Archive through June 17, 2005
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
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(J) Shuttles and Fighters:
Casual fighters in freighter skids:
Archive through June 17, 2005
Re: Silent Running.
Actually silent running is only effective when you are not moving...
So pirates can use it to ambush a freighter, but it is not very effective for invasions, as active scans will detect the warp signature of your ship as it moves.
Now if your empire wishes to invade using impulse only ships moving at sublight speeds... we will see you in 200-300 years after you cross that 1 F&E Hex.
Hmmm, now what was the original question here??
I proposed that there should be a available slid for carrying a pair of fighters (old ones) to provide a marginal bit of protection against a LR pirate.
MJC and I were gaming it out and we got distracted.
I still think it is viable
Ken: Silent running as written does indeed only apply to when you aren't moving. However, there are problems with using this as an explanation as to why pirates are successful in the SFU. The background says that a pirate can come screaming in at a convoy at speed max with all three of his photons nearly fully overloaded and at WS-III. The convoy is taken by surprise.
If the pirate was on silent running as written, he simply doesn't have enough power to reach WS-III, and certainly won't be holding overloaded photons. He'll also be limping in at speed 10, not speed max...
Therefore, if we are to use silent running as Andy Palmer proposes to allow pirates to close with freighters undetected, we have to allow them to move, at almost maximum speed, and allow them to use engine power to get to WS-III. We then have to come up with the restrictions so every raiding enemy ship doesn't use the same techniques. So far we have:
a) It is tied in with Orion stealth or
b) They use a special fuel which normal navies can't use.
or both or something else.
None of this affects Mike Grafton's original proposal, which was designing a fighter carrying skid for freighter defense. What does affect the proposal is how we set up the pirate raiding scenario to test whether the defense is useful.
How close does the pirate get before the freighter sees them? What weapon status does the freighter start at?
Mike's view is that freighters are careful, vigilant and alert; challenging any strange sensor reading and instantly reacting to any possible threat. Therefore they will detect a pirate a long way away and be ready to defend themselves. In a short period of time after a distress call the constabulary will arrive to save the day.
Others disagree. Some cite (SG4.0) as the typical pirate scenario. (Convoy WS-0, constabulary 6 turns away). Others point out that as a written scenario it is probably atypical by definition. Either the convoy is at a higher weapons status normally (helps the convoy) or the police are further away (helps the pirate) or perhaps both.
Hence we continue our exploration of the issues of piracy in the SFU... 
Another useful scenario would be "Orion Roulette", SL108 from CL #8. It proposes a convoy of three small freighters, two POL/small-frigates (Klingon E4), and an Orion LR. All five convoy ships start at WS-I; the Orion starts at WS-II. The convoy starts in the middle of the map, and the Orion can enter from any map edge. The Orion's victory condition is to capture a freighter; if he does, he wins, otherwise the convoy wins. The Orion has 10 turns (the scenario states that a cruiser will arrive on turn 11.)
"...instantly reacting to any possible threat." Well I would say "reacting fairly intelligently in a reasonably prompt time." A merchant does not have a dedicated sensor/ scanner officer. As I noted, maybe a Sensors/Scanners/Navigation/Comms Officer might be closer to actual service.
I think that there are several giant assumptions that have to be made here
1) How many bpv is a box of cargo worth?
2) How many boxes of cargo does a raider have to get to break even (after salary, fuel, maintenence, food, ship loan payments...)
3) How far are responders? Say on a 2d6 (2 = within 2 turns as they are using you as a tethered goat, 3 = d6 turns, 4 = 6+d6 turns, 5 to 9 = 10 + d6 turns , 10 = 15 + d6 turns, 11 = 20 +d6 turns, 12 = over 25 turns) As I tried to illustrate, ships and captains never REALLY know who/where their responders are. A passing pf flotilla on patrol? An unscheduled transit by a C7S led heavy battle squadron, a survey vessel looking at a local interestng thing, a pol covering a convoy just over yonder, whatever???
4) What will happen to a freighter captain/ crew/ shipping line if it "stands and delivers" a few boxes of cargo to buy off a raider? What will we do with a captain/ crew that loses their ENTIRE cargo and/or ship?
5) Is there any level of defense available to freighters BETWEEN none and dragging around an escort? I think fwiw there should be defense skids available for "more valuable than most" cargos.
6) Why would pirates that had merchants "stand and deliver" NOT occasionally just space the merchants and keep the ship and cargo both? Not often, maybe once per 20 ships? This is where I think that SPPs "give up some cargo and we'll let you go" would fail in practice. Especially independents. Rob a few, and then steal an entire ship. Maybe bring back a few boxes aboard your LR and let the crew aboard the capture sell it over the border (national/cartel/whatever).
7) How good are comms and IFF? Are freighters suckers for a sad story from another ship?
8) How vigorously does the local law react to piracy, forged IDs, leaks, etc
Way too many things that we should have to consider to completely cover the business of piracy.
I've been lurking here for a bit, but have been following the topic for a few days (mainly since I'm working on some fiction involving Orions and wanted to see what everyone else's take on them was ).
My thoughts were that the Orions are more like a Modern Organized Crime Syndicate (i.e Mafia, Yakuza, Triad, etc), than traditional pirates. They are into every time of criminal activity (drugs, slaves, arms sales, smuggling, etc). The ships we seen in SFB are their combat arm, used more to intimidate, coerce, etc, than to conduct actual piracy. However, since SFB is about ships fighting ships, we mostly see them in SFB when they're being pirates.
My thoughts to Mike's questions:
1) probably between .1 and 1 BPV depending on what is being carried (ore or grain probably at .1 BPV, parts of a starship or ground base at 1 BPV).
2) would 10% of the ship BPV be reasonable, SANS expendables? This would explain why LRs like Plasma-Fs, no costly reloads
3) Seems reasonable. Probably a little faster in a race's Core Sector or near a major planet/fleet installation. A little slower near the frontier. Of course during a War, all bets are off depending on the strategic situation.
4) Probably depends on how often they end up 'standing and delivering' vs everyone else. Too many times and the insurance company / police / government will start taking a hard look at an inside job. Same with losing the entire ship.
5) More options are always better . However, remember that the cost of these options has to be taken into account when figuring out if the Merchant is profitable. How much does it take to run a merchant for a month? Same as the pirate, 10%? Or some other number. Then figure out the cost of maintaining the extra defenses and how much income the freighter makes. Subtract maintenance from income and determine if the freighter is still profitable. If it isn't, it better be getting a government subsidy for that dangerous run, or be moving somewhere safer.
