Ideal Pirate Ship Configeration And Size? ...

Relax wrote:Pirates... BC's???

Are you kidding me? This is a BUSINESS.

Pirates are pirates and doing piraty things because they are greedy and lazy. Therefore, bare minimum platform that has sensors, overtake acceleration, and can fire a missile or two. Frigates/DD.

Warlords, with an ever increasing pride and ego, who think THEY are the masters and you plebes should kow-tow and kiss their feet, will buy CL/CA's/BC's to conquer. Warnecekes of this universe. Warlords are more than willing to partake in thievery, but not at the possible expense of their empire building.

One is not the other.

Pirates that were in Refuge were operating with Battlecruisers. Silesian pirates, before Manticore and Anderman carved it up, and divvied it out, had sweetheart deals with local governors. Those sweetheart deals mean a pirate was likely only ever going a few systems away from where they could re-fuel, re-arm, pick up any crew that had flown captured prizes to be sold. This drastically reduces their fuel storage needs, which means they don't need such a large hull, which meant they could get away with using light cruisers or frigates.


A pirate spends about as much time, loafing around a solar system, as a naval ship would. So to pirate, you not only need large crews, but you need fuel storage space. And battlecruisers really are the best blend of fuel storage, speed, firepower, and crew capacity.


That is most likely one of the reasons Manticore has long favoured battlecruisers. Because they spent most of their time sending their navy out, to protect their commerce (again, a battlecruiser role), but those ships spent extended time away from the fleet train.

A humble pinnace is perfectly adequate for any starter pirate. It can disappear into the shuttle bay or cargo holds of the first freighter to be hijacked. Essentially the equivalent of modern pirates using small motorboats to attack freighters.

The only issue is the lack of hyper capability, which means the pirate pinnace would have to keep hold of at least one of their prizes for transport. Pirate Q-carriers.

Any old decommissioned warship will do the job, whether it's an ex-SLN BC or a 60,000 ton frigate from a tech base equivalent to pre-alliance Grayson. The smaller, the better, as operating expenses will be lower and pirates aren't in the business of fighting warships anyway, though there are other considerations such as reliability, availability of spare parts and ammunition.

Until recently, a Silesian light cruiser probably would be ideal. Solarian built or licensed destroyers/cruisers certainly would be the most desirable, but any pirate bidding for those are probably out of their league competing with verge governments.

munroburton wrote:A humble pinnace is perfectly adequate for any starter pirate. It can disappear into the shuttle bay or cargo holds of the first freighter to be hijacked. Essentially the equivalent of modern pirates using small motorboats to attack freighters.

The only issue is the lack of hyper capability, which means the pirate pinnace would have to keep hold of at least one of their prizes for transport. Pirate Q-carriers.

Any old decommissioned warship will do the job, whether it's an ex-SLN BC or a 60,000 ton frigate from a tech base equivalent to pre-alliance Grayson. The smaller, the better, as operating expenses will be lower and pirates aren't in the business of fighting warships anyway, though there are other considerations such as reliability, availability of spare parts and ammunition.

Until recently, a Silesian light cruiser probably would be ideal. Solarian built or licensed destroyers/cruisers certainly would be the most desirable, but any pirate bidding for those are probably out of their league competing with verge governments.

The only problem with pinnaces, they can't hold enough consumables (ie air) to stay on station long enough.

Textev would be HH4, Field of Dishonor. When Ramirez wanted to schedule his "training exercise" on Gryphon, and he dropped his Marines on top of Summervale.

Unfortunately, they couldn't get to Gryphon from Hephaestus . The components of the Manticore Binary System were just past periastron, but the G0 and G2 companion stars were still almost eleven light-hours apart. Nike 's pinnaces would have required two and a half Manticoran days to make the trip, which was twice their maximum life-support endurance with full troop loads.

ok, a more thorough check of the wiki, I found a reference to pinnaces

Pinnace
A pinnace was a type of shuttle with a capacity for about 100 personnel. Is normally armed, able to form a wedge, and was capable of high acceleration.

