Fleet Standard Close Escort?

[mbrinkhues]

Being wealth enough to have something and actually HAVING IT are two totally different things. Otherwise there would be a few more aircraft carriers around IRL in example.

Just because a system might/should have it's own forces does not mean they really will have them. There might be other pork barrels that get shot more often.

Same with the Impies. They MIGHT be there. Or they might be sitting in drydock over some important nobles world filling his coffers. Or out in deep space chasing Zhodanie because an Admiral had some "disfunction" and believes the enemy is "messing with his bodily fluids" (Cowboy hat and ex-Sollie scientist optional)

This are all parts of canon that are quite open to interpretation.

 

[rancke]

There could be several valid explanations for [Walston having two patrol cruises and a dozen fighters].

Oh, sure. In fact, I'm working on an adventure set on Walston right now, and I've come up with an explanation. I just mentioned it as a curiosity. One of the few low-population systems whose defenses we know about have a couple of hundred megacredits worth of hardware. I've come up with a special reason why the Imperium wanted to lavish that much money on this specific client state, but for all we know, the Imperium could be in the habit of donating a couple of patrol ships and a dozen fighters to every member world that can't afford to buy them themselves.

There is no reason I can think of which would prevent a skilled pirate from destroying or capturing a small patrol vessel like a patrol cruiser or close escort.

I can think of a few reasons why a pirate might want to think twice before he tried.

1) Military ships would make sure they had jump fuel, so they'd jump away if they were outnumbered.

2) If they were evenly matched, the ships would fight. Unlike pirates, national ships have a government behind them to pay for repairs. Pirates have to pay for any damage out of income. Fighting is not an optimal strategy.

3) Any pirate that successfully engaged a national ship would touch off a massive hunt. It would be vital to make sure he didn't leave behind any evidence of his identity. It would be difficult to make sure a losing opponent didn't jump away with files full of sensor data.

Historically, the majority of successful pirates were only successful for two reasons: fast hit-and-run tactics and their ability to instill fear, causing their victims to surrender without a fight or flee, abandoning ship or town.

Neither of which applies to a Traveller pirate trying to capture a merchant near a patrol ship.

It should also be noted that during the Golden Age of Piracy (late 17th-early 18th Century) the careers of even the most notorious and successful pirate crews were dismally short, seldom lasting for more than two years.

Whereas Traveller portrays piracy as a lifetime career (That is, a normal-length life-time career ).

There were a couple of exceptions, of course: Cheng I Sao of China (a Terran) built up a huge pirate naval empire and protection racket which eventually evolved into organized crime, in every traditional aspect. She retired quite comfortably, and died of old age.

And Morgan ended up as British governor, didn't he?


Hans

 

[Arthur Denger]

I can think of a few reasons why a pirate might want to think twice before he tried.

1) Military ships would make sure they had jump fuel, so they'd jump away if they were outnumbered.

One might suppose this; however, a naval commander who failed to engage pirates (especially if ordered to do so) would likely face mutiny or be relieved of his command (at best), and could end up being blackballed for cowardice, imprisoned or even executed. There are plenty of examples of this IRL.

2) If they were evenly matched, the ships would fight. Unlike pirates, national ships have a government behind them to pay for repairs. Pirates have to pay for any damage out of income. Fighting is not an optimal strategy.

I agree about the fighting, optimally the pirate would take the government ship(s) without bloodshed. However, the historical record shows that pirate vessels rarely docked in any port for repairs; repairs were made by crew, and if their ship was badly damaged in an engagement, the pirate crew simply took their victims' ship(s), destroying the rest.

3) Any pirate that successfully engaged a national ship would touch off a massive hunt. It would be vital to make sure he didn't leave behind any evidence of his identity. It would be difficult to make sure a losing opponent didn't jump away with files full of sensor data.

Is there anything in canon which supports this assertion?

(By national, I assume you refer to an Imperial starship, or one belonging to a local or regional sovereign government.)

