How many SW infantry to clear out a GCS?

[Darth Wong]

The scenario is pretty damned artificial though; Imperial SOP when attempting to capture a ship is to disable it with ion cannons first. Even if this tends to make the ship blow up, they would probably just repeat this process with ship after ship until they managed to disable a ship without blowing it up. So the part of the scenario which stipulates fully functional interior systems is really not reasonable.

The second part makes more sense, but of course, now it's almost absurdly easy. We know that when you disable most of the onboard systems in a Federation ship, such as life support, people start dropping within minutes for some bizarre reason. Also, they're so reliant upon things like internal transporters that those still functioning would be useless, and even their comm badges don't work if the ship's computer is down. So most of the resistance would be either ineffective or knocked out of commission without having to do anything.

[Connor MacLeod]

The scenario is pretty damned artificial though; Imperial SOP when attempting to capture a ship is to disable it with ion cannons first. Even if this tends to make the ship blow up, they would probably just repeat this process with ship after ship until they managed to disable a ship without blowing it up. So the part of the scenario which stipulates fully functional interior systems is really not reasonable.

They don't have to just use ion cannons. They have non-nuclear EMP weapons as well (which owuld probably be alot less damaging than the ion cannons.)

Hell, they dont even need to disable the ship - just send over an assault shuttle full of Spacetroopers. A spacetrooper suit is basically a fully-enclosed spaceship, that's probably going to make any sort of "fucking with the interior" defense pretty redundant. And Spacetrooper use is probably going to be pretty SOP itself as well.

The second part makes more sense, but of course, now it's almost absurdly easy. We know that when you disable most of the onboard systems in a Federation ship, such as life support, people start dropping within minutes for some bizarre reason.

Maybe they're designed to release some sort of sleep/knockout gas in the event of am emergency like that to spare the crew having to endure asphyxiation?

[Themightytom]

That would be a pretty big safety hazard. If the inertial dampers screw up or get taken off-line, you either lose gravity or squish everyone to paste. It would be safer to have grav plating in the floors which is hard-wired to strict limits in order to prevent mishaps.

The exploding consoles of death don't seem very safe to me, neither does no seatbelts on ships that shake violently when something looks angrily at them, nor do the transporters seem safe. if we counted the number of transporter uses vs mishaps demonstrated on any of the series i don't think we would get a very appealing statistic.

side note, i was watching "booby trap" and when Picard began to manually maneuver the enterprise out of an asteroid field, he warned the crew that inertial dampeners were being controlled manually so eeryone should brace themselves.

THAT didn't seem safe at all.

[ArcaneDude]

Hell, they dont even need to disable the ship - just send over an assault shuttle full of Spacetroopers. A spacetrooper suit is basically a fully-enclosed spaceship, that's probably going to make any sort of "fucking with the interior" defense pretty redundant. And Spacetrooper use is probably going to be pretty SOP itself as well.

Problem with that is that Spacetrooper armour is not only large, it's also heavy. Not much chance that they'll be bartering around the narrow corridors and low ceilings of any given ST ship without getting stuck somewhere. If they somehow managed to take control of the ship from a console near their entry point, though...

Curious; has anyone ever thought of the possibility that troops are beamed out of a ship when invading? Assuming that the transporter system hasn't been disabled by ion cannon blasts, that is.

Not that a Federation commander would ever be so ballsy... <_<

[Darth Wong]

It seems to me that transporters are usually the first system to go down when the ship takes damage, at least based on the boarding incidents I've seen. Or maybe they just carry some device which jams the transporter.

[Ted C]

Curious; has anyone ever thought of the possibility that troops are beamed out of a ship when invading? Assuming that the transporter system hasn't been disabled by ion cannon blasts, that is.

They considered beaming off Ensata intruders in "The High Ground", but their "inversion" teleportation devices interfered with the transporters.

The possessed O'Brien was also worried about it in "Power Play", but he was able to block transporter use with forcefields and with other technical trickery.

Basically, transporters are so trivially easy to block that apparently anyone who knows they exist can negate their potential usefulness.

