Urban Warfare in the Trek

In my game there are 3 planets having at each other and I was thinking about this one Npc that was going to be a sniper. In a world with beam weapons as in instant kill but you tend to find your shooter fast I was thinking of kinds of tricks I could play or if a sniper is just not viable with trek warfare you know with sensor arrays and transporters and all. Either way just wondered what people thought urban warfare in the 24 would be like not sure if their was much street to street fighting in DS9. I mean a ship with its weapons might be able to turn a city into slag but its a waste of good infrastructure but could gurella tactics be viable in where everyone has a tricorder? I guess theres anti-sensor belts I always wondered why not every soldier in DS9 wore one I mean if you get picked up by sensors whats stoping people from just beaming you up in a cell for a nice torture session or hell just scattering your particles all willy nilly. It may be just me but as a GM players love transporters if I throw something at em I have to have a way around the all mighty transporter. Wild beast killing villagers find its immune to phasers? beam the dam thing up in space! The bad guys shields are down quick beam their bridge crew into the brig! Thats another thing once the shields are down what spots people in the show from just beaming all the threats all willy nifty. I mean whats good for the goose is good for the gander i guess but if I had a baddy transport my pcs crew in the void they'd be pissed... I dono not saying theres not ways around it..eh what the hell this tread was about urban warfare and it became my bitchfest on pcs and transporters..eh sorry aobut that...any ideas on transporters to would be cool just limits around and what not. Oh one questing if a vessle has its shields raised can it use its transporters for things besides intraship transport.

Well, to put it simple: depends on your campaign focus.

In DS9, it become clear (at the Siege at AR-55 I believe) that "they jam our sensors , we jam theirs". The TV show did not bother to explain how, and obviously it is the way to teel a good story. Rodenbery started this: " a police officer knows how a gun works, and he does not explain it every time he draws the weapon".

But for RPGs we usually feel the need for additional explanations, so if you really wanna go that way, with lots of assassination plots and open combat your sniper can use one of the anti sensor black vests, as seem on TNG when Picard was captured by Cardassians (Chain of Command).

Just remmember 2 things: Firstly, nowadays the "sensor" capabilities and accuracy of our weapons are way overrated on the movies. There is nothing realy surgical at the present time. Secondly, no place has ever been taken and kept "secure" military speaking without ground forces.

You will notice that I omitted any specific reference to Starfleet on pourpose.:)

Well here a a few additional considerations.

1) Ships phasers can be set to stun. That would allow then to take out a city without redcing it to slag. So if a city is unprotected by a shield, a viable tactic would be to zap the populace and then beam down troops to secure the city.

2) Why people don't wear anti sensor belts: Probably because then your side can't find you either. That means they won't know where you are and can't coordinate with you. Or they might fire on your location because they don't know you are there. Then, if you have such a belt, your side can beam you out either.
Anything that lets you get around the above restrictions is something that the enemy can use to nullify the effectiveness of the gear.

For commando raids, stealth is good. On the battlefield it's a nightmare. Anyone who has ever played a game like D&D and had the entire group go invisible with an experienced GM running, will quickly discover that it ain't so hot.

3) Range. One thing that I noticed early on with Star Trek RPGs, and something that I don't agree with, is the realtively poor range of phaser rifles. Most don't have the range of a 21st century sniper rifle, and they are also a hell of a lot more visible, since they create an illuminating bright line of light that would give away the sniper's position.

I'd suspect that a real sniper weapon in Trek would probably have better range, and use a non-visible wavelength (or at least non-visible to the majoirty of the species).

4) Snipers aren't nice. Basically, I doubt that the Federation would use snipers much. The idea seems to clash with the Federation (and Starfleet's) "good guy" approach. In the modern worn snipers serve three purposes-elimination of key enemy personnel, demoralization of enemy troops, and slowing down/denying the enemy terrain. All are at odds with Starfleet's Combat philosophy.

Elimination of Key Personnel would be something that might still occur, but has problems. Typically killing off leaders is a bad idea, as it makes it harder to negotiate terms with the enemy, or get them to surrender en masse, and is more lieky to cause them to continue on as gurellias.

Demoralizing the Enemy: Picking off enemy solider can demoralize them, but it can also anger them. Plus needless killing is against the beliefs of the Federation. The Federation fights to protect people, not kill enemy soldiers indiscriminately.

