On 19 Aug 2015 at 21:00, Anthony Jackson wrote:

> From: Jim Vassilakos
>
> > Yet another dumb question from yours truly...
> >
> > Imagine that you're in the middle of a shipboard combat aboard a
> > small merchant or scout vessel. IYTU, how important is it to take
> > the bridge?
>
> Depends a bit on how much you're disabling the ship as you go. From
> the bridge of an intact ship, you can: * Modify gravity in particular
> compartments * Accelerate without negating gravity * Jump, assuming
> fuel. * Manipulate life support * Open or close doors * Monitor
> internal surveillance, if present. * Probably other lesser harassment.
>
> All of these problems can be solved by disabling the systems that
> would be controlled from the bridge, or disabling the communications
> between the bridge and the rest of the ship. If you do so, the bridge
> becomes far less valuable.

IMTU the big thing are the anti-hijacking measures - once that protocol is invoked the
bridge gets to over-ride local control of door locks, gravity, lighting, air circulation, &
etc.

Skilled people with tools and time can in turn over-ride that by opening up the ship's
penelling and getting into the pipe and cable runs and physically cutting control lines
then physically opening and closing valves, adjusting grav plates, and so on - assuming
that the people on the bridge haven't ramped the gravity right up and inverted it a few
times, smashing the would-be hijackers bones, of course.

This only applies to pre-New Era ships that haven't been lobotimised - I run a NE game,
and ships built then don't have centralised anti-hijacking systems because they are too
good as anti-crew systems if Virus gets into the computers. On them having the bridge
is nice, but it won't win you the ship. The same goes for engineering (though from there
you can play 'surrender or I blow us ALL to hell'), and you need both to have any real
hope of making a properly directed jump or in-system transfer.