Piracy Campaign

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

The way I see it, pirates need a few things:

1) A safe haven to operate from. This could be a small asteroid base or a friendly colony world. This haven will have places for the pirates to sell goods and restock supplies, as well as places to relax.

2) A reason to perpetuate their crimes. Greed and politics are often the two big ones, and quite often go hand in hand. This also helps narrow down their targets; greedy pirates will board passenger liners for the upper-class cash, while politically-motivated pirates may just destroy other ships without taking much in the way of booty. Sometimes, though, they'll just take what they need, be it food, fuel, or ammunition.

3) A ship to operate with. Sometimes, the "ship" is a fighter or light freighter from which to blow up merchant vessels; light freighters are useful for pulling in cargo from the wreckage. Other times, the ship is a larger vessel.

Fulfill those three requirements, and pirates become useful parts of the game world, either as protagonists or antagonists.

Add to this-
4) A high volume of target trade (as I just mentioned). This suggests a fairly sophisticated space-faring society.

5) A low commitment of resources to policing piracy, which could be due to many things- lack of government will- as seen with the Malacca Straits until recent years, when piracy dropped due to increased action from neighbour countries; lack of government funds; other drains on the military dollar, such as war engagements, etc. This means that response time to piracy actions is delayed due to anti-piracy forces being too thinly spread compared to the volume of space to patrol and the number of targets available. Further, do trading companies expect protection from the government, do they have private security, or have insurance companies or shipping unions set up their own ad-hoc anti-piracy units?

6) Pirates need ships with tactical advantage- speed, stealth, manouverability or firepower. This can easily be achieved though- modern pirates do it with a small speed boat, a rocket launcher and a few AK47s.

7) An escape plan, which is an extension to point 1. Do they get to safety with speed, stealth, or just fast enough to beat distantly-placed rescuers? Do they profit from stealing booty and selling it, which means they make a run for it, or from ransoming ships, passengers and crew, which means they sit tight and wait after boarding?

Don't forget that trade ships are not the only target of piracy, many private luxury vessels are the targets of modern pirates.

[B9anders]

I've always thought Infinite Worlds would lend itself really well to a piracy campaign.

Raiding through timelines for historical objects and accessible resources, then hiding from infinity in some obscure timeline.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

So that's how the Somalis are doing it...

Seriously, if piracy can still exist against the power of modern day radar technology, I'm sure enough tech assumptions can be postulated to make in-system piracy possible without requiring superscience.

Radar? Radar is horizon-limited. Space is different. There just isn't enough cover out there. The Malacca Straits are of course the best of all possible situations for pirates. They're a choke point for commerce and large military vessels, but not for the pirates.

[Daigoro]

First, space is big. And it's full of stuff. You'd be operating at enormous ranges, trying to detect targets fractions of an arc-second across. You'd have to identify the targets against the background of general space traffic, which is presumably considerable if piracy is going to be profitable, as well as planets and moons and stuff. Compare it to the current program to detect and track every asteroid in the Asteroid Belt for an idea of the complexity of this. Then even if they are detected, there's the problem of being able to respond to the attack in time with rescue efforts.

And give the pirates even a few regular-tech stealth options, like non-radar reflective black paint, low profile cross-sections, baffled exhaust emissions, or whatever works against sensors of your TL, and they'll be hard enough to see. The only reason they'd need superscience invisibility is to defeat superscience sensors.

Besides which, some level of invisibility to sensors isn't such super science any more.

But I think my point was, it's not that modern ships can't see over the horizon that's their problem. They can see well enough out to a sufficient distance, but it doesn't stop pirates from zooming in and assaulting them. Even with satellite imagery, AWACS, over-the-horizon radar, and all our modern technology, pirate attacks still occur. Think about the reasons for this, and you can extrapolate the situation to a realistic space setting without calling on superscience.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

First, space is big. And it's full of stuff. You'd be operating at enormous ranges, trying to detect targets fractions of an arc-second across. You'd have to identify the targets against the background of general space traffic, which is presumably considerable if piracy is going to be profitable, as well as planets and moons and stuff. Compare it to the current program to detect and track every asteroid in the Asteroid Belt for an idea of the complexity of this. Then even if they are detected, there's the problem of being able to respond to the attack in time with rescue efforts.

And give the pirates even a few regular-tech stealth options, like non-radar reflective black paint, low profile cross-sections, baffled exhaust emissions, or whatever works against sensors of your TL, and they'll be hard enough to see. The only reason they'd need superscience invisibility is to defeat superscience sensors.

Besides which, some level of invisibility to sensors isn't such super science any more.

But I think my point was, it's not that modern ships can't see over the horizon that's their problem. They can see well enough out to a sufficient distance, but it doesn't stop pirates from zooming in and assaulting them. Even with satellite imagery, AWACS, over-the-horizon radar, and all our modern technology, pirate attacks still occur. Think about the reasons for this, and you can extrapolate the situation to a realistic space setting without calling on superscience.

You're still probably missing the expected ship density in the observed space. BTW, don't try comparing space pirates to their naval friends - try comparing to airplanes instead.

Now, of course in a space opera, things will be different. For instance, in my next campaign (codename Tenth Moon Down), I'm planning to (1) reduce ship cost to about 1/5 normal, but increase maintanence cost (resulting in the same price as if taking a bank loan) and (2) use some sort of hyperspace build which would create semi-stable trade routes, but with some difficulty in using sensors, and next to no ability to communicate over a useful range.

[Langy]

edit: Also, following this line of reasoning would lead you to conclude that the Mafia shouldn't exist.

How so? The mafia doesn't have enough money for every single person in it to instantly become a multimillionaire if they sell what they use to commit their crimes. Considering the likely cost of a spaceship, that's unlikely for a group of space pirates.

[GoodGame]

Originally Posted by 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.

That assumes a purely profit through sale of stolen goods motive. Privateers might have other motivations---patriotism or a foreign investor. Also, the original story of the Somali pirates was a kind of environmental/economic protection; The pirates might simply want to scare off some economic activity---scare off resource gatherers, divert traffic away from their abode, etc..

[Langy]

True, but that's not really piracy. Privateers != pirates.

[Kaldrin]

Originally Posted by 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.

The questions I think about are:

- What's the quality of sensors in this universe? Can they detect something across the solar system or even in the next system or do they have trouble registering anything farther than co-orbital objects?
- How FTL is the universe? Are there goods constantly traveling back and forth along established corridors or can ships just go willy-nilly anywhere they want and take the best course?


Space is pretty big. Finding prey might be more akin to having a series of spies on worlds feeding you information and you paying them off, if you don't find the information yourself. Likewise, hiding from authorities might be really easy.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Langy

True, but that's not really piracy. Privateers != pirates.

The line isn't that clear-cut. Big-time piracy always has a state unofficially encouraging it. The difference between them and privateers is a matter of how officially they are sanctioned. Sure, there are guys in speed boats jacking cabin cruisers but the cool pirates you'd want to play? They're going to have some nation offering them deniable protection and support. The whole reason why the "Pirates are cool" idea took hold in the first place was because Britain was playing that role back at the start of the Golden Age of Piracy because they were mostly a problem for the Spaniards.