Forcing an entry to a starship

[epicenter00]

Not speaking at all of what's in this or that supplement, I would imagine that starships are actually extremely difficult to get into in the Traveller universe.

Traveller in general is very materialistic; "property is more valuable than life" is a view that is propagated from the very top of the Imperium's social system. In thinking in the Imperium, starships would be treated more as homes than vehicles. Vehicles have easy rescue systems in case of accidents and are thought of as reasonably easy to replace. Homes are fortified against intrusion because it's your refuge.

Rescue systems may be required by Imperial space law, but I'd imagine everyone would regularly flout them and deactivate or otherwise circumvent them. A panel with a RESCUE sticker stuck to it that you hit to blow the cockpit is right out. The rescue systems would be sort of considered a joke: inspection time comes around when they're reinstalled or reconnected, the engineer hastily unwelds the thick armor plate in front of the easy access RESCUE door, and so on; the hazard of having your precious ship stolen is worse than the (unlikely) scenario of space rescue. "Cool" ship inspectors probably joke about it with captains, jerk inspectors penalize you fiscally but still don't downcheck your ship.

Anything that five guys and/or gals could do in like 10 minutes to an hour is definitely out, especially if it could be done stealthily. I figure that thrilling space jackings are pretty rare and most people actually just seize starships on the ground; subsequently anything that resembles a ground highjacking method (ie; a bunch of people in spacesuits trying to figure out how to get into a ship) is going to be extremely hardened against. It'd make a ship thief's job too easy; just wait until all or most of the occupants have left (given a ship usually lays over for a week on a world, it's long enough to stake out) and run up to the ship and do whatever you have to do in order break into the ship.* Once that's done, fly it off to another aerospace port on same planet most likely. While weapons laws might be restrictive in most starports, they're a part of Imperial law and not local law and I think everyone in the startowns of the Imperium realize that spacers are usually armed; spacers tend to be loners who like the privacy and don't consider it worth their lives to be good Samaritans. Even if they see something, many are just going to be "not our business."

Rescue equipment in the Third Imperium I would imagine would actually be large, bulky, and hard to hide: It'd be basically some brute force method like the Jaws of Life on Steroids. Ships that expected to find other ships in trouble -- rescue crews, "pirates" (opportunists), and military patrol vessels would have them. Everyone else, it'd be a few tons of dead weight that'd be better spent carrying cargo or paying passengers.




* This is assuming the ship thieves / repo (wo)men haven't just figured out crews are basically lonely and just hire a cute girl to pose as a fruit seller selling fresh citrus or something to come by pushing a cart - man or woman, they're going to go outside to buy some fresh citrus and talk to a harmless girl just to have someone different to talk to after being cooped up in a ship for a week+.

 

[Icosahedron]

Some good points there, Epicenter. I like the idea of rescue equipment necessarily being bulky and redundant. Not sure if TLs would agree with that, though.

I've always figured that, in common with houses and vehicles, the easiest way to enter a ship is the same way the crew enter. Just like a house, it's much easier and stealthier to pick the lock than to cut or smash your way in - though ram-raiding is a popular option. Depends whether you want the ship or its contents.

I would imagine that, where provided, the cockpit windows would be a natural weak point.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I'm sorry, no offense intended, but I'd have to disagree with the statement:

Vehicles have easy rescue systems in case of accidents and are thought of as reasonably easy to replace. Homes are fortified against intrusion because it's your refuge.

For some of the following reasons:
Just as larger capacity vehicles have additional rescue options, so do larger capacity dwellings. Fire escapes and roof top exits come to mind.
A car door when locked is probably harder to break through or pry open than a house door.
More cars are probably equipped with alarm systems than homes.
I think homes are very easy to break into.
- Other than in extremely high crime areas you don't see bars across windows.
- Windows are easy to break.
- Windows are required to be large enough to be used as an emergency exit so they are also large enough to climb in.
- I could be wrong, but my guess is that the majority of homes do not have a good security system active.
- Houses may have a motion light but they typically cover the main entrances and not all of the windows.
- Building code requires exit doors to open inward. This makes it easier to break in. One reason is so that if something has fallen and blocks the door it's on the same side as you are and you can move it to exit.