Slowing down the Enemy/Denial of terrain: In the modern world, a well placed sniper can slow an enemy down, or deny then access to a key bit of territory. With Trek a few bits of tech mess that idea up. Big problem number one is the transporter. Troops could use that to outflank a sniper in a building, or even beam an incapacitating substance INTO the building, taking out the sniper.

Plus, street to street fighting probably is less important in Trek. Unlike us, the people in Trek can use the transporter to bypass locations. So I suspect warfare would probably be more along the lines of containment and denial of resources. With the transport, there really are no "flanks" in the traditional sense, in ground warfare.


Another thing worth consider is that, if you can do it, they can do it too.


5) Why you can't beam the bridge crew off.
By cannon, there is no reason. However, there are some off screen reasons given in the various tech manuals and other products. One such reason is that the bridge has a secondary force field that protects it. This field also explains why the Bridge can be left such a target, exposed on the top/front part of the ship. THis secondary shield reduces some of the damage from a bridge hit (the reason why we get more shaking, and less vaporizing), and also provides some protection against beaming). The cases where someone manages to beam people off a bridge with shields down can be explained as having damaged the secondary shield as well.

Truth told, the argument has a few holes it it, and isn't well supported.

But then, why go to the bother? just beam a photorp or six INSIDE an enemy ship.


Technically, the easiest way to destroy an enemy ship would appear to be to transport a spanner, com badge, tribble, whatever, right into some antimatter aboard the enemy ship. I'm assuming that there are saftiy systems that prevent just this sort of thing, mostly to prevent accidents, and that such safeguard can't be overidden easily.


There is also the idea that even though we usually see the same half dozen people running everything each week, the ship does have a crew, and that in battle sites like auxiliary control and Engineering are manned and can control the ship in a crisis. Much the way a battleship or carrier can continue to function in the modern world despite taking a bridge hit.


6) transporters and Shields. Generally if shields are up, transporters can't be used. A few early TNG episodes ignored this as originally TNG was supposed to gotten past that limitation, but later it was decided to keep the limit for dramatic purposes. Later on, a few high tech tricks were invented to allow limited transporters use, such as matching shield frequencies with the target vessel.

Some good news is that there are transporter dapining fields and such that either prevent or restrict the use of transporters. Such fields tend to prevent transporter locks, although things like pattern enhancers and wearing a com badge might get around them. I think that such fields might be just the thing to take transporters out of an adventure for you.

There are also natural phenomena that can disrupt or interfere with transporter use. If you put such conditions on one or more of the 3 fighting planets, then that world would be an ideal site for your urban combat ideas.

7) Not everybody has the same technology. This works out in several ways. For example, what if one of more of the fighting world doesn't have transporter technology? Or what if they have transporters, but they aren't as advanced as the ones used by the Federation or the Klingons? Or maybe their sensors aren't so good? Any sort of technological restriction opens up the door for more "primitive" (read 20th-21st century) combat.

In one of my own campaigns, I had two planets in the same system at war with each other. Both sides lacked tranporters, phasers, or photorps, had limited shields, and primitive warp drives (basically nothing greater than TNG warp 2-2.6 or 10-25 times light speed). The situation was rather WWI like in nature, with fighter pilots, entrenched locations (an asteroid field between the two planets) and so on. Naturally the PCs ship blundered right into the middle of it. The PCs starship simply outclassed anything either side had to throw at it, but it was only one ship, while the planets had whole fleets.


The best rule, Star Trek wise, is to figure out what sort of story/adventure you WANT to run, then figure out what you need (or need to neutralize) to make it work. For a one off, or to handle a specific idea, anything can be made to work. Just make certain you justify such changes to the players so they understand WHY things do work the same here, AND be careful not to create some thing that can come back to haunt you campaign later.

For instance, you COULD come up with some alien device that screws up Starfleet sensors and/or transporters, giving you the urban warfare you want. Make the item non portable, and allow Starfleet (preferably the PCs, it makes them feel special) to eventually figure out a way around it (Starfleet always does, eventually), so that when the campaign moves on, you don't have the players trying to do the same thing to someone else each week.

Transporters have a beam. Hence "beam." So you need to have nothing too dense/interfering to come between ship and destination. This is why shields block them.

So what's your plan for upcoming episodes? What part does the urban warfare have in your outline?

