About 6 months back, I was playing in a buddy's game and the players made it a very free-form push-the-game-as-far-as-your-personal-initiative-will-take-you kind of campaign - very kewl and I would have liked to continue it as my character was contemplating the hijacking of a naval vessel but the game was abortively shorted out so no dice.

I'm now back as the GM for the group and have been toying with a scenario which involves taking over a naval vessel, like a large missile cruiser or aircraft carrier. I'd like to hear some ideas, especially from anyone who's ever served aboard such vessels, on:

1. how possible it would be to take over such a vessel
2. when would be the best time
3. how would you do it
4. any other related issues

Then, to make things more interesting, how you would you go about hijacking a nuclear sub AT SEA?

Oh, Siege, sorry, nothing to do with you and any form of kinky acts (can you say "Cockatrice" again? ).

Well:

You are going to need to worry about the crew, and any embarked marines (if any). Then, you are going to have to worry about how to move the ship once you have dealt with the crew. (I assume you are talking about stealing such a vessel, and not holding the crew hostage, or whatever.)

So, you'll need some guys that know how to steer, etc the ship. A 'safe port' to put it in, and so on. Any nation with a ship worth stealing is not going to be too happy with out. Stealing a 'pirate' ship or similar is probably much simpler. Get a boat 'attractive' to pirates, fill it full of boarders, and wander into pirate infested waters. When they try to board you, kill 'em all, collect the reward (if any), and keep the ship as legimitate salvage.

Yeah, I was thinking of stealing the vessel, IF POSSIBLE. As such, I would have no interest in holding the crew hostage. The problem is that with a fully crewed aircraft carrier, for example, I just don't see how you could possible hijack the ship with anything less than battalion of WELL-ARMED spec forces or a reinforced brigade of well-trained soldiers/marines.

Then, you'd need a small army of riggers to man the necessary systems to get the ship moving/functional. You'd also need some way to then hide the vessel after that from satellites (spirits?) and berth her some place away from prying eyes.

You know, funny you should mention that Dim Sum. I was wondering how you were going to pull THAT one off in the campaign myself. It sure warms the cockles of my cholestrol-ladden heart that you haven't worked anything out yet.

IIRC you need at least 3 riggers just to control the darn thing.

So ... it would appear that you would need to hit the ship when it has a skeleton crew on board. Since that's very unlikely or very rare, that would mean having to get a lot of the crew off in some way. Ideas? Nuclear emergency (a la The Hunt for Red October)? You'd need to co-opt the engineers and even then, the ship would call in the emergency to fleet command.

Gawd ... the more I think about it, the more massive an undertaking it becomes to cover all the contingencies.

@ SykoBear

Well, the alternative would be to hit the vessel while it's in port but although it sounds easier at first, it'd be next to impossible to get away, out to sea.

I didn't have anything planned at the time, just some rough ideas (hehehe), and I was thinking it through last night when it hit me just how much legwork would be involved and that's BEFORE even getting to the operational difficulties of actually performing the hijack.

Subverting the entire crew is probably the easiest method.

~J

Mind control captain at sea, so he just "decides" to change course?
Only problem - there could be wards at captain's bridge to prevent from that, but every ward can be broken/supressed.

I thought about that, Kage, but it would be nigh on impossible to subvert the whole crew (anything between 2,400-3,000 men/women for an aircraft carrier?).

Best I could think of was to subvert as many of the key people possible. Even that would be a long shot .... Hmmmmm .....

Thanks, Grendel. As you've pointed out, even taking a "small" ship like a Oliver Perry-class frigate is going to be a nightmare.

How about staging an elaborate or even a real ship in distress and mounting an assault while the navy ship conducts rescue operations? That would reduce the reaction time of the crew, neh?

It'd still be the easiest method. Kinda like it's easier to get to Mars with a big cannon than by flapping your arms really hard (and I'm talking a gunpowder cannon here, not something like a Mass Driver that could actually do the job).

~J

Notice that in future crew are likely to be slightly lover. Though this is SR, so there will be riggers and drones to worry about. This makes taking over the ship even harder, as you can now fit a 10+ combat drones into storage to prevent such things. Also notice that the ship is likely to be warded, have onboard mages, etc.

