High Guard Boarding Action Rules

[allanimal]

IN the CRB on p.163, there is the statement:

High Guard includes detailed rules for conducting boarding actions on the Personal scale, allowing you to play through a blow-by-blow scenario that sees the Travellers taking over an enemy ship or desperately trying to repel boarders.

I'm flipping through my copy of High Guard, and not finding these detailed boarding action rules.
Am I just missing it (I do need new glasses, so a possibility)?
Can someone point to where these rules are located?

 

[GarethL]

Every reference I can see refers to the table in the main rulebook, or simply refers to using deck plans as the basis for personal combat.

 

[allanimal]

Every reference I can see refers to the table in the main rulebook, or simply refers to using deck plans as the basis for personal combat.

Ok, so it's not just me. It isn't in there. Bummer, the last boarding action we did using the CRB rules was anticlimactic. I was excited when I saw that comment in the CRB about High Guard to see how it could be made more exciting...

 

[Welf]

Would be interesting to know if this is still planned for any future supplement?

 

[MongooseMatt]

The original plan was to have a full boarding action system in High Guard but, as it underwent development, it became very clear that this should be a supplement (or even full game) in its own right. It is still very much on the cards and something we will be looking at again next year.

 

[paltrysum]

As far as I can tell from the abstract boarding action rules, it is possible to board a ship whether or not its manoeuvre drive is operational. I can see a number of ways why this would be the case, but just to confirm: Is that the way it's intended to work? It seems to me that a) even if a ship has only 1G of thrust, they could seemingly prevent a boarding action just by applying micro level thrusts, but... b) a ship with superior thrust and the computational ability to mimic the movements of an opposing ship at a picosecond level (or whatever speed the computer could do it) could potentially nullify their opponents' ability with a thrust advantage of 1 or more.

How do you all apply the rules when it comes to boarding actions?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

How do you all apply the rules when it comes to boarding actions?

Forced Linkage Apparatus allows you to force dock with even manoeuvring craft once you have caught up with them, but only once per dogfighting round*. (Unfortunately there are a lot of dogfighting rounds, so you will succeed sooner or later, but the target might get to fire a few times first.)

Anyone can do a normal docking with a non-manoeuvring craft.

Getting through an armoured hull isn't trivial, but, say, a mining laser helps. (Do damage > armour rating*.) A Breaching Tube is enough to get through light armour (Armour ≤4*).

The actual boarding is resolved as personal combat for "small" ships or using the Boarding table for "larger" ships.

* House-rule?

 

[nats]

I feel there is no way you could dock with a maneuvering ship IMO unless you are a pirate or specialist boarding ship with a specially designed piece of apparatus that will fully secure the ships before boarding takes place. And I am thinking large jaws or struts with shooting bolts into the enemies hull. Even then if a target can maneuver fully it would be a very difficult job to secure the ship and remain tied together. The structural loads on the linkages would be huge. If there were any other ships around they would probably try to smash you into one of your other ships to get loose.

 

[Condottiere]

Or you deliberately crash a boring machine into the side of the hull.

 

[Linwood]

Or you deliberately crash a boring machine into the side of the hull.

I’ve kicked around thoughts of designing an alien race that attacked other vessels that way - Chamax Plague in space! The thought was to use a large number of small heavily armored craft that would ram, bore in and board. Never took it far enough to work out the details but i never entirely forgot about it either.