[aldo_14]

You could say the same of capturing a submarine.

[Mustang19]

Good points. I see that it makes sense now.  As for automated defences, they wouldn't be THAT expensive considering how many zillions of dollars one of those fighters or bombers must cost. Think- right now we could probably make those kinds of automated defenses, so they shouldn't cost very much in the future.

And as for the marines vs. engineers thing, in the old sail days ships would carry a large contingent of marines speficically to defeat boarding attempts. Think of how many marines a cruiser must hold. Several hundred? Now how many people can an Elysium hold? Maybe 50 or so?

I noticed that a lot of FS ships, like the escape pods, are designed for personnel transfer but really can't carry many people. In one of the Silent Threat missions where you have to escort your ship's escape pods as the Krios is blown up by the GTI, you're told that "we have 43 people in escape pods" when there are like 10 escape pods out there- each one can fit 4-5 people? So how many people could a little transport hold, vs. how many people are there on a capital ship?

And even if you do capture the thing, like I said before it's probably going to be sabotaged. IMO there has to be some reason that in Freespace nobody ever captures a capital ship for the sake of using it later

[Prophet]

I didn't forget about security forces. But most of the crew would still be engineers and stuff. I and I did mention that that the capturing techniques need work. Mostly referring to the ships that transport the marines.

As for the sabotage. Consider that the ship must first be made reasonable safe to approach. And prevent it from slipping away during boarding. And include a messy boarding action. Don't you think the ship would spend some time in a drydock after that? Thus any sabotage would likely be noticed.

[aldo_14]

I didn't forget about security forces. But most of the crew would still be engineers and stuff. I and I did mention that that the capturing techniques need work. Mostly referring to the ships that transport the marines.

As for the sabotage. Consider that the ship must first be made reasonable safe to approach. And prevent it from slipping away during boarding. And include a messy boarding action. Don't you think the ship would spend some time in a drydock after that? Thus any sabotage would likely be noticed.

how do you think it'd check to sweep a damaged half-kilometer long vessel, including behind every single accessible bulkhead, etc?  I'd wager long enough to safely set a few timebombs.

[Prophet]

Are the crew die hard fanatics? Do they have access to explosives big enought to present danger to themselves and the ship?

Yes it is possible that they have access to explosives. But I imagine that critical areas where explosives can cause catastrofic damage would also be first areas for boarding marines to secure, for various reasons. If the explosive is sufficently large to destroy the ship regardless of placement, then I'd classify that as fanaticism. And the captured crew has no idea how long they will be aboard the vessel. So how to set the timer?

Look. I'm just saying that in my opinion boarding actions are completely possible. And I consider them humane thing to do. If the other option is to conduct genocide by shooting everything that comes in to view.

If we are to debate this further, then split the discussion in to it's own threat. But lets get this one back on topic.

[aldo_14]

Are the crew die hard fanatics? Do they have access to explosives big enought to present danger to themselves and the ship?

Yes it is possible that they have access to explosives. But I imagine that critical areas where explosives can cause catastrofic damage would also be first areas for boarding marines to secure, for various reasons. If the explosive is sufficently large to destroy the ship regardless of placement, then I'd classify that as fanaticism. And the captured crew has no idea how long they will be aboard the vessel. So how to set the timer?

Look. I'm just saying that in my opinion boarding actions are completely possible. And I consider them humane thing to do. If the other option is to conduct genocide by shooting everything that comes in to view.

If we are to debate this further, then split the discussion in to it's own threat. But lets get this one back on topic.

Firstly, just look at the size of a multi-kt MX-50 missile; not big.  Secondly, it doesn't have to destroy the ship - just make it too much of a pain in the arse to keep hold of it.  Take out a few critical sections, kill a few crew, job done.  Thirdly, the crew can evacuate beforehand; or at the very least you can't keep them onboard a damaged ship - it's a huge risk (they'll outnumber the captors) and a resource drain.  Not to mention it only takes a few hardcore loyalists to plant bombs or do sucidal damage- remember Koth ramming the Colossus? Or more modern examples like WW2 Soviet Commissars.

[Prophet]

Whatever.

[NGTM-1R]

That would require material for the bombs. Also to be more then a mere nuisance you really have to put it somewhere that matters. There are comparatively few such locations and these are easily secured. If the objective is to destroy the ship then either the fuel or magazines are the only viable options. (And perhaps not even the fuel.) Not every FS ship would have much in the way of explosives lying around either.

Considering the relative size of all known FS explosive weaponry, I don't see somebody manhandling a Hornet down the hall quick enough for that. The size argument you're making here is not coherent: you forget that an MX-50 is a good thirty-plus inch diameter weapon. The Hornet is at least twenty inches. These aren't weapons you can just drag around.

[Blue Haired Maniac]

There's simply too much that can go wrong when trying to capture a ship, so why try it? I mean, to have a successful capture, you would have to...

a) Isolate the ship from the main fleet that way other capital ships can't interfere with the capture operation.
b) Clear out the ship's fighter cover so they can't interfere with the capture operation.
c) Disable and disarm the ship in question so that it can't run away and it can't fire on the troop transports.
d) Send marines in transports to dock with and take over the ship.

Now here is where it gets interesting. You know that the ship you're going to capture is going to have its own compliment of marines, who are going to be prepared to receive boarders. One Argo transport will simply not be able to carry enough troops to effectively take over a ship. You would need to send in one Argo, and hope they can claw out a foothold while you get the subsequent transports into position in order to take advantage of the breech.

