Ideal Pirate Ship Configeration And Size? ...

I find myself in strong agreement with kzt and relax ( ). Even if you had a BC with, say, 50% crew, you'd still have around 1,000 personnel, all of whom have to be paid, most of whom would have to be trained, and all of whom would be thinking that if there were fewer crew, they would get paid more--especailly if they were in charge (remember, pirates are neither the smartest or the most moral of folks). So I think larger ships, while more survivalbe, are also more costly and make for smaller shares of the loot....and would also tend to make the middle-men they deal with nervous.

You need a ship that can overtake, have enough armament to intimidate a merchie (not much), and can run if necessary from an ambush. It has to have adequate crew for capturing and manning taken merchants, but not too large so that the shares are appropriately large for the risk.

To me, an LC is the 'dream' ship for a pirate, but a DD is probably more likely. Frigates may be a bit too small for the necessary prize crews and still maintain the ship.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Hutch wrote:You need a ship that can overtake, have enough armament to intimidate a merchie (not much), and can run if necessary from an ambush. It has to have adequate crew for capturing and manning taken merchants, but not too large so that the shares are appropriately large for the risk.

To me, an LC is the 'dream' ship for a pirate, but a DD is probably more likely. Frigates may be a bit too small for the necessary prize crews and still maintain the ship.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

For me, a big destroyer or an under-gunned light cruiser would be ideal --- fast 2 or 3 missile tubes are sufficient to overwhelm a LAC and sending out warning shots, lots of space for drones and other recon/sensors, lots of space for bunkerage and beans, space for a big crew. The best defense against an escort is to avoid that escort, so good sensors and probably recon drones are a must.

kzt wrote: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.

Where in SVW do you see this?

saber964 wrote:Pirates Bane was a general collier not a missile collier. probable the honorverse version of an AFS.

The distinction between Pirate's Bane (and her sister ship, whose name escapes me ATM) is moot -- Pirates Bane was described as "Essentially a privately owned Q-Ship."

If I was to go into serious piracy, I'd want a Q-ship like Pirate's Bane. HMAMC Wayfarer would be nice, but had too much cargo space given over to a military sized crew of thousands, vs Pirate's Bane's twenty to forty (IIRC) with room for high value cargo and a prize crew or two.

Of course, the Millenium Falcon would be (was?) a decent pirate ship.

When I was thinking BCs, I was thinking something big enough to give convoy escorts and system defense forces pause...

You guys have valid points about crew size, etc. But still, there is still something to be said for cruising range, additional time of station and survivability. The answer to larger crews and less payout might be to take more merchis.

The other idea that's come up here that I like is Harold's about usng Q Ships so you would need smaller crews and still be able to carry more crew for prizes.

Don

n7axw wrote:When I was thinking BCs, I was thinking something big enough to give convoy escorts and system defense forces pause...

You guys have valid points about crew size, etc. But still, there is still something to be said for cruising range, additional time of station and survivability. The answer to larger crews and less payout might be to take more merchis.

The other idea that's come up here that I like is Harold's about usng Q Ships so you would need smaller crews and still be able to carry more crew for prizes.

Don

Q ships run slightly more crew than the average merchy, gotta maintain the guns. And the Q-ships captains all seem to be current or ex-navy captains who captain more like a naval ship.

I'm a fan of larger, CA to BC hulls, because you can run it with a bare minimum "naval" types, who actually operate the pirate cruiser, and you've got more room for the marine/boarders. Once you've boarded, and if the merchy didn't get the crew off your marines can bully them to follow your instructions.

More marines = less time spent waiting for prize crews to get back to a pickup point = more income because you've snapped more merchies before going into the "hurry up and wait for crew to come back" phase.

But to do that, you need a ship large enough to hold all those boarders, mostly marines but some naval types who can operate ships. And your ship needs to be larger to have the bunkerage to go that extended time between tanking up. Which is in the description of battlecruisers.

Battlecruisers' roles centered primarily on raiding and serving as a heavy screening unit for other capital ships. Battlecruisers were ideal for commerce raiding since it compelled the enemy to deploy a disproportionate number of lighter weight cruisers to defend against the raids.

n7axw wrote:When I was thinking BCs, I was thinking something big enough to give convoy escorts and system defense forces pause...