Okay, hmm, so would everyone agree that taking an aricraft carrier is simply out of the question? I mean, how many times is an aircraft carrier going to be travelling alone in the first place. Most times, if it's on operational duty, it would be surrounded by a flotilla of other heavily armed ships whose duties are to protect it.

All right, so let's set our ambitions on something a little smaller like a missile cruiser (like, say, the Tico-class cruisers) which would still be a very valuable target in terms of its instrinsinc value and the nuclear/conventional missiles it carries.

Taking some of the points you guys have raised, I would subvert as many of the key crew personnel as possible:
- the captain and/or executive officer
- weps
- communications officer
- chief engineer
- Marine contingent commander
- the ship’s surgeon
- the cook?

Hijack a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) or ULCC (Ultra-Large Crude Carrier). This raises issues of its own (about the how’s and how-not’s) but I think we’d all agree that it would be far easier than hijacking a naval warship straight out. Stage an accident (whether real of fake) on the VL/ULCC in the vicinity of the cruiser such that they are the closest ship able to render assistance.

Have divers tasked with the assault leave the VL/ULCC from the hidden side once the cruiser draws up parallel to the oil tanker to commence rescue operations. The divers will swim under the keels of both vessels and assault the cruiser on the side not facing the oil tanker. The assault has to be synchronized to commence at the same time shooters from the oil tanker launch heavy weapons on the side of the cruiser facing it.

While the divers are en route from the oil tanker to the cruiser, all crew who have been subverted have to move into position to facilitate the assault. The captain / XO have to neutralize any ship-to-ship weapons and riggers and the chief engineer may have to temporarily disable propulsion and/or power (no power, no riggers?). If the doctor was co-opted, he might have been able to introduce a very potent laxative timed to take effect during the assault or, with the chief engineer’s help, even introduce ether into the environmental systems. Meanwhile, the marine contingent commander (or even just the ship’s armourer) could disable the personal weapons of the marines on board.

The assault divers would have to come on board FAST and, as Grendel has pointed out, be absolutely ruthless. At the same time, the captain or XO can order the crew to cease and desist, and obey the assault team.

How many men would I need?

Hmm, Kage, I'm still not convinced that trying to subvert the entire crew would be the easiest way of doing it, even if we're looking at a smaller crew of a Tico-class cruiser. I just don't see everyone being bought off because there's not going to be just one but many who will not be able to sever family connections and other ties to their nation no matter how much you pay them.

Buying off a few of them, though, like the key crew members ... that's something more feasible, I feel.

how long are you going to keep the ship? i mean, let's face it: with the massive amounts of satellite coverage in 2060, you're not going to be able to keep the damn thing forever.

Sorry, just the time to jot down pele-mele a few ideas, which should help you understand it should be doable:



ONBOARD EMBARKED INTELLIGENCE/AGENTS:
- you find how to get them in (Masking adepts, plastic surgery modified agents with retinal, digital, vocal etc. mods, etc, etc.)
- onboard agents can mess up with the energy plant of the aircraf carrier, local actions on the communications emettors, matrix access granted to inside/outside agents, control of the machines and engines: all can be neutralized quite easily with competent technicians and micro-runs/sabotage onboard.
- food/water/air poisoning (better get some viral stuff which spreads well and to which onboard agents get immunity, which disable the onboard regular personel, which mobilizes all resource, with plausible blame on food supply -to be arranged-, to avert people thinking of some other explanations of vast food poisoning): of course, some well staged poisoning will not be discovered as all controls will be fixed.
- decks/lifts/maglocks/doors/missile vaults sabotaging: just to keep the bad guys from moving where they would be useful, or giving them some red herrings (missile vaults diversion, pretty sure all security will have this one as a priority; when they are all in the right place, DMSO vector sleeping/incapacitating gases will take them out!!)

MAGIC:
shouldn't be the biggest issue in such a techie environment: elementals/spirits will get confused at who are the targets and whom to help...

