A different paradigm for naval warfare (and maybe even piracy?)

[atpollard]

Since it seems unlikely that pirates will ever follow any rules (that is what makes them pirates) a discussion focused primarily on "Piracy and Surrender" seems of little value to me.

It also appears that there is a consensus that Navy ships, as a rule, take prisoners if a ship surrenders. That leaves little room for discussion here either.

However, most of the players I encounter are unlikely to be serving on either an active naval warship or a pirate vessel, could we focus a little energy on the Privateer? It seems to me that Traveller PCs could become involved in “commerce raiding for a cause” from either end of the equation.

Is there any point in surrendering to a privateer? How would the PC arrange for his/her ransom? Could you pay your own ransom with Electronic funds and just go free at a neutral starport?

Should the PCs expect a reward for capturing a Privateer crew who did not realize that your single “laser” turret was actually a particle accelerator (operated by a Gunner-5) until it was too late? Or is there never a reward, so just kill them and loot their ship for small craft?

Could PCs become Privateers? How much is a captured ship worth? How would they get paid for the ship? How would they ransom prisoners? Could the just deliver the ship and prisoners to a friendly Naval Depot and let the navy write them a check for 15% (like a salvage fee)?

Would any of this make more or less sense in the shattered Imperium? Traveller IS bigger than the Imperium. There are many “IMTU” out there and some (like mine) barely acknowledge the O.T.U. politics. Under what circumstances would “surrender for prize money” work?

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by tater:
I'd have to look at mote in god's eye again...

Tater,

It's in the extended version, the one that includes the space battle off New Chicago. In the original version, the publishers cut those scenes to bring the book in under a certain word count.

Naval career generation doesn't mention prize money, for example, and without alternate rules for HG, naval combat is virtual suicide.

There was a Prize Court variant for CT published in JTAS. That's the same place you found the modified HG2 crew rules we both use.

BTW, I'm not at all familiar with Convoys and Commerce Raiders, who published it, I'd like to take a look. (is it traveller, or is it a history?)

It's both Traveller and history, historical lessons we can apply to Traveller. Google the title and the name 'Larsen E. Whipsnade'. You'll find it on several Traveller sites including the TML archives. It used to be in the 'ct-starships' files section too.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[atpollard]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
P.S. Oh, and it isn't a different paradigm because everyone has assumed the very thing you're suggesting for close to 30 years now.

Except the people who wrote the official combat rules that leave almost no crew alive to surrender.

 

[atpollard]

Originally posted by tater:
BTW, I'm not at all familiar with Convoys and Commerce Raiders, who published it, I'd like to take a look. (is it traveller, or is it a history?)

see here:

http://www.falkayn.com/traveller/jp/commerce.html

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by atpollard:
However, most of the players I encounter are unlikely to be serving on either an active naval warship or a pirate vessel, could we focus a little energy on the Privateer? It seems to me that Traveller PCs could become involved in “commerce raiding for a cause” from either end of the equation.

AT,

Commerce raiding and/or privateering with an eye towards capturing vessels runs into the same problem that piracy with an eye towards capturing vessels does; namely time.

To capture a vessel, you have to have the time to:

- Either disable, cause a surrender through force, or cause a surrender through threats
- Place a prize crew aboard the disabled and/or surrendered vessel either by docking with said vessel with your vessel or docking with said vessel with a small craft
- Take control of the now captured vessel against either the active or passive resistence of the crew
- Make any and all repairs necessary to operate the vessel
- Move the vessel to a safe (or not so safe) jump point

You're more than welcome to game that in any Traveller ship combat system. When, or if, you use vector based games like Mayday, LBB:2, Brilliant Lances, or Battle Rider, let me know how quickly you can match both position and vector with your target ship. If you use the other Traveller ship combat systems, keep an eye on both the number of turns and special situations required; for example in HG2 a ship must have no m-drive, no offensive weapons, and be abandoned by it's side before it can be boarded.

As all that time ticks away, think of all the 6gee SDBs, military escorts, and other nastiness that is vectoring your way thanks to your capture's original Signal GK.

Are there political, economic, or other conditions that would make commerce raiding/privateering for capture more likely? Yes, most certainly. In the OTU however, those conditions would be fleeting however in both time and place. Whether they would last longer in a personal TU is up to the GM.

Between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War, technological advancement put paid to classical, large scale piracy, privateering, and commerce raiding. Destruction of and/or damage to merchant shipping began to replace the capture of the same. By 1900, piracy and privateering were gone except in the most extreme cases and commerce raiding referred only to destruction/damage and not capture.

