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Pirate group

R

Rine

Inactive Member
Me and a friend were discussing the feasibility of a pirate group operating within this particular world setup. The group would consist of a shuttle/freighter of some sort that can hold a few suits of power armor (potentially modified, you know how outlaw techs love to mess with stuff). They would use the guise of a damaged freighter/shuttle to lure in passing liners, and then raid them.

The question is feasability wise:

The hyperfold technology, is it a straight linear jump between world A and wolrd B not affected by other bodies, or do you have to have a series of jumps to get where you are going? This is vital because if you were going to fake a damaged freighter, it doesn't make sense to have it near a planet, so if you can simply jump from planet to planet, that kinda ruins the idea.
 
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Fold technology in the SA is from point A to point B. No jumping required.

Odds are if your playing damaged freighter you'd attract a star army ship instead of a transport.
 
Well, most people have a shred of good in them at least, and most folks want to help out their comrades, like they'd want to be helped if they were in trouble. Following this line of reasoning, if a damaged, life support-damaged, don't-know-how-much-longer-we-can-make-it freighter were sitting dead in open space with an automated rescue beacon and hail on all commercial channels going, any nearby vessel would try to help, more than likely. Thus, it is merely a matter of determining the best point from which to try this ruse...
 
Considering that most ships belong to the military and there are more people in the star army than all other commertial endevors and that the star army does moniter all frequencies as well as commeritial not to mention the fact that all commertial shipping lanes like the transuniversal gates (which don't recive much attention) and the Ayenee lanes are well protected by star army units and others.

Also if your in deep space the odds of another ship being around are trillions to one. You have virtually no chance of being even remotely close to another ship unless your near a planet or other major destination (like the feynar cloud) where ships would drop out of their FTL flight to manuver in for a landing.

Piracy has to be much more sophisticated than what your proposing.
 
Well like i said, the warp drive question disables the whole idea. If passing ships dont have to stop over to get around gravity barriers (like in SW mythos) or something similar, then you cant be far enough from an inhabited place to enact a trick like that.

All that really leaves pirates with is smash and grab operations on outposts and planets, in and out before the military backup arrives.
 
Your still going to have to be much more sophisticated than that to be a good pirate. Military backup can arrive literally in seconds with the fold drives on the Iori star fortress.
 
Well, thats why you disable communications ahead of time, and make sure you know exactly what it is you're stealing, to get in and out quickly. Probably would help to find the shipping schedules for the few commercial ships around so you can hit them too, and would definately help to have a legitimate shipping company as cover and information gathering.
 
The main obstacles to a piracy organization in this universe aren't ones that can't be overcome, I mean, let's see what you're up against:

1) Nigh-infallible multi-lightyear range near-instantaneous communications. (I say nigh-infallible because in any universe where heat and entropy still exist, the possibly of breakdown is there if not terribly likely)

1a) Nigh-infallible multi-lightyear range flight control and sensor systems. "Hmmm, transport X12673-B has taken an unplanned flight deviation/stopped. Better see if they need help."

2) An omnipresent military force with response times on an intergalactic scale that make our local police response times now look like a joke.

3) Said omnipresent military force's godlike armament. Guns that take traditional concepts of space-time out back and beats them to death with a metal truncheon before spitting on the corpse.

Like I said, nothing totally insurmountable.
 
So if everything of yamatai is omnipresent, what exactly are we rping? You cant really rp a military style setting without some sort of opposing force. And if an opposing military force can survive, illegal organizations who are generally far more covert can as well.
 
Well seeing as I always wanted my character to be a pirate I am very interested in this topic. Uso could you give an example, im curious as to your idea of sophisticated... I have a few plots but Im curious...
 
Rine said:
So if everything of yamatai is omnipresent, what exactly are we rping? You cant really rp a military style setting without some sort of opposing force. And if an opposing military force can survive, illegal organizations who are generally far more covert can as well.
Click to expand...

