Ideal Pirate Ship Configeration And Size? ...

Torlek wrote:In honor among enemies the corrupt governor, was very upset that Honor would not sell of the captured FF as a prize but destroyed instead. That indicates that pirate FF are hard to replace. Therefore a pirate CL is even harder to replace, which means it is expensive.
Now we discussed before how an FF is almost as good in being a pirate as a CL. Yes endurance might be a problem but the size of your guns do not matter against an unarmed unarmored freighter.

I don't know how a pirate would choose to outfit a FF sized ship; but historially at least RMN frigates were long endurance ships.

They were a bit smaller that destroyers, and a lot more lightly armed, but in exchange they appear to have had the endurance of a cruiser. That's why back in the mid 1800's they were still used for convoy duty, or Silesian patrols. Because the bigger, more powerful, destroyers didn't have the legs for it. (As destroyers continued to grow in displacement to pack in the necessary offenses, and especially defenses, their cruise endurance seems to have gone up as well -- though still short of what a classic CL could do; which sunk the majority of it's mass/volume increase over a contemporaneous DD into endurance and crew, not firepower.

But if a pirate succumbs to the temptation to badly over-gun (and to a lesser extent over-crew) their FF sized hull it might cut deeply into the endurance that class was known for.

RamscoopRaider wrote:Not sure about almost as slow as a normal freighter. Some of the Refrigerator ships turned Raiders of the WWII era were near as fast as a WWI era battleship at 14-20 knots. That would translate to mid to high 300's of gravities in Honorverse terms. Now I don't think Mr. Weber has ever said what kind of acceleration these type of ships typically have in the Honorverse. Given that the average Freighter in the Honorverse cannot make more than 200gs flat out, even a 300g ship would have a 50% edge. Still we can't be sure of the type of acceleration of this type of ship

I'd be surprised if even a fast freighter had noticeably different acceleration than other freighters of it's displacement. Unlike ocean ships the strategic speed of a ship has almost nothing to do with it's ability to accelerate. Even a slow freighter will hit it's max velocity in less than a day and a half (way less if its in a grav wave; where all ships get a roughly 10x boost to acceleration).

Transit time is dominated first by hyper generator, going from the Delta Bands to the Epsilon bands is good for about a 25% reduction in hyper time. Going from Delta to Eta (still pretty conservative for a military generator) cuts the hyper time by 50%.

Secondarily it's heavily affected by particle shielding; going from merchant to military grade shielding raises your top speed in any band from 0.5c to 0.6c about a 17% improvement.

In comparison the transit reduction from improved acceleration is far less; because most transits involve weeks in hyper; shaving off even an entire 24 hours of acceleration time from a 2 week trip in only an 8% improvement -- and a 2 week trip is fairly short.


The return on investment for a military set of impellers and compensator just isn't anywhere near as high as on the hyper generator, or even on the particle shielding. So I bet that most 'fast' freighters still have civilian impellers (with their lower cost, size, and reduced maintenance) while springing for the better hyper generators, and probably the better particle shielding.

n7axw wrote:

Theemile wrote:

How about a passenger liner? In SITS2, there is a 211 Kton "Pegasus" type liner. It holds 5000 passengers in mid-level comfort and 35Ktons of cargo, with about a dozen shuttles. In the notes it says there are a variety of subtypes, and while this one only moved at ~200 gravities, it would not surprise me if there was an "express" model with military type comp and nodes - because passengers will pay more for a little speed.

Any "stooging" around could be waved away as this being a specialty "cruise", with normally ground bound passengers paying money just to swan around in space for whatever reason.

As for weapons, all you need is the weapons outfit found on any old LAC - a couple box launchers and some small lasers and firecontrol. You hide the box launchers behind some broadside cargo doors and steal some state rooms for the lasers. You don't need much, just enough weapons to show you are serious and can really back your threats. Yes, you will be dog chow if a military ship shows up, but them's the risks.

The only problem is such a design will have weak or no sidewalls, little or no ECM, and little or no active defenses. But it will be cheaper, easier to maintain, and easier acquire them a military ship.

We've already discussed the fast liners that Hauptman was using for passenger service to Silesia, the Atlas class I think. Its legs would be a bit better than what you are suggesting. But your proposal also works.

I still think that adding a bay for a half dozen LACs to the Q-ship idea increases both flexibility and survivability since the mother ship would not have to come within range of its prey.

Don

The difference is the Atlas Class is 5x the size of the Pegasus, and comes automatically (and known) with a CA's weapons and defenses - besides being extremely rare. A Pegasus could pull off the sweet innocence act - or would be more likely to that is.

