The Economics of Piracy

The Economics of Piracy...

The piracy MOTTO should be upgrade for more LOTTO.

Something that has stuttered my brain since the beginning. First off, I always thought that piracy was a rather lucrative business for some pirates. They would commandeer a ship and hit such a big jackpot that they couldn't bother counting the loot. They'd simply call it a booty.

And the really legendary pirates didn't just go willy-nilly chasing after just anything, I thought. They went after the ships carrying the big booty. I don't understand why there isn't some very rich pirates. Especially with governments in on it. Key corrupt individuals in several governments can rake in the spoils getting access to secretive information about convoys, bulk valuable transfers or sensitive military data. A few very key seizures by pirates should yield quite a bundle of credits. Why aren't there some heavily armed pirate ships? Can't they afford to upgrade as they pilfer and plunder? And I bet some Solarian League companies make available technology that the arrogant SLN has ignored. What's stopping the corporate world from selling their inventions to private individuals? Giving pirates access to some incredible tech from the ignored corporate world that can catch many a ship unaware.

There should be an underground pirate wholesale magazine. In other words, why aren't there pirates that "pimp their rides?"

With spinners as hubcaps.

After all, if you're going to be in the business of piracy in the first place, where each outting is a "crap shoot," you better at least be prepared to "crap shoot" back at the other ship. If you're going to be in that business, you should be well armed and fast. At least as time hypers by - upgrade man.

I've heard some reasons given that the weapons and tech is so prohibitively expensive. But so is your ass, which is in a crap shoot every time. I don't understand why corrupt goverments don't make drones disapper on a requisite order. They're getting huge payoffs, they're even fencing for the pirates. So hows-about some horse trading. It seems that the larger payoffs would easily cover the costs of weapons resupply and ship repair/maintenance.

Another stumbling block is in the need to possess the technical proficiency to operate a drone and other high-tech tech. But I imagine some not so squeaky clean officers that were unduly retired and needing to make a living is up for hire to the highest bidder in the pirate-for-hire world. Especially someone beached by Janacek.

Now imagine if Thomas Bachfish hadn't been a wus and swung the other way making Pirate's Bane an inside joke of pirates.

At any rate, it seems that piracy as it is, is far too dangerous a business for it not to be any more lucrative than it is. Yet we all know that there are convoys running all of the time that are unescorted and essentially carrying what amounts to a "motherload" to the bank account of pirates.

So why aren't there more pirates living in the high rent & caviar district?

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For the same reasons that piracy isn't that big of an issue today. If your area of space has made a concerted effort to police the spaceways, a functional government willing to prosecute said pirates, and legitimate, riskless economic opportunities at home, then you're not going to go hop on a space jalopy to rob some folks. The risk/reward ratio is firmly pointed at the risk side. You might not hit the stinking rich jackpot that scoring the right freighter would, but it certainly beats getting turned into debris or incarcerated, and fairly quickly at that.

Now if you're some piss-poor system in the Verge, with not even a SLN destroyer wandering through once a year, then the economics of piracy makes a lot more sense. But by the same token, that potential pirate simply won't have access to the resources to run a particularly advanced warship. And since you don't need the latest and greatest technology to capture an unarmed freighter, there's no incentive to try to acquire it.

that's something that has also always bothered me. While I'm a big fan of the "battlecruiser slashing and high precision maneuvers", if I were crazy enough to go pirate in Honorverse, I'd be one who grabbed whatever I could. RD's, upgraded electronics and whatever illegal tech I could get my hands on.

The closest to a pirate "riding the high life" we've really seen, is either Warnecke's crazies, or the group that was associated with beaching Bachfish (cant recall the names involved with that).
And even Warnecke's nutbags didn't really spend on any tech goodies, and they saw Warner Caslet using an EW drone and mentioned how "pirates dont use those", they only bought more and more warships.


