Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
It is indeed.Well that's the nut.
So it all comes down to a decision of Have vs Need.
Is it better to Need and Not Have ... or is it better to Have and Not Need?
Which then devolves into risk assessment.
With respect to Traveller setting pirate encounters, the ramifications of being forced to "heave to and be boarded" can range from ... paying a toll/tax to the pirates, where no one gets hurt (except the operator's finances) and there's no wanton damage inflicted ... all the way up through take prisoners/sell as slaves, seize starship/take as prize ... and at the extreme end there's just straight up "kill them all" and take the hulk for scrap.
As appropriately noted elsewhere in these forums, piracy is basically a "racket of bullies" who want to reduce the risks involved in their operations too. Compliant merchants with a "help yourself" attitude will typically be treated friendlier than those who put up stiff resistance ... but that's just an abstract notion rather than a rule you can count on in every circumstance.
So seen in that light, if a merchant ship on its route can expect to encounter pirates, say ... once year (on average) ... over a 40 year service lifespan that then amounts to 40 interactions with pirates. If a ship preemptively "surrenders" each time and pays a "toll" of MCr1-6 (roll 1D6) each time to "ransom" the ship back to the operator, 40*3.5=MCr140 in expected operational losses to pirates over the course of 40 years of operations.
Note: MCr140 easily exceeds the value of a J1 Free Trader or a J2 Far Trader. It even exceeds the value of a J1 Fat Trader.
Now ... as a merchant ... ask yourself.
If you're going to pay MCr140 over 40 years ANYWAY ... would you as an operator rather spend that amount of money "on paying off pirates" to let you keep your starship (and crew and livelihood and business) ... OR ... would you rather spend an extra MCr140 on construction costs/bank loans to get a bigger maneuver drive+power plant and be able to EVADE those pirate interceptions?
I offer that mindset up as an example of the kind of financial analysis that can go into the motivations behind choosing a fast trader (with high maneuver power/agility) versus a slow trader (with minimal maneuver power/agility). If you "don't pay" up front in your choice of starship class ... you could just be signing yourself up to "pay" after taking delivery and running transport services.
You can, of course, "tickle the numbers" to get the risk analysis to provide you with different results, but I just wanted to demonstrate the thinking behind that informs the choices.
Of course, the easiest way to ensure that the opportunities for pirate attacks each year remains ZERO is to only jump to worlds with type A/B starports ... C-X need not apply. Sticking to type A/B starports is the functional equivalent of "outsourcing" the safety and security of your starship and crew to local system defense patrols (so not quite a convoy escort protection, but close enough for the purposes of our discussion).
This is why I say that the J1 Free Trader and J2 Far Trader work wonderfully inside of well patrolled and defended space lanes. Leave the "protection" of type A/B starport services for the fringes and backwater worlds and you're basically a sitting duck for some "entrepreneurial" pirate to come along and pick you off as a reward for your complacency.
In that respect, pirates are a bit like misjumps.
Pretty low odds of them happening at any specific moment ... but if you add up "low odds" lots of times, eventually you're going to get unlucky. That's why it's better to invest in countermeasures (fuel purification plants vs misjumps, escort fighters and maneuver drives vs pirates) to reduce the risks associated with those outcomes as much as possible by design and business model.