The Economics of Piracy

Sigs wrote:Why would a pirate need anything bigger than a destroyer? Their entire reason for existence is to pray on a helpless victim rather than fight it out with an actual warship. Their needs extend to a weapon that can force a merchantmen to stop and let them board, engaging in any sort of combat is bad business because a naval ship can go back to port and be repaired and the crew brought to 100%, a pirate most likely does not have that capability unless they have a repair ship that Andre Warnecke had and even that is limited in capability. Any combat no matter how trivial runs the risk of damage and thus costly repairs and need to get new crewmembers. There is little reward for defeating a warship other than maybe capturing more modern and capable wreck than the one you are left with.

As for successful pirates? There may be a few and there may very well be many who simply retired to a quiet life somewhere far from their hunting grounds and/or became "respectable" politicians who organize piracy in their immediate area or nationwide.


We hear of the brutal and failed pirates but just because most of the stories revolve around failure and/or sloppy maintained vessels does not mean all pirates are equally sloppy with equally sloppy and poorly maintained ships. We just have less of a reason to hear about once that got rich and went to live in some safe planet far from their hunting grounds.

I often wondered why we didn't see pirates using small crappy freighters. All you need is a couple of laser mounts, hidden, and a cheap targeting system. Travel the cargo routes and act like a freighter. When you come upon a freighter you encourage the crew to leave, man the ship and take the cargo that way.

Being humane and allowing the crew to escape will mean it will be hard to find more prey, but the authorities won't be out for blood as bad as if you are slaughtering crews.

I can't think of a cheaper way to go about this.

Jeroswen wrote:I often wondered why we didn't see pirates using small crappy freighters. All you need is a couple of laser mounts, hidden, and a cheap targeting system.

We've seen at least one:

Shadow of Saganami
Chapter Forty wrote:She was also armed, although no one in his right mind—and certainly not Duan Binyan—would ever confuse her with a warship. She didn't make any effort to pretend she wasn't armed, although her official papers significantly understated the power of the two lasers she mounted in each broadside and her engineering log always showed that at least one of them was down for lack of spare parts. The Verge could be a dangerous place, and probably ten or fifteen percent of the merchies which plied it were armed, after a fashion, at least. The "inoperable" broadside mount was simply part of Marianne's down-at-the-heels masquerade, and half her point defense clusters and counter-missiles tubes were concealed behind jettisonable plating, again in keeping with her pretense of parsimonious owners.

All in all, Marianne was capable of holding her own against any pirate she was likely to meet. She could even encounter a light warship—a destroyer, say—from one of the podunk navies out here with a more than even chance of success. And on at least two occasions, Marianne herself had turned "pirate" for specific operations. On the other hand, any modern warship would turn her into so much drifting debris in short order. Which was the reason Duan and his crew vastly preferred to depend upon stealth and guile.

Jeroswen wrote:I often wondered why we didn't see pirates using small crappy freighters. All you need is a couple of laser mounts, hidden, and a cheap targeting system. Travel the cargo routes and act like a freighter. When you come upon a freighter you encourage the crew to leave, man the ship and take the cargo that way.

Because unless you refit that freighter with military-grade impellers, your chances of intercepting other freighters drop drastically. Sure, you'll still be able to pick off the odd victim here or there, but you can't really loiter in a system and wait for good targets to show up (which pirates seem to do very often).

Not to mention that, in a situation where you are caught in the act and intercepted by a proper military vessel, you have absolutely no chance to escape.

The E wrote:

Jeroswen wrote:I often wondered why we didn't see pirates using small crappy freighters. All you need is a couple of laser mounts, hidden, and a cheap targeting system. Travel the cargo routes and act like a freighter. When you come upon a freighter you encourage the crew to leave, man the ship and take the cargo that way.

Because unless you refit that freighter with military-grade impellers, your chances of intercepting other freighters drop drastically. Sure, you'll still be able to pick off the odd victim here or there, but you can't really loiter in a system and wait for good targets to show up (which pirates seem to do very often).

Not to mention that, in a situation where you are caught in the act and intercepted by a proper military vessel, you have absolutely no chance to escape.

Add to military-grade impellers a military-grade inertial compensator, or face being turned into anchovy paste. A military-grade hyper generator and military-grade particle shielding will dramatically cut the the travel time between systems, from months to weeks.

All of which increases the cost of the freighters and undercuts the idea of using them as a cheap way to commit piracy.