You have to remember one thing, the technology in Star Trek, while incredibly advanced & almost magical, is limited by the plot.

That means as a GM you do whatever you have to do to make the story work, even if it means messing up the cannon or doing something inconsistent. After all that never stopped writers of Star Trek shows.

You don't want the PCs to be beamed out of a situation easily? Just come up w/ some reason as to why the transporters aren't working: gamma radiation is preventing a lock; a force field is around the area the PCs are in; the ship is under attack & had to move beyond transporter range; Q has decided to have some arbitrary fun & shut down all transporters.

Phasers too powerful? Interference from some energy discharge is causing the phasers to malfunction & only the stun setting works

You want snipers? Come up w/ some weapons never heard of on Star Trek (actually there was a Klingon sniper in Star Trek VI). Starfleet ethics prohibit snipers? Well these guys work for Section 31. Or these are Romulan snipers fighting alongside the Federation against the Dominion. Or the Dominion War has become so desperate, Starfleet is considering tactics they never would have considered before, like landmines, assassination, rounding up suspected terrorists/traitors on mere suspicion, etc.

As GM, I think you can modify the situation enough to fit your story as long as you have some explanation that might pass muster w/ your players.

On the other hand, if they come up with plausible uses of technology don't necessarily shut them down because it will screw you up. Basically, you need to set the technology's limits firmly beforehand in a few simple sentences and then plan around that-being aware that anyone who's interacted openly with the Federation or similar-level powers will have to consider things like transporters or phasers or advanced sensors in their planning. EM countermeasures will be just as important as any actual weapon.

Things to think about:
-in-beam transporter scramblers. one of the most brutal traps, these interfere with transporters without blocking them.

-advanced holography. requires a lot of power, but along with sensor interference can really screw with people.

-hunter-killer probes. automated suicide troops like these make sensor/EM jamming even more essential.

-airstrikes. blowing a hole in most city blocks is something everyone just assumes people can do, so compounds will be deep underground instead of some random building. if the random building holds a generator and shields, though, it could serve just as well.

-operating at the limits of awareness. most of the time you will not necessarily see or even hear your enemies before the first shot is fired.

-security. there is no real way to secure a city in the 24th century the way you could in the 14th, without razing the place. the problems western troops have in iraq and afghanistan now will be magnified tenfold. this means that the Federation's methods of diplomatic relations, nonaggression and providing aid is more important than any military tactic. The Federation isn't concerned with defeating enemies; they want enmity to cease.

Yeah, both good posts. I've had example of both come up in my Trek campaigns.

In one instance, the PCs had to recover a crashed shuttle from a planet, before the ship was discovered by the native pre-warp (but early industrial), culture. Said planet had an unusual magnetic field that contained particles that interfered with the transporters.

So the PCs had to send the away team down in another shuttle to reach the ship. Then figure out a way to either repair, tractor (opps, pesky particles in that magnetic field), tow, or break up the shuttle into smaller parts that can be moved. All while not drawing the attention of the locals.


In another case, the PC's ship was caught in a tracor beam from an alien planet, and an away teram was beamed down to free the ship. Problem was that the native culture that the Federation was aware of had a medieval culture, and the Away Team had to worry about the Prime Directive, limiting what they could do. I had planeed to run a sort of fantasy RPG adventure here, with the character travelling across the terrian to the site where the tractor beam was eminating from. But, I goofed up and completely forgot about the transpoter, so ten minutes into the mission the team just called the ship and had it tranport them right to the front door.

I COULD have retconned something up to force the corss country thing, but, I figured why? THe goal of the mission was for the players to have fun playing a fantasy adventure in Trek. If I FORCED them to do so they would probably just resent it rather than enjoy it. Besides, I made them pay for thier dumb mistakes, why should I get special privileges?

So I let them skip 3.4th of the adventure and jump right to the endgame. I also gave them each some extra XP for not being stupid enough to travel cross country when they had a transporter (Hey, I took points away when they acted stupid, figured they deserved a few extra for not being stupid when I was). THey were rather pleased that they "blindsided" the GM, too.

