Fellow Travellers,

As usual, thanks!  You've just provided a bucketful of ideas, most of
which hadn't even occurred to me, in addition (Thanks Leonard) to
explaining some holes in my initial thoughts (nothing unusual there,
BTW - the holes, I mean... ;-)

Again, thanks!

- Bill Rutherford

At 02:26 AM 1/10/2015, you wrote:
>On 9 Jan 2015 at 23:39, Bill Rutherford wrote:
>
> > All,
> >
> > The players are landing at a D starport which is pretty basic.
> >
> > The bad guys want to disable the players' ship to keep them from
> > leaving but it's not politic to simply bombard it from space or turn
> > the weapons of another parked ship on the players' ship.  A couple of
> > thoughts that sprang to mind ito disable the ship include:
> >
> > a) Fry the ship's electrical systems by running a vehicle with a
> > large capacitor aboard into one of the landing legs.
> >
> > -- Is this even practical?
>
>Nope. You can't fry the electronics in your car by dropping a high
>voltage power line onto it. That's because the body acts as a Faraday
>cage.
>
>Ships will be even better protected.
>
> > -- Thoughts re: how this could be done without also frying any crew aboard?
>
>The voltage would never get *into* the ship in the first place.
>
> > b) EMP...
> >
> > -- Nukes would likely be off the table but could this be done with a
> > high-voltage low amperage electrostatic discharge from the vehicle
> > that contacts the landing leg?
>
>
>For close range, an eMP bomb is rather smle to make. And doesn't
>require a nuke. doesn't even require huge amounts of explosives.
>
>But again, the ship will be pretty well shielded against that in the
>first place.
>
> > c) Simply ram the ship with a vehicle, collapsing a landing leg,
> > possibly breaking seal integrity around the gear door?
>
> > -- Any thoughts about likelihood of breaking integrity?
>
>If the ship falls over, a lot of things will break.
>
>If it doesn't then you'll have to inflict enough damage to prevent
>retracted the leg properly without causing the ship to fall over.
>Tricky.
>
>Things that will prevent the ship from lifting fall into several
>categories:
>
>1. legal. they *could* lift off, but might be in big trouble if they
>do. Maybe even enough to get the locals to send something to force
>them down.
>
>2. "practical". Maybe some of the crew, passengers or supplies aren't
>on board. Lifing off may still be *possible* but would lead to
>various levels of problems.
>
>3. "physical". something is broken/missing/whatever. the ship is
>*unable* to lift until the problem is corrected.
>
>
>--
>Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
>shadow at shadowgard dot com
>
>
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Bill Rutherford
xxxxxx@comcast.net