Hence why the boarding craft is able to leave, But Boarding Is an incredibly dangerous mission, and if the soldiers are forced to retreat, Then they aren't in any condition for the boarding craft to try and haave another go. If it was actually a suicide mission, I wouldn't have included a way for the Boarding craft to leave at all, but its 50 ish men trying to assault the Inside of a 40k Space ship, That shit IS a suicide mission, Thats part and partial of boarding, Even if the ability for the Boarder to fall back to the Plasteal eater where it can Leave is meant to minimize that.
Not sure how you want to make it LESS of a suicide mission, Its a boarding Craft, The ability for it to leave at all is already very optimistic.
Boarding is Incredibly dangerous, their not much a boarding craft can really do to make it LESS so.
it not like we have invested in Teleportariums on our ships at all, So i'm not exactly optimistic to try and add a teleport homer as the first port of call fir this kind of thing, which would probably have been the "Safer (as much as a trip through the fucking warp can be) option, and even that is insanely dangerous with the amount of interference.
EDIT: our men are human still , Expecting them to be able to Fight through enemy Internal garrison, Complete their objective, Fight BACK through the hallways and tunnels of the ship, return to the Plasteel, Board the plasteel, Extricate and then be in a condition where they are able to have the plasteel make ANOTHER Go into the same ship is just outright pie in the sky, Our men aren't in power armour, They aren't space marine They will get tired and worn down fighting through Urban+++ and including the material cost needed to allow the boarding to Leave with those boarders and immediately have another go is just expecting our men to achieve the impossible.
That's because when you think of Boarding, you think of the typical Imperial Boarding mission.
Board the ship, head straight for the objective, and just keep throwing men at the problem until you get there. It's a great mission profile if you are a Lamenter in power armor who can endure that kind of action (and who is contractually obligated to get half the chapter killed every other decade), but for anyone else it's de facto a suicide mission.
Crucially however, there is no reason for us to board this way. Other paths are possible. There are many things you can do, once you get on board a ship. Charging for the bridge or main plasma generator is but one path to victory.
Warships in warhammer are absolutely labyrinthine. They are massive edifices only barely controlled by the people who fly them, with many imperial warships all but developing separate societies somewhere within the holds.
The only reason the defender manages to concentrate their force to this extent, is because they know where the invader is headed. They think only a handful of locations on the warship are worth attacking.
So, let's alter the playbook.
[X]Infiltrator Class Assault Shuttle
A relatively small, but incredibly fast and maneuverable boarding shuttle, this shuttle aims to dart through enemy point defenses, before exploiting weaknesses in the hull to infiltrate. Garbage shutes, disused airlocks, badly repaired damage. Typically this means landing somewhere in the underbelly of the vessel, well away from important targets. But that is exactly as planned. Well away from responding forces, the Infiltrator's team will deploy the ships extendible mechadendrites to hijack into local power and vox channels, or even more important sensor and data channels if they are available. They will dig in, and defend the position as the infiltrator starts dumping propaganda across all decks, inciting the never content lower deck crews to riot.
or, maybe we take advantage of the fact that as attackers, we have the initiative :
[X]WaterSkimmer Assault Craft
Small and incredibly nimble, this heavy assault craft is intended for quick, disabling strikes on enemy warships. After penetrating the enemy defenses, it will fly towards enemy batteries or emplacements, entering the vessel through the gunports. It will then deploy cluster ammunition to clear the area of immediate hostiles, allowing the onboard compliment to place sabotage and denial charges, leaving before ammunition is exhausted or the enemy can mount an effective response.
