Need help with a tactical problem

[Schone23666]

Originally Posted by simonmark6

The amount of damage you have described is pretty catastrophic.

If the ship is listing the boiler explosion has caused either a breech in the hull or popped enough welds to cause a major leak. It also means that the cargo hold has the potential to be partially flooded in order to cause the ship to list. An explosion that has caused that much damage is likely to have killed anyone in the hold and damaged or flooded any valuable cargo.

The fire is also an issue. Fires in ships are nasty and will have caused major toxic issues, also, I would be very surprised if the Coast Guard haven't formed a cordon and be crawling all over the ship to contain the fuel oil that is likely to be leaking from it. That means the harbour is full of HAZMAT boats and oil-spill cleaners are on the way.

Inside the ship, not only are the walls metal but the ship is listing so everything is canted at an angle. Below decks the corridors are coated with toxic soot and anyone not in BA is likely to suffer horrible effects. A boiler explosion that has caused a breech is also likely to have twisted ladders and steps up and down and caused some doors to be distorted and impossible to open.

I find it unlikely to think of any detectives being in the ship unless they're following a lead. Fire Investigators and HAZMAT personnel, yes, but local plods, no. The scene is a major environmental incident first and a crime scene second.

The heroes would be better off posing as a HAZMAT clean-up crew than a traditional SWAT breeching unit. I also don't see the point of a helicopter gunship back up, or the snipers: any incident will be inside rather than out.

My father was a fireman and worked in one of the largest docks in the UK (Port Talbot deep ore port: not much in transit but massive ships). If there had been an incident like that, crews would have been coming in from across the country and by the next day, international teams would be on the way.

This, of course may depend on the country it is set in, but a listing ship which has had a catastrophic explosion and fire is highly unlikely to be deserted the next morning.

I'd go for a high-tension infiltration with the heroes sneaking in wearing high vis and BA rather than tooled up for bear. In many ways this makes for a much scarier environment: the situation is dangerous and when the SHTF you don't even have the big guns to bail you out. This could be a really dramatic situation with lots of horror moments depending on the nature of your terror.

Thanks SimonMark6. A lot of really good points here. As you can probably guess I'm not very well-versed in naval/maritime knowledge. I thought later with a boiler explosion that would very well indeed create a LOT of problems.

So instead I might write that the cargo vessel is more like a ghost ship (not literally of course) that ended up sailing into the harbor without responding to any hails from the port authority or coast guard. The ship scraped alongside a pier and sustained some damage but is still afloat. What's eerie is that there doesn't appear to be anyone aboard....other than signs of chaos. Blood spatter, bullet holes, discarded Kalashnikov rifles and shell casings with other ominous signs are everywhere but no corpses....except for the captain, who if found is inside his locked cabin, dead from a self-inflicted pistol shot to the head with his eyes frozen in sheer horror. And the power system to the ship appears to have failed, so again it's dark with only the emergency lighting now on.

Instead of daytime, it's nighttime....within hours of the incident the heroes are flown to the site to investigate what exactly happened, and it's snowing and freezing cold. As for where this is taking place, New York harbor. So most likely NYPD, Port Authority and Coast Guard will be on the scene.

So, now back to how one should approach a search of the ship when they believe a high value target or cargo is in the interior. Are there anything to consider in particular or should it go somewhat similar as one would consider doing MOUT in a room-to-room, corridor by corridor tactical situation?

As for the supernatural horror in question, let's just say I'm going for a bit of a Lovecraft vibe.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

The search is going to be similar to multi-storey building search except that most work ships (i.e. anything that isn't intended to carry paying passengers) don't need wide open corridors.
While main passageways typically allow space for two people to pass each other, secondary passageways and stairwells are often only wide enough for one person at a time and you won't get a lot of capacity for overwatch as the person you'd be covering will effectively be blocking your view down the passageway/stairwell.

Any combat in these areas is going to require the second man to be shooting over the shoulder of the lead man (or around his torso, hips etc. etc.) unless the lead kneels or ducks down to allow unobstructed view for the second guy. Naturally enough, conducting a search like that takes much longer

I would recommend taking a look at many of the pages found here
http://www.workboatsinternational.com/
but specifically this sub-heading
http://www.workboatsinternational.co...-for-sale.html
While not all the schematics are big enough to use for mapping purposes, a lot of the images can give you ideas as to the limited space you have inside a work ship.

Although the following link is for an icebreaker, there's a lot of photos of various areas on the ship that may also prove helpful for getting a feel for the space constraints any searchers would have to deal with.
http://yachtconversions.homestead.co...s_ISBJOERN.pdf
Same with this one although this is a research ship
http://offshorepool.homestead.com/81mResearch.html

[Apache6]

For military and Coast Guard units the mission is called Visit, Board, Search and Seizure.