So you'd need a minimum of a frigate, and even that's likely to be breathing soup pretty quickly.

I'd want something with enough weapons to give a podunk system defense force ship pause but still small enough to be able to run if a real navy's warship happened along.

Bunkerage and consumables storage size would be a consideration as well. I'd want as long a set of legs as I could get along with the ability to store a good bit of loot and/or food, water and air.

I figure a DD or, maybe, a light cruiser if the hunting's good. A cruiser wouldn't be a bad idea if you can keep that big a crew happy. It would give you better legs and longer duration but that's getting too big for my tastes. I wouldn't want to go heavy cruiser, much less BC or higher. They have too much to keep maintained and require too many mouths to feed. That much firepower also tends to draw unwanted attention from real navies.

Maybe even cut the crew compliment down a little on the bigger ships- pirates don't need to be able to fight both sides of the ship at once all the time so call it 75% what a navy would consider required gun crew strength- call it a 'side and a half' worth of gun crews. That gives you spare gunners in case of injury, enough to get the ball rolling if you suddenly find yourself needing both broadsides and plenty of bodies for damage control and boarding parties. Watch crews could be trimmed a bit as well. Pirates don't have to run things 'Bristol fashion' or even to normal civilian standards.

Piracy is all about the money. The bigger the crew is, the smaller the shares are.

I wonder why anyone would set out to be a pirate from scratch anyway?

Different if you are a Haven State Sec BC on the run and need to get some consumables and cash in a hurry.

But in a universe with virtually unlimited energy, physical resources, and lots of unsettled planets it would be more profitable in the long run (if you could afford a ship initially anyway), to use it to colonise one. No worries then about pesky Manty cruisers and airlocks.

Somtaaw wrote:

Relax wrote:Pirates... BC's???

Are you kidding me? This is a BUSINESS.

Pirates are pirates and doing piraty things because they are greedy and lazy. Therefore, bare minimum platform that has sensors, overtake acceleration, and can fire a missile or two. Frigates/DD.

Warlords, with an ever increasing pride and ego, who think THEY are the masters and you plebes should kow-tow and kiss their feet, will buy CL/CA's/BC's to conquer. Warnecekes of this universe. Warlords are more than willing to partake in thievery, but not at the possible expense of their empire building.

One is not the other.

Pirates that were in Refuge were operating with Battlecruisers. Silesian pirates, before Manticore and Anderman carved it up, and divvied it out, had sweetheart deals with local governors. Those sweetheart deals mean a pirate was likely only ever going a few systems away from where they could re-fuel, re-arm, pick up any crew that had flown captured prizes to be sold. This drastically reduces their fuel storage needs, which means they don't need such a large hull, which meant they could get away with using light cruisers or frigates.


A pirate spends about as much time, loafing around a solar system, as a naval ship would. So to pirate, you not only need large crews, but you need fuel storage space. And battlecruisers really are the best blend of fuel storage, speed, firepower, and crew capacity.


That is most likely one of the reasons Manticore has long favoured battlecruisers. Because they spent most of their time sending their navy out, to protect their commerce (again, a battlecruiser role), but those ships spent extended time away from the fleet train.

The "pirates" operating in Refuge were atypical in that they had modern heavy cruisers--SLN Gladiator-class heavy cruisers. And they only had them because Manpower(fronting for Mesa(fronting for the Mesan Alignment)) gave the "pirates" the heavy cruisers for the mission that Manpower(fronting for Mesa(fronting for the Mesan Alignment)) wanted them to carry out in the area around Verdant Vista (in the short story The Service of the Sword, in the anthology The Service of the Sword, prior to Crown of Slaves). Unfortunately for the "pirates" in question, they had the misfortune to run into Captain(jg) Michael Oversteega\en in HMS Gauntlet first.

