Piracy Campaign

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

They aren't really separate types. Whether a marauder will attack cities or ships en route depends on the defenses of the city and how easy it to intercept commerce. The Vikings mostly attacked shorelines because there wasn't much commerce or standing military force on the shore. The Golden Age pirates and privateers mostly raided ships because there were a lot of them, and they carried more lootable cargo than any place on the shore that wasn't protected by troops and shore artillery. Somali pirates attack ships because they're almost undefended and there's no shore location worth looting within their operational range. Piper's Space Vikings and Norton's Jacks, tended to attack colonies because their method of FTL precluded intercepting ships before they hit orbit.

Shore-raiding calls for somewhat different assets than sea-raiding, but there's a great deal of overlap. Space raiding calls for radically different assets than planet-raiding, at least with any sort of realistic tech assumptions.