Yeah, that's where the militia idea helps.
10 people in a Militia, 6 in a BP but both opperate in combat the same way (exept for riding around in shuttles and transporters).
The advantages are probably, that BPs are hard-core, have better equipment including a better set of armoured pieces and better training ( all they do with their spare time is train but militia have to actually run the ship when they're not being militia ).

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 04:52 am: Edit

On the pirate killing frighters-- there's another point to consider.

Too much of that, and insurance costs go up to teh point where freighters don't sail alone-- the colonies either starve or start running some sort of convoy system. That make everyone unhappy-- the government gets unhappy because it's hurting economic development of hte region which means less in the way of taxes. They start seriously considering sending in cruiser or (in later years) carriers, PFT's or Division control ships. those are scary, scary things to a pirate.
Remember, even a group of civilian frighters can give an LR a run for it's money, which means now you have to start sending groups of pirates, which cuts into everyone's profit margin AND makes the benefit from catching you much higher which may increse the temptation to cut loose some military assets to handle you. (I consider the ultimate anti-piracy system would be a PFT or otehr ship with fighters/pf's and sensors-- follow along behind the convoy, and once you pick up the pirates launch your ships).
And even if this doesn't happen-- if freighters stop sailing, the pirates lose, because unlike an enemy government they doh't WANT to stop commerce-- because they need it to survive.
So the pirate has to walk a fine line between taking too much, and taking too little, and I would assuem that every Cartel lord has some very, very good analysts and economists working for him, calculating what the proper "take" is for a region .

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 05:14 am: Edit

Yeah, basically there's a differance between theft and robbery.

The pirate who kills will find governments sending out actual warships because guess what...governments have been known to lose electons on the issue of law and order.

Human beings are soar lossers...just look at the "revenge" everytime a shark takes someone ( or watch JAWS and see it).
Goods can be replaced.
Ships can be repaired.
Human life...that's whole nutha' ball game and people take it particularly personnal and governments love to do what THE PEOPLE think is a good idea because it raises their chance of re-election.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 01:36 pm: Edit

MJC, a lot of places DON'T have the human value system placing lives above goods.

That said, EVERY polity would place LOTS of poeple as worht more than a LITTLE bit of treasure.

As for convoys, I would expect Q ships first. I proposed that the empires have a few DIFFERENT kinds of Q ships, just to shake things up and make pirates more uncertain...

So so might have side/ rear/ front firing armnament instead of the usual. Or a CVE Q ship.

I personally would like to see a "PFT" Q ship, with a pair of PFs hidden behind a panel ready to launch.

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 08:00 pm: Edit

I still long for the PF-pseudo pod...that is, a fake 'cargo pod' that carries a PF flotilla inside.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 08:23 pm: Edit

In truth, by the time you've got PF's, I think the best way to use them is a PFT tagging along behind the convoy-- the special sensors on it can keep tabs on the freighters you can always use the PFT for somethign else, instead of a pod that is pretty much single use. Remember, every Q-ship and armed freighter causes logistics officers to tear their hair, as it's a loss of cargo capacity.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 09:12 pm: Edit

But a PFT and a squadron of PF's are an expensive set of units for what amounts to convoy escort mission.

MCG's suggestion would seem ( I think ) to be a smallish PFT that carries 2 PF's... not a full squadron of 6... nor would it need the special sensors that a PFT normally has.

in BPV terms a PFT (such as a Klingon D-5P) would be worth 125/100 while a squadron of 6 G1 PFs would add (G1BL=40/50, G1Bx4=(4x(20/38) or 80/152, and a G1S=100/50) or a total of 345/352 BPV's. *

MCG's idea would be a pod carrying 2 casual PF's say normal G1B's for use in an emergency, no more than 40/76 BVP's instead of Charles 345+ BPV.

A pirate confronted by a "defenseless" convoy suddenly finding 2 G1B's emerging from one of the freighters might have second thoughts about pouncing quite so energetically.