6) Depends on what the disappearance rates of freighters are and how bold the crew is. If 1 in 20 merchants go missing due to pirates, then you know you have a 5% chance of being killed if you 'stand and deliver'. If you fight, you probably have a 95% (!!!) chance of being killed. What do you do? Remember most freighter crews aren't trained military, so dying for king and country aren't number one on their list of things to do today
7) IFF and Comms probably fair. On responding to a sad story, it probably depends on the freighter and how many times they've been in a similar situation and/or burned. Some may go out of their way to help, others ignore it and claim comms trouble (remember the ship that was nearby the Titanic as she sank?).
8) Depends on too many things. Just like on where you are on Earth, (i.e. which country, ongoing disaster/war, etc), local law enforcement can vary from very, very good to absolutely useless and corrupt!
If nothing else this is going to provide useful information to whomever works on Prime Directive: Pirates
Michael C. Grafton:
I am taking some time on the side to read the topic. I have found that, yes, many of the concerns I had raised had already been discussed.
However, you have chosen to ignore a few things.
Even so, these things do not in and of themselves invalidate the scenario you have set up, and it could proceed apace.
The thing you have to understand is that Tactical Intelligence does not in and of itself mean that you will always be aware of something approaching you in SFB. It has never meant that. If it had, it would have included a flat rule stating that you would always use it and never use (S4.2). Further there would never be a scenario where a Battle Station was taken by surprise.
Other things you are ignoring is that your "police" force might have been diverted. Just having TWO "large police units" (an F5I AND an E4J) nearby would be unusual. G2s and E3s are not completely out of the system in Y175. But even if they were nearby, that does not mean that the Orion attacking YOUR ship is not deliberately trying to lure them here and away from some other Orion operation, or vice versa (i.e., another Orion Light Raider harrassed some other shipping in order to lure the police presence over that way).
And as noted, a given Orion might try approaching several merchants before he succeeded in getting close enough to one to pounce.
The other thing you are running into is, as noted, it would be unusual for the freighter to moving 'fast', and the sudden acceleration of the freighter is generally what tells the Orion that he "has been spotted". The lack of that acceleration is, of course, what a Q-ship uses to try to lure the Orion into its effective range, i.e., it plays "we have not seen anything, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope" while making sure all its weapons are ready.
Now, you have a large freighter that was, in theory, lopping along at speed five or six (call it six). At some point you spotted the Light Raider, and you apparently made the decision to tell him you spotted him by accelerating to speed nine or ten. At that point the Light Raider captain had to make a decision: Continue the attack, or pull away and stalk a less wary freighter.
Yes, the Orion does not want the freighter to call for help TOO SOON, or to have TOO MUCH TIME to get ready for visitors. Remember that the typical large freighter has a crew of only 18 to 24 people (two crew units). Which means a lot of functions are "automated", i.e., there are not enough people to man all stations on the freighter 24/7. Even if you assume only two shifts (either 12 hours on and 12 hours off, or 6 hours on, 6 hours off, 6 hours on, 6 hours off, or any other combination of duty shifts to have half the crew awake at any one time, that still leaves youw with normally only nine or twelve people on duty at any time. Assuming as a minimum that helm, navigation, and Command, and engineering half to be manned, that leaves between five and seven people to anything else, and that anything else include routine maintenance and checking the cargo.
But even Fleet Starships get surprised (see "The Mighty Hood Goes Down" which was pounced on by three Klingon Cruisers while moving slowly and with its weapons basically empty.
If the freighter suddenly accelerates, that tells the Orion he has been seen, and he can check his data board and determine if the freighter has time to warm and charge its phaser banks, and he can determine if the freighter has time, and power, to arm its shuttle as a suicide shuttle. The acceleration also may tell him whether it is a Freighter/Q-ship, or an armed freighter. (Standard Freighters only accelerate by four, armed ones accelerate by five). A large freighter accelerating by five in an interval where it will have time to arm its weapons is probably NOT something an LR is going to keep boring in on. A DW might, but an LR will not, and the LR is going to have to seriously evaluate his options before continuing to close on a large armed freighter that does not spot him until he is REALLY close.
If the freighter only accelerates by four, he is going to get a count on its phasers before he makes his next decision. This again is a case of "when did he spot me". If it has just the standared phaser-2 and phaser-3, then no problem. If it has (as yours does) THREE phaser-2s and a phaser-3, he will suspect skids (Ducktails do not add phasers), and all skids add phaser-2s (so far) with a point of power to operate them. So he can feed that into his data at that point. (He is going to have to consider the double game, i.e., it is a Q-ship with Dummy phaser mounts to look like a ship with skids, or that it is a freighter without skids that just has some dummy phasers to make you think he has skids).
Even though most of the heavy weapons of Armed Freighters and Q-Ships point forward, the Orion SHOULD approach from the front. It is both a time problem and an intelligence problem. If the freighter tries to run (accelerate and turn away), you close more quickly. You also can SEE the disruptors (or plasmas, or drones) as heavy weapons since you are approaching them (will not help if it is a Q-ship), and you will NOT run over the NSM if it happens to be a Romulan Q-ship.
Again, the Orion needs to make "attack or not" decisions.
And he wants to get close enough to "make threats", i.e., "Call for help and I will space you all" kind of statements. Because the truth is that the Orion does not want to fight at all.
And a call for help when the Orion is a ways off may be enough to make him leave right then, but if the call goes out after he is close, and in particular after he has made his how threat, he may feel that he has no choice but to carry out his threat. (Of course, in such case it is a good idea to leave one crew member alive to tell the tale, i.e., that the others died because the Captain, or the communications tech, tried to call for help under the Orion's gun. This can be either the youngest member of the crew, or the oldest member of the crew, or some crewmember you pick to suit your own taste for blood. You might even allow the crewman (whether captain or commo tech) who called for help be the one that lives so that he can suffer the agony of having caused the deaths of his crew mates. But it sends the message (and just killing the crew and leaving a recorded message that the fleet/police might decide not to spread is a bad idea) "resist at your own peril."
I think the MAN ON WATCH would be watching the scanners rather than the veiw screen.
But he would probably be serving double duty as HELM'S-MAN as well.
...During the night shift.
6) Why would pirates that had merchants "stand and deliver" NOT occasionally just space the merchants and keep the ship and cargo both? Not often, maybe once per 20 ships? This is where I think that SPPs "give up some cargo and we'll let you go" would fail in practice. Especially independents. Rob a few, and then steal an entire ship. Maybe bring back a few boxes aboard your LR and let the crew aboard the capture sell it over the border (national/cartel/whatever).
Pirates would take the Freighter from time to time. A freighter is a good thing to have as it makes the Orion seem more legit when he tries to "fence" his ill gotten gains. Plus selling the freighter bags a lot of money.
