Hasn't this all been said on a different thread just a few days ago (about the Type R Corsair)?
Real pirates.
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
Hasn't this all been said on a different thread just a few days ago (about the Type R Corsair)?
Geosync is well within range of local defenses. Smart pirate won't go anywhere near there.
Smart pirate knows that you can't force a victim to comply without being in weapon range. And you're only within weapon range of the victim for the last two hours of my scenario. If you don't try to match orbits, you're going to go screaming by so quickly that you're going to be out of weapon range, and the target is then going to proceed to land while you reverse course.
A Patrol Cruiser is cheap enough that any world that gets enough traffic to make it worth lurking will have one. Or ten.
Alas, Sutton's Law says you're wrong.
Note that there's one fundamental difference between piracy on Earth and piracy in Trav - on Earth, you can be caught anywhere between your origin port and your destination port. In trav, you can be caught only within the "three mile limit" of your departure or arrival ports.
Never thought the pirate DID need thugs. But prize crews are more or less necessary, since the real money is going to be in the ships themselves, not their cargoes.
There will always be places with no defenses. These places will also have no merchant traffic to speak of. Sitting around in orbit above the world in Chamax Plague (which gets one starship in every year or so) waiting for a victim to wander in is inadvisable, if you're there to make money. Or even if you're there to interfere with commerce.
Note that a Patrol Cruiser only costs a couple hundred MCr. It's not expensive for a government large enough to have enough trade to make piracy worthwhile.
It's not even expensive for a world like, say, Regina, to provide a pair of Patrol Cruisers for every system in its subsector.
Or Trin could provide a squadron of Patrol Cruisers for every system in the Spinward Marches for about 5% of its System Squadron budget.
Note, by the by, that the backpack nuke is the kind of thing that gets the Imperial Navy to take an interest in you. And they have the resources to put a cruiser squadron in orbit around every world in the Imperium, and still have a few hundred left to hunt for you....
Fundamentally, you seem to assume that the normal level of starship traffic is tiny. Which might be reasonable. On the other hand, if there's that few starships, you'll make more money by using your corsair as a transport.
Travellerspud
SOC-12
entirely plausible, if there is a reason...
perhaps it is really a trade war in disguise...or the government is corrupt and in cahoots with the pirates....or the planetary navy wants a bigger budget....or the planet has no good starport and the ships really ARE slow....the Imperial Navy won't get involved unless it becomes a big issue OR a Noble takes it up for some reason....or they stumble across it in one of their sweeps
it is not hard to create a table of planetary budget (based on TL, population, etc) that shows which niche worlds cannot afford space defenses; ie-low TL and low population. Then find one (or more in a cluster) of these worlds on a trade route. That is your pirate zone. Sure, some of the nearby worlds will have vessels to spare they COULD send, but politics being what it is unless the citizens of a planet are directly affected, they are unlikely to allow their tax dollars to fight pirates in other systems (to benefit "those rich merchants"). The combination of these kind of "no defense" systems, with a lack of political will by neighbors, creates the pirate zone.
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Omnivore
Guest
On the economic aspect, let me just refer you to this current thread rather than repeat what has already been said. You can find similar economic analysis on Walt Smith's site from a decade ago. I'm sure a search would turn up more results here and elsewhere. Summary, piracy in the OTU is economically viable.
With regards to planetary defenses, I would simply argue that if a class C or below starport world had the tech, economic base, and political will to invest in sufficient planetary defenses to threaten lurkers at 40,000km (geosync from size 8) they'd have a higher class starport. Class C's probably have some defenses to protect the starport itself, but standard weapons operating out of gravity well and atmospheric limitations (1/1000 laser range, -1G to missile G-rating - assuming standard atmosphere size 8) aren't going to be much of a threat out at 40000km.
With regards to worlds setting up their own mini-Imperium inside the Imperium... think about it. Also organized threats beget organized response to a certain level at least - a wolfpack of corsairs would make a light lunch of solitary patrol cruisers. That point can be argued back and forth, but the fundamental point remains, there's no incentive for most worlds to protect other worlds from piracy in the general case. Otherwise, you'd hear the taxpayers screaming twice as many parsecs away.