Some really solid stuff here guys. The sniper was to be a foe or maybe estranged ally eventually. Many of the sides are employing mercs so I can throw a few intresting alien soldiers of fortune. I'm going to have the enemy use various methods of jamming + holographic decoys to mask their movement add in some mines mix in automated hunter drones a few aoe ventron pulse devices to mess with weapons. along with orbital bombardment from various sides of the conflict and low flying shuttle craft to strafe ground troops and I have a wonderful bloddy mess to test my pcs mettle should be fun no matter what they do either throw their lot in with one of the factions or try to negotiate a peace.

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Originally Posted by Dubwas

Some really solid stuff here guys. The sniper was to be a foe or maybe estranged ally eventually. Many of the sides are employing mercs so I can throw a few intresting alien soldiers of fortune. I'm going to have the enemy use various methods of jamming + holographic decoys to mask their movement add in some mines mix in automated hunter drones a few aoe ventron pulse devices to mess with weapons. along with orbital bombardment from various sides of the conflict and low flying shuttle craft to strafe ground troops and I have a wonderful bloddy mess to test my pcs mettle should be fun no matter what they do either throw their lot in with one of the factions or try to negotiate a peace.

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If the sniper is supposed to be a one of a kind villain, rather than one of several such snipers the enemy has trained, you can get around all the limits by giving him some sort of advanced technology that surpasses Federation science.

For example, you could give him a 'stealthsuit" that makes him hard to spot, and more importantly, blocks him from Federation sensors and tricorders. Maybe even give him some sort of special site-to-site transporter so he can hit & run.

Yopu could add some tension/color/drama to the character by having him use a failry silent advanced crossbow that fires poisoned quarrels rather than an energy beam or slug. Victims could slip into unconsciousness before dying. THat would let you add a subplot to the story, with the medical characters (and/or science) working towards developing an antidode, AND would cut down on the number of characters the sniper kills outright, letting you "save" any PCs he hits). A posion also lets you cheat, by ,making certain alien species immune or resistant to the poison, so the groups Vulcan, Andorian, whatever just ges into a coman for a bit before recovering.

Such a foe could become a reoccurring character who pops up later in the campaign, until he is finally caught (and even later if he escapes).

Defeating him in the Star Trek manner would probably consist of finding some vulnerability in his technology that could be explotied. Like some sort of unusual property of the stealth suit that can be scanned for, once the PCs are aware of it.

As a final twist, you could even make the sniper a merc for hire (feeds into the reoccurring NPC bit), and possible an Romulan who is an exile, or wanted criminal (possible falsely accused), with a cloaked Romulan scout of shuttle. THe stealth suit could be a prototype personal cloaking device that the sniper stoel, and that the Romulans want back (or at least want to stop from falling into the hands of another power).


Just some ideas.

Cool I like that actually I plan on the sniper to use that one slug gun from that ds9 episode where dax has to solve a murder the rifle transports the bullet in front of the target but intresting shots could be set up like haveing the bullet emerge from odd angles makeing it look like the shot came from friendlies ect. Hes going to be a old dominion war buddy of the captians who could not get his head out of the war and go back to normal starfleet duty so he went freelance and got himself caught up in this war he dosent really care what side he servers but the side that paid the most and he dosen't break deals he still has a bit loyal to the federation so he will go for disabling shots on the pc but be completely ruthless to the npc soldiers that poision dart thing is neat might use that if not ill save it for another time . as for medical officers I plan to keep him busy with the wounded of the war and the science officer/engineer will be busy comeing up with things to counter alien tech Im sure

If you give the guy some good engineering skills, he could figure out a lot of the tricks needed to bypass all the tech.

Maybe he invented/found some sort of prototype stealth suit ?

BTW, If you are going to have him still have some sypmathy for the FEderation, then it doesn't make sense for him to kill Federation NPCs and spare Federation PCs. Other than the Captain, why would he spare other PCs?

Some options:

1)Have him be "soft" on all Federation/Starfleet types, but kill non-Federation soldiers. This would work out great for some of joint mission between the Federation and the Klingons or Romulans. Maybe the character was betrayed by an ally and that's why he bears a grudge. This could be good for some sort of diplomatic mission, with the allies suspecting a Starfleet conspriacy. The Captain will then be forced to hunt down his old friend to maintain the peace.

2) Maybe he wasn't hired to kill Starfleet personnel, just the enemy. So he picks on ene,my leaders and leave the Starfleet people alone. Pretty nasty if the guy standing next to you drops dead.

