Archive through June 11, 2005
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
New Rules:
(J) Shuttles and Fighters:
Casual fighters in freighter skids:
Archive through June 11, 2005
Mike: Please don't stop. I for one am finding this interesting. We all make mistakes - especially when we aren't used to playing with a particular set of units.
Onto some comments: MJC: Standard load photons can't fire at range 0 or 1. Of course throwing half a point of reserve warp into the photon solves that problem - but you'll take feedback.
The freighter will have a control rating of 3. It has no seeking weapons in its native loadout. The Orion has a control rating of 6 - you have G-racks - although you can only launch 3 drones per turn without OAKDISC - but that is irrelevant for you as you only have 2 racks.
Oh - and crippled fighters cannot HET to break a tractor beam. They do have 2 ECM however, which might cause your beams to miss.
I think you are wise to take out the shuttles before their drones come online. They will whack you with their phaser-2's, doing about 15, but that is why you have shields... 
On the face of it, this would still seem to be plausible... a frighter with a load of fruitcake that is valuable in quantitiy and a pirate that wants to cash in on the theft.
a hit and run (AKA smash and grab) would yeild some profit...but not as much as the whole cargo is worth...and neither pirate or merchant have the ability to refine or process the fruitcake of the most valuable portions.
if the original conditions pertain... the pirates only option is to capture the freighter and escape before help arrives.
Unless the fruitcake was fully insured and the owner wants the pirate to "torch" the cargo so that they could collect on the insured value of it...oh wait! Are we looking at a "grinch stole christmas" story...? that the dread pirate Campbell is working to deny "the Who's in Whoville" their christmas fruitcake in hope that huge profit is possible by selling the stolen delicacy back to the who's who are demanding same.
Iat would appear that unless the LR is seriously reinforced with more boarding parties or something... I don't see how capturing the weary donkey is possible in the time allotted.
Maybe we should back off and start over.
At T- 1 day, what's the state of Mike G's ship?
(which is another way of asking what its state will be when the pre combat events start happening)
Quote:Further, I (me, when I retire and get myself an MR to enjoy my twilight years) would NEVER assume that the fighters have a 16 impulse delay before they can launch drones.
Ummm, I guess I was engaging in meta-game-think.
Quote:OK, well with all the mistakes I keep making, lets forget the entire thing...
I'm willing to keep going but not willing to do over...too much biting of fingernails!
Besided which I have a really bad rep' when it comes to knowing the rules so you ought look to someone else if starting over.
DC:
I'm a little lost, isn't 0909 to 0911, R2?
All is not lost for the freighter.
As far as I can tell, at the end of the turn; Fighter #1 & 2 are probably crippled and Fighter #3 should have been able to launch drones before my drones strike ( I really should have launched the non armoured ones ).
And then still Fighter #4 abord the freighter.
Then there is the phaser hits against my shield #1 which really makes fighting hard to continue for me and it'll take me quite a while to re-arm my Phot-tube and you'll probably find ways to not get the fighter struck ( like lettimg me hit your ship at R4 early in a turn and that'll buy the 16 impulses you're looking for.
MJC: For some reason I thought you were in 0910 when you fired into 0911. You may indeed fire your photon as you originally envisaged... It will only hit on a 1-4 though as the fighters have 2 built in ECM and you don't have a brass razoo of counter. The fighters should probably EM too, to give your gunners small fits (a 2-shift may just save them).
But as John said, possibly time to work on two things: The scenario setup (i.e. how close is the Love Ewe to the Weary Donkey at start) and victory conditions (i.e. how long does the Love Ewe have before the constabulary comes a calling).
The way to go is to work on an LR vs a Large Freighter - balance that in favour of the LR, then give the Freighter the fighters and see if a difference really emerges.
Everything in SFB comes down to scenario setup and victory conditions afterall...
IN this scenario MJC and I are testing whether a Large freghter with 2 defense skids and 4 fighters can hold off a LR. The version being evaluated here has:
4 shuttle boxes with ready racks
1 phaser 2 360
1 apr
1 battery
1 cargo
4 deck crew + 4 fighters (zorans in this case)
4 Bps
3 complete drone loads for the zorans
the ability to store 20 spaces of extra stuff for the fighters if bought with Commanders options. I bought 6 type 6 drones, and 4 ew pods.
I set the Victory conditions high to make MJC CAPTURE me and get away from retribution. In fact, it really doesn't matter as I don't see how he can load 3 Orion cargo boxes in the amount of time given if I resist. So basically, he has to capture me and then sublight evade before the rescuers arrive. The LR then leaves an obvious trail for the police to follow away. MJCs helper (say a free traitor with 4 extra crew units comes in to man the capture, and takes the crew off to ransom). Big money...
About the scenario we are in: I'm sorry, but I still don't see how MJC is zipping around quite so fast.
He starts T2 in 0101, I am launching Zorans 1 and 2 in 0910. (this ignores how he went speed 30 on turn 1, started 30 hexes away, chased me fleeing at 17 and ended up BOTH more than 15hexes away, so I won't shoot my 3 phaser 2s into his #1 ( I KNOW he has no reinforcement due to his speed), and CLOSE enough to overrun my fighters before they get active).
The Zorans can fire 2 P2 as of Imp 9, 2 Drone I as of impulse 17. Zoran 3 (launched imp 3) can fire a p2 imp 11, a drone imp 19. All 3 have ew pods (wonder why Zoran #3 was going speed 5?) so they should be able to counteract MJCs stealth unless he has jacked up ew. Plus the ship can fire 3 Phaser 2 at range < 8 as far as I can tell.
I am NOT so irked by my and MJCs errors, as by the amount of irritating "never" and "can't" comments I recieve here and in emails as to what policy is as opposed to what SVC tells us is the actual historical deal. I sorta PREFER 2 non perfect pepole duking it out. The idea that a player takes 30 minutes to do EA is ridiculous and bores me to tears. COMBAT goes FAST and the ability to make a perfect decision after contemplation at length is NOT A GOOD QUALITY in a tactical level commander. Sure Admirals and Generals think stuff out IN ADVANCE, but in the fighter furball/ fleet action/ mud and blood real world taking your time results in death! SPP should back me up on this...
As I see it, merchants are basically idiots in the Alpha sector. Any pirate that comes along can just tell you to "stand and deliver" or die. Hence, every CR and LR will basically never fire a shot. Hopefully, for any merchant stupid enough to travel, the pirates will only decide to take JUST some of your cargo and not your entire ship. Since they get to range 5 without any dispute, if I was an LR, I can tell you what I'd do (at the very end of this)...
Conversely, any merchant skipper with the least brains would just refuse to travel without an escort. Armed and Q ship type cargo movers would be the sole means to move cargo, and the history tells that is not so.
