Q Ships?

[hemulen]

Anyone done anything with these? I'm thinking of a scenario whereby the scout + S type + PCs are called in on their next scout base refuel to provide escort for an armed trader (maybe 2) carrying "a valuable cargo". The PCs won't be told that it's a Q ship, since the idea is to lure potential attackers out into the open, and the Navy don't want the game given away. In fact, they may do several jumps with no attacks, and I'll throw some clues in (e.g. the crew of the merchant ship are a bit loose tongued in dodgy bars etc). I may also set them up with another Scout ship also acting as Escort that appears to be a bit on the iffy side, just to keep them paranoid.

I noticed (in T20 anyway) that the Subsidized Merchant and the Patrol Cruiser are the same tonnage, so was thinking initially of a specialised Patrol cruiser stats in a Subsidized Merchant hull.

Any other plot twists gratefully received!

cheers,

Mark

 

[Spyder_GS]

Keep an eye on the tonnage total, for a Q you'll probably want pop-up turrets which, if I recall correctly, increases the amount of dtons used.

As for plot twists, if the Q crew are going to be a bit gabby in port, why don't you throw a hijack attempt in when a portion of the crew are dirtside. LOTS of nasty sorts would love to get their hands on a Q ship if only to strip it down.
Put it in a high-traffic orbit and allow some boarders to get on. If the orbit is stable, the engines can effectively be cold requiring restart time and allowing the PC's to intervene...alternatively, you can have a boarding attempt against the PC ship.

OR you could have a disaster on the Q ship, a missile malfunctions, arms itself and blows have the ship apart ,you're all at least a 4 days out from a port and rescueing the crew will seriously overload life support, not to mention that they will likely need medical attention.

 

[hemulen]

Originally posted by Spyder:
Keep an eye on the tonnage total, for a Q you'll probably want pop-up turrets which, if I recall correctly, increases the amount of dtons used.

Good point, I guess the Cruiser has enough spare cargo space to absorb the effect of the popup turrets. I'd like a scene where the Q-ship gets jumped by a couple of badguy ships, and the PCs Sensor Ops picks up a lot of metallic debris (so they'll probably think it's been hit), as the Q-ship fires explosive bolts to reveal some nasty weapons...

As for plot twists, if the Q crew are going to be a bit gabby in port, why don't you throw a hijack attempt in when a portion of the crew are dirtside. LOTS of nasty sorts would love to get their hands on a Q ship if only to strip it down.

OR you could have a disaster on the Q ship...

Nice ideas! Good twist on the gabby crew - I was initially thinking that they would be pretending to be ordinary merchant crew having a few drinks too many and letting slip info about the "normal merchant ship" carrying a valuable cargo, in the hope this would get back to potential attackers. The PCs might even try to shut them up!

cheers,

Mark

 

[BrennanHawkwood]

One thing you might want to consider while planning the scenario is the ultimate purpose of the Q-Ship.

I would imagine that in the case of a shipping line, a navy or a planetary government most q-ships would be used in such a way that the owner would eventually want the pirates, etc. in the region to know that they have one or more Q-ships in operation.

For those type of owners the reputation for using Q-ships probably carries a higher long term benefit in the form of a deterrent against potential attacks on their legitimate shipping than the number of actual pirates that a given Q-ship is able to actually take out of circulation. (An interesting side effect of this is that the owner may be willing to spend more money than usual on building or converting a couple of ships as Q-ships simply because the long term benefits could be huge.)

On the other hand, if the target is a specific group of pirates or simply racking up a kill total, secrecy will be much more important. If the owners are an individual or small group of individuals I would expect this to be the more typical intent, though I can certainly think of occassions where a larger scale owner might have effectively the same sort of objective.

In this case the number of pirates they take out of circulation is more important that long term discouragement of pirate activity. As a result maintaining secrecy about the ship's purpose takes on much more importance. After all, it is easier to lure in pirate for the kill if they have no clue that you are a Q-ship. And if word gets out that a q-ship is hunting in a given area and it actually has the effect of decreasing pirate attacks, a q-ship that is just looking for pirate kills will likely need to move on since it will have made its own job harder.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Excellent points, Brennan Hawkwood! Stars for you!
Mike Rourke,
ISS URSULA (a Q-ship campaign)
site mgr.

aka in these parts as..

 

[Ranger]

Another mission for a Q ship could be a counter piracy sting operation. Most pirate bands don't resell their booty themselves. They rely on merchants of 'questionable charactor' to move the merchandice to market. The crew of the Q ship could be sent on a mission to infiltrate a piracy operation by posing as a down on it's luck merchant and gather information on pirate operations for a navy counter piracy operation or to locate pirate ships and bases and take them out themselves (if the Q ship is well enough armed).

Note: I can't take full credit for this idea, they are in the article on Q ships in Challenge 25.

