Small Ships/Big Ships Redux

[Liam Devlin]

Hmmm. Piracy in the 3I..(I presume this is pre Rebellion, yes?) good..in conjunction why merchants/ yachts go armed...(or should).

Aramis posted:"Piracy needs the following considerations to work:
(1) You must be able to force combat with the target
(2) you must be able to threaten the target
(3) you must be able to obtain the target's valuables before reinforcements arrive
(4) you must be able to escape or outrun the reinforcements.
(5) you must be able to use or sell the valuables.

In the 3I (1) is possible. (2) is likely. (3) is common provided you wait til just shy of the jump limit. (4) grab and skitter out to the jump limit. (5) is the problem....
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Caveat-#3 is possible especially with 0 SDB's in system.
Caveat #5- if yer trying to sell the starship ye've taken, agreed. Serial numbers etc are traceable...But if its the subcraft vehicles-those are in the bazillions made, and are harder to trace. And just as easily sold for high profits.. If its the goods in the hold...or ransoming the passengers..Those have there own problems Aramis is dead on.
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In the modern wet naval environment, (1) is a problem, (2) can be arranged with SSM-MP systems (TOW or LAW), (3) is right out in anyyplace less than 100miles from a shore-base or carrier, (4) is also a problem... bigger naval vessels are in fact faster! (5) is no different a problem."
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Piracy still exists in the Indian Ocean, and Pan pacific states (archipelagoes, multitude of ships of innocuous nature, and registry...#4Grabbing the stuff and skittering may not be James Bond stuff, as much as "hide in plain sight"--its whats under the hood that matters...below the water line that is! AN effective camoflage, still in use today.
#5-Theres a market for everything criminally undertaken, else why do it? Beats honest work if the pay off is there w/ a buyer!
How to prevent the target ship from getting off that warning is almost as important as seizing her. Surprise plays a key role inn thsi factor, as do "Native shills" amongst hired on crew (both wet/ Space versions). Sabotage of the radio--who warns what Navy? No one does...

Pirates who operate today might not be numerous, but they are no less devious & cunning, and dangerous.

A Crypto tech Navy Brat's observations on Wet piracy/ vis a vis Traveller Piracy.

 

[aramis]

Item 5 is where the roleplaying is!

Seriously, though, even in indonesia & the south china sea, IF THE AUTHORITIES WANTED TO, they could shut down much of the piracy going on. They have neither the motivation nor the clout.

In traveller, arming merchantmen is a way to avoid having to fund loads of SDB's. Once ships are armed against pirates, similar ships will be modified into pirates. Ships themselves are limited in traveller to certain physics limits... so the occasional 9-G RRV is going to catch the occasional piate in the act... (Thank-you FF&S) Even most warships aren't going to be close enough to nab every pirate.

Now, add a letter of marque, and you now have a legitimization of going for the ship; with out a LoM, you go for cargos, and maybe a subcraft or two.

And yes, every pirate craft will be ID'd. So What? If you can't catch up with it in time to stop it, it is successful. And a pirate can get away by jumps to oort clouds, etc, and shovelling snow. By the time you can respond out there, they've jumped. (Remember, GG's and mainworlds are NOT the only sources of fuel. See Beltsrike, too.)

 

[Liam Devlin]

Aramis makes good points here on

"#5-roleplaying the disposal of the loot!"

In addition to neither motivation or the clout, Can we add, a certain amount of corruption in certain countries to "look the other way"? Balkanized regions and pocket states in the Troajn Reaches/ Foreven, Vanguard reaches, The beyond are ripe pickens fer this lot of work...as are a few key spots along the Spinward Main/SM!!!

In yer theory of arming the merchant saves $$$ on SDB's makes the challenge of good gunners a must fer Merchie skippers...

On top of that yer theory that "if ye arm merchants, then armed ships resembling merchants follow to become pirates follow" is akin to the Stainless Steel rat philosphy of cyclical theft & Law enforcement. One feeds the other-round n round...

Considering the risk, one P-class Corsair (even selling a Fat Trader at a loss) still turns a profit if he only bags one in a given year.. to pay crew, and maintenance fees (at a place say like..Thanber/Querion-E/SM...!)

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Piracy needs the following considerations to work:
(1) You must be able to force combat with the target
(2) you must be able to threaten the target
(3) you must be able to obtain the target's valuables before reinforcements arrive
(4) you must be able to escape or outrun the reinforcements.
(5) you must be able to use or sell the valuables.

In the 3I (1) is possible. (2) is likely. (3) is common provided you wait til just shy of the jump limit. (4) grab and skitter out to the jump limit. (5) is the problem....

