That Corsair/Pirate Problem...

[Quint]

So, I was just thinking and had a realization (that I may have had before and forgotten) and was wondering who else has come to the same conclusion. Given the problems inherent in ship-to-ship combat, boarding, and capture in the OTU Traveller (though perhaps slightly less so in a Bk2 SSU), is the "real" model not "Pirates of the Spinward Main" but instead "Space Vikings"?

Given the early source material used, this actually seems to make far more sense. That pirates are actually looting settlements rather than trying to intercept ships in transit. It certainly still gives the navy an important anti-piracy role, and one that emphasizes patrol and ports-of-call rather primarily strategic deployments.

D.

 

[flykiller]

is the "real" model not "Pirates of the Spinward Main" but instead "Space Vikings"?

would make better sense, but there are problems with that as well. the original vikings were successful because 1) they could stage a surprise landing anywhere, and 2) when the local villagers trotted out the standard roman infantry formation to deal with them the vikings simply would steal a bunch of horses and ride off to loot elsewhere. this all worked because the coastal regions were "rich" and largely defenseless and the vikings were "poor" and could strike and escape anywhere. not sure that same dynamic can be replicated in an environment where even "villagers" have radar, radio, and maneuver drives, and the "vikings" have multi-MCr ships and the tech to support them already - what are they going to steal?

 

[Kilgs]

I think the reference is to the novel "Space Vikings" and not old-school Vikings.

I believe so, at least in frontier areas or those of low population. So what if they have radar, what's their response time and defensive resources? Heck, we have radar and satellites now but folks seem to keep invading other countries, committing massive heists and mass abductions... So what if you can see them coming... how are you going to stop them?

This will inevitably get countered (argument-wise) as we delve into the "planetary invasion" argument that has raged here for centuries (in ant years). But I feel that anti-gravity changes everything when it comes to raids and invasions. I have no problem with planetary invasions in TU so that definitely colors my thinking quite a bit.

As to what they would steal, that's easy... EVERYTHING. Modern thieves already have cellphones but they keep stealing cellphones, car thieves have cars and keep stealing cars. Greed is a powerful motivator and it is completely unreasonable/illogical. Anything that can be sold, melted down, sold for scrap, put on a windowsill... It's all fungible goods from a raider's perspective. And those kinds of people don't stop because they "have enough" and there is no such thing as "don't need anymore..."

It's not need that drives most crime but want. And many folks want a thing simply because others have it.

Including, unfortunately, sophonts themselves. Slaving has always been comprised from a base of abductions and raids.

 

[DickNervous]

would make better sense, but there are problems with that as well. the original vikings were successful because 1) they could stage a surprise landing anywhere, and 2) when the local villagers trotted out the standard roman infantry formation to deal with them the vikings simply would steal a bunch of horses and ride off to loot elsewhere. this all worked because the coastal regions were "rich" and largely defenseless and the vikings were "poor" and could strike and escape anywhere. not sure that same dynamic can be replicated in an environment where even "villagers" have radar, radio, and maneuver drives, and the "vikings" have multi-MCr ships and the tech to support them already

The "vikings" could always go after lower tech worlds. If you look at the Pirates of Drinax campaign by Mongoose there are two examples of this working, one being the very first "mission" for the players where a band of pirates landed and stole stuff from Clarke.

The second is where the "barbarians" on Oghma who are constantly raiding Borite and Marduuk which are both low-tech, low-pop worlds. Now granted, the Ogmans are mostly slavers so they are "stealing" people, but there are plenty of places it could work.

Anywhere there is a low-population and/or lower-tech world than the "vikings" they could get away with it. Now, how profitable it would be is another story.

- what are they going to steal?

