Fires on Ships - Your Opinion Needed!

[Silvereye]

I voted no.

There are plenty of more crunchy things you could do with the critical hit tables already. Crits that disable Ship Traits or reduce the number of turns, block auxillary craft hangers and launch bays.

While fires were certainly fun in Man O'War, watching your opponents ships burning down to the water-line was very satisfying. Massive Fires already exist on the Crew Hits table so you do get the idea that command will be closing compartments and venting sections - hence the larger crew losses.

 

[TrueCentauri]

Personally, I think it would complicate matters without adding much joy or balance. Who likes to have fires should be down to wet water navy.

Apart from that, fires on a space ship are a sheer nonsense. If you have a fire, simply turn off gravity, close the door and the fire dies out. Fire exist because of gravity and putting a fire out would be rather easy (apart from the rotating hull EA ships). Any vent of the atmosfere would also rapidly stop a fire. So why let it grow out of proportions?

Appollo was designed with pure oxygen for this reason. That it became a tragedy was because the tests were carried out in 1g earth.

 

[Silvereye]

Apart from that, fires on a space ship are a sheer nonsense. If you have a fire, simply turn off gravity, close the door and the fire dies out. Fire exist because of gravity and putting a fire out would be rather easy (apart from the rotating hull EA ships). Any vent of the atmosfere would also rapidly stop a fire. So why let it grow out of proportions?

Appollo was designed with pure oxygen for this reason. That it became a tragedy was because the tests were carried out in 1g earth.

Gravity has no bearing on a fire. I believe there have been tests carried out in micro-gravity that have showed that a fire behaves like a liquid. However as you and previous posters have said all you need to do to fight it is seal the section and starve it of oxygen - the easiest way is to open it to space.

Info on the Apollo fire

 

[Nomad]

" Have you ever seen fire in zero G? It's beautiful..."

(From the film Event Horizon)

Fire will burn in microgravity - NASA has posted some photos of an experiment aboard the Shuttle, of a candle burning with a spherical flame.

However, unless there is a draught, it tends to exhaust the oxygen in the surrounding few inches of air and go out. No gravity, hot air does not rise (no 'up' to go towards), therefore no convection currents.

In B5, the Churchill was shown ablaze through huge rents in her hull - she'd have decompressed so fast the fire would have been out in seconds.

 

[Wulf Corbett]

In B5, the Churchill was shown ablaze through huge rents in her hull - she'd have decompressed so fast the fire would have been out in seconds.

The important thing, however, is that it wasn't. It lasted long enough for the scene to play out. This is a Babylon 5 game. What hapened in B5 should happen here. Realism has no place other than where it fits the source material.

Wulf

 

[Nomad]

Realism has no place other than where it fits the source material.

You're welcome to your opinion Wulf, but there are limits to my ability to suspend disbelief.

 

[Wulf Corbett]

Realism has no place other than where it fits the source material.

You're welcome to your opinion Wulf, but there are limits to my ability to suspend disbelief.

You're very choosy in where you put your limits, clearly. Artificial Gravity? No problem. Reactionless drives? Absolutely! Visible light weapon-grade lasers? Sure, why not. FTL travel? Of course. Every alien race just looks like humans in suits? What else would they look like?

But flames coming out of holes in a spacecraft? No way!

Each to their own... :roll:

Wulf

 

[Nomad]

Artificial Gravity, Reactionless Drives, FTL - Imaginary Physics, the raw stuff of Science Fiction.

Hydrogen atoms in space fluorescing in a high-energy laser beam sufficiently enough to be visible - I don't know, perhaps if anyone ever builds a laser that powerful, we'll find out.

Humanoid aliens - apart from the practicalities of finding, for example, 6-foot insect actors, who says some aliens are not humanoid? How many examples do we have?

Fires burning in a vacuum? (Or setting fire to the atmosphere of Jupiter) Known Physics...just wrong.

Very choosy? Yes. Never considered it a fault.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

It's not burning in a vacuum. It's being fed by the atmosphere of the ship, either burning as the atmosphere rushes into space, and thus burning very briefly, or burning inside sealed compartments that still have atmosphere.

