After reading the Tac Intel rules again, I came to the conclusion that to hide, pirate ships would only need to run at the same speeds as freighters. The only ways to tell it is a pirate is High speed, weapons fire(exposions), or both. So pirates would only need to go slow and hold their fire to sneak away.
When doing a raid on a convoy, the freighters are likely to scatter anyway. This means that after the quick battle where you choose one freighter, loot it and run(slowly), the cops will have to trace all the paths to find you. Occationally they will get lucky, but most of the time you will get away.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Thursday, May 27, 2004 - 03:10 pm: Edit

That's about right. Which precisely explains why Q-ships exist!

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 05:39 pm: Edit

Yes, D17 makes it quite cleaar that you can't even tell the race until tactical ranges.

So... again, I ask, why wouldn't the orions see to it that some of the LR and SAL ops are in fact legit? Anything which would give even a moment's hesitation can mean life or death for a pirate.

If even 1/2 the operaations of LR's are legit, or even "Questionable", that makes a HUGE difference for smuggling... it gives the ship a reason to be there and so makes the smuggling much easier.

Also, a civilianized version fo the LR/DR owould be an excellent merchant ship... replace all option with 25 point cargo boxes drop the cloak, engine doubling, stealth bonus. Produce this at cost to launder money... and sell to anybody. This then HIDES the LR/DR class ships in plain sight. It also casues hesitations before engaing the LR/DR class... as you can't ID it until you can count the mounts... or it engine doubles, cloaks, or otherwise exposes.

as for F&E: I agree. it was a case of exaggeration on purpose. F&E already conflicts with SFB D17... but the nature of the issue is one that PD hasn't resolved, either... How much flight control doe the various states exert? We know that the tholians shoot anybody crossing without a flight plan approved by the holdfst. What would the federaion level of paranoia be?

Also, would bases be able to set up longer ranges for S1 - S5 levels of TacInt than scouts? (In SFB, S5 is already "No", due to S5's defined range bands.) If so, then the base layouts from &E make a lot of sense. And those are the ones in GPD.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 06:08 pm: Edit

The Orion Pirate ships are only produced at pirate shipyards...for cartels. They are by definition pirate ships and this will be fired at on site.

Orions use Free Traders and freighters and the like to make legit deals with various traders.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 08:39 pm: Edit

also the orion ships require to much crew to operate, even if you were to say that without their option mounts filled they require less crew it won't come anywhere close to reducing the crew cost enough.

read through the GURPS CIVILIANS topic to see how much the crew affects the operating costs

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, May 31, 2004 - 04:36 am: Edit

Crew size isn't that big an objection. I figure about 2/3 of the "overage" is boarding parties and prize crews. The big objection would be those 25-point cargo boxes.

Nevertheless, I agree with Chris -- you shoot at pirate-hulled ships automatically, and find out who it belonged to during the inquest.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, May 31, 2004 - 11:06 am: Edit

Orion Pirate Crews: First, I think that pirate crews might should have always had some level of randomness to it. Like when you buy one you roll a die to determin the crew levels plus or minus or normal. (the problems with that is you don't always want your opponant to know exactly what ou have.)

Perhaps pirates could trade in up to a number of crew for BPV.

Anyway, that's SFB... back on subject.

A good portion of any pirate crew would likely be new recruites that get paid next to nothing and may only get room and board until the ship scores a win (then the bounty is divided perhaps...just like in the olden days). That's would account for cost a great deal.

Why are they willing? Well, if they move up then they can get a paying job that also gets a bigger share of the prizes. Also, it's better than prison.

CARGO: Here is how I see the 25 point cargo thing working. A pirate cargo hold is of a particular size, period. Constructed like any other ship and the CA would have only three cargo but pirates reinforce their holds so as to maintain their winnings in battle better because what's in their holds is more valuable to THEM than anyone. Additionally this value is evident in their general lack of a line of supply, making their cargo imediatly more precious. So, their equivelent cargo hold takes two hits to destroy. ON the SSD it is represented by two separate boxes that hold less spaces of goods.

