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Post by Rocket Witch on Mar 6, 2017 2:58:55 GMT
What about chemical warfare? Fill their ecosystem with some nitrous and put them to sleep? There is a problem with that: everyone requires a different dosage, in order to assuredly KO everyone you may risk killing some. Also gas masks are a simple, standard piece of military equipment; unlikely to be carried into space, but they'll have spacesuits for EVA work. They probably wouldn't have enough of these for everyone, but if you gas & enter you could still encounter healthy opposition from part of the crew unless you wait for hours while constantly pumping the stuff in to counter the work of the filtration system if it's still functional.
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Post by deltav on Mar 6, 2017 3:02:45 GMT
deltav "low yield thermonuclear weapon" is where you went wrong, Neutron Bombs were made to kill Soviet Armoured Tank Divisions, by cooking the crew, however tanks are armoured (go figure) so the radiation pulse was not as effective as thought, also if you have LoS to the bomb exploding you get cooked in a different way. A small nuclear blast will wipe out the crew module also the Li-6 radiation shields everyone uses are perfect for stopping that kind of stuff Don't get distracted by the word "thermonuclear". Neutron bombs don't kill with heat as much as with radiation. Look it was just a passing comment. Just was saying that if the boarding robots opened the airlocks and tossed in a couple neutron grenades, they could take out the crew but leave the computers and equipment intact.
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Post by n2maniac on Mar 6, 2017 3:08:19 GMT
Aim an unshielded nuclear reactor at them for a bit, let them cook. Or insert radon/other isotope/dirty bomb. Or just plain old poison? Wait, we were boarding it rather than venting the crew compartments to space for a reason, nevermind.
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Post by David367th on Mar 6, 2017 3:09:33 GMT
What about chemical warfare? Fill their ecosystem with some nitrous and put them to sleep? There is a problem with that if there are people inside you don't want dead, which is a probable scenario for a boarding op. Everyone requires a different dosage; in order to assuredly KO everyone you may risk killing some. Would it not be a viable tactic though? Even if the dosage was low enough not to pose a danger, their fighting capacity would be way lowered under the influence.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Mar 6, 2017 3:24:03 GMT
Would it not be a viable tactic though? Even if the dosage was low enough not to pose a danger, their fighting capacity would be way lowered under the influence. Low doses of N 2O inhibit anxiety which may make the enemy resist more strongly. Of course you can just use a different gas but I thought that was interesting. Tear gas might work nicely; it still isn't without risk of serious harm but I guess that risk is similar to going in vanilla anyway. A more benign solution could be to smoke the rooms and enter with IR/nightvision gear.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 6, 2017 4:07:45 GMT
deltav "low yield thermonuclear weapon" is where you went wrong, Neutron Bombs were made to kill Soviet Armoured Tank Divisions, by cooking the crew, however tanks are armoured (go figure) so the radiation pulse was not as effective as thought, also if you have LoS to the bomb exploding you get cooked in a different way. A small nuclear blast will wipe out the crew module also the Li-6 radiation shields everyone uses are perfect for stopping that kind of stuff Don't get distracted by the word "thermonuclear". Neutron bombs don't kill with heat as much as with radiation. Look it was just a passing comment. Just was saying that if the boarding robots opened the airlocks and tossed in a couple neutron grenades, they could take out the crew but leave the computers and equipment intact. the W66 (a neutron bomb) had a yield of "The W66 was a low yield (details not declassified, but reportedly a few kilotons)" Wikipedia, a russian missile which according to wikipedia was a ERW had a yield of 10Kt, the W70 Neutron bomb haad a varible yield of 1-100Kt although ERW is only effictive at lower yields, the W79 a neutron bomb had a yield of 0.1 to 1.1Kt and they were 200 pounds in mass, 112cm long and 20.3cm wide EDIT: Compared to the W54 (smallest production nuke) the W79 has a massive yield, the W54 manages 10T of TNT at a minimum and 0.25Kt at a max, so 100T is the minium for IRL neutron bombs, more then the mini nukes we use for NEFP EDIT2: mukes -> nukes
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Post by deltav on Mar 6, 2017 4:17:30 GMT
Don't get distracted by the word "thermonuclear". Neutron bombs don't kill with heat as much as with radiation. Look it was just a passing comment. Just was saying that if the boarding robots opened the airlocks and tossed in a couple neutron grenades, they could take out the crew but leave the computers and equipment intact. the W66 (a neutron bomb) had a yield of "The W66 was a low yield (details not declassified, but reportedly a few kilotons)" Wikipedia, a russian missile which according to wikipedia was a ERW had a yield of 10Kt, the W70 Neutron bomb haad a varible yield of 1-100Kt although ERW is only effictive at lower yields, the W79 a neutron bomb had a yield of 0.1 to 1.1Kt and they were 200 pounds in mass, 112cm long and 20.3cm wide EDIT: Compared to the W54 (smallest production nuke) the W79 has a massive yield, the W54 manages 10T of TNT at a minimum and 0.25Kt at a max, so 100T is the minium for IRL neutron bombs, more then the mini nukes we use for NEFP EDIT2: mukes -> nukes Okay gosh lol.
