Ship availability?

[Mike]

I would like to know if the Free Traitor or the Slaver are available for use in Middle Years era games?

[Mike]

Another pirate related question.

What kind(s) of ships would Early Years pirates (both Orion and non-Orion) have used?

[mjwest]

I would like to know if the Free Traitor or the Slaver are available for use in Middle Years era games?

This is directly answered in Briefing #2. See the last paragraph of (7E) for the answers.

(Spoiler alert: The answer to both is, "Yes.")

[mjwest]

Another pirate related question.

What kind(s) of ships would Early Years pirates (both Orion and non-Orion) have used?

Well, for the most part Orion Pirates didn't really start operating until extremely late in the Early Years period. At that point they used very early versions (precursors, really) of the later CR and LR designs.

Prior to that, non-Orion pirates were generally what would be encountered. Most of those were more of the "ethically challenged merchant" strain than pure organized Pirate Organizations. In most of those cases, they simply used up-gunned civilian craft. No one really made purpose-built pirate ships until the Orions built an infrastructure to make it work.

[Mike]

Thanks, Mike!

I don't know what I was thinking about the Free Traitor and Slaver. Now I'm wondering if I had two other ships in mind, but typed the wrong ones...

[rfeceo]

We've been using a mix of Rigellian and Orion craft as "pirates."

One problem is that the small and large freighters are too fast for most warships (at Fleet Scale), as they have no energy requirements except for movement, and can maintain 16+1 (Speed 20) and Speed 24 pretty much indefinitely, which is typically faster than most EY warships can maintain and still fire weapons.

[Dal Downing]

We've been using a mix of Rigellian and Orion craft as "pirates."

One problem is that the small and large freighters are too fast for most warships (at Fleet Scale), as they have no energy requirements except for movement, and can maintain 16+1 (Speed 20) and Speed 24 pretty much indefinitely, which is typically faster than most EY warships can maintain and still fire weapons.

You need to reduce the EY Freighters Power by a third and drop their max Speed to 8 to make freighters work in the Early Years. They could still do 8+1 for a max speed of 16.

[rfeceo]

Yeah, I had proposed (to our group) doubling their move cost, but we haven't actually used that yet.

Our recent campaign convoy raids have all had Tholian PCs as the raiders, and they can run down nearly anything, or "Y" class frigates or destroyers which can generally fire enough weapons at speed 24 to wound a freighter and force it to slow down. Or the patrol/escort is sufficient enough to defeat the raider, or there is no escort, so its been largely moot for our purposes.