Anything not nailed down :rofl:

 

[flykiller]

As to what they would steal, that's easy... EVERYTHING ... Anything that can be sold, melted down, sold for scrap, put on a windowsill... It's all fungible goods from a raider's perspective.

yeah, but then there's the little matter of transportation and fencing. stealing gold is easy, you put it in a bag and carry it away and melt it down and then go out and spend it. stealing 13 dton computers is hard, and selling them on amazon at discount prices leads to questions. "yeah I stole this thing, don't know what's on it and yeah there was some gunfire and stuff, but hey it's ok just install it and put it in control of your navigation and weapons and airlocks ...."

The "vikings" could always go after lower tech worlds.

... but why? why would some tech 12 raiders swoop down and steal my five year old car from out of my driveway?

how profitable it would be is another story.

it would seem to be the ENTIRE story. unless you're dealing with people who are determined to die in battle and go to valhalla, in which case the raiding is an excuse.

Including, unfortunately, sophonts themselves.

ah ... now that might work. but unfortunately for "vikings", there are much easier and quieter ways to take people than swooping down in a raid.

 

[mike wightman]

Low TL worlds may well have higher TL gear that privateers could pilfer. A small craft or two, a few ATVs, even a couple of air/rafts can be sold for a considerable amount.

Wait for a type s to jump insystem for its regular survey/message drop to the world off the beaten track, wait 'til it lands, deal with the crew and steal the ship.

 

[flykiller]

Wait for a type s to jump insystem for its regular survey/message drop to the world off the beaten track, wait 'til it lands, deal with the crew and steal the ship.

could work. sounds like a job for Scotty McLean, starship repo man!

 

[Quint]

Using the Space Vikings model, assuming that they are operating at roughly TL12ish (even 10-11ish) and they are going to have quite the advantage against TL8 and below cultures.

They can nuke with impunity, as they have Dampeners and the targets don't. They have anti-grav, and their targets don't, the EW mismatch is probably prodigious, and the mismatch on a fireteam level is pretty profound as well.

As to what you loot in the high ticket areas:

TL0+: Precious Metals/Gems and Luxury goods (plus Art and Alchohol)
TL6+: Fissionables/Radioactives
TL7-8: Medical Drugs, Artificial Organs

If you can't fill your hold with those, then you start supplementing with whatever - scrap metals, finished goods, food products, livestock/slaves if you're equipped for it, pretty much anything a merchant would normally buy and try to sell at a profit.

Now, you might be making less money off of it - but then again you may simply be selling it somewhere that doesn't care and getting the normal local going rate.

As the novel pointed out, the real goldmine is when you find a planet that is regressed from a higher tech and you can convince them to start mining Lanthanum and Zuchai Crystals and paying you those as tribute instead of being looted every few months.

D.

 

[Quint]

I think the reference is to the novel "Space Vikings" and not old-school Vikings.

Yes, that is exactly what I was referencing Space Vikings by H. Beam Piper, arguably the origin of the Sword Worlds and the appearance of the Mercenary Cruiser...

D.

 

[Enoki]

There's always low pop systems with an A or B starport in them... Probably little or no defenses and a nice starport to loot... Maybe just take the high port...

 

[flykiller]

There's always low pop systems with an A or B starport in them... Probably little or no defenses and a nice starport to loot... Maybe just take the high port...

as a way of life, can't see it.

as a one-off or very-short-term game, make a great opportunity for some q-ship action, especially if any pc's have ship tactics skill. frontier area, former mil get reactivated and assigned a ship, covert tracing of their fencing operations, ambush "vikings" a time or two in a full-on ship battle, then figure out where their super-secret base is and go raid THEM. yeah, that sounds like fun.

 

[Hyphen]

The "vikings" could always go after lower tech worlds. If you look at the Pirates of Drinax campaign by Mongoose there are two examples of this working, one being the very first "mission" for the players where a band of pirates landed and stole stuff from Clarke.

The second is where the "barbarians" on Oghma who are constantly raiding Borite and Marduuk which are both low-tech, low-pop worlds. Now granted, the Ogmans are mostly slavers so they are "stealing" people, but there are plenty of places it could work.