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Post by beta on Mar 7, 2017 14:17:51 GMT
Boarding to capture electronic data would be highly unlikely. It would be fairly trivial to wipe data quickly (zeroize as another poster stated). If data security was important, small explosives around your encrypted data storage could be either pre-installed or easily placed. On the order of tens of seconds to minutes to destroy data (physical) or seconds (zeroize). Unless you have a unique situation and the enemy has poor pre-planning (high G killed their crew, automated systems do not sanitize data for example), you will not be capturing data.
The main reason you want to board a craft would be to capture the people on board. Chemical weapons or concussion devices (flashbangs etc.) would be dubious at best, unless we are still going with the no crew have access to spacesuits concept.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 7, 2017 14:25:47 GMT
what officers and intel agents have in there heads might be worth boarding for, other crew may have orders to kill them to prevent capture
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Post by beta on Mar 7, 2017 14:27:44 GMT
what officers and intel agents have in there heads might be worth boarding for, other crew may have orders to kill them to prevent capture Yeah, I originally had a much large post delving into tactics for entry and what the opposing crew would do. At the end of the day, if the crew you are boarding is fanatical and don't value their lives, you are better off nuking them or expending some railgun ammo. Cheaper in mass, volume, and cost than building a bunch of kill-bots to scuttle over to their ship and shoot them.
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Post by The Astronomer on Mar 7, 2017 14:32:27 GMT
what officers and intel agents have in there heads might be worth boarding for, other crew may have orders to kill them to prevent capture Poor Xiping.
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Post by ultravires on Mar 7, 2017 22:40:44 GMT
It occurs to me that we may have been thinking of the wrong targets to board. Presumably, the thing you would most want to take over would be space stations/asteroid bases etc, not so much enemy ships. Bases/Stations are large and expensive, so you want to take them intact- which means you can't nuke them (unless you only want to kill them, but that means you also loose the strategic position/production/farm facility etc.). Seems to me there are a lot more possibilities in that scenario.
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Post by Bard on Mar 7, 2017 23:04:37 GMT
It occurs to me that we may have been thinking of the wrong targets to board. Presumably, the thing you would most want to take over would be space stations/asteroid bases etc, not so much enemy ships. Bases/Stations are large and expensive, so you want to take them intact- which means you can't nuke them (unless you only want to kill them, but that means you also loose the strategic position/production/farm facility etc.). Seems to me there are a lot more possibilities in that scenario. Yes!!!!! Also I'm hoping in future, Space Stations come into play as a more substantial element in COADE like Oneill Cylinders, Asteroid bases etc.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 8, 2017 3:30:09 GMT
get into the station and release gas, you want the structure not the people.
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Post by RiftandRend on Mar 8, 2017 5:29:44 GMT
get into the station and release gas, you want the structure not the people. Disabling their life support systems would have a very similar effect with out necessitating gas carriers.
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