Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

I also don't think it was meant to be a really long time prohibition but then we have no idea what the documents worked out by Kingsford and Harrington say or if they address this.

On the other hand, it is a really clear statement that ANY SLN ship found outside SLN space will be treated as a pirate and that should give even hardened OFS and some of the more rapacious FF people pause. Your right about it should prevent the sort of covert Buccaneer operations used by OFS in the past.

It also paints a clear picture for anybody who might want to do a little freelancing with an SLN ship......we find you we kill you......

cthia wrote:That evokes even more potential problems inherent in the design. I think that it is also obvious to the pirates that hunting season in SL space is for a limited time only. That is the point. Take advantage of the bounty while the Gorilla is chained to his pen. It is a limited window of opportunity. Which also implies the need to grab as much as possible until this bountiful window of opportunity closes. Looting and pilfering should have begun as soon as Honor's decree went out.

There is NO open season for pirates within Solarian League space, unless you mean they hit something on the edge of SL space and try to hide in the Verge. But like we see with the slavery hunting expedition with the SLN in cooperation with Torch, it will not be a problem to work up an ad hoc alliance to take on any such pirate.

The smarter pirates will work those Verge nations that the Solarian League can no longer assist and are too far for help from any Grand Alliance or Andermani base: that is the main can of worms opened by Honor's ultimatum.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:That evokes even more potential problems inherent in the design. I think that it is also obvious to the pirates that hunting season in SL space is for a limited time only. That is the point. Take advantage of the bounty while the Gorilla is chained to his pen. It is a limited window of opportunity. Which also implies the need to grab as much as possible until this bountiful window of opportunity closes. Looting and pilfering should have begun as soon as Honor's decree went out.

There is NO open season for pirates within Solarian League space, unless you mean they hit something on the edge of SL space and try to hide in the Verge. But like we see with the slavery hunting expedition with the SLN in cooperation with Torch, it will not be a problem to work up an ad hoc alliance to take on any such pirate.

The smarter pirates will work those Verge nations that the Solarian League can no longer assist and are too far for help from any Grand Alliance or Andermani base: that is the main can of worms opened by Honor's ultimatum.

My badd. That should have read open season in "League Space."

League Space being ports of call that are visited by SL freighters. Honor's decree only affects the SLN, not their carrying trade. Their freighters can be attacked outside of League Space, or on the edge of League Space or even some grey area in-between.

The smarter pirates will have their own reasons which may not gell with either of ours. Reasons that may be more political and personal in nature. Besides, the bigger and better prizes are mostly obtained from the better hunting grounds. The better hunting grounds have always been more dangerous, yes, but considerably more valuable and potentially more profitable with escape. Escape with freighters carrying bigger prizes and secrets.

But if the GA, by symptom of decree, has increased the chances of escape, then why not? At any rate, piracy may have more resources devoted to it by collaborating splintered states.

cthia wrote:That evokes even more potential problems inherent in the design. I think that it is also obvious to the pirates that hunting season in SL space is for a limited time only. That is the point. Take advantage of the bounty while the Gorilla is chained to his pen. It is a limited window of opportunity. Which also implies the need to grab as much as possible until this bountiful window of opportunity closes. Looting and pilfering should have begun as soon as Honor's decree went out.

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Well, it should be all about light units, but not necessarily. It could be a state sponsored operation featuring larger units.

It could happen in or out of the light, in which case it would actually be termed commandeering. As an act of war. But pursuing them has to proceed. Quickly. Before the spoils (evidence) are divided and the perpetrators vanish.

While you may have a point about a short period of spike in piracy, state-sponsored attacks are not a good idea. It's not too difficult to find out which state sponsored it and we're still talking about the League coming to ask for their toys back. That's criminally stupid.

Which of course won't stop criminals from doing it.

Oh, BTW, where do you think those criminal Verge dictators got their warships from? I'll give you one chance to guess. It's three letters, starts with O and ends in FS.

So... karma?

And if you suspect it is an entire system sponsoring the operation, you may need to arrive with a large enough force to force cooperation.

Yes, but "large enough" in the vast majority of the cases is going to be a proper CA division, maybe one or two cases will need a BC.

I don't think any of the legitimate states that did have navies before would engage in this kind of privateering at the expense of the League.

