(The lack of) Piracy in 2300AD

[Brandon C]

I thought I'd move this to it's own thread. Other than a short thread of privateering, this topic hasn't come up here in over a decade.

IMHO what makes piracy a rare ocurence in 2300AD setting is:

• the scarcity of spaceships, what implies enough control to probably note any ship`tuning pirate
• same about shipyards capable of building them. Any ship built is accounted for
• same for trained spaceship personnel
• control over tantalum as strategic material, without which no starship may be built

Even so, there is some, and some Challenge articles (all for classic 2300AD, but I guess they can be assumed to be more or less true in MgT 2300AD too):

• The sweet trade in Space: piracy (issue #41)
• Catch & Carry team (issue #45)
• SAMN (relating more to efforts to fight it, Issue #56)

And maybe others I cannot remember about right now...

The MgT 2300AD core rules appear to have little to say about piracy, other than the entry in the starship encounters and the pirate entry in the NPC section. (sorry Mongoose, but an index is not optional in the 21stcentury)

It is clear that piracy works much differently than in Traveller and is also less common. Merchant ships are rarely armed so a financially-strapped trader has much less of an option to go a-pirating. Pirates can no longer lurk near gas giants to pick off merchants who come looking for free fuel. While there is a period while an incoming ship is vulnerable while it's stutterwarp drive is discharging in a gravity well, a pirate ship's own stutterwarp drive is also nearly useless in such an encounter. Also, a feature of Traveller -- the purpose built pirate ship -- really can't exist in 2300AD; other nations would track down the builders and level the facilities from orbit with nukes. The only real "purpose built" raiders are more properly pruvateers.

I see only two types of piracy that are viable in the setting: the raiding of small colonies and outposts and stealing the cargo from landed ships (or cargo that is set to be loaded onto them). Or more bluntly, outright banditry and armed robbery, but not piracy in the historical sense.

Any opinions on this?

 

[kilemall]

Sounds about right, add in the extremely long range detection of ship drives, the necessity to entirely shut down a target stutterwarp otherwise no boarding, the system edge FTL speed patrols that will almost surely catch any pirate coming in from the cold to discharge their drives, and the pricing of ships, all adds up to a universe that is ship pirate-unfriendly.