Ideal Pirate Ship Configeration And Size? ...

No pirates are going to hang around in Q-ships willingly. To be able to look like a freighter, it has to be big enough, yet not have too strong a wedge(because they´re very unlikely to have the gear needed to mask a wedge to look weaker), meaning that any pirate Q-ship is going to be a glorified freighter that can´t outrun ANYTHING military.

The very opposite of what pirates would want.

Pirates want speed.
Minimal crew, yet enough room to have multiple crews for taking over captured ships(face it, captured ships will usually be the biggest prizes).
Overall a small ship, yet something still big enough to carry at least some captured high value/high priority cargo.
Enough firepower to guarantee no cargoship can avoid them, maybe enough to scare off an LAC or a patrolling/escorting DD at most, but still as small as possible.
Enough endurance/range to hunt far enough away from base that military patrols can´t just look where you´ve attacked and say "this starsystem, that´s where they are".

FF and DD are good enough to capture with, but are quickly going to get crowded and have just about zero ability to pick up any cargo, their endurance are lacking etc etc...

Anything bigger than a BC is going to start getting too expensive and difficult to maintain unless the captain has a local planet governor or something in his pocket.

No, it´s pretty simple, cruisers of one size or another are going to be the preferable ships for pirates.

For an actual pirate ship, the CL might be the preferred option, if it has the space for essentially a double + sized crew -- (1) need a well trained crew to run the pirate CL during a run-down / boarding action AND need extra crew to run any prize ships that are taken.
The pirates could hold a gun in the ear of the captured freighter's crew, but any pirate with 5+ functioning brain cells would want his (or her) own personnel on navigation and engineering.

The captured cargo and the ship's hull can be fenced later. The crew, if they have not evacuated, can be ransomed, but only if someone is able to pay.

-- Stewart

You need about 10 people to run a merchant. And you only need to run it to where you have your merchant mother ship hiding, which is not going to be very far if you are smart.

When you talk about a high-value cargo, what do you mean? I don't care how fancy your BC is, you are not going to load 1000 Mk23 pods, a LAC squadron, a DD, or a million tons of Beta nodes on board. None of them will fit through the hatches. You can almost certainly fit a few hundred tons of gold on a DD, and I fit an almost infinite amount of bearer credit chips on an armed rowboat.

People keep talking about buying a BC to be a pirate... This is a vessel that most POLITIES consider a capitol ship, and >75% of governments CANNOT afford without bankrupting themselves.

How many times have we heard of a planet who can't afford to keep up with the repairs on one of their few old DDs so it sits in orbit (actually only once, that I can remember) or can only afford a handful of LACs. I realize that different planets can have different levels of wealth, but even Hauptman had a difficult time building 14 Frigates for the Ballroom/Torch with outside assistance.

So if one of the richest men in the Universe can't afford to build a BC out of his own pocket, who can? And if you have the money to build/acquire a BC, you don't need to go into piracy to make money (Oh, you may front a pirate on the side, but you won't be getting your hands dirty. - and you won't be draining the coffers to give him a BC.)

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?

Theemile wrote:People keep talking about buying a BC to be a pirate... This is a vessel that most POLITIES consider a capitol ship, and >75% of governments CANNOT afford without bankrupting themselves.

How many times have we heard of a planet who can't afford to keep up with the repairs on one of their few old DDs so it sits in orbit (actually only once, that I can remember) or can only afford a handful of LACs. I realize that different planets can have different levels of wealth, but even Hauptman had a difficult time building 14 Frigates for the Ballroom/Torch with outside assistance.

So if one of the richest men in the Universe can't afford to build a BC out of his own pocket, who can? And if you have the money to build/acquire a BC, you don't need to go into piracy to make money (Oh, you may front a pirate on the side, but you won't be getting your hands dirty. - and you won't be draining the coffers to give him a BC.)

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?

I have been arguing that even a FF or DD is to expensive, to be profitable, when operating as a pirate.

Torlek wrote:

Theemile wrote:People keep talking about buying a BC to be a pirate... This is a vessel that most POLITIES consider a capitol ship, and >75% of governments CANNOT afford without bankrupting themselves.

How many times have we heard of a planet who can't afford to keep up with the repairs on one of their few old DDs so it sits in orbit (actually only once, that I can remember) or can only afford a handful of LACs. I realize that different planets can have different levels of wealth, but even Hauptman had a difficult time building 14 Frigates for the Ballroom/Torch with outside assistance.

So if one of the richest men in the Universe can't afford to build a BC out of his own pocket, who can? And if you have the money to build/acquire a BC, you don't need to go into piracy to make money (Oh, you may front a pirate on the side, but you won't be getting your hands dirty. - and you won't be draining the coffers to give him a BC.)

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?

I have been arguing that even a FF or DD is to expensive, to be profitable, when operating as a pirate.

You do have to question the economics of acquiring a FG or a DD (without outright theft) when even a ship like the Tankersley can only be afforded by someone like Honor.

