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	Archive through March 09, 2013	25		05/17 10:05am

That's what I thought, but sometimes a ship shows up that I missed.

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Wednesday, May 09, 2018 - 09:06 pm: Edit

As a long time player, I don’t think that any of those proposals make sense. What would make more sense is having option mounts for other systems.

Take the Orion CA. What if it had option boxes for non-weapon systems, so you could swap out tractors for transporters, and the cargo boxes become marine berthing bays. It would make one heck of a ship for planet attacks, though the lack of tractors would mess up drone defense.

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Thursday, May 10, 2018 - 12:48 am: Edit

If I may, Wayne, I'd encourage you to check out the Orion Nazgul class HDW (R8.34; Module R6). The ship has six option mounts plus eight non-weapon option boxes. I think it might be just what you're looking for.

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Thursday, May 17, 2018 - 08:29 am: Edit

Jeff,

That’s missing my point. Say you have a badly damaged Fed CC at a base which has been cut off from the Federation in the General War. There are also a couple of hulks at the base, so you strip what you can out of them, and install it on the CC in a campaign. Maybe you don’t have quite enough stuff, so you do a raid on a convoy, bring back the goodies, and viola!

You now have a Fed CC with four cargo (replacing four labs), two photons, two disrupters in photon mounts, drones replacing two of the phasers, tractors in place of some transporters, an oversized impulse engine (replacing two aft hull)...

It could be any other race needing to do the same sort of thing to get any ship back in service. After all, in war sometimes a working ship, no matter how butchered, would be preferable to no ship.

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Thursday, May 17, 2018 - 10:05 am: Edit

Maybe I'm misreading what you're trying to say, Wayne (which happens a lot with me), but I'm afraid that what you're suggesting is one of the things from the Commander's Edition that was deliberately not brought to the Captain's Edition.

Perhaps a good example of why some of what you're suggesting is such a bad idea was shown as the Hydran Ragnar; changing three hull boxes from a standard Ranger into additional fighter boxes. To me, it seems reasonable, but it's giving something for (effectively) nothing.

With regards to "... In war sometimes a working ship, no matter how butchered, would be preferable to no ship," I must respectfully disagree. Please remember that when a ship first puts to sea (or in this case, to space), there's a "Settling in" time as minor tweaks are done to systems intended to work together to make it so they can. A slap-dash ship consisting of systems that most likely were NEVER intended to be integrated together would, even in the best of circumstances, always remain glitchy and, at least in SFB terms, probably be represented by "Unrepairable damaged/destroyed systems" (unless, of course, your chief engineer was played by James Doohan).

Would a working ship, no matter how butchered, be preferable to no ship? You're absolutely right, yes it would. Would such a butchered ship actually BE a working ship? I have serious doubts about that, even in the best of situations ("Brothers of the Anarchist").

However, there is one caveat; talk with your opponent(s). If they're okay with you flying a slap-dash ship against them, then by all means, enjoy! In my early days of playing SFB, I did that a lot, and my friends were usually very happy to let me (they still kicked my butt pretty easily).

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, May 17, 2018 - 12:56 pm: Edit

Ayup. (S3.3) was sidelined because it turned into an exercise in who could abuse the modification rules the most. If you really, really want to go down that road, those old rules are republished out on the SFB Play Aids page (including a warning that they'll likely ruin your campaign).

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Thursday, May 17, 2018 - 06:49 pm: Edit

I used a rule in one campaign that you rolled dice to see if your ship was a modified hull.

If you rolled high, you got to tinker with your ship.

If you rolled low, your opponent got to tinker with your ship.

It didn't take very many low rolls to convince the players to bury the ship modification rules in a deep hole.

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Thursday, May 17, 2018 - 07:39 pm: Edit

I am concerned about this because I’m working on a campaign, which I’ll talk about after I send it in. In it a ship gets modified over the years in non-standard ways for what seem like good reasons to the modifiers.

Basically, they are broke!

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Friday, May 18, 2018 - 12:44 pm: Edit

In reading your post, Wayne, I had visions which, while probably VERY different from what you're working on (my first impressions usually are), are still very exciting. As such, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what your campaign is about.

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Friday, May 18, 2018 - 04:39 pm: Edit

The basics of what I have in mind is an Orion splinter group, which breaks off from one of the biggies (Pharoahs in this case, though it can be changed) which has no shipbuilding capabilities at the start.