On the contrary, the pirate crew would likely torture and/or kill the majority of any crew who resisted, leaving a survivor or two (in cold sleep, perhaps) to recount the grisly details when rescued. The pirates want their identity to be publicized: it builds up their 'resistance is futile!' reputations. (One example, from the Firefly/Serenity universe, would be the Reavers.)

I'd argue that (in the Third Imperium, and certainly earlier) large ships (destroyers and up) and also squadrons of smaller ships are going to be too important a military resource to be squandered on the engagement of pirates. Therefore, even if the ID data goes out across the instelnet, a tight dragnet will not necessarily be forthcoming...

Whereas Traveller portrays piracy as a lifetime career (That is, a normal-length life-time career )...

...And Morgan ended up as British governor, didn't he?

Yes. Morgan, Drake, Lafitte and a handful of others did successfully transition to lives of quasi-legitimacy, however they were the rare exceptions. The vast majority were killed, executed or imprisoned. And while the definition of pirates in LBB:Supplement 4 may be open to interpretation (which might include smugglers, terrorists and privateers, in addition to freebooters), there is not much reason to conclude their ultimate individual fates would be any different than their antecedents'.

 

[pendragonman]

Pendragonman,

Wow, that's some dial back...

Tell us, do you use any vector movement system for ship combat? Because any vector movement system; LBB:2, BL, BR, etc., will produce the same results I'm talking about.

What model do you use for ship combat? HG2 where nothing moves? Or MT's watered down, somewhat flawed, vector-lite system?



You've assumed wrong again. Marc W. Miller decanonized the TCS budget formulas for use within the OTU setting nearly a decade ago.



I couldn't help but notice that both your examples didn't have any picket ships in them. Whether the target starts from a dead start or starts with a vector, the pirate's job is not finished when they match vectors. They still need to get away and get away with damage costing less than the loot they just took.

The retention of normal space vectors through jump has been canon since CT. Most people ignore it for ease of play, but TNE emphasized it for two meta-game reasons 1) TNE's maneuver drives have limited gee turns and B) it finally gave navigators something to do besides making jump plots.


Have fun,
Bill

I use the vector work of LBB 2, and no it doesn't produce the results you claim.

Can anyone point me to where the TCS budget rules were decanonized? For what reason were they shut down, scaling issues? If so, those are modifiable anyway.

I used no pickets in either scenario because the question poised had moved from picket intercept to just the possibilities of freighter-pirate intercept.

As to getting away, that has never been much of an issue for me, either as the pirate or the freighter being boarded. Case in point, this weekend we did something that would be a bit crazy. We took an A2 into Vargr space. Naturally, a Vargr Corsair gave us the "heave to or we fire", so we did. When they went to board us, we counter boarded and took the ship. We did that with 2 marines and a doctor, against the entire crew of the corsair. We used surprise (like the idea of a merchie fighting back) to whack the 2 squads of borders with a tech 7 grenade launcher and a ram grenade launcher each firing one round into the boarders. Then we went back and took out the black gang and headed for the bridge. As we were connected at that point by a boarding tunnel, our port pulse turret was at point blank and hit twice to help shut down their manu and cut their small craft from escaping.

Taking, or being taken can be done very quickly if you plan. Thus you can get away very quickly with little or no damage.

 

[pendragonman]

Sadly, no. According to Hunter, Marc Miller has decanonized both Striker and TCS. However, since he didn't provide anything to replace it, and since they agree pretty well with Real Life, I'm still using them.

Note: To reconcile TCS with Striker, I assume that TCS is at a higher level of abstraction. The Cr500 per citizen is an average. My assumption is that it corresponds to the naval slice of a defense budget of 10% of GWP. This is because TCS deals with pocket empires surrounded by other pocket empires. Striker states that military budgets range from 1% of GWP (after prolonged periods of peace) to 15%, which is the maximum a society can sustain for a reasonable time. Budgets for Imperial worlds averages 3% (Emphasis mine).

(Actually, 10% is a bit high. 8% would be better. But if it's 10%, the government modifier table gives us a range from 5% in peacetime to 15% in wartime.)

I should have read your post before replying to Whipsnade.

