Hans and The Everest?

Chris, the idea that Hans and the crew of a Jukon was going to capture a battleship was ridiculous. It was ridiculous for a lot of reasons.

#1 - Everest class battleships simply have too many crewmen to just commandeer. Even a UC-ized and modernized battleship would have 1000 people on it, as opposed to about 100 on a submarine. Hans Bond is pretty cool, but he's only one guy and also poorly armed. The submarine only had 1 marine squad on it. The Everest had multiple marine squads on it. Its crew was high level. It would have been a strain to simply keep a crew of that size occupied. Possible, yes, and that is what I wrote.

#2 - You're assuming that the crew of a Zeon submarine is capable of crewing a Federation battleship, even a model that is hundreds of years old and probably requires specialized training anyway. When you're crewing a battleship you don't just put a key in an engine and turn a steering wheel, it's a grossly complex piece of machinery.

#3 - Plus, you're assuming that both #1 and #2 can be done quickly. The ship wasn't really under attack until the final turn of the event, after Zeon had already basically lost, and the Federation was doing mop-up. How much time do you think it would take the crew of the ship to A - defeat the battleships marines, B - subdue or kill all the crew, C - move the submarines crew to the battleship, D - organize themselves in the necessary positions assuming they even knew what those were, and E - familiarize themselves enough at those positions to pilot the ship out of enemy waters? Probably longer than a couple minutes.

#4 - Supposing all of the above happened instantly, how long do you think it would take the Everest to get away from the battlefield? On its fastest speed as per the rules, it would take 4 turns, almost an hour and a half. You think in an hour and a half that the Federal forces wouldn't notice that their largest and most important ship is leaving the battlefield and not responding to the comm? Do you think they wouldn't go after it? Almost every single thing in the Federation fleet moves faster than, and could catch up with, the Everest.


In every instance in the RPG where somebody has captured a ship, it has been in an event that their side won, for all of the above reasons. When you win an event and rout an enemy force, you have leeway room to say that you've taken the several HOURS it would probably require to organize a crew for a captured ship to the point where it's actually usable. The idea of capturing a ship in an event that you also lose, especially a ship of this size, is pretty silly, basically no matter what kind of resources you put into it.