You can't argue around the technology.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[atpollard]

Bill,

If piracy is impractical because of the dificulty in capturing a ship without destroying it, why (in your opinion) would a merchant ship bother with a turret? How can a pirate stay in business long enough to pose a threat? Destroy the ship and loot the rubble?

 

[atpollard]

What about a raid on intra-system boats? It takes almost a week to travel to an asteroid belt or gas giant.

Day 1: intercept a supply transport.
Day 2: strip it's cargo holds
Day 3: strip it's turrets (and computer?)
Day 4: relax in jump space

If the patrols get too close, jump early.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by atpollard:
What about a raid on intra-system boats? It takes almost a week to travel to an asteroid belt or gas giant.

AT,

Ahhh! It's nice to see someone looking outside the Yo-Ho-Ho Blinders that usually handicap these discussions about piracy.

According to both the moronic, pro-piracy Yo-Ho-Ho school and the grumpy, anti-piracy Mugwump school, piracy always involves intercepting, attacking, boarding, and looting starships between the starport and the jump limit and nothing else.

It's nice to see someone else thinking outside of the box!

Off to make supper, longer post later tonight.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by atpollard:
If piracy is impractical because of the dificulty in capturing a ship without destroying it, why (in your opinion) would a merchant ship bother with a turret?

AT,

There's a Meta-Game answer and an In-Game answer to that.

Meta-Game: Players like to blow stuff up. Any game that didn't allow armed starships would not be played.

In-Game: Players go places where 'normal' people don't go, places where you need a turret.

I believe it is perfectly plausible that there are places in the OTU where starships don't need to be armed. I also realise that, as they move through the OTU, our players aren't very interested in those places. Players are attracted to trouble and trouble means weapons.

Consider the following:

- Not every fictional person in the OTU is going to look at the numbers as dispassionately as we do. Some of them are going to try and 'mug' a starship despite the odds against it. Leaving aside sociopaths and the other exceptions, criminals are not very smart. It's why they turned to crime in the first place. A tramp trader could very well 'get by' for years with a laser-missile-sand triple turret. It would be the equivalent of a postman carrying mace because of dogs or my cousin carrying mace because of her fellow nursing students.

- OTU corporations big and small engage in trade war practices. If you have the political cover, you can quite literally get away with murder in the Third Imperium. While trae war practicioners are supposed to take great pains to ensure their targets are 'legitimate', mistakes are routine enough in warfare. You could be innocently hauling freight belonging to one side in a trade war and be targeted for that. Given the threat of a trade war, using patsies to move your goods instead of more easily identifiable hulls sounds rather plausible doesn't it? It might be nice to have some defenses against a quick strike, wouldn't it?

- Given the nature of communications in the OTU, sometimes you won't when the feces hits the rotary ventilation device. You could be the first ship in-system after the revolution, especially if you travel to those backwater places that players normally travel to. A turret or two could keep your ship and crew from being 'drafted' by the People's Popular Liberation Front of Judice.

How can a pirate stay in business long enough to pose a threat? Destroy the ship and loot the rubble?

After reading the post you wrote after this one, I already see that you're thinking outside of the box. That's good, that's very, very good.

Piracy arguments in Traveller always boil down to the same, tired, blindered arguments made by the same two groups; the pro-pirate Yo-Ho-Ho school and the anti-pirate Mugwump school. Each focusses on piracy as ONLY being attacks on starships between port and jump.

The Yo-Ho-Hos do so because they're too ignorant of the facts to know what piracy historically was and what piracy is today. The Mugwumps do so because, by cynically limiting what constitutes piracy, they can argue more strongly that it cannot exist. Thus we get stupidity and cynicism in the same debate, not a very palatable combination.

The (in)famous LBB:2 starship encounters table is used by both schools as 'proof' for their arguments. Both schools deliberately misread the table and the text that accompanies it. Both schools also read more into the table and the text that accompanies it.

The Mugwumps present the table as 'proof' of port-to-jump pirate attacks when the table merely says the players' vessel in in-system 'going about its business'. They then insist that piracy can only be such attacks because the table says so. The table also doesn't present any warship larger than 800dTons or any merchant vessel larger than 600dTons. Naturally the Mugwumps, the vast majority of whom will argue for a huge Imperial navy with huge warships protecting huge merchantmen, ignore that part of the table. They also ignore the fact that no SDBs show up on the table too. They want the table applied literally to bolster their anti-piracy argument and ignored altogether to bolster their big ships argument. Neat trick, huh?