A lot of guesswork, but based on the prize money Honor got in Field of Honor, a BC was valued in 1905 at $400 million. Assuming a crew of 2500, that's an up-front investment from each of $160,000.

Hijacking a billion-dollar freighter doesn't get the pirates a billion dollars, though. As stolen goods, there's a steep dive in the value. So probably one freighter breaks even on the BC's initial cost, but you'd have to take at least another one to meet the maintenance costs and start paying the crew.

Whereas a frigate is only going to cost maybe 50 million. Although it's more of a per-crew investment($.5-1 mil per crew), the return is immediate as soon as the first prize is taken. The frigate's initial cost, pay for its crew members and maintenance costs for a good while, maybe even fill the magazines.

We can guess that there aren't a terrible many people willing to pay enormous sums to enter a life of criminality where the first mistake usually results in death, so piracy is definitely an investor-based enterprise. Basically, the financiers go nowhere near the actual pirating, relying on people who have no better opportunities to do the dirty work.

So from an investment standpoint, say I have half a billion I'd like to use to get many billions by stealing defenseless shipping. Which will provide a greater return sooner, one BC or eight frigates?

Silverwall wrote:Also a lot of piracy in Silesia and similar places is similar to piracy in the 21st centaury.

It's more about the ransom than actually getting your hands on the sweet loot in the holds. This is mentioned explicitly in Honor amongst enemies when they talk about ransoms for the crew of Hauptman's captured by Warneck's loonies. Really high value cargos will be retrieved by whatever means necessary, in RL they ransomed the ship full of T72s the pirates captured but do you really think that the major governments were ever going to let them keep/sell those tanks?

I have to agree with Duck that the chance of anything bigger than a DD is out of the question, again if you look at things in real life the typical pirate vessel is a rubber dingy with some yahoos armed with AK's and RPG's with a mother ship which is a dilapidated light fishing vessel. This is not a high tech outfit and the equivalent in most Honorverse backwater locations is a minimally armed Frigate.

I will agree with you that most pirates are going to be in minimally armed frigates, with some going for smallish DDs. However in some areas going for a ship that creeps into CL range will make sense. There is a trade-off between cost of crew, cruising endurance, and number of crew that can be spared to take captured vessels to the fence. Anyone with anything larger cannot meet payroll except by going on the traditional big pay for pirates, longshore raids.

Longshore raids are not done by pirates in modern times because due to the combination of cars and radios, they will be met with overwhelming force before they can escape. 50+ men can take over a smallish city in a surprise raid before authorities can respond when the fastest means of communication and response is a fast horse. A 50 man raid by Somali Pirates into the suburbs of Mombasa today would likely be met by Kenyan police and military before they could complete the armed robbery of the first bank.

So the Verge had armed freighters already floating about, and the Verge is the very edge of Solarian influence. Silesia must be absolutely rotten with armed freighters, regardless of the prior Silesian stance of 'no-privately armed ships'


Which makes Manticore pretty damn brave, or pretty damn stupid to be operating unarmed freighters, when the pirates in Silesia had already crept into commonly being large frigate and light cruiser ranges without batting eyelashes.

munroburton wrote:A lot of guesswork, but based on the prize money Honor got in Field of Honor, a BC was valued in 1905 at $400 million. Assuming a crew of 2500, that's an up-front investment from each of $160,000.

Hijacking a billion-dollar freighter doesn't get the pirates a billion dollars, though. As stolen goods, there's a steep dive in the value. So probably one freighter breaks even on the BC's initial cost, but you'd have to take at least another one to meet the maintenance costs and start paying the crew.

Whereas a frigate is only going to cost maybe 50 million. Although it's more of a per-crew investment($.5-1 mil per crew), the return is immediate as soon as the first prize is taken. The frigate's initial cost, pay for its crew members and maintenance costs for a good while, maybe even fill the magazines.

We can guess that there aren't a terrible many people willing to pay enormous sums to enter a life of criminality where the first mistake usually results in death, so piracy is definitely an investor-based enterprise. Basically, the financiers go nowhere near the actual pirating, relying on people who have no better opportunities to do the dirty work.

So from an investment standpoint, say I have half a billion I'd like to use to get many billions by stealing defenseless shipping. Which will provide a greater return sooner, one BC or eight frigates?

I'm not rejecting the more practical use of eight frigates. I'm just saying that if a capable captain & crew found itself with the possibility of purchasing a BC, that they wouldn't pass it up. Or may even go out to explicitly acquire one to execute the big score, which would render the BC as a use once get away vehicle. Then you destroy it in a back alley of space if you can't sell it to a chop shop.