So they have to steal everything.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, May 18, 2018 - 06:41 pm: Edit

Wayne Borean:

You could write an article about how each cartel got set up, and introduce history where a given cartel's name changed as a result of an "internal reorganization" and even cover "turf wars" between the cartels (a "secret history of the cartels" so to speak). But overall the Cartels have much of "known space" tied up. No Cartel Lord is going to overlook a "splinter" group in his/her territory (that is one of the reasons all Cartels have "enforcer" cruisers and operate ships wholly owned by the Cartel). No Cartel Lord is going to sanction any existing supply chain providing goods and services to such a splinter group. And if there is no risk to the cartel (i.e., the Splinter Group trying to break away knows too much about the Cartel's operations to risk this) would use their networks of agents to tell the "local law enforcement" exactly where the Splinter Group is setting up.

Within his own cartel space, your splinter group is (however minor) competition for profit, and if not quashed could become more serious competition down the road. No one becomes a Cartel Lord by being a "nice guy" (however much they might present a public persona of being such). From their standpoint, you are violating "the Franchise system," and must be brought to heel (pay your franchise) or be exterminated.

So if you try to do this (set up a splinter operation in Pharoah Cartel space), you will be visited either by the heavy cruiser Hammerfield (assuming it was early in the General War period and before the Hammerfield vanished) and have to negotiate with Deth O'Kay (its captain, supposedly a nicer guy than Pharoah himself), or the Spear of Orion (after Hammerfield disappeared), or the battlecruiser Hammerstrike (middle of the General War) or the Heavy Battlecruiser Sword of Orion (late in the General War).

Or it is possible that you will simply be "removed" by a Pharoah Cartel "Crime Team" with less muss and fuss, and the others of your group, perhaps seeing the errors of their ways, invited to come back into the Franchise system.

But no Cartel Lord is going to allow you to set up business in his territory, and they will deny you access to the existing Cartel system (making it harder to find targets or sell your swag or get the resources to repair, much less resupply, your ships), tell the local law enforcement where to find you (allow their "tax dollars" to do the work for them, even if they do not actually pay the taxes), send a Crime Team to shut down your upper management, send an enforcer ship to show displeasure, or an enforcer ship backed by a squadron of other ships to make sure none of you get to serve as an example of how weak Pharoah Cartel is because they let you set up business in Cartel territory.

Cartels do not "share the wealth" in their territory. You are either part of the franchise system, or you are dead. Have a nice (short) life!

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, May 19, 2018 - 03:21 pm: Edit

If it was not clear, the last sentence was meant in jest.

Orion Pirates are pirates, if perhaps a little less bloodthirsty overall. (Killing too many civilian crews attracts the attention of the law and order types, which is bad for business). As an isolated merchant ship has no chance against even a light raider (or a slaver for that matter), it is usually better to surrender in such a circumstance. There is also the economics that if you destroy the freighter, you cannot rob it again later when it has a new cargo to pick over. So it is not necessarily "kindheartedness" that lends itself to not blowing freighters apart, but simple economics.

Convoys are always another matter, and knowledge of how far away help is is another factor of course.

But, honestly, no Cartel is going to tolerate someone trying to set up their own "splinter" in their space. You could write an article or campaign about how a given Cartel got started. You could even try to start a Cartel in a region in which no cartel currently formally operates (say in the ISC Distant Zone, or the Lyran Far Stars, or the Hydran Old Colonies). None of those would become real unless SVC decided to allow such..

But setting up a splinter in an existing cartel's area of space means dealing with that Cartel.

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Saturday, May 19, 2018 - 05:21 pm: Edit

What happens when one cartel starts muscling in on the turf claimed by another cartel? I mean, what if Hamilcar, in enjoying the wealth going back and forth between the Hydran homeworld and outer colonies along the Klingon, LDR, and Vudar borders, also decides they'd like to pillage the trade routes between the Hydran homeworld and the outer colonies along the Lyran Empire border? Daven won't take too kindly to that. Would the cartels get into a shooting war with each other? Would Daven hire "Stringers" to raid Klingon routes more violently to get the ISF hunting Hamilcar more tenaciously?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, May 19, 2018 - 05:44 pm: Edit

Jeffrey George Anderson:

See the background to the Klingon-LDR war. That is precisely what did happen. That is to say one Cartel had a contract to support the LDR, and the other Cartel incited the Klingons to believe that the ships supporting the LDR were performing regular piracy leading to the Klingons invading the LDR (albeit, without sanction of the national government to do so, which risked triggering a larger war with the Lyran Empire the Klingon Empire was not seeking at the time, so the diplomats had to sort things out).