The problems are:
1) Merchants basically appoint narcoleptics to their sensor officer positions, as to be caught at WS-0 means you completely ignored all S level tac intel.
2) Not that the above matters, because when they DO get any S level tac intel, they do not act on it.
3) When they DO act on tac intel, they don't bother upping their arming status. They just talk... They leave their phasers unwarmed, fighters unarmed, their speed is kept at the cheapest possible cruising speed. Any half @$$ed excuse put forward by a pirate or anyone else will convince me to be unprepaerd for any chance you lied.
4) Luckily they do save a lot of fuel that way. If merchants cruise at speed 8 between the stars (warp 2), and it is 10 light years between stops, they have a journey of over a year each way. They can spend some of that savings on life extension therapies. Klingons especially will need them. SPP suggested speed 5 as more likely. That would mean 2 years each way... That Romuilan ale in the holds sure is well aged before it hit the shelves at the local ABC on Earth. Forget trying to move fruit/ cattle on the hoof (important for Kz &lyr) or anything perishable...
5) Even if they do manage to overcome all of the above, well, they are stupid merchants, which means if they buy a skid that comes with fighters and deck crews, then the union merchanters will go on strike and no longer perform deck crew duties on their own darn shuttle.
6) And of course, the police and DSF are about as useful as colorful feathers versus preditors. Even when you are travelling alone, you cannot depend on them being able to respond in a reasonable time frame (after 6 turns, 1/6 chance to arrive each turn). I could understand there being a XYZ chance that help willnot arrive for ABC number of turns... But in any region a regular, slow, unarmed freighter might travel should have some type of response be TYPICALLY available. NO response should be an exception.
So my plan as a pirate
NEVER pick on any ship with an escort. Why not wait and get the FREE goodies any unescorted ship will hand over. I will use my ecm advantages, long range scanners and a "professional liar" (I'm sure there are some unemployed politicians of hte correct race around) on staff to get close before you can prepare. SO I am now at range 10 (to 30) or so before you can react.
You don;t have much chance to respond, if you want to try my good side make sure you warm the phaser caps before you try to send firing enery to them... So I will get a completely uinanswered volley of df and seekign weapons in and there is nothing you can do about it except surrender.
Hence, I tell the merchie to "stand and deliver" or die. You say OK because you like life. You know any distress call will earn a death sentence for the captain and comm officer. And a video of your execution will be distrubted (anon of course) to the local news channel and merchant hiring hall to discourage repeats.
If you say OK, I tell you to drop sheilds, go speed 0, drop fire control and eject all shuttle craft at speed 0 without weapons or crew aboard(I can detect life forms with Tac Intel, and seeking weapon status with labs, I wil wait out the time constraints for a sp at speed 0, AFAIK you cannot set them to time release). You will recieve my shuttle craft with a boarding team aboard. Defiance earns death as above.
My boarding party confirms what type of ship you are. In any case, I require you to disarm all weapons by unloading racks, and discharging into space all energy weapons, etc, etc. Defiance as usual...
I send over more BPs. I require ALL your crew to congregate, unarmed, in one area, without power or weapons (probably naked just to prevent any hidden stuff in pockets). Your empty shuttle craft box(es) would be good. I use your and my transporters to transfer any and all cargo I desire. I also transport over anything else I like, like fuel, galley stores, spare parts, etc. If yu have drones or Dtorps or adds, well, I take all the ammo as part of my booty.
At this point I decide if I want JUST the entire ship, the entire ship and hostages too, what my ship can carry and some hostages, or just what my holds can carry. If I want everything, I just gas you in the hold and handcuff you together until a transfer ship come s(see below). Or I just open the shuttle craft bay doors and lose any potential ransom at the same time as I lose any potential troublemakers...
I will propose my solution next posting
oops error in the above:
per skid is 2 fighters in 2 shuttle boxes, 2 deck crews, 2 Bp, 1 phaser 2, 1 apr, 1 btty, 1 cargo. 3 sets of loads for the fighters, 1/4th of the fighters are armed and ready to launch at all times.
USUALLY these are the oldest fighter in local space. Shouldn't bother with type 6 drone only fighters because the threat is a raider...
My proposed solution:
Slow (and unarmed) freighters mostly stick to areas that reasonably can be sure of a response in a decent time period. If no response is going to ever come, there is no sense in setting up the scenario.
Freighters use the sensor data they receive and respond in an appropriate paranoid fashion. If they detect something at the longest ranges, they challenge it using appropriate and robust codes. A closing course results in a course change to see of they are PURSUING or just happened to be on a course that comes close.
Failure to respond to a hail should alert the local police or fleet ship, colony, outpost, research station, defense battalion fighter squadron. Pf flotilla, (what have you) monitoring the airwaves to follow up with a HIGH VOLUME HAIL (i.e. if they hear a hail and no response, they will inquire…) and physical response if possible if no decent answer is forthcoming. Responding with correct codeword replies or penetration of a decryption scheme and then acting on it as a pirate should result in a MASSIVE effort using lie detectors/ mind sifters/ psionics to find the leak. So crooked clerks will find themselves in jail or even executed if someone died as a result of the crime… In the fiction, most people have secure comms. I gave MJC the ability to read mine for 1) dramatic liscense 2) let him react better and 3) because it shows a limitation on low level public access encryption. There should be fairly robust means to challenge and get replies from the police and navy.
If an unknown (pirate) is pursuing a merchie, the Merchie should go to general quarters, even if the pirate has a good IFF, code responses, and/ or a believable story. It’s not their IDENTITY that causes you to go to GQ, it is their actions! Someone is chasing Mr. Merchie in mid space far from known allies and safe harbor, if you are friends, no harm is done; enemies should rarely get WS-0. In fact WS-0 should result in court-martials for incompetence for the captain and entire crew on duty on the bridge. EVERY piracy act should result in an automatic review of the sensor data. Missing data tapes should result in lie detector tests/ mind sifters whatever to confirm your story… Failure to resist only encourages the pirates. They should have to fight. Merchie should mock surrender and then shoot when the pirate gets close and lowers a shield to send over a BP. Or drop shields. Volley your phasers at the pirate down shielded, kill the boarders and then raise shields next impulse and fight. A LR cannot take many internals. A phaser 2 from range 5, tac to get the phaser 3 in arc. Or let them board while you H&R counter board, anchor them for a suicide shuttle…
Merchies should fight or be arrested by the local police as a possible accomplices to the crime. Surely, the insurers will raise the cost of insuring any cargo that goes into your holds, so probably any captain looted is unemployed or has a hard time getting cargos if he is owner/ captain. And if an entire ship or cargo is taken and the merchie captain survives, who would insure a future ship he captained or his cargo? Cowards like you would just give it up to the first pirate to come within a few parsecs anyway...
