Variant: Tukera hires the PCs to retrieve the computer. Oberlindes hires someone else to also retrieve the computer because it woud now be theirs if not for the embezzling employees. Hilarity ensues.
Piracy: A primer
- Thread starter Hal
- Start date
Variant: Tukera hires the PCs to retrieve the computer. Oberlindes hires someone else to also retrieve the computer because it woud now be theirs if not for the embezzling employees. Hilarity ensues.
You're missing the other component of piracy -- ships to loot. It takes 10's of millions of Credits to set up an enterprise that can bring in profits in the 10's of thousands of Credits per month, if that. Free Traders seem to work on the edge of survival as it is.
Simply, they can not sustain any reasonable chance of taking MCr's of damage. Bad enough losing a cargo, but ship damage is unsustainable.
Shops can handle "employee shrinkage" and shoplifting. But they can not absorb the costs of shops being routinely fire bombed in to destruction. It's not worth the risk, not just to self, but to the economic security of the trader.
So that means that any place there is any real chance of pirate activity will be boycotted by traders. They won't go,
That doesn't mean there won't be piracy of opportunity. Or wartime raiding, but simply it's likely be rare enough to be something more of a plot element in an adventure rather than a pervasive reality of trade.
The Oz
SOC-14 1K
Very true: Historically, ships were cheap, so there were thousands of ships, replacing them was cheap, and the cargoes were often worth more than the ship was, so pirates were more interested in the cargo than the ship.
In TRAVELLER the ships are expensive and are usually the real "prize" to be captured.
In TRAVELLER the ships are expensive and are usually the real "prize" to be captured.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Sp, this is a thread on Piracy: A primer. How does Piracy work in your Universe? How do they attack ships and get away before they're nailed to the barn door by the Imperial Navy?
It is one thing to calculate how much money/revenue that the pirates can take if they successfully abscond with a hull they've captured. It is another thing to actively take a ship, get past the override codes, the fail-safes, etc - and get away.
So, give us the details
I have no Imperial Navy.
Well I am a bit loath to go into detail as this is an arena of mystery and discovery about 'how things work' IMTU.
But I can shoot for broad strokes.
The part time or mortgage skips try piracy the way you suggest it, overhauling a ship the hard way.
That could work, although I expect a more common occurrence is dump over pleasing cargo (maybe even loads or cash boxes on hand for the occasion), the pirate comes and scoops them up possibly with a high-G small boat, essentially a pirate tariff/protection racket.
For actually getting the target ship to cooperate quickly and give up the ship with codes intact, the pirate crew will have to have the reputation of absolute safety if you give up, and absolute death or worse if you don't.
But, that's the amateurs.
The professionals will operate on another level.
They will hijack, and not just pistols, but sophisticated crew takedown and control.
They will get crew onboard for intel and acting at the right time.
They will operate on intel, know your routes and weaknesses and strike at optimal times.
They will cause fuel leaks to spring as the ship heads to the jump limit or perhaps jump drive fuel pump sabotage, so when it's jump time, the ship can't jump.
They will slip into standard jump lanes with those false flag-IFF corsairs, to be able to pounce on prepped ships like the above, and slip away without showing true colors if the target becomes too hard.
They will otherwise do most of their boarding with much more expendable and fast small boats.
A unique feature of my pirate clans is that they are a long-term community, less opportunistic Caribbean pirates and more Black Sea Cossack Pirates. So, they are particularly interested in sustainability and practical matters.
One of the things they do is arrange for cargoes to be shipped that contain things like starship drives/weapons, high grade medical equipment/drugs, makers, etc.
They will then 'capture' the subtly cooperative ship, get the agreed-upon cargo for the arranged price, and pay in cash or illegal drugs/guns/biotech from the Cloud either right then or in some back channel way.
Chumps chase ships. Professionals have the ships come to them.
How big of a community? How many take downs a year in an area of how many ship transits? Do they have any competition? How many of these communities exist?
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Now now that would be telling re: numbers!
The amateurs would operate as the 81 encounter table would have it, low level starports and scraps. The really desperate are looking to score just the fuel and life support supplies to get a few more weeks of running time.
The pirate clans are more bold but still wouldn't hit the main sub-100D jump lanes for the richest planets, Earth Mars and the Centauri worlds Prometheus and Pronoia.
However, I have TL10 in play, and so there are fueling stations in-between to make the J-2 distance work with J-1 ships.
The clan pirates wouldn't dare Faust Vegas' guns and besides it's too good of an intel source, but many ships won't risk FV's on-station lures and go to private and national fuel stations.
THEY are ripe picking for a professional with top intel and the virtually no-100D distance for jump escape.
The Oort Cloud is one great big piracy zone, the metal poor area can find value in just scrap hulls and so they aren't so picky about keeping target ships in one piece. Of course, always better to salvage a drive or plant.
The clans are less about hitting the big time and going home rich and more about keeping their piratical lifestyle out of the reach of the Confederation.
As such it's not about X hauls generating Y funds for Z people, as it is getting high value items that are not easy to make in the Cloud or UnSurveyed Space.
Cash of course helps secure under the table buys and intel and so a clan heist can be just about money, usually a lot
If amateurs run into the clans, the clans will win 90% of the time and the amateurs are really just another victim class. A few that impress may be asked to join.
Gas giants are largely not worth it, too few of them and too susceptible to patrol and satnet deployment.
The amateurs would operate as the 81 encounter table would have it, low level starports and scraps. The really desperate are looking to score just the fuel and life support supplies to get a few more weeks of running time.
The pirate clans are more bold but still wouldn't hit the main sub-100D jump lanes for the richest planets, Earth Mars and the Centauri worlds Prometheus and Pronoia.
However, I have TL10 in play, and so there are fueling stations in-between to make the J-2 distance work with J-1 ships.
The clan pirates wouldn't dare Faust Vegas' guns and besides it's too good of an intel source, but many ships won't risk FV's on-station lures and go to private and national fuel stations.
THEY are ripe picking for a professional with top intel and the virtually no-100D distance for jump escape.
The Oort Cloud is one great big piracy zone, the metal poor area can find value in just scrap hulls and so they aren't so picky about keeping target ships in one piece. Of course, always better to salvage a drive or plant.
The clans are less about hitting the big time and going home rich and more about keeping their piratical lifestyle out of the reach of the Confederation.
As such it's not about X hauls generating Y funds for Z people, as it is getting high value items that are not easy to make in the Cloud or UnSurveyed Space.
Cash of course helps secure under the table buys and intel and so a clan heist can be just about money, usually a lot
If amateurs run into the clans, the clans will win 90% of the time and the amateurs are really just another victim class. A few that impress may be asked to join.
Gas giants are largely not worth it, too few of them and too susceptible to patrol and satnet deployment.
So ... they need a holocaust cloak, then?
Yes!
In my setting, the pirates are mostly (90%) remnants of the defeated Sidereal Federation Fleet; they have hide outs, places built during the war, and space is too big to find all of them. If a navy patrol arrives, they just scatter into the deep dark, so to help counter this, the Unity government will hire mercenaries to hunt down the pirates ... good for the players at time being, though one would think that as time goes by, attrition will do most of the work.
