Piracy Redux

[sablewyvern]

Jump Space wipes the slate IMHO - much simpler.

An explanation could be that a sun's gravity well grabs and drags a ship while still in jumpspace, and then the local target world does the same thing, resulting in a suitable vector on re-emergence. Perhaps the bulk of the time spent in J-Space is in fact spent escaping the initial gravity well and synching with the target system.

 

[jawillroy]

I don't think that a pre-jump vector should give a pursuer any kind of clue about what system you're headed to - it might indicate what direction your vector would be pointing once you got out of jump, though. And that's where a navigator would have to be really very precise, and have good data on the expected positions of planetary bodies (and whatnot) in the destination system.*

The more I think about it, I reckon commercial ships will come out of jump well outside those 100 diameters. I remember LBB2 suggesting in-system travel for ships coming in from jump could take days, and I'm inclined to go with that.

I need to think about it more, but I'd wonder how a roll on Nav skill might be used to shave time off a jump's in-system travel component, as well as the time spent in jumpspace. Seems like there ought to be risk involved in shaving it too close...

*(IMTU, this is where the cr10,000 charts come into play, and why you should pay big bucks for that generate program; they're self-erasing not for copy protection, but to remove the navigational hazard represented by the use of jump-charts past their accurate date. Thinking of a routine conversation with the clerk at the starport navigation office: "Right then: One chart for armed merchant Anabel, class 2 hull, 1 parsec from Staeanger to Uslant. Please confirm that your expected time and coordinates for jump fall within the windows stated on the chart, and sign here... and here. Seearr Tenkay. The usual account? Open sky.")

 

[Matt123]

Wow, 8 pages since I last visited, I should have kept up!

I am impressed with this excellent example of a Jedi ‘hand wave’ as a way of dismissing an arguement.

Quote: Matt123
Why would the pirate make the demand to pull over via radio instead of tightbeam laser comm.

Reply: apollard
The Merchant has only radio, so it would not hear your military comm.

Curious, what makes you think someone with a multi-million credit ship/business would skip on cheap secure comms gear. Communications are the life blood of commerce, the ability to secure a price for your cargo before you land is invaluable. Radio simply tells everyone listening about your affairs.

If you were thinking of Meson comms, I would agree with you, but Laser/Maser comms & radar are well established by TL10, let alone TL12/13.


Refering to the same post I made

Quote: whipsnade
Your forgetting about the time involved.
Re-read ATPollard's original example. The merchie in it immediately stops thrusting under orders from the pirate and - before the pirate can even match vectors, let alone board - the fighters have engaged the pirate vessel.

Again you have ignored the proposition that you very politely request the Captain to shut down his comms. You remind the Captain he has insurance to cover his losses and that passengers take a dim view of being in the middle of a firefight that the Captain could have avoided.

If he fails to comply, you knock a few holes in him & will likely still get your 30 minutes of pillaging. If he complies, you get to take your time & he & his ship survive intact to make an insurance claim.

As a Captain with the responsibility of the lives of crew & passengers, fighting or broadcasting Maydays is not neccesarily the best option. Pacification of the Pirate & leaving him to the Navy to sort out is the solution I would pick.

Cheers!
Matt

 

[Matt123]

On a differant tangent, the first issue with boarding & stealing captured vessels is with finding prize crews. I suspect finding like minded individuals interested in the piracy career path would be difficult, let alone finding professonally trained pilots & navigators with this inclination.

In the 1600-1700's crews were often offered a chance to join pirate ships & when you compare conditions of service, it is no wonder that many accepted. The conditions of service in the OTU are much, much better and far less likely to generate willing pirate crews.

Personally I prefer the idea of nicking the small craft/air raft and anything in the Captains safe before leaving quickly. Cargo is too random unless you accidentally hit a mail ship.

One post that made me laugh was whipsnade's post
"It's heartening to see the woefully silly, nearly impossible, loiter-without-being-noticed, catch-and-loot-them-between-port-and-jump, Yo-Ho-Ho/Hollywood idea of full-time pirates finally be ditched in this thread."

I don't believe anyone was suggesting that particular Piracy tactic was the best option, but that wouldn't stop people with the inclination from trying. My preferance would be intra-system Piracy, but only because it is less risky and potentially just as lucrative. Not because the 100D loiter is "nearly impossible".

