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I know the answer is 'because good story' but i'v been reading the new dark imperium novel and it just struck me.... If a ship's void shields go down and one side gears up to teleport in to disable and ruin the ship what stops them just teleporting a massive bomb!? are there any instances in the fluff when this has happend?! it just seems like... we'll you'd just do that why bother going in on foot!

Well I don't know about the novel but generally it seems like you wouldn't blow it up because then you can steal it. A ship costs a lot more than however many people you lose taking it.

because if you just teleport a bomb you can't be 100% sure if you got the target or not. they wanted Fulgrim to be dead, and needed a "see the body" situation

I don't know of any instances of it occurring in the fluff but I shall posit a general reason as to why and its potential solution (my players in a Rogue Trader Campaign did this in order to weaponize their Teleportarium).

A Teleportarium is a relic and requires extensive maintenance and specialist knowledge to repair and even operate, in addition, teleportaion itself is a violent procedure that is not entirely trustworthy.

Now imagine attempting to send a live device via teleportation - if something goes wrong you could potentially have the device detonate in your own Teleportarium and you've just damaged/destroyed a near priceless piece of technology. Not worth it.

My players got around this by sending explosive devices, unarmed, with a Death Cultist who gladly gave his/her life to detonate them on the other end. (They got through tens throughout the campaign).

BrianDavion wrote:
because if you just teleport a bomb you can't be 100% sure if you got the target or not. they wanted Fulgrim to be dead, and needed a "see the body" situation

I think 'blowing up the spaceship they're on' would be sufficient enough of a 'see the body' scenario seeing as by rights they'd die in the cold void of space. Unless, of course, they have titanium plot armour, in which case sending your mooks in to hack them up would probably be futile too

pm713 wrote:
Well I don't know about the novel but generally it seems like you wouldn't blow it up because then you can steal it. A ship costs a lot more than however many people you lose taking it.

This makes more sense to me. Ships are fantastically valuable. If you blow one up, the enemy loses a ship. If you capture one, the enemy loses a ship and you gain one. Where possible, that would be a massive boon in a war effort.

I'v thought of another good reason

teleporter range is short
blowing up a ship that close to another ship might cause said teleporting ship to get caught in the explosion.

assuming they can't get away in time being a big lumbering ship with the power to do telporting and get that close

 Latro_ wrote:
I'v thought of another good reason

teleporter range is short
blowing up a ship that close to another ship might cause said teleporting ship to get caught in the explosion.

assuming they can't get away in time being a big lumbering ship with the power to do telporting and get that close

That's another good point if ships carry enough munitions to destroy multiple other ships, plus the colossal energies of their drive systems (both warp and realspace) blowing one up in close proximity might be a bad idea. Especially if you're already a bit damaged from the firefight that dropped their shields.

Teleporting bombs does in-fact happen.

Battlefleet Gothic, both the miniature and computer game, have bombs getting teleported. Large scale bombs are teleported into space as a hazard. But the Teleportation attack is also fluffwise both boarding parties being teleported aboard, as well as some explosive devices to cause damage. It's a mixture of things.