Re: Arcane helm monopoly...

Sean Reynolds mentioned something called a 'Bolaship'?  What supplement did
that come out in?  WHo makes it?

My impression of the jettison was that is was an exclusively _rear_ firing
device, it is always found in the rear.  I must have missed the line about
it being catapulted.

In using it tacticly, it seems the requirement is to be able to fire on
exposed decks.  Several small ships could either disable or suppress the
crew from coming on deck by maintaining covering fire positions from all
sides on the deck.  This wouldn't help versus ship weapons which can be
pulled into the hull to be loaded.  Have a Glasssteel, or glassee window
to target the device and just take parallax into account when you fire.

It seems that for certain purposes, like controlling extensive rigging,
having an open deck makes sense, but to prevent boarding, or to shield
your own crew in preparation for boarding an overhead movable shield
and/or large hatches to the boarding staging area would make sense.

What sorts of boarding impediments and boarding aids do people use on their
ships?  An obvious mechanism is a Psionicist who can Dimension Door to an
unobserved portion of an enemy ship through which the marines, (but no
not necessarily the psionicist himself) board.
The problem seems that the more impediments there are to boarding, the harder
it will be to use ship's weapons during closing.

A compact ship would seem to have an advantage in that it would be easier
to concentrate marines in defense, and a smooth hull with no protrusions,
or a few isolated ones would work well.

However, unless ship's weapons ports can snipe at people on the hull, boarders
can hide on the 'dark side' of the ship, landing as opportunity and space
arise until a large enough party to rush the sides has boarded.

If two ships are working together, they can cover each others bellies by the
simple expediant of coordinating their maneuvers so they can crush boarders
between them.  This only works for smooth, flat or round hull designs...

Another question:
Prior to combat, do you lock the helm room door?

Michael Sandy