Anywhere there is a low-population and/or lower-tech world than the "vikings" they could get away with it. Now, how profitable it would be is another story.

Anything not nailed down :rofl:

The Space Vikings in the novel refer to this as "chicken-stealing".

 

[flykiller]

The Space Vikings in the novel refer to this as "chicken-stealing".

and after all costs - jump time, lack of work, labor costs, maintenance costs, fencing discounts, occasional casualties, occasional arrests, and other loss of personnel - are factored in, probably about as profitable.

 

[Quint]

and after all costs - jump time, lack of work, labor costs, maintenance costs, fencing discounts, occasional casualties, occasional arrests, and other loss of personnel - are factored in, probably about as profitable.

Who says it has to be more profitable than that?

It's an exercise in barrel-scraping, but while I'm sure hitting the Imperium equivalent of a Spanish treasure galleon is the dream I also expect that it's about as common.

I don't expect that the folks who are generally living as pirates are doing so because they decided to forgo a sterling and upstanding career as a merchant, naval officer, or scout to take for the glorious and enriching trade of pirate. They may have started out as upstanding folk, but somewhere things took a turn - and now they are wolves-heads and wrecca.

D.

 

[Enoki]

as a way of life, can't see it.

as a one-off or very-short-term game, make a great opportunity for some q-ship action, especially if any pc's have ship tactics skill. frontier area, former mil get reactivated and assigned a ship, covert tracing of their fencing operations, ambush "vikings" a time or two in a full-on ship battle, then figure out where their super-secret base is and go raid THEM. yeah, that sounds like fun.

I could see it if the pirates have identified the equivalent of a convenience store / gas station, or several of the same and hit them periodically.

Another real possibility is they hit secondary targets in systems. That is, they raid some secondary world or satellite in a system and escape by jumping before the cavalry arrives.
When you do the extended generation system you find many systems have secondary worlds or satellites that would be attractive targets for piracy / criminals where the main world or ones with space forces couldn't arrive before the pirates jumped, particularly if the pirates have the fuel to jump already on their ship. They could do this by either first refueling, posing as legitimate merchants etc., then hitting their target, or by using drop tanks in the system they jumped from leaving their ship fully fuelled for a second jump after hitting their target.

 

[BlackBat242]

Also remember that, in the Space Vikings story(ies), the vast majority of the "loot" was NOT resold, but was kept, and used to maintain/boost the home planets - in Traveller the pirates could be from somewhat distant low-tech worlds that are stealing what they cannot afford to buy, trying to use captured loot to build up their home tech base (yes, these are actually privateers). The high-tech gear they possess & use would then be all captured material.

 

[Whipsnade]

So, I was just thinking and had a realization (that I may have had before and forgotten) and was wondering who else has come to the same conclusion. Given the problems inherent in ship-to-ship combat, boarding, and capture in the OTU Traveller (though perhaps slightly less so in a Bk2 SSU), is the "real" model not "Pirates of the Spinward Main" but instead "Space Vikings"?

Congratulations. You just reinvented the wheel.

And considering how often the board's membership "turns over", reinventing the wheel is a very good thing.

The intercept-fight-board-capture model of piracy doesn't really work too well inside the 100D limit, especially when we remember that ships in orbit around a Size 8 world can shoot at targets beyond that limit. Raiding the main world can be problematic too.

Enter LBB:6 which finally brought the rest of the system beyond the main world into the picture. Now we've got settlements, habitats, and - more importantly - traffic all of which are not going to be defended as well as the main world and it's starport.

As for "chicken stealing", Walt Smith did a shocking thing over a decade ago. He actually looked at the numbers. In this essay, Walt looked at the cost of a corsair compared to it's "prey". He assumed pirates would get 10% of the price of a starship, 25% of the price of a small craft, and various percentages on other kinds of loot. He found that:

One starship will pay a corsair's "mortgage" for roughly five years.
One fat trader will pay all the bills for three years.
One small craft will do the same for one year.
Fifteen launches or lifeboats will pay off a corsair.