There should be a variety of measures used by the sector Police and planetary forces to assist merchant defensive abilities besides wimpy POL and rare Q ships. I tried to propose defense skids built specifically for the purpose, and I still think they are a viable part of a entire range of measures that would make piracy harder.
My proposal:
*Fighter Skid for KZ/KL/FED
2 fighter, 1 apr, 1p2, 1 btty, 1 cargo, 2 deck crews and 2 shuttle boxes, 2 Bps
*Combat skid for KZ/FED/KL
2 Phaser 2, 1 phaser 3, 2 apr, 1 battery, 2 BPs
*Other combat skid for KZ/FED/KL
Phaser 2, APR, BTTY, drone A and add 6 and hull (or something), 2 BP
*Plasma guys would get a couple of racks or a Pl F plus some btty and power and Bps, or some D torp fighters.
*Lyrans and Hydrans are tougher. A pair of phaser 2s and a pair of phaser 3 with power and btty? Hydrans obviously might have non fusion fighters. The big problem is that Hydran weapons are fixed arc and ESG are big and power hungry. Disr are really not too attractive to me in this role.
The police should subsidize these things (so they have a split econ/ combat bpv) and they should be readily available for any especially valuable cargo. Also there should be a version of the slow freighter with more intrinsic firepower, plus some extra APR, again there should be a subsidy as these make the police’s job easier and the ship more valuable in emergencies (like in a wartime convoy in contested areas).
The Petrick Shipping Consortium has a pack of guards on each ship, yet they don’t hire competent sensor techs or captains? They pay all that money (over 10% of the economic value of the ship) to guards on EVERY shipment? If I was captain I’d be irked. And how does the Petrick Co. defend against my plan above? Note his marines are HALF the crew aboard the ship, more or less. Maybe there should be a special type of crew/militia available for Captains Options. I.e., Convert a crew unit to 2 defensive use only BPs. Can still function as a crew unit, no delay for conversion to Militia on own ship.
The problem is that the setup everyone insists on using for all merchie scenarios is based on several mistaken assumptions:
1) Merchant marine crewmen aren’t very observant (when in real life they detected boarders on the high seas {well, off Norfolk } about one quarter of the time at NIGHT without NVG or illum, just their bare eyeballs and jamming big binocs to see me and my merry crew in a 2 IBS or 1 RIB. Not much I could do to suppress my outboard wake. This was about 25 years ago, but still. Followed up by embarrassing spotlights being shined on us… Once in the dead zone near the hull we were safe, but sometimes {twice} they picked up on us slithering via our cave ladders up to and into the anchor hawse pipe… Merchies far from shore have to do SOMETHING to stay awake; they scan the ocean to see steel icebergs (i.e. shipping containers) and what not and avoid it… Note that TODAY merchants still get boarded by armed pirates in Indonesia and they defend themselves with firehoses!
2) Merchies have no stake in their cargo. The question is WHO owns the cargo during shipment? The exporter (i.e. pay some one to tote it and then receive pay when it is received by the destination?), the importer (i.e. pay the “producer” up front and then someone totes it for me?), the shipping company (so the shipper pays the “producer” hauls it with all the associated risks, and sells it at the destination, taking profit from the differences between the buy and sell prices, minus expenses, minus insurance, minus risk…), the insurance company (so in effect the insurer has both all the risk and no chance to control that risk? NO WAY, I know insurers and that is not their deal).
Whoever has the risk should be looking at what they can do to reduce their risk in an economically efficient way. (You know… a 1% cost invested, if it prevents a 50% loss, 25 % of the time, and the accrued chance of event is 3% annually, with an event inflation value of .26% compounded annually with an opportunity cost of money calculated at 5%...)
3) Merchies will fork over cargo because they know no police are around, the pirates know when the police are around. WHAT? How could either side get knowledge like that? I can see, “Police are thought to be…” or “Are not known to be…” Basically, police patrols and responder availability should have a very random and secret element to them for just that reason. Again, if a merchie tells the insurance/ shipper/ importer/ police investigator “well, the police were nowhere around to aid me in a reasonable time…” the follow up question would be “What gave you that idea? Who told you that? Let’s go talk to Merchant Guild Member Gossip Bigmouth... So you heard this from Inspector Leaker? Why did Inspector Leaker tell you this? Inspector Leaker, why were you sharing this info? Do you mind if we audit your income, give you a lie detector test, demote you to assistant interfamily domestic crime investigator on a single sex penal asteroid housing violent & criminally insane, gay torture cannibal murder rapists serving life sentences, sorta near Barren Rockistan III?” “For 20 years?” “Here is a divorce request form, your wife will be wanting to fill this out… Kiss the kids goodbye, you won’t be seeing them again…”
I HOPE someone notices the subtle and casual reference to "Alice's Restaurant" where you can get anything you want...
Michael C. Grafton:
I think you are envisioning a universe in which every freighter that leaves port is subject to attack as soon as it clears the planetary system.
Pirates are just not that prevalent. They cannot be or you get right back to what I said, i.e., if there are that many pirate attacks, there would not be any independent merchants at all. Everything would move by convoy under guard.
Merchant ships are, in SFB terms, CHEAP AS HECK. There are many, many, many, many, MANY more of them than there are warships. Many (probably a majority) of freighter crews go through their entire careers without ever being subjected to an attack by Pirates. Can you imagine the difficulty in hiring crews if part of it was "Your Life Expectancy as a crewman of a merchant ship is estimated to be six months to two years"? Merchant crews on most freighters are simply civilians trying to make a living.
So you are operating in an area where there has been a recent spike in attacks, or attacks on particular ships carrying particular high value cargos. (The infamous mole in the shipping news organization.) Eventually the pirates will move on (too much activity in one area brings a concentration of police and maybe fleet assets to look for you).
As to your sensor tech. False argument. Literally you are saying that no one is ever "surprised" and that it cannot happen. The reality is that things go wrong. See previous comment about the Orion learning the area he is operating in. The Orion KNOWS where you are, and his approach is going to be made a time of his choosing and probably based on his knowledge of an area of space where he will have an added advantage to move in on you.
Does this mean that he will always catch the freighter by surprise? No. Things can go wrong with his approach. So there is always a chance that you will spot him "way off", but the odds on him succeeding in getting relatively close are going to be higher.
You have to, I am afraid, live with that as it is the game background. If Orions cannot attack and rob freighters, then there simply would not be Orions. Period. There are, so they can. But as noted, they do not always succeed. The situation might be comparable to any large cat stalking prey animals. The Cat might make three or six failed attempts before he finally succeeds in getting close enough to "pounce", but he only needs to succeed that one time in four or seven to be successful.
And he might make several attempts to close on your freighter during succeeding days before one succeeds, or before he moves on to another freighter. You might never be certain that it WAS an Orion that turned away the previous times.