"Pirates" is in quotes because although the crews of the ships operating around Refuge had actually been pirates, they were operating under the control of Manpower(fronting for Mesa(fronting for the Mesan Alignment)). Which is not typical for pirates. Under the laws of war in the Honorvese, the crews would still be considered pirates by the RMN--or worse, if the Mesan connection became known to the RMN--the crews would be considered slavers, subject to the Cherwell Convention.

jtg452 wrote:I'd want something with enough weapons to give a podunk system defense force ship pause but still small enough to be able to run if a real navy's warship happened along.

Bunkerage and consumables storage size would be a consideration as well. I'd want as long a set of legs as I could get along with the ability to store a good bit of loot and/or food, water and air.

I figure a DD or, maybe, a light cruiser if the hunting's good. A cruiser wouldn't be a bad idea if you can keep that big a crew happy. It would give you better legs and longer duration but that's getting too big for my tastes. I wouldn't want to go heavy cruiser, much less BC or higher. They have too much to keep maintained and require too many mouths to feed. That much firepower also tends to draw unwanted attention from real navies.

Maybe even cut the crew compliment down a little on the bigger ships- pirates don't need to be able to fight both sides of the ship at once all the time so call it 75% what a navy would consider required gun crew strength- call it a 'side and a half' worth of gun crews. That gives you spare gunners in case of injury, enough to get the ball rolling if you suddenly find yourself needing both broadsides and plenty of bodies for damage control and boarding parties. Watch crews could be trimmed a bit as well. Pirates don't have to run things 'Bristol fashion' or even to normal civilian standards.

Piracy is all about the money. The bigger the crew is, the smaller the shares are.

You make some great points, however I'd disagree on the size. Even a podunk, nowhere system would have LACs, and we've seen a few (mostly terminus systems) that also have light cruisers for system defense. To be big enough to give them pause would take a heavy cruiser to truly make them wary of engaging (assuming a level tech field, pre-Buttercup days)

For watch crews, and "less than navy" levels of gun crews, also agreed this has been proven over and over. Warner Caslet in Flag in Exile captured a CL with his own CL, and they only had a few guns crewed, most of their crew were in shirt-sleeves, not skinsuited.

But that can also be applied to battlecruisers, if you'll recall in Cerberus, Warner Caslet figured you could cut a Warlord-class crew by about 40% before you impaired combat capability (full on, navy warship level). So a pirate crew could go even higher and cut by about 60% of the crew needed to actually operate the battlecruiser. Now granted, they'd probably put some crew back in, the pirate version of marines for their boarding parties and such, but they don't have to use all the space they have available. And it does mean, on the rare occasion they may work in conjunction (PNE for example when they were called in to bomb Torch), they'd have the extra room to bring more boarders, rather than being required to bring a whole extra ship (way more mouths to pay off, rather than just paying a few marine types)

Vince wrote:
The "pirates" operating in Refuge were atypical in that they had modern heavy cruisers--SLN Gladiator-class heavy cruisers. And they only had them because Manpower(fronting for Mesa(fronting for the Mesan Alignment)) gave the "pirates" the heavy cruisers for the mission that Manpower(fronting for Mesa(fronting for the Mesan Alignment)) wanted them to carry out in the area around Verdant Vista (in the short story The Service of the Sword, in the anthology The Service of the Sword, prior to Crown of Slaves). Unfortunately for the "pirates" in question, they had the misfortune to run into Captain(jg) Michael Oversteega\en in HMS Gauntlet first.

"Pirates" is in quotes because although the crews of the ships operating around Refuge had actually been pirates, they were operating under the control of Manpower(fronting for Mesa(fronting for the Mesan Alignment)). Which is not typical for pirates. Under the laws of war in the Honorvese, the crews would still be considered pirates by the RMN--or worse, if the Mesan connection became known to the RMN--the crews would be considered slavers, subject to the Cherwell Convention.

that is true, but they were operating in the same general principal of pirates. They knocked off a few freighters, and sent them to fences, recovering the prize crews from time to time. On the same topic, a number of privateers in Silesia, who had letters of marque authorizing them, would still act as pirates, so a pirate is a pirate whether they're 100% freelance, or being subsidized by a nation or corporation.

