Piracy Campaign

[Kaldrin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Well the consequence of the two FTL type model is it means that pirates will have to hijack every ship they attack because they'll be in "speedboats" with no cargo capacity worth mentioning.

And cargo ships would probably be gigantic if they were assembled in zero-G. More cargo equals more profit if the cost of fuel is linear per unit weight.

[David Johnston2]

Of course straight cargo ships will be built to maximise capacity so with only a single engine module they will be as slow as things get. Giving a pirate ship a second engine would probably be a standard part of converting it for piracy or privateering.

[Jasonft]

Originally Posted by Molokh

I'm not sure it's the proper setup for a 'retro' spacebuckling game, though. I mean, it's not like in the Golden Age of Piracy navies would be able to identify pirate ships and come after them.

Another reason for using 'Babylonian' hyperspace: supposedly, in hyperspace, communication systems and sensors are near-useless, to the point of the Mk.I Eyeball being the primary detector and identifier.

Another Golden Age of Piracy could still be done, you just have to find some way of eliminating technological communications from the equation.

Unfortunately for the would be space pirates, this is one thing the Golden Age pirates didn't have to deal with but they do. Golden Age victims could only talk between ships and/or shore at a fairly close visual range - depending on your TL, starships might be able to comm across light-years in real time. In any case, the ability of pirates to operate inside star systems without getting identified is going to be drastically reduced or even eliminated.

An amusing idea I have been knocking around for a campaign might work here to help the pirates, especially if you use a 'multi-level' hyperspace ala David Weber's Harrington series:

What if normal space had no mana, but the deeper you went into the layers of hyperspace ('higher' levels of hyper giving faster travel) the more magic works? The pirates in this scenario are simply the first ones to figure things out and be able to use it effectively. Heck, maybe they even made an alliance with something that lives in those upper bands of hyper no ship ever comes back from - and it's something eeeevil.

Of course the Navy poo-poos these stories. Pirates always seem to generate lurid tales. But it eventually turns out those rare people who wildly hallucinate in hyper (and thus have to travel sedated or not at all) are the few humans who still have Magery...

Like I said, I've been working on this idea for a while. But if you really want something to give your space pirates an unbeatable edge for a time this would be a real doozy.

[Phantasm]

Similar to the mana aspect is one that I've toyed with for my own space opera setting:

Real space and hyperspace are like an onion; real space is the skin of the onion, and hyperspace is arranged akin to the layers of the onion, so that the farther into hyperspace you get the shorter the distance is between two points in real space. The kicker is that the deeper into the onion you go, the greater the effect on the human body (and possibly mind) it has; the visual effects of hyperspace also have a slightly unhinging effect on the human mind as well. Military and civilian regulations place limits on how far into the "onion" you can safely go at any one time; pirates, of course, don't have to obey those regulations.

This makes the pirates faster than the military and civilian craft by pushing their craft deeper into the hyperspace onion, and also leads to a possibility of the most successful pirates being slightly off their rocker after a period of time.

[Kenny]

I've been doing more thinking about the campaign idea, I don't think interstellar trade would be too unusual escpecially as FTL travel becomes more popular and affordable. Even before then there would be trade and travel for rich and important persons and goods.

So if you make FTL travel mature then travel in all sorts of goods, even some food stuffs, would be traded especially amongst closer star systems. There is a chance you get a situation where you could get trade like found in the world today, but far more wide ranging.

This leads to another question (doesn't need answering, I just love thinking aloud! :) ) where do pirates fit in? Alongside being a pirate they could also be smugglers. Some pirates could hit in-system ships and flee to FTL once they got what they want. Others could hit FTL ships for more valuable goods. Some pirates could do both.

Firstly pirates need a region of instability to operate in, or at least a region not swept by a navy on a regular basis. So if we add an unstable region into the interstellar scene I believe trade would still continue. Either the trade is from powers bordering the region or from powers within the region who still need to trade (perhaps because they need to trade because they specialized before the region broke into chaos).

Now we get to the problem of too much chaos and all interstellar trade would break down, so there has to be a limit to the chaos. This then leads to the problem of dealing with the navy and the chaos. There could be a major riot but this will likely be dealt with quickly but for piracy to occur it needs to be longer term.

The next idea is a failed military coup, the military was then weakened and sent on external problems, not allowed to operate within certain parameters, or weakened so that they are unable to deal with the pirate threat. This also means that ex-military ships could still be working to either overthrow the government still (a mini-rebelion) or that they could've turned rouge becoming pirates, bandits, or the like.

The police (or space guard (taken from the US coast guard)) might not be able to effectively deal with the problems because they are not strong enough. As they do not want to worry about increased insurance premiums (and it does happen today in Somila) the shipping companies do not want to report some (or most) of the problems they have with pirates.

So how do the pirates get money? Firstly if they take entire ships for a ransom (unlikely in this situation) they need to get some sort of bonds. But if they take goods then they'll be able to sell them at a place where there will be no questions will be asked.

We still have the problem of police arresting the pirates. A safe haven where the pirates could flee to would be a likely idea, so would be bent police--maybe both.

Now if the campaign was set early enough you could get a short while before the police start to really get tough on both pirates and the bent police. That could be an interesting twist for later in the campaign.

The safe port could be a military base and this is one of the reasons the police could leave it alone or not even attack the pirates too heavily because they fear the retribution of the ex-navy. And the military cannot take part because they fear the military might join up with the ex-military.

So there you have it: the cornerstone of my campaign I hope to run sometime in the future.

Again, thanks for the notes and help guys.

[Jasonft]

If Piracy becomes a problem in your campaign universe, you should also consider the problem of 'vikings'. Pirates would be going after your ship traffic but vikings (for lack of a better term) would be going after the more isolated ground targets. The two types of raider would likely both be present if your universe had areas lawless enough that piracy was a big issue.

It's just a question of scale really. If you can strike at shipping traffic and get away then your bad people will certainly start looking at orbital or ground targets sooner or later.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

If Piracy becomes a problem in your campaign universe, you should also consider the problem of 'vikings'. Pirates would be going after your ship traffic but vikings (for lack of a better term) would be going after the more isolated ground targets. The two types of raider would likely both be present if your universe had areas lawless enough that piracy was a big issue.

It's just a question of scale really. If you can strike at shipping traffic and get away then your bad people will certainly start looking at orbital or ground targets sooner or later.

Somebody add the Space Vikings tag. ;)(I've already added my tag limit.)

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

If Piracy becomes a problem in your campaign universe, you should also consider the problem of 'vikings'. Pirates would be going after your ship traffic but vikings (for lack of a better term) would be going after the more isolated ground targets. The two types of raider would likely both be present if your universe had areas lawless enough that piracy was a big issue.

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.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Wing Commander: Privateer. 'Nuff said. ;)

Best single-player space-sim EVAR! I went looking for an updated version of that game, or something similar, about three years ago. That's what got me into Eve Online.

I loved that game.

[Figleaf23]

Space Viking might be a helpful resource.