Would advanced technology (X1 and/or X2) versions of the Prime Corvette and/or the Armed Cutter be off the table also, or might they be placed in a separate category to auxiliary units derived from bulk freighter hulls?

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On a broader level, it would be interesting to see how the various police, local defence, and other lawfully-armed organizations in a given Alpha Octant empire might evolve from Y205 onwards.

In the case of the Federation, there have been hints here and there regarding the various National Guards moving past the G-era ships in Module R8 at some point in time; one such note is in John Sickels' superlative article on Federation heavy cruisers in Captain's Log #52. Indeed, this might be a particularly pressing issue for the Orion Enclave: would they continue to insist on building more powerful ships of their own design to replace those lost during the Andromedan invasion, or might they finally reach the point where they'd feel obliged to use the same standard of warships deployed by more "integrated" member planets like Earth or Vulcan?

There's also the question as to how the Federation Police might move forward into this new era. Or, for that matter, how "friendly independent worlds" in Federation space, such as Bisalia, might approach things.

I wouldn't necessarily see "private military contractors", of the kind noted to exist in Federation space, being given access to former "line" warships. But if X1 and/or X2-tech equivalents to the Prime Corvette and Armed Cutter were permitted to exist, perhaps one might more reasonably picture such units being made available to them - or rather, to those which can afford to purchase and operate them.

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I should also add that if any of these discussions were to lead to more first-generation X-units appearing in the Alpha Octant, it might be best to mark them for a would-be "Module X1B", rater than risk taking up space in Module X2 (and/or in a potential follow-on "Module X2R").

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, December 01, 2020 - 08:58 pm: Edit

Gary, in my view, the Federation Police would probably retire a majority of the Masterson & Callahan cutters and adopt surplus FFGs as their main patrol boat. I'm not sure they would "need" X-POL, let alone X-FF, for the most part. They may have a "few" for special missions or high-risk areas.

As always, SVC may have different ideas.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 06:15 am: Edit

Lots of discussions about POL class ships has been done already on the BBS. The general consensus seemed to be the Fed X1 frigate would work, but needs cargo boxes (at least 2...). Perhaps all it needs is a deck house adding 2 or 4 cargo boxes. Additional X2 refit would be icing on the cake.

An X2 POL will still be outmatched by any X2 raider cruiser, or large type.

The LR is the traditional duel opponent for a POL, but may not be an ideal choice for X2 upgrade, depending on its opposition... ie if a vanilla freighter has valuable cargo, a vanilla LR will do the job just fine.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 08:43 am: Edit

You cannot predict which pirate will attack which convoy. Very few pirates will have X2 and not many more X1 so why do you want to fit every police ship with X2? If you do that, the ONLY x2 ships you will have will be police ships. I do not see any X2 police ships and I am dubious that they would get X1. You assign police to protect the area and rely on the fleet to handle the very few X2 pirates.

There is no point in fitting any police with X2 as the chance they will meet an X2 pirate is very low.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 12:23 pm: Edit

I don't remember ... were there any X1 police boats published by ADB? I know I've seen an SSD for one, but that may have been a fan-design.

Personally, I agree with SVC in they shouldn't need X-tech ships for their mission. There should be a ton of surplus FFGs for them to adopt after Star Fleet switches to the DW as their main smallest-ship.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 01:09 pm: Edit

I asked Petrick and he couldn't remember doing an X1 police boat.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 07:24 pm: Edit

X1 police ship - LDR MPX (though it can be argued that it wasn't a police ship to start with) ...

Now the Lyrans have the MP to start with but haven't (so far) upgraded their POLs to that standard ...

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 09:48 am: Edit

There is a Gorn X-frigate (R6.A11) in Captain's Log #51. However, while non-X frigates are typically operated by the Gorn "space police", it's noted that the FFX was used by the Gorn navy, at least through the Andromedan War. (Although, since it retained the cargo capacity of the non-X frigate it was derived from, it was often used as a de facto priority transport, supporting the deployments of other Gorn X-ships.)

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I do wonder what the aftermath of Operation Unity might mean for the Orion Pirates in other ways.

While Orion mercenary ships would have taken part in the Unity campaign itself, might there have been any contact with the local Jumokian pirates once they reached the Cloud proper? Perhaps one or more "independent contractors" might decide to set up shop out in the LMC long-term: be it to serve as mercenaries supporting the ongoing efforts to deal with the lingering Andromedan presence there, or eventually to set up their own local "establishments" once enough time had passed for the region to sufficiently recover?