I personnally wonder if there have been any published "Attack Freighters" that would be the most common pirate vessel as they can opperate "incognitoe". Or maybe LR and CR hulled cargo haulers.
Remember you don't have to murder a crew to take their ship.
• You could put them in their shuttle and send them on their way, knowing that you've got hours to get out of the vacinity with the freighter.
• You could put them on a class M planet and then drop a dime from a pay-phone ( wearing a balaclaver if a video-payphone ) in port.
Or possibly just put them on the surface of a farming planet abour four hours walk from the nearest homestead.
• You might even have a deal with the enemy who is not only paying the bounty for the freighters you sink ( and letting you keep the cargoes and hulls if you merely capture `em ) but also will hold the "prisoners" in one of their prison facilities until a truce and a prisoner exchange is held.
Also not that the police treat an armed robber differently ( in the number of police officer assigned to catch him ) than an armed robber who blows everybody away because he wanted to leave no witnesses.
The same will be true of pirates. If five prirate ships work this section of space; that's POLs split five ways.
If there are five pirates working this section of space and one of those pirates routinely makes the crew take a long walk through a short airlock, the POLs will be split 5 ways and four of those parts will be assinged to put that one pirate in the big house.
Do you really want to make profits easier for the other guys working your franchise district!?!
Quote:The lack of that acceleration is, of course, what a Q-ship uses to try to lure the Orion into its effective range, i.e., it plays "we have not seen anything, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope" while making sure all its weapons are ready.
Reminds me of one of the final sceens in 1941.
Do not...take the ammunition from the storage bins.
Under no curcimstance should you...place the ammunition in the receiver.
Do not...place the safty level in the depressed position.
Never, ever, ever...cock the firing mechanism.
And under absolutely no curcumstance...depress the foot trigger!
MJC posted:"Why would pirates that had merchants "stand and deliver" NOT occasionally just space the merchants and keep the ship and cargo both?"
Because such genocide would eventually create such an uproar from the various communities (civilian, associated governments, merchant trade associations, tax payers etc) demanding that the military DO SOMETHING to end the practice of mass murder.
Britain ended the practice of the Thugge cult for ritualistic murder, the pirates of the 16th and 17th centuries (Black Beard for example) were hunted down and killed, and the Barbary pirates of the North African Coast were dealt with by the United States Navy (and others) in the early 18th century.
Each of the examples I site murdered prisoners.
other pirate groups that spared victims seem to persist and in some areas prosper (well except for those killed by the recent Tsunami... but one could argue that was a natural catastrophe and not a government or military policy!)
The point is, if the Dread Pirate Campbell indiscriminately killed prisoners (and not even all prisoners) it gives both the potential victims greater motivation to resist since the chances of survival either way begin to approach the same probability) and it gives the various governments motivation to protect their citizens by justifying expensive and elaborate efforts to hunt down and kill the Dread Pirate Campbell (and his evil minions)all out of proportion to the level of economic threat that the Dread Pirate Campbell and pirate Clan represent.
Much the same as a Rabid dog is a public danger and must be killed so that society can be safe.
MJC asked about "Attack Freighters" I think they are called Q ships in Orion service. Though I would prefer to get an armed freighter with a Q ship pod, so as to be able to flee if things went sour
SPP asked about "an F5I AND an E4J" I was just messing with MJC. I have a random chart of possible responders (from a fast convoy with a pol, to a pair of PF to a DSF Cruiser.) I was planning to let MJC have S Level warning anyway, os he could scurry away if he detected much total warp signature. The point is that neither a normal merchant ship or pirate can be sue what is going to respond...
Jeff noted "Because such genocide would eventually create such an uproar..." Well sure, MJC would want to avoid any drama here if:
1) he plans to stay in that particular franchise. If this is his grand finale before moving to a new job (like mercenary service in the LDR or in another cartel) why woudl MJC care about the uproar he leaves behind?
2) MJC has not thought of some clever way to blame his arch enemy Guido the CR captain in the frachinse next door, or a neighboring cartel, or what have you
3) If anyone ever connects the disappearance of the freighter to piracy inthe first place. Maybe MJC fakes a engineering failure/ explosion. Or he kills the crew, takes the entire cargo and any valuables and then runs the entire ship into a convenient asteroid like a suiceide freighter. So everyone KNOWS the ship wasn't hijacked, the crew just screwed up...
4) MJC is in his own franchise in the first place
5) MJC calculates that he can take 1 big old freighter and not start a pogrom vs orions. Well, it didn't happen when I took a freighter LAST year, so why should it be a problem now?
6) As SPP noted freighters are everywhere, surely there are a fair amount of freighters being "hijacked" by their own crews, the cargo and ship sold illegally and the crew (or the ones that killed most of their shipmates) disappearing and living high off the proceeds.
7) MJC can't figure out some way to blame a neighboring government (ie, he flees with his stolen freighter across a border)
WAY too many ways to mess with the LAWs heads and theory generation.
as some of you might suspect, figuring out possible failure modes and generating responses and preventative measures is what I do for a living... Basically I look at everything and think "how can this maim my guys?" "What stupid thing can my guys do?" "Is there a better way?" and of course when all else has failed "What the heck happened here?"
Don't you hate know it all, don't do anything safety guys? Me too
SPP noted that full use of Tac Intel would just about eliminate all surprise scenarios...
I have several responses
1) Yeah, so what? I know we only set up interesting cases in the first place. As I think SPP/SVC have noted somewhere in your writings, MOST battles are NOT interesting to play or study because the disparity of forces meant one side ran away without combat being enjoined or died without hurting the enemy (ie, my FFg intercepts your B10S led combat group of a C7, an entire D7 squadron, a D5 squadron and a F5W squadron).
2) Or there is a reason the S level intel was ignored "We are expecting fast convoy PQ-13 to meet us at point zulu..." the bad guys were hiding behind a planet, in a asteroid field, in the fringes of a nebula, doggo in open space, under cloak...
3) Warships and Police by the nature of their duties are always poking around and looking for stuff in out of the way places. Plus they patrol the spaceways looking for interesting things to do. THEY don't avoid possible pirates, they look to meet them. Freghters want to avoid ALL contacts except the ones that mean money. So they pick up their cargo at point A and ideally get to point B without ever meeting another ship.
4) Merchants should be very vulnerable to surprise in Orbit, they probably have all hands moving cargo and taking shore leave. Since they poke along more slowly and don't visit lots of planets, they have fewer chances to get off ship.
5) And of course, there are always idiots and "penny wise" being in the system...
6) As I have tried to show, there should be some way for a freighter to UP it's defensive status if there is a COMPELLING reason to both spend the $ and effort. My back story was meant to show why this ship was so paranoid.