Since nothing was implemented to replace TCS, clearly it should not be taken out of service until a replacement IS offered. Therefore it is still "canon". Just like the Kennedy class carriers were the main battle carriers for the U.S. fleet until replaced by Nimitz Carriers, or likewise replaced by CVN-21 carriers (Circa 2015 or so). Or the economic model the government uses to determine the poverty level. Just because it is not directly a good economic model doesn't mean that it can't be modified to work.

I lower the 500 to 250 to get my budgets using TCS, and sometimes I adjust the multipliers too, trying to reflect a more player friendly budgetary system.

 

[mbrinkhues]

I use the vector work of LBB 2, and no it doesn't produce the results you claim.

Can anyone point me to where the TCS budget rules were decanonized? For what reason were they shut down, scaling issues? If so, those are modifiable anyway.

I used no pickets in either scenario because the question poised had moved from picket intercept to just the possibilities of freighter-pirate intercept.

As to getting away, that has never been much of an issue for me, either as the pirate or the freighter being boarded. Case in point, this weekend we did something that would be a bit crazy. We took an A2 into Vargr space. Naturally, a Vargr Corsair gave us the "heave to or we fire", so we did. When they went to board us, we counter boarded and took the ship. We did that with 2 marines and a doctor, against the entire crew of the corsair. We used surprise (like the idea of a merchie fighting back) to whack the 2 squads of borders with a tech 7 grenade launcher and a ram grenade launcher each firing one round into the boarders. Then we went back and took out the black gang and headed for the bridge. As we were connected at that point by a boarding tunnel, our port pulse turret was at point blank and hit twice to help shut down their manu and cut their small craft from escaping.

Taking, or being taken can be done very quickly if you plan. Thus you can get away very quickly with little or no damage.

Well, you had a generous GM and/or stupid pirats. Rule 1 is "NEVER hard-dock with a ship until you have it under control"

A smart pirat would have send a boarding crew in suits and/or a subcraft. An UNARMED subcraft. Sure, you can kill the subcraft but than the pirat will kill you. And those who die during the ship-ship exchange will be the lucky ones. Same if you subdue the boarders. Between a series of passworts (to make sure you don't pose as the borderers) and optionally a nice demo-charge in the cockpit a smart pirat will make sure that you don't counter-board.

 

[pendragonman]

Well, you had a generous GM and/or stupid pirats. Rule 1 is "NEVER hard-dock with a ship until you have it under control"

A smart pirat would have send a boarding crew in suits and/or a subcraft. An UNARMED subcraft. Sure, you can kill the subcraft but than the pirat will kill you. And those who die during the ship-ship exchange will be the lucky ones. Same if you subdue the boarders. Between a series of passworts (to make sure you don't pose as the borderers) and optionally a nice demo-charge in the cockpit a smart pirat will make sure that you don't counter-board.

You assume that everyone who tries out piracy is smart and capable. Not all are.

And survivors of these kinds of engagements are the ones who learn these rules to implement them next time. You gotta learn somewhere.

And I did not claim that these pirates were particularly smart or lucky, did I? :smirk:

PC-run pirates are normally much more successful than NPC ones (at least vs a PC ship anyway). And who really cares about NPC pirates taking NPC vessels except as a way to generate scenarios for the party?

 

[Whipsnade]

I use the vector work of LBB 2, and no it doesn't produce the results you claim.

Pendragonman,

That's odd. The results of LBB:2's combat system is exactly what convinced me decades ago that your claims have no validity. Especially when you factor in LBB:2's extremely long weapon ranges. As I pointed out before, using LBB:2 you can sit outside of Earth's 100D limit and shoot at ship in Earth orbit.

For the others in this thread, here are some 100D travel times at various gee ratings for two 100D limits:

World size A (all others will be smaller, so travel time will be shorter)

1gee: 0.28 days (6h43m)
2gee: 0.20 days (4h48m)
3gee: 0.16 days
4gee: 0.14 days
5gee: 0.12 days
6gee: 0.11 days

Gas Giant

1gee: 0.75 days (12h43m)
2gee: 0.53 days
3gee: 0.43 days
4gee: 0.37 days
5gee: 0.33 days
6gee: 0.30 days

Can anyone point me to where the TCS budget rules were decanonized?

