SD as pirate vessel

kzt wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:<shrug> Could be. Now that you mention it, I think I remember reading that as well. Either way, grasers are more powerful, but the x-ray lasers are probably easier to generate in a laserhead. If warship-grade lasers *are* x-ray lasers, then they'll be more powerful than regular lasers, and just goes along with my point 2 above.

It was in the starship armor article. I think that was by Andy?

Here's the relevant paragraph:

In Fire Forged, An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design, Weapon Effects and Armor: How Does a Weapon Damage the Target? wrote:The author begins with the photon wavelength. One might as well use frequency or energy because they are all mathematically equivalent but weapons designers fairly consistently use wavelength. Early space energy weapons used photons in the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and even the radio range. These wavelengths are impractical to focus at contemporary combat ranges so modern weapons use shorter wavelength photons in the X-ray to gamma ray range. Indeed, modern space weapon lasers are so commonly X-ray lasers that the term “laser” is generally synonymous with “xraser” in naval parlance. Their rarer gamma emitting cousins are called “grasers.” Both of these words have their obvious origin with the ancient “laser” though the fact that many such weapons do not operate on the principle of “stimulated emission” is generally forgotten. Confusion sometimes results because different scientific and engineering communities have different definitions of exactly what constitutes the cutoff between X and gamma rays. An astronomer’s X-ray might be a particle beam engineer’s gamma ray and so on. There appears little hope at this writing of ever clearing this up completely. This article uses the terminology of the Interstellar Association of Astronautical Engineers that a photon with a wavelength greater than one picometer (10–12 meters) is an X-ray and light with a wavelength shorter than that is a gamma ray. This value was chosen because one pm is a good cutoff point when discussing armor and weapons effects. This is because light begins to exhibit deep penetrating characteristics in common spacecraft materials for wavelengths shorter than this so that a graser cannon operating at 0.1 picometers damages a target in different ways than a laser at 10 picometers.

Boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

Vince wrote:"akira.taylor"]"svenhauke"]totally agree not for long...

but for a short time they have real power

remember 15 000 SD sold as scrap metal ...

But as soon as an actual fleet hears about you, they are going to send warships to deal with you - a Battle Squadron, not some piddling cruisers. Then, they are going to crush your little nation. Since you are a really scary pirate, and need to be stopped before you get even more powerful. Remember the comment about Theisman making sure no SDs got away during the Havenite Civil War - plenty of lighter ships did (like the whole People's Navy in Exile), but he hunted down and destroyed the SDs (and DNs and BBs, I think - my recollection is nothing heavier than battlecruisers, if that, got away to play pirate).[/quote]
Some PRN BCs did manage to get away to play pirate. When SLN Rear Admiral Rozsack (Frontier Fleet) went up against the Mesan Alignment backed PRN in Exile, (Torch of Freedom), he went for the BCs as primary targets. Although ten of the BCs were ex-SLN Indefatigables (provided by the Mesan Alignment using Mesa and Manpower as fronts), there were four PRN Warlord-class BCs as well as eight Mars-class heavy cruisers and the smaller vessels (light cruisers and destroyers).[/quote]


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As you point out, the x-PN / PNE Mars and Warlord class ships were x-State Sec that got away from the Theisman / Gisgard / Tourville "field exercises" for the rebuilt RHN.
Rozsack targeted them, and Mesa acquired / armed them because they were more capable than the SLN type-equivalents.

Back to original question of the thread -- using a SLN SD as a pirate raider would be similar to Khumalo's effective near-bluff of the Samothrace-class Hercules at Monica -- impressive, until you look at the age and faults.

Off the books CA's, BC's and re-armed auxillaries will likely hide "under the radar" much more effectively.

-- Stewart

Somtaaw wrote:1) On the topic of interceptions, piracy is also about just waiting until you get a good envelop. If the merchy doesn't translate practically on your lap, you can always stay a hole in space, and thus undetected until you do get a good hyper exiting merchy.

The average acceleration of Manticoran (so every merchy) seems to be a piss-poor ~150 gravities or so.
The average Scientist (which means slowest SD in the galaxy), is ~422 gravs.

So the slowest known SD in the galaxy, still has three times the speed of any merchy, and the merchy has the drawback of having downward Alpha translation velocity, and probably coasted inside the hyper limit. So they'd have to turn a minimum 90 degrees, and try to crab back out... while also suffering from having less acceleration than the SD.