7) Low WS can also be used to indicate a low level of higher command leadership ability. So Admiral XYZ said he wanted the battle ships moored together and Sundays mornings to begin with the bands playing. So Intelligence team Alpha did not pass on/ understand the secret intel that warned of possible a fed first strike implied by "captains discretion." Whatever.
I think so many Q ships have rear facing weapons that Attack Freighters do have a place serving the role of being able to sneak right up to a pirate and then attack as opposed to being placed in the convoy and then doing its dirty work in the quite of deep space.
Perhaps cargo carrying ( or regular policing ) versions of the Orion stealth ships would be in order.
Quote:1) he plans to stay in that particular franchise. If this is his grand finale before moving to a new job (like mercenary service in the LDR or in another cartel) why woudl MJC care about the uproar he leaves behind?
Well yeah I would.
I might have to come back sometime fairly soon.
I undoubtedly will have someone buying into my franchise and when the bosses learn that I've "salted the fields" for the guy who comes after me, I'll have an Orion CA on my tail for sure.
Quote:2) MJC has not thought of some clever way to blame his arch enemy Guido the CR captain in the frachinse next door, or a neighboring cartel, or what have you
The trouble with that is that even though the five local POLs get split with four chasing Guido, two more are sent into the area and with 7 POLs bumbling around I'm more likely to get caught.
Quote:3) If anyone ever connects the disappearance of the freighter to piracy inthe first place. Maybe MJC fakes a engineering failure/ explosion. Or he kills the crew, takes the entire cargo and any valuables and then runs the entire ship into a convenient asteroid like a suiceide freighter. So everyone KNOWS the ship wasn't hijacked, the crew just screwed up...
Well that sounds like a good idea but No.
The crews will soon get the idea that that asteroid feild is un-naturally dangerous ( all hands lost!?! ) and start to opperate as though they were in danger from piracy ( armed weapons damage asteroids you know ).
Plus you'll find a POL parked there for a while while a ComPlat is placed near the asteroid feild with a beakon warning ships to stay away.
You just made the act of Piracy that much harder by having to deal with a second scanner opperator.
If lots of asteroid feilds start killing lots of freighter ( any you want the cargo spaces for your own wealth ) then you can bet that the local fleet will be called in to either demolish all the Asteroid feilds or find this smartass pirate.
Quote:4) MJC is in his own franchise in the first place
Read R8.1 and you'll see that it just isn't possible to say for sure that I am the only guy working this side of the street.
Quote:5) MJC calculates that he can take 1 big old freighter and not start a pogrom vs orions. Well, it didn't happen when I took a freighter LAST year, so why should it be a problem now?
I'ld love to talk about airbags Vs seatbelts.
Airbags have absolutely no use in a society where everybody wears seatbelts. But since the US ecconomy controls the fashion ( especially when it comes to cars ) the rest of the world has to pay for a thing that only suits the American quirk of insisting on not wearing a seatbelt.
To take a freighter is one thing.
To take the freighter and "space" the crew is something else!
The reason you shouldn't fish with a hand-grenade ( other than the personal danger to one's self ) is that by killing all the fish at once there will be no fish alive to replenish the stock in that pond/small-lake/dam.
So too, pirating in a manner than makes pirating harder in the long run is going to harm the ability of those who follow; to make a living.
So to tie it all together.
Just because something is EASIER for you to do it that way does not automatically give you the right to make everybody else pay for it!
Quote:6) As SPP noted freighters are everywhere, surely there are a fair amount of freighters being "hijacked" by their own crews, the cargo and ship sold illegally and the crew (or the ones that killed most of their shipmates) disappearing and living high off the proceeds.
I don't really understand what you're saying.
Are you putting forward the idea that the police should punish a crew who turn up at a farm house on some out of the way planet, because some other crew "turned to the dark side"!?!
Quote:7) MJC can't figure out some way to blame a neighboring government (ie, he flees with his stolen freighter across a border)
Sure misinformation happens.
What exactly is your point?
Quote:Freghters want to avoid ALL contacts except the ones that mean money. So they pick up their cargo at point A and ideally get to point B without ever meeting another ship.
That's reading too much into the freighter captain's mind.
The freighter captain wants to stay within the shipping lanes.
This means he will get contacts on his scanners. Quite a number of them.
Now, in a user pays enviroment, ships that stray from the shipping lanes are more likely to get into trouble ( because the shipping lanes avoid pulsars and asteroid feilds and nebulae ). They are also more likely to be more costly to rescue, requiring a search&rescue rather than just a rescue.
This would result in either a fine for leaving the shipping lanes ( whether you needed rescueing or not ) or higher premiums on your insurance when you next insure your vessel.
Plus there's the fact that POLs will take your turning as to mean you are a smuggler (or worse...admittedly M level detection would hard but trying to make it harder arrouses suspicion ) and not want to let them get into scanning range; you turned.
Finnally, turning your ship to face away from other traffic will cost money in the form of fuel. The shortest distance between two points being a straight line and your ship is zig-zagging at every subspace-radar contact.
Plus zig-zagging to avoid your contacts uses up time which eventually mounts up to being short by an entire run ( maybe one per decade ) but that costs "the Line" big bucks.
These facts all mean that it is more costly to run a "fear every contact" freight run.
Thus most freighter captains will not run a "fear every contact" freight run and will instead run under the SOP ( or perhaps Best Practice ) and simply rely on their insurrance for dealing with that, one out of a hundred thousand contacts, that turns out to be trouble.
Quote:4) Merchants should be very vulnerable to surprise in Orbit, they probably have all hands moving cargo and taking shore leave. Since they poke along more slowly and don't visit lots of planets, they have fewer chances to get off ship.
Conversely the COMPLAT, BATS, AGRO STATION ( the one with the small warning station and the National Guard fighter Squadron ) will be watching their scanners to make sure the opperation of cargo transfere goes without a hitch.
Michael C. Grafton said: "1) He plans to stay in that particular franchise. If this is his grand finale before moving to a new job (like mercenary service in the LDR or in another cartel) why would MJC care about the uproar he leaves behind?"
REPLY: Because the Cartels do not like independents that do not follow the Cartel rules, and an independent that enters my Cartel's space might leave behind a similar uproar when he decides to leave my Cartel for another, which gives me good reason not to grant him a franchise in my territory. He would be a loose cannon, and it might be easier to just have my enforcer visit his ship and put a new captain in charge. I could soothe relations with the neighboring Cartel by turning the Dread Pirate Campbell back over to them so that they can soothe local law enforcement by turning Campbell over to them. If I were to decide that I liked Campbell (perhaps because of the large bribe he is offering), I would have to ask if he is worth a "gang war" with the Cartel he came from (just as they would be asking if it is worth threatening a gang war to have me turn him over to them). We are pirates, we are looking for the big score (naturally), and we are willing to run risks (goes without saying), but we have to balance that against the possible response of the local government. Same would apply if he wanted to go on mercenary duty with a government (LDR, WYN, etc.), those governments have to ask themselves the same questions. And ask themselves if this loose cannon might decide to turn on them. And a Crime Lord could simply send a Crime Team on an assassination mission.