On the fly by threat, what merchant captain except perhaps a captain/owner running on the absolute edge financially, is going to take the risk when he can just dump some cargo and run as a counter offer? It does depend somewhat on the reputation of pirates/privateers in the area, but a captain facing a board of inquiry over a loss of cargo/small boats/whatever, is A) alive, and B) not facing one over a loss of his ship.
In regards to the backpack nuke idea - unless it actually detonates there's no proof it was a backpack nuke and if it actually detonates any proof is vaporized - and pages could, and have, been written about OTU Imperial anti-nuke policies and enforcement over the actual *use* of nukes. Unless the merchant captain is willing to gamble his life on it, he'll never know whether the threat was real or not.
Finally, Willie Sutton aside, the fundamental proof of the existence of piracy in the OTU is in the works comprising OTU cannon going all the way back to the Citizens of the Imperium supplement in 1979. Now in YTU, perhaps every clump of dirt sprouts an sensor for a deep meson gun pit on a starport C world, but in the OTU that is contraindicated.
PS: Received while contacting class D starport. "We're sorry, Tim's out sick today and I need some sleep, try contact every hour over the next eight or so. This is a recording."
Brian
With regards to planetary defenses, I would simply argue that if a class C or below starport world had the tech, economic base, and political will to invest in sufficient planetary defenses to threaten lurkers at 40,000km (geosync from size 8) they'd have a higher class starport. Class C's probably have some defenses to protect the starport itself, but standard weapons operating out of gravity well and atmospheric limitations (1/1000 laser range, -1G to missile G-rating - assuming standard atmosphere size 8) aren't going to be much of a threat out at 40000km.
With regards to worlds setting up their own mini-Imperium inside the Imperium... think about it. Also organized threats beget organized response to a certain level at least - a wolfpack of corsairs would make a light lunch of solitary patrol cruisers. That point can be argued back and forth, but the fundamental point remains, there's no incentive for most worlds to protect other worlds from piracy in the general case. Otherwise, you'd hear the taxpayers screaming twice as many parsecs away.
On the fly by threat, what merchant captain except perhaps a captain/owner running on the absolute edge financially, is going to take the risk when he can just dump some cargo and run as a counter offer? It does depend somewhat on the reputation of pirates/privateers in the area, but a captain facing a board of inquiry over a loss of cargo/small boats/whatever, is A) alive, and B) not facing one over a loss of his ship.
In regards to the backpack nuke idea - unless it actually detonates there's no proof it was a backpack nuke and if it actually detonates any proof is vaporized - and pages could, and have, been written about OTU Imperial anti-nuke policies and enforcement over the actual *use* of nukes. Unless the merchant captain is willing to gamble his life on it, he'll never know whether the threat was real or not.
Finally, Willie Sutton aside, the fundamental proof of the existence of piracy in the OTU is in the works comprising OTU cannon going all the way back to the Citizens of the Imperium supplement in 1979. Now in YTU, perhaps every clump of dirt sprouts an sensor for a deep meson gun pit on a starport C world, but in the OTU that is contraindicated.
PS: Received while contacting class D starport. "We're sorry, Tim's out sick today and I need some sleep, try contact every hour over the next eight or so. This is a recording."
Brian
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There aren't going to be a whole lot of those, though. Only traffic between system that lie more than one jump from each other will need to visit such no defense worlds, and only if there are no alternate routes. Jump-2 and Jump-3 traffic cost roughly the same (per parsec) and both are cheaper than jump-1, so in many case they will simply bypass the dangerous systems.
But, sure, there will be some "stepping stone" systems that get a lot of traffic.
Historically nations did deploy ships to protect its trade and if the local potentate didn't have the ships to patrol his own coasts the nations that did would do it for him wether he liked it or not.
The biggest problem that faced a nation trying to protect its shipping was that there were far more places to patrol than ships to patrol them. Which is the exact, particular, and crucial difference between historical situations and a Traveller universe. Except for systems with a sizable presence in space, there is essentially only one place to patrol in each system. And starships are valuable. Deploying a half-squadron of patrol ships to a neighboring system to avoid that sort of losses even a single ship represents is simply good business sense.