You guys have valid points about crew size, etc. But still, there is still something to be said for cruising range, additional time of station and survivability. The answer to larger crews and less payout might be to take more merchis.

Any pirate with military grade compensators will catch any merchant, assuming time and vectors that aren't grossly unfavorable. So your take is limited by the merchies you can find, not your size. So, taking more merchies isn't going to be anything a BC is directly better able to do. Indirectly, it can take merchies against better defenses, so it could work in a tougher "market" than the smaller ships. If it turns out there's enough of that market, a BC could do as well or better in it than a FG/DD/CL in a weaker one. I have to question that assumption though: how many spots to take merchies are there that a BC can handle with ease that would give a smaller pirate ship pause, and how many merchies are there to catch there that you can't catch somewhere easier? Enough, in both cases, to cover far higher operating and crew costs?

The other idea that's come up here that I like is Harold's about usng Q Ships so you would need smaller crews and still be able to carry more crew for prizes.

Don

But you'd have a hard time running down some merchies and an impossible time evading defenders. If you can build the thing to look like a freighter, even under inspection, but move liek a warship, you're set - but that sort of custom build is going to require exactly that dream pirate starting capital.

Somtaaw wrote:

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.

I think you may have missed the point I was trying to make, probably because I didn't emphasize it or explain it (clearly) enough.

The point I was trying to make was that the pirates operating around Refuge had modern heavy cruisers solely because Manpower(fronting for Mesa(fronting for the Mesan Alignment) recruited the pirates and provided the ships.

No ordinary pirate would have been able to get such modern, powerful ships on their own. They simply would not have been able raise the money to acquire such ships (either by outright purchase, or somehow bribing officials to look the other way while they take it).

The only "pirates" we have seen operating relatively modern, powerful ships (anything heavier than a destroyer or light cruiser) were renegade forces that initially acquired therm legally, with other backers that provided the money necessary to buy the ships and the additional money necessary to keep the ships running. Examples:

1) Warneke's privateer squadron--Chalice Cluster, Silesian Confederacy)
2) Peoples Navy in Exile--(State Security)

So, the question is, what would make a good pirate ship, for an ambitious and well-funded would-be pirate. The answer is, the same kind of ships that are being used to hunt pirates.

They have the same functional requirements. Speed, stealth, modest magazines, boarding crews, and low cost. Most pirates make do with less, because they either can't afford the money or manpower for better, or because they are trying to do it as cheaply as possible. But if you were ambitious you would want something pretty similar to the pirate hunters.

SWM wrote:So, the question is, what would make a good pirate ship, for an ambitious and well-funded would-be pirate. The answer is, the same kind of ships that are being used to hunt pirates.

They have the same functional requirements. Speed, stealth, modest magazines, boarding crews, and low cost. Most pirates make do with less, because they either can't afford the money or manpower for better, or because they are trying to do it as cheaply as possible. But if you were ambitious you would want something pretty similar to the pirate hunters.

Largely. The pirates have tighter budgets and need to capture merchants, sometimes against the will of a nearby warship. The warships have backers for their whole operation, not just part of it, and can capture or destroy pirates, definitely against the will of the pirate. So the pirate needs less firepower, defenses only in case they come against a warship, and prize crews.

All a pirate needs is to be able to catch and crew merchies and evade warships. Being able to fight a warship is a luxury, or a ticket into a richer market, but for a price. The warship needs to have the defenses (and firepower, speeds, sensors, etc. - but the defenses are the thing that sticks out most) to handle, easily, the toughest pirates they can expect to come against often. (Exceptional pirates you can accept handling with trouble, with help, or by punting them to a larger force.)

Oh, and the warship is likely to be built so that it is adequate against other warships too, just so it's not a strict pirate-hunter, unless it can be deployed where that's all the use you will ever have for it and can count on always having that use for it. (It is possible no current Honorverse navy has that niche to fill, though the Silesian Confederacy navy certainly would have. Still, I suppose the Avalon CL may be able to serve that for the RMN for a long time after it is obsolete against other warships.)