Ideal Pirate Ship Configeration And Size? ...

Weird Harold wrote:

munroburton wrote:I doubt a frigate could carry enough spare bodies to capture ten prizes per cruise - more like only two or three. It's the Marine capacity that really makes the difference between a frigate and a light cruiser from a piratical viewpoint.

If space for hostages and prize crew is your primary concern, then an Atlas-class passenger liner is your ideal pirate ship:

Enough arms to take out an unsuspecting convoy escort, enough defenses to survive a suspicious convoy escort, and space/life support for about a SLN SD's worth of extra people.



An armed merchant ship like Pirate's Bane and Ambuscade (or purpose built q-ship like PRN Sirius) provides the same sorts of advantages without the overkill and maintenance requirements of a dedicated Warship. They also provide the ability to masquerade as a legitimate cargo carrier to gather information or fill in the gaps when the pirate business is slow.

A Pirate ships needs to be able to hide-in-plain-sight without raising suspicions about a privately owned warship. All of the advocates of warships are arguing for a Privateer or commerce raiding Rebel "Navy" more than they're arguing for an ideal pirate ship.

From an Economic side, the Atlas class is a mistake - it had a crew the size of a CA and cost a fortune to run - it only made money when it was nearly full of wealthy passengers. There was a reason Hauptman built only 2 of them - their mil spec parts made them expensive to keep up. Remember mil spec means military levels (and costs) of maintenance. I wouldn't say an Atlas costs as much to run as a BC, but surely as much as a CA if not more.

Even the Pirate's Bane and Ambuscade were expensive to run - Bachfitch charged a premium to haul cargo and probably needed that premium to cover the larger crew and maintenance costs - being armed as he was, he couldn't afford to charge normal rates. With Silensia becoming a safer place, I would bet he may be forced to close up shop or move on to more dangerous pastures.

Theemile wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:If space for hostages and prize crew is your primary concern, then an Atlas-class passenger liner is your ideal pirate ship:

From an Economic side, the Atlas class is a mistake ...

Sarcasm doesn't work well in text, apparently.

The point about Pirate's Bane is that it appeared to casual observers as just another merchant ship, which a dedicated warship-type Pirate cannot do.

Weird Harold wrote:A Pirate ships needs to be able to hide-in-plain-sight without raising suspicions about a privately owned warship. All of the advocates of warships are arguing for a Privateer or commerce raiding Rebel "Navy" more than they're arguing for an ideal pirate ship.

It's not quite that extreme. An apparent warship can masquerade, after all, as a warship, most of which aren't pirates. Beyond that, with Honorverse stealth and electronic warfare misdirection, it can look like a freighter up to fairly close inspection. Not as close as a freighter-form hull, of course, but often more than close enough.

Being able to look just like a freighter would be an advantage to a pirate, a substantial one. But there are costs to it. Doing without hammerheads is going to help a whole lot looking harmless, and you can still pack in enough ability to be harmful (for pirate purposes) without them.

The tubbier general hull form of a freighter is going to impose a serious acceleration penalty, quite likely more than you should be eager to pay unless the whole piracy scenario for you is to look totally innocent, seize prey when no one is looking, and never, ever have to worry much about running things down or running away. It's an option, but it'd make me nervous.

Military grade impellers may be another thing that is very hard to hide and very useful to have. Sirius had to run them out for use, so apparently building them for use without being obvious that they are military grade is not easy, if it is possible at all. Sirius compromised that way, with nodes they could "hide" out of use. That's one option. Others are doing without them and being slow - again, good for but almost necessitates the never-show-your-fangs piracy mode - or having them and trying by other means to conceal your piratical nature.

Pretending to be a high-speed, priority transport may be an option consistent with vital pirate gear and the appearance of harmlessness, but slinking slowly about star systems like a pirate will make that act hard to buy.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping self---
Disagreement on all counts. The upgrades would have to come out of my portion, because I'm the ship owner, otherwise, like you said small pay. But out of all the gazillion people in the Honorverse, with a good profit margin and "profit sharing", I think I could reasonably come up with the crew(s) I needed to keep a nice operation jumping around the galaxy doing ship-stealing things, and still develop a reputation that the "human animals and predators of the galaxy need not apply", just the sneaks and thieves. No harsh discipline required if everyone is on the same page, easier to manage, and keeps my arse from getting dropped out of an airlock without a space suit if HHA and company (well, her lower ranking minions now that she's all fleet admiral and everything) catches me in the act.

Somehow having a reputation of being a pirate, even a somewhat less brutal one, does not sound like a good idea.

Neither does reinvesting my share of the loot. Everyday I spend pirating I roll the dice getting caught. No matter how good my pirate ship is, if I am in the wrong place at the wrong time and get caught in the act by a proper warship I am almost certainly toast. So if I invest money I am increasing the time I need to pirate it back, by which I increase the chances that I get caught, but I do NOT increase the chances that I can salvage the situation if I am caught. Therefore if my goal is to make X credits profit an get out of the game investing beyond the bare necessities, unless that investment enables me to capture more ships per time, of being a pirate is counterproductive.

Same goes for trying to obtain a quality crew. First of all I have to do a lot of outreach. Which means I run the risk to run into law enforcement or some psychopath, who believes in the Klingon method of promotion or any number of risk I run trying to recruit for my illegal enterprise. Second I have to invest time and money in doing that outreach. Both should be better directed at growing my retirement fund. Third the return of investment of having a better crew is small. An bad crew should be just as good in MOST cases in taking a slow unarmed freighter as a good crew. Nor is the best pirate crew in the galaxy good enough to outfight the regular navy. So why bother having them?