And let's not forget that a relatively small company like Al Morai has four patrol ships of its very its own. If Al morai has para-military ships corresponding to several percent of its business fleet, how many patrol ships do all the other shipping companies put together have? Where would such ships be deployed? Not in systems with adequate system defenses, but in systems without thier own ships that has a lot of civilian traffic passing through.
Hans
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That analysis is about as useful as a recipe for roast moose that starts "You take a moose..."
The analysis skips a couple of rather crucial preliminary steps and begins by assuming that the pirate can capture a ship in the first place without getting shot to pieces.
Or you can argue the other way round, that a high population implies a lot of trade which implies a starport that is big enough to service the traffic and adequate system defenses. A starport rating of C merely means there is one or more services that is needed for class B status missing. The obvious one is the one about being able to have boats or ships built for you there. Such a class C starport could have annual maintenance, refined fuel, repairs, and a capacity every bit as high as most class A and B starports.
(And if you tell me that this exposes a big flaw in the starport rating system, I agree with you completely).
Several problems with that. Wolfpacks will need to capture more ships to show a profit, very few system navies are so small that they'd have to deploy patrol ships singly, and pirate ships that go up against national ships are guaranteed to take some damage. And while national ships that fight pirates gets their repair bills paid by a grateful government, pirates that fight national ships have to pay their own repair bills.
That proves that pirates exist in the OTU, something that I don't think any pirate doubter has ever claimed was not the case. What it doesn't prove is that professional piracy as portrayed in Traveller makes sense.
See, the OTU is fictional. If you point to a real life article about real life pirates, you prove that pirates can exist in the world today. If you point to a fictional reference about pirates, all you prove is that an author thought up a fictional reference to pirates.
Hans
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Omnivore
Guest
Just as anti-pirate efforts come in different shapes and sizes, so do pirate operations themselves.
A solitary pirate corsair taking one prey per year can scrape by, one victim every six months and they're doing fine, one every three months and they'll go on a holiday spending spree. This type of pirate will be more likely found lurking about systems off the main and feeder routes. Ship's may well not be the only target of this type, anything that isn't sufficiently protected and nailed down is liable to end up in their pockets.
A semi-organized gang of pirates, for example a Vargr corsair band, might well take on larger prey, allowing them to hit feeder routes despite the presence of patrols as long as there are no significant in system defenses otherwise. Like the solitary pirate, they may sometimes hit targets other than ships, just being larger and more powerful, their targets may be also.
An organized privateer operation funded by a competing trade concern will also prey on feeder routes and may also be able to employ inside information obtained by spies, use agents to misdirect target protective assets, and generally doesn't have to turn much, if any, profit. Generally the only ground side strikes this type of pirate will make are those against target infrastructure.
A government sponsored privateer operation may even prey upon main routes and definitely don't need to worry about profit margins, although they may need to worry about logistics, employing a 'live off the land' strategy. This type of pirate is very likely to make targets of enemy infrastructure as well.
If in one's analysis of piracy in the OTU one comes to the conclusion that piracy doesn't exist or can't exist - contrary to the OTU - one needs to re-examine the assumptions made in the analysis.
I think the primary errors are in assuming the Imperium is too pervasive, that it actually cares, that your average being is unselfish to the point of their own detriment, that knowledge somehow proliferates faster than the speed of jump, that knowledge is routinely obtained in the absence of observers, that people are in general always competent, prepared, and willing to place the value of lives lower than property, etc..
PS: "What'ya mean OTU isn't reality!!!"
As another thread just reminded me, I'd completely left out the subjects of Jump Masking and possibly jump point prediction, both of which can be viewed as giving a pirate a larger window of opportunity.
Brian
A solitary pirate corsair taking one prey per year can scrape by, one victim every six months and they're doing fine, one every three months and they'll go on a holiday spending spree. This type of pirate will be more likely found lurking about systems off the main and feeder routes. Ship's may well not be the only target of this type, anything that isn't sufficiently protected and nailed down is liable to end up in their pockets.
