Different biological missile

[zortlord]

How about a biological missile that is used against enemy ships. It would be used to convert the ship into a carrier for the disease. I imagine these being used as a system defense in that the attacking force would then poison their home system. Thoughts?

[Aedrion]

Could be used as something to kill the crew but I'm not sure if it already exists or not.

People attacking my systems don't go home again...

[Azrael Ultima]

It's much easier to infect a planet than it is to infect a ship. It's also much easier to quarantine a ship you know has been infected than it is to quarantine part of a planet.

It's really not a very worthwile way of spreading disease.

[zortlord]

If you destroy the command ship, the entire fleet retreats uncontrollably. And I don't think you can scrap ships that are retreating, so how do you prevent ships that are disease carriers from possibly infecting home planet?

[Azrael Ultima]

By not letting them dock or land? That's below the level you, as the leader of a space empire, deal with.

[zortlord]

That assumes they and everyone else know they are carriers. Lots of diseases have a LONG gestation period and if the missiles carrying the disease look like normal missiles... And and and... We could keep going at this for a long time... Was just a thought about biological weapons using enemy ships as vectors.

[Nall White]

How about a biological missile that is used against enemy ships. It would be used to convert the ship into a carrier for the disease. I imagine these being used as a system defense in that the attacking force would then poison their home system. Thoughts?

After you infect the ship(s). Do you hang around while they are still shooting at you? Pop the CnC and stop defending your system until the timer runs out? NOT trying to be a smart @$$. Just playing devil's advocate.

[Aedrion]

Ships are as carriers sounds like a pretty exploitable idea seeing how a strike force stays only one turn, which would then not work in their advantage at all.

But I'd say Bio missiles could be used to kill crew aboard ships and stations. Possibly with the effects of the plagues: Death, crazy shoot-everything-mode or loyalty to your empire or maybe even xombie crew! Yea!

toxic gas and not actual disease might also work, it's still bio-warfare but focused on smaller scale.

Maybe they could be shot in canisters like boarding pods, but faster and from a longer range and mainly kill crew, ships with large amounts of crew being more resilient maybe? =P

[Razed]

If I may interrupt the genocide in the making, you are missing one point lore-wise.
Namely, how will the bio-agent will reach the crew from outside the hull, without depressurising the whole section, which will "blow out" the agent altogether? And that's just assuming that the crew won't wear any enviro suits or just simple anti-vacum jumpsuits, just in case.
Besides, I believe that any space faring race has adequate quarantine procedures for vessels crew.
Also, spaceships are a small, closed system, with a set of closable systems within systems (airlocks, bulkheads) which would impede and isolate any infection, unless it's a zuul infection;)

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[zortlord]

Look, all I can throw out are ideas:

as for infecting the ship, why not:
use an armor piercing missile that deploys after penetrating the hull.
Maybe the infective material doesn't even need to penetrate the hull- if pan spermia is taken seriously, why not a similar route with diseases.
Possibly use an injector attached to the missile- if that works for leech rounds...

regarding quarantining:
You wouldn't quarantine a ship unless you knew it was infected. If the disease gestation period is exceptionally slow or requires some environmental trigger to rouse from dormancy that could only be found on a planet...
What about idiots on a ship disobeying orders and flying down to a planet surface violating the quarantine (maybe they're no longer following orders since their command ship was destroyed e with their leadership structure)...

[ForceUser]

According to lore only destroyer sized ships and Morrigi cruisers land on planets normally. Construction, refit and mothballing all normally take place in space. For something like this to work it would need to be transfered to the crew onboard (Who are wearing full space suits during combat in the first place) or it needs to transfer from the outer hull of the ship to any shuttles that may dock with it that then survive through reentry through a planets atmosphere (thousands of Kelvin I believe).

We're not shooting down the ideas willy nilly. A suggestion needs to fit both within the lore and the game play elements. All we are doing is pointing out flaws and helping improve an idea so that it has a higher likelyhood of being implemented.

*Edit: If the shuttles in lore uses Feathered reentry like the SpaceShipOne then reentry heat might not be as big a problem.

[Azrael Ultima]

That assumes they and everyone else know they are carriers. Lots of diseases have a LONG gestation period and if the missiles carrying the disease look like normal missiles... And and and... We could keep going at this for a long time... Was just a thought about biological weapons using enemy ships as vectors.

How about the fact they have been hit by a missile? That tends to be pretty telling. Not to mention that even the possibility of such a weapon being used would probably lead to a medical screening for the whole fleet.
Your suggestion requires that basic safety procedures are being ignored.

Really, the whole thing is way easier to stop than it is to implement, so it's not really worth it.