As for trying to compare honorverse to current piracy, a single planet with only so much waterspace versus an entire galaxy is a huge space difference. And as Honor pointed out to Alice Truman during Flag in Exile, anti-piracy patrols aren't really so much to catch pirates as "to encourage them to move along and go target some other poor sucker's shipping rather than ours".

And with the multitude of failed colonies, and other backwater planets, there's lots of places for mini-Warnecke's to take over, and base from while they go raiding somewhere richer (and far away from their backyards to throw off pursuit)

Somtaaw wrote:that's something that has also always bothered me. While I'm a big fan of the "battlecruiser slashing and high precision maneuvers", if I were crazy enough to go pirate in Honorverse, I'd be one who grabbed whatever I could. RD's, upgraded electronics and whatever illegal tech I could get my hands on.

The closest to a pirate "riding the high life" we've really seen, is either Warnecke's crazies, or the group that was associated with beaching Bachfish (cant recall the names involved with that).
And even Warnecke's nutbags didn't really spend on any tech goodies, and they saw Warner Caslet using an EW drone and mentioned how "pirates dont use those", they only bought more and more warships.


As for trying to compare honorverse to current piracy, a single planet with only so much waterspace versus an entire galaxy is a huge space difference. And as Honor pointed out to Alice Truman during Flag in Exile, anti-piracy patrols aren't really so much to catch pirates as "to encourage them to move along and go target some other poor sucker's shipping rather than ours".

And with the multitude of failed colonies, and other backwater planets, there's lots of places for mini-Warnecke's to take over, and base from while they go raiding somewhere richer (and far away from their backyards to throw off pursuit)

The more advanced your warship, the more you need to pour your time, money, and handful of knowledgeable experts in maintaining it. That quickly starts to cut into your profit margin. So now you have hit more targets. That leads to more usage of said tech, so more upkeep; plus you're raising your threat profile enough that people will start paying unwanted attention towards you. Sooner or later you hit a tipping point where you either have to cut down on your expenses, or you become too big a threat that people will start gunning for you, personally.

Duckk wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:that's something that has also always bothered me. While I'm a big fan of the "battlecruiser slashing and high precision maneuvers", if I were crazy enough to go pirate in Honorverse, I'd be one who grabbed whatever I could. RD's, upgraded electronics and whatever illegal tech I could get my hands on.

The closest to a pirate "riding the high life" we've really seen, is either Warnecke's crazies, or the group that was associated with beaching Bachfish (cant recall the names involved with that).
And even Warnecke's nutbags didn't really spend on any tech goodies, and they saw Warner Caslet using an EW drone and mentioned how "pirates dont use those", they only bought more and more warships.


As for trying to compare honorverse to current piracy, a single planet with only so much waterspace versus an entire galaxy is a huge space difference. And as Honor pointed out to Alice Truman during Flag in Exile, anti-piracy patrols aren't really so much to catch pirates as "to encourage them to move along and go target some other poor sucker's shipping rather than ours".

And with the multitude of failed colonies, and other backwater planets, there's lots of places for mini-Warnecke's to take over, and base from while they go raiding somewhere richer (and far away from their backyards to throw off pursuit)

The more advanced your warship, the more you need to pour your time, money, and handful of knowledgeable experts in maintaining it. That quickly starts to cut into your profit margin. So now you have hit more targets. That leads to more usage of said tech, so more upkeep; plus you're raising your threat profile enough that people will start paying unwanted attention towards you. Sooner or later you hit a tipping point where you either have to cut down on your expenses, or you become too big a threat that people will start gunning for you, personally.

That is true, but as it is, virtually 100% of pirates in Honorverse are almost all universally high-tech bums, with their equipment barely functioning in the first place. There's none that have a better level of ship maintenance, even with all the ex-Naval types that switch to piracy seem able to get higher maintenance to happen. It's a bit mind baffling that only the side whose motive is pure is capable of keeping their ships from falling apart.