Note*: BPV calculations do not include special drones or speed upgrades.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 09:16 pm: Edit

It's also a loss of a heck of a lot of cargo to get your convoy of three small freighters; jumped on by a pair of LRs. So you can justify less cargo on the one Q-ship if it means the actual freighters make their destinations.

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 09:16 pm: Edit

Or you could use a cheap AuxPFT loaded with even cheaper Interceptors.

Best convoy escort, EVER.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, July 23, 2007 - 07:46 am: Edit

Mike, I agree that an Aux PFT would be a better escort.

I was putting the "PF Pod" out as a QSHIP type role.

So part of its expense would be the deception panels...

And I think that taking 6 (!) PFs or interceptors along as your convoy escort would be overkill (both in term of firepower and cost).

Mike

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Monday, July 23, 2007 - 08:45 am: Edit

Mike Strain. Er...but that would be the:

Pseudo-Fighter Pseudo Pod


I guess if you built a Free Trader around one, it would be the:

Pseudo-Fighter Pseudo Pod Free Trader!

- OR -

PFPPFT!

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, July 23, 2007 - 06:35 pm: Edit

Something to understand.

The point of having boarding parties on a freighter is the idea that you can hold out until help comes.

If you know you cannot hold out, then boading parties or not, you have to surrender or die.

Now, letting the Orions kill you might cause the police to send more resources to the area, but that is not the reason those bully boys that make up your boarding parties signed aboard, or the reason you became a merchanter for that matter.

So if there is reason to believe that help will arrive before the Orions can overwhelm your defense, then fighting is an option (the government may have bounties that it pays to freighters that can prove they resisted an Orion attack as part of its police operations).

If there is reason to believe that your chances of being rescued are poor, there is every reason to negotiate terms with the Orion, to the extent of offering to have your crew assist in the transfer of cargo in order to speed up the operation. (NOTE TO PROSPECTIVE ORION PIRATES: NEVER let the crew of a freighter help with cargo transfer, you never know when one of them will stick something on your ship you do not want. You want to scan and confirm the cargo and transfer it with your own people to make sure no one messes with it. While more than 90% of the time the freighter crew will help you in all earnestness, that less than 10% of the time can be fatal.)

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, July 23, 2007 - 08:01 pm: Edit

Ahh, reminds me of that scene in Star Wars: A New Hope.

"That was too easy...they must have put a tracking divice on board."
"Not this ship, sister."

And then look what happens.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 12:14 am: Edit

Or just "Star Wars" to those of us who remember the original theater relese with no "Episode IV" in the text crawl.

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 12:22 am: Edit

I thought it always had the Episode IV thingie?

When I saw it in '77 it had the Ep.IV thingie.

By George M. Ebersole (George) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 01:37 am: Edit

I think Ep IV was added later when rereeleased.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 06:51 am: Edit

And also, for the freighters it may not make sense to try and fight-- let's say that you have insurance-- the company pays up when you lose to a pirate.
Insurance rates go up say, .1 percent-- because you'll need a LOT of pirates before they start making a real impact.
you go home and cash your check and get a new cargo.
Mr. Pirate knows that you'll still be hauling cargo and he may raid you again-- if he blow syou up, slaughters your crew, etc, etc, you no longer are out there, and that's one less ship to raid.
Worse, other ships may start avoiding the area.

An important note to remember-- pirates are not raiders. They don't WANT to disrupt trade, because that lessens thier possible prey. So the last thing an intelligent pirate wants to do is create a situation where people decide they don't want to take the risk.
They also want to enjoy thier retirment, and being "generic pirate #10" is a much better way to enjoy the retirment then becoming known as "captain Spine eater" and his band of rapacious bandits, who fathers will space thier own daughters before letting them fall into your hands.
Such a band would, if allowed to exist, destroy commerce over vast areas, so out of pragmatism the orions themselves woudl hunt them down.
So if we assume this is the case, I'd doubt that many freighers would bother with security teams in most cases, because they can't help, and in most cases, all you're risking is your cargo. The most LIKELY case for a security team wouldn't be to stop pirates-- but a csae where a freighter had a large number of passengers and needed to maintain order.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 01:15 pm: Edit

Charles Gray:

All salient points that I have previously noted.