Michael C. Grafton said: "2) MJC has not thought of some clever way to blame his arch-enemy Guido the CR captain in the franchise next door, or a neighboring cartel, or what have you"
REPLY: Here, we agree (believe it or not). But by definition such would be very rare. If you did it very often, you would sooner or later get caught. And you have to remember that you (as an Orion captain) can never absolutely rely on the loyalty of your own crew. While Klingons have security stations, it stands to reason that Cartel Lords have informers on the ships operating in their Cartel space (and spies in neighboring Cartels). After all, they need to know that you are reporting your "take" accurately. It would not do to have you steal 32 million credits and report that you had only stolen 30 million credits. You have to remember that piracy is a business, and the Cartel Lord has to make sure he is getting his cut so that he can maintain his operations (and sock funds away for his own eventual retirement). As such, they like to keep things low-key.
Michael C. Grafton said: "3) If anyone ever connects the disappearance of the freighter to piracy in the first place. Maybe MJC fakes an engineering failure/ explosion. Or he kills the crew, takes the entire cargo and any valuables and then runs the entire ship into a convenient asteroid like a suicide freighter. So everyone KNOWS the ship was not hijacked, the crew just screwed up . . ."
REPLY: As others have noted, freighters mostly run on known routes. Freighters suddenly having navigation failures of that magnitude is going to attract a lot of attention. Sure, the occasional monster is going to take a freighter on a known route. Sure, the occasional survey or mining (as in looking for ore veins in rock fields) freighter is going to come to grief while going about their normal business. Sure, freighters of all types are sometimes lost to storms. But your typical freighter plying the space-ways is not going to plow into an asteroid five light-years off the axis of its travel. And even freighters have "black boxes", i.e., log buoys, to be dropped (or jettisoned by the ship's computer) to provide data on "Just What Happened Here". The upshot is that Cartels are not going to allow psychotic mad-dog killers to take command of the ships they provide.
Michael C. Grafton said: "4) MJC is in his own franchise in the first place"
REPLY: The only way that can happen is if MJC is the Cartel Lord, or is the first Orion to drive into a new area of space that no Cartel has yet tried to expand its operations into (in which case he is on the road to becoming a new Cartel Lord and founding his own Cartel). Otherwise he is working an area of space assigned by the local Cartel Lord his ship belongs to, or he is an independent contractor who is working a Franchise area that a Cartel Lord has assigned him. In either case, he answers to a Cartel Lord, and if he does not he can expect a visit from the Enforcer. In both cases, he may have many members of the crew who are personally loyal to him, but there will be other members of the crew who are ostensibly loyal, but report to the Cartel Lord. Like it or not, to fence your swag you need the Cartel system. To get repairs, replacement crew (one of the things the Cartel does for you is background checks on prospective crewmen to help avoid having that Police Informer slip through), general resupply, etc., you need the Cartel System. Which provides ample opportunity for members of your crew to pass messages to the Cartel Lord's informer network on what you have been up to.
Michael C. Grafton said: "5) MJC calculates that he can take one big old freighter and not start a pogrom versus Orions. Well, it did not happen when I took a freighter LAST year, so why should it be a problem now?"
REPLY: Here is the point. SOMETIMES the whole freighter is taken. But it is rare. The problem is the technology we are working with. Even today they are working on putting hidden transponders on freighters are a means of deterring theft of the ship. Basically you still the ship, and attempt to re-register it, and we run a reader and the freighter's hidden transponder answers the code in the reader with its original registration. If you do not have the code, the transponder will not transmit. So you could never be sure that you had found it. (Sometimes the Cartel will know due to local corruption . . . but there are a lot of freighters.) There is also the "screamer". Essentially ever so often the crew needs to input a code or the "screamer" will go off (the screamer constantly broadcasts the freighter's location). Or there are any number of embedded codes in the freighter's computer software requiring the crew to do something to keep them from operating. And every freighter is different.
Michael C. Grafton said: "6) As SPP noted freighters are everywhere, surely there are a fair amount of freighters being "hijacked" by their own crews, the cargo and ship sold illegally and the crew (or the ones that killed most of their shipmates) disappearing and living high off the proceeds."
REPLY: This runs into the problem that freighter crews are small. Sure, it is always possible that someone will sign aboard a freighter who is able to run it, perhaps in company with a few people who will sign on as passengers. But again, the Captain and first officer will have lock out codes that will take time to break, and will again access a screamer if the captain or first officer do not input the daily code to not do so. Most of the crew will have specialties other than navigation and helm. The upshot is that while it can happen, it would again be very, very, very, rare.
Michael C. Grafton said: "7) MJC cannot figure out some way to blame a neighboring government (i.e., he flees with his stolen freighter across a border)."
REPLY: That would require him to be operating in an area where there is a border, which can happen, and certainly the Romulan border provides cover (Romulan Privateers are in the game background). So, yes he could do it a couple times. The problem is that the game background establishes that battle sites and engine signatures can be read for a considerable period after an incident occurs. And the engine signature will read "Orion", not "Romulan".
MJC wrote: "Airbags have absolutely no use in a society where everybody wears seatbelts"
Umm, this is incorrect. Airbags are not a SUBSTITUTE, they are a suppliment; the two together are so much better than either one alone... But I sorta agree with your basic premise that if EVREYONE had used seatbelts all the time, airbags probably wouldn't have been so important to adopt. I was a firefighter paramedic before I became a Enviro/ Safety and Health guy.
MJC wrote "The reason you shouldn't fish with a hand-grenade"
Well, I have set off HE in the water and I can assure you it does not kill ALL the fish. It DOES kill many of the fish, and the bigger ones are the most vulnerable (the whole inverse cube volume relationship thing). Explosions in water kill and stun by compressive damage to the soft tissues, including rupturing the airbladders. What works even better is a hand cranked telephone. Drop the wires in the water, and crank like a son of a gun. Stunned fish will come afloating. Unfortunately, where I come from being found to POSSESS a hand cranked phone in a boat will land you directly in jail for poaching... This is a fairly standard method used by marine biologists to see what is in the water.
Ok, I lost pretty much all that last arguement...
