The Economics of Piracy

Kytheros wrote:2 is a mixed bag - more crew means more prize ships without taking breaks, but you're probably running up against endurance issues, and the more crew means the ships you do take are split between more people, so each individual crewmember gets less.

cthia wrote:

The Economics of Piracy:

Foods are transshipped to worlds, not corporations and people. Freighters have to make money. They don't like operating unless full. They can't afford to. Planets don't want to wait for another freighter coming in months. They can't afford that nonsense. You all imagine that a big score is "goods to or fro," one planet of origin. I doubt that's the norm. Worlds, and entities within, are probably responsible for their own insurance. One thing's for certain, the matter of their insurance isn't a concern for pirates. I'm fairly damn sure about that.

Freighters? These behemoths have a huge DWT (dry weight tonnage) And they aren't as numerous as fat buffalo on the plains of Kansas. Heck, I'm sure that the League wishes it had plenty more of these buffalo. In fact, they'd really like to steal some of that fat high-on-the-hog uppity neobarb's freighter cattle as well. So when you need to import or export goods in a time sensitive fashion as I imagine all planets dealing with months as a delivery schedule do, you take whatever available transport comes along or is scheduled to come. And you have a huge order arriving! Some of them get really loaded folks. Just like the mail trucks along some routes.

It's beginning to sound like everyone is trying to force normalcy and its associated thinking onto pirates. These are not logical people, at least the logic as you and I know it. (I'm tentatively including you as having vision) And they, and therefore their thinking and lifestyle, aren't driven by common logic.

Why does a pirate decide to pirate anyways? It's because Murphy has beat the shit out of him so many times that they bunk together.

Piracy is a problem people. It is real. You all seem to be babies about it. Pirates don't just take what they "need to survive" from the "total booty available in the universe" like native American Indians who respect the cycle of life.

Pirates always take what they can. What they think they can get away with. They can't afford to pass up on a once in a lifetime score that they may never see again. These people have families to get back to, or relationships, if they ever want to remain sane and human. Shore leave and vacation aren't benefits that some corporate conglomerate or the government gives to pirates. It isn't a 9 - 5 job with the luxury of knowing when they'll make it back anywhere. So to expect them to take time and chance to overanalyze anything while the next pirate is signing on for dry buffalo on the plains is ridiculous. After all, I may actually be right that pirates really do have relationships, loved ones and an existence to support.

So when a once in a lifetime slam bam thank you mam comes along, "You speak for yourself and let them do what they do." It's piracy and "It Is What It Is." The volume of space is huge. It isn't like there's so many buffalo out on the plains that every pirate is living high on the hog. It's the sort of scarcity in hunting that makes a lone hyena consider challenging a lion for food.

In the Golden Age of Piracy, the early times which first alerted planets, not navies that they even needed a mechanism to fight piracy - when the stink of it first bit the universe in its collective ass and the highest form of thieving criminal first stood up and claimed himself "I am Preston of the Chaseways!" - I imagine that NOTHING was safe.

I imagine that the concept had to be reborn. It was nothing like Blackbeard's era. 'But the greed is the same,' you might think. Oh no, you can't say that either. An Old Earth historical pirate cannot imagine the true riches floating about in the vastness of space. We're even arguing about it in a forum of speculation.

This is the vastness of space. The act of piracy here had to evolve. Is always evolving. Again, as I speculate, early on, I can imagine that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WAS SAFE! Piracy didn't become a problem by being nice. I imagine that even military escorts were attacked in the Golden Age before it was established by virgin example that this is a bad idea. Military convoys are at risk even currently in the Honorverse, and are attacked. Just not by pirates. But by commerce raiders or privateers. A technical, more politically correct form of pirate. They are simply pirates with a conscious or ideals of patriotic ramblings AND support.

Even commerce raiders and privateers probably have corruption within their ranks, and who are stealing confiscated and seized convoys and selling it on the black market themselves. And what does that make them? Technically, right back into pirates - only difference, who may actually get court-martialed instead of airlocked. Technically, these pirates already do have BCs and SDs. Do you really think all of the commerce raiders and privateers of every polity is honest? Good luck with that naive outlook of how reality really works.

