I am interested to see how others would have handled this situation.

The players have been tracking a recently turned traitor naval cruiser. (the players also have a cruiser)

The navigator flubs his re-entry roll and I decide instead of out in the edge of the system they come out of the warp much farther in, close enough that the traitors notice them. The enemy cruiser immediately moves to engage (still far out of engagement range though). The players warm up their empyrian mantle and go silent running. The enemy cruiser after failing to find them also goes silent running (though without a mantle). Thus begins a week long cat and mouse game as the 2 ships hunt around trying to find each other.

Finally the players navigator is able to locate the other ship and I rule that with his direction they can get a lock on the other ship with passive sensors. So the players lay their plans and go in for the ram and board while still on silent running. I ruled that ramming an unsuspecting ship is a +0 roll instead of a -20 one. They succeed and plant their reinforced prow in the side of the enemy ship, and off go the hordes of troops and combat servitors they keep on hand.

Since they had surprise I let them have a +20 to their command roll and did not let the enemy turrets effect the roll one the first round. With the damage they caused with the ram (with attendant crew and moral loss) plus the other bonuses they had they mad a hash of the enemy crew in short order.

How does this sound to you, especially how you would handle a surprise boarding action?

I`d like the idea of a suprise ramming attack, bout i doubt that they could get in ramming range without being noticed.

GregorM1980 said:

Yeah, I can see the submarine analogies here. But as soon as the ship is closer than 2 VUs (for example), they should be detectable due to their engines or just plain old being visible. Plasma flaring into space is not what I would call undetectable, especially a ship as large as a criuser.

But, the ram would be a surprise. Turning a cruiser to avoid takes momentum and preparation. Preparing to repel a boarding action however would take less time. I'd go with +0 ram, no turrets ,but stop there.

Well done by your players btw. !

Johan B said:

I would levy a penalty on the enemy cruiser, since a vessel can prepare itself to repel boarders, this would be, in essence, the opposite of that. Perhaps a command check to mitigate a penalty?

Overall though, I think you handled it fair and fun, well done by you and the players.

On a side note since there was no rules that I could find for passive sensors or for that matter what effect a damaged auger array would have.

I was using a -30 penalty and half range for passive sensors but I honestly have no idea what to do for a damaged/destroyed auger array.

Is the ship completely blind? I would guess not as if it was then any critical the players (or NPCs for that matter) get would be assigned to the auger arrays. What kind of penalties to BS rolls (among others) would you assign to the ship?

GregorM1980 said:

How do you figure? Assuming the sensor checks were failed, they wouldn't visually notice until the ship was at least 250km out. And by that point they essentially have 2/3rds of a minute to react.