Now I'm not exactly talking full-up naval levels of maintenance, that does require the upkeep you speak of, and constant replacement of parts (still more upkeep). But pirates don't get paid hourly wage so doing regular maintence which leads to more time "out a-hunting" which translates to more regular payouts. Instead of sitting out at X fence, trying to get a replacement part because they sat around drinking their rum and not doing maintenance, which means net loss of bank balance.

Duckk wrote:The more advanced your warship, the more you need to pour your time, money, and handful of knowledgeable experts in maintaining it. That quickly starts to cut into your profit margin. So now you have hit more targets. That leads to more usage of said tech, so more upkeep; plus you're raising your threat profile enough that people will start paying unwanted attention towards you. Sooner or later you hit a tipping point where you either have to cut down on your expenses, or you become too big a threat that people will start gunning for you, personally.

I agree. Also this.

The Princess Bride movie wrote:
Well, Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. So he took me to his cabin, and told me his secret. "I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts", he said. "My name is Ryan. I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a King in Patagonia."

Who says a captain is going to stay around long enough to keep upgrading the ship. Get enough money for the finer things in life, a nice outer territory planet in the League or a better independent planet in the verge, where your money will go far, but you have safety from some other pirate and you settle down to a life of luxury. Heck, use your seed money to setup a line of businesses and have continuing money. And when OFS shows up, sell out and move on somewhere else.

cthia wrote:After all, if you're going to be in the business of piracy in the first place, where each outting is a "crap shoot," you better at least be prepared to "crap shoot" back at the other ship. If you're going to be in that business, you should be well armed and fast. At least as time hypers by - upgrade man.

I've heard some reasons given that the weapons and tech is so prohibitively expensive. But so is your ass, which is in a crap shoot every time.

The thing is, unless you are running around in at least a 2nd line BC getting into any fight is going to get a bunch of your people killed and cost a lot of repairs.
Even a DD can tear a strip out of the side of a CA before getting crushed. (Especially if it's a 1st line navy's DD and a 2nd or 3rd rate CA)

But in general is very rare to run into an armed escort of ship, and pretty rare to run into a potential prize at all. So the money is better invested in collecting a squadron, or later fleet, of minimally armed ships so you have more coverage and a better chance of finding prey at all.


Basically you could pimp your ride, but you'd be better off getting a 2ns frigate instead. Do that a few times and you can promote yourself off the front lines and then you don't care much if an individual ship gets destroyed; as long as on average your pirates bring in more value than it costs to refit or replace them.


But yeah, RDs are probably the one upgrade that would make economic sense.
You only really need to launch them when you've got a potential prize (or threat) in your sights. So they shouldn't be getting used to much; which should keep the refurbish costs reasonable. Certainly the prize you capture should more than cover the cost to refit the drone (because you should be able to recover it after capturing a merchantman); and losing the drone if it discovers the "prize" is a warship is far cheaper than losing a whole pirate frigate to that same warship.

And based on the RMN, recon drones are trivially easy to refuel and use again.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:After all, if you're going to be in the business of piracy in the first place, where each outting is a "crap shoot," you better at least be prepared to "crap shoot" back at the other ship. If you're going to be in that business, you should be well armed and fast. At least as time hypers by - upgrade man.

I've heard some reasons given that the weapons and tech is so prohibitively expensive. But so is your ass, which is in a crap shoot every time.

The thing is, unless you are running around in at least a 2nd line BC getting into any fight is going to get a bunch of your people killed and cost a lot of repairs.
Even a DD can tear a strip out of the side of a CA before getting crushed. (Especially if it's a 1st line navy's DD and a 2nd or 3rd rate CA)

But in general is very rare to run into an armed escort of ship, and pretty rare to run into a potential prize at all. So the money is better invested in collecting a squadron, or later fleet, of minimally armed ships so you have more coverage and a better chance of finding prey at all.


Basically you could pimp your ride, but you'd be better off getting a 2ns frigate instead. Do that a few times and you can promote yourself off the front lines and then you don't care much if an individual ship gets destroyed; as long as on average your pirates bring in more value than it costs to refit or replace them.