But I am still confused about the relative frequency of Star Bases, Bats and Base Stations, Complats, SAMS, Asteroid mining colonies, Convoys, Police, fleet ships, Occupied Planets of various types, and what have you.
Either they are common so there is a decent chance that I will have rescue coming,
OR
They are uncommon, so I should be paranoid of tac intel traces.
Michael C. Grafton said: "1) Yeah, so what? I know we only set up interesting cases in the first place. As I think SPP/SVC have noted somewhere in your writings, MOST battles are NOT interesting to play or study because the disparity of forces meant one side ran away without combat being joined or died without hurting the enemy (i.e., my FFG intercepts your B10S led combat group of a C7, an entire D7 squadron, a D5 squadron and a F5W squadron)."
REPLY: And goes to the basic case. Is there piracy? Yes, the game background says there is. Is every freighter subject to attack after it clears a planetary system? Yes, and no. Any freighter might be attacked, but in general the threat of a given freighter being attacked is very low. As noted, the average freighter crewman will go through his entire career having never personally been the victim of a pirate attack. This does not mean that he does not know someone who was attacked, or that he did not serve on a ship that was attacked at some point, either before or after he served on it. If freighters were attacked with great frequency, then there would (as noted) simply not be any such thing as a "single freighter", or at the very least any such thing as a single unarmed freighter. There would only be convoys. So basically Orion scenarios that get published are those where the Orion bit off more than he could chew, or help was a lot closer than the Orion anticipated, or the fleet discovers an Orion base or other location. How frequently will those events occur? The obvious answer is that all of them are rare. If they were frequent, then there would not be any Orion pirates, and the background says not only that there are Orion pirates, but they operated through recorded history. It has been noted that the Orions actually made piracy more of an organized operation by discouraging independent operations, i.e., before the Cartel system was established it was possible for a large freighter or a Free Trader to attack a small freighter and loot it. The Orion Cartel system did not tolerate "independent entrepreneurs", and the Orions themselves operated to destroy their "competition".
Michael C. Grafton said: "2) Or there is a reason the S level intelligence was ignored "We are expecting fast convoy PQ-13 to meet us at point zulu . . ." the bad guys were hiding behind a planet, in a asteroid field, in the fringes of a nebula, doggo in open space, under cloak . . ."
REPLY: Well, this as noted fits the background you are trying to create to make your design concept acceptable (no problem with that by the way, all designer?s have to start from some point). And it has been addressed. How many times will a given Orion raider approach a freighter only to be spotted and turn away? Out of how many such approaches does he have to succeed in order to be successful? We do not know, it is not defined, and it does not have to be defined. (No one is going to be interested in a playing a campaign that revolved around him setting up his LR and rolling a die to see if the freighter spotted him THIS TIME.) All we need to know for game background is that the Orions obviously succeed enough times to be a going concern, but are not such an overwhelming presence that independent travel by freighters does not occur and doing so is not considered overly risky under normal circumstances. Now, yes, there are going to be instances where convoying is going to be the rule. Just as there are going to be times the Orion is going to attack even though an alert freighter has spotted him during his approach. This latter case is an Orion who is having a bad week (or weeks), i.e., every time he has tried to make his approach he has been spotted. Or every time he succeeded in his approach help came too soon. In short, he has become desperate for a score and is running a higher than normal risk. But even the most alert crews are sometimes taken by surprise. But these are "background" items. We do not have to know why the freighter is at Weapon Status III, or Weapon Status 0, or any Weapon Status in between, we are just seeing "the event".
Michael C. Grafton said: "3) Warships and Police by the nature of their duties are always poking around and looking for stuff in out of the way places. Plus they patrol the space-ways looking for interesting things to do. THEY do not avoid possible pirates, they look to meet them. Freighters want to avoid ALL contacts except the ones that mean money. So they pick up their cargo at point A and ideally get to point B without ever meeting another ship."
REPLY: While that suits your background, it is not the game background. Piracy is rare. Pirates do not stay in one area very long because they do not want to attract attention. For a freighter plying its route, meeting another freighter is a welcome break from a boring routine. You can assume with the computers and communications that freighters have data bases on each other. If freighter X shows up and hails freighter Y, both can take the names of each other and quiz their data bases to know if they are supposed to be there, or where the other freighter is supposed to be. From a piracy standpoint, you can assume that the normal shipping lanes are thoroughly penetrated because the pirate cartels run their own front companies and do ship legitimate cargoes.
Michael C. Grafton said: "4) Merchants should be very vulnerable to surprise in Orbit, they probably have all hands moving cargo and taking shore leave. Since they poke along more slowly and do not visit lots of planets, they have fewer chances to get off ship."
REPLY: Again an assumption, and one that actually leads to the crux of the whole thing. Freighters were created without first considering how they might operate. They were intended only to be targets. How they actually went about their business was not considered in their creation. Thus you wind up with small freighters that are defined as a control section mounted on the front of a pod, and an engine section mounted to the back of pod. The whole is truly inadequate for landing cargo or picking up cargo from a planetary surface in that all it has is one transporter and one standard shuttle. So the Ducktail was proposed to give the Small Freighter an HTS and a tractor beam. The Large Freighter traded in its one (useless except as a free hit) lab box for a tractor beam in the Captain's Edition, but it still had exactly the same cargo handling abilities as the small freighter (one transporter and one standard shuttle). The Ducktail gave it two HTS shuttles. The idea of Ducktails was to grant the freighters an effective means of servicing newly established colonies that did not themselves have a Commercial Platform, or numbers of Admin Shuttles. (You cannot use an HTS shuttle to bring cargo down from a standard Small or Large Freighter because the rules do not allow cargo to be loaded onto a shuttle in an overcrowded bay, which a single bay with an HTS in it is.) Ducktails let the Freighters compete with the Free Traders. (A small freighter carried more than twice what a Free Trader carried, and a Large Freighter more than four times, but a Free Trader could land on the planet to deliver and pick up cargo.) With the idea of Ducktails came skids (one of which was designed to eliminate the need for the Ducktail, i.e., the LASH skid). With skids we come to where we are, i.e., the desire to use skids to make cheap warships out of every freighter and thus put the Orions out of business. But the upshot of the Ducktails and skids is that a standard small freighter with a pod, LASH Skid and Ducktail could visit many planets that were not economical to visit without those items. So a given small freighter might be making the rounds of a dozen small colonies, landing food stores at a mining colony, picking up ore, landing the ore elsewhere to be turned into processed metals, taking the processed metals somewhere else, and so it goes. It does not have to drop its pod to be loaded and pick up a new pod while making such rounds, and is more efficient than the Free Trader. Its greater volume lets it go directly to more small colonies while the Free Trader would have to take more round about routes to constantly empty and refill its small holds.