You might look at modern pirate attacks in the Malacca straits. Not every freighter that goes through the straits is attacked, and not every freighter that is attacked is stolen in toto, not every freighter that is attacked has casualties among its crew. But it does happen. There has, however, been a recent decrease due to the Tsunami effectively wiping out some of the Pirates. There was also, a few years ago (mid 90s) a case where a group of pirates tried to board what they thought was a freighter, but turned out to be a Soviet Troop ship that let fly at them with some of its weapons (the Pirates reportedly "vanished" . . . but give the multiple rocket launcher that was fired that statement could be taken in different ways).
Michael C. Grafton:
None of the above should be taken to mean that your basic scenario to this point is flawed. I noted that the Orion might make failed approaches, and obviously your scenario appends from one such failed approach. The result being an LR captain having to make decisions about how much of a fight he wants to have with this freighter to get his goods.
By the way, I remember the incident where Indonesian pirates tried to board a Russian troop ship, I just do not remember if it was merely an Alligator, or one of my favorite Ivan Rogovs (I thought the Ivan Rogovs were neat troop ships, even if they were "on the other side" when I was in the service).
Quote:I think you are envisioning a universe in which every freighter that leaves port is subject to attack as soon as it clears the planetary system.
I don't know that he thinks that, but it's clear he expects the risk to this freighter to be higher than normal; otherwise, why install the skids? I think it's safe to assume this particular freighter run is at least expecting the possiblity of a problem, and that's why the fighters are there.
For piracy to succeed the ships have to be concentrated into an area. The Malacca Strait is an example; around 50,000 ships a year (about 25% of the world trade) uses the strait. the number attacked is a small; (60 in 2004; IMO 2004 Annual Rpt.). How many piracy attacks occurr on the open ocean; not aware of any. The attacks against ships occur in straits and along coastal area. There is also the complicity of local officals and the lack of security patrols.
SFB: I would think for the Orions and other pirates to have a chance that some form of space terrain concentrates the freighter traffic into certain areas or passages. Post GW I would expect piracy to increase (I expect there are more choke points in space than there are ships to patrol them) and a reasonable response, for some areas, could be a fighter SKID. Also XP is out and would be used by Orion ships. In a general sense freighter owners/operators and cargo interests would respond in some fashion to the increased threat possed by the post GW chaos. Could be an interesting lead in to the "Trade wars".
Mike Raper;
As I have noted, I do not have a problem with this scenario being played out. There are some assumptions Michael C. Grafton is making that I have no choice but to contest. There are Tac Intel Rules, and they do provide strategic levels, all true. There are also endless scenarios where ships are "surprised". By that I do not mean the full invocation of the "Surprise rules" (D18.0), but simply someone is "in your face" and you are still at WS-0, or maybe WS-I while he is at WS-III (and your side might have several ships, all of which are in this same condition). It is not always a case of someone sneaking up on you in obviously concealing terrain, or your stumbling across someone in obviously concealing terrain.
Now, scenarios reflect circumstances that happen, and obviously they try to reflect the 'interesting circumstances'. By definition, the 'average' Orion plundering of a freighter is "not interesting". No more than the "average mugging" is in any city in the world (where, again, the police almost never arrive in time to help keep wallet and jewelry from being taken). The interesting muggings are generally the ones where the Mugger was (in essence) taken by surprise.
Now, Michael is sort of trying to do that, but do it without a Q-ship. He has a cargo that it is important that it gets through, but the cargo is not "militarily important enough" that the fleet is going to provide an escort and amalgamate his freighter into a convoy, i.e., his cargo is only important to his company (if it does not get through, his company is bankrupt?). And there is some heightened risk (pirates have been active), which may be at an even greater level (there are no raiders from foreign races in the area, but a foreign race has offered a bounty to some Orions to destroy as opposed to loot ships).
If you escalate to Orion Attacks are being made, and the Orions are destroying ships to collect bounties from a government that your star nation is at war with, add in that this cargo must get through, but is not important enough to warrant a convoy, or an escort . . .
Well that can get you to Michael Grafton's situation on the weary donkey.
Now, even if all that is true, this does not mean that the crack sensor man he has on duty is going to in fact detect the approach of the Orion. Maybe he just did not pick up the ship against the back scatter of the Ion storm that is beyond his sensors? Maybe that Pulsar over there is creating just enough interference that the Orion could get close, and the Orion, having scanned your ship and the area is using this, plus the fact that he is just one ship, to come in.
Maybe you detected and challened ships two previous times, and one was another freighter that simply moved off, and the other was a police patrol and your man is just not that alert even with you standing over him. Maybe your standing over him made him nervous. Maybe you yelled at him for the two previous false alarms, not because you were really mad but because you needed to work off the tension, but he got the wrong message out of it.
But the upshot is that you are not always going to detect the approach of the Orion.
The Above Having been said, I say again, the situation can proceed, this is just one of those cases where the Orion did not achieve surprise, and did not find out he did not achieve surprise until he felt he was committed to attack anyway.
Joseph R. Carlsson:
Sorry, but you miss the point.
The problem is that, yes, space is three dimensional with few real choke points, but there are MANY MANY MANY MANY more routes and something moving on virtually all of them. Every hex of the Fed and Empire map is filled with small inconsequential colonies that affect nothing in Federation and Empire and only collectively generate economic points. But five hexes of blank space do not generate two economic points for your empire by being blank hexes. They do it because there is a lot of commerce going on in those hexes represented by small frighters, large freighters, free traders, and etc. going back and forth and round to all those various little colony planets. Individually each of those colonies is nothing, just as individually each of those little cargo haulers is nothing, but they add up to those economic points over a six month period.
The second thing is that while the Pirates operating in the Malacca Strait are using speed boats and grappling hooks to do what they do and do not have the ability to get into deep water, the operations of the Orions are more akin to those of the 1600s to early 1800s. They are quite adept at attacking ships in deep space just as the Pirates then were adept at hitting the shipping lanes between the old world and new world (and not just waiting off a harbor for something to come out). The shipping lanes were predictable back then (wind and sea currents), and the Orions will know the shipping lanes in an area they want to operate in.
Plus, modern freighters that use the Malacca straits tend to have GPS systems in order to help them avoid running into each other and keep track of their cargoes. Would it surprise you to learn that the Pirates in the Malacca Straits have tapped into that system (meant to keep the ships safe) in order to determine which ones to target and where they are? (I am not making that up, they HAVE done this and it is causing a lot of trouble because the system cannot simply be turned off.) Similar things might be happening in the SFB universe.
SPP wrote "Literally you are saying that no one is ever "surprised" and that it cannot happen..."
