Space Pirates?

[Deucex]

Sure you always run into them, but, has anyone ever played a Space Pirates game? Now, I don't mean swashbucklers in space or anything. I was thinkin' more along the lines of regular Joes skulking around the galaxy in rickety ships, syphoning off goods from unmanned cargo barges. Avoiding facist/corporate patrols, etc. Or perhaps, you work for a small government at war with a big government and the small government supports piracy for its disruption of supplies.

 

anyone?... got any stories?

[azato]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

For some reason the movie ICE PIRATES comes to mind. I don't remember anything other than a few campy scenes.

[Deucex]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

I had that thought too when posting.

 

"the little guy, he trys harder... I painted him black so he'd be perfect"

 

Beware Space Herpes!!

[Sundog]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

I love Ice Pirates personally.

 

But a close analysis shows the problems of space piracy. Not hi-jacking - that pretty much involves getting a team aboard a ship in dock, I'm talking the old find, board and take style piracy.

 

Intercepting a ship in space isn't easy. Hell, finding one that doesn't want to be found is hard! And any sort of "Jump" FTL drive would make it futile, unless you can somehow jam their jumping capability.

 

The only realistic depiction of space piracy I've ever found s in the David Weber Honorverse. And there you have a very specific technological, physical and economic/political environment to support it's continued existence.

[Hermit]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

I run a Star Pirates campaign, but I wouldn't call it realisitc. It has been, however, a lot of fun.

[Arkham]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

I thought all Starship based games eventually devolved into piracy...

Isn't that some overarching rule? Maybe that's just Traveller...

 

( I haven't played in a whole lot of Starfaring games. Trying to remedy that though... )

[Deucex]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

I love Ice Pirates personally.

 

But a close analysis shows the problems of space piracy. Not hi-jacking - that pretty much involves getting a team aboard a ship in dock, I'm talking the old find, board and take style piracy.

 

Intercepting a ship in space isn't easy. Hell, finding one that doesn't want to be found is hard! And any sort of "Jump" FTL drive would make it futile, unless you can somehow jam their jumping capability.

 

The only realistic depiction of space piracy I've ever found s in the David Weber Honorverse. And there you have a very specific technological, physical and economic/political environment to support it's continued existence.

 

 

I always liked the whole stable wormhole/warp conduit thing to be good for SF games. You don't have to be that much more high tech then we are now, the wormholes are good bottle necks, you can predict traffic patterns, it makes for great exploration scenerios and there is the ancient alien civilization possibilities. The FTL is instantanious through gateways and the majority of travel is at nonrelitivistic speeds getting from wormhole to wormhole with the occasional stop in port.

 

Of course I love it when the players eventually realize that the web of wormholes sure is a convienient set of anomalies.

 

In this format, a few credits to the harbor master will get you manifests departures and destinations of both manned and unmanned vessels. From there, fuel capacity will tell you speed and stellar chartography will give you the most likely paths. All that's left is grappelling hooks, cutting torches and a near suicidal need for income and it's AAARRRRGGGGHHH! Maties!

 

Pedantics, please step away from the keyboard.

[austenandrews]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

Realistically speaking, boarding a spaceship in transit (that doesn't want to be boarded) is potentially harder/more dangerous than boarding an airplane in flight. You could get around it by making space laws requiring rescue actions as a route to Trojan horse boarding.

 

The real thievery would come in or near ports. It wouldn't be unlike how the mob regularly snags cargo shipments from the airport tarmac. Unmanned cargo barges might be a good weak point, as far as secrecy goes. Bear in mind, though, that technologically it's fairly trivial (a) for ports to remotely monitor a robot ship on a continuous basis and ( for a robot ship to continuously or periodically monitor its own mass and sound an alarm if it changes. So it may not be as simple as just clamping onto the hull and carving a cargo door. In fact it may be easier to sneak aboard a crewed ship, which must make allowances for random human activity, as opposed to "big dumb object" robot ships that should be almost entirely static.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

Realistically speaking, boarding a spaceship in transit (that doesn't want to be boarded) is potentially harder/more dangerous than boarding an airplane in flight. You could get around it by making space laws requiring rescue actions as a route to Trojan horse boarding.