I've thought about LACs - the biggest downside I can see is their lack of native ability to hyper. So if a military vessel catches their scent - they are toast with no way to run away without giving away their transport vessel (if it's even in the area.)

Theemile wrote:How about a passenger liner? In SITS2, there is a 211 Kton "Pegasus" type liner. It holds 5000 passengers in mid-level comfort and 35Ktons of cargo, with about a dozen shuttles. In the notes it says there are a variety of subtypes, and while this one only moved at ~200 gravities, it would not surprise me if there was an "express" model with military type comp and nodes - because passengers will pay more for a little speed.

Any "stooging" around could be waved away as this being a specialty "cruise", with normally ground bound passengers paying money just to swan around in space for whatever reason.

As for weapons, all you need is the weapons outfit found on any old LAC - a couple box launchers and some small lasers and firecontrol. You hide the box launchers behind some broadside cargo doors and steal some state rooms for the lasers. You don't need much, just enough weapons to show you are serious and can really back your threats. Yes, you will be dog chow if a military ship shows up, but them's the risks.

The only problem is such a design will have weak or no sidewalls, little or no ECM, and little or no active defenses. But it will be cheaper, easier to maintain, and easier acquire them a military ship.

Either SITS2 had a misprint, or else you dropped a digit when posting the tonnage. For comparison, 211Kton is close to the tonnage to the:

House of Steel wrote:Truncheon-class heavy cruiser
Mass: 223,000 tons
Dimensions: 471 × 57 × 48 m
Acceleration: 513.2 G (5.033 kps²)
80% Accel: 410.6 G (4.026 kps²)
Broadside: 5M, 5L, 3G, 2CM, 6PD
Chase: 2M, 1L, 1G, 1CM, 2PD
Number Built: 77
Service Life: 1809–1905

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

Yes, and that Trunchean CA, had probably 900 crew plus all of its offensive weapons. Strip all the offensive weapons. Strip all the defensive weapons. Strip out the extra fusion rooms. Strip out the much larger impeller nodes. Strip out the much larger hyper generator. Strip out the vastly larger bifricated impeller rooms for civi design. And finally, strip out all of the armor in said CA. All of a sudden, the ship has gobs upon gobs of internal volume in which to stash people. You might have noticed, but said ship, would be larger than the largest cruise ships today with their palatial rooms and well over 5000 people aboard.

So, when HAE rolls around and there is a BC sized cruise liner, it easily could have had several times as many as the SITS "economy" cruise liner. Said Hauptmann line cruise liners was a palatial cruise liner.

Jonathan_S wrote:

RamscoopRaider wrote:Not sure about almost as slow as a normal freighter. Some of the Refrigerator ships turned Raiders of the WWII era were near as fast as a WWI era battleship at 14-20 knots. That would translate to mid to high 300's of gravities in Honorverse terms. Now I don't think Mr. Weber has ever said what kind of acceleration these type of ships typically have in the Honorverse. Given that the average Freighter in the Honorverse cannot make more than 200gs flat out, even a 300g ship would have a 50% edge. Still we can't be sure of the type of acceleration of this type of ship

I'd be surprised if even a fast freighter had noticeably different acceleration than other freighters of it's displacement. Unlike ocean ships the strategic speed of a ship has almost nothing to do with it's ability to accelerate. Even a slow freighter will hit it's max velocity in less than a day and a half (way less if its in a grav wave; where all ships get a roughly 10x boost to acceleration).

Transit time is dominated first by hyper generator, going from the Delta Bands to the Epsilon bands is good for about a 25% reduction in hyper time. Going from Delta to Eta (still pretty conservative for a military generator) cuts the hyper time by 50%.

Secondarily it's heavily affected by particle shielding; going from merchant to military grade shielding raises your top speed in any band from 0.5c to 0.6c about a 17% improvement.

In comparison the transit reduction from improved acceleration is far less; because most transits involve weeks in hyper; shaving off even an entire 24 hours of acceleration time from a 2 week trip in only an 8% improvement -- and a 2 week trip is fairly short.


The return on investment for a military set of impellers and compensator just isn't anywhere near as high as on the hyper generator, or even on the particle shielding. So I bet that most 'fast' freighters still have civilian impellers (with their lower cost, size, and reduced maintenance) while springing for the better hyper generators, and probably the better particle shielding.

Point Conceded, your argument makes a lot of sense. The idea didn't want to get out of my head, so I posted it to see what others thought. Figured it was the easiest way for a Pirate to get a somewhat speedy ship with good endurance, and wasn't completely obvious. I can think of ships that are theoretically better but require a heck of an explanation on how some Pirates go their hands on them and didn't decide to retire filthy rich from selling the thing

Theemile wrote:...