Mr. Miller announced so on the TML, he's told Hunter, and he's told other Traveller authors and publishers. Your excuse about continuing to use TCS and Striker for a purpose that the game's creater and IP holder has explicitly said is no longer valid is nothing but sour grapes and your "valid until superceded" rationale is laughable.

Mr. Miller says you can't use those metrics anymore and produce canonically valid results. You opinion, my opinion, and anyone's opinion on the subject doesn't matter on whit.

I used no pickets in either scenario because the question poised had moved from picket intercept to just the possibilities of freighter-pirate intercept.

Finally, an explanation! You're using a "special circumstances" to create your results. Hell, I can rope in enough special cricumstances to make an act of piracy work in orbit off More right above the Archduke's Palace. Special circumstances are just that; special. The rest of us are taking about pirates earning their daily bread, you can't wait for or rely on special circumstance when you need to eat or repair your ship.

As to getting away, that has never been much of an issue for me...

Without any pickets or other ships on hand - an unlikely situation anywhere there's going to be merchant traffic worth attacking - you wouldn't need to worry about getting away. Sadly, the deck isn't always stacked that way.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[atpollard]

I saw a TV show on “modern pirates” (I know, not the best source for accurate information, but a quick way to obtain a general overview).

A tactic that they mentioned as increasing is an “organized crime” approach to piracy where everything about the ship is known before it leaves port. A containerized freighter is intercepted in open water, the entire crew is killed, weighted and dumped. The ship’s name is changed to match new registry papers created in advance. The ship docks at a port in another part of the world and delivers the stolen cargo which has been pre-sold. A large racket with multi-million dollar profits.

A technique for boarding sometimes used is to disguise the ship and crew as a patrol craft and board the victims for inspection. This is occasionally done by real navy crews looking to make a little extra money on the side. [Think of a planetary navy close escort (from a poor world) snatching an occasional free trader or subsidized merchant refueling at the gas giant when no other ships are around. “Just passing through” can be dangerous.]

 

[robject]

Well, you had a generous GM and/or stupid pirats.

...but a fun game where the players won.

 

[pendragonman]

Pendragonman,

That's odd. The results of LBB:2's combat system is exactly what convinced me decades ago that your claims have no validity. Especially when you factor in LBB:2's extremely long weapon ranges. As I pointed out before, using LBB:2 you can sit outside of Earth's 100D limit and shoot at ship in Earth orbit.

For the others in this thread, here are some 100D travel times at various gee ratings for two 100D limits:

World size A (all others will be smaller, so travel time will be shorter)

1gee: 0.28 days (6h43m)
2gee: 0.20 days (4h48m)
3gee: 0.16 days
4gee: 0.14 days
5gee: 0.12 days
6gee: 0.11 days

Gas Giant

1gee: 0.75 days (12h43m)
2gee: 0.53 days
3gee: 0.43 days
4gee: 0.37 days
5gee: 0.33 days
6gee: 0.30 days



Mr. Miller announced so on the TML, he's told Hunter, and he's told other Traveller authors and publishers. Your excuse about continuing to use TCS and Striker for a purpose that the game's creater and IP holder has explicitly said is no longer valid is nothing but sour grapes and your "valid until superceded" rationale is laughable.

Mr. Miller says you can't use those metrics anymore and produce canonically valid results. You opinion, my opinion, and anyone's opinion on the subject doesn't matter on whit.



Finally, an explanation! You're using a "special circumstances" to create your results. Hell, I can rope in enough special cricumstances to make an act of piracy work in orbit off More right above the Archduke's Palace. Special circumstances are just that; special. The rest of us are taking about pirates earning their daily bread, you can't wait for or rely on special circumstance when you need to eat or repair your ship.



Without any pickets or other ships on hand - an unlikely situation anywhere there's going to be merchant traffic worth attacking - you wouldn't need to worry about getting away. Sadly, the deck isn't always stacked that way.