BOARDING TEAM (if any): I love the en masse use of DMSO vectored gases/toxins (Gamma Scopolamine, tailor-made toxins would be even better!). It's always efficient, especially if you can fix some immunity for the runners.
Most of the regular personel is not fit or equipped to welcome any boarding party, so cutting down lightings and arriving with smoke/flash grenades and vision control (IR, night vision, etc.) equipment should turn all target # out of the league of the average Joe crewman.

PROPAGANDA DURING THE CONTROL TAKING OPERATION:
if everybody aboard develops quickly some visible symptoms of quick evolving disease (why am I thinking Red Mask?? or a non lethal version...), some broadcast message like: "you surrender, you get antidote, otherwise you die anyway in two hours" can go a long way to get the regular crew's minds out of the real issue.

DRONES: you can always with a super competent, super well equipped rigger/rigger crew turn them to your advantage, or at least make them take a big dive (on tactical stuff on the the deck of the ship, antennas, etc.)
When operation is on, also a lot of fake radioed messages on the ship security teams frequences will help.

MATRIX: quite obvious all that you can do with it. First of all control all outgoing communications.



MOST IMPORTANTLY: check well files of all personal embarked, even in the Captain's safe. If you don't find the cook's personal files, ABORT MISSION, I repeat ABORT MISSION.

Haha! Thanks, Rice Bowl, for the comments. I hope my players who are reading this thread are getting increasingly paranoid about what I'm going to throw them into. I have a feeling they'll be checking through all the personnel files with a fine tooth comb.

Introducing an agent or two on board (PCs) would aid a lot, of course, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to do, which is why I went with the subvert-key-personnel route. You'd need a pretty whiz decker to hack into the DOD or base computer files to lay the appropriate trail that would pass a security check when "transferring" on to the vessel's crew.

Dim Sum,

I'm not talking about inserting two guys aboard!!
I'm talking 30-50 well trained!!
Whoever has a serious interest and a way to profit of the hijacking of an aircraft carrier WILL NOT hire a mere runner team, however hot the rep! however flashy the deeds!
It will be a well funded op, with well connected people and only highly skilled people with a perfect record sheet will be approached.

Then, after the ship makes some stay in a harbour, I beg to differ on the feasability of putting 30 moles aboard:
you kidnap the guys you want to substitute and put the look-alike agents instead.
Preferably the single ones, with no relatives. For the others, aboard the family reach is far lessened and thus less susceptible to be discovered.
Try to put moles together, so they aboard also are less susceptible to be discovered, having less to interact with "regular" crew members.

The getting aboard procedure should be known, and then all searched for parameters (ID and bio) should be arranged to pass the tests.
You can also mass Influence all the people making the check to let staff back onboard.

Don't forget that key personel has more exposure, and will be more checked for by the Magics etc.
Random technicians lost in the masse of a few thousands people will have a maneuver margin far superior, plus if you can get them pass for techies, they will have natural access to their objectives!!!

BTW, to implement this kind of ops, you need at least a year (get all ships blue prints, records of the staff, decide who to substitute, find the qualified agents, window of opportunity, etc).


To finish, for the nuclear sub at sea, you should think Magic: if you have a mole, a high level Masking initiate with many high Force Elementals at his beck and call + a few tech moles should make it.
Otherwise, you can try the Commandant Cousteau sub approaching target and announce he comes for pizza delivery: you sure stun them for a whole minute of complete stupor!

Well yeah, I agree about the cook.
And sadly I do agree that even best guys will not be able to capture ship AND keep it under control, if they are only few. There are too many places that you must keep under control, while suspectible to enemy fire.
And any "strange disease" will likely cause ship to inform their superiors about drastical situation, and ship will be quarantined while being guarded by few other ships.
Best they can take is some "romantic cruiser", where they have small crew and lots of hostages around. And yes, submarine is better this way with less crew, but still a very risky thing. And smallest suspicions will get you hauled overboard

I can think of only two really effective ways of taking over a properly crewed naval combat vessel.

