Can Hyperspace fold equiped vessels basically kidnap?

[Gamerofthegame]

Alright, here's the thing.

Hyperspace fold create a bubble around the ship and anything in that bubble is tugged along for a merry journey through space time. However, there is no show of consent or anything else.

So, by this logic, a vessel could run up to another, make a fold and then take off. Or hell, you could even weaponize it by getting a enemy vessel only partially in it and running off with the other half. With the new generation of Yam fighters (Read; Nodachi) they has a quick mini-fold-jump feature, this seems like it'd be even more weaponized then anything they could wield.

Additionally, paired up vessels could do similar. A pair of ships could fold in, then the other fold out while picking up a enemy and they merrily beat the crap out of it 2+ on 1 before coming back to do it with another ship in the opposing column, etc. Is this possible as well?

Or is this all one of those things where we just go "Don't do that" and ignore it?

 

[Kyle]

I think there might be safe-guards that prevent ships from being nabbed like that; but I could be wrong. It might just be that it's a general rule of thumb to 'not do that'

Although it would be an interesting tactics for pirates... I may have to explore that...

 

[Wes]

A ship with a large enough fold sphere could indeed carry another ship around. I don't think the shearing idea would work well, as ships would tend to fall (entirely) on whatever side of the "edge" they were mostly on, perhaps even warping to the wrong place. Plus that's a lame way to do space combat.

 

[Fred]

When you use a fold drive, you're cheating on all sorts of laws of physics. It's probably a delicate process. Needing to be out of a planet's gravity well to engage a fold drive is a likely indication of that. It wouldn't surprise me to have an intruding object within the fold sphere could cause all sorts of undesirable events from drive failure ("I am set to transit X mass, not X+Y mass"), to structural damage and potential ship destruction for anyone forcing it.

You know, enough horror stories for the consequences to be a relative unknown, but still largely discouraging. That way, it's not even sureshot enough to be a reliable desperation move.

The weaponized variant of the fold drive already exists to: it's called a Transposition cannon. Those were more or less phased out of the setting. My guess as to why? First, there are horror stories as to how such weapons can go wrong - the Second Draconian Fleet is a presently living testament to that. Also, they might face similar limitations to fold drives in being unable to properly function within a strong gravity well - since battles are fought over resources more often than in empty vacuum, it's impractical to equip ships with a massive seldom-useable weapon weapon array.

Finally, the few space structures that could boast the huge enough transposition equipment to support such a function are likely in the realm of massive dreadnoughts/starbase. This supports past precedent of planets and moons being moved in the roleplay either for utility or as doomsday weapons... but those end up firmly being rarely used plot devices (thus motivating the Battle of Taiie, and the move of planet Hanako and the Lorath homeworld).

 

[OsakanOne]

You could explain away cheap stuff by saying something like... When you attempt to shear an object, the bubble tries to expand to contain the object.

As a result, the bubble doesn't stabilize properly, causing massive structural damage to both ships - with the larger suffering less damage -- to the point where it isn't uncommon for wreckage to fly out of the exit location of a fold.

Basically, the damage dealt should make this worthless except as a suicide/last ditch maneuver.

If the bubble tries to wrap around something small like a fighter or armor, its much easier to wrap and doesn't result in sheering - so it does indeed kidnap it.