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HI EVERYONE

First time on DAKKADAKKA and I have a question, I hope this is the right section!

I’ve always liked the now discontinued Elysian models that were on Forgeworld and loved the idea behind their many roles in combat, specifically the ship-boarding aspect. Now, I would love to write up a background for an Elysian regiment that specialises in Ship-to-ship boarding and combat in space. The only problem is I can’t find any source material for the types of vessels they would use during a spaceship seige and boarding operation. Or even if they do that anymore! The last time I read about this as one of their roles was years ago, and haven’t seen anything else since!

Initially I thought maybe they used Valkyries but I’ve never been able to find out if they’re environmentally sealed or if there’s a “space variant” that works for that role. I’ve also thought about some kind of drop-pod or breaching pod, but like I said I haven’t been able to find anything out about it.

If anyone has any idea or knows of an old lore that would answer my conundrum then I’d love it if they could get back to me!

Thanks for any help!

LordPortchy.

Battlefleet Gothic had 3 ways to conduct a ship t9 ship boarding action.

Shark assault boats - some kind of hostile intrusion landing craft thingy.

Teleport assault - only used for small hit and run raids when ships are quite close (within 10,000km....)

Boarding torpedoes - fired like normal torpedoes and designed to dig right I to the enemy craft before discharging the assault troops.

The boarding torpedoes were also the delivery mechanic for Space Crusade iirc.

Also, welcome to Dakka


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I just had a thought. While valkyries could theoretically be used to deliver the troops to the target they don't have any way to breach th3 ship. Therefor3 the assault troops would need to bring something with them or be getting delivered to a safe landing zone.

You could see an initial assault done with torpedoes and shark assault boats to capture landing faciliti3s and docking arms, with further troops being brought I more normally using valks.

First of all, space (and air) craft are the domain of the Imperial Navy. The Elysian Drop Troops therefore work closely with the Navy to provide much of their equipment and support. As such, we need to look at Imperial Navy methods to attack other ships and planets.

Valkyries are not typically sealed and are atmospheric craft, although I think there are some examples in the fluff of a sealed variant used in orbital insertions. Note that they have jet engines, so they are unpowered in vacuum without some kind of additional boosters. I think the examples I saw basically involved dropping sealed Valkyries like bombs over the target, and then they gained power upon entering the atmosphere.

The most well-known method for boarding ships available to the Imperial Navy (not Space Marines, who have many methods) is Shark assault boats. These things are pretty big, at 55m long. Emperor-class battleships are the only Navy ships that routinely carry them.



Boarding torpedos are used by Imperial Navy ships in the fluff, but I don't think the IN could take them in the Battlefleet Gothic rules. I may be mistaken. So they are an option, but not a common one. Specialist forces, like the Elysians, may have access to such methods, due to their unusually good reputation and equipment supply.

Teleportation is very rare, and I think is generally reserved for Marines/Mechanicus.

However, there is another option, and that is orbital drop ships. These are not specialised in ship-to-ship action, but would do in a pinch, similar to how Space Marines will use Thunderhawks to board enemy craft if necessary. Not much is known about Imperial drop craft, except that the common size seems to be able to carry about a company (from various novels). The only existing model that I am aware of is the Arvus lighter, which is a tiny utility cargo shuttle. Whilst this could be used, it would be horribly defenceless on the approach. The only other drop craft I know of is the Devourer, which looks like a much better bet for landing troops on the surface of an enemy ship, and then gaining entry by cutting through the hull. This would seem to be able to transport about a company or two.



The final option is to send troops through space just in void harnesses and thruster packs. This is sometimes done by Assault Marines, and I see no reason it couldn't be done by other troops. It would be horribly dangerous, and best suited to targetting star bases, asteroids, and other similar targets with predictable courses.


All-in-all, Shark assault boats are by far the most likely method by which Elysians deploy in space, followed by some kind of orbital drop ship. Directly moving through space with thrusters is the other method that could be used to infiltrate bases. Other methods are less likely. These would most likely be deployed from a cruiser or battleship with hangar bays, or maybe an escort carrier (these are rare though).



Edit: I forgot there is also the Tetrarch lander, which transports a company. This is similar to the Devourer drop ship.