Cheers!
Matt

 

[Icosahedron]

I don't think that a pre-jump vector should give a pursuer any kind of clue about what system you're headed to - it might indicate what direction your vector would be pointing once you got out of jump, though. And that's where a navigator would have to be really very precise, and have good data on the expected positions of planetary bodies (and whatnot) in the destination system.*

If you go with Newtonian 'artillery shell' vector retention, you need to set up a vector that closely matches that of the target system and planet. Realistically, the largest part of that vector will be the relative velocity difference between the starting starsystem and the destination starsystem - stars are not static, they are all flying through space in effectively random directions at enormous speeds. They seem static because of the distances involved.

All the pursuer has to do is clock your (enormous and time-consuming) vector and fit it to his database of relative star velocities. Voila! he knows which system you're heading for.

Even with Local Centre of Gravity vector retention, if your pursuer knows that your exit vector is the same as your arrival vector, there will be a finite number of solutions for systems within jump range that will match that particular vector with a planet. Especially if you're not trying to evade pursuit and your planned planetary intercept is a standard 'best fit' model.

I'm not saying I could figure it out as a player, but I think a qualified Navigator with a TL12 Navcomp could make a pretty good guess at which of the few nearby worlds would vector-match your ship.

If, OTOH, you are deliberately avoiding pursuit, a zero vector might be your best bet anyway!

 

[rancke]

I tend to look at the CT trade codes a bit more simplistically. If a world is Ag in my mind it is a notably major source of Ag for the region.

Whoever first came up with the AgWorld Combine was making the same mistake. There are worlds in District 268 that can export far more food than Motmos, Tarkine, and Tarsus. The trade codes are not really open to interpretation [insert usual caveat about everyone being able to do whatever they like in their own TU]. There are quite specific definitions, and a world with 6 million people and a TL of 5 is not a major exporter of agricultural goods even if it the majority of its production is agricultural and it exports a majority of its agricultural production.

The fact it is low TL in this case needn't mean it isn't a big producer.

Yes, it does. Limited technology limits the possible production. And limited population limits the possible production. A world with six million inhabitants isn't going to produce enough food to make a difference to a market with billions of buyers (not in bulk, that is -- if they produce some wildly popular luxury item, they can have an impact on the luxury market).

Labor intensive perhaps, for some products, less so for others. Could be it's one big grazing range for enormous meat stock.

Turning vegetable matter into animal matter reduces the bulk of your production.

And all the mega freighters do is park on the plains, open the doors and call the animals in to transport them for processing. Or process on board en route like the big trawlers.

OK, I yield -- a little. That may[*] work for one or two Ag worlds, but its a rather singular explanation. I certainly hope you're not proposing it for turning every Ag world into a major agricultural exporter. It certainly doesn't apply to the one world we have a detailed writeup about. The nobbles of Tarsus seem to take as much work as most cattle.


Hans


[*] I say 'may', because I'm not at all sure such an ecological situation would exist. With all that meat running about, wouldn't there be predators to keep them down?

 

[rancke]

And just how many worlds orbit at that speed? Here's a hint - most will be inside the jump limit of their primary star.

Really? So what about worlds in the life zones of G-type stars? You do realize that the same argument works fairly well even if the world moves a somewhat bigger distance in 34 hours? A bell curve would place most of the hits inside +/- 12 hours or even +/- 10 hours, wouldn't it?

If the target world is moving slower; like the OTU's many gas giants with inhabited moons, will be moving slower thus greatly "shrinking" your jump limit "target". You could very exit at 153 or 183 hours and still be outside of a jump limit.

Eh? If it moves slower, the chance of hitting the jump limit gets higher. It's if it moves faster my window becomes smaller.

As for targeting a gas giant moon: None of the official rules ever addressed that, and I believe the standard way to handle it is to assume that you hit the gas giant's jump limit and have to fly the rest of the way. I don't see the problem here. Worlds that move so fast that realistically a ship would hit outside its jump limit a significant amount of the time, sure, but what's the problem with gas giant moons?

I thought you'd like this explanation for why the rules say you always hits the jump limit ("You don't, but you do it often enough to ignore the possibility that you don't"). I came up with it during one of our discussions on the topic. I'm not proposing to introduce this as a game rule, just as something to explain away a belief-busting oddity.


Hans

 

[rancke]

There's always going to be room for J-1 shippers; it works for MTU and I don't see why it wouldn't in the OTU.

Of course there will. Any time you have enough passengers or cargo going from one world to another one one parsec away to support a J1 ship, you'll have a J1 ship. What you won't have is a J1 ship when you have trade for a world TWO parsecs away. In such a case you'll have a J2 ship.