[Connor MacLeod]

Problem with that is that Spacetrooper armour is not only large, it's also heavy. Not much chance that they'll be bartering around the narrow corridors and low ceilings of any given ST ship without getting stuck somewhere. If they somehow managed to take control of the ship from a console near their entry point, though...

first off, it depends on the model. There are at least a couple lighter versions, as well as the huge boxy "HeavY" stuff.

Secondly. the heavy stuff is at most 2 m tall and maybe half that wide. Its large, but Feddie corridors tend to be rather large too. Just seeing most people passing through I doubt a 2 meter tall object would have MUCH problem passing through - might be uncomfortably close to the ceiling, but thats it.

[ArcaneDude]

Hmm. I might need to rewatch a few episodes of ST then...

I didn't know there were lighter versions, really. I haven't read that much of the books yet, but I'm trying to read as many as possible now.

Other idea; Buzz droids. Use Ion cannons to disable shields, realease swarms of Buzz droids, and let them take the ship via the outside and the Jefferies tubes. They could vent all atmosphere, or at least fiddle nicely with the environmental control. No troopers expended, ship taken with a few minor hull breaches...Might work.

[Peptuck]

Curious; has anyone ever thought of the possibility that troops are beamed out of a ship when invading? Assuming that the transporter system hasn't been disabled by ion cannon blasts, that is.

They considered beaming off Ensata intruders in "The High Ground", but their "inversion" teleportation devices interfered with the transporters.

The possessed O'Brien was also worried about it in "Power Play", but he was able to block transporter use with forcefields and with other technical trickery.

Basically, transporters are so trivially easy to block that apparently anyone who knows they exist can negate their potential usefulness.

Not to mention that DS9 and onward they never made good use of transporters to stop boarders. The Klingons on "Way of the Warrior" are one example I can think of, and then you've got the Remans in Nemesis.

[Ted C]

Not to mention that DS9 and onward they never made good use of transporters to stop boarders. The Klingons on "Way of the Warrior" are one example I can think of, and then you've got the Remans in Nemesis.

And in Nemesis, don't we know that the transporters didn't give out until later (since they had to still be going at least until Picard transported himself over to the Scimitar)?

[Timotheus]

Not to mention that DS9 and onward they never made good use of transporters to stop boarders. The Klingons on "Way of the Warrior" are one example I can think of, and then you've got the Remans in Nemesis.

And in Nemesis, don't we know that the transporters didn't give out until later (since they had to still be going at least until Picard transported himself over to the Scimitar)?

Transporters require a comm badge to work as IFF. Just going by life signs you cannot get a decent lock to know who you are beaming. Since all the civilians and kids do not wear com badges you would risk beaming the local preschool class in the space the same time you are beaming the invaders who happen to be in the hallway next to them.

[apocolypse]

Not to mention that DS9 and onward they never made good use of transporters to stop boarders. The Klingons on "Way of the Warrior" are one example I can think of, and then you've got the Remans in Nemesis.

And in Nemesis, don't we know that the transporters didn't give out until later (since they had to still be going at least until Picard transported himself over to the Scimitar)?

Transporters require a comm badge to work as IFF. Just going by life signs you cannot get a decent lock to know who you are beaming. Since all the civilians and kids do not wear com badges you would risk beaming the local preschool class in the space the same time you are beaming the invaders who happen to be in the hallway next to them.

But at the same time though, they are able to differentiate aliens from humans via scanning. They've done so before. Even if you can't necessarily separate human from human, you can definitely separate human from alien. Seeing as how there are no Remans on the crew...

Further, transporters don't necessarily "require" comm badges since people without them are targeted and beamed all the time with no issue. Hell, B'Elana (sp) was able to transport people using a "skeletal lock" before. It appears that comm badges, while helpful, aren't necessarily essential to the process. Although there are a couple of eps that I can think of where the comm badge was necessary, iirc that was due to outlier circumstances.

[Ted C]

But at the same time though, they are able to differentiate aliens from humans via scanning. They've done so before. Even if you can't necessarily separate human from human, you can definitely separate human from alien. Seeing as how there are no Remans on the crew...

