How do you board and pacify an O'Neill cylinder...

How do you board and pacify an O'Neill cylinder? What's the composition of the armies and how do you wage war in a setting where these are the main form and most numerous of space settlements?

Zakus and Gelgoogs. Zakus and Gelgoogs

Mass-Produced Big Zams.

You would only need a few very good guys to breach the command center and take over the controls. Once it is done, the cylinder is yours. If anybody disagrees, you can just vent the atmosphere and/or kill the power until they change their minds.

I kinda worked with the idea, my estimate was 4 elite and ultra-badass fireteams of power-armored infantry and an equal amount of expendable but tough-as-nails combat drones. This must be enough unless the colony's security force has crazy short response times.

>This must be enough unless the colony's security force has crazy short response times.
i wouldn't count on that. The designers/inhabitants of the cyclinfer sre surely going to figure out this weak point.
A heavily fortfied command centre that includes a security force barracks is going to make things a lot harder for that kind of offensive force.
the attacker venting the atmosphere or cutting power can largely mitigated by habing such an action require simultaneous activation from multiple isolated command stations distrubuted around the cyclinder.

Why would it even have a single command center able to control everything? This cylinder is the size of a megalopolis. You can't just breach the mayor's office and turn off the lights everywhere, can you? And even if you can, what's stopping some electrician from just rerouting the power manually?

Compounding that, if the cylinder is of the type at your pic, with solar windows, killing power won't have much of an effect for quite some time, during which your strike team will have to defend itself from a couple million people. If there's no solar windows, there will be issues with lighting, but it'll take some time anyway to radiate the heat away.

Draining the air is a more realistic concern, but for that you'd have to capture and hold the axial airlock, and even then the sheer volume of air in the cylinder will give the station security time to dislodge you. And this is not taking into account possible internal partitioning.

the most straightforward way would be to have a warship with weaponry capable of breaching the walls, to threat venting the atmosphere.
Otherwise itd basically be heavily resisted urban fighting to try capture the key control stations.

If the command center is THE strategic point of such a large project, you can bet your ass it is going to be heavily defended and subject to very strict security procedures to insure containment and delay any assault enough for the bulk of the local security forces to mobilize.

If we assume a "standard" O'neill cylinder, the population would be in the millions.
Let's assume a population of 2 millions people, for a density about equal to the island of Malta and about 1/4 of Hong Kong or Singapour.
There could easily be as many as 3000 cops and up to 1000 soldiers with them being a real drain of manpower or ressources.

Let's assume that :
- The cops are evenly spread to act as a permanent garrison and keep the order while preventing people from messing around with the infrastructure (because breaking a few things on a space station is a much bigger offense than on Earth)
- The military keeps half their forces as a mobile reserve stationned at the command center while the other half is spread thin between the various critical systems.

That's still about 500 soldiers with state-of-the-art equipment that protect the command center.
Other systems might be vulnerable to the fast attack you describe but even then, holding such system might not be easy with hundreds of soldiers ready to be deploy anywhere in a matter of minutes.

Really, boarding the cylinder isn't the issue : break through multiples breaches.
Let the atmosphere vent itself through the holes so that most of the population rush to safe rooms.
Meanwhile your troops enter with voidsuits and kill anyone they encounter, aiming at taking the docks and shutting down the power and other critical systems.

(1/2)

Once the docks are secured, shuttles can land and offer to evacuate the inhabitants.
By that point, the cylinder is already conquered, as there's no way the locals could endure a prolongued siege without atmosphere and power.
Their only choices are either to accept to surrender to evacuate in ships with breathable air or to resist and hope that a rescue force will show up to not only push back the invasion but also make the repair and bring enough ressource to restore atmosphere.

(2/2)

>And this is not taking into account possible internal partitioning
given how critical keeping the atmosphere is, internal partions and multiple failsafes and resealing systems is a certainty.

Would draining the air even be possible? Why would there be an option to do that in the command center?

I'm not at all sure the venting will be quick, and the boarders will have to negotiate some pretty nasty winds.

One thing that people don't realize is how long it would take the atmosphere to vent. They're so absolutely massive that the way they deal with collisions and breaches from space debris is to not deal with them - there is SO MUCH air in them that it would take decades or centuries for it to become a problem. Whatever tiny holes a commando team punches in them aren't going to make a difference.

These things are almost forty fucking kilometers long with self-contained ecosystems and populations reaching into the millions WITHOUT urban clutter. They're HUGE.

