Attack Strategy to Cripple Spaceship

[tinkerdan]

You must work for the planetary government that presides in my novel's universe since this is their party line.

How to disable. Before you ask that ask yourself, how do they even find the ship in space? Space is big - mind bogglingly big - to quote Hitchhikers. Finding a ship in a solar system is probably harder than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Much harder. And if you leave the system that problem becomes a billion times worse. You need some reason for the ship to be in a specific location within the system - hyperspace conduit tubes (like railway lines), jump points which everyone has to use. Or failing that some super tech.

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Incidentally-they-are the pirates.

 

[Overread]

A single ship that splits into multiple ships with the intent to confuse and then have most of those separated elements assault the target ship has one flaw - there has to be a central and typically large hub for the ships to dock to. That is assuming that the drives to travel vast distances in space are significantly larger than those one would typically have on a short range ship (depends on the world your in - X-Wings in Starwars could cross huge distances between the stars, negating the traditional need for a carrier to transport them long distance).
A central hub is also good to house things like recreation, food, stores (LOOT!) etc.. which you don't really want to be bringing into the main firefight and using for assault ships.

If you do have a central hub then when you're on the attack, once you've marked the target that can hold right back out of range and let the assault ships charge in - that way even if your target fires back you can take a 100% loss on the pods, but still have the main ship make an escape (its also there out of battle to provide support, such as spotting for a trap or simply acting as an overview control point with people able to instruct without being in the firefight themselves..

IF smaller ships can house hyperdrives or similar then you can have each ship equipped and they can operate fully independent of the other (which also introduces an interesting mechanic since it means each assault ship could operate and separate from the main crew - creating tension - though it would also suggest that recreational and other facilities might be rather sparse.

 

[tinkerdan]

I think they were describing something more of a swarm formation which only requires a slightly larger queen bee module around which they swarm. But they could still be somewhat docked depending on how many pirates there might be and how many modules so the queen could be a simple docking rig that can branch out like a plant and hold the other bee pods like leaves. They would have to have some sort of hive like holding cell if they were to have slave prisoners that would be held for the duration. But when docked the bee pods could possibly act as the attitude thrusters for the entire complex before they go into warp-jump-or hype. The rig could be mostly fuel and thrusters with the branches and access corridors.

 

[Jester85]

How to disable. Before you ask that ask yourself, how do they even find the ship in space? Space is big - mind bogglingly big - to quote Hitchhikers. Finding a ship in a solar system is probably harder than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Much harder. And if you leave the system that problem becomes a billion times worse. You need some reason for the ship to be in a specific location within the system - hyperspace conduit tubes (like railway lines), jump points which everyone has to use. Or failing that some super tech.

Even a ship trying to avoid attention has to stop at some sort of spaceport/refueling station, etc. at some point, doesn't it?

The pirates could have been tailing them since their last brush with civilization--it'd make sense for them to lurk around spaceports, scoping out the comers and goers, noticing vessels and crews that look like easy pickings--and waited to pounce until they're in the middle of nowhere, with no one to help.

 

[tinkerdan]

Yes they could have many stopping places but honestly the better source for slave labor might be some back water planet with few defenses and lots of people.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Guys,

Don't mean to derail the topic, but no. Firefly's drive you know absolutely nothing about save that it looks like some huge steam engine and there's a spinning thing on the outside of the ship that may or may not be part of it. Warp drive on the other hand you do have some knowledge about, as you do about antimatter reactors providing the energy for it. The ships in Battlestar (the newer series) use a jump system. You watched them program it and the ships vanish and reappear, while the fighters have some sort of rocketry system since you see the trails they leave behind them.

But the real tech flaw with Firefly is the mix of techs. I mean to give just one truly horrific example, we have one epp where a man is lying on a deck with a rifle shooting through an open hatch while not wearing a suit (so are we to assume they have shields? Not to mention antigravity to hold him down to the deck?) at another ship. I mean really? A bullet? Fired at another ship travelling at unknown speeds when that ship surely has shields too and if they can contain air should be able to stop a pitiful bullet. And if they have antigravity why do they need jets / rockets to lift off a planet?

Star Trek has a bible which goes through the tech in detail among other things. So does BG. Firefly just doesn't.

And lets not get into the whole craziness of I'm going to get on a starship centuries or millenia from now but wear my distant ancestor's clothes, talk like a western, and carry a six shooter. I mean why didn't Joss just go further back and have them in furs and carrying spears? It would have been just as anachronistic.

Sorry - pet peeve of mine. This was a show that should have been brilliant. And it almost was which says a lot about Joss' talents.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[jastius]

why attack? its a piece of crap vessel. they are already transporting your human cargo.. so why not just hack the nav-com ... you know tell its mapping system that the place they are supposed to go is the system the pirates want them in.. then they come in out of warp in a different section of space, their emergency communications signals are blocked by jammers, then they just use really big magnets to trap the ship between two or more of their ships, a la scrap car at a junk yard.. the magnet also emf's their computers so the pirates then use radio signals to run the ship...
simple pimple. keep the oxygen levels low and they won't have any energy to do anything but breathe.

 

[Overread]

At some point you'd have to attack and take over, you could lure the ship away from its destination like that; but otherwise when they arrive at the wrong destination they'll know something is up. Panicked people will do stupid things and you could suddenly find that your target blasts off in the wrong direction when they realise what's going on. There's also the chance that they could fix their nav-computer if they spotted the heck during the flight.

It would be a good way to confuse and lure them to a mid-flight ambush spot where the show of force and the fact that you've messed their navigation up could convince them to surrender.

 

[jastius]

what surrender? if the crew can't breathe they can't fight.. they will be suffocating .. pirates board after everyone is unconscious and load the human cargo onto the other vessel. use the boarding crew to take piece of crap ship into salvage port .. ships crew from freighter would be enslaved along with everyone else. the dummy crew deploys garbage with a beacon that makes it look like the ship exploded.. old trick from submarine warfare... so all the authorities find is crash sites.. meantime everyone is slaving away at the salt mines of copernicus..

 

[David Evil Overlord]

In Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, the more advanced fleet fired nanites at the other fleet. Try fighting back when your hull is being eaten by nanites, that use the hull to make more nanites to eat more hull to make more nanites, increasing exponentially...

But that's probably way past the tech level you want...