Note that the tactics I developed for my freighters (before I came to work at ADB) were specifically responsible for rules "clarifications" that were issued. If you go back to the early 1980s, there were no rules prohibiting freighters from purchasing T-bombs, and every ship (not just Romulans and minesweepers/minelayers) was allowed to purchase Nuclear Space Mines.

Let me tell you, back then Orions treated the freighters of the Petrick Merchant Consortium with RESPECT, by jingies. Of course, back in those days we only had large and small freighters, large and small armed freighters, free traders, armed priority transports, and Federation Express boats to move cargo. None of your fancy "skids" and "ducktails" that you kids have these days.

When the Gubermint came in and outlawed the T-bombs and NSMs on freighters (and outlawed NSMs on all non-minesweeper, non-minelayer, non-Romulan ships, i.e., the "rules clarification brought on by the Consortium's use of T-bombs and NSMs), the Consortium had to develop new tactics to keep them pesky pirates at bay until the police or the navy could show up, that was why we started putting platoons of bully boys on the ships. Yes sir.

I will note that "back in the day" when I created my "Orion Pirate Campaign" it was easy to do with a regular deck of playing cards as the ships that could show up were pretty limited.

It went something like this (I wish I could remember precisely): Draw three cards.

If the first card is 1-7, it is a small freighter, if it is 8-10, it is a large freighter, if it is a face card, it is Free Trader (Jack), APT (Queen), or Fed Ex (King). If it is a Joker, the next card is the first card.

If the second card is a numbered card, no change. If the second card is a face card, and the first card was a freighter (rather than a Free Trader or Armed Priority Transport or Fed Express), the freighter is an armed version. If the first card was a joker, the second card is the first card, but all face cards are large freighter cards (small freighter if the card is a 1-7, large freighter if the card is a 8-King). If the first card resulted in a Free Trader, Armed Priority Transport, or Federation Express, this second card is ignored even if it is a joker.

Third card determines the number of turns before "help" arrives. 1-10 is the number of turns, with all face cards and the Joker being 10 also.

If a Joker is drawn for the first or second card, the freighter is a Q-ship.

The cards could be looked at by the freighter player, and had to be placed face down where the Orion Player could check them after the battle played out.

The Orion never knew if any freighter he attacked was a Q-ship or not, and never knew when "help" would arrive, only that he had a good chance of ten turns before it did, but it might also arrive immediately.

I think the card Suites determined how big the responding/rescuing ship would be, or maybe there was a fourth card drawn, I no longer remember. There may have been an additional delay before help arrived (maybe it was three turns plus the card number drawn). I just do not recall.

I tried redoing the system in the last year or so, but adding in Luxury Liners, and Skids and ducktails made it impossibly complex, and Module R11 with all of the skids and ducktails it added only made it worse.

And before anyone asks, yes, I did also run convoys that had the Mech Link refit and used Interceptors and PFs as escorts as I mentioned in another topic.

By Larry E. Ramey (Hydrajak) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 01:53 pm: Edit

C. Gray,


Do you think the "Defended Sea Lane" would work in space? I sort of doubt it as the geography of 3D space doesn't lend itself well to chokepoints and such that the DSL needed. But if you sort of say, "All freighters going galaxy spinward should come to Regulas 1st then proceed along this path to Denub." Insurance rates for freighters on the Defended Space Lane would be lower than for guys "offroading" it.

