Piracy
Piracy: Piracy in Traveller is poorly defined. This is one of many attempts to define it.
Description (Specifications)[edit]
Pirates operate in frontier systems; piracy is firmly suppressed around class A and B mainworlds.
There are more efficient uses for a starship than piracy, but there are people who cannot do legal careers for various reasons and ships they'd not be able to use legally. Combine the two, and you get Pirates.
Being a pirate is dangerous, risky, and a bad idea. Many people find it the best choice from a list of really bad ones, or are good at making bad choices - or even good at making bad choices work out.
Note that the objective is usually taking ship's cargos and small craft for money. Destruction and killing happens, but is usually bad for business - Impie attention starts to come to bear much faster.
Economic Considerations[edit]
The discussion is most productive when it focuses on risk and reward.
- Pirates transit several systems from a base to hunting grounds.
- Pirates tend to like low-quality starports with an attached scout base.
- They may spend a year to get one catch, and still be profitable.
- Taking small craft is typically the best balance of risk and reward.
Low-patrolled systems are the only systems where a pirate will want to fight at all - the risks are too high in a system where patrol ships are en route to the fight. Targets taken in un-patrolled systems are almost always valuable enough to cover costs, unless damage stops the pirate from jumping back to base.
Pirates typically don't take entire starships. Though lucrative (even at a 10% fence value), it is very difficult to jump away a starship you take, and the risk of attracting pirate hunters is too high.
The existence of speculative goods, and the large variance in law levels, means that a merchant selling a cargo is no big deal, so unless the cargo is unique in some way selling it would be simple.
On the other hand, small craft can be popped into the cargo bay, and are likely to fetch half of their value.
Each small craft taken may pay expenses for a few years, or pay part of the value of the pirate vessel. 15 lifeboat/launches is all it takes to completely pay for a 400t Corsair. Pinnaces and ship's boats are worth even more.
Income can be far, far higher than expenses if the pirate hits a few good targets. This makes up for the really bad luck a pirate can have - one missile hit can cost millions, even if it doesn't kill you. Piracy therefore is high-risk, high-reward.
The Adventure Class Ship[edit]
The "average" corsair will be an Adventure Class Ship.
Really any small starship is a candidate for a pirate ship. In particular, streamlined hulls are useful for frontier refueling without recourse to port authorities. Since it operates outside of civilization, there's no need for a disguise -- in fact corsairs cannot disguise themselves as merchants, no matter the ship class or type.
Note for the "must swim with the fishes" people out there: the average pirate ship will _never_ call at a starport that has any kind of legal controls or Imperial presence. It will never, except at long ranges or in the most cursory manner, be able to play the role of honest merchant - and it works within these limitations.
So, what of ship title, and so on? Pirates who took ships in a "civilized" area must somehow forge new transponders, or scavenge them from boneyards, derelicts, and so on. They would have to replace the transponders, come up with some forged log to make it plausible for the ship to be where it is, and so on. A good distance for the forged port of manufacture or transfer would be something like 2 months away by X-boat, an expensive message to send just to check on a random trader appearing at port. There might even arise a black market in transponders for common ship classes. Rare ships, unique ships, and so on would have to be transited to about 30 parsecs from the location of its former activity. Setting up so many pirate bases to be able to do that would be prohibitive, so those flying a custom ship are probably safer from seizure of the ship by pirates.
Base of Operations[edit]
Pirates make arrangements with criminal groups or even individual smugglers to buy cargos they have stolen. They keep what they need for their jury-rigged ship repairs, and hope for the big haul - except that the mind-set that leads someone into being a pirate often has the big haul make them overconfident, so they go for a bigger one.
Thus, a pirate must have a base of some sort. Privateers have a de-facto base in the principality that issued the Letters of Marque. For goods taken, it must have a market. If they go all the way to taking ships, they need a place to sell them, or refit them to fighting use.
Piracy without a base would be limited to stealing the cargo and staying ahead of the reports-- perhaps even kidnapping, if done right and the crew is willing to risk it.
Operations[edit]
A ship hunted by a pirate can expect the following to happen:
1) Some deception may occur. A pirate may pretend to be a customs or patrol vessel - a deception that will not last long, but may allow the first stages of an intercept to occur. Stealth capabilities, for those pirates lucky enough to have them, are made use of.
2) Calling for help will probably do little good, unless they can delay the pirate through unexpected thrust capabilities or good battle tactics/weaponry - many of which will make the pirate give up anyway, unless desperation or prospect of an unusually great haul perks up the pirate's courage. The target was detected by the pirate too far from help, either due to a minor misjump outside the usual traffic lanes or because the target is in a place where patrols don't go. Or perhaps something has already happened to the local patrol ship - if the planet Pinata only has two Patrol Ships, and five or six pirates club together to bushwhack the patrol, they'll have free rein of the system (away from whatever planetary defenses there might be) for weeks.