A semi-organized gang of pirates, for example a Vargr corsair band, might well take on larger prey, allowing them to hit feeder routes despite the presence of patrols as long as there are no significant in system defenses otherwise. Like the solitary pirate, they may sometimes hit targets other than ships, just being larger and more powerful, their targets may be also.
An organized privateer operation funded by a competing trade concern will also prey on feeder routes and may also be able to employ inside information obtained by spies, use agents to misdirect target protective assets, and generally doesn't have to turn much, if any, profit. Generally the only ground side strikes this type of pirate will make are those against target infrastructure.
A government sponsored privateer operation may even prey upon main routes and definitely don't need to worry about profit margins, although they may need to worry about logistics, employing a 'live off the land' strategy. This type of pirate is very likely to make targets of enemy infrastructure as well.
If in one's analysis of piracy in the OTU one comes to the conclusion that piracy doesn't exist or can't exist - contrary to the OTU - one needs to re-examine the assumptions made in the analysis.
I think the primary errors are in assuming the Imperium is too pervasive, that it actually cares, that your average being is unselfish to the point of their own detriment, that knowledge somehow proliferates faster than the speed of jump, that knowledge is routinely obtained in the absence of observers, that people are in general always competent, prepared, and willing to place the value of lives lower than property, etc..
PS: "What'ya mean OTU isn't reality!!!"
As another thread just reminded me, I'd completely left out the subjects of Jump Masking and possibly jump point prediction, both of which can be viewed as giving a pirate a larger window of opportunity.
Brian
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That makes one BIG assumption: that the starport is a feature of the local government's doing. If the starport is an Imperial effort, not a local one (as is implied in later CT canon), then it simply means the Imperium thinks the system not worth a better port.
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Omnivore
Guest
Assumption based on presence of pirate encounters in encounter tables for class C starports.
Brian
But the encounter tables are quite obviously simplified to the point that their relation to "reality" is very tenuous, since they do not factor in the population level of the systems the various classes of starport are located in nor the astrographical location of the system.
Not only would a class C starport in a high-population system have a lot more trade and thus a lot more traffic than a class C startport in a low-population system, but a class C starport in a system located on a major trade route midways between two high-population systems three parsecs from both would, for example, have a lot of jump-3 through traffic that a class C starport of a system with the exact same population located in a cul-de-sac would have. Not to mention that a starport in a system located one parsec from a high-popuation system would have more trade than one located several parsecs from the nearest high-population system.
Hans
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Omnivore
Guest
Curious, what trade system are you using to come up with these traffic relationships? High population or not, given bad trade classifications and low tech levels, trade isn't likely of a very high volume with any Traveller trade system I've used. As far as nearness to high traffic systems go - that's irrelevant unless a major trade route passes through.
Brian
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For the basic notion just ordinary common sense. More people means more production and more demand which means more trade. That's how it works in the real world and I see no reason to believe it wouldn't work the same way in the Far Future.
For actual numbers I turn to GT:Far Trader.
Unless you've used FT, any trade system you've used deals solely with the trade available to free traders and thus ignores trade and passengers carried by regular freighters and liners. It's useless as evidence for absolute trade volumes.
It's true that bad trade classifications and low tech levels also affect trade volume, but then, the encounter tables don't take that into account either, do they?
Nearer suppliers and customers means smaller transport costs, which means a greater amount of trade goods that can profitably be traded, thus greater trade.
FT may or may not have gotten the details wrong (some people have argued that it did), but it was written by a professional economist, so until something better comes along, I'll stick to it. And, wrong or not, the basic principles I believed in long before FT was published. I especially do not believe that the vanilla Traveller trade system represents a complete and accurate picture of inter-system trade and passenger traffic. It's a set of game rules that allows a referee to moderate the in-game transactions of a PC-crewed free trader, and at that it contains a large number of simplifications that would serve to distort the picture of how the average free trader fares. Using it uncritically to form a picture of the life of a free trader would be bad enough, but to use it to form a picture of the regular trade that takes place over the head of free traders is even worse.
