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While in the bar recently, the topic of surrenders came up. Surrenders are one of the few things about Comms that make a player feel really useful at that station, so having incentive to get surrenders and to minimize the destruction of surrendered ships (at least while their crews are aboard) could make for interesting story twists. Since, in RP, surrenders could potentially be really important, what are some ways we could use surrenders as an RP device?
Things that come to mind immediately are:
1) the presence on the enemy ship of an officer who has especially relevant information that might lead to another mission2) the presence of hardware on board that we might need (like the daka generator)
3) the presence of a TSN traitor on board
4) with war coming, might the situation become so serious that capturing enemy ships could become a viable source of ships, or at least spare parts? Thinking back to the Napoleonic wars here (as Adele would), where captured ships also meant prize money. Not that we should go the prize money route, whatever the Pirate King might wish…
I’m sure there are more possibilities.
To be honest, the Pirate King would prefer to reorganize the Science corps to handle this kind of thing (the number of incredibly skilled science officers right now is better than ever), but the idea never took off and he personally feels it’s too bothersome to try.
Also, I feel the best we can gain from captured enemies is intelligence, as our technology on weapons and engines is better than most; but capturing an elite ship from time to time doesn’t look that bad. Especially that Unuk with the unspeakable German name they threw at us a couple of weeks ago.
Beyond the storyline issues, there’s the matter of figuring out what to do when not receiving orders, or how to accomplish things (for example, the most appropiate time to gain a surrender. I think updating station manuals and instructing science officers in new protocols, in addition to research, would be better left to a team of experts than to the best judgement of command.
Also, if the R&D team alters the effectiveness of surrenders, the Scicomms corps looks like an ideal place to chech they’re not going overboard with the changes.
I suppose that since we’re at war there should be some clear directives about when to demand surrenders, there could be valid reasons not to; during peacetime the instruction could me more along the line of getting surrenders whenever possible.
I’ll try to remember to ask at the next officer conference, and other people could too, in case I forget.
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