Or, for that matter, once the Sakharov returns to the Alpha Octant in Y219, might there be some form of contact between the Orions, the Jumokians, and the Zosman Marauders? Would there be attempts from one group to muscle in on the others' operating areas, or might a more mutually beneficial agreement be struck instead?

Of course, since there is no real "unity of command" among any of these groups, it's quite possible that a dizzying array of arrangements and/or entanglements might ensue, as each sub-group with a potential stake to claim pursues its own perceived self-interests.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 04:20 am: Edit

The Orions and Orion Pirates aren't (exactly) the same. There will still be pirates, even with X2. Not all Orions are pirates and not all pirates are orions.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 11:02 am: Edit

Re: Orions in The Cloud

Post-Unity everybody is connected, and the Orion Cartels have already shown that they can tolerate no other criminal franchise competing with them for turf, having fought off the non-Orion pirate cartels ~Y117.

But, The Cloud is very far away, so far away that it's impossible to maintain control and supply lines across this distance without a Unity-style effort.

So there are two forces at play, the Orion Pirate's ineluctable drive to sit atop the organised crime power structure, and the impossibility of maintaining direct control and support across the distances between The Cloud and the Alpha Octant.

I see only one plausible scenario: The Orions try to establish an LMC cartel.

This would leave the question of what happens to the Jumokians? Some portion of them would want to hang up the mantle of pirate raider post-Unity, and resettle Jumok. Some portion of them would remain pirates.

This leaves two possible outcomes, one where the Jumokian Pirates, operating with the clandestine support of a recovering Jumok, effectively keep the Orions out through constant vigilance, and become an Orion-level criminal threat within The Cloud, and another where the Orions establish a Cloud Cartel, and the Jumokian Pirates are either eradicated or folded into the new criminal organisation.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 11:09 am: Edit

The Orion Pirates are a diverse and largely extended threat that reaches almost all of the alpha octent.

Is it too far a reach to suppose that there are a limited number of “regional pirates” not affiliated with the Orion’s?

Particularly after the General War, the ISC campaign, and the Andromedans invasion, it might be possible the several factions set up in the piracy game for fun and profit.

No idea about who or what these factions actually represent, but they just might be something to consider adding to the game.

For example, Leebiyah (spelling) was a single planet near the borders of the Klingons, Kzinti and Federation that used fighters, and were a regional menace that primarily used Klingon fighters.

What if they “upgraded” to using skiffs or interceptors to attack and capture freighters in an area of 7 or more f&e hexes?

Similar to how theSomali pirates acted in the real world.

Suppose there is another independent world near the borders of the Romulans, Gorn and Federation? Suppose goring the General war they used sunlight shuttles, fighters and bombers and hardly anyone noticed. Then the got their hands (claws, tentacles etc...) on some skiffs and later upgraded to Romulan intruders?

If either group operated in 7+ f&e hexes, it would constitute a regional threat, but not serious threaten most empires.

By John L Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 11:21 am: Edit

Here is a thought. I propose that after Operation Unity, the Orion Pirates went legitimate. It was no longer profitable with the advent of X1 and the much improved X2 to continue to be a pirate. The military would have tracked them down and eliminated pirates. They had the time to do this with no more wars to fight. Well, the Fed would jail them or insist that they stop their evil ways first.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 11:32 am: Edit

Orion Pirates and the Cloud Cartel:

No.

The Orions do not operate as a fleet. The Orion ships in Unity were in essence supplied (the Cartels made them available) by the Cartels, but LOGISTICALLY they were supported by the regular empires (just like any other Orion Mercenary in the Alpha Octant). The upshot is that it is not possible for any Orion Mercenary to "go rogue" in the Magellanic Cloud because the Orion would have no (zero, zip, nada) support. No place to trade his ill gotten ... er ... found goods, no secure basing for repairs, no etc., etc.. You cannot move a cartel down the paths to the Magellainc Cloud because the basing and refueling and resupplying of such ships along the routes is entirely dependent on the Galactic Powers and there are too many such facilities for the Orions to bribe/coerce ... er ... negotiate passage.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 11:51 am: Edit

The cloud has its own pirates. Any business between Orions and Clouders would be very difficult.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 12:09 pm: Edit

I could see a lot of pirates going legit around Unity.
STEVE COLE CANNOT SEE THIS HAPPENING.

