On 21Oct2020 1811, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
> This is mostly for military or paramilitary (or perhaps criminal,  > paranoids aka... player ships) vessels vs. smaller vessels or >
civilian vessels. Those can be a little laxer on security because >
boarders may be less likely. Or at the least, the designers may want >
cheap ships and not want to allocate space and so on to provide >
greater internal security.
I think this is a matter of how common boarding actions are in your TU.
In mine, for large military vessels it practically never happens, even
in wars. For small ones, it's still very rare, and access to vital
locations for rescue and for routine operations is more important. Thus
they won't be designed with boarding in mind. Smaller vessels might well
be designed with them boarding other vessels in mind, though -
especially ships like the Patrol Cruiser.

For merchants boarding is very rare, but after hijacking/mutiny probably
the most common direct threat against the ship, but the owners are also
going to be very cost-conscious, so they'll be very likely to not take
any security measures that increase operating costs. Thus engineering
will have easy access, and will tend to have areas of the hull that are
easy to open up in a yard over large components like the reactors. This
makes them vulnerable to boarding through the locks and via holes cut in
the hull. The bridge will also have a lock handy because crews tend to
be small and concentrated by the bridge and by engineering, so that's
where the locks and equipment lockers will be.

Also, if you're serious about boarding, unless you really want the ship
afterwards (and you haven't already trashed it by shooting it up),
you'll probably make your own hole anyway. That way you get to decide
where you come in, and the crew can't so easily set up defences against
you. I assume that aside from pirates boarding merchants they've cowed
into letting them come alongside ("Stand and deliver!"), a ship you're
boarding will have been shot at, and unless it was quite large compared
to the ship shooting that means it's got a serious damage (criticals) by
the time it's been rendered unable to evade, and you're not boarding a
manoeuvring ship.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>