You do know you can get fires aboard submarines, right? You can also get fires below decks on surface ships, below the waterline and to all intents and purposes, in a sealed, artificial environment.

 

[Commador Q]

as long as the system isn't to complicated, i'm for it. perhaps they can be similar to boarding action, as far as rules go (ie the're resolved in the end phase and have relatively simple effects)

i don't mind the fires doing damage to the hull either as In my opinion fires on a star ship would be more damaging to the ships poer relay and C+C systems than to the actual crew (since you can seal off effected sections).

 

[Ripple]

hmm...

I would like to vote yes but only if the current table were revised in such a way that it did not cause large crew losses and fires. Ie remove the damge portion of the hit but have 'causes fire' or 'causes fire 2'.

One concern I would have is that crew is already the 'ticker' on which a ship often lives or dies. Close blast doors not protecting crew has already made crew the finite resource on a ship.

From a fluff perspective also keep in mind that many materials have enough oxegen in them to feed their own consumption. There is a american navy incident of a aluminium alloy destroyer I think that burned to the water due to the alloy having a self burning material in it. Maybe Omegas have a materials problem as we see lots of them burning but not so much everyone else.

Second point is that while you could indeed vent a compartment to space you would be hesitant to do so unless the fire had gotten out of control. Venting would be a last ditch effort as you would not want to have to abandone all the way to the next fire seal door. I mean ships would not be designed on this scale with each individual room sealable. Too much mass in bulkheads. You would want your crew still fighting in the next compartments to stay at their stations while a dedicated damage control team dealt with any fire bigger than a hand held could deal with.

In game terms figure it would be a crew quality test every turn to stop a fire from spreading that is independant of damage control tests. If you ship is crippled or skeletoned you take a penalty. Thus you would get the scene where you knew the fires would kill you this round so you go to ram, much like in the show. I don't know, just seem to remember most of the ships that get mauled in the show blow before survivors can escape, but after the action has ended. Thought fires might cover some of that.

Ripple

 

[Nomad]

and thus burning very briefly

Which was rather my point.

You do know you can get fires aboard submarines, right?

Not if the submarine has large holes in it. It fills up with water.

You can also get fires below decks on surface ships, below the waterline and to all intents and purposes, in a sealed, artificial environment.

No question. But that's not a vacuum.

 

[Triggy]

You do know you can get fires aboard submarines, right?

Not if the submarine has large holes in it. It fills up with water.

David's comment probably should have read "You do know that you do get fires aboard submarines, right?"
The point is that some sections would flood but others would burn (flooding takes longer to happen on average than it takes for a fire to spread) and it's these sections burning that are represented by the rules

You can also get fires below decks on surface ships, below the waterline and to all intents and purposes, in a sealed, artificial environment.

No question. But that's not a vacuum.

[/quote]
Davids point is that for all intents and purposes, it is a vacuum. No air gets in or out of the sections affected.

 

[Nomad]

There is a american navy incident of a aluminium alloy destroyer I think that burned to the water due to the alloy having a self burning material in it.

USS Belknap, following a collision with a carrier in the Mediterranean in the 70's. Her aluminium superstructure burned down to weather deck level, her hull being made of steel. Something similar happened to one of the British Type 21 frigates lost in the Falklands war.

But the aluminium alloy was burning in oxygen in the air, I believe.

 

[Slightly Norse John]

Be happy they're only going on fire. Burning spaceships are
1) absurd, for many above mentioned reasons, and
2) canon.
Unfortunately, 2 beats 1, insofar as the game of the series is concerned.
As energetic an object as a starship has to be- simply to move itself takes astronomical amounts of power, never mind this transluminality lark- it could and should have some really exotic failure modes. I'm not sure what happens when a gravimetric power plant lets go, but I'm pretty sure it's some, probably unsurvivably drastic, variant of 'boom'. There are much worse things than a little chemical combustion.