 

The real thievery would come in or near ports. It wouldn't be unlike how the mob regularly snags cargo shipments from the airport tarmac. Unmanned cargo barges might be a good weak point, as far as secrecy goes. Bear in mind, though, that technologically it's fairly trivial (a) for ports to remotely monitor a robot ship on a continuous basis and ( for a robot ship to continuously or periodically monitor its own mass and sound an alarm if it changes. So it may not be as simple as just clamping onto the hull and carving a cargo door. In fact it may be easier to sneak aboard a crewed ship, which must make allowances for random human activity, as opposed to "big dumb object" robot ships that should be almost entirely static.

 

The Robot Ship adds posibilities though. Sure, it may instantly beam a change in mass, thus alerting authorities to a possible Pirate Attack or something else wrong with the ship.

 

But now you have Pirates hacking space transmissions. Timed escapades (We have less than forty minutes to grab cargo and be gone before Space Patrol gets onsite. No mucking about). Two pirate vessels trying to tag the same container (now they're under time constraints and have to fight each other - it just wouldn't do to cut and run!)

 

 

I'm sure other things can come to mind to make it adventerous.

[austenandrews]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

For that matter a pirate might be able to hide the mass change and other evidence of intrusion, if he was careful and knew exactly how the system works. Or use a drone to spoof a clean monitoring signal and make off with the whole ship (you could build another scenario around just obtaining the algorithm for a clean signal). Or robot barges could come in convoys and one of them could be infiltrated. Or you could stage a meteor accident. Or there could be a cryo-frozen crew and the pirates have to be finished before they wake. Or fierce security robots could intervene.

 

Definitely no shortage of possibilities.

[Alverant]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

For some reason the movie ICE PIRATES comes to mind. I don't remember anything other than a few campy scenes.

 

Actually I kept thinking of Tom Smith's song about pirate ninjas from Dino Island. Jolly raptors, pterodactyls instead of parrots, Blackbeard waving a katana around while riding a T-rex... oh the fun!

 

To raid a moving starship, you first have to disable it to keep it from escaping. That would be much like starship combat where you try to disable the engines. The trick is to disable and not destroy or cause so much damage the booty is lost. If you use rubber science, you can have plasma webs that catch and hold starships or a subspace destablizer which disables FTL travel impossible (except for yer own ships matey).

 

The real juicy treasure is gained from raiding ports when a ship is coming in or ready to take off. You would still have to avoid the planetary defences and due to re-entry, stealth is impossible for the final approach unless you have full cloaking and have a gradual descent that causes no disturbance. You can still use the Trojin Horse trap where the pirate vessel is disguised as a normal ship, revealing its true nature once it's close enough.

 

After raiding the goods, you still have to escape. Depending on how pirates opperate, they could take hostages then shove them in escape pods once they are out of weapons range. Pirates, in general, would have to keep their word in this case. If they just space the hostages or sell them into slavery, there is no reason for anyone to worry about their saftey. Pirates would have to police themselves to keep this "aggrement" alive. One pirate gang that goes rogue and starts killing the hostages can ruin it for everyone.

[Basil]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

After raiding the goods, you still have to escape. Depending on how pirates opperate, they could take hostages then shove them in escape pods once they are out of weapons range. Pirates, in general, would have to keep their word in this case. If they just space the hostages or sell them into slavery, there is no reason for anyone to worry about their saftey. Pirates would have to police themselves to keep this "aggrement" alive. One pirate gang that goes rogue and starts killing the hostages can ruin it for everyone.

In this regard, the method used by the pirates of the late 17th/early 18th century "heyday" of piracy: if you surrender, we'll just take your stuff; if you fight, we'll kill every last one of you.

 

If people expect pirates to keep their word on that, then they have a damned good reason to surrender.

 

BTW: Space Pirates = good fun RPing.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

Now I wanna get into a Space Pirates game . . .

[sinanju]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

In this regard, the method used by the pirates of the late 17th/early 18th century "heyday" of piracy: if you surrender, we'll just take your stuff; if you fight, we'll kill every last one of you.

