[Space Opera] Boarding Pods ideas

[Diomedes]

Perhaps the pods have some technobabble technology that allows them to breach shields, but it's too bulky to be used on a missile (or too expensive to waste on something that will just explode).

[Daigoro]

An alternative: the shields have a single weak spot that boarding pods can probe around to find and then manoeuvre through. Missiles don't have the sensors, maneuverability or delta-V to do the same.

If that's not robust enough, maybe shields are nested so that the weak spots don't overlap, and a missile wouldn't be able to get through just going in a straight line.

[(E)]

What if there was something like a reasonably common latent "electropath" ability that could be boosted by some gadget that allowed transition through a shield.

Or a device exists that allows "electron flow" to be manipulated allowing shields to be forced open. The side effect is it requires decision making to use and simultaneously dampens any electronics.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

Spoofed transponders.

The shields were designed to keep hostile missiles out, but let their own side's stuff - f.e., rescue pods or fighters - go through.

So when you try to board your enemy, you switch on a transponder, hope that the codes are still alright, and hold your breath while you push forward.

Okay, this trick would not work very often before the shield are simply locked.

[Randover]

I like that shields need to be knocked down to sent in boarding parties.

Alternatively. The boarding pod/vessel carries extremely expensive anti-shield tech and its generaly reusable. You can make a super antishield missile but than the extremely expensive tech explodes with it.

[warellis]

Wouldn't you generally board after crippling the ship anyways?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by warellis

Wouldn't you generally board after crippling the ship anyways?

That's not always an optimal solution. Pirates, for example, might want the ship mostly intact in order to steal it; in particular, they'll actually try to avoid damaging the engines in that situation, sending boarding parties to take the control room so they can fly it away on their own.

Even in wartime, boarding parties composed of Space Marines intent on sabotaging a power plant that's located in a Core system might not want to wait for the ship to be crippled before moving in.

In the source materials, boarding pods often hit a ship at the start of combat so that the PCs who aren't in command or gunnery positions have something to do in the defense of the ship while the larger battle rages around them.

[Daigoro]

Boarding is also a pretty effective way of taking a ship out of the combat without having to whittle down its shields, especially if you can gain control of the bridge.

[(E)]

What about shields being intrinsic to the boarding tactics? Say a scanner gap around the ships own shields or a power leach technology that allows the boarding pod to exploit the abundant power of the shield to facilitate the next stage of boarding, hull pent ration.

[safisher]

"Alright recruits, listen up. The shields of the *$%^#& can block smaller missiles, but NOT biggers ones -- it just fries INTERNAL electronics, especially sensors, computers, and fly-by-wire controls, etc. It's got an EMP type carrier signal. Whatever. Shielding against this is possible, but expensive and not all that reliable. Pods, these babies here, they are dead simple. Stick-and-rudder. No electronics to fry. Of course, once inside the shield you are unable to signal to us -- unless you take the ship. So, recruits, take the ship!"