A Hidden Pirate Base.....
- Thread starter DickNervous
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
1. Criminal organizations will find pilfering cargoes at starports and dirtside a lot easier and risk free than investing in a unique and identifiable spacecraft where they have to run down their victims, board them and then get the loot.
2. Commercial raiding between interstellar commercial entities might be tolerated by an interstellar regime for short durations, as long as it doesn't affect GDP or interfere with their governance.
3. Pirate ships have to pick on weaker prey, because a prolonged battle not only could buy the victim enough time for help to arrive, it could also damage the pirate sufficiently that they couldn't transition out, and repairs and casualties might not be worth the loot.
4. Navies like to indisputably rule the waves, pirate activities question that, and corporate contributors may ask their political proxies as to why they (don't) pay taxes so that their goods can be hijacked brazenly.
5. Insurance rates would probably be the supreme deciding factor in wiping out pirate activity.
2. Commercial raiding between interstellar commercial entities might be tolerated by an interstellar regime for short durations, as long as it doesn't affect GDP or interfere with their governance.
3. Pirate ships have to pick on weaker prey, because a prolonged battle not only could buy the victim enough time for help to arrive, it could also damage the pirate sufficiently that they couldn't transition out, and repairs and casualties might not be worth the loot.
4. Navies like to indisputably rule the waves, pirate activities question that, and corporate contributors may ask their political proxies as to why they (don't) pay taxes so that their goods can be hijacked brazenly.
5. Insurance rates would probably be the supreme deciding factor in wiping out pirate activity.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Re (5) above, I'm not sure I've ever read canonical insurance rules for ships in Traveller...
To reduce the damage issue, pirates could operate several ships, fighters or escorts to disable the "prey" and then a troop and transport ship for boarding and looting once the prey is disabled.
Damaged fighters could then be abandoned or repaired (if time allows before a distress call attracts help), or if the "prey" surrendered and/or is only lightly damaged the worth of the "prize" would exceed the loss of a fighter or two. Hence why Letters of Marque are issued to privateers - there must be some economic benefit to the privateer, or they wouldn't accept the LoM.
To reduce the damage issue, pirates could operate several ships, fighters or escorts to disable the "prey" and then a troop and transport ship for boarding and looting once the prey is disabled.
Damaged fighters could then be abandoned or repaired (if time allows before a distress call attracts help), or if the "prey" surrendered and/or is only lightly damaged the worth of the "prize" would exceed the loss of a fighter or two. Hence why Letters of Marque are issued to privateers - there must be some economic benefit to the privateer, or they wouldn't accept the LoM.
CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
While I've thought about the issue of insurance I've always considered the issue of mortgages. Who is going to lend money for ships and authorize their operation in areas where piracy is a real risk?
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Commerce raiders can be partially or wholly subsidized by the parties of the first part.
I suspect that ships travel through the Suez Canal that are not 100% paid off.
In Traveller, the ship should make some provision to defend itself and encourage pirates to seek a softer target ... like install a turret and hire a gunner.
IMTU, I look at ship loans in the same light as I view subsidies: often, they're being financed by investors on worlds that are seeking to expand their own trade connections - they're investing in ships to encourage trade in areas which the corporations are neglecting.
CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
I'm not sure what the point is here?
By the way, the bottom picture on the left of my desk is an aerial picture of a ship going through the Suez. The pictures I took of the desert from the ship are quite boring.
Ok I'm going to break tradition here and actually attempt to answer the OP questions.
Ok how much manufacturing and mining capability does it take to support a class B starport?
If we look at Planet Tamer's handbook it lists rules for colony economic development given a labor component TL and capital goods (the means of production) you can say that 1 labor unit produces X economic value per month and consumes Y economic value for support (food, luxuries, housing, repairs for that housing, repairs for the capital goods and other needed buildings. X-Y will be different for different worlds and starting conditions and I leave that for some other gear head to look at. You can just pick a tech level and assign a value for Y and the remainder is the CR/month per worker.
As a house rule for this I would state the shipyard is just another heavy industrial capital good producing a CR value per month just like any other labor and raw material supplied capital good, this number would be the CR value of ships that could be constructed per month IF SUPPLIED WITH PARTS!
Parts would come from the output of either light industrial capital goods or heavy industrial goods capital goods as makes sense for the part in question.
so you have some labor put to food production, some power producing buildings, then mining equipment, construction equipment, then light factories and heavy factories all before you start building the first ton of ship.
