[Stormkeeper]

And in the process kill the entire crew, that's never a good plan for taking a ship.

I thought we just wanted the ship, not the crew ?

And that'll work... once. Then it'll be known the crew is gonna die no matter what.

Who would know if it was a black op and you had awacs?

[Blue Lion]

You would need to use black ops and AWACs all the time then.

And oh yea the enemy would notice all their ships vanishing and put two and two together.

[ShadowGorrath]

Hey, another thing against capturing ships- no capital ship is without escort. Can you get through the escort that your losses are too light to capture the hostile ship ?

[Colonol Dekker]

Troopships from Conquest Frontier Wars are nice.
Small nippy craft, or heavy vblockade runners with numerous delivery pods / breaching / landing craft..

Or fly an assault shuttle into an orions hangar. That would work too, like a covenant style thing.

But i LOVED the ISSAPC's from Space: Above qand Beyond. (off topiucc- man i felt like i'd been punched inthe gut when i saw that final episode)

[Snail]

IMO you still need crew in navigation, communications, sensors, etc. etc, not just people on the bridge. I'd say that there are people working computers or what have you in all the subsystem areas, so that you can't just blow up the bridge and be done with it.

[Stormkeeper]

You would need to use black ops and AWACs all the time then.

And oh yea the enemy would notice all their ships vanishing and put two and two together.

TBH, I wouldn't capture ships very often.

Hey, another thing against capturing ships- no capital ship is without escort. Can you get through the escort that your losses are too light to capture the hostile ship ?

Yep. Rapid, overwhelming firepower in the face of an confused, unprepared opponent. IMO, if you were gonna capture the ship, you would know its route, and therefore, its escort. An appropriate counterforce could then be assembled, and precision jumped around the ship. Note that in FS2, ships could only be detected moments before exiting hyperspace, and I doubt that ships could bring their firepower to bear quick enough.

IMO you still need crew in navigation, communications, sensors, etc. etc, not just people on the bridge. I'd say that there are people working computers or what have you in all the subsystem areas, so that you can't just blow up the bridge and be done with it.

Like I said, ker-blamm life support, bombard the ship with radiation weapons and cobalt bombs and you win.

[Snail]

There are probably more than 1 life support systems and they're probably protected. Electromagnetic radiation-resistant stuff is probably put over the hull.

[Blue Lion]

You would need to use black ops and AWACs all the time then.

And oh yea the enemy would notice all their ships vanishing and put two and two together.

TBH, I wouldn't capture ships very often.

Hey, another thing against capturing ships- no capital ship is without escort. Can you get through the escort that your losses are too light to capture the hostile ship ?

Yep. Rapid, overwhelming firepower in the face of an confused, unprepared opponent. IMO, if you were gonna capture the ship, you would know its route, and therefore, its escort. An appropriate counterforce could then be assembled, and precision jumped around the ship. Note that in FS2, ships could only be detected moments before exiting hyperspace, and I doubt that ships could bring their firepower to bear quick enough.

IMO you still need crew in navigation, communications, sensors, etc. etc, not just people on the bridge. I'd say that there are people working computers or what have you in all the subsystem areas, so that you can't just blow up the bridge and be done with it.

Like I said, ker-blamm life support, bombard the ship with radiation weapons and cobalt bombs and you win.

Exactly, you're putting a lot of time and effort into something you're not going to use very often.

Quite honestly a transport and some marines would be vastly easier. The only real reason to do this would be to get an intact ship, and you would almost spend as much time and effort as it would take to build one.

[Ghostavo]

IMO you still need crew in navigation, communications, sensors, etc. etc, not just people on the bridge. I'd say that there are people working computers or what have you in all the subsystem areas, so that you can't just blow up the bridge and be done with it.

Like I said, ker-blamm life support, bombard the ship with radiation weapons and cobalt bombs and you win.