But yeah, RDs are probably the one upgrade that would make economic sense.
You only really need to launch them when you've got a potential prize (or threat) in your sights. So they shouldn't be getting used to much; which should keep the refurbish costs reasonable. Certainly the prize you capture should more than cover the cost to refit the drone (because you should be able to recover it after capturing a merchantman); and losing the drone if it discovers the "prize" is a warship is far cheaper than losing a whole pirate frigate to that same warship.

Kudos to all posts.

I fully expect that BCs will become synonymous pirate platforms - "the right tool for the fool?" Pirate ships have to be fast. I imagine they do lots of illicit goods running. (Reminiscent of the prohibition era, guns and alcohol.)

I'd like to add that milgrade sensors should be a high priority as well.


Don't forget that I'm proposing that there are some pirate operation's that are well supported by "sensitive information" loops. They don't even light off their drives, so to speak, unless they already have sector, heading, bearing and inventory long since logged. A target's complete travel itinery as a map where the most vulnerable leg of their journey is plotted in pink. "We'll have the sissies right where we want 'em. With their hose down!"


Imagine a tip from a well placed corrupt official who is privy to the travels of some very costly, high tech goods that would be priceless on the black market. You have already been given information regarding their inept security detail as in a total lack of escort. Lack of escort is going to be a bear for a carrying trade such as Manticore's. Especially during a time of war - and moreso at this juncture of a critical drawdown of forces. I can't imagine there not being some well organized piracy operations from very rich contributors who also have important affiliated interests - who also need pirate operations to be reliable. I imagine pirates move illicit goods around as well. Some entity has to launder and fence illegal goods and money. Now consider a constant influx of this type information regarding these type targets classified as "sweet spots" coming in regularly. There should be well supported and funded operations out there that rarely has to shoot at anything except Murphy and his law. Drones would be the highest requisite cost. And they are deployed only to verify, not identify targets and are always recovered. And these type fishing trips are a one fish operation, then retire to divy the spoils.

It's hard to believe that drones aren't readily available on the black market. Especially Solarian drones. What, with that corrupt, credit hungry lot of League bureaucrats with their arm clear up to their shoulder blade, already in the cookie jar? There could even be outlets to drop off drones and have them refurbished like your dry cleaning, to knowledgeable outfits who employ once highly skilled technicians drummed out of navy's for whatever reason but isn't immune to the ever loving need to make a living.

If the price is right the product is in the mail. Some desperate outfits may even steal their own shipment. That'll cut some corners and costs.

If only corrupt operations can get their hands on a good chunk of captured Solly junk. I bet there are garage gurus who can work wonders scavenging off of outdated Solly junk. Honorverse chop shops.

I fully expect that BCs will become synonymous pirate platforms - "the right tool for the fool?" Pirate ships have to be fast. I imagine they do lots of illicit goods running. (Reminiscent of the prohibition era, guns and alcohol.)

That's like saying the synonymous pirate vessel today is a Somali pirate running an old Spruance-class guided missile destroyer. That's a ridiculous amount of ship for your run of the mill pirate. You're paying for both a large crew - thus, splitting the booty into smaller shares - and the increased maintenance costs. I can't think of any time a genuine pirate (as opposed to a state sanctioned privateer or covert cat's paw) has run a BC in the Honorverse. There's no way that a battlecruiser would become "synonymous" with piracy.

The majority of cases we've seen in the Honorverse were destroyer - or at most, light cruiser - sized. Everyone we've seen that's swung at larger vessels also had pretensions of being an actual navy, whether it was Warnecke's band of crazies or the ex-State Sec ships, which meant they had some degree of outside backing. Pirates funding their operations solely through their own loot wouldn't be able to operate battlecruisers, or even a number of heavy cruisers, without eventually going broke, drawing a lot of heat from the authorities, or both.