What you should do to force obedience is threaten to nuke the central axle. These colonies are actually two contra-rotating cylinders, and the the contra-rotation provides not only gravity but attitude control. Fuck up the central axle and entire colony is suddenly in turmoil as it loses gravity and eventually sunlight, which will kill its ecosystem. Controlling local space means you can keep bombing the axle if the inhabitants ever manage to repair it.

Taking any space station is probably a diplomatic action. If we assume you've gotten to the station via a spaceship, which can fire projectiles an appreciable percentage of c, your tech level makes squishy humans negligible

You essentially can hold the whole station hostage to any level of force you see fit.

I imagine the Invasion is quite polite

Now the counter-insurgency on the other hand, of that plot is made

this so much.
There'd be no reason to have that function and it's such a clear weakness, no one would build that in.

I guess that if you have a populatiln in the millions, the whole thing should be like a fortress with heavily armored hull, separate sections, laser defenses, missiles, drones, huge garrisons and all of that. Once the exterior defenses have been neutralized, and assuming you dont want to kill everyone inside, you would probably need dedicated boarding ships.

destroying the axel wouldn't take gravity away anytime soon. They'd have so much inertia that each no seperated cylinder would keep spinning (and giving artificial gravity). Longterm stability for keeling sunlight on the mirrors. would be lost. But that would be an issue of weeks or months time scale. Its not really useful as a way to take it.
to make it useful you'd have to get into seig and blockade the cylinder form incoming support and resupply, which alone would give you the cylinder without having to actually bother breaking the axel.

just directly attacking the mirrors would be a better threat

That or attacking the hydroponics.

Are you French, user?

I didn't say split them. If they're both connected to the axle but the machinery is stuck, they can't continue rotation without tearing something apart.

The colony may still be in one piece, but it'll be in absolute pandemonium. If the choices are to submit or have the axle wrecked, most colonies are going to choose the former.

These.

The way to take over a colony would be with fairly "conventional" warfare.

Blockade and take control of immediate space to "siege" it out and cut of off from external supply lines and reinforcements, probably cut off external communication with ECM, breach the sides and move in ground troops to pacify the city and take control of internal supplies as well as deal with any interior defenders.

It'd be just like taking control of a city on Earth, except completely self contained.

Depends on the population. Are they transhumans or humans? How augmented are they? What is the security like?
If everyone is a mind uploaded synthetic with combat mods and /or combat software and memory backups, then any border has to fight billions.

If the security is made of von neumann bots then the structure itself will be made into an army to stop intruders.

And so on.

>they can't continue rotation without tearing something apart
these things are going to be billions of tonnes of rotating mass, they will definitely tear stuff apart if you try and seize the axle mechanism.

Stopping rotation is not going to be an easy or quick tging to do.

G3 Gas

>these things are going to be billions of tonnes of rotating mass, they will definitely tear stuff apart if you try and seize the axle mechanism.

Yes, that's my point. That's why I said to threaten this if the colony doesn't do what you want.

"Do what I say or I'll fucking kill you" can be fairly persuasive.

the worst that'll happen is shearing of the axel and separation of the cylinders.
This would be a simple enough failsafe in engineer in.

damaging the axel isn't that kind of threat.

>all these Gundam reference replies
Veeky Forums I am proud

>How do you board and pacify an O'Neill cylinder?

The answer is akin to the answer to an old riddle:

Q: How do you gt down off an elephant.
A: You don't get down off an elephant, you get down off a duck.

You don't board an O'Neill cylinder until AFTER you've pacified it. You pacify an O'Neill cylinder by plausibly demonstrating a significant threat.

You poke a "little" hole, one that the colonists can "patch", and make your offer. If they're as stupid as most of the posters in this thread, you'll have poke a slightly bigger hole the colonists have more trouble "patching". You make your offer again. If they still won't deal, you make several large holes, kill them all, repair the cylinder, and repopulate it.

It's like the 3 stages of classical siege warfare. You'd march up and give the city a chance to surrender on good terms. If they said no, you began operations and, when you made the 1st breach in the wall, you made an offer on somewhat worse terms. If they turned that down, you finished the siege by carrying the town and killing everyone in it.

An O'Neill may be freakin' huge. All that means is it's freakin' huge TARGET. I'd expect orbital habitats and the like to be declared "open cities" in the case of war if only to prevent millions of unneeded deaths.

>No mention fo Babylon 5´s Severd dreams ITT

B5 doesn't count, it was lowest bidder fragile.

I assume that the colony is not trying to give the attackers a reason to say "fuck it" and start bombing the living shit out the station.