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 03:10 pm: Edit

Okay here is something that has been bugging me for some time now. The Alpha-Centaurans. GPD says they are a minor state with no major contribution to the Federation economically. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that they don't even rate named/minor or major status in the F&E capital assualt charts. Yet they are a founding member of the Federation and in Y1 had the ability to produce their own starships of up to cruiser size. In addition they have two stars that could support humanoid life in their system and a third one (Proxima) that could have resource producing planets etc. What happenend to them? How did they lose the ship producing ability they had in the early years. Is this an intentional mystery, and oversite, or a game balance decision for the strategic game?

By David Lang (Dlang) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 03:28 pm: Edit

it's not that they lost the ability to build ships, it's just that they don't have a large enough economy to qualify as a minor world (I doubt if earth today would qualify as a minor world on the F&E scale of things)

as for shipbuilding capability, they probably are still building ships, just not warships. there are a lot of civilian ships that they could be producing.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 04:24 pm: Edit

I could be wrong but I don't gather that it's just the one world that makes or breaks it. It it were just one single planet then few or no worlds would stand up to beign a major planet. I think it's more what the Star System produces (the ecconomy that is produced on all the planets and asteroids around a star).

Alpha Centari may be a fantastic place but if the rest of the Star System doesn't produce much then it won't classify as a minor or major World in F&E terms.

They can produce ships but how many? Enough for one world? Sure. Enough to make a difference for the Federation? Nah.

They probably have one of the finest NG ships around, though.

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 04:26 pm: Edit

The capability to build size class 3 warships in the early years would mean the prescence of at least a medium sized naval dock and all the associated facilities. Granted they may have given up producing these ships, but they would still have these facilities. They should at least rate an economy similar to the Cygnans who had a late start due to Kzinti controls. Given the nature of the system itself, they would have vast potential and by all rights should be an economic power house. I mean the centauri system could have 3 planetary systems orbiting its 3 stars with 2 potentially the same size as the Sol system and the third smaller but with resource potential. Additionally two of the stars are a yellow and an orange, which have the greatest potential for class M worlds. Something must have happened to them or perhaps they will get a different look in GPD Federation.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 04:56 pm: Edit

F&E may just say "Alpha Centauri is close enough to Sol that their economic output is combined". I think they're close enough for a day-trip by shuttlecraft.

As far as GPD is concerned, Alpha Centauri might be devoted to low-impact industries such as the production of luxury foodstuffs and consumer goods. Maybe the Slurm bottling plant is there. And again, with the system's proximity to Sol, Terran mining concerns wouldn't need a local office, so the actual planet wouldn't do much business even though the system was important.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 05:12 pm: Edit

Once they came under the protection of Star Fleet they most likely got rid of (recycled or sold) their ship building stuff. Why have it around requiring up keep and resources when you are a core system under the protection of the entire Star Fleet and thousands of parsecs away from any enemies?

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 06:25 pm: Edit

In F&E the capital Assault cards list the planets individually. So it should be at least a minor, I think. Considering the militancy and conservative bent of the Alphas they would likely but quite reticent to give up their place in the Fed hiearchy because of proximity to Earth. I can see that ADB would be reluctant to change the importance of Alpha-Centauri due to strategic game balance factors.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 09:39 pm: Edit

Hugh: Alpha-C is an agrarian society, so not a lot of heavy industry.

There are a lot of different types of bases that make sense in GPD but would never make it in SFB. For example, when a freighter arrives in-system with those 25-box cargo pods, the freighter detaches the pods and picks up a outgoing pod (or two) and heads back out -- just like a modern-day semi with a detachable trailer.

How do you get the cargo down to the surface, or for that matter how do you get the outgoing cargo from the surface into a pod, ready for pick-up?

How about an unarmed civilian cargo transfer station? It can dock a dozen or more 25-point cargo pods, and has a bunch of transporters and HTS shuttlecraft to get the cargo up and down to the ground (and about 3000 unionized forklift operators). This base makes a lot of sense in re GPD, yet you'll never see it in SFB because it has no place in a space combat game.