As the text says, any warship will always be able to catch any merchant ship. That's not the point I was making. An SD, accelerating at 400g, will not have the same maneuverability as a Destroyer accelerating at 500. SDs will not be able to generate intercepts on as many targets as DDs will. They will take longer to reach their targets, they will be inside the hyper limit longer, and that means they're going to run into interference more often.
Now, SDs are big ships, they can take hits, but over time, those hits will add up to massive maintenance overhead, which you need specialized equipment and yards for. This makes SDs much more vulnerable than DDs would be.

2) On the topic of crews, pirates already have oversized crews on a ship for ship basis. Pirate destroyers had crews better suited to light cruisers, or even heavy cruisers. With Manticoran (maybe Havenite too?) computer automation taking up the slack, pirate DD's now have the crews of RMN/RNS battlecruisers. You don't have to crew the ship to the tactical requirements of a first-tier navy, you just need enough to crew a few guns, a couple missile tubes, and then your boarding shuttles.

But then we're going into economics again. I think we can agree that an SD is going to have running maintenance costs far higher than a DD or CL or CA, yes? Given that, and given that even the baseline crew requirements for an SD are higher than those of a smaller ships (by which I mean, the minimum amount of crew necessary to operate the vessel), your running expenses will be much higher than they would be for a small ship.

This means that a pirate operating an SD, which is already a prime target for real navies, will need to raid much more aggressively than a normal pirate, which will make it that much more likely that someone's gonna take him out.

I think there's a reference to crew needs during one of the Worlds of Honor books, Midshipwoman Harrington during an explanation about the energy weapon mounts. Think it was like 4 crew for the mount, probably the same for a missile tube. I believe I previously suggested an SD only really needs to keep 2-3 lasers, and about the same in missiles operational... so call it 24 crew for 3 laser mounts, and 3 tubes, on each broadside. Add in a few more for bow & stern weapons, and you're using less than 75 crew for covering all 4 arcs. That's the only 50% larger than one broadside of an Avalon or Kamerling light cruiser... which are the classes most likely to possibly meet a pirate.

Until word gets out that you're using an SD as a pirate ship. Just like a streetgang using a Tank, in the short term, you'll be able to crush your opposition. But very soon, you're going to find yourself overwhelmed, because you made the mistake of rising to a level that requires an immediate response.

3) On the topic of affording the ships at all.... Solarian League Navy officials already lose full battlecruisers that were designated to go to the breakers. You think they wouldn't also just lose full SD squadrons, if they were paid the equivalent of untraceable cash under the table?

There's no question that that could happen.

But it's extremely unlikely. Losing a BC or ten is nothing. They're not going to be a significant threat to a real navy. Losing entire battle squadrons on the other hand? That's more worrying. The paycheck the SL official is going to ask for to let that happen will be rather astronomical, I would imagine.

It wouldn't be full value, but it was also covered in a Mandarin briefing, that the Solarian League can't afford to de-mothball their existing SDs, they can't afford to breaker them, and they can't afford to crew them even as missile decoys.

for the intelligence side of the pirates economically speaking, should only use CL to CAs, well we've also seen there are a LOT of stupid pirates. From Warnecke, to the pirates in Refuge attacking the Gauntlet, to just about any Silesian pirate who ever engaged Manticoran ships (in the books it's written that doing such basically becomes a death sentence)

We've only seen the stupid and unsuccessful pirates in the series so far. I would assume that there are lots of pirates we don't see because they have the good sense not to get entangled in situations they can't get out of.

4) For Honor (or anyone) calling in fleet support if they actually encountered, and then ran from a pirate SD, a solar system is a very large place to hide, and even with Ghost Rider recon drones, it can take a long time to thoroughly search a system to find things.

A raider's gotta raid. Sooner or later, patterns in his raiding will emerge, and those will then be exploitable.

And lastly, a single SD, could actually go for entire convoy's of merchies, because it's got the boatbay space to handle all the pinnace/assault shuttles to simultaneously board a chunk of the whole convoy, and two SD's could board entire convoys. Again, yes it's not as efficient, but pirates in Honorverse, have been proven to be very stupid, on multiple occasions.

And a group of pirate Destroyers can't do this?

Look, if you want to keep arguing that SDs are really good pirate vessels, you have to come up with reasons why they're better at being pirates than a couple of Destroyers or Cruisers working together.

