OTU Only: Blowing Up a Civilian Starship with a Computer Virus?

[MrBlipvert]

Hi Travellers,

In preparing for an adventure, I'm scrambling for a way that a grounded interstellar starship -- that is engineered along the lines of ships in the OTU -- could be convincingly scuttled while on the surface of a planet. The framing ideas are that:

• this is intended to be a scenario background detail -- something that happened in the past and for which the PCs will discover evidence and I have no intention of inflicting this on the PCs themselves;
• the ship is a civilian ship, so should not contain a built-in system for scuttling a ship that one might expect to find on a military vessel (cf. the USS Enterprise)
• the destruction is caused by somehow using the ship's own engineering/ structure/ systems against it (nobody slipped a bomb on board);
• while the setting is not OTU, the ships are built along OTU lines.

I will be grateful for any and all ideas. I'm running the session on Sunday.

 

[mike wightman]

Overcharge the jump capacitors - boom.

 

[kilemall]

I have scuttle rules for my hybrid LBB2/LBB5 rules.

Most scuttles would be enemy denial of warships.

Civilian scuttle would depend on motives. Did the scuttler just want to deny ship taking off or use of ship for shelter or information altogether?

The surest way I can think of is override safeties of the fusion power plant and point an emergency scram function of dumping the plasma through ship components.

I envision a normal controlled scram would dump through the maneuver drive nozzles, perhaps just as simple as disabling the m-drive control fields and it’s like taking a plasma gun to the drives. Or weaken the field so the scram goes through the reactor ignition components.

That presumes the scuttle person is good with leaving survivors no power plant.

A fission plant could just be set to meltdown.

My military scuttles usually involve nukes, either pre placed or manually set, at optimal demolition points plus key areas like computers, spinal weapons, power plants etc. The idea is to collapse the whole ship into an unusable debris field.

It’s unlikely that a civilian ship would have even conventional explosives for that purpose, but they do have repair equipment that could be used for cutting. It could be cut to still maintain use as a survival structure but unable to lift without falling apart.

The computer is a key piece unlikely to be repaired and without it the ship is going nowhere.

I’m using the CT computer damage rules to envision that the computer is actually 12 distributed nodes, hard to entirely wreck. Someone going after that likely has data they wish to erase. More conventional renderings would have it in one cabinet/rack/room and thus an easy part to break. Repair kits can again be used to destroy.

You could make it more a mystery by presuming someone has come by and salvaged components, the players will have to get past that damage to find the truth. If you want it repairable and just a dirty quick emergency scuttle, probably not.

 

[kilemall]

Overcharge the jump capacitors - boom.

Oooo that’s good, I feel shame for not listing it.

May not fit his mystery part, not much mystery there with the engineering section blown out.

 

[Spinward Flow]

So you're basically looking for a "self harm to scuttle" type of scenario then?

First option would be to use any weapon systems aboard for the purpose. Simplest of these options would be a missile launcher. Program a missile (or multiple) to return to the launcher with intent to detonate and scuttle the (stationary, not defending) ship. Note that such a scenario would make it look like the ship was attacked "from above" and there would be almost no way to determine that the bombardment was self inflicted.

Overcharge the jump capacitors - boom.

This would be very successful(!) and would require override/overwriting the safety protocols in engineering for the jump drives. Problem with this option is that it would pretty convincingly "vaporize" the ship, creating a nice crater and debris field but leaving very little of the ship intact. You wouldn't have a crippled hulk left over afterwards to search through.

Basically THIS (minus the energy weapon):

I envision a normal controlled scram would dump through the maneuver drive nozzles, perhaps just as simple as disabling the m-drive control fields and it’s like taking a plasma gun to the drives. Or weaken the field so the scram goes through the reactor ignition components.

Again, would require an override/overwrite of the safety protocols in engineering for the power plant. For somewhat obvious reasons, nuclear power plants (fission or fusion) are rather deliberately designed NOT to fail in this way under non-edge case scenarios. However, in self sabotage situations, those safety measures can be overcome (with sufficient Time, Tools and Tech Manuals).

It’s unlikely that a civilian ship would have even conventional explosives for that purpose, but they do have repair equipment that could be used for cutting. It could be cut to still maintain use as a survival structure but unable to lift without falling apart.

For a civilian ship, deliberate misuse of repair equipment to inflict critically disabling damage to key systems would DEFINITELY be on the menu if you want to leave an intact hulk that can be used for shelter but not mobility. Slicing away at control lines, power distribution nodes, junction circuitry and any number of other critical services could effectively cripple a ship to the point of rendering it "deadweight tonnage" that could only be towed. In that circumstance you're looking at deliberate sabotage of critical systems and their redundant backups to render the ship unusable as a transport craft while keeping its capability as a shelter intact.

Depending on how "hard" of a scuttling you want for your scenario, the same (dis)repair tools could have been turned against the computer systems, irrevocably compromising them and their data storage, leaving no records of what happened (aside from forensic evidence). That way, you create a "mystery" to be solved as to what happened here based on whatever evidence can be found.

 

[whartung]

Yea, you kinda of need to define "scuttle" Are we talking a burned out hulk, or a crater surrounded by starship fragments?

Or a Starship hull that "won't start", but is otherwise intact. Is it supposed to be non-salvageable? And how difficult did you want to make it to be salvageable.

 

[kilemall]

I dunno that small ship jump capacitors are ship destroying. Assuming a typical Type S/A drive letter A setup, that’s 4 EP. Whether you translate it to 4 weapon hits or X explosive power, this isn’t the same thing as a Kininur black globe banked power event.

As a quick and dirty LBB5 roll, assume a plasma hit on the internal damage table with whatever EPs as input to the closest battery level, plus critical hits per hull letter to battery overmatch. It will be a burnt out mess but not a crater.

