Who deals with piracy groups? Any former pirates?

[Doshii Jun]

Stealthy pirates have their place. So do brutish ones. GMs decide what they need.

 

[Nightowl]

Sorry Zack, your exact words were "Hyperdrives are point to point so there is no intercepting a target in deep space."

Calling what you said "impossible" isn't that far of a stretch, yet canon gameplay has proven otherwise.
As for "stealing from a port", it usually doesn't work too well in real life. Sealed cargo containers, TEUs and coded inventory. Unless you swipe the entire TEU, but then you need a crane to load it. And you have no idea what you are stealing. Compared to an entire ship you can hijack and disappear and later resell or strip for parts and personnel ransom, stealing the entire ship is a lot more convenient and profitable.

It's one of those theory that doesn't meet with actual conditions thing.

And think we already covered that it *is* possible to intercept a ship in deep space, and in fact is a fairly common setting.

 

[Wes]

Unless you swipe the entire TEU, but then you need a crane to load it.

Why would a cargo pirate not have a container handler? Or just use whatever crane the port has sitting around?

And you have no idea what you are stealing.

You could bribe an NPC. Maybe the one who runs the X-ray machine. "Psst. The container with the unicorn chalked on the end is full of super expensive sensors."

Compared to an entire ship

You could totally take the entire ship from the port, especially if it's a small one. There's sort of precedent for this in the RP. In The Fringe RP, some NPC pirate dudes boarded the (plot) ship when it was docked, which was easy because most of the crew was out doing stuff in the port.

Let's try to keep in perspective how huge space is. I think we should all try to cut back on how sensors in the RP are portrayed as basically perfect.

Even if you could create a star-sized gravity well in the hyperspace path of your target, it's unlikely the target ship would survive the "virtual collision" with that mass.

 

[Zack]

'Hyperdrive causes damage when it gets yanked out of FTL' would make a decent explanation for why the No FTL Boundary for star systems is poorly defined. Cautions transport captains would drop out of FTL very early to avoid damage while military ships with better FTL drives may push the limit further knowing they can take it.

I'd also like to ask that we add all of this information about FTL to the FTL wiki pages.

Sensors and how they work might be a whole new topic, and I think getting into that here would get us off the topic of piracy and how to be good at it.

 

[MoonMan]

Vinross Yu-Ceanker Minerals hires pirates.

Vinross Yu-Cranker Materials does indeed tend to hire pirates, and as long as they do their jobs, pays them very well.

Of course nobody actually knows this because it's a S-E-C-R-E-T. ;^)

 

[OsakanOne]

Vinross Yu-Cranker Materials does indeed tend to hire pirates, and as long as they do their jobs, pays them very well.

Of course nobody actually knows this because it's a S-E-C-R-E-T. ;^)

Zack didn't claim that didn't exist, Zack claimed that it was not a great way to go about pirating things.

Samantha is right that throwing a large enough gravity well in-between point A and point B would stop a ship from passing through the area but interdiction fields have been removed from the setting.

You could do something like moving a planet, small moon, or cargo-hold full of gravity generators in the way but the chances of it catching something and dropping it back into real space are going to be close to 0 with the distances involved unless you have some flight-plan ready ahead of time and know where to drop your FTL speed-bump. This is going to take a decent number of ships and pre-planning to make work.

Then you still have to disable the ship, get the cargo, escape, and make sure you aren't tracked.

---

Compare this to just stealing the ship before it leaves or after it has arrived. Slip some money to the right dock-hands and the cargo ends up disappearing into a warehouse somewhere, or just sneak onto the ship before it takes off then kill the crew while in transit.

---

If you want to be a good pirate, you're going to try and minimize the amount of damage you do to your target and try to take it with as little overhead as possible.

What like a mine field that creates a disturbance and repositions itself with its own ftl engines, needing info for what to jam where ahead of time?

 

[Zack]

Shush Osaka, I don't want to give away all the good stuff!

But yes, if you have a sensor that detects the ship 'upstream' you could position your gravity well downstream with enough time left over to actually catch the target.

It sounds like this may destroy the target ship based on Wes' post. This would make it a great military option but less so for piracy.

 

[Aendri]

I'd also question how that makes it any different from interdiction, from a functional standpoint.

 

[Zack]

Interdiction had a technical component to it, it operated like Electronic Warfare and required specialized equipment and we'll trained staff.

Moving a planet or star's worth of mass to stop a ship would be a massive undertaking requiring a fleet of space-dump trucks. You could do it if you really wanted but it would be slow.

Of course if you tried to game the system with artificial gravity you would just be using interdiction fields since that is what an interdiction field is (gravity manipulation)

 

[OsakanOne]

Interdiction had a technical component to it, it operated like Electronic Warfare and required specialized equipment and we'll trained staff.

Moving a planet or star's worth of mass to stop a ship would be a massive undertaking requiring a fleet of space-dump trucks. You could do it if you really wanted but it would be slow.

Of course if you tried to game the system with artificial gravity you would just be using interdiction fields since that is what an interdiction field is (gravity manipulation)

Isn't the main problem creating enough of a disturbance to destabilise? In which case got don't nesesarily need the "biggest hill", just the most "appropriately deep gaps": rangerovers for example can drive up an 80 degree incline in passing rain through a landslide with the right tyres but driving over ice, they get stuck by tire sized holes with zero traction.