Hans
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Omnivore
Guest
Using real world economics to handle such a wide ranging disparity in technological levels and resources as portrayed in Traveller is full of assumptions and presumptions. Even then it is totally ignoring sections of the real world where the population has nothing of value to trade and nothing to buy anything with.
With classic Traveller, if you simply assume that the starport type is indicative of the transport volume, that the tech levels, trade classifications and exchange rates have meaning, then you end up with an entirely different model. I won't for one second argue for CT or Merchant prince's handling of the model in game terms but that's no fault of the model itself. If you assume another model, then you'll be arguing with far more than just the portrayal of piracy.
Brian
With classic Traveller, if you simply assume that the starport type is indicative of the transport volume, that the tech levels, trade classifications and exchange rates have meaning, then you end up with an entirely different model. I won't for one second argue for CT or Merchant prince's handling of the model in game terms but that's no fault of the model itself. If you assume another model, then you'll be arguing with far more than just the portrayal of piracy.
Brian
It does assume that human societies will tend to operate in the same way 3000 years from now as they operate in the real world today. I don't consider that a bad assumption. Indeed, I consider it a very good assumption.
I don't understand what you're getting at here.
Yes, and the model you end up with does not make sense.
Not really. I'm just assuming that the vanilla trade system is reasonably valid (though still somewhat simplified) for modelling free traders but has little or nothing to do with regular traffic.
Hans
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Funny, I know a world with billions of people and because it has no starport it has no interstellar trade at all...
...happens to be the same real world you're using as an example
Would we have a huge traffic volume if we were part of an interstellar empire? That depends. Would we have anything we could trade? Anything of value to the other worlds that we could do without? Of enough value to justify the expense of shipping it across parsecs? In what quantities? Is there anything they have that we would want? That they are willing and able to supply? Could we afford it? There are far too many variables to make an accurate guess. The best we can do is make a guess that makes for an enjoyable fiction with just enough of a veneer of plausibility to allow it to look "real" to the players.
Is GT: Far Trader wrong? That's the wrong question. Of course not, it can't be wrong because it is a fiction. It is built on supposition, entirely.
Is it more right because it was written by an economist? Again no, and still because it is a fiction built on supposition, entirely.
The right question is does GT: Far Trader make for a good game? Or if not the right question it seems to me the only one that matters.
I'm certainly not implying that basic CT trade or any of the variants are any more right, or wrong for that matter. Again, because they are all built on suppositions. Different suppositions. That's all. Not right ones, or wrong ones, just different ones. Pick one and have fun, it's a game.
FWIW of course, original CT trade rules apply (or should, despite people constantly making it out to be more) to one very narrow and artificial case. Player Characters operating a J1 Free-Trader who have a hard time making ends meet trading and have to undertake "adventures" to pay the mortgage. Stretching those rules to any other scenario requires adding work to the rules or they fall apart, explode might be a more accurate word. They will blow up in the ref's face and destroy the game in my experience.
There is no way to accurately model interstellar trade without making huge assumptions and applying personal prejudices. We have no facts to work with. Anyone claiming such has reduced their credibility, imo of course.
Common sense? Well that also varies between people based on experience and expectations. In this case I'd also take any claim of accuracy, veracity, and rightness because it is just "common sense" with a grain of salt. Even from you Hans, no offense intended
...omnivore appears to have beaten me to the post button on some points, and Hans too, I was too long winded
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Omnivore
Guest
Why should they? They certainly didn't 3000 years ago!
But we've hit upon our primary difference of opinion. To me CT's handling of trade classifications, starport types, tech levels, and pop levels all work fine for GM'ing games in the OTU including the economics of piracy. Yes there are warts *shrug*, never found them important. You have a different opinion.
@Far-Trader: only minor point I'd argue a bit with is that taking CT's handling out of the player trader context causes problems - well with Merchant Prince yes - but that aside, to me it is just a matter of explaining why no one wants to trade with world x. Which, as a GM, just helps to differentiate between worlds, so that today it isn't raining in sector Murgo.