Just some thoughts,

Rob

 

[Spyder_GS]

Here's a couple others, Q and escorts are on a run looking for trouble by looking like potential targets. They recieve a distress call and obligated by space law one of the ships responds.

Possibilities:
1. PC ship responds, while it's alone, a pirate raider tries to take them out to reduce the escorts available to the "merchie". Meanwhile, the somewhat iffy NPC escort are actually in cahoots with the raider and attack the Q ship believing it to only have one or two turrets.

2. The NPC escort goes to check it out and get's blown away, the raider then comes in after the fat slow merchie and it's lone escort.

3. The NPC escort investigates and comes high-tailing it back with the raider on its heels. Q and PC's have to take on the raider

4. The fat slow "merchie" and it's escorts are on a little travelled path near hostile or uncontrolled space and meet up with a foreign warship that has already responded to the distress call...there is an old beat up freighter docked to the warship. The captain of hte warship "invites" the Q captain and a few choice crewmembers over for dinner and a quick tour of the brig. PC crew is then contacted by warship and "invited" over. Now get out of that...

5. Q and escorts respond to the distress find an old combat drone that was place for area denial/commerce disruption and never recovered. When the ships come into range it powers up and attacks.

6. Actually 5.A. the drone isn't so old, it's just about brand new and has no markings...who placed it? Possible lead-in to another adventure.

For 5 and 6 I would make the drone about equal in all respects to the Q ship. The NPC escort should be of little to no help, so the PC escort is what will tip the scales in favor of the PC's (not that that will fix a series of really bad rolls by the PC's or really good rolls by the drone).

For a raider, it would be unusual for a pirate or commerce raider to have access to really good eqiupment. Most of their equipment will be recovered from kills. So I would lower the usp of any weapons they have. An advantage they definitely would have would be multiple ships.

It might also be interesting to hand the players a situation where they have to run. Perhaps a local warlord with a fairly competant navy is looking to add a few ships to the fleet. As long as word doesn't get out who's to know?

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Ranger:
Another mission for a Q ship could be a counter piracy sting operation. Most pirate bands don't resell their booty themselves. They rely on merchants of 'questionable charactor' to move the merchandice to market. The crew of the Q ship could be sent on a mission to infiltrate a piracy operation by posing as a down on it's luck merchant and gather information on pirate operations for a navy counter piracy operation or to locate pirate ships and bases and take them out themselves (if the Q ship is well enough armed).

Note: I can't take full credit for this idea, they are in the article on Q ships in Challenge 25.

**************************************************
Good stuff Ranger!
He's right guys, the *weakest link* in the piracy chain is who fences what they take. This canbe as he relates, the "questionable* merchants to worlds with C-class or better starports, and low-moderate law levels. You needa C-class for any chop-shop of starships/ subcraft seized.
In the Marches:
Querion subsector (E): there are 7 Nonaligned or Client state systems that meet those demands. But only three of them with low enough law levels to make it lucrative to fence there:
Thanber (B-class/TL-C/Law-3);
Yiktor (C-class/TL-A/Law 1);
and Terra Nova (C-class/TL-9/Law 2).

Vilis (f):
Tremous dex (B-class/TL-C/Law 1);
and Tionale (C-class/TL8/ Law 1).

Jewell (B):
Only Gougeste (C-class/TL-A/ Law 0) qualifies.

In District 268 (N):
Asteltine(B-class/TL-A/Law 2);
Avastan (C-class/TL-A/Law 0)
Trexalon (B-class/TL-C/Law 1);
Binges (A-class/TL-A/Law 1);
Tarkine (C-class TL-7/Law 2);
Talchek (C-class/TL-5/Law 2);
Dallia (B-class/TL-(B-clas/TL-9/Law 3)
And Tarsus (B-class/TL-A/Law 0).

In Darrian Subsector (I):
Only two fit the bill here-
Debarre (B-class/TL-9/Law 3)
And Bularia(C-class/TL-5/Law 2).

These would be your areas to watch for them. As you can see, district 268 has the most systems that might be involved/ or have laws not stringent enough to allow the fencing of Hijacked ships & cargoes.

 

[lightsenshi]

A Q-ship would have to look innoculous and yet be large enough to be lethal. Bay weapons, naturally, are out due to a lack of a way to conceal them. But if you don't mind spending money (most govenments don't) you can pack a lot of popup turrets into a freighter.

 

[BrennanHawkwood]

I've seen a suggestion of fighters deplayed from what used to be the fighter bay. One of the ideas I've toyed with (inspired by David Weber's excellent Honor Harrington books) is the idea of missile pods. As the pirate approaches the 'merchant' 'dumps' some of its cargo (mostly junk and disposable covers from the popup turrets and so on) include 1 or more missile pods allowing them to very suddenly put out far more missile fire than they should be able to. The ship would probably need improved fire control capabilities to do it. It may also be better suited non-OTU campaigns since I can't remember seeing any place where unmanned missile pods were used in an official source. (Though if I am wrong I'd love to hear it).