Again. Nice posts. Everyone. Thanks for the guestimates munroburton. There I go thinking that a BC costs lots more. But an aging BC would have to be worth what, half that? If sold at cost, or within the "good ol' boy network."

Be that as it may, the "sweet spots" of freighter looting I'd think would be valued in the tens of billions. These are huge freighters.

By comparison. A modern day cargo ship can carry a maximum of 169M DWT. High-grade marijuana sells for $6,000 lb. If a container ship shipped loaded with high grade weed. That would be 169T X 2204.62lb X $6000 = a shipment valued at
$2,235,484,680. Surely there are many items in the Honorverse shipping lanes with values significantly higher than Old Earth pot. Even if it is high-grade weed. And an Honorverse freighter can carry just how much more DWT? (Deadweight tonnage)

Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised, of the capability at least, if several hundred billion to quite more in shipments of a single freighter are common!

I just can't shake the feeling that we may be jumping the gun at the value of a BC to that rare breed of pirate with impeccable tactics&strategy that can plan, implement and pull off, this type of heist. Let's say a scorned ex-payee on Janacek's payroll. This calibre of pirate can take this sort of shipment away from even a convoy escorted by two DDs. And if he can get a double freighter grab??? Ultra-booty-licious! Then retire and buy yourself a small planet in the Verge.

Somtaaw wrote:So the Verge had armed freighters already floating about, and the Verge is the very edge of Solarian influence. Silesia must be absolutely rotten with armed freighters, regardless of the prior Silesian stance of 'no-privately armed ships'


Which makes Manticore pretty damn brave, or pretty damn stupid to be operating unarmed freighters, when the pirates in Silesia had already crept into commonly being large frigate and light cruiser ranges without batting eyelashes.

There is no evidence of armed freighters being well armed. The Solly designs such as the dromadary are not only unarmed and so unconcerned by the possibility of damage that they are spinal mounts with core components in highly exposed by easy to maintain locations. Manty and Andy freighters are not armed as is shown by various events in silesia but do design ships to take light battle damage with a central core design.

In fact the only armed "freighters" we have seen have been a variety of Q ships and special ops ships or official fleet auxiliaries. None of these are representative of "Typical" freighters.

Armed "Merchant ships" in the cannon

* The Havenite Q ship from on basilisk station. Armed as heavy cruiser with professional naval crew
* Wayfarer class Q ships, originally armed fleet auxiliaries converted to eggshells armed with gatling sledgehammers (firepower is greater than most BC's of the era)
* Captain Baschfish's ships which are registered as a reserve fleet auxiliary logistics ships courtesy of Manty Naval Intelligence, originally built as a armed fleet logistics ships by the Andermani
* Marriane a black ops ship and sometimes slaver beloning to the Mesan cartels and ultimately taking orders from the Allignment. Much more heavily armed than her papers suggest. Gets away with this mainly by being Mesan Registered and hiding weapons behind internal weapons. Stated to be much more heaviliy armed than a typical armed freighter.

Now for the only armed merchant ship not equiped/functioning as a fleet auxiliary/Q ship

* RMS Artemis, a BC sized luxury passenger liner armed as a heavy cruiser with dedicated combat ratings in the crew. Makes regular runs into Silesia and is explicitly designed to scare the holy living hell out of any punk pirate that sees it. Publicly armed to the teath and as fast as a fleet BC to boot. Pirates will stear clear as picking a fight with these ships will get them shot to shit and attract all sort of unwanted official attention from Manticore once the dust settles. The way it is descibed in cannon makes it clear that having such a well armed civilian ship is a very special case.

The only time we see "Pirates" using anything larger than a frigate/DD is when they are revolutionary navies and Successionists acting as real military forces pursuing a commerce raiding strategy with political agendas. Actually taking the prizes is a nice bonus but not actually required. Folks in this category include the Peoples Navy in Exile. The Mesan cats paws driving the Solly heavy cruisers, Warneck's scumbag "Naval Squadron" and the pirates that Baschfish runs into in Mrs Midshipman Harrington.

All these forces are armed and behave like navies with a bit of piracy as a nice secondary income at most compared to clear political goals being pursued by military force.

Finally 400 million sounds rediculously low as the purchase value for a BC. We know this as in Field of Dishonor the yard repairing Nike manages to salvage a broadside graser saving 14 million dollars in the process. This gives us a floor cost on the graser mount of 14 million and probably more as this is the savings after repair costs.