Actual, honest-to-goodness considerations of repelling invasions would most likely never fly. If your opponent has warships parking outside of your colony, then you are screwed either way. No amount of sub-stations can change that, so to speak.

Thus, most of the colony's security would focus on repelling internal threats. Terrorists, insurgents, rebellions, coups, the works. Decentralizing is not a good idea here, you are just giving free targets to your enemies. You want everything in one place, surrounded only by your most loyal soldiers so that when the shit hits the fan, you can push the button and vent the atmosphere or kill the power until everyone calms down.

Also, when I said to crazy short response times, I was thinking about "outrun a boarding torpedo surfacing in the middle of the command center" kind of crazy short, not "OK, it is just a few minutes of walk from here" kind of crazy short. Like, the advantage the boarding party has is fucking insane, you need sorcery to stand a chance.

What would be the point though?
If we have the ability to make them, why not just make your own.

>Decentralizing is not a good idea here, you are just giving free targets to your enemies.

Absolutely not. Decentralization is MANDATORY.

Not to withstand an outside attack, but to prevent a coup, merc assault, terror attack, or psychotic episode from putting ONE person in control of the switches to EVERYTHING.

There's going to be NO master switch for anything. If the air scrubbers in Section 123 get shut off by someone for some reason, the scrubbers in the other 122 sections work harder until the "problem" is "solved". Each control center will only control a small part of the puzzle and only several control centers working together can control absolutely vital operations like airlocks.

It's funny that you call other people stupid but subscribe to the idea that a tens of kilometers long millions of tons space station is just going to decompress in seconds without blowing the entire thing apart.

Because you're denying the other guy those resources and that sector of inhabited space.

>subscribe to the idea that a tens of kilometers long millions of tons space station is just going to decompress in seconds

Where did I write or imply seconds? Or even hours? Or days for that matter?

You just inflict damage the colony cannot repair and wait for the inevitable. Killing any repair crews you spot will help too.

Do us all a favor, sperg somewhere else.

>Each control center will only control a small part of the puzzle and only several control centers working together can control absolutely vital operations like airlocks.

That sounds like a nightmare to coordinate.

There are far more easier, and less expensive ways to do that.
Give me a realistic reason for taking over another habitat, a reason that you wouldn't find in some dumb comic book.

>That sounds like a nightmare to coordinate.

And yet it's done every second of every day with the US national power grid.

>There are far more easier, and less expensive ways to do that.
You talk about "dumb comic book" reasoning and yet don't think it'd be cheaper to take over an already built and populated colony than building and populating a whole new one? Wow.

Redundancy is exactly what you WANT in a spacecraft, especially gigantic stationary ones housing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

Space is a horrible, hostile place that mankind was never meant to live in and will kill you in seconds if you don't have every single means of survival possible in perfect working order. So if you can make it so that if one of those means fails it doesn't kill everyone in the colony, you fucking better do it.

Decentralization = one thing fails, not everyone dies.
Centralization = One thing fails, everyone dies.

That's why we threaten people with nukes all the time IRL, right user?

Don't be a pedant.

>Because you're denying the other guy those resources and that sector of inhabited space.
I meant there are cheaper, easier ways to deny a group of their holdings than a literal hostile takeover.
Think of the political backlash, for one.

It's a monumentally stupid idea.

55 million people were once left without power because some trees hit a power line and everything spiraled from there. People are dumb.

Ah, well, we are in a misunderstanding here. I did not mean that everything should be done by one thing, but control should. Kinda like how the strategic missile arsenal works: despite the actual physical sub-systems are scattered all over the place, you have the Football in the hands of only one man.

>muh scount UAVs
>muh infantry
>muh tanks
>muh artillery

The best part of fighting inside an O'Neill cylinder is the short range. No need for multiple types of artillery, and barely even a need for anti-air. No orbital strikes either.

Navies never commandeer enemy ships during a wartime?

>That's why we threaten people with nukes all the time IRL, right user?

MAD doesn't apply in this situation because the colony - or it's allies - cannot make a similar threat against the aggressor's assets elsewhere. The OP's question implies there's enough political cover for the operation; i.e. the aggressor can seize control of the cylinder, what's the best way to do it?

As I posted earlier, I'd expect every habitat of this type to be declared an "open city" by both sides in the case of war. That way the megadeath counts can be avoided by all sides.

>55 million people were once left without power because some trees hit a power line and everything spiraled from there.

Yup, and the other 200 million people weren't.

>>People are dumb.

As this thread proves.