J-3 routes will whip between the high-pop, high value worlds; they'll bypass the little worlds, rendering them backwaters even in the midst of an empire.

That's just it. J3 routes don't specifically go from high-pop worlds to high-pop worlds (They often do, but that's because they're the cheapest solution). They go between worlds 3 parsecs apart with sufficient trade to support them. You don't have J3 ship jumping between Porozlo and Rhylanor, you have lots and lots of Really Big J1 ships. But if you have two backwater worlds three parsecs apart with enough trade to support a ship, that ship will be a J3 ship, not a J1 ship.

Now, for long-distance travel, J2 and J3 is cheapest on the average, but the specific astrography plays a part. Two worlds 8 parsecs apart may be connected by jump-2 ships. But if the intervening worlds are awkwardly placed for jump-2 connections, jump-3 or even jump-4 may, in fact, be cheaper.

And in the case of passengers, some people may be willing to pay jump-4 prices in order to get there twice as fast.


Hans

 

[jawillroy]

"What you won't have is a J1 ship when you have trade for a world TWO parsecs away. In such a case you'll have a J2 ship...You don't have J3 ship jumping between Porozlo and Rhylanor, you have lots and lots of Really Big J1 ships. But if you have two backwater worlds three parsecs apart with enough trade to support a ship, that ship will be a J3 ship, not a J1 ship."

Well, right. If there's an argument about that I must say I've lost the thread. I'd never say there was no place for J-3 trade. Did I?

 

[far-trader]

Quote: Matt123
Why would the pirate make the demand to pull over via radio instead of tightbeam laser comm.

Reply: apollard
The Merchant has only radio, so it would not hear your military comm.

Curious, what makes you think someone with a multi-million credit ship/business would skip on cheap secure comms gear. Communications are the life blood of commerce, the ability to secure a price for your cargo before you land is invaluable. Radio simply tells everyone listening about your affairs.

Refering to the same post I made


Again you have ignored the proposition that you very politely request the Captain to shut down his comms.

You can't have it both ways. Either the Trader has no tight beam comms so the pirate has to broadcast his terms, or the Trader has tight beam comms so they can squirt the port with a 911/Mayday/GK that the pirate won't hear even if they demand comms shut down.

Personally I agree, all ships will have tight beam comms. Radio will be mostly for navigational direction finding and backup.

I'm sure no one will do business with a tramp Free-Trader over comms. They'll want to inspect the cargo before negotiating a sale. And besides, most of your cargo is freight, and you get paid the shippage on that once it's delivered, intact.

And the subbies won't need to do business over comms either, they'll have a local factor on the ground full time to arrange business, or be treated like any other tramp Free-Trader.

You remind the Captain he has insurance to cover his losses and that passengers take a dim view of being in the middle of a firefight that the Captain could have avoided.

If he fails to comply, you knock a few holes in him & will likely still get your 30 minutes of pillaging. If he complies, you get to take your time & he & his ship survive intact to make an insurance claim.

As a Captain with the responsibility of the lives of crew & passengers, fighting or broadcasting Maydays is not neccesarily the best option. Pacification of the Pirate & leaving him to the Navy to sort out is the solution I would pick.

On a differant tangent, the first issue with boarding & stealing captured vessels is with finding prize crews. I suspect finding like minded individuals interested in the piracy career path would be difficult, let alone finding professonally trained pilots & navigators with this inclination.

In the 1600-1700's crews were often offered a chance to join pirate ships & when you compare conditions of service, it is no wonder that many accepted. The conditions of service in the OTU are much, much better and far less likely to generate willing pirate crews.

Personally I prefer the idea of nicking the small craft/air raft and anything in the Captains safe before leaving quickly. Cargo is too random unless you accidentally hit a mail ship.

You presume much

Who says the cargo is insured? The freight won't be insured by the Captain, he's just being paid to carry it, and won't be paid if it's not delivered intact. Someone may have insured it and they'll collect on it, not the Captain. Speculative cargo? Who's going to insure that? Can you imagine the Captain paying the premiums?

Who says the ship and the rest is insured? The OTU seems more about personal responsibility than insurance. Certainly anything in the Captain's safe is not likely to be insured.

What if the passengers and crew are more worried about being killed than being in the middle of a firefight if it gives them a chance at continued life and liberty?

If I remember the practices correctly joining the crew of pirate ship was not about a better life (I can't imagine it being better*) but about living period.