Well
(1) is difficult near the 100D limit, merchants will jump out.
(3) is difficult, assuming the local SDB wasn't suspicious about you hovering there near the 100D limit, it's still going to be there within 2-3 hours. That's enough time that you can force someone to pull over and proceed to steal their safe and some more transportable stuff, but nowhere near enough time to steal the ship or a significant amount of cargo. Frankly, if you sit around on the 100D limit, in any system with appreciable defenses, an SDB will wander around to ask what you're up to, and wouldn't you like to move along, pretty soon.

 

[thedamnyankee]

The basic problem, though, is that whenever you have large (>> 5,000 dton) warships, there is no reason whatsoever to allow private merchant vessels to mount weapons -- the entire Traveller paradigm of armed PC-scale ships goes right out the window.

The issue is one of effectiveness: in a universe of megawarships, no ship that PC's can reasonably afford can mount a credible threat to even the smallest naval auxiliaries (of which there will be an overwhelming number, besides). The only reason to mount weapons, therefore, is as a defense against "pirates" -- but the simplest method to prevent "pirates" from becoming a problem is to prohibit shipboard weapons in private hands in the first place, and rely on the aforementioned hordes of small naval auxiliaries to saturate the spacelanes with patrols to catch violators.

This is essentially the situation in the real world today: nobody mounts guns on their merchant vessels; instead, they call the Navy or the Coast Guard when they get in trouble. Piracy does still occur, but normally using boarding parties armed with hand weapons and delivered by speedboat.

In the last historical period where privately owned vessels (privateers) were able to participate in naval operations at all -- usually as commerce raiders, but occasionally picking off small naval auxiliaries -- the largest warships were only 10-20 times the size of the privateers, and with only 10-20 times as many guns (though the total weight of shot on a ship-of-the-line was much greater).

SO, if you still want your 200-400 dton armed PC ships, and you want your Traveller universe to make any kind of consistent sense (which I realize not everyone cares to do), it seems to me you pretty much have to limit your naval vessels to 5,000 dtons or so.* Otherwise, kiss your weapons goodbye, and call for the cops like a good citizen.

Having come to this conclusion, I further contend that 5,000 dtons (25,000 gross register tons; 70,000 tons displacement) is plenty big enough for any reasonable gaming purpose -- huge, in fact, for something that flies under its own power. Our perceptions are skewed by fantasy physics at the movies, that's all.

What difference does it make whether there are 250 crew or 25,000? You're still only going to deal directly with a handful of officers and men; everyone else is just scenery and statistics.

Characters are interesting to play when they can sway events through their actions -- is it better to command one 5,000-dton ship-of-the-line in a universe where fleets number maybe twenty such, or to command a million-dton squadron when each fleet is made up of dozens? Scale is what you make it.

[*I'm fully aware that this causes other problems; those who know me are equally well aware of my efforts to solve them.][/QB]

Wow. Persuasive Argument. You just changed my mind on the subject. Now what reason is there for the 5000 ton limit in game? Im thinking its related to Jump drives, so yes you could build a massive SDB, but it can be out manuverd by the smaller Jump capable war ships.

Christopher Schroeder

 

[themink]

Originally posted by Christopher Schroeder:

Wow. Persuasive Argument. You just changed my mind on the subject. Now what reason is there for the 5000 ton limit in game? Im thinking its related to Jump drives, so yes you could build a massive SDB, but it can be out manuverd by the smaller Jump capable war ships.

Christopher Schroeder

You don't actually need a "hard" limit on ship sizes. It is more a question of the amount of money spent.

If your Imperium only takes a small tax on trade (with a laissez faire view) then they have a much lower budget so ships of this size as still huge.

Given the overheads involved in haulling goods (ships are expensive) the returns have to be pretty good - and there is a limit to how much cargo of that nature needs to be shipped. So you don;t need massive million ton Frieghters

Having smaller "total" tonnage, the pinnacle of the pyramid will be much lower down.

Having said that, I do like the jump limit on ship size. It's not traveller but it gives the defenders an even bigger edge. That stabilises borders and allow "splinter" empires more survivability. So I could have more, smaller empires. mmmm I can see that being stolen for MTU

 

[Liam Devlin]

An aside on whether to arm or not arm small merchants...

"This above else first, go armed"-Plato,of Athens

I would not give my Pcs an unarmed ship. They knew/ and know they aren't "the biggest fish in the sea".

We extrapolate the Imperial navy ships at various sizes, but space, might I point out, is vast, and the distances involved (not to be punny) astronomical...

An Imperium of 11,000 worlds, and trillions of people (and Bazillions of credits worth of commerce/ tariffs/ taxes) can conceiveably have the numbered fleets of the MT era.