To build off some of the above with a question. I was under the impression the average human would not survive getting teleported with IOM tech.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
To build off some of the above with a question. I was under the impression the average human would not survive getting teleported with IOM tech.

Average humans can't - but Ciaphas Cain did! (It seems to be more the exposure to the warp than any actual physical effect)


There's ship-to-ship boarding tubes in one book, but they're used for boarding a derelict rather than a combat action.

Also on teleportation, it's a standard close in option for all cruisers to drop hit and run onto nearby enemy ships. It's not totally safe, but the IN probably isn't that concerned about safety to an assault team that has, in all likelihood, no possibility to get back to their original.ship.after completing their.mission.

I believe that boarding torpedoes could be bought as an upgrade to standard IN ships in a campaign, but it might be misremembering. I agree that they are not common in standard IN service though.

 Flinty wrote:
Also on teleportation, it's a standard close in option for all cruisers to drop hit and run onto nearby enemy ships. It's not totally safe, but the IN probably isn't that concerned about safety to an assault team that has, in all likelihood, no possibility to get back to their original.ship.after completing their.mission.

I believe that boarding torpedoes could be bought as an upgrade to standard IN ships in a campaign, but it might be misremembering. I agree that they are not common in standard IN service though.

Oh, I didn't realise this- will need to go re-read my BFG stuff So teleportation is much more widespread than I remembered. I suppose very successful teams (capturing a sufficiently large area of an enemy void craft) would be able to be picked up by cargo and drop ships from hangars.

I still reckon Shark assault boats (and more local analogues) are going to be the primary method of inserting troops.

The variety of ways Space Marines can attack ships, by comparison, is hilariously huge, although I suppose that is one of the two primary missions inherent in their entire creation purpose and naming as marines.


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beast_gts wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
To build off some of the above with a question. I was under the impression the average human would not survive getting teleported with IOM tech.

Average humans can't - but Ciaphas Cain did! (It seems to be more the exposure to the warp than any actual physical effect)


There's ship-to-ship boarding tubes in one book, but they're used for boarding a derelict rather than a combat action.

Yes, I suspect the tubes would be an extremely dangerous option to use against a combat-effective foe, unless they were seriously outmatched, like a battleship approaching an escort with destroyed engines. Boarding grapples are a thing, but again, I think only Space Marine ships have used those in any routine manner, primarily the World Eaters in the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy (Ursus claws spring to mind?).

beast_gts wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
To build off some of the above with a question. I was under the impression the average human would not survive getting teleported with IOM tech.

Average humans can't - but Ciaphas Cain did! (It seems to be more the exposure to the warp than any actual physical effect)


There's ship-to-ship boarding tubes in one book, but they're used for boarding a derelict rather than a combat action.

They can survive it, but caine is left flopping around like a fresh-caught fish from the systemic shock.
Terminator armour (or a grey knight's psyker skills or a culexus' pariah talent) makes teleporting and being 'combat ready' at the other end possible, not just possible at all.

locarno24 wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
To build off some of the above with a question. I was under the impression the average human would not survive getting teleported with IOM tech.

Average humans can't - but Ciaphas Cain did! (It seems to be more the exposure to the warp than any actual physical effect)


There's ship-to-ship boarding tubes in one book, but they're used for boarding a derelict rather than a combat action.

They can survive it, but caine is left flopping around like a fresh-caught fish from the systemic shock.
Terminator armour (or a grey knight's psyker skills or a culexus' pariah talent) makes teleporting and being 'combat ready' at the other end possible, not just possible at all.

Power armour seems to be enough- there are several in-game examples over the years of (non-Grey Knight) power armoured units who are able to teleport, such as the squads that could teleport with one of the characters in the Badab war Imperial Armour books.

Or maybe the distance matters? the further a person is teleported, the more likely they are to suffer adverse effects?

Being transhuman and in power or terminator armour helps, and terminator armour contains teleport homers making recall easier & safer.

Power armour seems to be enough- there are several in-game examples over the years of (non-Grey Knight) power armoured units who are able to teleport, such as the squads that could teleport with one of the characters in the Badab war Imperial Armour books.

Or maybe the distance matters? the further a person is teleported, the more likely they are to suffer adverse effects?