Coast Guard law enforcement personnel and Navy Masters of Arms will do 'permissive' mission," where they do not expect "significant active resistance." Marines will execute non-permissive missions in-extremis, but the Navy Seals are THE world experts on the mission. Often Navy surface combatants will order ships to strike colors/surrender and fire across their bow, or if required disable them by cannon fire rather then risking personnel.

Will not talk much about tactics beyond saying they are done either TOP down via Helo insert, or bottom up via boarding from small craft.

Potential for losses are very high. It's a very challenging mission to do right.

[Silent Hunter UK]

Originally Posted by Apache6

Potential for losses are very high. It's a very challenging mission to do right.

The same problem you get with any such insertion into a building - it's why it's only done when hostages are already being shot and things have gone down the metaphorical pan very quickly.

[unkated]

Hmmm.

Weird unmanned ship drifts into a big city harbor straight to the dock.

I'll bypass the issue of how, especially as mention that this game has supernatural elements. But then that makes the investigating personnel frustrated and jumpy if none of this makes sense...

However, regardless of the weather, it seems to me, that this will probably generate a plethora of city and state agencies at work:

1. City police cordon until the dock can be surveyed (a large object crashed into it you said). Second cordon/checkpoint at a gangway ramp once established to catch anyone coming off or anyone attempting to get on while the police investigation is in progress.
   
2. City engineering team to survey the dock itself.
   
3. Fire personnel and ambulances (maybe) will show up at least until it is shown that there are no fires nor anyone trapped (in wreckage) that needs to be rescued on land or shipboard. Large port may have specialized fire units trained for ship/water issues.
   
4. A large ship with no authority to land has appeared in a US port. Until it is investigated, again, city police will keep people off of it.
   
5. Customs officials will want to check what is aboard - probably after the ship is cleared as not dangerous.
   
6. City SWAT and/or FBI/Homeland Security (depending on the when of your timeline setting) will check and occupy the ship to see what the ship is, where it came from, where is the crew.
   
7. Once determined to not be an immediate danger, police detectives will board to being to investigate (unless overruled by or teamed with FBI/Homeland security). Probably at least one team will look for the ship's office/captain's cabin for paperwork trying to figure out what the heck happened.
   
8. Blood stains you say? CSI/CSU teams will work on those.
   
9. Harbor police will examine the water around the ship looking for crew; someone may be stuck in a launch to ward off the curious, but if the weather is oh, so poor, a deck watch will probably be used instead). Harbor police/port safety inspectors will probably examine the ship (just crashed into a dock).
   
10. If there is a snowstorm blowing, your snipers will not offer much protection or support due to poor visibility.
    
11. Helicopter hanging out would be rather noticeable to the various agencies aboard and ashore. And they would know how to contact a local official pilot - local agency or news organization - so a loitering chopper would in rather short order become suspicious, especially on a day with a crashed mystery ship.
    
12. Depending on how they get aboard, if you want them to go after ship's papers/manifests, they can ignore most of the ship. These will be in the ship's office or the captain's cabin (where the police and/or FBI detectives will be working). Unless, of course, getting the manifest data is only part 1 of the problem...

Tactical problems

• How to disguise/bluff past multiple cordons to access the ship.
• How to maneuver past other teams to find the manifest/navigation data.
• How to leave the vessel past multiple cordons with as few questions as possible. (I'd use the 'hurt team member' approach, and crowd into the ambulance.

It seems to me more an exercise in stealth and acting than combat, but your mileage may vary.

Personally, I'd go for fire/survey/safety inspectors, with hidden small arms (pistols, SMGs), preferably from an agency unlikely to actually be there "City Health Inspector's office sent us. Yeah, I know the port guys and the Fire Marshall has teams aboard already..."

Have fun.

Uncle Ted

[Jason Weiser]

Unkated,
I like that..though I might try the CDC/PHSUS route.

"Um, yeah, we heard there was a meningitis/hepatitis outbreak aboard. Crew abandoned ship before harbor entry, god knows where they are. We're here to do epidemiology intel work and find the ship's log, so we can figure out where the hell they got the bug? You don't want us aboard, ok, fine..let us know when you begin to get flu-like symptoms, ok?"

Or, pretend you're Coast Guard/NTSB doing an accident investigation....like how in the hell the an unmanned ship was allowed clearance into the harbor, not to mention plow into a dock in NY Harbor.

[Schone23666]

Thanks for all the help with suggestions guys.

As for the ship....welllllll....there is one little toy surprise once our intrepid investigators enter the cargo hold....

It's in the form of all the ship's former crew and those several containers that were full of Russian mail-order "brides"....they've all been turned into undead zombie slaves who shuffle toward the investigators ready to tear them apart....along with a multi-tentacled monstrosity that seems to just get bigger and bigger in size, that's studded with gaping, fanged maws that wants to wrap it's slimy tentacles around the investigators and....well, you get the picture.

Oops, did I mention I was going for a supernatural Lovecraftian horror vibe? Roll for sanity check, please!