Every Single Traveller Holy War

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

I don't mean to start anything, but I finally can't resist... it's an honest question, and I wasn't present at any of the TML flamewars.

I'm reading a certain otherwise fabulous adventure with a view to running it, and it's got lots of pirates in it. We're in a region beyond the Imperium. The pirates are preying on this route through which this mid-sized entity conducts business with two smallish-sized entities. There are a couple other smallish-sized entities in that general region as well, one of whom serves as a pirate market/haven.

Let's say these pirates manage to capture a ship with 10,000 tons of refined ore.

1) To whom and how do they expect to sell it, without either them or their buyers getting caught (eventually), or them incurring massive expenses (and risks) for jumping way out of area and/or reloading the stuff to another ship?

2) Why don't the mid- and smallish-sized entities team up, hunt them down in a systematic fashion and blow them and the smallish entity that harbors them to smithereens?

 

[GypsyComet]

I guess I'm out of the loop on any Ship Bridges or Ship Automation Holy Wars...

The ship bridges disagreement comes when comparing Book 2 and HG to MT and TNE. What exactly is, or should be, part of the CT black box of a bridge? This is not the place for details, mind you, but that's what that particular hot spot entails...

 

[GypsyComet]

I don't mean to start anything, but I finally can't resist... it's an honest question, and I wasn't present at any of the TML flamewars.

I'm reading a certain otherwise fabulous adventure with a view to running it, and it's got lots of pirates in it. We're in a region beyond the Imperium. The pirates are preying on this route through which this mid-sized entity conducts business with two smallish-sized entities. There are a couple other smallish-sized entities in that general region as well, one of whom serves as a pirate market/haven.

Let's say these pirates manage to capture a ship with 10,000 tons of refined ore.

1) To whom and how do they expect to sell it, without either them or their buyers getting caught (eventually), or them incurring massive expenses (and risks) for jumping way out of area and/or reloading the stuff to another ship?

2) Why don't the mid- and smallish-sized entities team up, hunt them down in a systematic fashion and blow them and the smallish entity that harbors them to smithereens?

Keeping to the "just a list please" feel of this topic, your question boils down to a well known set of hot spot questions:

Who builds Corsairs? (and the extension "Who would hand a MCr200 starship to a known criminal?")
Who buys/fences what they steal?
Where the heck is this big Navy we keep reading about?

Piracy ties into a lot of the other hot spots, right down to the basic economic model and the nature of jump space. While the TML won't fall for it (again), it used to be the case where a question like the above would eventually drag most of Traveller's other Holy War topics into the fray. Like an episode of Connections gone horribly wrong. I doubt I could build the whole argument tree anymore, but it gets big quickly.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

The basic economic model?

The nature of jump space?

Shit, now I'm curious.

 

[flykiller]

Where the heck is this big Navy we keep reading about?

determine yard construction capacity, yard maintenance capacity, where those yards are, where the high population worlds are, and where the enemy fleet likely is, and you'll see there's really only a few ways to deploy the imperial fleet.

 

[GypsyComet]

The basic economic model?

The nature of jump space?

Shit, now I'm curious.

Remember. You asked.

The easy path is "High Space Piracy" (ie. matching vectors, "cease maneuver or be fired upon", etc.) of interstellar commerce (ie. jump-capable ships en route to other systems).

In order for this to work a Pirate must identify a target and match vectors with it in the relatively brief period between the port and the 100-diameter limit, all while not being identified as a pirate until it is "too late" (whatever that means), since being identified means help can be dispatched, and if the pirate can match vectors, so can a Patrol Cruiser or SDB.

So far that's ship sensor efficiency, the ease of interception, the nature of the Jump horizon (more on that later), ground sensor efficiency, and Local Defense budgets.

Boarding actions are incredibly dangerous, even for fully trained and properly equipped Imperial Marines. The very system on board ships that allows for shirtsleeve space travel, the artificial gravity, can become a deadly weapon if long corridors are available, or even simply between floor and ceiling. That said, the pirate ship may still have high energy weaponry aimed at point-blank range, and Fusion weapons rarely miss at this range.

Now we've involved "what do Marines carry again?", the nature of artificial gravity, and the usefulness of Plasma and Fusion weaponry in space combat, which is itself a hot topic with many branches.

But (he said, backing up) how can the pirate ship know where a ship will enter or leave the system? Jump is vectorless, right? Incoming ships can appear literally anywhere and outgoing ships just have to clear the Jump Horizon, right? Well, that depends on whether you use Jump Masking, and whether or not you believe that a ship requires a mass (or a Jump Horizon) to exit jump space.

Jump as a bigtime physics breaker, the necessity of mass for exits, and the need for no masses to be along your line of jump.

Oh, and how long will that pirate have to hang out? Just how much commerce is there to rob from, anyway? And how big are the ships that carry most of that commerce? That requires knowing the volume of commerce, which involves knowing how lucrative and/or vital interstellar commerce is, which means knowing the worlds and their resources. Wait. How did this planet fit 20 billion people under domes on a 1000-mile diameter airless rock? These random worlds don't make sense!