I figure that thrilling space jackings are pretty rare and most people actually just seize starships on the ground

I do to. Of course this varies depending on what area of space you are in.

run up to the ship and do whatever you have to do in order break into the ship.* Once that's done, fly it off

First, how does the crew get on board? Maybe the hatch normally can be opened from the outside by the crew by just punching in their access code. Maybe it's biometrics. No matter what the rescue options, this is all that has to be bypassed when on the ground. Hack it. Kidnap a crew member.
For emergency entry, which would definitely raise eyebrows (like someone using a slim jim to open a car door):
Depending on the type of starport, the starport security should keep most riffraff out of the area the ships are berthed. Cameras and whatever security the tech level allows would also be in place.
Again depending on space port, a "flight plan" would probably have to be filed and a ship without authorization would be detained as the engines warmed up and before it ever left the ground.
In any Traveller game I've played in, except in very secure locations, someone is left on board and they can warn the crew and local authorities if anyone unauthorized starts messing with the ship.
There are many security measures that prevent someone from just flying off with a ship. Both mechanical (locking a fuel line closed or even removing a key part of the ship) and electronic (enter a password to start the bridge computer programs, systems in engineering could require a password entered there as well) securities could be implemented to prevent easy theft.
How long does it take to get a parked ship up on the air anyways? This is a question that has been discussed on this site before.

As I indicated in a previous post, if passengers are carried then the rescue requirements may be much higher than on a cargo only vessel.
I would think exiting the ship quickly in an emergency is probably a certainty if you are carrying high passengers. Your ship might get passed over by passengers if they find out you are sealing them in their coffins.
Anything that happens in space is not going to be responded to immediately so while options for rescue should be available (banks and owners don't like holes blown in the sides of their investments and rescue should be available from an average ship and not just a specially equipped vessel) it does not have to be expedient or even available if security lockouts are enabled. Crew normally get in with a passcard or biometrics or whatever. When everyone is on board and your travelling, this is disabled. The manual access, maybe several standard access panels with numerous bolts and behind them a set of hand wheels that need to be turned, could also be manually jammed if pirates are about to board. IYTU maybe they are jammed and only made operational if the crew 1) believes the rescuers are legit and standard access is disable so that manual access is needed or 2) a situation where everyone needs to get into the emergency low berths

EDIT: Piracy and theft are probably less common than someone skipping with a ship or just not keeping up with payments. What options would banks, insurance companies and others require so that their property/investment/collateral can be recovered easily and with minimal expense?

 

[HG_B]

Thanks for that interesting explanation. The MegaTraveller box has a small warship on it with a hatch surrounded by black and yellow hatching, but I suspect that this is an escape hatch intended to be blown from the inside.

I wonder whether the future equivalent of thermite strips would actually work on a hull which has to be proof against meteorites? The nearest equivalent in the 21st century might be a submarine. How would you make an emergency entry through a hull like that, if at all?

Regards, Lindsay Jackson.

In MT the default hull armour value is 40. If the ship is mil, scout or other that is designed to resist boarding attempts you will have to spend a long time with a plasma cutter.

 

[samuelvss]

Blow Out the Hatch!!

Hull-breaching charge, 1.5m.
TL13 565kg Cr2900.
Blows a hole around the rim of any hatch or iris valve, allowing immediate Zero-G assault through the breach (inner diameter of 1.3 m) by those in vacc suits and otherwise encumbered with weapons, armor and gear. Instantly severs the hatch, and blows it out away from the breach. Anyone standing directly in the path of the hatch will take 7D damage; anyone within 1.5 of the hatch on the inside will take 2D damage; anyone in contact with the inside of the hatch will take 4D damage. Attaches through magets or adhesive to the outer hull, and fired by a timer (20 sec to 30 min) or hand-held actuator using a firing wire (15 m). Other detonators may be used, but are not included. This charge will blow similar hole in any section of the hull; but, without very specific knowledge of what is behind the hole, this is very risky, as it may cause structural or mechanical damage and will quite possibly end up in a space without easy access past the hull breach (i.e.: a now mangled fresher).

From a tactical standpoint, non-airlock hatches are preferred. An airlock will take two charges, with a smaller diameter, custom charge used on the inner hatch. (A second charge can be modified by one with Demo skill so as to blow the inside hatch out the outside hole. Routine task, +2 for each level of Demo skill. If the the second hatch does not clear, it will be lodged inside the airlock, Routine task to clear.)

Lift pack.
TL13 30kg Cr 3000
Lifts the above charge (675 kg lift) for 3 min, allowing for loading and unloading without cargo handling equipment. Can be recharged from ship's power.