Now for a fully autonomous asteroid/planetoid that does not need a living creature to operate you would need to have a few more constraints, one being a marginally higher technical level so you can have decently good robots which at TL=9 would be a main frame and dumbots. Which could be a really good idea in that the players will not be tempted to take them away and sell them. You could also limit what can be built by what programs the mainframe has. It would take robotics and or computer skills to develop a new product. Not just the end product but you would need to program every component of that item.
If currently the dumbots are building flintlock muskets, you could change the item to a percussion cap musket with a new item (percussion cap) and some minor changes to the base design, however changing it to a M16-A2 would require about two orders of magnitude more effort.
Another item to think on would be how many years the starport has been there without involvement of any NPC or player, did the mainframe break down, or did the ore vein peter out and the production stop due to lack of raw materials. Did the place lose it's atmosphere, life support machinery break down or are the airlocks broken. Did the pirate have automated defenses, are they still active?, perhaps they were making one 4 Dt. fighter a month and it's been 500 months...
Ok how much manufacturing and mining capability does it take to support a class B starport?
If we look at Planet Tamer's handbook it lists rules for colony economic development given a labor component TL and capital goods (the means of production) you can say that 1 labor unit produces X economic value per month and consumes Y economic value for support (food, luxuries, housing, repairs for that housing, repairs for the capital goods and other needed buildings. X-Y will be different for different worlds and starting conditions and I leave that for some other gear head to look at. You can just pick a tech level and assign a value for Y and the remainder is the CR/month per worker.
As a house rule for this I would state the shipyard is just another heavy industrial capital good producing a CR value per month just like any other labor and raw material supplied capital good, this number would be the CR value of ships that could be constructed per month IF SUPPLIED WITH PARTS!
Parts would come from the output of either light industrial capital goods or heavy industrial goods capital goods as makes sense for the part in question.
so you have some labor put to food production, some power producing buildings, then mining equipment, construction equipment, then light factories and heavy factories all before you start building the first ton of ship.
Now for a fully autonomous asteroid/planetoid that does not need a living creature to operate you would need to have a few more constraints, one being a marginally higher technical level so you can have decently good robots which at TL=9 would be a main frame and dumbots. Which could be a really good idea in that the players will not be tempted to take them away and sell them. You could also limit what can be built by what programs the mainframe has. It would take robotics and or computer skills to develop a new product. Not just the end product but you would need to program every component of that item.
If currently the dumbots are building flintlock muskets, you could change the item to a percussion cap musket with a new item (percussion cap) and some minor changes to the base design, however changing it to a M16-A2 would require about two orders of magnitude more effort.
Another item to think on would be how many years the starport has been there without involvement of any NPC or player, did the mainframe break down, or did the ore vein peter out and the production stop due to lack of raw materials. Did the place lose it's atmosphere, life support machinery break down or are the airlocks broken. Did the pirate have automated defenses, are they still active?, perhaps they were making one 4 Dt. fighter a month and it's been 500 months...
Sorry to break it to you, but that would be a fail.
You didn't answer the OP questions: How big? How many?
(but it was an interesting bunny trail.)
The how big how many cannot be answered directly till he settles on a tech level rule set and if he's using people or robots/automation of some sort then we can get down to cases.
The Referee must chose the capacity of the shipyard, with a 100 ton ship taking a baseline 40 weeks to build (see Trillion Credit Squadron from classic Traveller) for perhaps 20 million credits that gives the minimal yard capacity of a Classic Traveller class B Starport starts at 500,000 credits a week in construction capacity.
If for example he can build 1 million CR a week and a laborer with one unit of shipyard heavy industry supplied with parts can build CR 500 a week then he needs (1000000/500 = 2000) shipyard workers plus another 2000 industrial workers to build the parts and perhaps half as many again to keep everything working. The rule set specified does provide rules for how large that industrial capital is, and that also is a variable by tech level.
So while I did not tell him directly how big, I did point him to a method to come up with an approximation that should be good enough.
The shipyard capacity rules found in adventure 5 Trillion Credit Squadron do provide a general guidance for shipyard capacity based on government type, population, and economic output, I felt that this case would fall outside the scope of that rule, so the colony model in World tamer's handbook could be adapted to answer the question for a dedicated facility with or without on site parts production.
Now as to the cost of this... the capital has costs listed for each type of capital for each tech level, however this is a pirate... If you got your start by capturing a colony ship, spacing the colonists and then using your starting capital to build more capital, and labor units (robots): free.