On the size issue, might I offer some examples of HG fixes from the estimable Ken Pick?

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/book2plus.html

These are tweaks to consider, for going over the 5kton "limit".

(by the way, "limits", especially in a game using ones imagination in the frame work of rules strikes me a wee bit oxymoronic, but then again...
I am a heretic!). YMMV

Do as thy will in YTU.

 

[themink]

I have a cunning plan.

IMTU nuclear dampers haven't been invented.

Nukes are very expensive - however it reduces ship duals to swapping missiles trying to get a nuke past the laser defenses.

It means that even a pathetic little Far Trader might get lucky and lob one through a patrol cruiser's defences.

Thus Civy ships are "dangerous enough" to be armed. There is no point building mil ships bigger than 5kdT - you are still vulnerable to incoming etc etc

A reversion to the age of privateers where civy ships were dangerous enough to mil ships that they could put up a fight.

With my reduced total space tonnage, I think this will work (Yes I like small ship traveller) - on the down side, I see fighters making a big come back - weasel in to pointblank range and then fire your single nuke at knife fighting range.

 

[thedamnyankee]

Ok, IMTU
I’ve decided to create a small cluster of about 100 worlds to work in. The over riding Idea is that the sector duke (actually its only 4 subsectors) had some idea that the Empire was going to fall, so he took steps to keep his little universe from back sliding too far. The cluster had the advantage of being mostly self sufficient anyway (needing a J-4 to get to the rest of the empire.) So In the end several smaller Kingdoms are created each "loyal" to the vestiges of the Imperum but really autonomous. To keep the cluster from falling into war the Imperium set up a tonnage and hull number restriction ALA the Washington Naval treaty of the 1920. This means each kingdom will have a set number of ships which I can name and make each one a little different. “That’s the King Zaphad! Its there biggest and newest Dreadnought!”

Christopher Schroeder

 

[GBoyett]

Originally posted by thrash:
The basic problem, though, is that whenever you have large (>> 5,000 dton) warships, there is no reason whatsoever to allow private merchant vessels to mount weapons -- the entire Traveller paradigm of armed PC-scale ships goes right out the window.

The issue is one of effectiveness: in a universe of megawarships, no ship that PC's can reasonably afford can mount a credible threat to even the smallest naval auxiliaries (of which there will be an overwhelming number, besides). The only reason to mount weapons, therefore, is as a defense against "pirates" -- but the simplest method to prevent "pirates" from becoming a problem is to prohibit shipboard weapons in private hands in the first place, and rely on the aforementioned hordes of small naval auxiliaries to saturate the spacelanes with patrols to catch violators.

To put in modern perpective: why allow private ownership of guns if the army can use weapons that can reach over the horizon?

Most pirates will have about the same amount of weaponry as merchants. For the most part it will be a even fight. If a group does use 10kton+ ships, they don't have that long to live because a ship of that size is not just threat to commerce, it's a threat of national security.

The Imperial Navy's job is not police work but defense and power projection with largest amount of firepower possible. Policing is the main focus of the small patrol ships and SDBs.

When was the last time you heard of a battleship or carrier dealing with pirates?

Originally posted by thrash:
SO, if you still want your 200-400 dton armed PC ships, and you want your Traveller universe to make any kind of consistent sense (which I realize not everyone cares to do), it seems to me you pretty much have to limit your naval vessels to 5,000 dtons or so.* Otherwise, kiss your weapons goodbye, and call for the cops like a good citizen.

Then your dead. If you disarm the law abiding, then only the government and the criminals will have the weapons.

Today there are credible studies that violent crime rates go up in areas with strict anti-gun laws. Wash DC has one of strictest anti-gun law cities, yet it's near the top in violent crimes.

 

[Anthony]

When was the last time I heard of a battleship dealing with pirates? Roughly the same as the last time a battleship was needed to deal with pirates, which would probably be the barbary pirates, though if you count commerce raiding, WWII at least. However, if an act of piracy occurred under a battleship's nose, I wouldn't expect it to ignore the act.

The reason that battleships aren't used to suppress piracy today is that, frankly, piracy based on ship to ship combat is dead. If piracy involving ship to ship combat is alive in the traveller universe, it makes sense to use warships to suppress it. They won't use battleships unless the pirates are using pretty big ships themselves, but even a 400 dton close escort can vaporize any ship an armed free trader has a chance of beating.

 

[themink]

Originally posted by George Boyett:


Most pirates will have about the same amount of weaponry as merchants. For the most part it will be a even fight.

When was the last time you heard of a battleship or carrier dealing with pirates?

call for the cops like a good citizen.