Porta-Hatch
TL9** 400kg Cr 2000
A specially designed hatch with fittings to be welded (or even bolted!) into a hole blown by the above 1.5 charge. It will be obvious that this is a refit to anyone seeing the hatch with any exposure to starships. The seals and fittings provided make a airtight seal when installed by anyone with Mechanical skill. Hatch sensors,etc, require Electrical skill to hook up to the mangled leads left behind by a hatch breach.

**The technology involved is TL8, but this kit is typically available only in conjunction with the above kit, or at any A or B starport. Otherwise, available through special manufacture at TL 8 for Cr40,000, requiring specifications and 1D weeks to find the vendors needed.

 

[epicenter00]

I'm sorry, no offense intended, but I'd have to disagree with the statement: For some of the following reasons:
Just as larger capacity vehicles have additional rescue options, so do larger capacity dwellings. Fire escapes and roof top exits come to mind.
A car door when locked is probably harder to break through or pry open than a house door.
More cars are probably equipped with alarm systems than homes.
I think homes are very easy to break into.
- Other than in extremely high crime areas you don't see bars across windows.
- Windows are easy to break.
- Windows are required to be large enough to be used as an emergency exit so they are also large enough to climb in.
- I could be wrong, but my guess is that the majority of homes do not have a good security system active.
- Houses may have a motion light but they typically cover the main entrances and not all of the windows.
- Building code requires exit doors to open inward. This makes it easier to break in. One reason is so that if something has fallen and blocks the door it's on the same side as you are and you can move it to exit.

No offense taken, I see your point. In this case, a ship is basically like a vehicle and a home rolled into one. Well, really more like a panic room.

A starship is going basically going to be a home in a high crime area, perhaps in a country without much in the way of laws to prevent you from doing whatever you want to do to fortify it. Yeah, bars over the windows, plate glass replaced with some sort of shatter-resistant glass, the interior of the windowframes built up so that they can't be climbed through (there's a high crime area near where I work where I see this kind of thing), those "door shoe" things to prevent entry, and so on. Of course, over all of this, you've replaced all the wood and drywall of your house with metal - it's what a lot of people would do if they could get away it.

It makes escaping a bit dicey, but people aren't so worried about that...

 

[Carlobrand]

Striker describes a ship hull as being of strength equivalent to about 6" of steel. That doesn't mean it's literally 6" of steel, just that its construction provides equivalent resistance to penetration.

AHL declares the inner bulkhead or hatch to have a penetration modifier of -5, to require 250 points to breach, provides a satchel charge for the purpose, and declares the outer hull to be unbreachable (at least by anything available to a boarding party). The satchel charge has a penetration of 30, so it would take about 10 such charges to blow the hatch off, if I read those rules correctly. Wow! The thing's a safe!

Honestly, your best bet is your ship's turret-laser, assuming you have one and the target is not moving. Otherwise, you're going to have to go buy some boomboomstuff.

 

[warwizard]

I once used a combination of grav floor plates and some TDX to do a combat assult into a suspected pirate that fired on my NPC Imperial firey class when challenged and ordered to stand by for boarding.

The configuration was a light frame mounting 4 grav plates at the corners with a portion of TDX at each plate. The plates are set so that the gravity is perpendicular to the surface to be breached, and the TDX would cut a 4 sided hole in the surface.

And for the best intrusion method: Teleportation. I bet the Zhodani military use that method a lot.

 

[BytePro]

Nothing is going to be so secure one can't get in it... one way or another (I'd call turret weapons handy hull openers ).

I've seen large sections of modern sub hulls cut up (for testing)... funny thing was, someone actually stole a multi-ton section once - left deep grooves in a freeway leading all the way out to the scrap yard some dozens of miles away (yes - they were caught) :rofl:

Aside from a built in structure like a bank or toxic/rad waste vault, one of the most secure things is probably a tank... they are not designed to be easy to get into and top of the line models are made to punch through just about anything and survive some awesome raw power. However, specially designed, man carry-able, warheads can get through in fractions of a second. And, without active and external security, there would be a number of ways to 'steal' one. Such as winching it away - though probably with a tarmac truck; lift it with a heavy lift cargo crane onto a ship, or hoist it off with a cargo chopper - of just get a whole gaggle of friends with good backs and cargo straps...

Of course, if one counts a theft as successful based on criteria that excludes getting caught, well that's another story.