The Referee must chose the capacity of the shipyard, with a 100 ton ship taking a baseline 40 weeks to build (see Trillion Credit Squadron from classic Traveller) for perhaps 20 million credits that gives the minimal yard capacity of a Classic Traveller class B Starport starts at 500,000 credits a week in construction capacity.
If for example he can build 1 million CR a week and a laborer with one unit of shipyard heavy industry supplied with parts can build CR 500 a week then he needs (1000000/500 = 2000) shipyard workers plus another 2000 industrial workers to build the parts and perhaps half as many again to keep everything working. The rule set specified does provide rules for how large that industrial capital is, and that also is a variable by tech level.
So while I did not tell him directly how big, I did point him to a method to come up with an approximation that should be good enough.
The shipyard capacity rules found in adventure 5 Trillion Credit Squadron do provide a general guidance for shipyard capacity based on government type, population, and economic output, I felt that this case would fall outside the scope of that rule, so the colony model in World tamer's handbook could be adapted to answer the question for a dedicated facility with or without on site parts production.
Now as to the cost of this... the capital has costs listed for each type of capital for each tech level, however this is a pirate... If you got your start by capturing a colony ship, spacing the colonists and then using your starting capital to build more capital, and labor units (robots): free.
CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
I think it should be keep in mind that that the base likely is not a cooky cutter star port. But someone felt the need to give it a classification. The star port may meet some requirements of a class B, exceed some, and be well below others.
Here are just a couple varieties
One of the things that gives a star port it's classification is fuel type. Class C is unrefined. Class B is refined. So in one persons eyes it could be lacking a bit in overall shipbuilding capability (be more of a chop shop than a manufacturing facility) but they call it a class B because it has the capability to provide refined fuel.
A class B star port can build a certain sized ship, but there can be huge variance in how many it can produce simultaneously and how quickly it can complete them. For a automobile comparison, you have the 270,000m² Ford Flat Rock Assembly facility with over 3,000 workers that pumps out varieties of the Ford Mustang, Ford Fusion, and Lincoln Continental (sorry couldn't quickly find production numbers but i think it is thousands per day) vs the 3,570m² Bugatti Atelier facility, which is less than 2% of the size, with maybe 100 workers making less than 100 cars a year.
If a small shipyard has the capability to produce one ship every other year with lots of bots and 20 workers could it still be called a class B?
For Mongoose, from the 3I Starports book,
For size, I underline "usually". As indicated above, this could be mostly fuel processing and storage.
Here are just a couple varieties
One of the things that gives a star port it's classification is fuel type. Class C is unrefined. Class B is refined. So in one persons eyes it could be lacking a bit in overall shipbuilding capability (be more of a chop shop than a manufacturing facility) but they call it a class B because it has the capability to provide refined fuel.
A class B star port can build a certain sized ship, but there can be huge variance in how many it can produce simultaneously and how quickly it can complete them. For a automobile comparison, you have the 270,000m² Ford Flat Rock Assembly facility with over 3,000 workers that pumps out varieties of the Ford Mustang, Ford Fusion, and Lincoln Continental (sorry couldn't quickly find production numbers but i think it is thousands per day) vs the 3,570m² Bugatti Atelier facility, which is less than 2% of the size, with maybe 100 workers making less than 100 cars a year.
If a small shipyard has the capability to produce one ship every other year with lots of bots and 20 workers could it still be called a class B?
For Mongoose, from the 3I Starports book,
No mention of numbers are given. Note that I underlined capable. Ships may never have been built at the pirate yard and it functions, as some already suggested, as a chop shop and repair facility. It seams that refining capability and storage capacity is important.
For size, I underline "usually". As indicated above, this could be mostly fuel processing and storage.
In this case, probably a black market.
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I am pretty sure it is MetaGame information from Mongoose to the Referee.
I guess none of them if we're talking about a secret pirate base. I don't believe any of them locating such a base and just rating its starport...
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Clean bathrooms.
After 3 months in a deep space Type S with no shore leave, recycled stale life support and only Sgt. Pinback and the annoying alien, scout base raters can be greatly swayed by clean bathrooms.
I have to assume it's the same for pirate Michelin raters.
:rofl:
Right, but there is no reason the referee can't ask that question. Obviously it wasn't TAS or the Scouts. Perhaps the guy that used to own it considered it class B, but it really isn't?
Cheers,
Baron Ovka