Michael C. Grafton said: "5) And of course, there are always idiots and "penny wise" being in the system . . ."
REPLY: Of course.
Michael C. Grafton said: "6) As I have tried to show, there should be some way for a freighter to UP its defensive status if there is a COMPELLING reason to both spend the money and effort. My backstory was meant to show why this ship was so paranoid."
REPLY: The compelling thing that is missing is the reason governments have sets of these skids sitting around all over the place to be added to some odd freighter here and there. Moving them around, making sure the flight crews, ground crews, and fighters are available is an additional logistics and personnel burden. I mean, SVC and I have often discussed the concept of renting out U.S. Military personnel to guard ships going through the Malacca Straits. Park an LHA on either side of the straits, put a detachment of troops on each ship that is going into the straits with a few more on standby with the helicopters to ride to the rescue with a few Harriers. Once passage is complete the troops are picked up by the LHA on the opposite side for a rest before transiting back through with a ship going the other way. In essence, it turns the entire strait into a 'convoy system' in essence. Of course the Indonesian government is never going to agree to such a surrender of its sovereignty over the straits.
Michael C. Grafton said: "7) Low Weapons Status can also be used to indicate a low level of higher command leadership ability. So Admiral XYZ said he wanted the battle ships moored together and Sundays mornings to begin with the bands playing. So Intelligence team Alpha did not pass on/ understand the secret intelligence that warned of a possible Federation first strike implied by "captain's discretion." Whatever."
REPLY: And as alert as the American and Australian Crews were at First Savo Island, the Japanese still slipped past the destroyer screen and destroyed the Western cruiser force. And even though the Eastern Cruiser Force had watched the gunflashes as Western Force was chewed up, they were still surprised when the Japanese searchlights hit them and they were shot to pieces. It happens.
The fist battle of Savo Isaland is a good example. The peace time US navy before WWII was going through the depression just like everyone else. The net effect of the command policies was to develop cautious COs (training for war breaks things and if you get into trouble for breaking things then you don't train)
The lack of decisive actions by the cruiser COs was because they were not trained to be aggresive (fight). My understanding is the first American cruiser didn't go to GQ and close it water tight doors and stayed on course at 5 KTS. Many freighter crews would be like this, aren't vigilant about things they aren't trained for or aware of.
Michael C. Grafton said: "But I am still confused about the relative frequency of Star Bases, Bats, and Base Stations, Complats, SAMS, Asteroid mining colonies, Convoys, Police, fleet ships, Occupied Planets of various types, and what have you."
REPLY: There is always a chance at rescue, and always a chance that it is just not close enough. Particularly if freighters are sending out many false calls for help. Even real events can be logged as hysteria. The thing with your design is that part of your design process is an automatic assumption that you are insisting on. That under the Tactical Intelligence rules you will always be at a higher weapon status than zero. If that were at all true, then armed freighters would always be at such a high weapon status. (They have larger crews and marine forces already embarked. A small armed-freighter has six times the crew of a small freighter, or three times the crew of a large freighter if you prefer, plus two additional crew units of boarding parties. A large armed-freighter has four and a half times the crew of a normal large freighter, plus three additional crew units of boarding parties.) So your design concept that just having the extra crew units being added by your defense skid means you are not going to be caught at a low Weapon Status cannot be accepted. Add to that the even larger crews and superior sensor/scanner suites on warships and police ships . . . We are not going to write a rule that says ships with larger crews are always at a higher Weapon Status. It is not a modifier, and just adding the crew to your freighter does not mean that you never get hit by an Orion while at Weapon Status 0.
REPLY CONTINUED: Now, none of the above means that you cannot continue with your story. All of the above pretty much says that the background for your story can proceed apace. It is just that having the extra guys on scanner duty is not a RULE that says you do not get taken off guard, it is just in this particular case they were alert enough that you were not, or that the Dread Pirate Campbell (my term as I cannot keep in mind what you dubbed him) made some mistake in his approach.
REPLY CONTINUED: Now, as noted, you do need to address the fact that you are NOT a carrier, or you have to get SVC to give you a ruling that the Skid Carries a "V" identifier, even if only a modified one. (An example is that a BATS is not a Carrier, but if you add even one Hangar Module, it is a Carrier, the Module brings with it a "V".) But that is going to be an uphill fight as there are a lot of casual carriers that would be offended if you got the identifier for your skid. So you cannot under normal conditions have a fighter loaded up. You CAN make a choice between having a shuttle (or shuttles) prepared for a special mission, or having a fighter (or fighters) prepared for a special mission (i.e., combat) at higher Weapons Status levels. But you are choosing between having the shuttle as a suicide shuttle or wild weasel and having a fighter loaded and ready to go.
REPLY CONTINUED: Notice that I did not mention scatter packs in the above. That is because you have created a "gray area" that we have not encountered before. That is that you have added a module (a skid) and changed a non-drone unit into a drone unit. Frankly, under the existing rules, I would have to say that yes, you can load scatter packs, but I would also have to say that I am not wild about new skids that will add multiple drone racks to a freighter. (Say six racks on one skid, with a hull box and a cargo box . . . the hull box provides living space and the cargo box can have reload drones.) Which is where you are going. (Even if you do not realize it yourself.) How about a skid with three phaser-2-360s, three APRs, one Hull, and one Battery (the hull to provide housing for the phaser crews, engineering staff for the APRs, and a few boarding parties)? Are we really going to change freighters into Modular warships? Heck, at that point why not change the ducktails into Casual Carrier tails to go with the new Weapon Skids?
REPLY CONTINUED: So I am currently inclined to let this go as a one-off, particularly if you and Campbell manage a good publishable story. But I am, I am sorry to say, overall opposed to the concept as simply bad for the game in my opinion. But please note that this is just my opinion. SVC may like the idea and adopt it, and he has a far better track record for adopting ideas and meshing them into the game than I have. He may also reject it utterly, you take your chances.
REPLY CONTINUED: But that does not mean that I do not want to address rules situations as they come up. So for your story you have managed a higher weapon status, but you do need to deal with the deck crew problem that you wer e not aware of. And you do need to deal with the fact that even with this Skid, you are not a carrier, so you have to weigh what you can have your four deck crews work on versus what you want and go from there. I have reviewed the scatter pack situation, and have decided that I have no choice but to sanction that if you want to divert deck crews to loading one, you can, but they come ouf of your four deck crews. And in so far as your scenario is concerned, you need to, as I noted, balance the time you need to hold out versus how long he needs to accomplish his mission. What you are looking at is the amount of time gained over a STANDARD large Freighter with either a pair of LASH Skids, or a Pair of General Skids, or one of each versus two of your skid (or perhaps one of your skid and one of the other two?). And you need to look at it from both the Weapon Status 0 situation, and the Weapon Status III situation, and perhaps a review of those inbetween. If a Large Freighter with two of the other skids can hold out as well as they can with your skid, the cost of your skid may be prohibitive. Z-1s may be obsolete, but they still cost 14 Economic BPV above and beyond the cost of the skid and their drones if they are lost.