1) Biological or chemical weapons. Poison their water supply while out to sea with a custom made virus. Be sure to jam their communications until the virus has finished its work, then clean up whoever was smart enough to survive (or leave them there and drive off with them locked up). If you find a way to innoculate yourselves, you can keep pumping the virus out through the ventilation or water and insure that any intruders will die eventually.

2) Using seriously high powered magic, cast mass hysteria along with a series of illusions depicting the ship sinking, controls showing damage etc. This would be supplemented with a decker breaking into the system and activating the actual warning lights. Between all the obvious signs that the ship is sinking and the mass hysteria spell on at least half of the crew, you should be able to get the crew to evacuate the ship. Fly in in your official navy rescue helicopter and drive away.

I'd personally take an entirely different approach to those mentioned so far. The main problem I see is that the suggestions posited so far play right into the hands of the defenses already in place. They're too conventional (in a very generalized way, mind you).

I'd take the "audacious speed" approach. A relatively small unit (probably ~dozen men or so) coming over the side while underway, with the sole goal of reaching the primary C&C. This can theoretically be done with raw speed, stealth, utter ruthlessness, and a map. Remember, until the marines are mobilized, for the most part, all you're dealing with normal crew, most of whom aren't much better than civilians on the street (at least in terms of combat survivability. Notice the word "most". Surprises can happen).

Once in C&C, eliminate all crewmen present, and lock it down. Get your riggers into the system, and SCRAM the entire power system. Shut everything down, full emergency shutdown. This will prevent smart engineers from trying to shut down engine power, witty crewmen from trying to use ships weapons (for the most part), etc. An added bonus would be if the intusion countermeasures can be kept online during blackout, but that's less than likely.

If at all possible, use multiple riggers to simultaneously lockdown the entire ship and SCRAM the power systems, to keep the crew as tightly contained as possible. Also, make your assault at night, as night at sea can be pretty freaking dark.

Once you've shut it all down and established a modicum of control, just tow the damn thing. Admittedly, towing it won't really work in a battlegroup, but then, any sort of takeover in a battlegroup is going to fail as soon as SOP for the ship is broken.

Edit: Also, you'll need to bring some top-notch magical support. Once you've locked down the vessel and powered it down, about the only thing left to the crew is spirits and other magical assault. Considering the skill requirements for this, though, finding appropriate magical support isn't going to be sufficiently more difficult than recruiting the rest of the nut-jobs needed for the task.

I have an addition. 2063 era ships will have combat drones. Period. They'd bu stupid not to. So, take along some excellent decryption or a good decker and a rigger. You have your own ready-made army, already dispersed where you need them most.

Imagine the look of surprise when the drones roll out and they though the calvery has come. "Yaaaaay! *brakakakakaka* Ow."

I think Large Mike has the right idea. If you give the ship rigger controlled controlled doors all over the place so that they could seal the crew into small groups in different rooms and take them out in several small skirmishes it could be possible. Also, turning some rigger controlled autodefense systems against the crew could do a whole lot to evening the odds out. Try getting a group of like 4 riggers on board along with a small combat group. That is probably your best chance.

As for taking out a nuclear submarine. Wait till its submerged, attack it with a spirit or some other weapon from far away designed to puncture the hull instead of obliterating it. When the crew starts to evacuate it, send in your team to go inside of it, and then have a mage did a heck of a big fix spell on it. YOu'll probably also want a way to get the water out. People are less likely to try and defend a submarine if they think its going down.

Fix has a serious drain code, so you should survive even if it is physical (as long as you don't have more than a moderate would before casting), the hardest part is getting the TN of 14,020,000 to learn the spell in the first place.

That's easy, you just go on a Rating 14,019,998 astral quest beforehand.

As for Homeland Security, they probably have Dumpshock bookmarked. Not like we don't talk about all sorts of mayhem on a daily basis.

~J

My calculator can't resolve the odds for a single die to a number above 0. I'll need to pull out Maple a bit later to see if the odds return to visibility with all those dice, but I somehow doubt it.

~J

Well: Magic is your second best bet when you want miracles, your first being divine intervention. Without magical support (Perfferably subverted, possibly taken-out), the crew would be almost completely defenseless to a well executed spirit attack. If you can jam their transmissions (or destroy all communications systems with sufficient reach to get help) then there is a good chance you'd suceed.