Have fun,
Bill

As I have said before, and have to say again, the picket makes no difference in the interception of the freighter by the pirate unless the freighter races toward the picket right away, which is why the problem reduced to such.

As to the weapon ranges, you are correct in that CT has HUGE weapon ranges, and weapons from the 100 d limit can indeed hit ships in close earth orbit. You still cannot shoot at ships in the sensor shadow of the planet (i.e. on the other side of the planet) which has been my premise from the beginning.

As to your arguments about my continued use of TCS, I refer you to one of the basic "rules" of Traveller:

A GM may modify whatever rules he wants and have "canonical" results for his TU.

Now that I have said that, argue away.

EDIT:

I have just reread Mayday (May the Universal One Bless the CT CD!). While it is very similar to the ship combat in LBB2, it is not the same. Mayday abstracts the vector math to single hexes for each g of thrust. I have read LBB2 to read the use of actual vector math, which does make a difference in use.

Since most of my current players are not truly comfortable with high speed vector calculations for quick game play, I am going to show them Mayday and see what they think.

 

[Arthur Denger]

...an “organized crime” approach to piracy where everything about the ship is known before it leaves port. A containerized freighter is intercepted in open water, the entire crew is killed, weighted and dumped. The ship’s name is changed to match new registry papers created in advance. The ship docks at a port in another part of the world and delivers the stolen cargo which has been pre-sold. A large racket with multi-million dollar profits.

A technique for boarding sometimes used is to disguise the ship and crew as a patrol craft and board the victims for inspection. This is occasionally done by real navy crews looking to make a little extra money on the side. [Think of a planetary navy close escort (from a poor world) snatching an occasional free trader or subsidized merchant refueling at the gas giant when no other ships are around. “Just passing through” can be dangerous.]

Sounds like the contemporary South Pacific model of piracy. The above scenario certainly seems far more plausible (and playable) than the typical 'yo-ho-ho-ist' smash & grab style. Said close escort (patrol cruiser, pinnace, etc) needn't have cargo room for booty, merely carry a second skeleton crew aboard to ferry the captured ship.

...
I have just reread Mayday (May the Universal One Bless the CT CD!). While it is very similar to the ship combat in LBB2, it is not the same. Mayday abstracts the vector math to single hexes for each g of thrust. I have read LBB2 to read the use of actual vector math, which does make a difference in use.

Since most of my current players are not truly comfortable with high speed vector calculations for quick game play, I am going to show them Mayday and see what they think.

IMO, Mayday's simplified vector/hex system is far more playable than LLB:2 -- you don't have to be a trig master to play it. (I'm sure for some math geeks out there, that makes it less desirable!) Bill's point about matching vectors and docking is still valid: even in Mayday it is a tricky, tricky business. I've only been able to do it once with success, and that was after the target ship's power plant was disabled in combat, silencing its lasers and M-drive. Had the target vessel kept back a single missile, the result could still have been catastrophic for the attacking ship.

Mayday is a lot of fun, and once the players have gotten a little practice, I think you'll find the whole procedure can progress quite rapidly.

Enjoy!

 

[rancke]

One might suppose this; however, a naval commander who failed to engage pirates (especially if ordered to do so) would likely face mutiny or be relieved of his command (at best), and could end up being blackballed for cowardice, imprisoned or even executed. There are plenty of examples of this IRL.

Of course a naval commander who's directly ordered to engage a superior enemy, or whose orders don't leave him any discretion, has to do so or face a court martial. The question is, how likely is it that he would be ordered to engage regardless of the odds? This is certainly a place where mileages may legitimately vary. But if they stay, they'll stay to fight. I can't see any admiral ordering his ships to surrender to pirates rather than running away.

I agree about the fighting, optimally the pirate would take the government ship(s) without bloodshed. However, the historical record shows that pirate vessels rarely docked in any port for repairs; repairs were made by crew, and if their ship was badly damaged in an engagement, the pirate crew simply took their victims' ship(s), destroying the rest.