 

If people expect pirates to keep their word on that, then they have a damned good reason to surrender.

 

Especially given that on most commercial cargo vessels, it's not like the crew owns the cargo. "Why the **** should I risk my life to protect Disney/Microsoft/Exxon's property? No skin of _my_ nose if it gets stolen!"

[keithcurtis]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

My Solar Colonies campaign featured an extensive pirate organization. More than just outright piracy, they also were involved in extortion, smuggling, kidnapping and other crimes.

The Black Fleet had a base of sorts; a hollowed and spinning asteroid far off the ecliptic with an artificially low albedo and farside heat sinks. This was all in-Solar System with Fusion Drives, so they had to be very creative to avoid being tracked. Fusion Drives are HOT.

 

Eventually, when the chips were down and humanity was on the brink of toppling, they were offered blanket amnesty in return for pledging the Black Fleet to aiding the legitimate navies.

 

And yes, their general approach to piracy was to attack weaker vessels and threaten to vaporize them unless they surrendered their goods or even their ship. They maintained an honorable code to ensure that people would give up rather than fight to the death. Most of their ranks came from the disaffected and disenfranchised people of the High Frontier.

 

Keith "The leader was a tiny Chinese woman named the Black Madonna" Curtis

[LunaRagno]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

Of course Space Pirates! With laser cutlasses!

 

Nothing less will do.

[Deucex]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

Of course Space Pirates! With laser cutlasses!

 

Nothing less will do.

hey you could use real cutlasses, all you need to do is breech their space suit... and no recoil to send you off into the big black.

[LunaRagno]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

hey you could use real cutlasses' date=' all you need to do is breech their space suit... and no recoil to send you off into the big black.[/quote']

 

What, mere chunks of metal? Bah!, I say, bah! Laser cutlasses are cool, laser cutlasses are hip, laser cutlasses are glitteringly high-tech.

 

They are also more "pulp" than 'hard SF."

 

That's why I think they go well with Space Pirates.

[Thrakazog]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

There used to be two huge essays out on the Traveller webring somewheres that described in detail pirate methods and economics in the Traveller setting. It handled them in fine fashion and made for an excellent read. damn if I can find them now, though. I think they may have been pulled down.

[Adventus]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

There used to be two huge essays out on the Traveller webring somewheres that described in detail pirate methods and economics in the Traveller setting. It handled them in fine fashion and made for an excellent read. damn if I can find them now' date=' though. I think they may have been pulled down.[/quote']

 

I did find this forum page on the Gurps site about Traveller and Pirates:Gurps: Traveller and pirating

[Capt JT Kohonez]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

Now I wanna get into a Space Pirates game . . .

 

Me too!!

[Capt JT Kohonez]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

I did find this forum page on the Gurps site about Traveller and Pirates:Gurps: Traveller and pirating

 

Your sig just made me bend over in pain! oooohhhh!

[Dog Soldier]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

C.J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union War had an interesting take on piracy and interstellar travel. Primarily it involved ambush at entry points to systems.

[pinecone]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

One of the best "Space pirate" storys I read treated "space pirates" as more like skyjackers...the best most efficient way to steal a ship is to board it as passinger or crew, and smuggle weapons on board.....

[Deucex]

Re: Space Pirates?

 

I look at the probes we are launching today. They start here, do a big burn that way, slingshot around this planet, head over there and so on. All very calculated to make the most efficient use of fuel and time. If i was gonna run freight in space, I would do the same thing.

 

Now if you know a shipment is going out, you can figure out its expected trajectory and pick the most logical intercept point. Since it would basically be drifting through space it would be quite easy to match speed and link up, just like a docking proceedure today. From there you cut free what you want or board it and take control.

 

The big problem would be whoever polices the the lanes may fly by and catch you in the act.

 

The big targets would be atmospheric supplies, food and water, most of which could be sold to small private Belt or moon mining establishments that probably would otherwise have to pay through the nose to buy it legally from suppliers. The other big targets would be ModCons for colonies.