Volume of commerce, volume and nature of shipping, necessity of commerce, world detailing, and living with die rolls.

Had enough yet?

 

[aramis]

determine yard construction capacity, yard maintenance capacity, where those yards are, where the high population worlds are, and where the enemy fleet likely is, and you'll see there's really only a few ways to deploy the imperial fleet.

But we know where they ARE deployed, no matter how silly that depoloyment might be. After all, it's in MT's Reb SB. And FSotSI tells us what is in those fleets.

 

[rancke]

But we know where they ARE deployed, no matter how silly that deployment might be. After all, it's in MT's Reb SB.

It's one thing if it's just silly. But if it's unbelievably silly, then perhaps Rebellion Sourcebook is... (dare I even hint at such a horror?) ...wrong?

Though I'm not sure just what it is you think is silly. IIRC, RbS don't go into details below subsector level (and not very much detail at subsector level).

And FSotSI tells us what is in those fleets.

FSotSI is one of he books I never acquired, but from what I've heard, it tells us what's in those fleets after years of fighting. After all, RbS tells us squadrons tend to have 8 major ships apiece (implied in the average number of squadrons and the average number of ships per fleet), whereas I gather that most of the squadrons described in FSotI only have 4.


Hans

 

[aramis]

I fear you have been lead wrong, Hans. FSotSI provides major roles, and at leaast 4 TL variants each. The designs themselves are the problem, not the fluff. The Fluff is useful stuff.

But it only goes UP to the squadron, and RebSB only DOWN to the fleet. Realistically, neither is useful. I only have it dead tree, and it's burried at the moment. That gap is the problem...

RebSB doesn't account for major fleet assets like bases; by not specifying squadron:fleet ratios, it leaves it all entirely vague. Which was my rather sarcastic point.

 

[rancke]

I fear you have been lead wrong, Hans. FSotSI provides major roles, and at leaast 4 TL variants each.

I've been told most (all?) of the squadrons had 4 major ships instead of 8. Was I misinformed? I said nothing about their compositions.

The designs themselves are the problem, not the fluff. The Fluff is useful stuff.

Yes, I wish I had gotten hold of that book. Any chance that you'd add the useful stuff to the Traveller wiki?

But it only goes UP to the squadron, and RebSB only DOWN to the fleet. Realistically, neither is useful. I only have it dead tree, and it's burried at the moment. That gap is the problem...

Or an opportunity to fill in the gap with something that makes sense.

RebSB doesn't account for major fleet assets like bases; by not specifying squadron:fleet ratios, it leaves it all entirely vague. Which was my rather sarcastic point.

Sorry, didn't catch the sarcasm. I don't see why you'd expect RbS to account for bases. Bases are below the level of detail that RbS covers. RbS does specifiy the average number of ships per fleet and the average number of squadrons per fleet. Presumably the number and composition of squadrons varies from fleet to fleet. Something like six CruRons, three BatRons, and one special squadron per fleet is what I usually assume.


Hans

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Personally, I'm willing to grant that:

a) space combat is actually possible;
b) boarding actions will usually succeed whenever the boarders are backed up by some badass mothership;
c) wonky UWP worlds and commerce between same can be quasi-plausibly explained with planetary reasons.

Also, the adventure I'm reading is set outside the Imperium, so no Navy problem. In principle.

What bugs me personally is the Somali Precedent.

I mean, look at these losers. Speedboats, AK-47s, holding ships for ransom because they don't have either the wherewithal or the customers for selling the cargo.

In an age of megacorp private armies, those hovels and speedboats would get deflated in no time.

 

[Captain Midnight]

I'll add another log to the "holy wars" fire...

"What is meant by calling the Third Imperium 'feudal', and what does it mean to be a noble?"

 

[Timerover51]

Just for grins, I'm calling people who engage in holy wars Quixotes. It doesn't sound like a bad title, but I don't think it's particularly complimentary. I'm one, by the way. Quixotes generally are uncomfortable with the idea that their discussions could be considered Holy Wars, and usually are convinced that only one side can reasonably claim truth (theirs).

Based on reading this topic, I qualify as a Quixotes. However, I recognize that some of my topics could be considered "Holy Wars", and generally I proceed under the idea that I will be on the losing end. I tend to be the "odd man out" on a regular basis.

 

[infojunky]

Well it has been a decade later, should start again?

 

[Timerover51]

My "Holy War" topics.

Prevalence of criminal activity in Traveller. In many cases, players are assumed to be operating as criminals.

Small Ship Universe

Larger Crew Sizes based on watches for 24 hour coverage

The massive problem of controlling an area with such a time lag in communications.

Personal Energy Weapons. I am not a fan of them.

Insurance for ships

Much greater maintenance set asides. The 0.1% of a ship's cost for annual maintenance charge is far, far too low.

Edit Note:. How the rules treat religion in a pretty much negative way.