No, what I am saying is that SURPRISE at a WS 0 level should be rare. Tac Intel should be used as I stated. Cargo ship captains should be paranoid for a reason, that's why they get the big bucks. Warships have to go to planets and other features to do their jobs and these can be used to hide in the penumbra etc. Merchants should avoid coming close to concealing terrain for the exact same reason. Hence why cloaks are so loved by pirates.
SPP wrote "So there is always a chance that you will spot him "way off"
No, there should be a small chance I did NOT notice him at the appropriate tac intel range. I have serious limitations on my sensor suite and he has stealth ships that also gain the numble benefit at range. So my warning is short. But WS 0? Not even time to warm phaser caps from btty? Putzing along at speed 5? In the "return of the Hood" story the Nina Wong used tac intel to react to the approaching Klinks, and I'm sure there are other examples...
WHAT is the speed of a freighter in Warp terms when cruising at best value speed? Warp 4 is speed 64? 3 is speed 27? Warp 2 is speed 8. In HIGH Warp, I thought you could go MUCH MUCH faster than in tactical warp for the same engine effort... SO shouldn't the freighter USE that ability?
The point is that the merchant ships are certainly going to be cruising at Warp 3 or more. Warships cruise at warp 4 or 5 IIRC. Current merchants mostly cruise at about 15 knots or so, they don't even have steerage below 5 knots IIRC. Warships only CRUISE about the same speed, although their dash speed is higher.
As my fiction piece and proposal was meant to show, there is a need for merchants to be able to add a small bit of firepower to their ships in a reasonable manner. Simply put, there should be some way for a merchant to add defense power while not dragging around an escort ship. All my proposal was meant to do was let a large freighter or 2 small freighters tote 50 spaces of cargo and be able to make things too expensive for a LR to want to bother THIS shipment.
I do NOT agree that merchant ships are cheap, look at the econ BPV of these things. A Large freighter is 61 econ/ 18 combat BPV, while a Klingon Q ship is 83. Add in the value of my cargo, and subtract all the extra crew and BPs from the q ship and the Large freighter itself (leaving out the value of the crew the Q ship has over me) and I may be MORE valuable than the Q ship.
For example, my cargo ship is carrying a load of replacement fighters from the factory towards the main distribution point for a wide area, lets say these are F18 equivalents. SO I am toting 50 fighters times 8 BPV all boxed up and ready for resale. The Cargo here is MORE valuable than the ship. In fact it is more than 6 times as valuable and there is no way besides bribery, grovelling, chance or wheedling to get an escort.
In the introduction to my story I explain that 1) this cargo is effectively the entire annual cash export cargo for the entire planetary system for an entire year. 2) The last cargo was taken, ship and all. 3) The exporters and importers both have an interest in making sure THIS shipment is delivered (ie this is not a case of the freighter buys the cargo and then sells it someplace). 4) There is also a manufacturer of machinery tha tis going to be depending on the $ this stuff is traded for to go towards purchaising hsi machines. 5)In this story, there is political maneuvering, dealmaking with the local planetary NG, a "deal" brokered by a regional NG laison, various export and import ministries, etc. It was neither casual nor routine for this skid to get rented. 6) The deal was the ISF rents the skids out for cheap (with a hefty deposit) and the locals man it, Everyone benefits, except for Digger MJC the pirate.
SPP,
I don't think I missed the point about piracy, just the where ships are located; trade routes verses choke points. The effect is similar, the location of the target is in a known area. However terrain does factor in "Maybe that Pulsar over there is creating just enough interference that the Orion could get close,..."; just not in the way I was using.
Just to make sure I do not and did not intend to imply a attack by armed men in a RHIB is similar to a LR. RHIB, an escape Pod and phaser rifles?
No I am not surprised about the GPS issue.
SPP,
I understand what you're saying; I don't disagree. My only point was that it's safe to assume that a freighter loaded up with a pair of these fighter skids must be expecting at least the possibility of trouble, otherwise they wouldn't bother. Yes, he can still be surprised...no doubt. But I don't think he's assuming that all freighters all expect to be ambushed all the time...just that in this scenario, the freighter in question may be in a less than ideal area, and has opted to use the fighter skids as extra protection. That won't affect how surprise, tac intel, or anything else works; it's more the spirit of the thing.
Quote:I am NOT so irked by my and MJCs errors, as by the amount of irritating "never" and "can't" comments I recieve here and in emails as to what policy is as opposed to what SVC tells us is the actual historical deal. I sorta PREFER 2 non perfect pepole duking it out.
I'm sorta irked that no one sent me an email, if you got a bunch.
Quote:COMBAT goes FAST and the ability to make a perfect decision after contemplation at length is NOT A GOOD QUALITY in a tactical level commander.
I agree, hence I didn't tractor and death drag fighters #1 & #2, even though it hit me about 10 minutes after I'ld posted what I would do.
I once played battletech which a bunch of guys who "knew" it was smart to not think about their plans until it was their go an then take about 10 minutes to think about their move. Well with 8 guys playing the standard 2 hour game of battle tech had turned into 2 hours per turn...sheesh.
Quote:Any pirate that comes along can just tell you to "stand and deliver" or die. Hence, every CR and LR will basically never fire a shot. Hopefully, for any merchant stupid enough to travel, the pirates will only decide to take JUST some of your cargo and not your entire ship. ...
...Conversely, any merchant skipper with the least brains would just refuse to travel without an escort. Armed and Q ship type cargo movers would be the sole means to move cargo, and the history tells that is not so.
Actually I think I said this a few days ago.
Since the entire crew of a large freighter can be crammed aboard one Admin shuttle, the freighter crew can afford to give over the ship ( it is insured and quite probably the cargo is insured as well ) and just sail off in an admin with a enough supplies for 20 people for however many days away the nearest safe harbour is ( thus always being just a few days by shuttle from safe harbour is a good way to do business ); without being bankrupted by the theft nor killed.
This is the Historical effect that Lloyds of London had on shipping.
By requiring a safer standard of sailing ( the "plimsal line" being the most obvious example ) and underwriting the cargo and vessels; ships in dangerous situations ( like being an 18th century sailing ship caught in a typhoon ) were not to be the financial end of the survivors.
This increased the number of poeple ( by lowering the wealth threshold ) who could enter into shipping and thus furthered the ecconomy of England by increasing the amount of international trade.
It's fair to say that under the UFP government similar would exist. Indeed I would argue that the UFP government would realise that trade was the way to make everybody wealthy ( excuse the use of cleche' ( or was it WTO dogma???)) and thus would set itself up as the underwritter for commercial shipping ( I mean really, who's richer than the government !?!) in order to maximise the ability of merchants to set up in commercial enterprise.
Quote:NEVER pick on any ship with an escort. Why not wait and get the FREE goodies any unescorted ship will hand over.
Because the unescorted ones tend to be hauling building industry sand or live sheep export rather than a cache' of military rifles destined for the front that rebels will pay big money for.