Against their own non-League neighbours, now that the FF isn't around to do its official job, that's possible.

cthia wrote:My badd. That should have read open season in "League Space."

League Space being ports of call that are visited by SL freighters. Honor's decree only affects the SLN, not their carrying trade. Their freighters can be attacked outside of League Space, or on the edge of League Space or even some grey area in between.

The smarter pirates will have their own reasons which may not gell with either of ours. Reasons that may be more political and personal in nature. Besides, the bigger and better prizes are mostly obtained from the better hunting grounds. The better hunting grounds have always been more dangerous, yes, but considerably more valuable and potentially more profitable with escape. Escape with freighters carrying bigger prizes and secrets.

But if the GA, by symptom of decree, has increased the chances of escape, then why not? At any rate, piracy may have more resources devoted to it by collaborating splintered states.

Most League merchants don't work the verge anyway, even the systems under OFS/FF "protection" -- they consider it too high risk. An uptick in piracy there, especially without the ability to deploy SLN escorts, simply means the League hulls will focus on intra-league shipping routes and leave even more of the Verge shipping to the somewhat less risk adverse Verge shipping lines.

And the ones from Manticore and the Andermani probably can gets some convoy escorts pried loose from their navies if piracy ticks up. But they've also been used to operating in pre-war Silesia which had the galaxy's worst pirate problem -- so operating in Verge systems too dispersed and too far from current pirate bases for piracy to really rapidly increase might seem safer in comparison.


Analogous to a fire triangle (with fire requiring fuel, oxidizer, and heat to continue to burn) pirates also need 3 things in order to continue to operate:
1) Money - initial financing and access to relatively nearby fences where they can dispose of their loot for more money
2) Repair/resupply
3) Sufficient targets

Existing pirates will already have their initial financing; but moving to distant areas that didn't previously have any real piracy threat means they won't know (or there won't be) nearby fences -- which makes it hard to convert loot into operating cash.

Much of the verge is too low traffic to be a particularly lucrative hunting ground. Having to wait around for the twice a year visit a system gets total means lots of bored pirates (which are prone to mutiny and rioting) and lots of cost going out while hoping for an eventual payday). And the systems that are high traffic enough to be lucrative are also prosperous enough to afford to buy and maintain enough defense to run off most pirates.

And much of the verge is too low tech to be a source of repairs of military supplies; though of course the pirates could buy food and basic consumables pretty much anywhere.

cthia wrote:My badd. That should have read open season in "League Space."

League Space being ports of call that are visited by SL freighters. Honor's decree only affects the SLN, not their carrying trade. Their freighters can be attacked outside of League Space, or on the edge of League Space or even some grey area in-between.

A consistent definition of "League Space" is the space controlled by the League Navy; not the space that comprises those all those ports where League merchant ships may call. After all the Manticoran Merchant Marine called on many League Core worlds and clearly those worlds were not part of "Manticore Space".

It is true that League merchant ships could be attacked outside of the space controlled by their navy, but most likely those routes will go to Manticore's merchants and all League merchants will carrying the freight between Core Worlds that Manticore formerly carried. The biggest problem that the League has is a lack of capacity to take over completely from Manticore; so despite the bad feelings, some freight will still have to travel on ships from Manticore..

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:A problem could arise if piracy in SL space rises, perhaps because the SLN has lost a little of their fear factor (or because of some nefarious master plan) and they can no longer police and protect their own legal bona fide interests because they are on probation.

It is like a convict trying to get his life together and needs to conduct legitimate business while an ankle bracelet is keeping him away from a certain area because it has a gun shop nearby, etc.

That's a good point, but as the discussion with Jonathan above shown, I don't think the prohibition was meant to be long-term. And it definitely did not talk about prohibiting the SLN from its own territory. Kingsford has every right to demand loosening of those restrictions if he feels his hands are tied and he has a good chance of getting them, provided the SLN has stopped participating in strong-arming tactics by then.

And this is all about light units. You don't send an SD squadron to deal with pirates any more than the USN sends a supercarrier group to deal with a foreign fishing boat entering US coastal waters (that's a Coast Guard job anyway).

After those secret FF/OFS plans were revealed by Byng's task force being surrendered, it's plausble that the bulk of "piracy" in the verge nearer to the League was carried out by the SLN itself. If so, then piracy in general may even decrease due to the SLN's wartime movements and subsequent withdrawal.