Administrative fiat is how they survive, more or less. Check the later end of the Ground Vehicles thread for more details; I hate rehashing things that have already been said.
 
The thing is about uber-cool/great technology...is generally, if there is war, there is technology around to defeat that technology. During all the time the factions warred, there had to be someone who designed a jamming system, else that omnipresent military force would drop right down on them right?

Besides that, there has to be SOMETHING that stops the warp drives from just putting you from A to B. People make mistakes, and if they could just put in A and B, there has to have been quite a few incidents of a ship appearing in the middle of a planet.
 
Seconds, huh? Do they not have to chart a course to their destination? Faster than light travel ainn't like dustin' crops, boy. Astronomical travel is rough shit, requiring precision of an obscene degree. At the very least, they have to take time to account for their current location in space.
 
So far none of the ideas on how to be a pirate on this thread will work unless Wes makes a special effort to have SA stuff malfunction so that the pirates can be sucsessful.

Astronomical travel is not rough shit, you just need to know where you are and where you want to go.

As far as SA technology, yes there are ways around them and there is ALWAYS more powerful technology. I've been working with that stuff for long enough to know how to get around them and circumvent the system. The only reason SA tech seems so powerful is that NC and all other shipyards don't have the technology of KFY and KFY, without QIS around, is at a virtual standstill with their technology. No one can seem to come up with better armor to protect against their weapons and along the same lines no one (on SA) has the capability to produce better weapons.

In any case I don't want to give to much away on the boards. IM me through Y! if you want to ask me a question directly.
 
Astronomical travel: Given i dont know much about your hyperspace mythos in this game, unless you are in a completely different dimension, you have to account for gravity wells and large masses along the path, which requires a lot of reference to astronomical charts. Because you know, colliding with one would suck.

Even if you didnt have to deal with that....well, actually, you have to deal with that. If you dont have to deal with masses, that pretty much lets you pop out anywhere, and THAT causes all sorts of nice things....a spaceship ending up in the middle of a moon, spaceships appearing atop each other, black holes, suns, etc.

Anyway, sounds like what this place needs to have serious opposition forces and therefore chances for better military style rp is either a dark ages caused by a cataclysm, an unusal alien force that approaches the same weapons from a different angle, or both. Sounds like you've pretty much rp'd the forces into a permanent win for one side.
 
Well that is only because there hasn't been a credible opponent on SA, ever.

I don't know what your talking about, but CDD, hyperspace folding, whatever, your not going to be anywhere near enough to a gravity field to be effecting in transit. the odds of you even comming remotely close to a planet is astronomical! A start and an end point is all that is needed.

you have to account for gravity wells and large masses along the path
Click to expand...

Literally, running even remotely close to something like that in transit is so improbable you have a better chance of winning the lottery... 27 times in a row.

The cataclysm idea wasn't to popular when wes introduced it and helped cause this site to collapse the first time. Again, the opposing force thing just isn't tollerated by wes.

'Dark Ages' is also what ruined mechwarrior.
 
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Mechwarrior was messed up long before Dark Ages arrived. It was called the 'Clan Invasion' and shifted the focus of Mechwarrior from actual mechwarriors and having to keep track of your heat and ammo and taking care of your precious few mechs because God/Blake/whoever only knew when you were getting more C-bills to even think about replacing losses (that is, if you could since mechs and parts seemed to be rare).

3025 turned Mechwarrior into a 'my madcat's dong is bigger than your lostech Highlander's dad's weiner' competition that was only won by the Inner Sphere through a contrivance of a plot hole.

Okay, hijacking over. Back to the topic.
 
Actually, what killed battletech is the fact that they forgot what made it important, the mechs, and removed that when they went into the dark ages. btech has had several dark ages (the wars between all the factions literally beat the star league into the sticks/stones time) and they dropped a very good storyline they had going when they still had opposing forces and intrigue. Like you said yourself, theres no viable opposing forces here, whatcha got to lose?
 
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