Look at it this way:
Pirate A has a SD.
Pirate B has an old fast(ish) small freighter, with an old laser and a missile tube ducttaped to the site.
Since pirate B's ship is so much smaller and steathlier it has about the same capability to generate an intercept as Pirate A's SD. So both ships in theory encounter potential prizes at the same rate. Let's say that about half of all potential prizes are escorted. The SD slaps the escort down and captures the prize, while Pirate B imitates a hole in space and lets the prize go. Furthermore Pirate B in an effort to avoid the Navy avoids well traveled areas to reduce the risk of encountering the Navy and only see half as many potential prizes as Pirate A. Furthermore the prizes in Pirate B's area are only half as valuable as the prizes Pirate A catches. Furthermore about half the time Pirate B has no prize crew available and must pass on a prize, while Pirate A has always enough crew for prizes. (Feel free to play around with these numbers) Therefore Pirate B has 1/16th of the income Pirate A has. HOWEVER a small old freighter is much much much more cheap to obtain and run. In if those cost are less then 1/16th of the cost tun obtain and run a SD (and the most certainly are) Pirate B makes more profit than Pirate A.
Plus Pirate B has not to worry about:
-Convincing one of the few major shipyard, which can handle a SD and are all affiliated to governments, to service his SD.
-Battle fleets dispatched to run down the pirate SD
-No matter how easy it is to obtain, outfit and crew an SD, it will always be easier to obtain, outfit and crew a small converted freighter.
-Logistical support able to keep an SD running. ect.

I have to reply to this. As a vessel to chase down merchant ships and such a SD would be hugely inefficient and a huge target for actual navy ships. But there are three factors here that I think are important.

First as a base of operations or as a vessel to attack entire planets a SD would be very useful for pirates. In fact there seems to be some talk in various honorverse books that mention pirate fleets that would attack planets. If you read Manticore ascendant it's part of the reason they had a powerful but mothballed fleet in that book. Just in case a group of pirates became active in the area.

Second there are more than just pirates that may want those SD's. For instance warlords operating outside of the solarian league. Or the transtellars may want some also.

Third and I think most importantly it's possible that someone may get the brainstorm to give those ships to pirates operating in or near the area Manticore controls. Historically this is how a lot of pirates did operate, they were paid to attack certain nations ships. Although we don't really think of them as pirates but technically they were since they weren't part of a nations formal navy.

The words freighter and stealthy should never be used together.

kzt wrote:The words freighter and stealthy should never be used together.

stealthy as in hiding in plain sight.

Torlek wrote:

kzt wrote:The words freighter and stealthy should never be used together.

stealthy as in hiding in plain sight.

Doesn't work, though. A pirate needs a military impeller in order to catch prey, and refitting a merchie with one is incredibly obvious.

No, the ideal pirate setup is more like a couple of DD or FF-sized combat ships and one or two merchant ships to carry cargo and personnel back and forth.

The E wrote:Doesn't work, though. A pirate needs a military impeller in order to catch prey, and refitting a merchie with one is incredibly obvious.

Nope, a pirate just needs a better inertial compensator than its prey. Even a single layer civilian wedge can theoretically accelerate faster than any inertial compensator built can handle.

Even if a ship has Military drive nodes like PRN Sirius had it doesn't necessarily mean it's a pirate ship; Ambuscade and Pirate's Bane are surplus IAN fleet colliers and readily identifiable as such. I'm sure they aren't the only surplus colliers in use as small freighters.

In their case, the only difference between a pirate and a pirate hunter is the motivation of the owner and crew.

The E wrote:

Torlek wrote:stealthy as in hiding in plain sight.

Doesn't work, though. A pirate needs a military impeller in order to catch prey, and refitting a merchie with one is incredibly obvious.

No, the ideal pirate setup is more like a couple of DD or FF-sized combat ships and one or two merchant ships to carry cargo and personnel back and forth.

The only differences between military drive technology and civilian drive technology in the honorverse is that the former is optimized for speed and the later is optimized for low cost. Hence hiding in plain site as a fast freighter, which is a freighter which archives higher speed by using of the shelve civilian technology but is has lower mass, compared to a freighter, which would normally use that model of drive.

And presto nothing to see here. Just some perishable goods freighter.

As for using a DD. The same argument I used against using a SD still apply albeit on a smaller scale.