And that is one of the differences between historical piracy and Traveller piracy and why analogies between the two are often flawed. Historical pirates could repair their wooden ships on deserted beaches at the cost of the labor. Traveller pirates has to get their damage repaired at fully-equipped repair facilities at the cost of megacredits.

(Also, historical pirates could disguise their ships. The ships Traveller pirates capture are chock full of engines and electronic doodads festooned with serial numbers. Faking a transponder is possible, but it's an axiom of mine that no pirate can disguise a captured ship against a really thorough forensic examination.)

3) Any pirate that successfully engaged a national ship would touch off a massive hunt. It would be vital to make sure he didn't leave behind any evidence of his identity. It would be difficult to make sure a losing opponent didn't jump away with files full of sensor data.

Is there anything in canon which supports this assertion?

The Imperium's attitude towards piracy can be judged from the way they reacted when they found out Tarkine was clandestinely supporting piracy (It sent a task force to replace the government and made Tarkine a client state) and when the people of Lewis imposed excessively high tariffs on visiting merchants (they sent a 60,000 T cruiser to ask them to mend their ways).

How would the US react if an armed ship captured a coast guard vessel and sailed off with it? Would they try to track it down? Would they want it back?

(By national, I assume you refer to an Imperial starship, or one belonging to a local or regional sovereign government.)

Yes.

I'd argue that (in the Third Imperium, and certainly earlier) large ships (destroyers and up) and also squadrons of smaller ships are going to be too important a military resource to be squandered on the engagement of pirates.

That may be because you haven't considered the difference in cost of destroyers and combat vessels (Of which the regular IN has between 20,000 and 28,000). You can get 25 Chrysanthemums for the cost of one Gionetti. And the Gionetti is a light cruiser. The average combat vessel (which includes battleships and 1,000,000 T carriers) would be considerably bigger. As for patrol ships, which are a better match for canonical pirate vessels than the Chrysanthemum, I don't have the cost here, but as 400 T vessels, they presumably cost less than half what a Chrysanthemum does.

As for duchy (subsector) navies and planetary navies, we know very little about them, but we do know the average naval budget of Imperial planetary navies. Believe me, high-population worlds can afford a few hundred destroyers and still have money left over for several trillion credit squadrons. (How many they would actually buy would, of course, depend on the perceived need. In a universe without pirates, they might not perceive any ).

Therefore, even if the ID data goes out across the instelnet, a tight dragnet will not necessarily be forthcoming...

By committing an act of piracy, the pirate ship becomes forfeit to the legal authorities (Note, that's an assumption, not canon, but somehow I don't see how any authority would refrain from confiscating a pirate ship). Ships a worth millions of credits. If the ship can be identified, simple greed will ensure that someone will want to track it down and capture it, and the value of a ship (which can be sold quite legally on the open market and thus has its full value) is enough to pay for an awful lot of man-hours and ship-time.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Mr. Miller announced so on the TML, he's told Hunter, and he's told other Traveller authors and publishers. Your excuse about continuing to use TCS and Striker for a purpose that the game's creator and IP holder has explicitly said is no longer valid is nothing but sour grapes and your "valid until superseded" rationale is laughable.

Them's fighting words, Bill.

Mr. Miller says you can't use those metrics anymore and produce canonically valid results. You opinion, my opinion, and anyone's opinion on the subject doesn't matter on whit.

That's not quite how it works, Bill. Without something else to tell us what is canonical, it's perfectly possible for a Traveller author to use those figures without contradicting canon. If I work out a navy for, say, Heya, based on 3% of Heya's GWP, who's going to tell me that it's not canonical just because it fits with Striker's figures?

Now, if I work out the defenses of Trin and give it the equivalent of five full Imperial fleets (or however many fleets it is that you can maintain for 60% of 3% of Trin's GWP), you could presumably demonstrate that it doesn't fit with the force levels implied by the rules in Fifth Frontier War. But at the force levels that Trin would have, I don't really care if it's the equivalent of one or five fleets. For role-playing purposes Trin's defenses are "Too big for any overt shenanigans", and that's good enough for me.