Further, transporters don't necessarily "require" comm badges since people without them are targeted and beamed all the time with no issue. Hell, B'Elana (sp) was able to transport people using a "skeletal lock" before. It appears that comm badges, while helpful, aren't necessarily essential to the process. Although there are a couple of eps that I can think of where the comm badge was necessary, iirc that was due to outlier circumstances.

I suspect that comm-badges are designed specifically to speed up the process of getting a transporter lock by providing their exact coordinates in all of their transmissions. They make transporter operations easier and faster, and they make it possible to distinguish a particular person from a crowd, but they're clearly not essential.

[Coyote]

Actually, it seems to me that, with the powerful yields of Star Wars weapons, as any firefight dragged on in a typical Fed ship, the damage would essentially begin to destroy the ship from within, 'Swiss-cheesing' it from the effects of blaster fire.

These are not strong ships, after all, and the interiors don't appear to be really battle-hardy.

[Darth Wong]

Certainly, by the time they brought in heavy repeaters and started blasting away, we could be looking at serious damage.

If they knew the layout of the ship, I would think it would be easiest to just cut an entrance into the ship near the engineering section, rather than entering at some farther-off location and then trying to fight a long running battle to get there.

[Darth Ruinus]

But cutting an entrace into the engineering section may cause an unstable warp core breach, causing the whole thing to explode. Safer to just walk it there.

[Batman]

If it's a first flight Galaxy or Voyager, the Stormtrooper commander having had ribenes for lunch may cause an unstable Warp Core breach. The rest of Federation starships seem to have reasonably stable Warp cores even in the face of battle damage.
And unless this is the FIRST Federation ship they manage to take in one piece, the location of main engineering shouldn't be hard to figure out, at least approximately.

[Connor MacLeod]

Who says they have to bother with the "kill" setting? Or neccesarily a high power one? They can use stun or a "lower output" setting to kill without neccearily blowing huge holes in the ship itself. Its not as if most of a GCS's crew is going to be heavily armored or anything.

[Darth Wong]

And they can liberally use gas grenades. Feddies would expect someone to try to seize control of main engineering so they can dump gas into the life support system; the option of simply using handheld devices to dispense gas probably wouldn't occur to them at all.

[Pelranius]

I wonder how many buzz droids would be needed to disable the life support systems on the GCS?

[phred]

IIRC buzz droids were fairly random about their work. so it would depend on how long it took them to stumble across something vital,

[Venator]

IIRC buzz droids were fairly random about their work. so it would depend on how long it took them to stumble across something vital,

They went straight for ship functions and the R2 droids in RoTS. It's still seriously slow going compared to weapons' fire, but they're small enough to get through Jeffries' tubes, and equipped for cutting through materials much stronger than ST hulls.

On a regular ship, they could be a terror weapon (with varying effectiveness). On a ship where half the vital systems are in hard-to-access, out-of-sight passageways, though?

[The Vortex Empire]

I wonder how many buzz droids would be needed to disable the life support systems on the GCS?

Well, if Fed ships are unstable enough so a hit to the shields without taking them down makes bridge consoles explode, I imagine that Buzz Droids cutting random parts of the ship apart would be very effective.

[Connor MacLeod]

Buzz droids would only be effective (and that term being used loosely) if you have schematicsof ths hip for the droids to use, so they know what ot cripple.

[phred]

They went straight for ship functions and the R2 droids in RoTS. It's still seriously slow going compared to weapons' fire, but they're small enough to get through Jeffries' tubes, and equipped for cutting through materials much stronger than ST hulls.

On a regular ship, they could be a terror weapon (with varying effectiveness). On a ship where half the vital systems are in hard-to-access, out-of-sight passageways, though?

With fighters the systems are all near the surface, and there are some obvious critical components(the droid, gun barrels, engine outlets) On a ship these distinctions arent as easy to make.(will this wire turn off the lights, stop the turbolift, kill the engines, keep the doors closed, drop the shields?)
Good terror weapons though.