Explaining Boarding Actions in Science Fiction

Spacedock delves into the time honored tradition of breaking into spaceships and shooting the place up.

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[inductivegrunt]

Talking about boarding actions and not showing Astartes was a missed opportunity. It's boarding scene was amazing and shows a good example of a successful boarding action. Boarding Torpedoes are a great way to board since you can pierce enough decks so that the vacuum is far behind and fill it full of Terminators to deal with anything inside, be it Orks, Tyranids, or simple humans with autoguns.

[TehAsianator]

I feel like jedi were almost specifically designed for boarding action. They're fast, hideously dangerous in close quarters, ship corridors mean their primary weakness of getting surrounded is heavily nullified, and to top it all off their primary weapon is also a fantastic breaching tool.

[johnbenson]

I like the Dr. Who version of boarding where you materialize your entire vehicle into the other ship and just open the door and stroll innocently out.

[justusbrinkmann]

A top 5 of boarding actions would be really nice.
Or maybe even a top 10.

[lokiorin]

If you have not read it, I highly recommend "The Lost Fleet" by Jack Campbell. It has an incredibly realistic take on futuristic space battles including the effects of time dilation when moving at significant percentages of the speed of light.

Related to boarding, it is called out multiple times that while boarding does happen it is rare because the Defender holds the ultimate trump card: the reactors. If push comes to shove they can send the reactor of the ship into meltdown and blow the whole ship and any nearby enemy ships as well. So boarding actions tend to be hard and brutal conflicts over the engineering spaces and typically what is left after a successful boarding is not worth salvaging. You loot the place of any intelligence material and then set the reactor off anyway from a safe distance.

[charlesvattimo]

This reminds me of Door Monster’s skit on FTL, “Use The Doors” where every issue from a fire in the engine room to getting boarded by enemies are resolved by opening doors to the airlocks, jettisoning the issue into space. This has inspired me to ensure any ship I make has a lung room, a massive cavity full of high pressure air to restore the atmosphere of rooms depleted upon exploiting the doors, and thereby space itself.

[kesmeseker]

IMHO boarding actions are an excellent vehicle to add reasonable mechs into your setting. Like modified and uparmored heavy EVA frames (which may normally be used as forklifts or maintiance tools) which are capable of withstanding light point defence fire. Arm them with a heavy duty plasma/fusion torch and auxiliary weapons like autocannons and missiles and voila, you have mechs which actually serve the distinct objective of cutting bulkheads and paving the way for more bulky instruments of boarding. You can even have melee "torch duels" as a bonus, how can you get more cooler than that!

[JVarley]

40k's Boarding Torpedoes are just such a delightfully insane concept.

[dragonturtle]

The best explanation I’ve seen for boarding is in 40k. The ships are kilometers long and naval battles (with some authors) can take hours or days. Plenty of time to send elite CQC specialists, murderbots, and super soldiers in to a ship to disable key components.

[theaerieshistorian]

There's also the additional discrepancy in that, unlike naval boarding actions or slugging matches here on Earth, space has three dimensions, so unless you completely annihilate the opposing ship, it's still going to be salvageable for the crew, unlike on the open ocean where the ship may sink.

[DarcyCasselman]

Loving the ongoing use of Legend of Galactic Heroes for background footage. Although we could have used more LoGH boarding axe fights. Because those are bad-ass.

[ZinXlX]

This reminded me of that CG movie Captain Harlock. Their boarding action was a lil flashy but the boarders had practical equipment for the task. Instead of just regular spacesuits their boarders were in heavily armored but very mobile mech suits which was perfect for leading the first wave of boarders. These mech suits were also armed with both ranged and melee weaponry if I remembered right plus some heavier ordnance for breaching armored doors.

[mattstorm]

I love the reference to For all Mankind's firefight. Yeah, you don't want to put the secret reactor into melt down when you are trying to take control of a base.

I think another thing to note is what you are sending to board an enemy ship. We might not launch a boarding action because it will put people's life at risk which you don't really want to do in space but there are situations where it's okay.
Such as the expanse, boarding actions in the first season are taken more like a police action. The space cops roll up, board, and ask for you ID and cargo manifest and later they are done to secure a specific asset and are either done via marines or by a drone.

In Clone wars we had battles where droids boarded republic ships with boarding craft or just jet packing onto the hull. Who cares if the enemy scuttles their own ship or defeats your droids, you can just go pick up more at the factory.

Or the immortal clones of Dust 514, when that was still playable. In theory, you could send them in dropships, hard drop pods, or jetpacks to board a ship and if they die their consciousness is uploaded back to the main vessel and they are reborn in a new clone. They can give tactical information and get thrown back out into the fight.

[project]

I'm only surprised that you didn't use "Astartes" as a complete list of how to handle a boarding action.

[kevingriffith]

I still love boarding drones, a great way to get all the advantages of bording actions without risking your crew... plus even if they can't breach the hull, having a squad of them running around on the surface of your ship wrecking any surface-level systems like point defense batteries is still a serious problem, maybe even more than if they actually managed to get inside where your interior defenses and personnel can get at them without EVA assistance. Have the ones that make it through the defenses bring those defenses down to make way for an even bigger second wave of boarders!

[padawanmage]

I remember in Babylon 5's 'Severed Dreams' the Earth Alliance used breaching pods to get in close and land on the side of the space station to let marines in and take over certain sections.

[NJHamilton]

I would be THRILLED to see a breakdown of your top 5 or 10 boarding actions!

As a personal request, can you do a "dishonorable mention" where things went hilariously wrong? 😊

[Fiirow]

The expanse is my favorite sci-fi series, boarding is one of the things I think it does great... They'll sometimes discuss what weaponry to use, low powered ammunition or high power makes a difference here.
More shows should go into the depth and really consider the consequences of firing weapons inside a pressurized tube. This would really enhance the boarding scenes, seeing how one or both sides have effective PPE against SAF, then rewarding accuracy and the use of less powerful fragmentation devices.

We hear it all the time "be careful not to puncture the hull", but a minute later they're absolutely sending it with MG's and grenades...

[grievouslytired]

Aside from the Invisible Hand and Tantive IV, my favourite boarding action is in the second Red Rising book. In Golden Son, two starshells, mech suits meant to be fired towards a planet from orbit by a magnetic accelerator, breach the bridge of a capital ship and force the crew to cooperate after killing the bridge garrison and command after threatening to vent the ship.

[Fen_Wolf]

I’d love to see you go into your favorite boarding actions. Overall all it’s such a crazy idea of boarding a space ship cause so much can go wrong when doing it. Can’t deny how cool it is though and there are definitely benefits to doing it.