Within the ship, the crew are unlikely to be able to bring any weapons to bear that can deal with a force 5 or greater spirit. Using high-force elementals en-masse; it should be possible to kill the crew relatively quickly. 16 or so force 10 fire elementals, quite a reasonable force from two good elven hermetics, should be able to take the ship relatively quickly. As you're not sending anyone in, the line "kill everyone on that ship" should suffice. If this is a subverted security mage, he might want to get off the ship first or add "except me". With a bit of talismongering, the costs could stay low (~25k:nuyen:) for the ritual materials.

It might not take 16, any number of mundanes would find it nigh impossible to stop even one force 10 fire elemental. It would probably be intelligent enough to toast people from range (avoiding force-of-will attacks) and to avoid traps. With a bit of mop-up (maybe a coupple of spirits reserved and ordered to take-out anyone who leaves the ship?) the ship should be yours.

There is the minor problem of starting fires on the ship, but AFAIK modern ships aren't really succeptible to fires spreading thanks to anti-fire measures. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

[edited a bit=so sue me]

Remember, the ships you're talking about taking out are likely to be in the middle of a frigging battlefleet. So, even if you manage to neutralize the mages on the primary ship, all the others are going to rush to help.

I was? In that case I'd say that you'd need to bribe all of the mages, then you'd have yourself an entire battlefleet (given crew to man them). Stealing one ship that's surrounded by a fleet just isn't going to happen without the rest of the fleet noticing. One way or another you'll need to eliminate the surrounding ships. I suppose someone may be able to launch missiles from a missile cruiser to (hopefully) destroy the other ships in the fleet. Subs which, AFAIK, travel alone should be an easier target, after the crew are dead you could use a water elememtal/sea spirit with the movement power to take the sub wherever you want it.

It all depends on budget, but if you remove the magical defenses then you expose the juicy, mundane, core to high-force spirit-powered death.

Try installing a big ass transmitter tower onto a ship and get it close enough to take over the vessel's entire stock of drone defences.

For ships, since they're made to float and also have watertight hatches in case of flooding, would that mean they have to rely on having air cycled through? If so, then just gas the lot of them. Of course, I've no idea what kind of scrubbers/defences they might have so you'd probably want at least one guy to take care of it.

That's an idea. Control Thoughts could be your friend here. I mean, as long as you make sure that you're not going to kill everyone, that'd reduce the ressistance some IIRC. Just swipe and set up select crew members, or might they take precautions against something like this? :/

If you wanted to go for a direct assault, I'm not sure how feasible it'd be but here goes. The night before the ship sails from a port it's visiting, have some guys in diving gear swim up to the hull and attach themselves to it. Possible even use on of those sea-sleds. Wait 'til out at sea then use magnets/clamps to climb up hull onto deck. Proceed to slaughter all and sundry. Of course, with no immediate retreat that makes it an all or nothing deal.

Thanks for all the comments/suggestions so far - they've got me thinking along some new lines, which I didn't consider before.

As I mentioned earlier, I think I'd revise my ambitions to taking over a guided missile cruiser like the Tico-class in RL today. Even if an aircraft carrier were travelling alone (next to zero chance), the force required to hijack the damn thing would simply be next to impossible to put together (with the kind of resources you'd have to put together for the operation AND maintain opsec, you might as well BUY a carrier!). Instead, the cost-benefit of hijacking a missile cruiser would still make it attractive enough to attempt.

A missile cruiser has a much smaller crew (today's Tico-class cruisers have a complement of about 360 officers and men so I figure it's going to be smaller still in the 2060s with all the automation available - call it 250-280 men in total) and the ship's actual size, as compared to a carrier, will also make it far easier to seize. Although Rice Bowl has suggested infiltrating 30-50 men on board with the crew, that represents a significant crew change that I feel would draw too much attention to escape notice from the ship's captain and/or other duty officers. It's possible but it would be risky IMHO.