In their Hollywood fervor, the Yo-Ho-Hos stick to a literal interpretation of the table inspite of all evidence that almost it's impossible. The technological assumptions simple cannot support it. They go on to 'over apply' the table too. No pirate attacks can occur in systems with class A and B ports, but the Yo-Ho-Hos ignore that. Also, the pirate encounters are only pirate encounters when the GM decides they are, 'SP' means 'scout' or 'pirate scout'. In their desire to go-a-pirating, the Yo-Ho-Hos forget that bit too.

You can see the tunnel vision each side of the argument suffers from. Now let's step outside of the box inhabited by the Yo-Ho-Hos and Mugwumps.

You asked how a pirate could earn a living. Walt Smith, whose site is linked at 'ct-starships', actually ran the numbers several years back. A 'pirate' could steal a ship's boat, pinnace, or cutter, fence it for a fraction of it's value, and pay the bills for a year. Snatch one small craft and pay the bills for a year. Interesting, isn't it?

You also mused about pirate attacks beyond the blindered, port-to-jump route. LBB:6 populated the rest of the Traveller star system. It's no longer mainworld and nothing(1). We have planets, moons, belts, and bases scattered from hell to breakfast in our systems now. People mean economic activity, people and economic activity means crime. Suddenly, an entire planetary system is open to pirate attacks, just not the heavily patrolled, oh-so-short distances between the mainworld port and jump space.

IMHO and IMTU, pirates raid outsystem facilities, rob ship crews, hijack small craft, divert cargos, and do all those things similar to their planetbound historical ancestors. Both Yo-Ho-Hos and Mugwumps will bleat that what is occurring isn't 'real' piracy because starships aren't attacked, intercepted, boarded, and looted between the port and jump space. Well too bad.

Right now in the real world when locals sneak aboard ships moored at Chittagong or Guayaquil to rob crews and steal equipment or when armed men in zodiacs climb aboard ships underway in the Straits of Malacca to do the same, lawyers, merchant marine unions, insurance companies, and law enforcement all call those people pirates. They don't mealy mouth the situation like the Yo-Ho-Hos or Mugwumps do; Well, the ship wasn't captured so it isn't really piracy. The people being robbed, their unions, the insurance carriers, and the cops all call it piracy so piracy it is. The opinions of pedants and nitpickers don't apply.

YMMV.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - It never was.

 

[veltyen]

... criminals are not very smart. It's why they turned to crime in the first place.

Crime can and does pay. While a large number of criminals that are succesfully prosecuted are not terribly bright that doesn't take into account criminals that aren't caught, or are caught but whose crimes are so convoluted as to be extremely difficult to prosecute.

Next time you are shipping empty crates, you might want to think why someone would be shipping empty crates. Your answer may be when a pirate vessel deliberately destroys your vessel.

Now this isn't classical 1950's-Errol-Flynn type piracy, but that has never really existed anyway. If anything it is a convoluted version of insurance fraud.

Wrecking (laying false signals to cause the crash of a vessel so that the goods onboard can be salvaged/stolen) also has a long history, but somewhat less of a romantic reputation then piracy has. In traveller this would involve spoofing the incoming flight path to a spaceport so that it intersects a mountain. Hopefully the ship hits hard enough not to just continue on its way, but slow enough that larger then atom sized chunks of cargo can be stolen.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by veltyen:
Crime can and does pay. While a large number of criminals that are succesfully prosecuted are not terribly bright that doesn't take into account criminals that aren't caught, or are caught but whose crimes are so convoluted as to be extremely difficult to prosecute.

Veltyen,

Which, of course, is why I wrote; Leaving aside sociopaths and the other exceptions... I was suggesting you'd need a turret because there maybe the occasional moron who will attack in orbit with a SDB parked next to him.

Next time you are shipping empty crates, you might want to think why someone would be shipping empty crates. Your answer may be when a pirate vessel deliberately destroys your vessel.

You read my paragraph dealing with trade wars?

Wrecking (laying false signals to cause the crash of a vessel so that the goods onboard can be salvaged/stolen) also has a long history, but somewhat less of a romantic reputation then piracy has. In traveller this would involve spoofing the incoming flight path to a spaceport so that it intersects a mountain. Hopefully the ship hits hard enough not to just continue on its way, but slow enough that larger then atom sized chunks of cargo can be stolen.

