Piracy Campaign

[Kenny]

I'm thinking of setting up a campaign using the new GURPS Spacecraft pdf.

I've been keeping my eye on the piracy issues near Somalia but would still like others views and takes on piracy both in the real world and in space opera.

Thanks for the replies up front and I might put some of my ideas for my game up later.

Kenny

[Ragitsu]

Will Bittorrent be involved?

;-)

[Neophyte42]

As much as Ragitsu was joking, why not add an occasional cyberpunk-style data-raiding mission to the game?

As for space piracy, I think that really depends on why space travel is happening. Pirates always like to operate within a short (relative) distance to their logistical base.

If your space travel is in system only, then perhaps an asteroid belt is where the pirates hide, so attacks are most likely when traveling near said belt.

If your FTL is fixed point jump based, then the pirates will likely set up shop near jump points (whether natural or man-made gates) that are also near some sort of planet / planetoid capable of maintaining a fixed base of operations.

If FTL is more free form, then pirate might try to set up near planets importing or exporting high value goods. Many of these planets will be well patrolled. If the FTL beginning or end has to be (again, relatively) far from planetary gravity, this opens up the patrol area, meaning less coverage. However, this also means lower probability of a ship being near where the pirates are.

Just some things to think about - I hope your game goes well!

[Ragitsu]

How about dimensional pirates? They're able to hop over, steal what they need, and hop back over. This, of course, makes them damn hard to catch. Enter the PCs...

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Ragitsu

How about dimensional pirates? They're able to hop over, steal what they need, and hop back over. This, of course, makes them damn hard to catch.

Which is when you bring in the equivalent of a "Q-Ship" -- a nice, tempting target that just happens to be bait for a trap.(The trick was a favorite of the British during WWI and the Yanks during WWII; build a merchant ship with a lot of concealed weaponry to lure a submarine into making a surface attack ... do it right and good bye, sub! Or, in this case, "goodbye, pirates," be they spatial or transdimensional in nature. )

[Kenny]

There are a few other things I have thought of:

1. Taking over a spaceship by hijacking it.
2. Docking to a ship and dragging it towards a safe (pirate) port to ransom it.
3. Threatening to destroy or damage a ship for safety money.
4. Taking of crew's possessions and other small valuable items.
5. Rigging explosives to the hull of a ship and removing them once ransom has been paid.

[Langy]

There are a few requirements for pirates to operate at all. The first is that whatever it is they steal needs to be significantly more expensive than what they risk - if they need a hundred million dollar ship in order to pirate, then pirates simply won't exist unless that hundred million dollar ship has upwards of two thousand men manning it.

Next, there needs to be some reason the authorities haven't destroyed the pirates already. Maybe the pirates have some sort of stealth technology, allowing them to attack from a safe port the authorities can't locate - but that's almost definitely super science. Maybe the pirates operate from another government's colony, and the authorities aren't willing to risk war to stop the pirates.

[Rickoise]

or as you mentioned you could have a pirates for the same reason as somalia does. 12(i think) years of anarchy and civil war on mars or in some solar system.

You could also have pirates that just lock on or grapple onto another ship, and the pirates get on and kill the crew and sell the ship. That way the pirates could refuse to use guns to avoid damaging the ship on the inside. That'd be sweet imo

[Langy]

Those requirements still need to be fulfilled to have pirates even if you have a somalia-esque situation.

If spaceships are too expensive, which seems likely given a realistic universe, then pirates won't exist because the pirates could just sell their spaceship and all of the pirates will suddenly be multimillionaire rich.

If governments can track pirates and attack their homebase without political problems, then pirates won't operate because they'll be killed too fast.

There are numerous solutions to the second problem - the first one is the real killer.

[David Johnston2]

[QUOTE=Neophyte42;794831]

As much as Ragitsu was joking, why not add an occasional cyberpunk-style data-raiding mission to the game?

As for space piracy, I think that really depends on why space travel is happening. Pirates always like to operate within a short (relative) distance to their logistical base.

One distinction between the Golden Age of Piracy and the mundane pirates that have always plagued cargo shipping, is that the Golden Age was an exception to that rule. For a century or so, pirate ships roamed free all over the Atlantic and around the Horn to Madagascar.

If your space travel is in system only, then perhaps an asteroid belt is where the pirates hide, so attacks are most likely when traveling near said belt.

If your space travel is in-system, piracy is impossible without a superscience invisibility cloak.

If your FTL is fixed point jump based, then the pirates will likely set up shop near jump points (whether natural or man-made gates) that are also near some sort of planet / planetoid capable of maintaining a fixed base of operations.

"Fixed" jump points, permanent choke points are a little too easy for the authorities to control. Pirates don't hang out at navigation canals or straits. Never did. They'd hang out on coastlines and islands that were controlled by friendly rulers or disorganised ones that couldn't control that commercial ships would have to pass by on the way from choke point to choke point.

If FTL is more free form, then pirate might try to set up near planets importing or exporting high value goods. Many of these planets will be well patrolled. If the FTL beginning or end has to be (again, relatively) far from planetary gravity, this opens up the patrol area, meaning less coverage. However, this also means lower probability of a ship being near where the pirates are.

Ideally your drive system should allow in-flight detection and interception of other ships. That gives you all of interstellar space that the anti-pirates will need to keep track of. Provided that the commercial traffic is really dense, you'll spot prey, but your hunters will have great difficulty spotting you.