I think we're getting a little off topic now.

MAD's got nothing to do with it. The US could have glassed Syria or Afghanistan, but it didn't, even though they couldn't fight back and even though it would be cheaper than conventional forces.

If a colony occupies strategic territory and contributes resources to the enemy's war effort then there is no reason why it shouldn't be on a list of targets to take over.

I can think of three.

1) In the event of an even worse disaster, such as a massive fire or atmospheric contamination of some form. You'd lose everyone who wasn't in self-contained areas, but you'd keep the station itself and anyone who could get to one of those areas.

2) A "soft" self-destruct. If someone manages to take the station, you can try to take them all down, or maybe even get them to evacruate.

3) It's not included intentionally, but there's a way to subvert a vital system to drain the air. E.g., reverse whatever system you used to initially fill the station, override an atmospheric pressure control beyond its safety standards, trick the system into thinking ship-sized airlocks are safely sealed when they're wide open, and so on.

Belgian.
What mistakes did I make ?

>Kinda like how the strategic missile arsenal works: despite the actual physical sub-systems are scattered all over the place, you have the Football in the hands of only one man.

You confusing control with command and then barely even understanding the command process.

Using your strategic missile arsenal analogy, while one man can open the "football" and "command" the codes be used, those codes are then counter-checked repeatedly all the down the chain of command until you reach the individual silo, sub, or bomber. At that time, it still takes at least two men to agree and perform simultaneous physical tasks to launch.

The thinking behind that process is followed in a many wide scale civilian control operations. One man cannot walk into a regional ATC center, a regional power grid control center, a regional rail traffic control center, and the like and start making changes to shut those systems down or otherwise fuck things up. Even if one man managed to blow up those centers, the others would pick up the slack.

As explained, the cylinder is a spacecraft and it demands massive redundancy in all systems, including command & control.

>Absolutely not. Decentralization is MANDATORY.

This. Tf. I really think they wouldn't build "LE MASTER SWITCH" command center. That's amateurish to assume. Political necessities wouldn't allow that.

Sure you might have some cylinders with a dictatorship/absolute monarchy/etc. where the upper class is so paranoid that they concentrate the central controls into one single area so that they are able to control these unruly proles better but that should be the exception imho.

Most stations probably would have a checks and balances/ separation of powers type system where different government branches control the functions of the station.

Engineering controls the air circulation but water purification went to the department of justice due to political shenanigans in the 2nd decade after the cylinder became independent.

Stuff like this.

>That sounds like a nightmare to coordinate.

In the day-to-day operations there probably is some kind of command center that has the overview, but they sure as fuck wouldn't be able to turn everything off with master switches. If an invasion hits that's still a valuable target to disrupt the inner workings of the station but a lot of stuff is going to be managed decentralized either way.

Central oversight is not going to assign a work crew to every single hull damage, they just review and occasionally check the process.

Oh and we haven't even talked about the inhabitants. Maybe they have their equivalent of gated communities able to survive for a while even if the central systems stop working.


"After the water distribution riots we made certain preparations..."

>MAD's got nothing to do with it.

MAD has everything to do with because you're failing to remember the political component of MAD. MAD is about more than destruction.

>>The US could have glassed Syria or Afghanistan, but it didn't

The US didn't because the political cost would be too high.

>If a colony occupies strategic territory and contributes resources to the enemy's war effort then there is no reason why it shouldn't be on a list of targets to take over.

I'm not saying a colony shouldn't be a legitimate target. Your example certainly seems fit the OP's case.

I can't explain the concept of "open city" to you because of the character limits, but I will suggest you read about it.

I'm not against the concept of open city, I'm just saying that simple virtue of being an O'Neill cylinder alone isn't a reason enough to become one.

See OP:

>and how do you wage war in a setting where these are the main form and most numerous of space settlements?

If most settlements are O'Neill Cylinders a different form of warfare would evolve imho. It would be more about cutting of trade routes, area denial and siege situations.

Sure you might have some NOT!Space Hitler types hellbent on extermination that would attack cylinders but most normal wars wouldn't just attack the main areas where you can live with heavy ordinance. Even the Nazis respected most open cities and I can't see how you would defend a cylinder long term if your fleet is destroyed.

Warfare would develop around that by making cylinders taboo targets mostly. If you successfully cut off a cylinder and you are able to maintain the siege it would typically surrender.

With the threat of explosively breaching the cylinder and letting it venting all atmosphere and backing that up with force of arms.

They don't listen? Follow up on your words. Others will fall in line.