Coming as I do from a long line of Downeast Yankees, Hebridean Scots, and shoreline Swedes, wrecking is in my blood. I can't even count the number of times I ripped off Whiskey Galore in my various campaigns.

Of course there is wrecking and then there is wrecking. Did you help the survivors or didn't you 'find' any?


Have fun,
Bill

 

[veltyen]

Of course there is wrecking and then there is wrecking. Did you help the survivors or didn't you 'find' any?

People can survive shipwrecks?

 

[far-trader]

YAY! Somebody poked Bill

Where to begin? Well, I guess I don't much have to. Thanks Bill, you hit most of the high notes.

And try not to take him too personally tater, his bark produces great insight and he doesn't bite, much. And a belated welcome aboard tater!

I had a good chuckle at the whole Yo ho ho/Mugwumps post. Especially the "table says so" bit. Been a bit of a canon waving table thumper myself at times, but the LBB2 Starship Encounters table for Piracy debate is one of the bigger larfs.

Example: When in a D class starport system you can only encounter a Type T Pirate ship if there is a Navy base. Well that'd be a bold Pirate indeed, except that there are NO Navy bases in D class systems. So no Pirates either. Errata? Nah, not to the true believers in either the Yo ho ho camp or the Mugwump town. That little oddity and other effects led me to create my own table instead.

One thing though, and I think Bill touched on this, that table and most others shouldn't be taken as the end of the story, just the beginning, and really only used when the players pull a fast one on the prepared ref and go off the page.

If the ref wants Pirates then they can place them anywhere they want and doing whatever. In fact that's the way it should be done, not by some random die roll.

They could even be in a A class starport system (especially if there is no strong space presence like a base). And even practicing Piracy in the ways Bill described rather than the trite "Heave to Free Trader and prepare to be boarded!" Unless the ref and players like the cinematic swashbuckling style, then go for it with gusto

Wrecking is another great idea I've wanted to use but I've not come up with any good ideas for implementing it. The usual methods don't work so well on starships. Care to share a few nuggets Bill?

 

[Whipsnade]

Dan,

Best 'wrecker' adventure I ran was planet-bound. Bear with me here, it was in the 80s, and my little grey cells are weary...

Backwater planet, 'C' or worse starport. The world was mostly water. Lots of small continents and island chains. Settlements scattered all over linked by grav freighters(1). Weather was horrific, partial greenhouse, energetic star, lots of storms, problems with radio, etc., etc.

'Bad' guys were fiddling with the nav beacons the grav freighters used. Normal everyday wreckers would either simply knock off the beacons and hope for crashes or help 'salvage' (i.e. loot) those wrecks that happened normally. When a beacon went off the air, companies would send out repair crews so few if any crashes occured. The new guys in town were 'spiking' the beacons instead. They'd install a backdoor control to the beacons, wait for a cargo they wanted to fly by in horrid weather, slowly 'queer' the beacon, and steer the freighter into a mountain. Think of trying to navigate at night in an airplane with no windows by compass while unknown to you someone is slowly adjusting you compass bearings.

Players were a 'fixer' team sent in. The patron, I forgot exactly who or what, had lost either a cargo or a body that was important. Maybe both, I can't remember. The players had to nose around and find the culprits. The big red herring was the normal everyday wreckers. The players' big break came about when they figured out there were two kinds of wrecks; the normal wrecks occassionally 'helped' along by locals and the carefully planned wrecks using the queered nav beacons.

Wrap up had the local wreckers helping the players deal with the real bad guys. The baddies were my usual 'employees and owners of a somewhat shady company'. They also had been bribing several others; shipping schedulers, freighter crews, beacon repair crews, etc. It was a bit of a mare's nest when the lid came off. After handling the big boys, the players turned over the boring bits; investigations, arrests, prosecutions, etc., featuring the low level bribe takers to a duchy MoJ team. Come to think of it, I think the patron arranged that too.

Anyway, I was able to keep the players on-planet using their role as witnesses for all the low level stuff. Keeping them there let me steer them into another adventure.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - Grav freighter you say? Certainly I say. Take one set of Type-R subsidized merchant deckplans, remove the jump drive, remove all the staterooms, remove the gig, remove the crew lounge, leave the drive tunnels & wings, leave the bridge, make the forward passenger lounge crew quarters/lounge with small craft cabins, turn the rest of the upper deck into cargo space. Viola, grav freighter.