 

[Spinward Flow]

this isn’t the same thing as a Kininur black globe banked power event.

Wrong.
It's EXACTLY THE SAME THING as an EP overload exceeding capacity ... you just aren't using a black globe absorbing weapons fire to do it.

 

[Condottiere]

When you want to be sure.

 

[mike wightman]

I dunno that small ship jump capacitors are ship destroying. Assuming a typical Type S/A drive letter A setup, that’s 4 EP. Whether you translate it to 4 weapon hits or X explosive power, this isn’t the same thing as a Kininur black globe banked power event.

As a quick and dirty LBB5 roll, assume a plasma hit on the internal damage table with whatever EPs as input to the closest battery level, plus critical hits per hull letter to battery overmatch. It will be a burnt out mess but not a crater.

And now calculate how many EPs go into the jump capacitors to overload them, e.g. a type A merchant...

Each ton of capacitors will hold 36 energy points...
A ship without additional capacitors installed has capacitors (for the jump drive) equal to 0.5%MJn

So a 200t free trader has 0.005x200x1 = 1 ton of capacitors.

So you fill them up with 36EPs, the equivalent of 36 beam lasers so 36 hits, trickle in a little more power and boom.

 

[ranger2261]

delete system 32 in the computer folder, rendering it inoperable, then thermite charges on all the bridge controls

 

[Condottiere]

Assume each power point contained in a jump capacitor represents one point of hull damage.

Each tonne obliterates one hundred twenty five tonnes at default, not accounting for larger hulls and/or structural integrity adjustments.

 

[infojunky]

Hi Travellers,

In preparing for an adventure, I'm scrambling for a way that a grounded interstellar starship -- that is engineered along the lines of ships in the OTU -- could be convincingly scuttled while on the surface of a planet. The framing ideas are that:

• this is intended to be a scenario background detail -- something that happened in the past and for which the PCs will discover evidence and I have no intention of inflicting this on the PCs themselves;
• the ship is a civilian ship, so should not contain a built-in system for scuttling a ship that one might expect to find on a military vessel (cf. the USS Enterprise)
• the destruction is caused by somehow using the ship's own engineering/ structure/ systems against it (nobody slipped a bomb on board);
• while the setting is not OTU, the ships are built along OTU lines.

I will be grateful for any and all ideas. I'm running the session on Sunday.

How big a boom?

 

[kilemall]

Wrong.
It's EXACTLY THE SAME THING as an EP overload exceeding capacity ... you just aren't using a black globe absorbing weapons fire to do it.

Disagree as it’s orders of magnitude difference in power banked per tons and leave it at that.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Disagree as it’s orders of magnitude difference in power banked per tons and leave it at that.

I'll let someone else enjoy the honors of doing THIS to your argument this time (since I doubt you'll credit anything I tell you).

 

[kilemall]

And now calculate how many EPs go into the jump capacitors to overload them, e.g. a type A merchant...



So a 200t free trader has 0.005x200x1 = 1 ton of capacitors.

So you fill them up with 36EPs, the equivalent of 36 beam lasers so 36 hits, trickle in a little more power and boom.

By that reasoning it takes 18 turns to charge that thing to capacity. I’m rolling with 2 turns as per the actual need for jump.

Now then if we are talking that somehow they spec 9x the capacitor for jump as some sort of safety margin but it’s there, it would create a big bang if you intentionally override the charging limits.

It also means the capacitor is a significant proportion of jump drive cost/tonnage, and you can load hours of fighting/maneuvering power in there making even a scout or type A with a lot more laser and battery power then is usually presented.

If you want to go with lasers as base, that would be one battery of 30 and another of 6. A lot of critical hits given we are talking hull sizes of 1-2.

 

[kilemall]

Assume each power point contained in a jump capacitor represents one point of hull damage.

Each tonne obliterates one hundred twenty five tonnes at default, not accounting for larger hulls and/or structural integrity adjustments.

Which version is that for?

 

[Condottiere]

Mongoose.

And what you do is kickstart the jump drive, but jam it to continue for another two to three rounds, so that the capacitors overload.

 

[kilemall]

Now if we are talking strictly computer virus in flight, I don’t know that you are going to get some of the more nuanced scuttle options we have presented.

I would expect requirements to force manual overrides on the actual engineering component to allow the unusual and unsafe.

Weapons overloading or self targeting might or might not have safeties, depending on worlds you have.

Which is something we haven’t mentioned for intentional scuttle, a typical 9-12 pack of missile warheads could make for good small ship demolitions if you image them like the missile supplement does, some sort of plasma jet. I imagine them as kinetic, so YUMV. But again not a computer virus.

What should work is a shut down of maneuver drive control, maybe even an emergency scram of the power plant. Anything pilot related would be accepted as normal inputs.

You could explain away why the ship just didn’t hit the planet and be destroyed as engineering overrides the computer to get some emergency lift or redirect leftover power from the capacitors to get just enough drive in time.

I have another scuttle rule where engineering can break glass and override the bridge/computer with an abandon ship protocol.

The engineering systems coordinate with a simple gravimeter measuring which way is down and how much, and automatically point the ship up with an acceleration equal to the pull of the planet plus stopping any velocity towards said planet if possible.

The intent is to stop the ship from bouncing around in orbit or on the ground long enough to evacuate even if the bridge or computer are gone.

We really need your intended narrative to get this right.

 

[Grav_Moped]

By that reasoning it takes 18 turns to charge that thing to capacity. I’m rolling with 2 turns as per the actual need for jump

The other 16EP/100Td/Jn come from the Jump Fuel burn (overclocked powerplant). IMTU the PP contribution is just to top off the caps