It would be easier to blow the ship up. Not to mention that the hull is capable of surviving nuclear blast in the order of several gigatons (not to mention large scale anti-matter/matter reactions), so I'd say it can survive any attempt of radiation poisoning. And if by any chance it didn't survive radiation poisoning, you'd have a worthless radioactive metal chunk.

[Stormkeeper]

There are probably more than 1 life support systems and they're probably protected. Electromagnetic radiation-resistant stuff is probably put over the hull.

If that's the case, the mole can just plant bombs in key locations and snuff out key systems. Or sabotage the ventilation system to pass carbon monoxide throughout the ship.

[DarthWang]

You know there's a lot of radiation in space - the ships are obviously shielded from it

[Droid803]

Yea, I think that point was raised in the "why don't we use nukes instead of beams" thread.

[Blue Lion]

There are probably more than 1 life support systems and they're probably protected. Electromagnetic radiation-resistant stuff is probably put over the hull.

If that's the case, the mole can just plant bombs in key locations and snuff out key systems. Or sabotage the ventilation system to pass carbon monoxide throughout the ship.

Moles planting, bombs, radiation weapons, this is way too complex! Just blow out the engines and send in marines!

[Stormkeeper]

There are probably more than 1 life support systems and they're probably protected. Electromagnetic radiation-resistant stuff is probably put over the hull.

If that's the case, the mole can just plant bombs in key locations and snuff out key systems. Or sabotage the ventilation system to pass carbon monoxide throughout the ship.

Moles planting, bombs, radiation weapons, this is way too complex! Just blow out the engines and send in marines!

That was one of my earlier ideas, yes. Most people had that idea. But storming a destroyer needs LOTS of marines.

[Droid803]

Yeah, but once its been disarmed and disabled, you can just cart them in by the bucketload.

[DarthWang]

At least until reinforcements arrive

[Gamma_Draconis]

Yeah, but once its been disarmed and disabled, you can just cart them in by the bucketload.

Or the captain of the ship decides it's better to blow up the ship along with everyone in it rather than have it fall to enemy hands. Now both sides lose, joy.

[Stormkeeper]

Imo, i think creating an emp field will cut off remote self destruct controls.

[Snail]

If that's the case, the mole can just plant bombs in key locations and snuff out key systems. Or sabotage the ventilation system to pass carbon monoxide throughout the ship.

Well in the main hall we can see some marines with guns guarding all the doors. I'm sure that if you don't have proper clearance that it'd be hard to get in. But seeing as it was a mole, I guess he would be able to get past security. However, some random dip**** walking around into all the life support rooms on the ship is bound to rouse suspicions.

And seeing how this is all in space, I'm sure people would have gas masks of some kind in case of hull breaches and all that stuff. So while you might get a few people with CO, I think they'd have enough sense to know what's going on and get their gas masks/space suits/wotevars on.

That was one of my earlier ideas, yes. Most people had that idea. But storming a destroyer needs LOTS of marines.

Well seeing as the majority of the 10,000 people on board would probably not be fully combat equipped, I don't think it'd be too hard to send in a few thousand marines to storm a ship. An Argo was described as carrying several hundred people on it during the mission Exodus ("Thousands of lives are at stake" or something along those lines), so I'd say ~8 Argo transports and a few well-placed Cyclops torpedoes would be able to take over the destroyer.

In the Shipyard demo mission, 5 Argos were used to take over a destroyer's skeleton crew, though they were stupidly deployed since they waited around. If they had been sent in one at a time they probably would have been harder to intercept...

Imo, i think creating an emp field will cut off remote self destruct controls.

Or "localizing the controls" (cutting off commands from the bridge) would probably be easier.

Yeah, but once its been disarmed and disabled, you can just cart them in by the bucketload.

Well as I said you probably don't need too much time to send in the marines (~10 minutes). An Orion has 2 docks in-game, I'm willing to bet it has more dispersed around the other sections of the ship.

[Stormkeeper]

As long as one of those 10,000 people isn't named Gordon Freeman, with a Super Gravity Gun in hand ...