There is no doubt that there are occasional "turf" fights between Cartels, but mostly (not always) the consigliories will work it out to avoid shooting. The Cartels are more about profit than anything else, and shooting wars between them are "bad for business." It does not mean that it never happens, just that actual shooting wars between Cartels are very, very rare. (The more common "Orion on Orion" fight outside of "mercenary ships" happening to be on opposite sides is an enforcer coming to ask a franchiser why he has not paid his franchise fee. Or a down on his luck Independent trying to poach, which is again failing to pay the Franchise.)

Basically the Cartel owns the sources of supply, and controls the ability of the Independent Operators to both repair and resupply their ships while also operating as the fences to take care of turning ill-gotten goods into cash. Some of that cash in turn is used for repairs and resupply. The cartel also has a network of spies so it can provide information on police patrols, the "sailing" of individual ships and larger convoys. The cartel operates a number of "legitimate" freighters which take on the stolen goods and move them to ports of call to be converted into the goods needed to resupply and repair the independent operators' ships (and the Cartel's own ships) and build new ships. The Cartel is also the primary source for "replacement crew" as it has the resources to "vet" people wishing to join the pirates to make sure they are not government agents trying to penetrate the system.

So you can see the cartel has an interest in making sure its own merchant ships are not attacked by "pirates." (When you are looking at the merchant to attack, you are going to check your shipping list to make sure it is not one of the Cartel Lord's ships ... unless the Cartel Lord has ordered you to attack the ship as part of an insurance scam of course.)

The cartels are very large and complex organizations (almost literally governments in their own right, although more akin to major multinational corporations) than simply collections of a few pirate ships. It is how they survive, and as was noted in an article a while a go, a given Orion ship captain has more to fear from the Cartel's own Accountants than they do of the local empire's law enforcement agencies.

And remember, the Cartels also run "protection rackets." That is to say that in some cases a shipping company pays part of its profits to the Cartel in exchange for the Cartel providing security that the shipping company's freighters will not be attacked. Which is of course another reason for the Cartel to take umbrage at a "splinter" group, which might attack such merchant ships and result in the company no longer paying protection (why should it if its ships are being attacked anyway?).

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, May 19, 2018 - 06:20 pm: Edit

Put another way, well over 90% of Orion pirate scenarios consist of the Orion ship pulling up to a freighter and saying (in effect) "Stand and deliver." Which is obviously a very boring scenario for both sides to play so we do not publish such. The Orion scenarios we do publish are that small number where "something went wrong" or "something unusual happened."

Help arrived a lot sooner than the Orion expected. The target turned out to be something completely different than what the Orion was expecting and thus there was a fight (which could even be the Orion ship having to fight off a monster in order to save the freighter so that he could rob the freighter).

I noted that back in the 1980s I ran an "Orion Pirate Campaign" for a short while (the goal was for the Orion player to work his way up from commanding a Light Raider to commanding the Enforcer heavy cruiser). Because in that (short) campaign the Orion never knew what he was attacking, and because I was (by that time) relatively experienced in the game system, some "unusual things" happened.

For example, Q-ships existed in SFB, but in almost all scenarios all sides know there is a Q-ship present, so most people do not really think about them. In the campaign, however, the ship being attacked was always randomly drawn, and there was a chance that any given freighter MIGHT be a Q-ship. The end result (as I have noted in the past, as it is an object lesson) was that when a large freighter maneuvered TOWARDS his light raider, and then attempted to tractor it, the Orion Captain panicked and fled without ever firing a shot. He KNEW from the actions of the ship (which did attempt to chase him, but Q-ships are tactically no faster than freighters, so he got away) that it had to be a Q-ship. It was not. It was just a standard large freighter running one heck of a bluff. But the fact was that it COULD have been a Large Q-ship if the cards drawn had called for it. Every time he attacked a freighter he was forced to take into account that it might be a Q-ship. Few Orion Pirate players really think about that.

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - 11:48 pm: Edit

Steve,

I’ve taken the issues with the cartels into account. Part of the campaign is economic - the new ‘cartel’ has heavy expenses. Most of what you rob goes to paying those expenses, so there isn’t a lot left to build up.

And some of the scenarios involve the major cartel trying to put the new guys out of business.