* Conditions aboard ship would be about the same, or worse since you have a harder resupply time and are bunking with a bunch of cutthroats. And of course you can't go home, unless you like facing the prospect of possibly being hanged until dead. But then maybe there's nothing particularly good about home either since you went a sailing. Maybe with a little luck you'll slip off the ship at some friendly port before the navy sinks you or some lucky merchant shoots you.

Pirates of old didn't often keep ships they captured, they sunk them. Either the one they took after securing the supplies and valuables, or their own after transferring to the better ship. The passengers, officers, and likely the crew for the most part, were left to go down with the ship, if they were lucky. Sold into slavery or used for cruel purpose if not. Pirates in Traveller will be even less likely to want to leave any witnesses or traces since it's even easier to hunt them down with it.

I don't expect any pirates, Traveller or otherwise, to be friendly folk one can deal with in a reasonable and civilized manner. The very choice of the profession precludes that. Except perhaps the Pirates of Penzance.

 

[atpollard]

Personally I agree, all ships will have tight beam comms. Radio will be mostly for navigational direction finding and backup.

I think that this 'secret communications' card is being overplayed. CB Radios and Air Traffic Control manage to function just fine without tight beam communications. Cell Phones manage to maintain reasonable privacy without tight beam communications.

Your ship arrives over 1 million km from the port. Rather than attempting to communicate via omni-directional antennae, you are going to use your commercial sensors to aim your parabolic dish at another parabolic dish on the surface or in orbit around a world beyond your tracking and detection range.

Your pirate is gong to secretly order this merchant to surrender by aligning his parabolic dish with the ship's parabolic dish as the merchant attempts to communicate with the planet to settle the details for cargo delivery.

I think that Radio is the communication norm and lasers are for military communication where the exact location of the receiver and transmitter are known in advance.

 

[pendragonman]

F-T, what about a "Lloyd's of Regina" type insurance operation? Why wouldn't that work for insured cargos?

From its start continuously to today, Lloyd's of London has insured cargos of all types except government outlawed contraband. (cf the Opium trade with China in the 19th century). Lloyd's insured cargo loads of Tea and Spices, raw materials, and even slaves. Very few of these cargos had contracted destinations and thus were speculative cargos. Insured speculative cargos.

Further, only non-owner captains or owner-captains that are close to reposession would not have some sort of insurance. Non resident owners would most certainly have some sort of insurance against loss.

Really, it is only the truly desparate ship operators who lack insurance, and most of these get desparate enough to try a little piracy or fraud scams. Mostly unsuccessful, but they try nonetheless.

 

[rancke]

The whole question of the Merchant screaming for help or not is moot. Space is big. There's no reason for a recently arrived ship to go anywhere near another ship. System control will assign arriving ships a flight path. Any ship that diverges from its assigned path (as any ship that intends to board another must) will set alarm bells ringing. It will also be in violation of traffic regulations and thus a source of fines. Customs cutters and system SDBs alike will make a beeline for it.

Being able to confiscate the ship for "piratical utterances" will just be a cherry on the top.


Hans

 

[Zowy]

It would be the claim jumpers and Belt pirates, I would be most woried abought.........

Prospecting and outsystem mineing can be hard dangerous work, with help far far way.......

 

[jawillroy]

I've been running solitaire as I've been hammering together MpTU, and that's been leading me to consider what piracy's all about there - I'm reworking the ship encounter process somewhat, both to fix the broken bits in the one in LBB2 and to also account somewhat for planet populations. I'd certainly like a better way than the LBB2 table to introduce small craft into the mix. I'd like it to reflect the difference between being on approach to and from a mainworld, and travelling in between planets in-system.

So far, I've been relying on a sort of "ruthlessness roll" to determine just what sort of pirate I'm dealing with, pretty much based on the book 3 encounter reaction table. A low roll indicating attack means the pirate's coming in with guns blazing, and is likely to board, slaughter everyone, and leave a lifeless looted bloodstained hulk behind. A high roll indicates a more civil approach - "shut down your drives and prepare to be boarded: your first false move will be your last. If you fire a single weapon we'll kill you all."

MTU's small enough that a Pirate's not really going to be able to fence a stolen ship, at least not a free trader - every port within a ship's range is going to recognize it. A pirate might take it to use it, at least as an auxiliary, but mostly I think it would just slow a pirate down too much to be practical. So the pirate's either going to blow up the ship after looting it, or strip it of everything that moves and then leave.

