Your space honorable warrior race likes swords so much that they want to use then even during boarding actions against enemies with guns. Is there any way to make this make sense?
>>45966992
Extendable monomolecular whip-swords. That cut through walls like they're made of paper.
>>45966992
RULES OF NATURE
Well, their shields emit very strong EMP/spacemagicbblast which jams all guns so they can close in and engage in honourable mêlée
>>45966992
Depends on the length of the swords, and how close quarters they're going to be. Never forget the 18 feet rule man.
>>45966992
>>45966992
Klingons bring guns, and knives for close-quarters stabbing.
Also, it'd make sense if you're in INCREDIBLY close-quarters, or if firing off a gun in a spaceship is an insanely bad idea for explosive decompression reasons.
Although if you're boarding and have a transporter to get back to your own ship, who gives a shit if you're blowing holes in the enemy's ship, unless you were planning to capture and use it yourselves or something?
>>45966992
Gunblades.
>>45966992
Spaceships are too packed with "keep everyone alive" systems and tanks marked "really explosive". One stray shot could kill everyone, so melee it is.
They have big meaty hands which make using any kind of gun hard
>>45966992
Boarding actions actually would be the ideal time to have swords for the same reason it is the ideal time to have pistols and shotguns. Unless the ship being boarded has a very open room design, you are talking about tight corridors and rooms. A large sword may not be effective but something that is small enough that you wont be hitting the walls will do.
>>45966992
Yes.
They're really bad at boarding actions.
>>45967007
>Cut through walls
>In a spaceship
Anyway, just give them force-fields that block energy weapons and kinetic rounds. "The slow blade penetrates the shield" and all that. How are your ships even getting into boarding range in the first place?
>>45966992
Rules of nature
>>45967086
I'm saying this from a Naval perspective that is. That's why modern swords were used in the Navy and still hold symbolic relevance to Marine forces.
>>45967066
Star Trek starships are particularly bad because they have the whole "Electro-Plasma System" going on.
The walls contain pipes carrying superheated, pressurized, electrified, magnetically confined, deuterium plasma.
This is why consoles explode so much.
>>45966992
Sure.
The big problem in space isn't cold, it's heat. Heat spreads by a hot molecule "exciting" another nearby molecule that it comes into contact with (to keep things simple). In space that can't happen due to it being a vacuum. This means that spaceships without adequate cooling systems can become ovens.
Any energy weapons are going to necessarily produce a lot of heat. Fire them too much, and you run the risk of raising the internal temperature of a ship to such an extent that you cook your own soldiers alive - not to mention run the risk of damaging the equipment, which, if your boarding a ship, I assume is something you don't want to do.
So basically the same fundamental problem behind stealth in space, if a different application of that problem.
To say nothing of the risk of your energy-based weapon blowing holes in a ship (or, again, the ship's equipment). This is the same problem with slugthrower weapons.
Now, add into this that a real spaceship is going to be very confined and tight. There's not a lot of space to maneuver around in, which means a lot of close quarters combat. In certain situations, such as close-quarters combat, a melee weapon is actually arguably better than a gun, to say nothing of how missing a swing isn't likely to screw up anything too badly, while missing with a bullet or beam weapon might, again, damage controls.
In that situation, melee combat in the space age actually makes perfect sense. The short sword, knife, katar, or other close-quarters weapon (you're gonna want stabby more than choppy) shouldn't be the first choice, but it's absolutely something that should be equipped and ready to use.
>>45966992
Your space honorable warrior race likes personal combat so much they want to use it even when they and their opponents are in separate pressurized tin cans in the middle of a vacuum. Is there any way to make this make sense?
>>45967055
Get some culture
>>45966992
Some cultures are just honestly stupid, that's all you really need
>>45967194
Spaceships are expensive. Taking them a 'prize is a good way to expand the fleet without expending resources on building new ships yourself.
>>45967130
"Modern" as in "early 19th century". I don't think a marine has seriously used their sword in combat since then.
Also, FYI submarines, which are similar to spacecraft in a great many ways, are packed with automatic weapons intended for use in case of hostiles on board. The risk of "accidentally puncturing the hull/damaging an important system" is enormously exaggerated by fiction, generally with the intention of justifying space swords. The same hull that's been designed to withstand meteorites/innumerable tons of water pressure/missiles and torpedoes isn't going to give in because someone shot a bullet at it from inside.
>>45966992
State of art combat drugs and cybernetics can keep people fighting even after taking multiple gunshot wounds. Shooting a guy will kill him eventually, but it's neither fast not particularly reliable. Meanwhile, good old decapitation still kills people dead on spot.
>>45967007
>>45967103
There was an episode of Andromeda that had someone using a monomolecular whip as a weapon. Everyone else considered her a retard for doing so, doubly so for using one on a space ship.
>>45967194
Boarding torpedoes.
>>45966992
Really good body armor or ballistic shields. Or energy fields if they're up against lasers or plasma.
>>45966992
Klingon swords tend to be made from sharpened cable brackets and other shit commonly found lying of ship decks during battle.
the Batleth is supposed to be decended from stone age weapons made from the jawbone of a manta ray looking creature.
in other words, whatever they can swing in a fight.
>>45966992
The Space Honorable WArrior Race (SHWAR) are largely technologically inferior to their enemies, however much they may loathe to admit it. All captains are ordered to capture enemy vessels with as many systems intact as possible, at any cost. This means the use of more precise weapons with the minimum risk of collateral damage, regardless of the danger it places the boarding party in. Truly, SHWAR is hell.
>>45967735
I like this.
>>45967264
There's really not that many weapons on a submarine and most of them are pistols and shotguns. The rifles and light machine guns are few and intended for topside force protection use, rather than repelling boarders inside the ship.