And, yeah, I acknowledge that you'd have to hit the ship either when it's own or after separating it from the fleet if it's playing escort. That's why I'd use the ship-in-distress decoy. There is no way you can successfully pull off the seizure of the ship if there is battlegroup in the vicinity that is able to respond. I would be aiming to target a cruiser that is assigned to make protocol calls at various ports around the world as they normally travel alone or pull one from escort duty of an unarmed convoy.

Cykotek, thanks for the suggestion. I agree that the assault should be made with several small teams moving fast and with single-minded determination to by-pass everything to reach their assigned targets, one of which would be the CIC. The only thing I'd have trouble with is that without the appropriate assistance from moles in the crew or subverted personnel, it would be all too easy for the crew to lock down the CIC and other key areas as soon as the alarm is raised.

While I believe that a ruthless and well-armed assault team could get pretty far (either killing the unarmed crew members who get in their way or cowing them with pure shock or intimidation) once they got over the side, I don't think they could reach the CIC before it's locked down (and almost no chance of reaching the CDC on a carrier).

So, the consensus is: subverting key crew where possible, boarding the cruiser in a lightning strike with small assault teams covered by an overwhelming force of spirits (thanks, Lilt!), make straight for key positions on board and choke points, especially the CIC, introduce your own riggers into the ship's systems or have subverted crew riggers do so, and - voila - the ship is yours.

Now, assuming you want to keep the ship (to sell it and its arsenal to the highest bidder), what are you going to do with the captured crew? How do you hide it as it moves underway? Where would you keep it secured and hidden?

I'd go with killing the crew to be safest - although it would up the ante on the emotional stakes and make the Navy far more determined to hunt you down, I can't quite see maintaining security if you released the crew. As for hiding the ship, spirits to mask the ship?? That might hide it from satellite and recon flights but wouldn't it be easy for Navy spirits to find it?

Kill the crew but save a small number of hostages. That way there's a major emotional kick to the general populace to "get our sons and daughters back alive", making any counteroperation more difficult with public pressure to ensure hostage survival. Torture a few to death if necessary.

~J

Edit: You might also want to have some tapes of crew members being herded into small rooms and then the mage casting Slaughter Human or appropriate metatype, and then a few similar pictures with ordinary bullets.
Your motto for this run is "Oderint dum metuant"

Bloody hell, Kage!! I don't know whether I'm more intrigued by the idea of running a campaign for you or flee the planet!

It'd be interesting one day to get deck plans for a missile cruiser and simulate the hijack with minatures with some players tasked with defending the ship and others trying to take it.

Why not use non-lethal takedown methods when capturing the ship - 'cause hey, you may need people later - and then putting them over the side later in the emergency lifeboats with some supplies, sans radio? Make it somewhere that gets enough traffic that they'll be found in a bit but not a major shipping lane so it's not immediately. Now they'll still want their ship back, but it always pays not to start a blood feud.

And another thought - communications. When you storm the ship, you absoluetly have to take this down ASAP. Either by brute force - blowing up the radio array, sneaky-like - get an inside guy to pull the plug, or just cart along a really massive fuck off jammer to take care of things.

FlakJacket, I agree completely with taking down the communications. One of the key personnel I listed for subversion is the commo officer. One would hope that in taking down the CIC fast enough (more likely with the aid of conspirators on board than by trying to reach it in time with an assault team) would enable the hijackers to render comms inoperational. Otherwise, yeah, a fricking large jammer would most likely be needed on commencement of the assault.

I thought long and hard about using non-lethal means when storming the ship - wouldn't be hard to do since all the crew would not be wearing body armour until general quarters is sounded, and even then, body armour would be limited to certain crewmen and the marines embarked on board. You are right about there being no point in starting a blood feud if unnecessary. However, I discarded the idea because unless you storm the ship with overwhelming force sufficient to subdue the whole crew, the crew is going to try to fight back if they know there's a good chance they're not going to die. "They're using tranq guns, guys! Let's get 'em!" Better, I think, to go with lethal force from the outset for that reason.

Of course, there's always the Red October method...

How do you convince the crew to abandon a nuclear submarine?