 

[mike wightman]

Dan, here is a little bit from the original starship encounter table:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Die Ship Encountered
-8 No encounter
9 Free Trader
10 Free Trader
11 Free Trader
12 Pirate
13 Subsidized Merchant
14 Patrol
15 Subsidized Merchant
16 Yacht
17 Yacht
18 Patrol</pre>[/QUOTE]

Patrols may be simple border pickets, or may be a form of pirate, exacting tolls or penalties.

I'll post my ideas about insystem pirates using smallcraft later (got to go to work )

 

[Whipsnade]

Dan,

Another 'wrecker' adventure I ran highlighted the odd nature of real world wreckers. Wreckers would often row out to a stranded ship and negotiate with the distressed crew about the cost of their rescue and steal items from ships that weren't exactly abandoned yet!

Among the Orkneys and the islands off Maine, around the extensive sandbanks near the mouth of the Thames and Gotland, along the Cornish and Rhode Island coasts, ship captains were loathe to allow any coast folk aboard their stranded or otherwise distressed vessel because the coasters would steal everything that wasn't nailed down or was nailed down, extort rescue fees for rowing people ashore, and generally treat the ship like a giant chunk of manna from heaven that only needed carving up before use.

The most serious charge made against wreckers was that they never 'found' survivors if it could be helped. You might make it ashore, but you might not last long after that. Another serious charge was that they doused shore beacons and set up false ones to create wrecks. See my post above.

This adventure took place in a backwater planetoid belt and would not work now. I didn't know back in the 80s what I know about planetoids now.

Anyway, the belt is prospected from a nearby system which owns it. No real permanent habitats, just supply ships and seekers travelling back and forth.

The wreckers pick a lode beacon on a likely planetoid and then tunnel under the most likely landing site. The idea is that surface will collapse under the next seeker visiting that site. The wreckers then show up to 'help' and, because they have more people and more weapons, strip the seeker of whatever they can get their hands on while 'assisting' the crew. The pranged seeker will either be able to leave after repairs or will be so badly damaged - by both the collapse and the wreckers' 'help' - that it can't fly away. In that case, the wreckers will be able to really pick over the hull.

The players were sent in as a Q-ship by authorities back in the system that owned the belt. The hope was they'd get caught in a wrecker trap and thus catch the wreckers themselves. Their seeker was tricked out with all sorts of internal surveillence gear. They also carried a few gun hands, real hard cases who stayed hidden in one of the ore holds until the wreckers got 'pushy'. The players even made their seeker look more damaged than it was.

They ran this honey trap 3 or 4 times before their cover was blown. The first time the seeker that showed up to help wasn't a wrecker! The players sweated bullets waiting for the totally innocent belters who had arrived to help to turn into wreckers. The next time, the real wreckers showed up and, after a little gunplay, the players' group captured the wreckers' seeker and jumped both back to the owning system. The other missions went the same way.

The operation was blown back in the owning system once the first cases made it to court. It was too good a story for the press not to print and, because this was planned on, the operation stopped. In fact, the eventual press coverage was part of the plan from the beginning. The authorities felt that, once it was known that a 'distressed' seeker could really be a Q-ship, any potential wreckers would stay on their best behavior.

In the end, as with most of my adventures, the players made some money, made some contacts, and made some new enemies.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[far-trader]

Sounds like a good one Bill. Kinda close to my half thought out idea ages ago of getting the PCs roped into an insystem delivery in some backwater asteroid belt system...

"Oh oh, says here on the manifest that you contracted to deliver this item to it's final destination, guess you didn't check the fine print. If you want to get paid for shipping it you have to pack it back up and haul it to Post #2413, it's about a 2 day trip there. Now get it off my dock before I start charging you a storage fee."

And so the players have to go off wandering through the belt to some small nameless rock and along the way they get lured or misdirected into landing at the wrong small nameless rock and captured. They escape and make it back to the port...

"Somebody messed with the navigation and took your ship? Really. First I've heard of it. If you want to report it there should be an IN patrol by in a couple months."

It's all a big trap of course. The original shipping container being the bait in the trap thanks to a nice on delivery bonus the PCs can't pass up (with the carefully hidden small print). Then the "helpful" port master redirecting them to the "correct" destination. And the PCs lose their ship (at least temporarily) and nearly their lives.

They escape one bunch of murderous "wreckers" only to report it to another one back in port, who promptly reports to the leader and is told to make the PCs disappear. A job which he bothches and the PCs are on the run. Eventually they link all the "players" including the ones in the originating system and solve the problem and get their ship back.