The FF/DD is expensive enough to purchase and maintain - and brings in as much money as the BC if used correctly. So how is the BC a better pirate ship?

Because the pirates probably wont be paying for the purchase.

What common types of pirates have we seen?

Renegades from a navy, stealing their ship as they desert.
Various ruffians hired by unsavoury people to raid a specific area, given support and sometimes even ships, or at least assistance in aquiring ships.
People dealing with, or even being sort of part of corrupt militaries, with their ships being more or less subsidised by a government.

Then there´s what seems to be a fairly common procedure for some governments to spice up the finances a bit by selling outdated ships on black markets instead of scrapping them.
Probably going for a small fraction of the original price. This goes well along with how people seem to be surprised anytime a pirate has MODERN equipment.

And of course, any pirate crew that manages to capture 2-3 average merchants over a shorter timeframe, if they have the contacts, those ships and cargo will easily be enough to pay for an obsolescent cruiser sold on the black market. Specifically, the ships are likely going to be THE valuable parts.


And no, i most certainly do not agree that a FF can bring in the same cash as a BC or CH/CL, they just don´t have the endurance, nor the size to carry any highend cargo and will be hard pressed to even carry prize crews.
Even a DD wont be large enough for everything, but at least it´s not blatantly "too small".


I also think there´s some degree of exaggeration going on in regards to just how expensive ships are, as it is clear that there´s a LOT of organisations that run their own ships to at least some degree, like newsmedia and rich folks, and if they can manage it, then pirates who don´t care about the law are most certainly going to be able to aquire and run somewhat larger ships.

Also, it´s been a clear theme that most pirates run their ships on the basis of "as long as it´s not broken", they basically rely on overall sturdiness of the technology rather than good maintenance.
Expect to cut "costs" for maintenance by probably at least 75% by doing that. As long as they can recruit a few decent techs, forcibly or by choice, they will still be able to keep things running.

On the other hand, how much money can you get for a couple million tons of loot? Or just the valuable stuff, if you don't want to haul the whole ship away.

Unless the cargo is VERY valuable, the ship is probably what you can get the most cash for much of the time.

But most pirates must be living hand-to-mouth, hoping the big score. For every pirate who makes that big score, there must be dozens who never do.

Quite. But don´t forget how many ships seems to have been captured by pirates, examples mentioned for Silesia suggests a LOT of shipping going on, as well as quite a major black and grey market, including with ships.

So even if conditions for the average pirate is probably not great, there´s clearly enough loot to go around for pirating to be interesting.

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SharkHunter wrote:But an Astra would be more FUN.

This thread is about the Ideal Pirate ship. While all kinds of pirate ship can work, here are my full thoughts of the Ideal Pirate ship and responses to previous posts. I will list them in order of least powerful to most powerful and it will be long.

For the comparisons of modern pirates to piracy in the Honorverse, you can't really compare them. Interplanetary distances are very large, while the distance a Somali pirate needs to travel to reach a freighter is really small. You have to take EVERYTHING with you in space. In a boat on Earth, light, heat and oxygen are all provided for free. With a portable desalination kit you have water as well from the ocean you are travelling on. Not so much in space.

For making a ship faster than it's civilian counterparts, see the following Pearls. Acceleration by ship mass. The accel table is pre-compensator improvements and should represent the tech available to pirates. Most freighters are in the multi-megaton range, so they will be quite slow. Even with mil-spec impellers a large warship is much slower than a smaller ship. Effective speed by hyper band. Military hypergenerators, more powerful Warshawski sails and internal compensators let you get to the higher hyperspace bands. Merchants stay in the delta bands or lower and warships range as high as the theta bands, with daring skippers bouncing off the iota wall.

Merchies offering fast service almost always use mil-spec hyperspace equipment rather than impellers for the greater cost savings vs speed as the difference of a few hundred gravities over the first few hours of flight in a week or more trip isn't as great as getting to the higher bands of hyperspace. Or having better particle shielding to have a higher top velocity once you accelerate there. The reason a pirate would want a higher accel, is to frustrate a patrol ships ability to bring you to arms before you get away into hyper. The faster your accel, the smaller the intercept basket for the patrol ship. Conversely, the faster your accel, the larger your intercept basket for catching prey.


Civilian ship with armed pinnace/LAC on board

The civilian ship can have a solid reputation, while the pinnace does the dirty work. The disadvantages are that the pinnace is short ranged and has to get to energy range to make effective the threat for a merchie to stop for boarding. While pinnaces have been mentioned as able to mount a boarding operation while a ship is underway, I would expect it is a tricky, dangerous operation only done by the most experienced assault troops. Rolling the ship to destroy the pinnace with the wedge, seems a viable counter tactic to me. If the pinnace wanders too far from the mothership, it risks being left behind.