It's also how sophisticated the teleporter is. Any teleporter is near-archeotech, but there are degrees of quality, from the 'normal' one an astartes capital ship might have to the "who needs a homing beacon' relic the deathwatch have in The Vorago Fastness

All of this has been very helpful! Thanks everyone!!!

LordPortchy

Necromunda use teleportation fields, with bare humans

I could have sworn one method in the BFG fluff and FFG BF Koronus material was a space equivalent of coming alongside with planks ropes from the mast, which must be umbilicals and short range thruster packs.

There's several references to gun cruisers conducting boarding actions and capturing ships which wouldn't have had anything exotic like teleporters, torpedoes or assault boats.

Also, the Badab War books by Forgeworld I think had a reference to an Elysian regiment brought in to fight boarding actions. I think Forgeworld even built an event table using Zone Mortalis tiles that showed Arvus Lighters deploying the Elysians in some sort of hangar bay.

30k White Scars had Void Bikes, which were larger jetbikes adapted for space use. I imagine there's all sorts of small craft that could be used for boarding we haven't seen yet.

It’s not Elysians, but in the 7-E Militarum Tempestus book, the 196th Omnicroid Hydras rode in a drop craft of some kind, which landed them and and their Taurox Primes onto the hull of some big ork ship. The Scions mag-booted down and went to place explosives to cripple the craft. I imagine one could mag-boot down and use some kind of breaching tool to get in, if the mission required.

There's a Vostroyan regiment in one of the Only War splat books that specialise in void sieges. They use modified flak armour that allows them to be active without atmosphere for long enough - in theory - to breach airlocks and such, rather than proper void suits. If I remember right, the adventure begins with your preparing to board Valkyries (it goes pear shaped and you just end up ramming your whole vessel into it, but that's neither here nor there) but I'll have to fish out the book to confirm.

Ok, so I've done some research since I last posted in the thread. First of all, as previously mentioned, every Imperial capital ship and large void defence installation has the ability to teleport boarding parties onto enemy ships, with a few caveats (short range, shields must be down). Ships have quite a limited teleporter capacity, so can only mount feasible hit-and-run attacks using teleporters on ships with a lower displacement (or greater damage resulting in a reduced relative crew). This is from the Battlefleet Gothic rules:

Ships which are close to their enemies may attempt to initiate a small-scale boarding action using their teleporters... Only the largest ships have the teleport capacity to move enough men onto their target to inflict the necessary amount of damage and such teleport attacks require prodigious amounts of energy from the ship's reactors... As you can imagine, it takes a lot more manpower to disable the weapons batteries of a battleship than it does a destroyer's. Therefore, escorts and defences with only one damage point left cannot make teleport attacks.

The implication is that escorts also have teleporters, but don't have the crew or the teleporter capacity to successfully mount a raid on an enemy ship (at least without crippling their own ship through lack of crew).

The BFG rules also have this to say about boarding in general:

Boarding actions are bloody, desperate battles between ships at very close range. The boarding vessel manoeuvres close to an enemy ship and sends a wave of armed crewmen across via teleporters, shuttles, life pods and in pressure suits to grab a foothold on the outer hull of the enemy vessel. The attackers then blow breaches in the hull and swarm in to try to overcome the defending crew in vicious firefights and hand-to-hand combat. Boarding actions are dangerous for both sides: even a victorious ship may suffer critical damage in the fighting or a prospective victim may explode with catastrophic results.

This tells us a few things: shuttles and teleporters are obviously used, but generally aim to claim the surface first (so a lot of fighting occurs outside the ship it would seem). I suspect the shuttles on most ships would consist solely of utility shuttles, like the Arvus. I suspect many would be much larger though, the Arvus is basically the smallest of cargo shuttles operated by the Imperium. Any ship that had assault boats (namely the Shark) would obviously use them in such a situation. Shuttles would probably make multiple trips to keep ferrying troops and supplies across. Seeing as boarding assaults are pretty desperate affairs, I expect that even craft like Aquila landers would be pressed into service if available, to ferry over command squads.