I mean look at what today's pirate are using an old small wooden boat with a speed boat motor, a rusty AK-47, a starving fisherman and some ancient freighter to use as a mother ship.

Weird Harold wrote:

munroburton wrote:I doubt a frigate could carry enough spare bodies to capture ten prizes per cruise - more like only two or three. It's the Marine capacity that really makes the difference between a frigate and a light cruiser from a piratical viewpoint.

If space for hostages and prize crew is your primary concern, then an Atlas-class passenger liner is your ideal pirate ship:

Enough arms to take out an unsuspecting convoy escort, enough defenses to survive a suspicious convoy escort, and space/life support for about a SLN SD's worth of extra people.



An armed merchant ship like Pirate's Bane and Ambuscade (or purpose built q-ship like PRN Sirius) provides the same sorts of advantages without the overkill and maintenance requirements of a dedicated Warship. They also provide the ability to masquerade as a legitimate cargo carrier to gather information or fill in the gaps when the pirate business is slow.

A Pirate ships needs to be able to hide-in-plain-sight without raising suspicions about a privately owned warship. All of the advocates of warships are arguing for a Privateer or commerce raiding Rebel "Navy" more than they're arguing for an ideal pirate ship.

Yeah, I agree on all counts here. Add into that the Atlas would have the legs to run if she needed to.

Don

A Q Ship as a pirate, now that's just nasty enough to get my piratical juices a-flowing even more than a CA-. We've read that some of the freighters had big enough bays to stow a destroyer, and the Haile Sowe (not a real big freighter) brought FF's to the party in Cauldron. Seems like the Q ship offers a lot of advantages because instead of prize crews, you just steal the cargo(s), disable the target's impellers and com systems long enough to get the heck out of dodge.

Agreement with some points about how much loot to spend on upgrades, but the point of the upgrades isn't to go toe to toe with warships -- it's to not get caught by them in the first place. Ergo no slaves, crew captures and ransoms, and no brutality. Heck, part of the time you could even play "honest merchie" as long as you're not staying in the same neck of a quadrant very long following some pirate adventures.

The point about hiring better crew has to do with "smart money", would you rather have a larger crew of thugs or a smaller, better paid, and more loyal crew a la Rozak's bunch. You might just survive long enough to do the outlaw thing for a couple decades and then give the ship up to someone else and retire to a system far far away with your own personal idea of 150 more years of whatever for fun. Live like a king in Patagonia, as the 3rd Dread Pirate Roberts* might say.

*honorverse fan yes, but a Dad whose kids, alas like that movie by Rob Reiner better...

SharkHunter wrote:A Q Ship as a pirate, now that's just nasty enough to get my piratical juices a-flowing even more than a CA-. We've read that some of the freighters had big enough bays to stow a destroyer, and the Haile Sowe (not a real big freighter) brought FF's to the party in Cauldron. Seems like the Q ship offers a lot of advantages because instead of prize crews, you just steal the cargo(s), disable the target's impellers and com systems long enough to get the heck out of dodge.

The flip side of that is that transfering cargo takes a while; so you're either hanging around the system where you captured the ship or else you need a prize crew for long enough to remove both of you to empty space to spend time moving cargo (instead of hunting your next victim)

Also, the captured freighter is worth quite a lot on its own; even disposed of through a fence. So with your approach you've got to trade off the reduced need for prize crews against the additional time it takes to transfer all the cargo and the loss of income from abandoning the captured ships rather than selling them. (Plus even a big Q-ship can only hold one or two prizes worth of cargo (maybe 3 if you ditch low value-to-volume material)

Jonathan_S wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:A Q Ship as a pirate, now that's just nasty enough to get my piratical juices a-flowing even more than a CA-. We've read that some of the freighters had big enough bays to stow a destroyer, and the Haile Sowe (not a real big freighter) brought FF's to the party in Cauldron. Seems like the Q ship offers a lot of advantages because instead of prize crews, you just steal the cargo(s), disable the target's impellers and com systems long enough to get the heck out of dodge.

The flip side of that is that transfering cargo takes a while; so you're either hanging around the system where you captured the ship or else you need a prize crew for long enough to remove both of you to empty space to spend time moving cargo (instead of hunting your next victim)

Also, the captured freighter is worth quite a lot on its own; even disposed of through a fence. So with your approach you've got to trade off the reduced need for prize crews against the additional time it takes to transfer all the cargo and the loss of income from abandoning the captured ships rather than selling them. (Plus even a big Q-ship can only hold one or two prizes worth of cargo (maybe 3 if you ditch low value-to-volume material)

Nah. You use your frigates to mess with the tramp freighter you're stealing from, show up and offer to deliver their cargo on time (q ships are fast...), deliver it, take the up charge, rescue reward, and ske-daddle!! Meet up with your frigate commanders at Cosmos v. Planet whatever for steaks and beer. But if you find a slave ship, you take all the slaves off safely, take any other cargo, space the slavers, and do the right thing. I do want to retire with a somewhat clear conscience, you know.... I might not make a very good nasty pirate, but I'd be rich!

Imagine a q-ship with a half dozen LACs tractored against the hull... even old style ones. Wouldn't that be nasty!

Don

n7axw wrote:Imagine a q-ship with a half dozen LACs tractored against the hull... even old style ones. Wouldn't that be nasty!

Don

Add a few SD grazers into the mix.
Oh, that's right, HMAC Wayfarer.