Then your dead. If you disarm the law abiding, then only the government and the criminals will have the weapons.

Today there are credible studies that violent crime rates go up in areas with strict anti-gun laws. Wash DC has one of strictest anti-gun law cities, yet it's near the top in violent crimes.[/QB][/QUOTE]

The above is only true if weapons are available.

(Aside Washington does not have strict anti-gun laws - compare it to Berlin) If you have an area with strict weapons control, however nearby weapons are easily available, you are spitting into the wind.

Once guns are "available" if you later ban them then yes, all you do is disarm the law abiding Far Trader and deliver them into the hands of the pirates.

If, at no stage, have you allowed civilians to arm, then the problem doesn't apply unless you live near a large lawless area which makes guns available (ie that's why London's hand gun crimes are escalating).

If there was a lot of commerce raiding at one stage, the response to which was to arm traders, then it sets the stage for this sort of universe.

(Yes, IMTU practically every ship is armed)

 

[simontmn]

Originally posted by The Mink:

If, at no stage, have you allowed civilians to arm, then the problem doesn't apply unless you live near a large lawless area which makes guns available (ie that's why London's hand gun crimes are escalating).

What's the large lawless area that provides London's illegal handguns? Jamaica? USA? Eastern Europe?

I live there, I'm curious.

On-topic, I like the point that removing nuclear dampers (and any other 'deflector shield' type tech) immediately makes large non-transport military vessels impractical. In modern navies the largest warships without a transport function are cruisers massing around 12,000 tons, pretty similar scale to the Traveller 5,000 dton warship, which likely masses around 25,000 tons on average. Of course transport ships like aircraft carriers may be much larger, but they're expected to stay well out of ship-to-ship combat.

 

[Jame]

I seem to have voted already, and can't remember which option I went with. Now I'd go with option 2 - give PCs' ships a shot but allow for MUCH larger ships.

Why? I want that pretentious TL-9 world to be able to construct 5,000 ton ships, even though the tl-15 Imperium will smash said ships.

 

[bromdenlong]

A possible reason for a soft 5000 dton limit on merchants might be that Imperial Down Ports make that their upper limit for groundside berths. Perhaps larger ships landing dirtside, or even in water, are just too big a strain on many local infrastructures.

Bigger unstreamlined merchants will be able to move freight more efficiently, but smaller streamlined freighters will be able to bypass the local cost of transporting goods from the high port to the planet's surface.

The smaller streamlined merchants should also be able to refuel from the local gas giant or planetary ocean much more quickly than an unstreamlined behemoth can refuel using fuel shuttles.


As for merchants being armed, I agree with George Boyett. There won't always be SDB cops around, or close enough to save you. In the inner regions of the Imperium, it might be impossible for pirates to stay ahead of the all-points bulletins about them, but in a border area like the Spinward Marches they would have neutral territory to run and hide in.

If you are doing all your business near Core, I doubt you need to be armed as a merchant. If you are in the Spinward Marches, you are a chump if you aren't armed.

 

[BardicHeart]

I voted option 3. I can see the Imps and Corps having bigger ships in part due to economics (nobody else can afford them) and part because even a planetary government isn't normally going to have much need for a fleet of dreadnaughts.

However, what I want most isn't so much a tonnage limit as just a more solid explanation of the imperial fleets and armies (including sample tables of equipment, unit organization, etc.), planetary fleets and patrols, and so forth.

 

[morfydd]

T

When was the last time you heard of a battleship or carrier dealing with pirates?

2000 thru 2011...off the Horn of Africa..

Unarmed Merchants are prey for pirates..
LHD's (helo and Jump Jet carriers), Cruisers, Amphibious command ships, Destroyers and Frigates ..of all major navies (USA, Russia, China, the EU, etc etc) all operate in this region to prevent piracy..

Note an LHD such as the Wasp, Mistrial, or Canberra have a full Squadron of Jump Jets on board and a full sqaudron or two of helos on board..

only reason there is no battle ship there are that none currently exist on active duty from any world navy ..and at least two Supercarriers are available at any given time to provide fighter cover to the Horn of Africa tasks forces ( The IO and the MEd are never without a carrier in them)...

 

[morfydd]

Option 2 is the one I think I chose ..mostly smaller vessels but larger ones exist ..and are in the background for the most part..( thou they aare there and avaiable as events if needed for a good story)

 

[HG_B]

Option #4 as there was no logical argument forwarded to indicate otherwise.

 

[Cryton]

I usually choose option 3, though PCs usually only encounter the big ships as background scenery or when I use one for an adventure site or the ship in question is the location of their patron.