That said there's nothing that is even remotely close to being able to penetrate the pressure hull and if you have armed intruders inside the ship who gives an actual fuck about damaging equipment?
The things that you really don't want to hit is high pressure air piping due to its tendency to create invisible death-beams that will cut you in half if you walk into them and hydraulic piping which is similar but visible and also can cause fires.
>>45967506
Citations needed on both. The first Batleth is supposed to have been forged by Kahless plucking a hair from his beard and dipping it into volcanic lava. (TNG: Rightful Heir)
Klingon swords are weapons passed down through families, deeply enshrined in their culture, not made of random shit on spaceships.
>>45967264
Cutlasses were issued by naval forces into the interwar period and even beyond in some cases.
The Royal Navy issued them to landing parties until 1936 and a US marine killed someone with a cutlass in the Korean War.
>>45966992
LoGH goes with a special compound that explodes when exposed to high heat.
Forcing both side revert to melee combat
While they use Axe and combat knife, but surel you can use sword instead.
>>45967060
There are episodes in DS9 where they just transport in with a bat'leth in hand and get instant gibed by phaser.
>>45967506
So, it's painfully apparent that you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about, but I'd like to know if you just made that up yourself, or if you actually got that from somewhere.
>>45968227
Then there was that crazy asshole that stormed Normandy with a claymore. Guy's probably in Valhalla by now.
>>45967312
Bullets tend to create more devastating wounds than blades. Shooting someone in the head, heart, or spine would also disable them permanently, and it's much easier to accomplish than beheading.
Because having somebody swinging what is basically a huge curved blade at you is inherently terrifying
>>45966992
>Using projectiles in a confined area where a hole in the wall can kill you.
All you need to do is not horribly downplay the dangers of being in space in general.
>>45969076
>your hull is thin enough to be penetrated by small arms
>>45969113
This desu senpai, a hull that weak would be torn to shreds by space dust.
>>45970268
Like the space shuttle, which can suffer catastrophic damage from a piece of foam insulation falling on it.
>>45970363
Each space shuttle took literally thousands of debris impacts over the course of its service life. Almost all of them caused negligible damage.
>>45968487
He actually survived and killed someone with a longbow.
>>45970582
Except were any of those projectiles super heated plasma balls shot at faster than the speed of sound?
>>45970582
Yeah, they're decently shielded against damage coming from the outside.
Boarding party would be damage coming from the inside.
>>45967053
This.
Read 'Forever War' and 'Another War' by Joe Haldeman. By the end of the war against the aliens humanity is using a device that when turned on disables all mecanical action more complex then a bow. They have to wear special suits to not die and charge the enemy with spears and swords.
>>45967055
It broke a heat tile.
It literally caused nearly negligable damage.
>>45970949
Well yes, actually, since when you're in orbit the things you get hit by are going to be micrometeoroids or orbital debris, both of which are going to be traveling at ridiculously high relative velocities.
I'm not really sure what you thought the space shuttle was getting hit by.
>>45971511
should link to
>>45970363
>>45966992
jedi /thread
>>45967938
>high pressure air piping due to its tendency to create invisible death-beams that will cut you in half if you walk into them
Could you elaborate on this? Is this literal or exageration?
>>45970980
If the concern is the hull being penetrated its no more likely to be penetrated from the inside than the outside. Even if the hull was penetrated a single 1/4 hole is just going to cause (fairly slow) depressurization.
The concern for the defending crew is damage to equipment and pipe ruptures. The aggressors aren't going to care much about equipment.
>>45971731
you don't know that high pressure steam will just lop off your head if you walk into it? fuckin' white collar workers man.
>>45971731
High pressure gas or fluid will quite literally cut somebody to pieces if they come into contact with it. Steam or hydraulic fluid will do the same.
High pressure air is particularly bad because you can't see the stream and also because it sounds like the world is ending.
>>45968487
Fightin' Jack Churchill? That man was ridiculous.
>Lands on D-Day carrying claibeg and longbow
>Also bagpipes
>Musters his company to "Hey Johnnie Cope"
>Ends up flat in the middle of three Wehrmacht brigades, loses all his men. Keeps fighting and plays bagpipes till...
>Gets captured
>Gets sent to fucking Sachsenhausen
>ESCAPES, WITH his weapons.
>Blames the Americans for ending the war early.
>>45971731
You know water jet cutting? Its like that but it's your limbs being removed. Super heated steam doesn't cool & condense enough to be visible until well away from the leak
>>45967053
>sabotaging opponents weapons
>honorable
Just charge in like a real man desu
>>45967256
1. They're a badge of office or part of a uniform so they're worn/carried anyway out of tradition and they end up getting used on occasion.
2. There's a societal element of honour or organisational tradition that demands at least some members of the boarding party use swords to prove themselves, like with counting coup or so on.
3. It's standard practice before boarding to flood the enemy ship with explosive gas that would prevent people from using firearms/energy weapons, forcing them into hand to hand.
4. Personal shields a'la Dune.
5. Legal reasons; guns are banned so while people can make guns and such, swords are just easier to legally use so everyone has one.
>>45972055
>>45972927
Thanks guys, this will be helpful for a steampunk nation I'm working on.And the players will hate you when I said I got new ideas from /tg/
>>45966992
You don't want to damage the ship. Using guns inside a ship can be pretty suicidal.
>>45966992
Dune.
Personal kinetic shields that can only be overwhelmed through truly astounding amounts of firepower; its just more efficient for everyone to close to melee range.
And no lasers or plasma shit. Just guns. So infantry units do get into melee often enough.
>>45967066
Tanks of "really explosive" pressurized stuff are actually pretty tough normally.
You probably don't want to go shooting rifles or machine guns inside a spacecraft, but you'd almost certainly be fine using pistols and submachine guns.
