Brandon Cope:
>> 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).
The most valuable part of a starship is not the "luxuries". It is the
drive
section: Free Trader TL15 MCr36.915 : M-drive MCr2.8, J-drive MCr12,
P-plant MCr11. Total drive section is MCr25.8, which is 55.9% of the value
of the ship. The hull adds another MCr10.494 t that, which means the hull
and drives amounts to 78.7% of the total value of the ship. {the
percentage
values WERE adjusted to take into account the 20% discount for mass
production included in the ship price}
And, before you say that you don't allow TLs higher than ?? (12?), let me
point out that the drive section of a TL12 free trader would run 85.5% of
the value of the ship, since low tech fusion plants cost more than high
tech ones, which increases the relative value of the drives {a TL12 990MW
fusion plant costs MCr33, a TL 15 one costs MCr11}.
>> 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
Hmmm...
For that TL12 free trader, a cargo worth more than the ship would have a
value of about KCr54.679 per Kl (KCr738.167 per ton disp.). Assuming MT
cargo rules, there ain't no such animal. Assuming classic Traveller cargo
rules, the only things that meet the bill are Machine Tools (KCr750 per
ton),
Radioactives(KCr1000 per ton), Gems (KCr1000 per ton), or Computers
(Kcr10,000 per each). Gems and radioactives come in lots under 81Kl, which
leaves 92% of your cargo hold empty, and leaves the value of cargo at 11%
of
the value of the ship (maximum). Machine tools (the best cargo from old
Traveller) come in lots of up to 405Kl, which leaves your hold less than
half
full, and your cargo value at 41% of your ship (maximum). Computers are
kind
of iffy. If the computers were 10 tons or less, and you had a cargo hold
full of them, then the cargo would be worth more than the ship. But I
doubt
you can run an interstellar trade for long on cargos of computers alone.
Especially since the frequency they turn up is one trip in 36.
>> 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.
No insurance in your campaign? Has LLoyds of London lived in vain? And,
for most
people, the choice between their property and their life is an easy one.
If
ships are THAT hard to come by, how did they come by the first one, anyway?
>> 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.
NO Vargr? Do you have criminals? I am sure that anyone wanting to join
the
pirate business needs a ship. I also suspect that there are wars, in which
case, one side or the other will pay handsomely for captured ships. That's
what Prize Courts are all about.
> I usually have 2 sets of crewman and an equal number of 'marines'
>on board my pirate vessels
Sounds like a personal problem. Historically, the Yankee privateers
carried
enough men to man ten prizes, if they could get the men. There was a lot
of
competition between various privateers for the available seamen.
> 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...
Well, false. The ships belonged to merchants and nobles. The Spanish
government just chartered them.
> 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
Have you noticed how long it took the real world to industrialize?
Slightly
less than 200 years, I believe. You suppose that 20 worlds couldn't reach
that
point in 500 years? Remember that we had to do it the hard way: we didn't
know
in advance that it could be done. Your post_Rebellion people already know
that
it works, since their ancestors had it.
>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
This implies (using TCS guidelines) a total population for your little
polity
of slightly less than the USA.
Hmmm...
Didn't the world's population rise by a factor of 50 in the last century?
Does that mean that your 20 world empire started with about 2 people 500
years ago?
>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).
This assumes the pirates are "environmentally sound". If they are in it
for the money, then one good ship sets them up for life, and any given
pirate can, and should, ignore ship production rates - that can be his
successor's problem.
> 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).
I know this may sound silly, but why do your empire's enemies go out of
their
way to preserve the shipping of your empire? If they destroy that
shipping, thenthey have defeated your empire? If they let it live, and
just siphon off a little, then they will never win their little guerrilla
action. Check out histories
of guerrilla wars to find out how guerrillas work, and what it takes to
succeed
as a guerrilla.
Later...
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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
--W. von Braun