3)Maybe he knows all the PCs. That's why he is going soft on them. Only problem is that this sort of idea works better if you can foreshadow the character before having him go bad.

4) Maybe the bad guy knows something the PCs don't and is killing particluar people for a reason, like the ones he is killing are really Section 31 agents, spies, or somehow realted to his grudge.

I think this thread would be better off in the Narrator Forum . . . but the discussion is the same regardless of where you find it.

As for the character concept . . . how about the character be a former fleeter . . . who got stranded, and assumed KAI, planetside somewhere. Say a former Engineer . . . who had to learn to survive a long time . . . using the technology the character could get their hands on, and adapt it to be covert . . . in doing so . . . always having Jem'Hedar, Breen, and Cardassians hunting him/her like an unwanted mouse in the house.

Say he/she finds out how the Jem'Hedar cloak . . . and adapt it to his/her needs . . . and goes on the offensive . . . maybe even not stopping after hostilities have ceased. Well . . . eventually the Federation finds him/her . . . but their moral compass has gone all askew and can't coupe with being "safe" without ALOT of pyscological help. I mean even the Great Fleet Captain Garth cracked and went all cooky. And of course this Officer would think that those who are seeking to help him/her were truly out to get him . . . so he dissapears into the stream of people leaving and going to the devestated former battlezone.

Fast forward to your games present . . . although still believing him/herself as still a Starfleet Officers . . . but not trusting anyone . . . he/she begins to be manipulated by some spy agency to do their bidding . . . but without their involvement . . . so they are clean.

If they can get to the "sniper", they can start him/her down the road to recovery, bring the wayward servicemember back into the fold. Otherwise . . . it's continuing to hide in the shadows, scrounge for the next bit of food, and death to all those who are the enemy in their eyes.

Don't give the sensors in Trek to much faith. You still need to know what you are searching for and being actively monitoring ;)

Say that we have an urban setting and a sniper with a late 20th century rifle. "Sir, I got 5289 possible individuals. Could you be a bit more specific?"

A few "fun" facts. The sonic bang will be more noticeable than the sound from the rifle. So in an open field, your guess of the location of the sniper, based on sound, would most likely by 90 degrees off. When dealing with a prepared and skilled sniper that have set up an ambush, you won't even have the impact of the bullet to determine the direction, or even realizing that the claymore mine that just shredded your friends was triggered by a sniper, using a bullet as a remote control. :eek:

On the other hand, that might be a bit to gritty for a Star trek episode.

(Moved the thread as there was no rule specific discussion going on)

If the sniper is really sneaky, he could use subsonic ammo. It could limit his range, OR you could consider some other type of projectile, such as a magnetic rail gun or some sort of self propelled bullet that travels at just beyond mach 1 (how about a photorp scaled down to 2cm in length?). Or a crossbow that fires poisoned or nanotech quarrels.


Personally, I think the Megataveler approach makes the most sense. There is no reason why a laser HAS to operate in the visible wavelength spectrum. An infrared or Ultraviolet laser would be invisible to humans (and to many other species, but not all-something that could be used to good effect in the adventure).

So the only signs you would have of a sniper would be when the burn mark appears and the body falls. Later the PCs could start to scan the IR band, but that only works during the shot.

I've seen UV/IR sniper rifles in other games. It's a nice simple (for Trek anyway) solution to a weapon issue. At least until some engineer hotwires some kind of scattering field around HQ....

Just a thought: could the transporter/slug rifle transport rounds when a sensor jaming field is operating? Considering all the things we see that screw with sensors seem to take transporters offline, that was a thought that went through my head.

I've been thinking about unique sniper/stealth kill weapons. Ripping off the "smart bullets" from the movie Runaway, one could imagine a "micro-missle": a bullet/missle the size of one of those 50 caliber rifle shells, but able to track a target and follow them. Actually, I've heard some kind of smart bullet was in early RD in the real world, so when you add the Trek Tech to it (sensors, better propulsion, maybe a tiny little antimatter warhead?), you get a really nasty weapon. Heck, they could even get worse, if you make them little sensor probes, like the ones that hunted the Bak'u in Insurrection: give them some a little AI, cloaking, holographic or blending tech, a nice antimatter charge and a list of targets, and you get tiny little suicide bombers, all quietly floating around the warzone, looking for targets to get next to and blow up!

But I'm just snowballin here...;)