Theemile wrote:

Torlek wrote:I have been arguing that even a FF or DD is to expensive, to be profitable, when operating as a pirate.

You do have to question the economics of acquiring a FG or a DD (without outright theft) when even a ship like the Tankersley can only be afforded by someone like Honor.

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.

The economics of space piracy is an interesting question. A pirate (who has higher expenses and fences goods for a lower price) can't make a profit from a bulk hauler who is merely making a modest living. He would have to hope for higher value goods, or perhaps good ransoms. 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. Only a handful of pirates retire rich.

That's one reason why pirates like to have inside information on shipping.

Tenshinai wrote:No pirates are going to hang around in Q-ships willingly. To be able to look like a freighter, it has to be big enough, yet not have too strong a wedge(because they´re very unlikely to have the gear needed to mask a wedge to look weaker), meaning that any pirate Q-ship is going to be a glorified freighter that can´t outrun ANYTHING military.

The very opposite of what pirates would want.

Pirates want speed....

That's an armed merchant cruiser, which is only nominally a Q Ship compared to the what I was thinking of, an Astra class aka Sirius from all the way back in OBS. Dang thing was at least DN size, and could literally hold CL size ships in it's hold(s).

Don't know how a pirate gets his mitts on something like that, if you can afford one, you don't need to be a pirate! But the flexibility would be awesome. Let's use your list... For ship-captures, use crew modules for your multiple prize crews. For grab the cargo and go missions, you want a big ship so you can just take everything out of their bays and lock it into yours. Leave enough integrated firepower to deal with just about anything up to CA size, a couple of scouting LACs or frigates, and a hot sensor suite to make sure you're not sneaking up on more than you can handle.

That said... I do agree:

Tenshinai wrote:... cruisers of one size or another are going to be the preferable ships for pirates.

But an Astra would be more FUN.

SharkHunter wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:No pirates are going to hang around in Q-ships willingly. To be able to look like a freighter, it has to be big enough, yet not have too strong a wedge(because they´re very unlikely to have the gear needed to mask a wedge to look weaker), meaning that any pirate Q-ship is going to be a glorified freighter that can´t outrun ANYTHING military.

The very opposite of what pirates would want.

Pirates want speed....

That's an armed merchant cruiser, which is only nominally a Q Ship compared to the what I was thinking of, an Astra class aka Sirius from all the way back in OBS. Dang thing was at least DN size, and could literally hold CL size ships in it's hold(s).

Don't know how a pirate gets his mitts on something like that, if you can afford one, you don't need to be a pirate! But the flexibility would be awesome. Let's use your list... For ship-captures, use crew modules for your multiple prize crews. For grab the cargo and go missions, you want a big ship so you can just take everything out of their bays and lock it into yours. Leave enough integrated firepower to deal with just about anything up to CA size, a couple of scouting LACs or frigates, and a hot sensor suite to make sure you're not sneaking up on more than you can handle. That said... I do agree:

Tenshinai wrote:... cruisers of one size or another are going to be the preferable ships for pirates.

But an Astra would be more FUN.

Most freighters are BB or DN sized...so any armed merchanter or Q-ship pretending to be a merchanter is going to be that big.

For speed, all military-grade ships have the same top end of .8c, so you can only compare acceleration. But you also have to keep in mind the minor issue that most navies, and even system defense forces (that we've seen) dont build them. Most people skip right from LAC to DD/CL.

That means only a few places even build FGs, which translates into scarcity of the hull, which further translates into expensive to acquire. After you own an FG hull, it's cheap as hell to keep operating, but you still have to get around the scarcity of the hull.

The most common sized raider we've seen, is in the DD to CL range in Silesia, with the occasional FG, and the odd reference to privateers with BC firepower (Honor Among Enemies, Honor's briefing directly from BuPers, Chapter 5)

Silesia is still, in my mind, a special case because of the corruption of the governors. Corrupt Silesian governors not only gave sanctuary to 'their' pirates, they also supplied entire ships, if those pesky Manticoran Navy officers blew up the original ship. And we don't know how much other services said corrupt governors supplied, from refuelling & rearming, to acting directly as a fence, to supplying data on incoming merchies. Any services rendered, turns those 'pirates' into privateers that don't have letters of marque to protect them.

I still stand by nothing smaller than a CA is good for pirates. Because of cruising radius, consumables storage, crew capacity, and ammunition supply all comes into factor. We've seen that pirates in the books will go so far as to fire off a total of 5+ missiles, as warning shots before it turns out the "merchy" they were chasing was a warship/HMAMC. Missiles aren't cheap or small, even if you only carry nukes that couldn't double as laserheads. 5 missiles per target, a DD would be "dry" after only a few prizes and have no choice but to enter downtime. A CL might carry enough to pre-schedule ammunition trips, and pick up any prize crews. The more time you spend going around recovering crew, and topping off ammo, the less time you're near a hyper limit, waiting to snap up another merchy.