Hans

 

[mbrinkhues]

I am not sure that we lack data on the Subsektor navies. One could read the Rebellion SB in a way that those forces are part of the "Colonial" or Sector Navy and therefor part of the Reserve Fleet each sector has.

And ID'ing a ship only works if the Deio-Chips are in use (post 1080 or even later) AND the pirat does not find a way around those AND has an imperial registered ship. Otherwise it's "repaint the ship, reprogramm the transponder". Ships in the OTU are described as "mass produced from identical plans" similar to planes or canal barges after all.

Killing an escort is what nuclear tipped missiles are for. After all as a pirat you are dead anyway so why not go all the way. Most escorts have no nuke dampers.

 

[rancke]

As I have said before, and have to say again, the picket makes no difference in the interception of the freighter by the pirate unless the freighter races toward the picket right away, which is why the problem reduced to such.

It makes all the difference in the world. The freighter jumps in near the picket. That means it is inside the range of the picket's weapons. That means that any pirate that wants to intercept the freighter will have to come within range of the picket's weapons. At which point, the picket will shoot at the pirate. Pirates don't like being shot at. They especially dislikes being shot at in any situation where having their jump drive disabled or their fuel tanks ruptured will result in their inevitable capture.

As to the weapon ranges, you are correct in that CT has HUGE weapon ranges, and weapons from the 100 d limit can indeed hit ships in close earth orbit. You still cannot shoot at ships in the sensor shadow of the planet (i.e. on the other side of the planet) which has been my premise from the beginning.

Not only is that not true (A missile-armed ship would be able to fire at a ship in the sensor shadow of a planet using relayed sensor data), it's also a false premise. A freighter that jumps into the system at the jump limit isn't going to enter any sensor shadow until it reaches the planet itself. Hopefully you don't propose that a pirate would attempt to intercept a ship in orbit around the planet? Well within the 10 diameter limit, which means that if the ship tries to jump, odds are that it will remove itself from the population of active pirate ships without any help from anyone.

Incidentally, any pirate that intercepts a freighter will inevitably be inside the 100 diameter limit and will run a risk when jumping away, but I'm prepared to assume that a pirate is willing to perform such jumps. There's a reasonable chance of surviving those, although I'm not sure how big a life expectancy anyone who makes a habit of it will have.

As to your arguments about my continued use of TCS, I refer you to one of the basic "rules" of Traveller:

A GM may modify whatever rules he wants and have "canonical" results for his TU.

Now that I have said that, argue away.

No one will argue about your right to do whatever you like in your TU. And, no offense, but I'm much more interested in discussing the OTU than in discussing your personal TU (Just as I don't expect other people to be very interested in the parts of my TU that deviates from the OTU).

Since most of my current players are not truly comfortable with high speed vector calculations for quick game play, I am going to show them Mayday and see what they think.

Mayday is a nifty little game. It's been a long time since I played it, but I have fond memories of it.


Hans

 

[mbrinkhues]

Can a freighter jump in close to a picket? There is a ten percent factor in jump time in the OTU so depending on how jumps work exactly what is the chance of a civilian craft to jump in near the military unit?

And do ships from all directions end up at the same point? Or do ships from different planets end up at different points on that 100 diameter sphere?

And finally: Even IF all ships can jump to an exact position, is that desirabel? What if two ships arrive at the exact same time? Rare but so is a nuclear reactor blowing up and yet it has happened IRL.

 

[rancke]

I am not sure that we lack data on the Subsektor navies. One could read the Rebellion SB in a way that those forces are part of the "Colonial" or Sector Navy and therefor part of the Reserve Fleet each sector has.

Certainly one could do that. However, this contradicts the information in HG, which specifically states that the subsector navies are separate organizations. At the meta-level it's obvious that the MT authors changed the subsector navies into the reserve fleets (In the character generation rules they did a search-and-replace of the two). But until TPTB specifically states that the information in HG is now invalid, the available evidence shows that there are both reserve fleets (part of the IN) and duchy (subsector) navies (not part of the IN).