>I'm just saying that simple virtue of being an O'Neill cylinder alone isn't a reason enough to become one.

You're too fragile NOT to become one.

Cherryh's "Downbelow Station" and other books thoughtfully explores the issue.

>trick the system into thinking ship-sized airlocks are safely sealed when they're wide open, and so on.
there probably wouldn't be airlocks for large shipping. It depends on the exact design, but on this kind of scale you can build it so that the artificial gravity keeps the atmosphere in place, as long as the wall at the end is tall enough to stop it spilling out. You could just have an open hole in the middle of the end for ships to come in. In practice there would probably be some sort of door just for security.

Nothing, just thought you were from the way you spelled Singapour.

That's only if you don't build your colony inside of an asteroid, which you have little reason not to do, considering you will mine it for materials anyway.

>One man cannot walk into a regional ATC center, a regional power grid control center, a regional rail traffic control center, and the like and start making changes to shut those systems down or otherwise fuck things up.

They can, tho. And thankfully to the cascade effect, they can do lots and lots of damage.

There is an evaluation somewhere on the internet that says you need to mess up one or two power plants to do a country-wide blackout in the US of A. It would be more like a country-wide instant anarchy, but you get the point.

There have been theoretical plans made where you take an irin asteroid a a bunch of mirrors or lasers to heat it and you can spin form massice hollow cylinders.

I would think if they're not going to surrender to your fleet then you would need to do some real damage to it so that they can either surrender to stop its destruction or die. You would almost certainly have insurgencies even once you've taken command but they can't really do much unless they can somehow take out your fleet

I predict ferocious selection pressure in habitat design.

Convincing yourself it would be economically advantageous.

Unless you bring copious explosives I suspect venting will take so long it makes venting hatches unnecessary. You might as well have crews work a few days to breach the hull. Might desiign some safe spots for that into the hull.

it would be like invading a planet, depending on the geography and resources.

Honestly your seemingly arbitrary topic reeks of evolved bandwagon le valve dyson sphere redditry.

Does dropping it count as pacifying?

One thing I must point out as briefly mentioned, an invader can strike anywhere instantaneously with breaching pods/boarding torpedoes, it does not have to move around physically on the habitation area itself. Even if the cylinder has a very thick "hide", defending against such an "acupuncture invasion" would be all but impossible.

Mostly Close quarters combat in the cities, with some minor mechanized infantry engagements in the parklands. There is no real reason to include guns that could breach the hab cylinder, so there is no real reason to include heavier forms of armor. The biggest guns will be HMGs or light autocannons, and the biggest vehicles will be IFVs and maybe helicopters.

If drones are involved, there will also be lots of anti-drone lasers. Not strong enough to kill a man, but will blind a drone's sensors or light it on fire. Capable of keeping any drones out of it's line of sight, but also super vulnerable to laser counter fire and regular bullets. Just shoot the lens out like any light and suddenly you can gain quad-copter air superiority again, provided you have a laser of your own to protect against their drones.

Now, armoring drones against laser fire would mean they would have to be heavy, to the point where they might as well be humanoid robots, and then maybe just humans in armor. To be honest I think children with automatic weapons but very light armor are already the perfect robotic soldier, but that's just me. There will always be a job for the INFANT( who t)RYs.

The cylinder could well be tough enough that armored battles become excusable. That is, as GM you can excuse the battle of Stalinkursk if you want to.

Still, at some point it's not really practical to throw around that much firepower in such a small area. There won't really be anything inside the cylinder worth armoring that much either. If it was worth armoring it would be outside the Cylinder. It would be a space battleship, specialized in destroying cylinders, or a Cylinder itself specalized in defending itself against space battleships.

Either way, you don't usually have tank battles inside habitats for the same reason you don't have them inside ships.

You know that the original Gundam series had this as the first space battle, right?

I'm not saying makes sense, but let's say it's a 1000km by 100km cylinder covered in skulls and the local governor hasn't met his tithe to the Munitorium, snd Stalinkursk is fucking _on_.

Drop it on Sydney.

build a smaller colony and drop it onto the cylinder

Oh of course. But I feel like it's more likely to be a torus at that size.

You mean so the central lighting tubes don't leak space-AIDS and radium into the high atmosphere?

Anyway, just thought of something, when unarmored targets are at risk of laser attack from the other side of the cylinder you kind of literally will get Stalinkursk. Armor moves freely in the open, infantry really wants to stay in urban terrain, closet Khornate generals send them out.

I WONDER WHO ARE BEHIND THESE POSTS?