I'll tell you about gross metric tons sometime but basically different cargoes have different profit margins.
Quote:But in any region a regular, slow, unarmed freighter might travel should have some type of response be TYPICALLY available. NO response should be an exception.
Well what is no responce.
Serious, the typical thing that a freighter needs rescuing from would be some really bad combination of freak events.
My Frighter gets blasted by a gravity wave in the middle of an Ion Storm and the ship's engines start leaking huge amounts of radiation.
My crew set off the automated distress beakon and jump into a shuttlecraft and move to a safe distance ( say 50 million metres ( 5 hexes )).
The ship blows up after about 17 minutes of not having the matter/antimatter reactor being shut down whilst in this dnagerous state...no one is harmed.
The storm dies down after another 33 minutes.
Our Distress signal did get through ( and transmissions from the shuttle we also detected ) and a POL picks us up after another four hours.
There are from this statement some 270 SFB turns between rescue and trouble ( could be more if we take turns to get off the ship or turns to realise the radiation level has skyrocketed ).
Now if the priates had a period of 270 turns before rescue, it MIGHT AS WELL BE no rescue at all.
That's part of the situation with this game and this game universe.
No rescue and rescue that comes after several hours are two different things to us but the same thing to the SFB game system.
Quote:At this point I decide if I want JUST the entire ship, the entire ship and hostages too, what my ship can carry and some hostages, or just what my holds can carry. If I want everything, I just gas you in the hold and handcuff you together until a transfer ship come s(see below). Or I just open the shuttle craft bay doors and lose any potential ransom at the same time as I lose any potential troublemakers...
Don't be too evil if you don't have to.
Theft by Extortion is treated very differently to Robbery Occassioning Assault. Robbery Occassioning Death....now that gets every cop on your trail.
Besides which if there is a robber who murders ( to make sure there are no witnesses ) preying on a bunch of victims in this area then people fight back...might as well fight and leave your attacker missing an eye and die than just die.
Freighters will go the same way.
If you can just take the cargo ( and possibly the ship ) and let the crew live then they'll be less likely to fight.
And so you don't need them naked. In an Admin shuttle at R3 will do just fine. Seriously, how hard is it to do 6 points of damage, one type IM drone with half a space of armour is certain death for an Admin shuttle (an VIM drone is certain death if they just fired off their Ph-3 at something else ) so even if they did see a way to fire their Ph-3 through your downed shield ( that you're using to transport through and by good positioning that wouldn't happen anyway...heck you can even hold the shuttle in a tractor to prevent any attempt at disengagment ); the crew do not need to be manhandled or humiliated, they just need to be kept under the threat of death should they start anything stupid.
Quote:Freighters use the sensor data they receive and respond in an appropriate paranoid fashion. If they detect something at the longest ranges, they challenge it using appropriate and robust codes. A closing course results in a course change to see of they are PURSUING or just happened to be on a course that comes close.
Again when the Kumeran sank HMAS Sydney ( it was a German surface raider built on a freighter hull ) the Kumeran signaled that it was a Dutch freighter ( at the time independant of German control ) and thus didn't have the codes to prove she was who she said she was because only commonwealth countries were using the identification codes.
The same would be true of the freighter in this situation.
If you hail them at S levels of detection and ask them for the code to prove that they are either a freightrer on your side or a warship on your side.
They will hail you in uncoded signal...what ship, where to, where from.
You hail them with the same question ( being the truly paranoid guy you want to keep your cards close to your chest ) and they respend. Some beleivible ship name, some neutral planet ( providing ownership, thus no codes ) some neutral destination or departure and some large port in your empire that is so busy you've got no chance of knowing/remembering that ship was there or not but that also lies on a believable line that passes through their destination and here.
You don't know that it's not true, now, you could turn to try to see if they're going to follow you or could just keep going about your own business.
If you turn they might turn.
If they do turn, you could signal them and ask them why or you could just assume they are trouble and ready yourself.
If you signal them they say, that they are following you in that their maps of this regon of space are poor and they have an outbreak of disease aboard their vessel and were hopping that you would lead them to port to get medical aid (which is similar to what the Kumeran said the the Sydney BTW).
Do you A) lead them to port B) turn to face them to deliver your ship's surgeon to them or C) ask them to leave you alone and arm your weapons?
If you lead them to port, they slow down and slip out of sensor range, do you turn and try to search for them or just go about your own business?
Quote:They should have to fight. Merchie should mock surrender and then shoot when the pirate gets close and lowers a shield to send over a BP.
Merchants should play dirty???
And the Orion signals the BPs aboard the vessel. "Kill them...all of them."
The LR delivers 2 BPs and since the Freighter mocked surrender by going speed zero the Orion launches two speed 6 Admins which each carry 2 BPs straight into the shuttle bay ) any raising of the shield with BTTY on your behalf would result in the LR Phasers and Photons smashing a hole in the shields for the shuttles.
6 BPs against the defensive ability of a large freighter ( or a small one ) is no regular BPs, I'm not sure if 2 CUs can form even one militia and any bought BPs.
In about a minute all the CUs will be dead.
Mock surrender is a really bad SOP...it gets other people killed as the Orion will basically smash off the phasers of the next vessel they attack "knowing" that her crew are engaging in mock surrender.
My brother used to be a court officer and there was a case in his court.
Basically little man marches over to large man and says give me back the money you owm me.
Big man grabs him and reaches back with his fist.
Little man says;" I surrender."
Big man lets go and turns back to his beer.
Little man tries to throw a sneaky punch.
Big man grabs the arm and twists it behind the little man's arm.
Now the little man and cops are prosecuting the big man.
The jury saw it like this.
Anything before, "I surrender" is a different fight.
In the fight that counted, little man threw a punch that got caught and dragged behind his arm, so he got everything he deserved if he got a broken arm.
Quite simply when you make mock surrender an SOP, you make life a whole hell of a lot harder for everybody else in the community because they just lost the ability to say two of the most precious words in the english language ( I surrender ) and have those words carry any weight.
Quote: Merchies should fight or be arrested by the local police as a possible accomplices to the crime.
Firstly...arrested as possible...makes for very busy cops and very low prosecution rates.
They don't arrest the guy at the petrol station for handing over everything in the cash register to the armed robber, heck they don't even do it if the guy offers to put the cash in an easy to carry plastic bag for the robber.
Now if the service station attendant's girlfriend tells the cops she saw the attendant meet with the robber and split the cash...then the cops might actually arrest someone.
Arrests have a lot of paperwork involved ( and puts a clock on further investigations ) so it's a much more efficent use of police time to build up and an airtight case and then throw people behind bars. Then there's the double jeapary laws to consider.