While the loss of the expendable shock troops would be negligible, having the mothership identified would mean your reputation is now not so solid. If the pinnace is onboard the mothership for a customs inspection, you have to have a rational for having a military small craft on an unarmed civilian ship and would most likely need some kind of papers to make it 'legal'.

Using a LAC or LACs would mean a longer range to intercept a merchie, but would have the same problem of having the mothership id'd if caught. The LAC can outrun the patrol ship in normal space, but can not go to hyper. The merchie can go to hyper, but can't outrun anything. Even worse, there is no rational for having a having a warship on your freighter and I'm sure any system government would be upset at that. Forget trying to hide a ship that masses in the tens of thousands of tons in a hold that needs access to space for the LAC to leave the ship from any customs inspection more thorough than 'your manifest looks nice'.

Civilian ship with modifications for weapons/sensors

The Pearl Armed merchant ships within the Silesian Confederacy, covers that governments don't like armed ships in their space that they do not control. Here is the relevant textev on Pirate's Bane and Ambuscade as to why they were armed and allowed free rein in Silesa.

War of Honor, chapter 27 wrote:
"So, technically, Pirate's Bane and Ambuscade are auxiliary units of the Confederate Navy. Technically."
"Technically," Honor repeated, and he smiled. "And practically speaking?" she inquired.
"Practically speaking, the Confed Navy's official warrants are nothing but ways around the prohibition against armed merchantmen which are available to those with sufficiently well-placed government patrons. Everyone knows the auxiliaries will never be called upon in their naval capacity. For that matter, at least some of them are pirates themselves!" He seemed, she noted, to actually find that amusing, in a grim sort of way.

Similarly, Marianne, the armed Jessyk Combine freighter, was owned and operated by one of the large Solarian League interstellar corporations, so would be tolerated due to who owned the ship.

So, a ship with weapons will need a powerful patron to secure the warrants for openly carrying weapons without lots of hassles from the polities it visits. Since they are openly carrying weapons, even when they are allowed free passage, I'm sure they have extra scrutiny because of their armed status.

On the other hand, having the weapons off the books so to speak, would entail problems for customs inspections. You would need to conceal weapons hatches and conceal the weapons on the inside of the ship as well. Since most freighters are open space, with the necessary space going equipment out of the way of easy cargo handling, this may not be as easy to hide from a customs officer as you may think. It could be looked over, but a competent inspector doing a careful inspection could very well blow the operation wide open on the hidden weapons as they are not small and draw lots of power.

In either case, you are still a merchant ship which means slow. Your intercept basket will be small, meaning lots of prizes can slip past you and if you are spotted, running can be a problem. If you are using an existing design that is armed, you will be known to be armed by your EW signature and if you are openly carrying arms, your EW signature will be passed around and kept by various polities. If you are concealing your weapons, once you are outed, then pretending to be an innocent merchie is much harder. The advantage is that modifying a merchant ship is relatively cheap and easy as the Masadans did to the insystem ore freighter in Ashes of Victory.

Armed auxiliary ship

Cpt Bachfisch was able to pick up two auxiliary ships and rearm both of them for his private Q-ship squadron. Almost all will have military particle shielding and hyperdrives to keep up with the fleet, so those are bonuses. Having military impellers would be even better as it would open up your intercept basket, but not all support ships will need them, so it will be harder find one with mil-spec impellers.

You will still be a larger ship, so either way will have a lower accel than a smaller ship. Naval auxiliary ships will have known EW signatures, so trying to hide weapons completely will be harder if the ship you are using is known to normally carry weapons. Once again, warrants from some polity will help if you are openly armed.

building your own mil-spec ship ala PNS Sirius
The two following Pearls, Q-ships and Q-ships as convoy escorts/raiders have info for the above sections, but have info on purpose built Q-ships. One of which is;

Pearls of Weber, Q-ships as convoy escorts/raiders wrote:
...building a "military hull" Q-ship is going to be about as expensive as building a light or heavy cruiser of comparable tonnage {in all probability, David meant 'comparable combat capability' - Ed}. Quite probably more expensive.

Once you are getting to purpose built Q-ships, you are into the money range of warships. Not to mention, unless it is a new or unknown design, everyone will know you are a disguised warship by your EW signature. So playing innocent merchant is pretty threadbare. To be a pretend merchie you have to be big which lowers your accel as well.