What does our resident Navy geek think?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 01:59 pm: Edit

SPP:

Why not use 2 decks of cards for the cards 1 thru 10, and only 1 set of royalty (Jack, Queen King, Joker)? if you use 2 differnt "colored" cards (say red and blue) all blue freighter results are "normal" freighters without skids or ducktails, red includes the presence of a skid duck tail combination.

If you really want to include a Luxury Liner (or even a tramp steamer variant) mark one of the freighter cards with some symbol that denotes that every 2nd or third appearance actually is a LL or TS instead of the small or large freighter?

That way you "simplify" the rules, but still allows for a statistical posibility of having some variation in the type of ship appearing.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 02:33 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

You are welcome to try. Back when I did it there was not as much variation as there is now. I managed to work something in my system that would cover the skids and ducktails that were in Module R8, but what was added in Module R11 makes that impossible.

The point to the original campaign that I created (back when there were few options) was to make it possible for any of the options to be the target of the Orion.

And there were other things (some possibilities on terrain types, some possibilites on the freighter's weapon status, and some possibilities on how close the Orion was before he was spotted) that I had included.

I have spent several years now asking for someone to create an Orion Pirate Captain's Campaign. Some have tried, all have abandoned the quest.

It runs into several problems (dealt with in my original campaign, WHICH I AM NOT CLAIMING WAS PERFECT).

Essentially, an Orion campaign needs to either be something where the Orion works his way up from smaller ships to progressively larger ships (perhaps in competition with other Orion Players who are also trying to rise up), or has to be balanced for the different sizes of Orion ships.

In both cases you have to handle the targets for large Orion boats. (LRs are okay for going after individual freighters, but a CR is massive overkill against a small freighter and really needs to be matched against some kind of Convoy).

Since the primary purpose of piracy is the acquistion of loot, the Pirate cannot be awarded points for blasting freighters into scrap, he needs to actually get cargo transferred to his ship and get out of dodge.

You cannot simply define standard freighters, as Pirate Operations are different if he has to deal with the idea that the freighter might be a Q-ship, and he can never really be certain about how much time he has to "do the deed".

Obviously the "scenarios" where the Orion attacks a freighter are supposed to be representative of those where "things did not work out as planned". (As planned, the Orion said "Stand and Deliver" and the Freighter did and the Orion then left . . . the scenarios reflect those times the Police Arrived sooner than anticipated or the freighter was able to do something, or something else happened, but they are the ones actually tracked for points.)

The Orion is obviously going to be penalized for any damage to his ship (including for engine doubling), and if he uses "expendable stores" (like uses up a shuttle, or empties his drone racks, or runs out of boarding parties or T-bombs), those things are going to count against him.

And obviously there should be some (Ship balanced) "Special Missions", like being ordered by the Cartel Lord he is leasing his franchise from to "Raid that planet", or having to fight a duel with another (similar) Pirate ship trying to muscle in on his franchise. Or maybe help defend an Orion base that has been found (you only need to repel the initial attack so that the Cartel can then evacuate vital materials from the base . . . the base itself is going to be lost when additional police forces show up), or maybe help defend the base from an attack by another cartel.

And maybe deal with a monster.

There is a lot that could be in an Orion campaign, but no one has succeeded in creating one, and my original system cannot handle the additions to the game since the mid 1980s (when it was first created).

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 02:50 pm: Edit

Reid Hupach and I worked on a scenario generator back in the early 1990's.

the premise was a base commander with a list of ships would (on a one month turn) assign what ships and forces he had available to complete the available missions, victory points awarded for each successful mission completed.

There was a solitare version for just the base commander (mostly just to create the scenarios for SFBs play)

a two player version (base commander verses Orion pirate)

and a multi player version that added merchant freighter/player, and individual captains for the ships assigned to the base commander (which then operated on rules, no base commander needed with 3 or more players.

I never thought to use playing cards... tried to build an encounter matrix that indexed a 2d6 roll (similar to the DAC).

The problem I ran into was transparancy...the ships were all known, the q ships were identified and there was no chance for the orion to be surprised...