 

[sinbadsam]

Originally posted by BrennanHawkwood:
I've seen a suggestion of fighters deplayed from what used to be the fighter bay. One of the ideas I've toyed with (inspired by David Weber's excellent Honor Harrington books) is the idea of missile pods. As the pirate approaches the 'merchant' 'dumps' some of its cargo (mostly junk and disposable covers from the popup turrets and so on) include 1 or more missile pods allowing them to very suddenly put out far more missile fire than they should be able to. The ship would probably need improved fire control capabilities to do it. It may also be better suited non-OTU campaigns since I can't remember seeing any place where unmanned missile pods were used in an official source. (Though if I am wrong I'd love to hear it).

Well IIRC there several articles on Interdicted systems use computer controlled missile batteries to keep the riff raff from going where should not. If you do not have the correct codes and go where you should not then you get fired upon. I believe that the missiles were nucs.

 

[lightsenshi]

Another evil suggestion would be a Far Trader with small cabins instead of cargo space.

"Heave to? Sure." *watches as all the marines board the pirate vessel*

 

[Liam Devlin]

Q-ship ideas/ using stock ships..

a) 200dtn A2 Far trader has a front loading cargo hatch lower deck with a 66dtn hold.
1.) Possible FTR hangar bay for 5-6x 10dtn FTRs/ 4x 15dtn FTrs/ 3x 20dtn FTRs/ 2x 25-30dtn FTRs.
2.) Barring FTRs, convert this into a 50dtn Msl bay.
Both these ideas allow for 10% extra space for arming/ mtce room.

Using a 400dtn "Fat Trader"/Sub. Liner..you have the drive through cargo bay.
Convert to a pocket FTR carrier.(10-15dtn FTRs probably/ 20dtn max due to width of hold).

Using a cargo container ship, the "cargo-modules", are actually weapons bays/ sections/ each with their own small power source (so the ship can fight on after the Powerplant takes a hard shot)...

Food for thought guys!

 

[lightsenshi]

Originally posted by Gaming Glen:
That's why a smart pirate is going to send over a smallcraft and wait for the all clear before endangering his ship by docking. And if the marines coming jetting over then the defensive sandcasters become offensive (let's go skeet shooting!). Does T20, or any rules, cover using sandcasters against personnel?


Glen [/QB]

*snip*

Corsairs have small craft?

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by lightsenshi:


Corsairs have small craft?

Beware the Vargr boarding torpedoes!

<splat>

<splat>

<thunk>

 

[gardclan]

Oh WOW! I thought those things were taken out of production owing to what they did to the paintjobs on otherwise solid prize vessels.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Darth Sillyus:
Oh WOW! I thought those things were taken out of production owing to what they did to the paintjobs on otherwise solid prize vessels.

We're working on that small problem but there are a few Mk-1 in service

 

[shield]

The original striker rules have rules for using sandcasters as anti=personnel weapons. The following stats are for use in an atmosphere.

Ranges: Effective = 500m, Long=1000m, Extreme=2000m

Size of Spread: Effective=40m, Long=80m, Extreme=120m

Penetration: Effective=20, Long=10, Extreme=5

Autofire DMs: Effective +8, Long +6, Extreme +4.

Considering you need to roll and 8 to hit, and that even TL14 battle dress only has a striker armour value of 18, a sandcaster will shred even imperial marines.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by RichardP:
The original striker rules have rules for using sandcasters as anti=personnel weapons. The following stats are for use in an atmosphere.

Ranges: Effective = 500m, Long=1000m, Extreme=2000m

Size of Spread: Effective=40m, Long=80m, Extreme=120m

Penetration: Effective=20, Long=10, Extreme=5

Autofire DMs: Effective +8, Long +6, Extreme +4.

Considering you need to roll and 8 to hit, and that even TL14 battle dress only has a striker armour value of 18, a sandcaster will shred even imperial marines.

Cheers
Richard

Gives new meaning to the term "Sandblasted clean".

 

[Gaming Glen]

Originally posted by lightsenshi:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Gaming Glen:
That's why a smart pirate is going to send over a smallcraft and wait for the all clear before endangering his ship by docking. And if the marines coming jetting over then the defensive sandcasters become offensive (let's go skeet shooting!). Does T20, or any rules, cover using sandcasters against personnel?


Glen

*snip*

Corsairs have small craft? [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]I was talking about real pirates, the ones using ships not labelled "this is a pirate ship" instead of the listed one sold to good-fer-nuthin rich boys (or girls) wanting to have some fun.

Glen