Pictures of the above for those unfamiliar with them:

More interestingly is void suits and life pods being used. Void suits would be quite dangerous, and require short distances. It would also require personal thrusters so the armsmen could move through the void (more on this in a bit). However, I imagine a bunch of individual soldiers is considerably harder for some of the point-defense systems to target, especially if they are intended to shoot at 50m+ sized assault craft and torpedoes. Life pods is a really interesting one, because they should be a reserve if needed, and you would need to recover them if you wanted to maintain the option for later abandoning ship. We have an example of an Imperial life pod:



I don't think these would be very useful in a boarding situation (you would need ten for a complete squad), but I suppose if the ship had enough numbers it could be a useful addition in shuttle capacity. As the Rogue Trader boxset has two of these in, it is somewhat feasible to make a squad of ten of these if you wished.


Regarding Elysians specifically. I searched through all the fluff I could find for them. The information about them being proficient in void combat and boarding space ships is relatively recent, and very little is out there beyond "they do it and are good at it". I've looked at their gear though. They have pressure suits, which are capable of supporting their oxygen needs at very high altitude. These also contain an integral oxygen supply, which apparently can be boosted with external tanks (unsurprisingly). The FW literature explicitly states that the suit is not sufficient as a hazmat suit, as there is too limited an oxygen supply, but the implication is that it will do in a pinch, for a short while. Therefore, I reckon it is also probably suficient to survive void contact for as long as the oxygen supply lasts. It is probably also relatively easy to void-harden to provide much better protection in space, such as by adding additional oxygen tanks and pressure sealing.

I also looked at grav chutes.


These have in-built thrusters, which allow for some manouevring on descents, and the grav chute itself slows descents. I think it is entirely plausible that grav chutes could be used as thrusters in zero-g environments, to facilitate moving between the two ships in the void (see above), and the grav chute itself may be sufficient to decelerate the trooper on their final approach to the enemy ship as they land (to avoid splatting into the hull). Therefore, I think that Elysian troopers, with little to no modification of their standard gear, are capable of traversing short distances in space and gaining ingress to hostile vessels that way (they are also well trained in demolitions, and carry demo charges and lascutters). This is in addition to using shuttles and teleporters present on Imperial vessels.

If I remember well from the Scion codex, grav chutes can be used to reduce the grip of gravity on yourself, allowing in this case Scions to lift themselves up in a nearby hovering Valkyrie.

 Haighus wrote:
Regarding Elysians specifically. I searched through all the fluff I could find for them. The information about them being proficient in void combat and boarding space ships is relatively recent, and very little is out there beyond "they do it and are good at it".

Actually, their original fluff from 3rd edition around the time of Codex: Armageddon was that they were proficient in ship to ship actions because of the amount of piracy near their homeworld and the regiment deployed from ship via some sort of undisclosed orbital insertion method. I think the reference is Codex: Armageddon and a WD Chapter Approved around the same timeframe that contained special rules for Armageddon regiments like Elysians and Salvar Chem Dogs. This whole business of Valkyries and paratroopers with roots in WWII airborne regiments and Vietnam Air Cav tactics didn't come about until 4th edition with the release of Imperial Armour 3: The Tauros Campaign.

EDIT: Maybe it wasn't the chapter approved article unless the text was elsewhere on the page. But I figured I repost this, some of the original Elysian fluff here for you.

witchdoctor wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Regarding Elysians specifically. I searched through all the fluff I could find for them. The information about them being proficient in void combat and boarding space ships is relatively recent, and very little is out there beyond "they do it and are good at it".

Actually, their original fluff from 3rd edition around the time of Codex: Armageddon was that they were proficient in ship to ship actions because of the amount of piracy near their homeworld and the regiment deployed from ship via some sort of undisclosed orbital insertion method. I think the reference is Codex: Armageddon and a WD Chapter Approved around the same timeframe that contained special rules for Armageddon regiments like Elysians and Salvar Chem Dogs. This whole business of Valkyries and paratroopers with roots in WWII airborne regiments and Vietnam Air Cav tactics didn't come about until 4th edition with the release of Imperial Armour 3: The Tauros Campaign.

EDIT: Maybe it wasn't the chapter approved article unless the text was elsewhere on the page. But I figured I repost this, some of the original Elysian fluff here for you.

That is cool, and older than the IA fluff I was looking at.

Still, the IA fluff says the same thing- they are good at boarding due to anti-piracy operations, but doesn't go into any more details. Which I was I meant by there being very little info. It explains why they've developed that proficiency, but not how they've done it.