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 03:26 pm: Edit

Hiding the Q-ship was why I used cards with the Jokers being the chance of a Q-ship.

I had my own "Orion Tactics" for dealing with freighters (truth, developed purely as a thought experiment, as I never had an opponent who wanted to be the target of an Orion raider after a solitary freighter). Once I had them developed, I sat down and developed what I could of counter Orion tactics, then again sat down as the Orion to see what I could do about them.

One of the things I found was that a Q-ship was a joke if you knew it was a Q-ship, and your only reasons to attack it were:

A.) The Cartel offers a bounty for the elimination of Q-Ships, large enough to cover any "combat damage" in doing the deed and still make a profit

B.) You happened to know that this Q-ship actually had something very lucrative in its cargo bays that was worth the combat damage.

On the other hand, if you did not know it was a Q-ship, the fact that it might be a Q-ship caused some interesting maneuvers and thoughts through the Orion's mind. (Things like stay at maximum transporter range when you lower a shield to beam over boarding parties to a 'surrendered' freighter, but make sure you have maximum ECM up and demand that the freighter, in addition to lowering its shields inactivate its fire control, and do NOT order the freighter to stop . . . but demand that it keep way on and execute a turn before lowering a shield. You do NOT want the freighter to turn into your down shield unmasking its hidden weapons to fire through your down shield, and even if he manages that, you want to maximize the chance he will miss. Stopped Freighters can use TACs, while a moving freighter has to satisfy a turn mode to bring concealed weapons into arc, so make sure his turn mode is not satisfied, and plan your own movement to immediately take your dropped shield out of arc after you have done the transporter action.)

Like I said, I put a lot of thought into it.

In any case, fear of Q-ships needs to part of any standard Orion's plans. Without the fear that any given freighter might be a Q-ship Orions operate VERY, VERY, VERY differently.

It also can get you into humorous situations (see my oft told story about a large freighter bluffing Orion Light Raider Captain into believing that it is a Q-ship) that cannot happen if the Orion always knows if the freighter is a Q-ship or not.

But I have had a lot of unhappy Orion players on my hands at different times.

Like the CR captain who ran through my convoy to tractor a small freighter since the sum total of the firepower of my freighters could not penetrate his shields . . . the five suicide shuttles that hit him earned me a healthy bounty from the local authorities that was more than enough to pay for replacing the shuttles and doing repairs to my ships (mostly from him triggering his suicide bomb when he realized he was not going to escape) with a good profit. (Random weapon status, the convoy was at WS-II, so all the freighters started with suicide shuttles held . . . admittedly because I honestly believed tactically that he would do just what he did, i.e., just run through the convoy and tractor a freighter. Afterall, in his mind, what could I do about it?)

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 10:22 pm: Edit

I will dig around to see if I can find that stuff... It occurs to me that if the two approaches were combined in some way, you can create a workable Orion Pirate campaign that would:

A) provide for the expanded numbers of choices (such as skids, duck tails Luxury Liners tramp steamers etc), and

B) account for the existance of Q ships, armed freighters, (possibly Free traitors or Pirate Q Ship if a Police playerwere involved?!?)... and you would only have to "flip the card" when the pirate actually forces the merchant to reveal its true identity.

That would reduce the number of actual cards that had to be "played or revealed" to only those cases where a generic type ship has many variations possible that need to be determined.

Might even be possible to make it into a flow chart type thing for a solitarie version...

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 - 02:30 pm: Edit

People also forget the concept of Orions having some actual legitamate buisiness holdings.

Cartels will back certain companies to invest/launder their cash. Hey if you got a stolen freighter why not "sell" it to the freight company you have investment in, you know the one which never seems to get hit by pirates, or the one time it did get hit they were able to collect the insurance on the cargo of dilithium which several dockworkers claimed smelled mysteriously like rotten fish when it was loaded??????