The early stages of the all out Andro attack must have been something of a happy-fun time for Pirates, fleets totally preoccupied, and a strong incentive to try to sneak single freighters through hoping the Andros would miss their signature rather than traveling in big convoys that still can't deal with an andro raider. (But could have made things awkward for a small raiding pirate.)

Then comes the Galactic counter-attack, and every power that can do so is hiring every mercenary they can to help deal with the situation.

Orion is back in the Federation, but was independent for awhile, and then it was likely mostly on its own during parts of the Andro war. Lots of people with paperwork records problems.

And as John Stiff mentions, a lot of andros will want to get out, as newer and better warships make the smaller pirates increasingly vulnerable.

I could see a lot of captains ending their mercenary service asking the admiral they've been working for, "You know, I seem to have lost some of my paperwork and inspection papers for this 100% legitimate private ship I own. Also, a lot of my crew has problems with their professional certifications, but I'm sure you've seen that they can in fact do their jobs. Could you send some inspectors over and help me get these minor paperwork problem straightened out."

Admiral: Sure thing. Um, you realize that legitimate civilian ships don't have a stealth coating or unsafe engines that injure crewmen with radiation when run at max.

Pirate: We'll get those minor problems fixed right up. We'll need to get some hull mods so we can attach a small cargo pod anyway for additional capacity now that we're going back into the legitimate fast shipping business.

And so we get a bunch of "civilianized" pirates, this doesn't really need SSDs, just a few rules on how losing engine doubling and stealth affects BPV, and a rule on what size cargo container the ship can carry on routine operations and what it does to turn mode and movement cost.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 12:10 pm: Edit

Perhaps governments would simply convert more of the surplus non-X frigates to priority cargo transport roles, similar to the way frigates would likely fall into the hands of the police.
SVC: THIS COULD BE DONE BUT THE IDEA OF FRIGATES GOING TO THE POLICE IS NOT ONE THAT ADB PROPOSED, SUPPORTED, OR ENDORSED. WE REALLY SEE GOOD REASONS WHY THAT'S A BAD IDEA.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 01:30 pm: Edit

I hadn't realised the nature of the Alpha-LMC crossing. If it's a series of what amount to military bases with refuelling stations, and no civilian traffic (I had just assumed that there would be civilian freighters bringing business to these refuelling/staging areas), then it would be quite hard for Orions to sneak into the cloud I suppose.

My notion was for Orion pirates to trickle in independently of each other and prey upon the newly recovering LMC (which would be filled with easy targets) and then take over the organised crime/piracy networks by working together and doing to the Jumokians what they did to the independent pirates pre-Y117. No central control, no need for a logistical support network stretching back to Alpha. They would be like the Elizabethan pirates in the Caribbean, supplied not from London, but from plunder and civilian merchant outposts. When they were on top, they would organise themselves as they always had, into a cartel.
SVC: THERE IS NO WAY FOR ORION SHIPS TO TRICKLE IN, AND AS I SAID, THERE ARE ALREADY A FULL SUPPLY OF CRIMINALS AND PIRATES IN THE CLOUD.

But if they can't make the crossing to begin with, then they can't establish themselves in The Cloud, even if they would want to.

That does bring up another question though, who operates these extragalactic bases post-Unity?

Are there still enough good feelings between the Alpha empires post-Unity for a codominion arrangement, or does something else happen? Or has it not been fleshed out that far?
SVC: THE HOST GOVERNMENT OF THE DEPARTURE POINT WOULD TAKE RESPONSIBLITY FOR AND CONTROL OVER THAT ROUTE. (THERE ARE THREE ROUTES.) OTHER EMPIRES WOULD FIND A WAY TO ARRANGE TO USE THE ROUTES FOR DIPLOMATS, TRADE, AND SCIENTIFIC MISSIONS.

By Benjamin Kidd (Bakidd) on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 02:41 pm: Edit

It seems unlikely that the Orions as a whole could ever "go legit". Individual pirates, certainly, but that would involve nothing more than laundering the proceeds of their activities into wealth that could be spent in the regular economy and then retiring, possibly cashing out their ship (either via a buyout by the rest of the crew or the cartel itself) and trading it in for something a bit less conspicuous (for example, trade in your LR for a Prime Traitor and five million credits in laundered money).

Alternately, I can easily see some pirates, in the chaos of the Andromedan War, go legit by becoming the security forces of a decent size colony. That would be the ultimate irony for a poor, beleaguered Federation Marshall. You finally track your quarry down, and it turns out she was voted planetary president in a legitimate election!
SVC SEES THIS PRACTICABLE BUT ALMOST IRRELEVANT TO THE GAME SYSEM.