This would reduce any pressure for them to return to those places without being invited. It's not really clear how significant a problem piracy actually is by the 1920s, with Silesia cleaning up. Aside from the Yahoos out at Tiberian, the Alignment had to tap the People's Navy in Exile and Monica for mercenaries and in all three examples, they supplied them with nearly first-rate SLN hardware.

Combined with the tidbit about the extremely old and small Noblesse-class being "still suited for anti-piracy work" when they were ditched in 1907, it just doesn't seem like piracy is capable of creating that much of an issue. Large bands like the Free Brotherhood or the Raniers seem to be several centuries in the past by the 1900s.

What genuine piracy there is nowadays seems to be cases of using the cheapest ships they can acquire to hijack completely unarmed freighters capped at between 150-200g. This class of pirate is content to use old frigates or even a freighter with added guns. Many probably don't even carry laserheads.

munroburton wrote:Combined with the tidbit about the extremely old and small Noblesse-class being "still suited for anti-piracy work" when they were ditched in 1907, it just doesn't seem like piracy is capable of creating that much of an issue. Large bands like the Free Brotherhood or the Raniers seem to be several centuries in the past by the 1900s.

What genuine piracy there is nowadays seems to be cases of using the cheapest ships they can acquire to hijack completely unarmed freighters capped at between 150-200g. This class of pirate is content to use old frigates or even a freighter with added guns. Many probably don't even carry laserheads.

I get the feeling that systems like Rainier happening all the time, aside from Silesia. We heard of quite a few of them every now and again. Even if it happens to one system per sector every 100 years, given the number of sectors in the Verge and Fringe, there should a dozen or two of them at any time. Another aspect is that the Hole in the Wall doesn't appear to be special, so there should several of them scattered throughout the space. So I expect piracy should exist as an endemic problem.

However, systems don't move. So what Jonathan said about having a fence nearby is still a requirement. That means piracy cannot grow to new targets very quickly. The longer journeys eat profits and the new targets are a complete unknown, raising the risk. Some may try, but given what's been discussed, this will probably not create a problem to the League systems before the SLN begins patrols again.

As for the Yahoos and the PNiE, the MAlign apparently wanted competent people. And however incompetent they were compared to the RMN and to Roszak's SLN detachment, they were still ex-Navy of some sort. There probably aren't a lot of those around, so the MAlign had to shop around to find someone who knew which direction to point a laser.

BTW, the Free Brotherhood may have been a case where it was possible only because of the sweet spot in technological evolution. The starship drives were fast enough that one could move from system to system and still arrive when conditions were more or less the same as when you set out, but slow enough that word of your misdeeds didn't reach any good Samaritan or simply a stronger force in time to bounce you out. And recent enough that there were a lot of colonies who couldn't afford navies because they were too expensive.

Brigade XO wrote:I also don't think it was meant to be a really long time prohibition but then we have no idea what the documents worked out by Kingsford and Harrington say or if they address this.

All so true, we do not know.

Brigade_XO wrote:On the other hand, it is a really clear statement that ANY SLN ship found outside SLN space will be treated as a pirate and that should give even hardened OFS and some of the more rapacious FF people pause. Your right about it should prevent the sort of covert Buccaneer operations used by OFS in the past.

It also paints a clear picture for anybody who might want to do a little freelancing with an SLN ship......we find you we kill you......

Any SLN ship? Well, does that mean that a TUFT freighter which has been commandeered by the SLN can be made to walk the veritable plank, as it were?

cthia wrote:Any SLN ship? Well, does that mean that a TUFT freighter which has been commandeered by the SLN can be made to walk the veritable plank, as it were?

The actual demand was "Any unit of the SLN". A TUFT ship taken up as a fleet train ship probably doesn't fall under that designation -- but one that's been turned into a podlayer would.

But frankly what legitimate reason would the League Navy have to start operating a commandeered League freighter beyond the League's own member system?

If they're trying to use it to do an end run around the prohibition then it probably does deserve to be treated like a violator of said prohibition... (And if they're not trying to do an end run around them I'm at a bit of a loss for why navy officers would now be operating a League freighter taken up into navy service out beyond the borders of the League)