 

[Chernobyl]

Ever notice how any thread post by matthew is almost instantly 4-5 pages long? :lol:

I liked the continuing damage idea but the key will be in the implementation. causing successive crits in additional turns has merit in my book. but, until I see how its going to work out I'll withhold judgement.


regarding submarines, if you were to completely flood any compartment on a submarine, simply to put out a fire, you'd quickly lose any buoyancy you had. Fires are excetionally dangerous aboard a sub and I have yet to see one portrayed properly in film.

Regarding the fire aboard the destroyer, Nomad's correct in that the superstructure is made of aluminum on some destroyers (I'm picturing the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate now...) to prevent them from being top heavy, and help reduce weight to increase the ship's speed. I don't think the structure burned, but it almost certainly melted.

Chern

 

[Nomad]

The point is that some sections would flood but others would burn

Tragically, this is exactly what happened to the last survivors aboard the submarine Kursk (according to Robert Moore's book on the subject, A Time To Die).

Having been trapped in the boats' ninth compartment for about three days following the explosion that sank her, they were upto their waists in water as the compartment slowly flooded through the prop shaft glands.

They were in no immediate danger, as the air bubble they were in - although at well above normal pressure due to the ingress of water -had nowhere to escape to, and they had a supply of highly reactive oxygen producing candles (standard equipment in case of just such an emergency).

As far as could be deduced from the positions of, and burns upon, the corpses of the crew, what happened was this; someone fumbled opening a new candle, and it dropped in the water. The water was covered in a layer of lubricant oil, washed off the prop shafts. The candle reacted with the oil, and exploded...

Those close to the blast were killed instantly, their bodies burned from the waist upward. Those further away had time to duck beneath the surface, and were only burnt upon their backs.

The fire lasted only a few seconds - my emphasis - and these men straightened up again...to find the fire was out, but that the air no longer contained any breathable oxygen.

Davids point is that for all intents and purposes, it is a vacuum. No air gets in or out of the sections affected.

It isn't a vacuum as long as it contains air. My living room doors and windows are currently closed, but I'm still (at the time of writing) breathing.

 

[Reaverman]

Ever notice how any thread post by matthew is almost instantly 4-5 pages long? :lol:

I liked the continuing damage idea but the key will be in the implementation. causing successive crits in additional turns has merit in my book. but, until I see how its going to work out I'll withhold judgement.


regarding submarines, if you were to completely flood any compartment on a submarine, simply to put out a fire, you'd quickly lose any buoyancy you had. Fires are excetionally dangerous aboard a sub and I have yet to see one portrayed properly in film.

Regarding the fire aboard the destroyer, Nomad's correct in that the superstructure is made of aluminum on some destroyers (I'm picturing the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate now...) to prevent them from being top heavy, and help reduce weight to increase the ship's speed. I don't think the structure burned, but it almost certainly melted.

Chern

HMS Antelope, went up like a roman candle during the Falklands. I remember seeing the pictures in the paper, a brilliant white glow (due to the Aluminium hull burning)

 

[Target]

If the pipe containing the oxygen was ruptured in multiple place from lets say being hit. You would have multiple fires and would be worse if it was in the inner deck and ruptured/fractured from the shock of being hit. Lot more difficult to vent and even if in was vented the pipe still would have to be shut of otherwise your precious oxygen would burn away. Then what if the heat from the weapon or resulting fire melted your bulkhead open. Real problems would be occuring and this could happening all over your ship you couldn't just vent your air and worse it could your oxygen reserves that are causing the fire. Can't just vent that. We all know when in space while in battle it would just be silly to wear a spacesuit.

 

[Nomad]

Antelope! Thanks, Reaverman, I couldn't remember which one.

Actually, aluminium burns a treat. Normally, Al exposed to the air forms a layer of non-reactive aluminium oxide very rapidly (milliseconds?) which protects it, but if you can set fire to the metal itself before that happens...

The Royal Engineers used stuff called Thermite - a mix of aluminium and iron powder - to, amongst other badness, spike captured enemy guns by melting their barrels. A railway engineer used some to destroy a speed camera a couple of miles from here, after it caught him. Unfortunately, the video recorder survived (it was buried underground) having taped him doing the deed..so it caught him again (and so did the police).

The US Navy stopped putting aluminium superstructures on their ships designed after the Falklands - the Arleigh Burkes are all steel.