 

[Whipsnade]

Dan,

Very nice and tricky.

Now, IMTU, the group running that little bait and switch, ship grabbing operation would be pirates.

Of course, what the Yo-Ho-Hos and Mugwumps would say about the matter is another kettle of fish entirely!


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Hal]

One of my "planned" play by email campaigns I wanted to run involved the subsector of Lunion where the following had occurred:

Son of a local Mafia like criminal organization had gone to college and was more "romantically inclined towards Piracy. There he met a supply officer who had been discharged for conduct unbecoming. It seems the supply officer had been involved in black marketeering and had switched the invoicing values on various crates. Since the Navy utilizes the civilian starports as much as they have their own secure warehousing, the supply officer could rerout those non-secure items to local warehouses, and secure items to naval secured warehousing. But what happens when you reassign the crate's invoicing codes such that a Naval Laser Canon is delivered to a non-secure warehouse and a crate of the same dimensions and relative mass was sent to the secure warehouse? Another part of this officer's scheme was that the warehouse was organized on a last in last out (LIFO) set up. In any event, to make a long story short...

My scenario was to create a game where the "pro-pirate" team could do anything they wanted after I gave them their list of assets. The Anti-pirate team could do what they wanted - after I gave them THEIR resources and assets. The Pirates started off with a stolen 600 dton ship as well as a stolen 4G gig with a mounted Laser Cannon installed (JUST barely fits). As to how they stole the 600 dton ship? They offered stock in a corporation to purchase the ship outright (or 50% down, the rest financed - depending). They then stole the ship.

How was this all to work out? Once the goods were stolen in what ever manner the pirates chose, the goods would be delivered to the father's unworld connections and essentially "laundered" on Lunion itself.

One last thing: the world this was to occur on: was a desert world. Per GURPS STARPORTS, worlds with hydrographic values of 4 and less often would have rules and regulations against wilderness refueling from the world's water sources (environmental issues mostly). As a consequence, the only fuel source at the world where piracy was to become an issue was a desert world. Specifically? Ianic. Using GURPS FAR TRADER, I estimated the weekly traffic volume for the world, created the Ianic Refueling Corporation, which in turn had 4 3G boats that would transport fuel from the local gas giant to the main world. I even determined how much fuel was necessary on a weekly basis to keep those incoming ships and outbound ships in a happily fed state so to speak. All that was lacking were:

Rules for keeping track of ship locations at all times (Now almost entirely done)

Completely fleshing out the astrographical data as well as the system data for all of the worlds in question

Patience dealing with a few chuckleheads who pretty much game me a hard time throughout much of the preliminary discussions on this topic.

As Bill Cameron has suggested, I've finally given up trying to stay within strictly "OTU" guidelines and create my own "In My Traveller Universe" solution and then invite people to partake in the fun.

Things of note in my "suggested campaign" were:

A) there was a Scout Base in the system. I was treating it as a training facility for future Scouts (mostly green pilots and green sensor operators) whose other task was to keep an eye on the Jonkereen.

B) Per the origional rules from FAR TRADER, the influx of traffic were a wee bit higher than a simple class E (or type III) starport could handle, so I had planned as part of the scenario, to create a THIRD party for the campaign in the guise of the Star Port Authority player. The third player would be charged with trying to upgrade the Type E starport to a type C starport. The idea here was to increase the influx of freighters such that they included ships bringing in construction supplies for the upgrade.

There was also one last important ACE in the hole (aside from intimate knowledge of the criminal underworld) that the would be pirates would have at their disposal. That last ACE makes all of the difference for the would be pirates. And if I ever DO run that piracy exercise campaign, I would be wise to keep that last ace hidden <g>.

If there would be anyone I'd trust to run the pirate's side of the equation, it would be Bill. I know however, he's a busy man. But someone like Bill in my opinion, COULD pull it off <g>. He'd be able to figure out when and where to pull off those acts of piracy, and when to lie low...

 

[mike wightman]

In the original starship encounter table I quoted above the patrol and pirate craft are either type S Scout/Couriers (6-), armed yachts (7), or type C Cruisers (8+).

IMTU the majority of pirate encounters are with smallcraft in out of the way systems disguised as customs inspection vessels, either of the planet or the Imperial Navy.

They either have a safe haven on the planet in question, a base elsewhere in the system, or a jump capable ship that can carry the smallcraft to another system (a converted subsidized merchant is good for this, an X-boat Tender is even better).

Privateers IMTU are a whole other matter...