A pirate could take one fat trader a year and do very well for himself. As Walt points out, that means pirates can afford to wait for a "golden moment" or travel far afield to their "hunting grounds".

As you wisely surmised, there is more to piracy than operating within the 100D limit, plus there are more and varied targets outside that limit too.

 

[GypsyComet]

I recommend reading, or at least skimming, A. Bertram Chandler's stories regarding the life and careers of Captain/Commodore/Scout/etc John Grimes and paying attention to what his long-standing nemesis, who puts in at least a guest appearance in most of the stories, is doing or suspected of doing. The list is long and dirty, and rarely involves boarding actions.

As for the Type P itself, I think of the distinctive chassis as a Type R or Type T variant that is amenable to conversion by dint of its lack of streamlining. I lean toward Type R because the Corsair's stated suite of variable hull features only makes sense if there are scores of the hull in legal endeavors for each Corsair to disguise themselves amongst.

 

[RandyB]

Congratulations. You just reinvented the wheel.

And considering how often the board's membership "turns over", reinventing the wheel is a very good thing.

The intercept-fight-board-capture model of piracy doesn't really work too well inside the 100D limit, especially when we remember that ships in orbit around a Size 8 world can shoot at targets beyond that limit. Raiding the main world can be problematic too.

Enter LBB:6 which finally brought the rest of the system beyond the main world into the picture. Now we've got settlements, habitats, and - more importantly - traffic all of which are not going to be defended as well as the main world and it's starport.

As for "chicken stealing", Walt Smith did a shocking thing over a decade ago. He actually looked at the numbers. In this essay, Walt looked at the cost of a corsair compared to it's "prey". He assumed pirates would get 10% of the price of a starship, 25% of the price of a small craft, and various percentages on other kinds of loot. He found that:

One starship will pay a corsair's "mortgage" for roughly five years.
One fat trader will pay all the bills for three years.
One small craft will do the same for one year.
Fifteen launches or lifeboats will pay off a corsair.

A pirate could take one fat trader a year and do very well for himself. As Walt points out, that means pirates can afford to wait for a "golden moment" or travel far afield to their "hunting grounds".

As you wisely surmised, there is more to piracy than operating within the 100D limit, plus there are more and varied targets outside that limit too.

Thanks for the link to that essay. Traveller just became a little more wild'n'wooly for me, and that is a very good thing.

 

[DickNervous]

Congratulations. You just reinvented the wheel.

And considering how often the board's membership "turns over", reinventing the wheel is a very good thing.

The intercept-fight-board-capture model of piracy doesn't really work too well inside the 100D limit, especially when we remember that ships in orbit around a Size 8 world can shoot at targets beyond that limit. Raiding the main world can be problematic too.

Enter LBB:6 which finally brought the rest of the system beyond the main world into the picture. Now we've got settlements, habitats, and - more importantly - traffic all of which are not going to be defended as well as the main world and it's starport.

As for "chicken stealing", Walt Smith did a shocking thing over a decade ago. He actually looked at the numbers. In this essay, Walt looked at the cost of a corsair compared to it's "prey". He assumed pirates would get 10% of the price of a starship, 25% of the price of a small craft, and various percentages on other kinds of loot. He found that:

One starship will pay a corsair's "mortgage" for roughly five years.
One fat trader will pay all the bills for three years.
One small craft will do the same for one year.
Fifteen launches or lifeboats will pay off a corsair.

A pirate could take one fat trader a year and do very well for himself. As Walt points out, that means pirates can afford to wait for a "golden moment" or travel far afield to their "hunting grounds".

As you wisely surmised, there is more to piracy than operating within the 100D limit, plus there are more and varied targets outside that limit too.

That is an EXCELLENT and AMAZING breakdown and the essay is awesome!