What is the source of pressure/thrust in ftl and more importantly can it be disturbed, calling for advanced driving from pilots to successfully negotiate?

I know but this is open context. Lots of analogues to keep it understandable.

 

[Zack]

There doesn't seem to be a consensus on what causes FTL to stop working anymore. We do know Star systems stop FTL so you probably need a star for this to work.

Or: your tire sized hole is probably a Jupiter's worth of mass.

 

[Nightowl]

We obviously have gravity generators considering none of us are role playing bouncing off the ceiling, so it might be more of a problem of bringing the equipment to the location then pumping sufficient power into it. With emphasis on "sufficient". On the other hand, we got unlimited power, just need a big enough tap. But IIRC, there is a dislike for interdiction because of overuse.

Why would a cargo pirate not have a container handler? Or just use whatever crane the port has sitting around?

You could bribe an NPC. Maybe the one who runs the X-ray machine. "Psst. The container with the unicorn chalked on the end is full of super expensive sensors."

You could totally take the entire ship from the port, especially if it's a small one. There's sort of precedent for this in the RP. In The Fringe RP, some NPC pirate dudes boarded the (plot) ship when it was docked, which was easy because most of the crew was out doing stuff in the port.

Let's try to keep in perspective how huge space is. I think we should all try to cut back on how sensors in the RP are portrayed as basically perfect.

Even if you could create a star-sized gravity well in the hyperspace path of your target, it's unlikely the target ship would survive the "virtual collision" with that mass.

Depends on the port, but those TEU handling cranes are *huge*! They are also fairly obvious and are fixed to tracks so you'd know when someone takes one for a walk. In the SARPverse though, I don't see any bulk handling ships, so it is possible that the handled loads are small and they work on something like the old stevedore system and all the opportunity that implies. As for bribing the officials and swiping a ship, that sound like a story in the making.

Anyway, I think we mined this well dry, piracy happens, the Star Army shoots those that they don't like and look the other way for those that so.

 

[Syaoran]

This really should be moved to a different topic. But also keep in mind, FTL interdiction is banned. So if you're forcing a ship out of FTL that is technically interdiction, even if if it's not the same as the way before. While we'd seen an increase in gravitic beam sales I don't think it's a good idea to be able to catch people flying by in FTL so easily. Maybe yeah if you get hit with a gravitic beam and held in place you shouldn't be able to FTL out. But stopping someone else in FTL will lead to abuse and complications down the road if just anyone can do it.

 

[Wes]

I'd also question how that makes it any different from interdiction, from a functional standpoint.

It's not any different, so let's not go down that road.

Intercept ships when they leave a system, or when they arrive in a system, or when they have to stop to make a turn between jumps, but let's not try to stop them while they're in FTL.

 

[Moogle]

I would just like to point out (thanks @paladinrpg and @Luca ) that the GAO does in fact have many different approaches to piracy, perfect for your enemy of the week for GMs.

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=faction:galactic_armament_organization#subordinate_groups

You want swarm tactics? We got that pirate.
You want false flag and sick ducks? We got that pirate.
How about boarders? We got that too.
How about an overt siege engine built for long, drawn out engagemrnts? NO. That's not piracy, that's too aggressive. That's warlording.

Spoiler

Jokes aside, falsified ID and IFF is probably going to be the biggest problem for the not-pirates to face when going up against pirates.

 

[Ethereal]

I'm a new player, but couldn't you use some sort of virus to shut down a ship's engines? Then board them and do pirate things?

Could you find a ship about to enter FTL, then fire a drone that when it hits (or is attached to in case of sabotage, which can be one-in-port) burrows into computer cables, then shuts it down that way?

Or if you have to know exactly the route someone's going down to 'interdict' them, could you attach some sort of tracker to it? If it's a commercial transport craft they tend to use the same routes multiple times, which allows for pretty precise planning of raids.

I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong place or sound like an imbicile, I just thought I'd give a fresh perspective..

P.S. I'd love to join a pirate plot

 

[Wes]

I was looking on the forum for pirate-related threads and found some old stuff:

1. Zack posting an ad for pirates over a decade ago, back in 2005
   
2. Chris looking for pirate players in 2006
3. What's a typical pirate like in Star Army? (2009)
4. Space Pirates RP and SS Galean, an actual Star Army pirate ship!
   1. Space Pirates OOC thread
5. Pirates take over a mining ship
6. Brainstorming rules for a pirate scenario in the UOC
7. Becoming a pirate GM and how to get a ship
8. What tech do pirates have? Is there a pirate GM?
9. A Pirate's Oath
10. More discussion about running a pirate plot
11. Pirate Captain Johnny Debeers, who I'm not sure is on the wiki yet (character adoption candidate?).
12. In-depth discussion of making piracy work in Star Army: Part 1 - Part 2

 

[Ametheliana]

Oh boy is this right up my alley.

I was excited to make an Iroma awhile ago and was even more excited to find out they had a criminal underworld, specifically, pirates!

Thus, the wonderful former pirate captain Aashi Nath!