Getting into a starship designed for plying space between civilized starports is probably not going to present much challenge - flying it away would probably be quite an effort, but not for those who made a successful career of it. Then there is the whole issue of ubiquitous surveillance and forensic tech making such an endeavor quite risky. Most civilian and merchant ships would probably count on external security as much as anything.

A starship designed for combat, wilderness landings and such would obviously have different design criteria.

 

[Strummist]

In one game I prepped a ship against boarding by using a lot of heavy-duty cabling connected to the powerplant to turn the entry passage of the ship into a big coilgun. Worked a treat. The ref ruled that several megawatts applied in that way fired the boarders at great speed out of the ship, while also heating them excessively. Okay, we destroyed our own powerplant, caused a lot of onboard damage and had an angry enemy ship still next to us but that's a different problem..

 

[Enoki]

Aside from a built in structure like a bank or toxic/rad waste vault, one of the most secure things is probably a tank... they are not designed to be easy to get into and top of the line models are made to punch through just about anything and survive some awesome raw power.

That is one of my favorites in designing ships that are hard to knock out or board: Build most of the outer hull in layers of tanks for fuel, water, etc. Sort of like a layered torpedo defense on a warship.

You cut a hole in the hull and find you are in a tank. You cut through the tank and find you are in a tank.....

The same goes for hatches. Minimize the number first. Those that remain have an inner and outer hatch (ie., airlock). The compartments on each side and inboard are all useless things like quarters or a storage room, or something like that. Those have locking doors. This means you still have to force another door or wall even if far less substancial than the hull itself.

The idea is two fold: First, you are slowed down getting anywhere useful. Second, you probably didn't bring anywhere near enough boarding charges, demolition charges, etc., with you to get there in any case.....

 

[warwizard]

In one game I prepped a ship against boarding by using a lot of heavy-duty cabling connected to the powerplant to turn the entry passage of the ship into a big coilgun. Worked a treat. The ref ruled that several megawatts applied in that way fired the boarders at great speed out of the ship, while also heating them excessively. Okay, we destroyed our own powerplant, caused a lot of onboard damage and had an angry enemy ship still next to us but that's a different problem..

Yeah and the TDX grav plate thing just blew a hole in the third stateroom, did not use the airlock at all... Standard ship classes tend to allow such selection of entry points, the designs are relativley fixed as far as the floor plan goes.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Now, right now, using a plasma cutter on a half inch of steel to cut a shape, and depending on the type of steel (stainless, etc.) takes anywhere from a few minutes to almost 20, but that includes a huge power supply, the hand unit itself, and imagining using that thing in space or in zero g it would be a mess, but again that is at TL-7? 8?

I always had it that the exterior hatch was keyed to comms of crewmembers and would only open for them, based on sort of a transponder signal AND a verfied visual (or maybe even a retina thing on some military ship or a DNA keyed lock) record in the ship's computer. And a outer iris valve IS the equivalent of 6" of steel, which could be 1/4" of Superdense, but in either case, you'd need to cause enough damage to essentially cut through the cross section of a railroad track, which is pretty thick if you're going to use a snub pistol.

The Solomani Marines in the game I am running now have access to two 15 ton boarding shuttles, which are kind of like the Vulcan shuttle in the first Star Trek Movie, except on one end, they have a combination airlock and fusion cutter unit mounted on a ring that cuts the whole airlock off, frame and all, and pushes it inside the ship to be boarded. They usually go in with armor on, carrying riot shields, and work over the crew pretty quick. This of course would be after a protracted space battle, and the ship to be boarded was ready to be boarded, and had no turrets left/no power/etc.

Other ideas? Computer-4+ to hack the ship's safety system and blow the explosive bolts and blow the hatch, in addition to the many other ideas presented above. Pirates and repo men would be pros at cracking a ship, no matter what, well, unless they were crappy piratess or repo men. figure if a Corsair as presented (with the clamshell doors) can get a courier in the bay, whoever is on that courier better have some guns...

 

[Enoki]

An easier way to secure important hatches on a ship is simply to have a mode where the hatches can only be operated by, say, the bridge crew. Once locked in this mode only the bridge can open them. The design of the system is such that you cannot bypass the bridge locally either. That is, the actual operating system is remote from the hatch. You cannot simply remove some panel and bypass the controls. You would literally have to cut the hatch open to get through.
So, you have to call the bridge to get them to cycle the hatch. No need for high tech beyond that. If the bridge crew knows none of the ship's crew are outside the ship they won't open any exterior hatch for example so you are now left with cutting through it.