Quote:2) Merchies have no stake in their cargo. The question is WHO owns the cargo during shipment? The exporter (i.e. pay some one to tote it and then receive pay when it is received by the destination?), the importer (i.e. pay the “producer” up front and then someone totes it for me?), the shipping company (so the shipper pays the “producer” hauls it with all the associated risks, and sells it at the destination, taking profit from the differences between the buy and sell prices, minus expenses, minus insurance, minus risk…), the insurance company (so in effect the insurer has both all the risk and no chance to control that risk? NO WAY, I know insurers and that is not their deal).
| Exporter | Yes Sometimes |
| Importer | Yes Sometimes |
| Shipping line | Yes Sometimes |
| Skipper | Yes Sometimes |
| The Crew as a co-op' | maybe |
| Insurer | It depends |
If the Insurer is in the business of providing a business service then it probably won't own the product being shipped.
If on the other hand the insurer is looking to make money hand over fist then why not!?!
As to the ownership of the cargo...that is what the contract is for. To make plain that issue and a hundred others like it.
Quote:Surely, the insurers will raise the cost of insuring any cargo that goes into your holds, so probably any captain looted is unemployed or has a hard time getting cargos if he is owner/ captain. And if an entire ship or cargo is taken and the merchie captain survives, who would insure a future ship he captained or his cargo? Cowards like you would just give it up to the first pirate to come within a few parsecs anyway
Ever been in a car crash?
Ever been bankrupted by it?
Ever heard of a taxi driver or courrier van driver who was bankrupted by a collission?
Sure it happens from time to time and the Insurance companies like to raise premiums for any reason they can find but the Insurance companies would have a policy and that policy would be fairly lax as captain's wouldn't want to ply their trade if bad luck was enough to cause a hard nosed insurer to make their lives impossible.
Remember that the Insurance company as a publically listed company has share holders and some of those share holders ( indeed most if we are talking about a General Shipping Strike ) have some degree of depandance on shipping.
So the policy would be fair and indeed every shipping line would go to the Insurer that had a fair offer so all insurers would be reasonably fair and have a reasonably fair policy. Because if they didn't the shipping-lines would stop, the share holder would loose money and the share holders would fire the hard nosed insurer.
A Policy of:-
Getting Boarded once looks like bad luck.
Getting Boarded twice looks like neglect.
Getting Boarded three times looks like an SOP.
The above policy is not too hard on people yet will weed out those with actual criminal ties. And that is what your share holders want.
A shop can't opperate by selling canned turd for a really high price nor can it give its entire stock away for free, it needs to find some middle ground and an Insurance company is just the same.
Quote:The follow up question would be “What gave you that idea? Who told you that?
No body told me. But I handn't been hailed by a POL for the previous three hours and you guys arrived 28 minutes after the pirates disappeared into high warp so it stands to reason doesn't it!?!
Quote:The shipping lanes were predictable back then (wind and sea currents), and the Orions will know the shipping lanes in an area they want to operate in.
Not to mention the fact that if a ship gets into trouble ( equipment failure, priacy or storm damage ) then it will be eaiser for the POL to find it if it stays in the shipping lanes ( not to mention more likely that other freighters will find it ) and thus the shipping lanes are clearly published and freely availible and the governement really doesn't like it when ships leave the shipping lanes. The government would also really like it if the shipping lanes were quite narrow as it means less expensive opperation as a single vessels can patrol it rather than several vessels particularly if a distress signal was sent.
Thus the priates have a pretty good idea of where their prey is likely to be found.
Quote:WHAT is the speed of a freighter in Warp terms when cruising at best value speed? Warp 4 is speed 64? 3 is speed 27? Warp 2 is speed 8. In HIGH Warp, I thought you could go MUCH MUCH faster than in tactical warp for the same engine effort... SO shouldn't the freighter USE that ability?
Yes, they should.
Lets just say for a moment that Strategic warp is the warp factor to the power of 4.5 ( rather than cubed ) in the speed of light and the freighter is still moving around at strategic warp at warp 2 ( to save on fuel ).
Thats a speed of 22.6 times the speed of light.
The trouble is my LR can move under strategic warp too, so I can move around at the same speed as you. But I can also move at say, warp 3 under strategic warp by investing 9 warp engine boxes ( I'm MC 1/3) and thus move strategically at 140.2 hexes per turn...your larger freighter just can't do that, so I can chase you down if you try to run under strategic speeds...sure, you'll detect me moving at speeds a freghter can't do but I'll probably sneak up on you at a high freighter speed and claim if asked that I've raised my speed to a higher level because of a sick crew and needing to find a port in a hurry so screw the fuel bill.
Quote:Current merchants mostly cruise at about 15 knots or so, they don't even have steerage below 5 knots IIRC
Oddly enough the water flowing over the rudder generates the hydron dynamic force ( that turns the vessel ) in a value that is in proportion to the square of the velocity.
Thus whilst you have maximum steerage at top speed you will have no steerage when stationary.
And when moving very slowly you'll have steerage that isn't worth a ••••...but there's no 30% cut off rule. Although the engine idle speed causes the engine to stop if it goes too clow and that idling ( because ships have no clutch ) is what is generating the fluide flow (much faster flow than regular flow around the vessel) over the rudder so their is something of a break point but still if the vessel is moving then the rudder can generate some force ( although a few newtonnes applied to a vessel that is hundreds or thousnads of tonnes isn't worth very much ).
Quote:Warships only CRUISE about the same speed, although their dash speed is higher
Again, it depends on what you're dealing with.
28 knots is a fast speed for a speed boat.
It's increadibly fast ( but not unheard of ) for a commercial vessel.
It's quite do-able for an aircraft carrier.
What the Pirates are using to capture the frieghters becomes very important to what they can or can not or can not conveiniantly do.
SFB prirates tend to be using what are in effect full warships.
Quote: I do NOT agree that merchant ships are cheap, look at the econ BPV of these things. A Large freighter is 61 econ/ 18 combat BPV, while a Klingon Q ship is 83. Add in the value of my cargo, and subtract all the extra crew and BPs from the q ship and the Large freighter itself (leaving out the value of the crew the Q ship has over me) and I may be MORE valuable than the Q ship.
So is econ BPV equal to A) the price of the freighter or B) the price of her to build plus all the haulage she would make over her life time/all the haulage her crew would make over her life time?
It is possible for a freighter to be cheap to buy and yet important to the ecconomy.
So I wouldn't let the econ-BPV let you be swayed to the idea that freighters arn't as cheap as chips. Q ships after all have reduced cargo capasity.
Quote:In fact it is more than 6 times as valuable and there is no way besides bribery, grovelling, chance or wheedling to get an escort
Firstly, that's really a job for an AxCVL and secondly, you'ld be surprised how easy it is to get an escort when you say;" Oh by the way I'm hauling military hardware to support the boys at the front !" to the starfleet commercial shipping intergration officer down at your local starbase.