And if try as you may, you still can't wrap your head around humans having rogue thoughts like "the one big score" even though it would be fraught with perils and a guarantee that one day they'll be running for their life and hiding...

⇒ Exhibit A: Elaine Descroix.

A rare breed of pirate. She steals from the rich governments and creams of societies and gives to herself. Elaine cares about self. The definition of a pirate. She used sex, stealth, feminine strategy and tactics every time to secure the big score. Which landed her in positions of power, acceptance and influence. The quintessential successful female pirate at heart. Who would have sold out her own mother had she been aboard the slave ship. And she pissed off several navies and factions that are now gunning for her to do it. In that light, it sure doesn't seem to ring true about the fear of being chased by entire navies and polities enough of a deterrent to stop the greed of humankind.

I suspect, in the Golden Age of piracy, that even navies all over the universe lost booty to pirates. Until the universe realized it had to get its shit together. But it still has its diaper changed here and there. When real life and reality sends it to the crapper to sit on the potty to think. "We've really got a problem in Silesia. And it stinks. Or is that us?"


Wake up forumites, pirates are not in Kansas anymore.

What was a humorous thought throughout reading this series that occurred to me time and time again, more so in this thread, is that I wager there have been times when an escort was inadequately supported because of available ships, oversight, error or neglect and limped back to some base, shot up and overpowered by pirates.

I know. You're really going to have trouble with that thought, as some of you've never really been to Kansas.

The rest of you are probably thinking I'm actually talking about the state.

cthia wrote:Perhaps this is how it works in RFCs world. I don't know. Haven't discussed it with him. But in reality, in as huge an expanse as the Honorverse, I would imagine that a pirate takes whatever weakling that comes along in a back alley of space. The smaller shipments are probably more numerous and weakly guarded. A freighter partly loaded or fully loaded will both easily die with a freighter's buffalo gun. A pirate is supposed to pass up a score that size because he can't hide it all? In the immensity that is space? And I'm supposed to believe that he can't find any fences for it, in the immensity of space? With all the poor and corrupt governments? I'm supposed to believe, that the long history of piracy in the Honorverse hasn't produced a number of fences that pirates know about? I'm supposed to believe that when a pirate boards his catch and sees it too full of buffalo he throws it back into the ocean because it is too large a catch? I thought you only throw small fish back into the ocean. (Except my sister, who wants to keep them all for stew. lol)

Sigs wrote:Here is the problem with this, let's assume that the pirates take the loot. What do you think happens when the nation who lost that cargo puts out the word that anyone caught with any part of the cargo in question will be on a very, very short list with an even shorter life expectancy few people will want to touch your stolen goods because anyone who does gets on the hit list.

And what happens if you have to hide the booty for a few years while the heat dies down? Who are you going to trust to hold the cargo? How are you going to keep 2,000 or more pirates from talking? Or for that matter from asking for their cut here and now before you even get it?

If you as a pirate hit a convoy, destroyed its escorts and killed thousands of naval personnel and stole trillions of dollars worth of merchandise you will have an entire navy gunning for you. And to top it all off no one will want to touch your stolen goods because they will be caught in the reprisal if they do.

cthia wrote:But seriously, why are freighters built to carry so much goods if they don't?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Sigs wrote:Here is the problem with this, let's assume that the pirates take the loot. What do you think happens when the nation who lost that cargo puts out the word that anyone caught with any part of the cargo in question will be on a very, very short list with an even shorter life expectancy few people will want to touch your stolen goods because anyone who does gets on the hit list.

And what happens if you have to hide the booty for a few years while the heat dies down? Who are you going to trust to hold the cargo? How are you going to keep 2,000 or more pirates from talking? Or for that matter from asking for their cut here and now before you even get it?

If you as a pirate hit a convoy, destroyed its escorts and killed thousands of naval personnel and stole trillions of dollars worth of merchandise you will have an entire navy gunning for you. And to top it all off no one will want to touch your stolen goods because they will be caught in the reprisal if they do.

I'd go a step further and say that disposing of it is even higher risk. It seems unlikely that your normal fence will be able to handle this entire once in a lifetime haul - much of it seems likely to require very specialized contacts.