And ID'ing a ship only works if the Deyo-Chips are in use (post 1080 or even later) AND the pirate does not find a way around those AND has an imperial registered ship. Otherwise it's "repaint the ship, reprogram the transponder". Ships in the OTU are described as "mass produced from identical plans" similar to planes or canal barges after all.

Can you provide a reference for that?

I could point out that post-1100 (which is the date the Deyo transponders are said to've been installed in every Imperial ship) is just exactly the time when CT material talks of pirates, but I don't believe in the unforgeable transponder. There are several examples of forged transponders in CT material.

Anyway, even the smallest Traveller ship takes many months to build. They are produced from identical plans, sure, but not mass-produced. There are about 1000 Scout/Couriers in the Spinward Marches. Beowulfs and Empress Maravas would number in no more than the hundreds. What sort of ship is your pirate vessel? Where does it go and what does it do when it's not out capturing ships?

Killing an escort is what nuclear tipped missiles are for. After all as a pirate you are dead anyway so why not go all the way.

The cost of nuclear tipped missiles is one reason why not. The cost of illegal nuclear tipped missiles and the difficulty of finding a supplier is another.

Most escorts have no nuke dampers.

Neither have pirates. Most escorts, OTOH, have sandcasters.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Can a freighter jump in close to a picket? There is a ten percent factor in jump time in the OTU so depending on how jumps work exactly what is the chance of a civilian craft to jump in near the military unit?

If jump works the way I've recently come to interpret it, ships will arrive along a half circle with a radius of 100 planetary diameters running from dead ahead of the world to dead astern of it. Some may even come out a little ahead or a little behind. That's why I stated in an earlier post that one picket (which would be stationed at the halfway point along that line) wouldn't be enough to provide complete security (Though if Bill is right about the weapons having a range of more than 100 diameters, they would actually all be within its protection). But their arrival will be distributed along a bell curve, so most of them will arrive within 15 or 20 degrees of the picket. And the thing is, the pirate would have no way of predicting where one of the odd ones would come out, nor when.

And do ships from all directions end up at the same point? Or do ships from different planets end up at different points on that 100 diameter sphere?

Unless the destination is masked, they can aim for the same spot and will arrive along the same line. Masking does introduce complications.

And finally: Even IF all ships can jump to an exact position, is that desirable? What if two ships arrive at the exact same time? Rare but so is a nuclear reactor blowing up and yet it has happened IRL.

Accuracy is 3,000 km for a one parsec jump. That means that if all ships aim for exactly the same point, they'll all arrive at random spots within 3,000 km of that point. That should keep two 15 meter ships from intersecting.


Hans

 

[pendragonman]

Of course a naval commander who's directly ordered to engage a superior enemy, or whose orders don't leave him any discretion, has to do so or face a court martial. The question is, how likely is it that he would be ordered to engage regardless of the odds? This is certainly a place where mileages may legitimately vary. But if they stay, they'll stay to fight. I can't see any admiral ordering his ships to surrender to pirates rather than running away.

And that is one of the differences between historical piracy and Traveller piracy and why analogies between the two are often flawed. Historical pirates could repair their wooden ships on deserted beaches at the cost of the labor. Traveller pirates has to get their damage repaired at fully-equipped repair facilities at the cost of megacredits.

(Also, historical pirates could disguise their ships. The ships Traveller pirates capture are chock full of engines and electronic doodads festooned with serial numbers. Faking a transponder is possible, but it's an axiom of mine that no pirate can disguise a captured ship against a really thorough forensic examination.)

C.F. the British Navy circa Napoleonic Wars for examples of ships ordered to engage regardless.

Fully equiped repair facilities can be found hidden in asteroid belts or outer planets of systems or other similarly desolate (or not so desolate) places. Think Port o Prince or any of the Barbary ports as examples of refitting areas.

As to disguising a ship, surely you have heard of pop turrets, false skins and the like. Remember, a really thorough forensic exam would mean the Navy personnel have control of the ship, then the jig is normally up already anyway.