Now we know from House of Steel that Nike is a later flight Reliant which has 6 of these mounts in each broadside and 2 more in each hammerhead.

This gives us a minimum value of just the graser armament of a bc as: 224 million manty dollars.

These ships also have 56 missile launchers, 8 Lasers, 48 counter missile launchers and 48 Point defence clusters.

Even assuing that all these average (including Ammo) only half the cost of a heavy graser or 7 million this is 1.12 billion manty dollars

so far we have 1.36 billion for the BC and we have only paid for the weapons. Engines, fit out, electronics, armour and hull will easily double this so a more realistic floor price for a BC is 2.75 billion manty dollars. This is way out of the range of normal pirates


Surely the money mentioned is just Honor's share of the pot divied a great many ways.

Lets make a couple of not very sound assumptions about this money.

1) Captains get the 1/4 of the money awared in napoleonic periods. (personally I expect the captains share to much smaller in the honorverse probably closer to 10% given the changes in culture and such)

2) the crown actually buys ships in a book value to the crew not on a % basis, I would expect less than full book value to be assigned to the crews given the way ship costs have changed since the napoleonic days.

3) the only captains with a claim on this money are those in Sarnows squadron and excludes the dispersed DD's and minelayers and they decide that Dansislav's forces get a big fat 0$ as the Havenites just up and surrended before they engaged.

This gives us 25% of the ships value divided amongst the 8 BC captains and 8 CA captains.

If we take the 2.75 billion for a BC and assume that a DN is 3 times the cost that gives us a grand total prize pool of 44 billion dollars paid by the Exchecquer for the ships.

Given the assumptions above this would have given honor approx 680 million dollars prize money which sounds about right for how her wealth is described in the books.

cthia wrote:I'm not rejecting the more practical use of eight frigates. I'm just saying that if a capable captain & crew found itself with the possibility of purchasing a BC, that they wouldn't pass it up. Or may even go out to explicitly acquire one to execute the big score, which would render the BC as a use once get away vehicle. Then you destroy it in a back alley of space if you can't sell it to a chop shop.

No, they wouldn't, because any pirate with the ability to acquire heavy firepower knows it would be stupid for him to do so (unless he has backing by some major power like Frontier Fleet).

Again. Nice posts. Everyone. Thanks for the guestimates munroburton. There I go thinking that a BC costs lots more. But an aging BC would have to be worth what, half that? If sold at cost, or within the "good ol' boy network."

His estimates are based on false assumptions though. 400 Million Dollars is what the RMN would pay to buy these ships into service, not what Haven paid to build them.

By comparison. A modern day cargo ship can carry a maximum of 169M DWT. High-grade marijuana sells for $6,000 lb. If a container ship shipped loaded with high grade weed. That would be 169T X 2204.62lb X $6000 = a shipment valued at
$2,235,484,680. Surely there are many items in the Honorverse shipping lanes with values significantly higher than Old Earth pot. Even if it is high-grade weed. And an Honorverse freighter can carry just how much more DWT? (Deadweight tonnage)

Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised, of the capability at least, if several hundred billion to quite more in shipments of a single freighter are common!

I just can't shake the feeling that we may be jumping the gun at the value of a BC to that rare breed of pirate with impeccable tactics&strategy that can plan, implement and pull off, this type of heist. Let's say a scorned ex-payee on Janacek's payroll. This calibre of pirate can take this sort of shipment away from even a convoy escorted by two DDs. And if he can get a double freighter grab??? Ultra-booty-licious! Then retire and buy yourself a small planet in the Verge.

Except that it doesn't work that way.

Assume you intercept a mid-sized honorverse freighter, packed to capacity with goods. Something on the order of 3 or 4 million tons of cargo, or roughly equivalent to the output of one of Earth's bigger industrialized countries for a year. There is no single buyer able to take that cargo off your hands, let alone at book value, so it has to be parcelled off and fed into the shadow economy piecemeal, or held in custody until the shipping company pays a ransom. Neither method will result in quick payouts, and whatever the final payout will be, it's not going to be anywhere close to the book value of the goods.

Meanwhile, your supposed pirate still had to go through the troubles involved in acquiring a capital ship, getting a crew, getting the ship set up for a raiding mission, and for what purpose? The mission you describe doesn't require a Battlecruiser to pull off, a couple smaller ships are perfectly sufficient for it, increasing the overall payout and decreasing the individual risk.

No, cthia. What you describe is something only a terminally stupid pirate would do.