My point is that in the past, the Alpha-C's must have a base that could build ships, like you said. But as time went on, they didn't have the resources or the industry to support that, so as early bases evolved into BS and BATS and whatever, the base that the Alpha-C's had in the EY period evolved into something that did NOT have ship-building capability.

That's my take on the matter. It's just of the top of my head, so it's not official (yet). But it is how I see things going.

(Incidentally, keep in mind that the hex containing the Bargentine and Landfalk systems supplied a large percentage of the food for the Klingons AND the Lyrans during the General War ... but there is no planet marked on the F&E map.)

By David Lang (Dlang) on Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 10:16 pm: Edit

there are already a couple bases that satisfy the needs described.

remember we are just talking about the inability to build WARships, not the inability to build ships of any type.

as things currently stand each empire has exactly one facility that's able to build warships (although starbases can build a FF and there are rules in the works for other slipways)

this means that Alpha-C is no more or less able to build ships then is Vulcan, Rigel, or Orion.

civilian ships don't get built in the single official shipyard, they get built elsewhere. all it takes is for Alpha-C to not have upgraded their shipyard to GW-era military capability, only to GW-era civilian capabilities. they don't have to have 'lost' anything

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 09:16 am: Edit

And just maybe when we did Y1 we randomly assigned ships to fed member planets and nobody checked F&E to see that AC was "not even on the map". It was the lack of AC "on the map" that led to the GPD statement that they were a pastoral planet with no major industry, a factoid ignored by Y1 which (arguably) should have assigned those ships to the Arcturans. Yeah, that's probably it.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 08:04 pm: Edit

Alternately there could have been a cultural shift.
Do we know that AC was an agrarian society in Y1 from the information we have??? Or is it just that way in the Y145-185 time-frame that the GPD text would be written to!?!

184 years ago Australia was just a penal-colony and people didn't even use the word "Australia".

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 08:25 pm: Edit

Doubtful. The 'we screwed up' theory seems to be the right one.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 10:06 pm: Edit

SVC:

Let us not be hasty.

Could we call in the staff writers for Enterprise(tm) and have them write in a "Temporal Cold war" hot contact incident? Maybe it was an unreported attack on the AC by the Zindi superweapon that removed all technology from the planet leaving bunches of sheep herds everywhere?

Nahhhh.... not even fans of SFB would buy into that one.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 12:20 am: Edit

Ahem -- just because there were no AC ships in Y1 does not mean that there won't be some in Y2 or Y3 ...

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 01:24 am: Edit

Of course the Arcturans probably wouldn't work, as they are too far "south". They probably weren't integrated until the Y100 timeframe.

BTW, in what product were the planets in the Federation capital hex named? (Other than Earth, Vulcan, Rigel, and Andoria.) Are all of the four planets in the "Earth" list in the Sol solar system by definition?

And just leaving things as they are would probably work, anyway. There is no reason that AC couldn't have had the "power" to field a small fleet, then fade into the background as other races passed them in prominence. That early fleet, which made sense when they were reaching into space on their own, is probably just way too expensive when they are a relatively minor member of the Federation.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 01:26 am: Edit

Gary,

AC ships are already in Y1. There probably won't be any more in Y2, as there are several other higher priorities. I would not hold my breath for a Y3.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 01:34 am: Edit

remember that cochran (inventor of the warp drive) is from AC so in Y1 (and for some time before that) AC had some fairly substantial technology

also remember that pre-warp earth and AC were probably about 40 years travel time away from each other (assuming 10% light speed) so AC needed to be self sufficiant.

after warp became fairly common AC could become a 'suburb' of earth, but that takes quite a few ships and I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't really happen until after the 1st romulan war (Y40 IIRC), remember they have a long tradition of being independant that would need to change before they could completely fade away

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 08:19 am: Edit

The fact the AC is so close to Earth would mean that they would most likely benefit from the intensity of trade coming into the region, they are also close to the technology center etc. There is a strong likely hood that they would be just as advanced as the other founding members.