Warship vs Civilian ship
I rate warships above even the best armed auxiliary ship as I like to keep to the KISS principle. A pirate ship is supposed to sneak in and capture ships for disposal of the cargo and ship. Adding in the additional headache of hiding the fact I'm a pirate from government officials into operations seems to be a needless complication to the pirate mission. Yes, warships cost more than civilian ships, but there are corrupt governments aplenty to get your warship from and depending on what you do with your 'civilian' ship, might even be the same or less price!

Frigate
Frigates are fast, so you have the ability to run away or run down prey over a larger intercept basket. But frigates have less weapons and endurance than destroyers and were even not used for show the flag operations except by the poorest of navies. Less crew space means less ability for prize crews. Likely to lose vs any patrol ship, including a LAC, it is forced to fight while running. See these Pearls for more info. Frigates vs. LACs...again! and Return of the frigate as a combat-effective unit. Yes, I know they both focus on navies and frigates, but the above info on frigates being small, low endurance platforms. While the FF will work well as a pirate, it is not my ideal pirate ship.

Destroyer
Fast, have a longer endurance than a frigate, and a larger crew for prizes. Able to fight off LACs and FF that stumble across it. While the DD will work well as a pirate, it is not my ideal pirate ship.

Light Cruiser
Has a crew big enough for prizes and endurance for long patrols. Enough weapons to fight off LACs and give DD's pause. Fast enough to run from most anything else. While more expensive than a FF/DD, the endurance and crew size more than offset that. A cheaper fleet unit and most navies seem to be able to build ships the size of CL as the Grayson flagship in The Honor of the Queen was a CL.

So there should be plenty of them in the galaxy to be had on the black market. Yes, almost all of them will be ancient compared to the current RMN, but they don't need to be new to capture merchies. A pirate doesn't want to fight anyone anyways, so running is better than fighting. A CL still is better in a fight than a FF/DD, so I would prefer a CL as a pirate in case you end up in a running fight from a patrol ship.

Heavy Crusier/Battlecruiser
Large crews for prizes, great endurance, ability to fight off most escorts and patrol ships make these great pirate ships. Battlecruisers are considered capital ships, so will draw way more scrutiny than other pirate ships once they are discovered. (Ala, sink the Bismark) They are also slower than DD/CL and cost more to operate, so not my ideal for a pirate ship.

Kizarvexis wrote:This thread is about the Ideal Pirate ship. While all kinds of pirate ship can work, here are my full thoughts of the Ideal Pirate ship and responses to previous posts. I will list them in order of least powerful to most powerful and it will be long.
[snipped a lot of good analysis]

I just wanted to make the point that with access to a reasonable competent yard it shouldn't be too hard to modify ships of the FF - CL size range to trade off weapons against endurance. With little to no armor to contend with it's much easier to pull tubes, beams, or shrink magazine to make additional room for crew, stores, and fuel.

So even with ex-military surplus ships a pirate can likely often trade off their desire for cruising endurance against their desire to be able to fight their way out. So they wouldn't always have to go to a bigger ship to get better endurance; as long as they didn't have designs to fight off warships of a real navy (or at least not ones of similar displacement)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:This thread is about the Ideal Pirate ship. While all kinds of pirate ship can work, here are my full thoughts of the Ideal Pirate ship and responses to previous posts. I will list them in order of least powerful to most powerful and it will be long.
[snipped a lot of good analysis]

I just wanted to make the point that with access to a reasonable competent yard it shouldn't be too hard to modify ships of the FF - CL size range to trade off weapons against endurance. With little to no armor to contend with it's much easier to pull tubes, beams, or shrink magazine to make additional room for crew, stores, and fuel.

So even with ex-military surplus ships a pirate can likely often trade off their desire for cruising endurance against their desire to be able to fight their way out. So they wouldn't always have to go to a bigger ship to get better endurance; as long as they didn't have designs to fight off warships of a real navy (or at least not ones of similar displacement)

But the CL gives you the endurance AND weapons to overpower FF/LACs or hold off DDs while you run. Sometimes you will need to fight as you run because fate will give you no choice. Stripping a DD for endurance means you may be taken by a FF or LAC and a FF has so few weapons that stripping it will mean you would be effectively unarmed vs a patrol ship. Not to mention pirates aren't known for their maintenance, so a CL suite of weapons give you a buffer to keep at least some weapons operational in each arc.

A CL also requires a much larger pool of crew then an FF or DD and can cover roughly the same amount of territory alone at a single time. Cl's sensor range is probably better but not overwhelming do IMO.

If you are creating a single ship force this isn't as much of an issue. If you are creating a pirate fleet though you can get more FFs or DDs out for the same resources and thus cover a wider territory thus increasing your chances of at least some of your ships finding prey.