> 1) Pirates probably do not care whether the victims can be robbed
>again and again. Take one Tukera liner home, sell it, and retire.
I use a sector set about 500 years after the Rebellion, where there is
precious little in the way of luxury resources. What liners there are small and
have a low resale value (they tend to be of spartan comforts and of the 'it'll
get you from point A to point B' mentality).
> 2) Probably more relevant to your picture - in the 15th and 16th
>centuries, the cargo from a ship was frequently worth more than the
>ship. Sometimes A LOT more. In MT, most cargos are worth no more than
>a small fraction of the value of the ship.
Along with the above, most merchant vessels are under 500 tons,
meaning they will not carry trivial cargo; whatever they carry IS valuable
> 3) There is also a lot of room between taking the ship and killing
>the crew. Neither especially implies the other. You can put the crew
>out in vacc suits, and they could probably be rescued in plenty of time.
>They are, after all, within a few million Km from the main world (unless
>they are stupid, or somehow unable to add).
Yes, but if an independant merchant knows that he is going to lose his
ship, there is less of a chance he will surrender, since it will be difficult
for him to easily get another.
> 4) As to selling the ship, that's where the Vargr come in. I doubt
>the Vargr care from clean papers. Selling a ship in the Extants should
>be a matter of listing it in the classifieds, and waiting a bit.
The Vargr, unfourtunately, do not exist as a racial entity in my
campaign.
> 5) As to the crew difficulties, notice that pirates traditionally
>carried large crews for that very purpose.
I usually have 2 sets of crewman and an equal number of 'marines'
on board my pirate vessels
>Sounds like you have been reading GURPS Swashbucklers. I notice that
>those pirates (Brethren of the Coast) usually took the ships, and
>marooned the crews in small boats. Obviously THEY didn't worry too much
>about robbing the ships repeatedly.
Well, true, but the ships they hit tended to be either owned by the
Spanish government, or belonged to large trading companies. In my campaign,
over 90% of the merchants are independant. So, some changes had to be made...
>BTW, why do pirates care how long it takes to build a ship?
>And why use an impoverished subsector that can only build 300 ships per
>year? Efate probably builds 5000+ per year by itself.
Well, I guess by MT standards, my campaign sector is impoverished,
but considering it's in the rebuilding stages nearly 500 years of Dark Years,
you couldn't expect a great deal more. Anyway, the 300 ships a year are
merchant vessels built at civilian ship yards. It does not include non-merchant
civilian ships, or military and exploration vessels (which have their own
ship yards). The central 'empire' of my sector consists of about 20 systems,
and cranks out about 600-700 ships a year (excluding small craft that are not
jump capable). Pirates end up having to care about ship construction times since
if they start taking ships left and right, they will put a severe dent into
available ships to plunder (see also below).
Perhaps my pirates wouldn't function in an 'official' Traveller
universe (whatever that may be now...), but they work well in mine. Most
pirates in my campaign fall into two groups. The first are those who get their
ships and maintainence from independant worlds in return of a share of the loot
(more or less privateers). The second group is old, semi-obsolete military
vessels with second line or reserve crews employed by a empire pretty much
ruined by my main one (though they aren't pirates in the conventional sense
either). Retaliation against the first group, if the threat gets bad enough,
is simple: about 20% of the empire's fleet is sent to the world backing the
privateers with the job of wrecking any starships they find, and of destroying
all shipyards. The second group is much harder: the natives of the vanquished
empire are too fimly entrenched and militarily equipped for such action. While
no longer a real military threat, they can, at best, only be reacted to when
their raiders appear (the Navy has deployed a great deal of Q-freighters in
systems on that section of the sector).
>[email removed]
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Brandon Cope ! "Every way I turn my eyes
Student Consultant, Stephen F. Austin State! Shadows pass in the night
[email removed] ! Haunted by reality
[email removed] ! Living out of dreams
- -------------------------------------------! Nothing is the way it seems"
a generous and sadistic DM ! Alan Parsons Project
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