Depending on where it takes place, loot won't necessarily include cargo: unloading the hold and figuring out what's worth the taking just takes too long. The ship's locker should be good for at least a few hundred thousand credits worth of cash and bearer-bonds, there's ship's supplies, vacc suits, weapons, tools and so forth. In a low population system with a poor, (or no) starport, a pirate will have leisure to examine a ship's manifest and cherrypick the hold. Anywhere else, with the heat on the way? No.

One thing: it seems to me that the financial draw isn't enough to create a pirate. If a man with a ship wants to get rich, there's better ways to do it than piracy. Something has to happen to make those legitimate means impossible - or the pirate's got something other than money on his mind.

IMpTU I've definitely got room for the bloody-handed, ship-destroying, no-quarter pirates: I've also got room for the gentleman privateer, and the scattered and hunted remnants of defeated navies: these may be ruthless, too, but may still cling to and live by the navy/noble culture that they came from. I've got skipped captains with all ports closed to them who want nothing more than to keep the ships they can no longer pay for. (Not so much a TP, more an AP here...)

 

[far-trader]

F-T, what about a "Lloyd's of Regina" type insurance operation? Why wouldn't that work for insured cargos?

I suppose mostly because I'm looking at it from a gamist perspective

If everybody is insured for all losses as part of the cost of doing business (since it has to be hidden in that as it's not mentioned separately) and all pirates let the victims live and keep their ship, then what's the point of a pirate encounter at all?

"Heave to merchant scum, we be wanting your insured cargo and then you can go on your way."

"Very well, third time this year you know, I'm going to miss happy hour at the starport bar because of this, stand by to transfer cargo."

Booooooring...

 

[jawillroy]

"There's no reason for a recently arrived ship to go anywhere near another ship. System control will assign arriving ships a flight path. Any ship that diverges from its assigned path (as any ship that intends to board another must) will set alarm bells ringing...


Hans, this sounds like a very good argument against piracy occurring in systems with a decent starport. Is anyone actually arguing for this? Of course this sort of response will occur on approach to an A or B port. It's like trying to take a superfreighter heading towards the Verrazano Narrows. It's not going to happen.

Now, a C port, or D or E, will be less like New York Harbor and a lot more like Bangladesh or Banda Aceh. I wouldn't count on system control there to be much use for navigation or anything else, much less system security.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Actually I can see a lot of reasons for J1 traders to travel between to endpoints more than one parsec away:

a) It's all you can build locally. You could import better drives or complete ships but your local economy won't like it and your government might not subsidize it

b) There are minor worlds in between. Sure the TL6-, Starport E agricultural (or even industrial) world isn't a big trading port. But it may be good enough as a stopover for a small frighter so it is included in the shedule. OTOH it likely won't have a space navy

c) Minor outposts and subbies. There's more to Traveller than the 3I. And a minor player might place an "outpost" (1 Officer, 1 Sergeant, 4 NCO and 40 Soldiers plus a radio) on a world to "claim" it

d) Belters. Again likely to be to scattered and un-organised for a decend local defence. But worth a stopover

You won't find the 30KTon Barge Carriers or even the 3K Tukkie Frighters there. But the 400dton Subbie and the 200dton A1 will be around.

And if you don't like J1 place the worlds farther apart. IIRC there are jump routes in Gateway that even with J2 ships require jumps into unoccupied systems to connect useful endpoints

 

[atpollard]

It's like trying to take a superfreighter heading towards the Verrazano Narrows. It's not going to happen.

Unless the pirate is operating out of NEWARK harbour.
A scary city.

 

[Whipsnade]

The question is, how do we, as players, determine what the relevant vector actually is?

Sablewyvern,

The simple answer is that as players you don't determine the relevant vector unless the GM decides establishing a vector to carry through jump is an important part of the adventure at hand.

Usually, such activity is "beneath" your notice as players. And, before anyone begins to gripe, how many of you actually calculate in-system trip times between mainworld orbit and jump point unless the trip itself is important to the session? How many of you arrange for refueling with an NPC? How many of you go shopping for food and other lifesupport funglibles CT requires to be replenished after each jump?

Most of the daily activities of players-characters are beneath your notice as a player. Do you check into hotels? Pay the bill at a cafe? Shop for replacement clothes? Floss your teeth?

Vector retention is there because it's part of Marc Miller's own essay on jump space. However, like nearly everything else in Traveller, it is there to be used when and as the GM see fit.


Have fun,
Bill