Piracy and Sword Worlds

Steve Higginbotham writes:
>Alistair Langsford:
>
>>Piracy
>
>>To me Piracy is either small operations on the Frontier, or big
>>business organised crime in anywhere better policed.  I think that
>>there was a Journal (ie JTAS) or early Challenge article some time back
>>which talked about the economics of Piracy, and how to work out where
>>it would occur.  Anyone remember this?
>
>Piracy is big business.  Remember how much pirate ships cost.  Remember
>that even if you steal the ship, you have to spend millions to arm it,
>and more millions to repair it and maintain it.  This implies support
>form someone who already has millions, like a government.

I've been toying with making the price of yearly maintenance higher the
older the ship is while making the risks of an inadequately maintained
ships less. The result should be that established corporations would
get rid of their ships after 30 or 40 years because they became too
expensive to maintain. Thus lots of cheap but old ships on the market.

The problem with fleet sizes I still can't quite see how to overcome.
More star systems and less high-population planets is what's needed here.

- ---

Mark Urbin writes:
>  Putting a little though into it, a Darrian/Sword World mutual defense
>treaty (against the Zhodani) would probably spring into place.

This would be something like a Monaco/San Marino alliance against Germany.

Incidentally, the last I heard GDW intended to use the "Light behind the
Claw" idea. Norris will manage to avert the virus (somehow), so the Sword
Worlds would not be affected at all.


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "A  subsector  official  pompously states that the
        subsector  armed  forces  have  four Kinunir class
        ships in service,  each with enough troop strength
        to put down any military operations that threathen
        the peace of the Imperium."

                        ---Adventure 1, The Kinunir