Naval Raiding Forces

[kaladorn]

Hal, one point:
1. A pirate is only a pirate if engaged in piracy or whom has formerly been identified as such (hence if you get a clear match on some distinguishing characteristic emissions, like a leak from the left Lepton Injector, then you've got a match).

Also, a lot of the viability of piracy depends on your rules for:
1. How easy it is to see other ships
2. How easy it is to intercept other ships
3. How easy it is to disable other ships
4. How easy it is to identify other ships (after seeing them)

These factors really determine the viablility of straight up space intercept style piracy.

Of course, pirates with ears to the ground around local scout and naval bases (and maybe illicit ties through same for drugs, guns, sensors, women, etc) may well know that a pirate hunting armada is in system and lie doggo for a month or two. The Navy will eventually shuffle its finite assets elsewhere and the pirates can return to business.

So intelligence gathering and counter-intel will be a large part of the pirates success and a large part of anti-piracy operations.

 

[Hal]

Originally posted by kaladorn:
Hal, one point:
1. A pirate is only a pirate if engaged in piracy or whom has formerly been identified as such (hence if you get a clear match on some distinguishing characteristic emissions, like a leak from the left Lepton Injector, then you've got a match).

Also, a lot of the viability of piracy depends on your rules for:
1. How easy it is to see other ships
2. How easy it is to intercept other ships
3. How easy it is to disable other ships
4. How easy it is to identify other ships (after seeing them)

These factors really determine the viablility of straight up space intercept style piracy.

Of course, pirates with ears to the ground around local scout and naval bases (and maybe illicit ties through same for drugs, guns, sensors, women, etc) may well know that a pirate hunting armada is in system and lie doggo for a month or two. The Navy will eventually shuffle its finite assets elsewhere and the pirates can return to business.

So intelligence gathering and counter-intel will be a large part of the pirates success and a large part of anti-piracy operations.

Agreed on all points. Part of the issues that crop up are based on actual game system involved. I generally don't know FF&S or MegaTraveller rules for sensors (so someone else can answer those questions. CT's rules for sensor ranges are based on MAYDAY - which if I recall correctly is around 1 to 1.5 light seconds for a merchant ship, and I think double that. GURPS TRAVELLER rules I never got the chance to test. To the best of my knowledge, there aren't too many game systems that permit drive emission pattern matching etc.

What I'd really like to see is an effort made to game out these situations using:

CT vector rules
CT MAYDAY rules
GURPS/CT Mayday FUSION rules
GURPS VECTOR rules.

Since others like TNE, MEGATRAVELLER, and D20 rules as well (Don't forget T4!) - it would be interesting to try the "same" scenario using all the different rule sets to see what happens.

 

[kaladorn]

Brilliant Lances is a brilliant game, it'd be a good choice, though not compatible with other Trav systems very much.

The things not often covered though are the difference between spotting a blip and ID-ing it to a particular ship (which assumes you have good data on that ship on-hand and that the ship hasn't modified its emissions profile sufficiently to hide or obscure a good ID).

See, in the modern world, a big problem is when you get a blip, you don't know if it is a 747, an enemy fighter, a missile, etc. On sea, you can get a radar contact, but is it an enemy attack boat, a carrier, or just a barge? You have to get a visual ID or some similar strong ID. And stuff can be faked (visual outlines, EM signatures, performance envelopes) so you need to gather a lot of this kind of data to be really really sure. And this is in a world where ships (legitemate ones, 99% of the time) don't just 'pop' into a system.

So, I can see where the entire result you'd get depends a lot on how you answer these kinds of things. To me, in space, sensor operator is the MOST key bridge position. A good one of these is worth stupendous amounts of CR.