In the end, its simply more time efficient to just blow up the ship question with the main guns of other capital ships.

As for what I would do if I was GTVA Command, the only thing I would've personally done different was instead of setting up a defensive line at the Capella node in Gamma Draconis, I would pull the entire 3rd Fleet back to Capella to back up the Colossus and send a few destroyers on a flanking attack. The fool who figured a defensive line could stop a ship that is completely designed to smash through such lines should've had his stars taken away.

[Mars]

An argo could carry hundreds... if not thousands, of tightly packed people

[Blue Haired Maniac]

But it only has one docking point. Just give me and a squad enough ammunition and we could slaughter the lot.

[Kosh]

Then there's Slaying Ravana, which only proved that the GTVA didn't know what it was getting in to.  We see only the end of that battle, but I'm willing to bet the first phase was increadible.  At the time, they may not have had the resources on hand to deal with it, and the bomber wing was their last chance of taking it out before it left the area.  It's destruction was a moral boost and probably gave Command the idea that it needed to pour more resources into fighting the Shivans.

I think the only way the Ravana could have destroyed so many ships was if the fleet was sent directly in front of it. This was insanely stupid considering the damage it could do to just 2 corvettes.

Should the Colossus have stood it's ground?  I don't know, one would think not, but we don't know why the commander of that ship chose to stay

The Colossus was disabled, the captain had no choice.

[darkship]

i disagree with the whole "collapse jump node prior to first sath" idea, simply because the scientist of the GTVA has not considered using massive amounts of Meson Bombs to do such as thing, such a plan  would be concieved under pressure from 80+ saths bearing down on capella, only desperation would cause them to consider collapsing a jump node.

As for Being GTVA command, i would have set up RBCs around the knossos to help in the blockade of ships going in (NTF) and ships comming from (shivans).

also why would command let the iceni enter the knossos with ETAK when they could have mounted a blackops to capture the iceni when it was enroute to Regulus? i mean wouldnt it decapitate the NTF leadership as well as take away ETAK? Considering there were so few ships guarding the Iceni at the time it would have been easy. of course considering they Bosch would not sacrifice his life and ship to keep the ETAK device from the GTVA.

[Prophet]

Perhaps command didn't know if ETAK was finished or not. And how much work would it take. And would the friggin' thing even work. And why endanger your own people? Let the madman go to the Shivans. If he manages to form an alliance, then all is well and good and politics take care of the rest. If he fails and gets eaten, well **** happens but at least it was a madman dictator.

[aldo_14]

Assuming Command wasn't pulling the strings the whole time.....

[karajorma]

What always makes me laugh about these sort of threads are the sheer number of people who state that Command were stupid for not simply deploying massive numbers of RBCs or meson bombs to achieve whatever objective they think Command should have achieved.

Does the word experimental mean nothing to you people?

Neither weapon had been battle tested. It's quite possible that neither weapon had been heavily tested at all before being yanked out of the labs and thrust into service. Hell given that the briefing only mentions that the scientists "claim" that the meson bomb is bigger than anything previous it seems quite likely that using it was similar to yanking out the bomb used in the Trinity test and dropping it on the Japanese instead.

So why people expect them to have been stockpiled somewhere and not used is beyond me.

[Mustang19]

As for what I would do if I was GTVA Command, the only thing I would've personally done different was instead of setting up a defensive line at the Capella node in Gamma Draconis, I would pull the entire 3rd Fleet back to Capella to back up the Colossus and send a few destroyers on a flanking attack.

Why do so many people want to launch flanking attacks in space? It dosen't do anything. On land, it gives you the advantage of surprise, cutting the enemy's communications, going around his entrenchments, etc., but none of that applies in space where ships can simply swivel to face a new threat in a few seconds.

[NGTM-1R]

There's also the question of whether they actually had enough, or any, Meson Bombs ready for deployment at that time.

However I do have to disagree somewhat Kara. Given the number needed for the plan to collapse the Capella nodes it does not seem likely the Meson Bomb was that new. I don't think they could just poof up forty or so of the most powerful warheads the GTVA has ever manufactured in a week or two. It seems more likely that the Meson Bomb had just started manufacturing rather than being in a prototype phase of development.

EDIT: Flanking still has meaning to a ship, particularly a ship in motion. An Orion's let alone a Sathanas' turn rate could almost be measured in degrees per day. One would be able to get off two or perhaps three unopposed salvos before the other guy could bring his main battery to bear; perhaps more if he was already engaged with someone else.

[karajorma]

There's also the question of whether they actually had enough, or any, Meson Bombs ready for deployment at that time.

However I do have to disagree somewhat Kara. Given the number needed for the plan to collapse the Capella nodes it does not seem likely the Meson Bomb was that new. I don't think they could just poof up forty or so of the most powerful warheads the GTVA has ever manufactured in a week or two. It seems more likely that the Meson Bomb had just started manufacturing rather than being in a prototype phase of development.

The game quite clearly states that the Meson is experimental not simply new.

To demolish the Knossos portal, we will detonate the meson bomb, an experimental new weapon under development at the Hideki Institute in the Vega system. Though its specifications are highly classifed, physicists claim the meson bomb has more explosive power than any other warhead in our arsenal, sufficient to destroy any small craft within a three-kilometer radius.

That's not the description of a weapon about to be put into production. They quite clearly say that it's still under development and that they aren't certain of its yield.

[Dan1]

Park Meson next to Colossus and see what happens.  (Similarly:  Would a Meson warhead destroy the Colossus?  Anyone ever tried it?)