Joseph A. Carlson: The thing about Savo Island is tha the U.S. had been at war with Japan for eight months when it happened (from 7 Dec 41 to 9 Aug 42). Yet the ships were still basically set up for peacetime. Float planes were not launched, and on being hit while still on their catapults (fully fueled) became bright targeting beacons for the Japanese gunners. The furniture in the ward rooms, as well as the paint on the walls of the wardrooms, were flammable, and also helped "illuminate" the targets.
Part of the reason for surprise was faulty intelligence. Tanaka's force was attacked by carrier air on its way South, and reportedly turned back north. It did, but only for an hour or so before turning back south. So even while watches were posted, no one was aware that Tanaka was still coming.
And of course there is good fortune. The Japanese task force hit the American Destroyer pickets when they were both on their outward bound legs, and as the Japanese themselves noted, people have a tendency not to look behind them. And Tanaka grasped that he had not been spotted and did not fire on the picket destroyers initially, slipping through to hit the cruisers behind them.
We were just lucky that Tanaka decided not to gamble much more than he did. Having aced five Allied Cruisers and four destroyers (all four destroyers and at least three, maybe four, of the Allied Cruisers were sunk or scuttled), he turned back north instead of turning South and attacking the transports and supply ships. That is literally the only reason Guadalcanal was not a complete disaster and a hasty retreat.
As it was, Tanaka lost one cruiser (a rare success by an American sub at that stage in the war given our awful torpedoes) on the way back north. But the damage he sustained in the actual battle was, if I recall correctly, only a single shell hit on one of his cruisers.
There may be errors in the above, mayhap it was not Tanaka the Tenacious that led the first sorty against the Americans at the 'Canal, but I am reasonably certain that it covers the known particulars without using the internet to verify anything.
SPP: Largely correct, except it was Gunichi Mikawa rather than Raizo Tanaka (who later became famous commanding the "Tokyo Express") who commanded the Japanese force. One cruiser captain launched torpedoes at the transports from (memory fades) something over 10,000 yards but scored no hits.
Not to dispute any thing posted above, I have a small "quibble" with the opportunity / benefit cost analysis of this scenario.
dsimissing the fantastic fruit cake cargo for a moment to focus on the cost element there should (In my opinion) be some recognition of the value of the carge.
if it was simply food stuffs (dried fruit, rum base, sugar etc) there would be not reason to assign fighters and skids to the ship.
the replace ment cost of 50 cargo boxes of dried fruit would be insignificant compared to the replace ment cost of either the frieghter or the 4 fighters.
If, however, the market price of the cargo (of what ever it is) equals or exceeds the areplacement cost of the freighter, then additional defenses would be justified.
would it equal the full economic cost of the large freighter, 2 fighter skids and 4 fighters?
if the market value of the cargo were double the economic cost of the items listed? triple?
at some point the cargo becomes valuable enough tgo justify "upgunning" the freighter.
at some point it becomes valuable enough to assign a police escort.
Point is, the cargo (or perhaps the need for the cargo at the destination) is the driving issue, not dread pirate campbels risk of attack or the desire of the freighter captain to survive.
If the cargo justifies the added defenses, then those defenses should be present.
if the cargo is of soooooo little value that Dread Pirate Campbel must capture the whole cargo intact with the ship carrying it... then there would be no point in paying for the added defenses.
if the cargo value was enough to justify 56 BPV's for the fighters (14 points each) plus the value of the freighter... then perhaps all Dred Pirate Campbel needs is 3 or 4 boxes ato "break even" (if no damaage and no weapons used in the seizure).
Its just that you shouldnt be able "to have it both ways".... either the cargo is valuable enough to justify athe added defenses... or its not.
I have to disagree Jeff. If the cargo is valuable the merchant company is probably not going to invest in defenses for the ship. While the cargo is worth that much more, the company is looking at profit. The likelihood of their freighter getting hit is minuscule. They might put it in an armed freighter. Why not roll the dice and expect the freighter to get through like most do? If the cargo is 'that valuable' the company would probably arrange for a convoy with police escort.
I also can't see any government giving fighters (military hardware) to a non-government ship. The Federation would be afraid of them getting into the wrong hands (the Orions have enough). Same for the Gorns and the ISC. The other races it would depend on who owns the ship. The Hydran guilds have enough influence to get this done but why? It cuts profit. The Klingons might consider it but I don't think freighter captains have enough political prestige to warrant fighters and the Admirals could surely find a better use for the fighters. The Romulans might. I can see Kzinti and Lyran nobles doing this (to prevent the supplies being 'borrowed' from a neighboring Count).
Still in most of these cases the ship is better off having a Q-ship in the convoy or another armed freighter or two. If the ship is alone, a few fighters might deter a small Orion ship but most Orions have the defenses and weapons to swat off a fighter attack and bag the ship. Plus, if I were an Orion and I saw an independent freighter armed that way I'd nuke it on general principles to discourage other freighters from doing this.
The costs of the fighters need not be less than the profit margin on a given cargo; the deterrence value over the whole of the company (and the possible tax and insurance credits) needs to be balance out against costs. Convince the pirates that Carter-Winston Exports are dangerous and the pirates might focus their attention on less hazardous plumage. Those calculations already provide SFU merchants with a range of differing weapon levels from none to military auxiliary with skids. This proposal would simply add fighters to the mix. (Though I have been expecting these fighters would be Naval Guards salted through the occasional convoy instead of corporate investments.)
I doubt the fighters would be tightly coupled with cargo value. The analogous situation would be adding an extra guard to an armored car: a change that attracts attention but not enough to ensure security. If the fighters show up relatively randomly, the pirates would have to conduct every attack concerned about the possibility of fighters without providing an inducement to the pirate to continue the attack against a proven high value cargo.
Historically, heavily armed merchants jumped by raiders have not always been carrying the expected cargoes. Capturing a family returning to Spain is less profitable than seizing the annual gold shipment. I recall one case where an undergunned US privateer captured a better-equipped English merchant. The most valuable items captured were the English guns, which allowed the US privateer to replace painted logs with cannons. That might prove the flaw in using fighters on independent freighters, especially remote controlled fighters. Destroying the freighter can lead to capturing the fighters, which may well prove more lucrative than seizing even the best cargoes.