Brian
Funny, I know a world with billions of people and because it has no starport it has no interstellar trade at all...
...happens to be the same real world you're using as an example
That's because I'm talking about the extremely basic concept of trade rather than the more specialized subject of interstellar trade. If you can explain to me how using starships to convey goods is fundamentally different from using seagoing ships (or river barges or pack donkeys) and just how that difference works to make a billion people have the same trade as a thousand, please do.
I don't know. But you are asking about quantitative factors while I'm arguing about qualitative factors. Would we have more trade between two worlds with billions of people each than between two worlds with thousands of people each? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Would we have more trade between worlds lying right next to each other than between worlds lying further from each other? Yes, we would. I believe in that as I believe in the laws of thermodynamics.
Of course we would. Just take a look at the vanilla Traveller trade system tables and you can see that there are lots of different things that a free trader can buy on one world ans sell on another. What makes you think that regular trading companies couldn't find things to trade? Indeed, what makes you think there would BE regular trading companies if they couldn't find something to trade?
Try taking an Akerut 5000T Hercules freighter and referee it for a while using the trade system and see how fast it will run into bankruptcy. Yet Akerut has (from memory) 20 of them is a backwater subsector like Aramis.
Of course we will. If a free trader can find enough freight and passengers to keep in business using its rather inefficient business model, regular shippers using a much more efficient business model can too.
Higher quantities between worlds with bigger populations, smaller quantities between worlds further apart.
I'm not making an accurate guess. I'm just drawing a logical conclusion to the effect that bigger populations mean bigger trade volumes and longer distances mean smaller trade volumes.
Even FT doesn't make accurate guesses. It provides ranges that the referee can select from to suit his purposes.
And I submit that assuming that free traders operate in the cracks of a much bigger volume of trade is far more plausible than to assume that what trade a free trader can find each week is all the trade there is.
It's a good deal likelier to be plausible, though.
I don't see any problems with assuming that FT makes for a good game, but I disagree with you about it being the right question here. For a good game all you need are rules that make for a good game and it's perfectly all right to sacrifice plausibility for gamability as long as you're aware that that's what you are doing. But to go the extra step and claim that implausible rules are plausible just because they are gamable is just plain wrong. For plausible world-building you need a world-view that actually work.
Hans
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Omnivore
Guest
3000 years ago the primary item of trade was blood and bruises.
Brian
Brian
Hans:
The fundamental differences between shipping via wet merchant and via space merchant, in a nutshell:
The fundamental differences between shipping via wet merchant and via space merchant, in a nutshell:
- A wet vessel whose engines conk out can replenish LS
- A wet vessel can expect to be found near where it was last seen when not under power; a space vessel can be expected to have continued to drift at course and speed
- A wet vessel having a hull failure can result in survivors who can last weeks; a space vessel will expect survivors to last mere hours (as airtanks run out)
- A wet ship without power is merely at the mercy of the local ambient, a narrow range of temperatures, mostly within survivable; A space ship without power is subject to blackbody cooling, and unless significantly inside the optimal hab zone of the star will cool to hazardous within hours, lethal in a couple weeks.
- Wet ships' fuel is mildly toxic, but easily handled and even immersion can be tolerated; Space ship's fuel is highly flammable, almost non-toxic, but is cryogenic and thus very hard to handle. An onboard fuel leak into compartments thus is very different; wet ships, one evacuates the survivors of a flooded compartment, while space, one thaws their remains.
- Relative costs of fuel are several orders of magnitude higher for space over wet. Even when wet and space use the same fusion plants. This has much to do with the requisite distances involved, as well as changing potential energy states.
- quality and quantity of LS equipment required is considerably lower for wet traffic than for space traffic.
- Comm times for wet traffic are measured in hours to seconds for modern (the only data sets robust enough to model comm effects are all telegraph era and later), while for Jump-travel, they are in weeks
- Wet Ship sensors are limited by world curvature, signal strength, and receiver sensitivity; Space sensors are limited only by signal strength and receiver sensitivity
- Wet rescue is only "often too late", space rescue will be "usually too late"