On range 13.
You were speed 17, I was speed 30, the range was 30.
This results in change range by 13.
Somebody said it was change range to 13.
And I took it as R13.
It's a just a mistake, plain and simple, but I'm not sure to whom ( or even if we should ) apportion the blame. Beside which SPP said I should start at R25 and that would put me without the blunder at R12.
Also note that the 270 SFB turn value in one of the posts I made above is infact 290 SFB turns.
I agree with some of what you posted.
"If you hail them at S levels of detection and ask them for the code... They hail you in uncoded... Some ship name, some neutral planet and destination or departure... Turn to try to see if they're going to follow you... If they do turn ask them why...they say, that they are following/maps/disease/ lead them to port ..."
My answer, don't come any closer than S- 5/1 (whichever is furthest) I can detect you... Closer and I will presume you hostile and fire! Sob story? OOH, sucks to be you. I MIGHT re transmit a request for help to the ISF somewhere, but I have a respoonsibility to MY crew/ passengers/ ship owners/ insurers/ cargo clients/ myself...
"They slow down and slip out of sensor range."
SO SORRY, I will be passing on a report of this entire incident, including your weak story, to the ISF when I get to port. IF the ISF desires, THEY can go take care of you. That is what they are there for.
As to holding the captain/ crew accountable, there are quite a few orders of magnitude difference between crashing a $20,000 delivery van and losing an entire large cargo vessel loaded with valuable stuff. I, for one, would never trust you again without a full investigation... Missing or altered data tapes woudl mean I definately would fire your entire crew if no GOOD and SATISFYING explanation was forthcoming. Like a 3rd party psionic mindsifting...
I used crated fighters as an example because $ is easy to calcualte for them, but instead insert "50 spaces worth of UIM replacement units, chaff pods, cured kangaroo pelts, sharks fin soup concentrate, whatever." Besides an AUX CV is not toting crated up fighters, it breaks them out. Now a fighter conveyer ff...
And you never get email because your profile here doesn't include any details like email address, nationality etc.
I agree with you about realtive values being different. Hence why ships might SOMETIMES want to rent/lease/ get loaned a self defense skid or 2. Notice in the story that the skids were carried sans crew and fighters TO the planet when the cargo was bulk fruit and nuts, manned for the trip with the valuable fruitcake shipment and the return with the toy fabricators. The last leg (out from KK) was going to loaded with stockings and similar bulky lesser value stuff. For this trip the NG troops and zorans would stay home. I think there is some floor below which it is not worth toting stuff between systems. For example, have you ever seen the giant live sheep ship that hauls them from Oz and NZ? Jeez the stink. Notice there are not many of these things, it is a specialty trade. The KZ/Lyr would have literally hundered of these things to supply the forces, non terrestrial colonies/ mines/bases... But is a LR is going to chase one down if it is not needing rations?
SPP wrote "Now, scenarios reflect 'interesting circumstances'. By definition, the 'average' Orion plundering... not interesting... No more than the "average mugging" is... The interesting muggings are generally the ones where the Mugger was (in essence) taken by surprise..."
1) SO a Q ship/ Armed Freighter/ Fed Ex/ LTT would be like renting an armored car.
2) So what can MikeG do to safeguard his personal goods and life? Maybe Mike takes a self defense class and gets a permit to carry his HiPower or 1911 concealed. He carries the old shotgun his grandfather left him in the car trunk (if I still had a car vs a jeep). He pays attention and alert to his immediate area. He locks the car doors when he is in the car. He carries "the club" in his car both to lock the steering wheel and as a club... (clever, huh? carry a nightstick, machete, axe handle whatever and questions may be raised by the police, but the club(tm) ?)
3) I consider anytime I get mugged interesting. In fact, I for one consider EVERY violent attack that has ever been made on me and those I am responsible for to be both "interesting" and worthy of learning from.
For example I banned my employees from SUVs, after an incidnet with snipers in Afghainstan, travelling in convoys with the Military after a ied blew my car up in Iraq, EVERYONE wore body armor when travelling in my company, even the Egyptian Arab Coptics that looked like locals and could speak egyptian accented arabic) after we were on the fringes of an RPG attack on a government convoy, All westerners were required to be armed at all times outside OUR security perimeter after the military abandoned us in place when we started to take mortar fire outside a base in western iraq...
As a firefighter after we had been shot at while responding a couple times, my fire department coordinated with the local police to be aware of who was known to be an armed (abnormal) paranoid, personally violent or suspected to be a Meth Smoker. We required the Police to "clear" these locations before we turned our fire trucks down their street... I had been PERSONALLY shot at by a guy who had been smoking meth for several days and had beaten up his entire family by striking them several times with THE DINING ROOM TABLE. These guys are strong and crazy!
A business owner might make sure the parking lot out back well lit, clear of cover and can be observed via peephole before unlocking the back door. He carries a cell phone. His buisiness always has 2 employees on duty and the doors are locked when one employee has to be alone. There us a panic button underthe desk of the receptionist and close circuit cameras...
The point is that means to protect a given shipment should be proportional to the value and risk of the shipment. As the convoy scenario shows, often a half dozen freighters get 1 pousy pol to protect them. So the convoy has to look tothemselves for some protection ability...
Quote:SO SORRY, I will be passing on a report of this entire incident, including your weak story, to the ISF when I get to port. IF the ISF desires, THEY can go take care of you. That is what they are there for.
You are so engaging in metagame-think!
So what happens when they do get to port (90% of the time you get that story it will in fact be true ) and THEY say; "hey, we lost several good men including our ship's G.P. (M.D. on the foreign planet) and you failed to render any medical aid."
Under International shipping law, every ship in the vacinity is legally obliged to render any and all aid to a ship in distress.
Sure the M.V. Tampa missed out but Howard is an S.O.B. who'ld gladly crucify anyone to get elected.
I wouldn't say that things are too different in the starfleet universe.
Quote:As to holding the captain/ crew accountable, there are quite a few orders of magnitude difference between crashing a $20,000 delivery van and losing an entire large cargo vessel loaded with valuable stuff. I, for one, would never trust you again without a full investigation... Missing or altered data tapes woudl mean I definately would fire your entire crew if no GOOD and SATISFYING explanation was forthcoming.
Yeah..I'm sure you'ld have a high staff turn over rate.
Also I think you'll find that 50,000 cars is worth more than a freighter, so Insurance companies would be nuts not to drive every first time car crash driver or stolen car owner, to the wall...if your line of logic holds water.
Also what missing or altered tapes??? Are you jumping up & down because the crew are in league with the pirates or because they gave up the cargo ( and possibly the ship) without a fight???
Be clear on this because your posts have definately gone along certain "extremely paranoid" lines.