[UT] / [Mass Combat] : Dropships boldly unloading and extracting boarding parties

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Many of you are familiar with settings where dropships, assault transports, or whatever you call them, boldly fly into the field of battle, unload a boarding party, commando squad, saboteur group, or whatever, and fly off (optionally they also extract said boarding party).
Examples include:
Star Wars, where Lambdas unload stormies into enemy hangars,
Master of Orion with their Assault Shuttles,
Captain Tylor, with the marine shuttle,
The Unreal universe (although there a point was made just how difficult sending a boarding party was),
Warhammer 40K (a Hit and Run is a case of unloading saboteurs to blow up parts of the enemy ship, although the approach takes some effort),
and to some extent Global Agenda (a dropship unloading agents who raid the Commonwealth infrastructure).

But now, I wonder what kind of technological setup really does make such tactics viable. The primary question is, if you can afford to unload a team of commandos to do hit-and-runs, why not simply unload a team of combat engineers who will set them up the nuke? In my own attempt to write up Mass Combat On Spaceships, I found that 'just shoot it' is probably a faster solution, and much easier most of the time - defenders have a huge advantage between numbers, C3I and 'fortifications'.

Thanks in advance!

[Langy]

Well, obviously you only do this if you want to not-completely-destroy the target. If you're just interested in neutralizing the threat, yeah, shooting it or sending engineers with a nuke is easier. If you want to capture the target, not so much.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Langy

Well, obviously you only do this if you want to not-completely-destroy the target. If you're just interested in neutralizing the threat, yeah, shooting it or sending engineers with a nuke is easier. If you want to capture the target, not so much.

The cases in Unreal, Star Wars (some of them), WH40K, and to some extent Captain Tylor are not attempts to capture an enemy ship/structure.

[gjc8]

If you have super commandos available, but not appropriate WMDs, that serves as a reason. If the bombs that you have can't blow-up a ship in one blast, then you at least need a team to move them to the bridge or the reactor or whatever vulnerable part.

Commando teams are multi-use. You can use them to capture ships, as Langy says, or insert them on planets/giant space stations to do commando stuff. And, if you're going to be carrying them anyway, you may as well put them to use when you find yourself in a pitched battle. Having an abundance of supersoldiers helps, too. The existence of Jedi/Space Marines who CAN take on a whole ship by themselves makes carrying boarding parties more attractive.

It may make more sense to carry more munitions, rather than landing teams with big bombs. If there's an exposed hanger, just shoot a big missile into it, instead of trying to land a team of combat engineers. Just shoot it, as you say, which does still seem to be a common tactic in Star Wars, for example. So you don't see bomb teams, but you do see multipurpose commando teams.

[dethb0y]

I'd say the best justification would be either cultural ("it's noble/important/brave to send down people and engage in combat") or logistical. It might be the case that the logistics of laying a bomb down would be greater than the logistics of just flying in a team of commandos and using stuff that's already there.

Really though i think the best way to deal with it is to just say that's part of the tactical doctrine of a given force. There's a long history of nations using tactical doctrines that didn't, necessarily, make a whole lot of sense, but still persisted.

Plus, of course, the "landing of the troops" is a classic trope going from the days of the siege of troy all the way up to the modern era. I don't see why some form of it wouldn't persist in the future.

[RyanW]

Realistically, any ship capable of any action is probably pretty much immune to boarding, and if they must, they can probably scuttle the ship and take the boarders with them. A boarding party is more likely to accept a surrender than to force one.

[Polydamas]

I think you are conflating two things:

• Armed flying vehicles which carry troops to a land battle. These are inspired by helicopter-borne troops in the last 50 years, and work in the same conditions (the attacker needs lots of flying vehicles, the ability to overcome enemy air defenses, and a rescue plan).
• Boarding enemy spaceships, with shuttles, teleporters, or men in spacesuits. This one seems a lot rarer except as a risky 'special forces' tactic or against opponents who are not resisting (Star Wars:A New Hope) or both (as in Williamson's Freehold where special forces launch a suicidal attack on space facilities by drifting towards the target in spacesuits which are too cool and non-reflective for the unsuspecting targets to detect). Both types are sometimes used in real-world naval warfare, especially the second.

The second is a lot harder to justify as a standard tactic, because as you say if you can deliver men you can deliver warheads, and I don't know of settings where it is common except Starfleet Battles, Star Trek, and Warhammer 40k.

[jacobmuller]

I remember a writeup of Marine tactics in one of the GURPS Traveller books (Groundforces?). You disable the opfor vessel with missile/ beam and then send in a boarding party to clear out survivors. As for why, beats me - unless you want to send over a prize crew. Reduce-Reuse-Recycle? Repair is cheaper than new-build? The cost in man-power is cheaper than a nuke? Being polite, ie knocking on their door in person to give them the option to surrender?

It's either about money or the guys in charge want to have an excuse for their toys, similar to manned aircraft today.