The whole basis for the Orion Pirates' existence is that there are lots of state level actors that aren't empires, including actual states (independent planetary governments), corrupt megacorporations, out-of-favor Romulan houses, etc. that have a vested interest in *somebody* besides the current hegemonic power in their region owning top-line starships. Originally it was the Orion government (elements of which didn't fully trust the Federation they felt compelled to join), but over time included the losing side of one of the Kzinti civil wars (Cluster Cartel) and who knows how many other intra-empire power struggles. There are many historical examples of revolutionaries and insurgents financing their activities via smuggling and drugs, as well as resistance movements morphing into organized crime over time.

Given that understanding of why the Orion Pirates exist (my personal opinion based on what I've read), it seems unlikely that X2 tech would be enough to stamp out piracy in the post-Unity era. There is certainly no shortage of disaffected individuals with military training in the period, and if outright piracy becomes impractical, the smuggling portion of their portfolio would just become more significant.

Heck, if X2 tech includes significant advances in replicator technology, it might make the logistics of running a pirate base even easier! If I'm an Orion "entrepreneur", an X-base, or even just an x-factory module (in GURPS terms a TL 13 robofac or nanofac) might be more profitable to me than an X2 cruiser.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, December 04, 2020 - 01:13 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

BUT THE IDEA OF FRIGATES GOING TO THE POLICE IS NOT ONE THAT ADB PROPOSED, SUPPORTED, OR ENDORSED. WE REALLY SEE GOOD REASONS WHY THAT'S A BAD IDEA.

---

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, December 04, 2020 - 02:20 pm: Edit

Police ships are designed for police missions. Why spend money to convert a frigate to police specs (creating an entirely new logistical support chain) when you have purpose-built police ships in production?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, December 04, 2020 - 02:44 pm: Edit

Fair point. Counter-point might be that the post-War POL are getting outgunned, so they might want something bigger. Of course, another down-side that just popped into my head would be the extra manning cost for the larger crew size.


Garth L. Getgen

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Friday, December 04, 2020 - 07:09 pm: Edit

Police ships are designed for police missions. Why spend money to convert a frigate to police specs (creating an entirely new logistical support chain) when you have purpose-built police ships in production?

Fair point. Counter-point might be that the post-War POL are getting outgunned, so they might want something bigger. Of course, another down-side that just popped into my head would be the extra manning cost for the larger crew size.

As the Orion LR/CR get meaner (the double raiders and MR) along with new DW, BR classes (and possible CA upgrades) and then there's X1 and possible X2 additions. What's the police counter-balance, the heavies (MP, G6) for leader duties, increased numbers for a better chance for the cat & mouse percentage, some X1 trickle-down tech when empires go X2?

Do the police need a new and heavier hull (the FF[G] option) as part of a tech upgrade to meet that rare LRX/CRX or will raw numbers do the trick (doubling the force)?

By John L Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Friday, December 04, 2020 - 08:31 pm: Edit

If I were a police ship and I see such Orion ships, I get out of dodge. This is clearly a military matter.

Who is to say that the military isn't shadowing the convoy waiting for the police ship to say the word - to swoop in and put an end to the pirate "heavies' or X1 ships. In the age of X2, the Orion pirates will soon be convinced to go legit! (In my opinion of course.)

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, December 05, 2020 - 12:05 am: Edit

The game does not differentiate between a Federation Police phaser 1 or a Constitution class CA phaser 1. Same with all the other SSD boxes.

The difference is the combination and number of actual systems boxes on the SSD forms.

Infact, the only SSD box on a POL police cutter, not on most “regular navy ships” in SFBs IS cargo.

The rules do not differentiate between hull shapes either.

Apparently a POL can dock to any base (Star Base, BTS, MB, SAM etc) just as easily as a FFG could.

It may be that there are specialized parts found on the POL engines that are not common with the Ships in service with Star Fleet... but that is the standard that exists now for all the years the POL class ships in service. Which means that from the YIS date of the POL (YIS127), the Federation HAS CONSISTENTLY maintained a separate logistical network to support the POL.

It seems odd that after nearly 100 years of segregated logistics, suddenly continued logistical support for a different class of police ship is unacceptable?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 05, 2020 - 01:35 am: Edit

The FFs are going to be worn out. You would do better to build a heavier police ship (and such things are already in the game). I could almost see older unconverted FFs being cascaded to the police for wartime convoy escorts, but not for regular policy duty.