It's obvious, from tSVW, that you can FIGHT a ship with a dozen crew. The problem is keeping it running and repairing damage if you take any.

So you don't need the mount crews, you just accept that if you lose fire control central you are screwed, and if the mount loses connectivity it is out of action. You need a few guys who can pull maint on the weapons to keep a reasonable number working.

As a pirate you are not planning of fighting ANYONE. Certainly not anyone who you think can actually inflict significant damage. So damage control repairs of anything other then drive components would be low on my list of things I'd want to optimize for.

Somtaaw wrote:

jtg452 wrote:I'd want something with enough weapons to give a podunk system defense force ship pause but still small enough to be able to run if a real navy's warship happened along.

Bunkerage and consumables storage size would be a consideration as well. I'd want as long a set of legs as I could get along with the ability to store a good bit of loot and/or food, water and air.

I figure a DD or, maybe, a light cruiser if the hunting's good. A cruiser wouldn't be a bad idea if you can keep that big a crew happy. It would give you better legs and longer duration but that's getting too big for my tastes. I wouldn't want to go heavy cruiser, much less BC or higher. They have too much to keep maintained and require too many mouths to feed. That much firepower also tends to draw unwanted attention from real navies.

Maybe even cut the crew compliment down a little on the bigger ships- pirates don't need to be able to fight both sides of the ship at once all the time so call it 75% what a navy would consider required gun crew strength- call it a 'side and a half' worth of gun crews. That gives you spare gunners in case of injury, enough to get the ball rolling if you suddenly find yourself needing both broadsides and plenty of bodies for damage control and boarding parties. Watch crews could be trimmed a bit as well. Pirates don't have to run things 'Bristol fashion' or even to normal civilian standards.

Piracy is all about the money. The bigger the crew is, the smaller the shares are.

You make some great points, however I'd disagree on the size. Even a podunk, nowhere system would have LACs, and we've seen a few (mostly terminus systems) that also have light cruisers for system defense. To be big enough to give them pause would take a heavy cruiser to truly make them wary of engaging (assuming a level tech field, pre-Buttercup days)

Pirates have an easier solution to dealing with that kind of defense than being able to out-fight it: be a pirate somewhere else. You've got a hyperdrive, go use it and find a combination of (a) enough traffic to keep you in business, and (b) trivial defenses relative to your combat and evasion capability. Move again when those are no longer jointly satisfied in this location. The larger and more powerful the ship to make satisfying (b) easy, the harder it is to cover expenses and satisfy (a).

Ideally, you'd want lots of speed, lots of stealth, just barely any firepower, and plenty sensors, bunkerage, and crew (to spare, for prizes and boarding parties). No warship jointly satisfies all that. Frigates probably come closer than anything else does, but for the small crews. Destroyers, light cruisers, these will have firepower in excess of your needs and (critically) expenses in excess of your ideal, but they may be had from navies and as warships go they may be your best available options. CA's, BC's - you would need really rich pickings (that you couldn't take against relevant defenses with a smaller ship) or a patron to soften your expenses massively to make these work well.

Frontier Fleet is always overstretched. It's going to be so much worse in coming months and years with the Verge calling its bluff simultaneously, with the Verge representation including the whole RMN and RHN now. League traffic isn't getting smaller (although much of it may be Manticoran smugglers rather than Manticorans operating with League permission), and almost all League systems have token or less SDF's. These will be the golden days of piracy there, even as they have become terrible in Silesia. Many of those pirates, as things become crazier, will also work as mercenaries and privateers. If you have a larger ship, you'll slide along a spectrum from pirate to warlord, but there won't be sharp lines between them.

I do think the march of technology, with fast, effective LAC's, FTL communications, and system defense missile pods with 4 stage MDM's and partial or complete FTL fire control, will make for a bad time for pirates. More and more systems will have effective control out to the hyperlimit, at least along some protected corridors. But the strategic and political conditions are going to be better than they have been in centuries for a couple decades to compensate.