3) The pirate will intercept. She may order the target to cut engines pretty early - high speed passes won't get you cargo, but they will wreck your merchant ship. It's easier to intercept a target if you don't care about relative velocities at intercept, but impossible to board a ship unless you match velocities - the threat of a battle pass should suffice to keep the target from evading, or even get the target to maneuver to rendezvous with you.
4) The merchant will be boarded. Some pirate vessels have (or the merchant will think they have) too small a crew to force a boarding - the loss of the boarding party might leave the pirate ship too undermanned to keep the merchant from escaping, even from right under it's guns. This will lead to merchant passengers or crew, in some situations, to resist the boarding party. Considering how many interstellar travellers will be wealthy/noble (and have bodyguards) or will be military/ex-military, this happens more often than you might think. Considering how many pirate vessels have severe manpower problems, this works more often than you might think. A rare, though not unheard-of occurrence is for a merchant to come to port with a captured pirate ship following behind it.
5) The merchant will be looted. Damage (to the ship and people aboard) will often depend on how much trouble they gave the pirate. Depending on the time factor, varying amounts of looting will occur. The ship's safe may be cleaned out, usually with the help of the Shipmaster or Chief Purser (obtained at gunpoint). Personal weapons, vacc suits, spare parts, even ship's vehicles or craft may be stolen. Cargo will be a prime target, though the lack of starport loading facilities will hamper this somewhat - you may see improvised cargo transfer gear on a pirate ship. Passengers and crew may be molested, robbed, even raped or kidnapped - the last depending on the pirate crew's connections and capabilities. If a pirate finds the winner of the Miss Regina Beauty Pageant on board, he might decide to kidnap her now and figure out the multi-millon Credit ransom scheme later, even if he doesn't currently have the capabilities to conduct ransom negotiations.
6) The Pirates will go their merry way. Their target will need some restocking and repairs, but won't be destroyed - unless they resist, in which case as an object lesson their ship might be left a gutted hulk, perhaps with them adrift in a life boat or vacc suit - perhaps not.
Kidnapping and Ransoms[edit]
- Kidnapping and ransoms are very high risk, high reward.
Now the third piracy income stream - kidnapping and ransoms. First, care must be taken to assure you don't let on where your base is to the targets. So, you would want to "disappear" the people for a few weeks. Then, you want to bring them to either their destination or origin, or where the personage tells you to contact their friends or relatives. The hazards are in setting up the handoff; in taking the risk that the contact information is going to lead to a private investigator tracking the pirate to his or her lair; and, of course, pissing off someone with enough power to get the military searching for wandering planets and checking them for pirate bases, ruining the whole setup. The perfect targets are the social standing 8-9 mid-level execs and military personnel, with fairly deep pockets but not enough clout to trigger the full-on military response.
History & Background (Dossier)[edit]
Sunbeard Declaration on Piracy: The below is the Sunbeard Declaration, the peace statement authored by Ian Whitchurch and moderated by Robert Eaglestone at the end of the Great TML Piracy Flamewar of 1997-98.
- 1. Mainworlds, with either significant trade or significant economies, can and will defend their space out to about their 100-diameter limits.
- 2. These anti-pirate defenses will make piracy in and around those mainworlds unprofitable.
- 3. These anti-pirate defenses may not extend to the entire system.
- 4. Pirates concentrate on less-patrolled systems or areas, and balance risk with reward, in whatever forms that takes.
- 5a. Shipping corporations apply risk premiums to trade with known unsafe areas.
- 5b. A corollary of 4. and 5a. is that Outsystems will tend to be places of high risk and high reward for all concerned.
- 6. Merchant ships that trade in safe areas are lightly armed or unarmed.
- 7. Merchant ships that trade in unsafe areas are armed based on perceived risk.
- 8. The best markets for stolen starships and identifiable cargo are in other states. However, unsafe areas will buy goods they know to be stolen at heavily discounted rates.
- 9a. Pirate ships tend to be converted Adventure Class Ships, rather than custom builds.
- 9b. Safe areas are too dangerous for corsairs. Unsafe areas tend to be high-risk and high-reward for all.
- 9c. Pirate warships may exist from mutinous or rebel crews.
References & Contributors (Sources)[edit]
- Loren Wiseman. "The Ecology of Piracy in the Spinward Main." Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society 19 (1984): 9-17.
- Lester Smith. "Solving the Piracy Problem." Milieu 0 (1996): 8.
- Martin Dougherty. Traders & Raiders (Mongoose Publishing, 2015), TBD.
- Author & Contributor: Walt Smith
- Author & Contributor: Ian Whitchurch
- Author & Contributor: Sunbeard the Pirate