You'd want reasonable assurance that you can liquidate it afterwards. But if you feel out potential additional fences before hand each increases the risk that they'll simply decide this haul is far too hot to handle, but that they'd get a nice reward for tipping off your target. Even rumors that the ultra valuable haul is being specifically targetted will likely result in additional measures taken to secure it -- making the pirates job all that much more impossible.

But trying to move the extraordinary haul afterwards, once the heat is on, just seems to up those risks again. No single fence can handle it, but each you reach out to knows there's a nation willing to move heaven and earth to punish the people who blew away their naval escort and stole their valuables. But even if all the fences refrain from turning out in each additional one you use is one more path that could potentially be backtracked to you if they get caught with any of the loot. (Or one more path that could give up intel on you in exchange for leniency if caught for some other illegal activity).

Sigs wrote:

I don't think Murphy has much to do with Piracy, it might be the case for a small % of pirates but it is likely not so for the vast majority. You always have a segment of any population which is eager to embrace less than legal or moral means to make money or visit violence on individuals with low probability of retribution.


As far as logic? They are logical, someone who has spend years attacking the defenceless would not likely be willing to attack a heavily defended convoy protected by those who have spend years preparing for a fight.


None of us are babies about it, we are realistic. A Pirate does not attack a heavily defended convoy, they seek out defenceless ships. If a patrol or a Q-ship is rumored to be in the area they change locations... pirates are NOT I say again NOT fighters, they want the most amount of gain for the least amount of danger.

Pirates take what they can, but that is exactly what we are saying, they take what they CAN take with the least amount of danger to themselves. They will likely not go after a convoy escorted by a couple of tin cans let alone heavy cruisers with a BC that is decades past it's prime and a crew that has spend their careers taking from the helpless.

In Your scenario everything HAS to go right or they gain nothing and most likely lose everything.

1) They have to have a BC ready
2) They have to have a means of crewing that BC in a short time frame.
3) Get the intel in a timely manner.
4) Somehow expect that a nation might send a good chunk of its GDP in one ship escorted by idiots.
5) Have every officer in every ship of the escort be an idiot, a coward or both.
6) Have exact travel plans and know for certain that the freighter in question will follow that flight plan no matter what.

*If you don't have the BC the mission is a no-go.

*If you can't get enough crew for that BC mission is no go or a very short one at the least once the escort get's a hold of you.

*If your crew is full of bloodthirsty incompetent morons because that is what you can get in a short time frame, you will be dead before you approach the freighter.

*If you cannot get the intel in a timely manner, there is a very good chance you wont be able to get the BC ready, the crew hired and be in position in time to get the target.

*If the organization in question is not stupid enough to send 2 trillion dollars worth of goods on one ship and all at once your once in a lifetime opportunity just went up in flame.

*If the merchandise is sent out but under heavy escort your plans go up in flames.

*If the escort commander and his/her subordinates are competent officers even if outgunned/out massed by you it will likely be a very, very bad day for the pirate and his crew IF they manage to survive.

*Your battle cruiser can only be in one place, what if the convoy commander has a choice from 3 routes?


You want pirates to have BC's and you have created this fantasy to justify why a pirate should have a BC ready and waiting. The problem is for your fantasy to actually happen it would require a lot of smart people whose job is to prevent this to suddenly become brain dead.


As for Elaine Descroix I think you have the names mixed up.

cthia wrote: I'm talking about that very rare breed of Preston of the Chaseways. Who has acquired tactics and strategy from classified sources. He knows how to best use a BC in support of piracy. Even if just her sensor suite is the most utilized. I suspect, that the mettle of pirate that sails aboard a BC also has a couple of DDs. He's rolling in the dough. But you can best believe that this brand of pirate doesn't waste the talents of his BC. Especially when he's receiving detailed travel itinerary and predetermined payoff. Deploy drones about your attack area, that reports to your pre-positioned BC. I imagine that with a BC you can run down a few scatterers.

This Preston also kills to keep his secret. No survivors. He has his drones prepositioned telling him that there is no other ship in sensor range to see what is about to happen.



Also remember, this is a dashing Preston of the Chaseways. A cross between Blackbeard, Harrington and 007. He doesn't care about the operating cost of a BC. Hell, he doesn't care about the BC. The scores this pirate goes after can pay for a BC in petty celebration after-party money. How much can an aging BC cost, acquired for a single mission against this kind of score.