Or a maniac hellbent for battle even if the odds are against him.
One could also play out Traven's "The Death Ship" by having a merchant being sent into pirate infested systems on purpose to lose the ship.
The options are endless.
Civvies with starship guns?
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
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Or a maniac hellbent for battle even if the odds are against him.
One could also play out Traven's "The Death Ship" by having a merchant being sent into pirate infested systems on purpose to lose the ship.
The options are endless.
B. Traven's books are a gold mine for the canny GM. Hell, B. Traven's life is a gold mine for the canny GM.
McPhee's Looking For A Ship and Buckley's Steaming to Bamboola can also provide lots of great real world stories for a GM to plunder for his own merchant campaigns. Among those are stories about well known "wrecking" captains, that is captains sent aboard by owners with the deliberate intent of sinking the vessel. One such man was so notorious that crews would refuse to sail with him. Another had his packed luggage stowed aboard a life boat days before the ship's "accidental" loss. Yet another had a running war with one his mates over helm orders meant to place the ship danger.
Looking For A Ship also discusses modern day piracy and how it almost always involves the theft of goods and equipment from ships rather than the seizure of ships themselves. McPhee's explanation regarding how the size of modern container vessels coupled with the size of their crews allows pirates to simply board, open containers, and pilfer the contents in plain sight and in daylight should be an eye opener for anyone still adhering to the simpleminded Yo Ho Ho piracy model.
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Thanks for the heads up on those books, they sound interesting.
Traven is a great resource, much of his work can also give a glimpse of a developing economy such as many frontier worlds would have.
Traven and authors like him are great resources.
Also, if by "developing economy" you mean "being strip mined by off-planet interests with huge bank accounts, tons of guns, and most of the local and Imperial government on the payroll" I am in total agreement.
Note the current situation with Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Some ships have taken to carrying machineguns to convince the pirates to bother someone else.
Garyius2003
SOC-13
I note we are balanced on a razor edge ourselves. There is a very real chance that, as America goes to a 200 ship navy, the Chinese won't pick up the slack and cargo ships will have to start mounting Bushmaster 30mms. 50 cal rifles are just barely working now with back up over the horizon.
I posted a real pirate incident that happened five years ago in the Indian Ocean region near Yemen. That kind of stuff happens more often than not. In the Carribean and off of the west coast of Africa it's more a case of swimmers heading out to yachts and looting money, TVs, computers and the like.
When I think of Traveller, I think of a close cousin to Star Wars where you get the occasional Millennium Falcon type captain who's slapped some AAA on his ship for "self defense". Maybe the guy and his crew walk around armed, maybe not. It depends on the world and other circumstances. But, the ship is capable of repelling the casual thief/pirate.
I read a post by a yachtsman on another BBS who told of some cannibal pirates in the Phillipenes, and how he and his buddy had to gun their engines to escape a souped up barge sporting something like an M-60 or SAW on the front nose. Another account told of two yachts that were being attacked by pirates armed with AK-47s. The yacht owners returned fire with shotguns using Buck-00 to keep the heads down of the pirates. This let one of the yachts maneuver for a ram, which nearly sank the pirate vessel. All these incidents happened within the last five years, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
So, piracy on the high seas still happens.
But I'm curious what kinds of hardware limitations to do you grant your private owners and companies to protect themselves? Limit vessel size? What?
madmike
SOC-12
The A3L far trader my group managed to successfully claim as prize is armed with three turrets. Port is armed with a dual beam laser, starboard with a dual sandcaster and the dorsal, a triple missile launcher.
The first question asked by the ships engineer was.... "Can we get nuclear missiles?"
After I finished laughing.... "Ah...no...."
The first question asked by the ships engineer was.... "Can we get nuclear missiles?"
After I finished laughing.... "Ah...no...."
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
I've long employed a simple TL mechanic, for the whole design including weapons, it works for me...
Civilian Ships, generally small yachts, traders, and such, are restricted to TL12 or less and turrets only. This nicely limits weapons, computers and software brought to bear, as well as power and maneuvering. It also caps armour though most civilian ships can't afford it for cost and volume reasons.
Para-Military Ships are permitted TL14 or less and may fit bay weapons. This covers mercenaries, properly licensed of course, and subsidized merchants which includes MegaCorp ships.
Military Ships are strictly Imperial Navy and the only ones sporting TL15 and higher (experimentally) and allowed spinal weapons.
In the OTU, systems may build TL15 vessels with spinal mounts and dispose of surplus ships to other system navies. (See Empress Troyhune).
Hans
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Of course, but the question and answer are obviously YTU / MTU.
Less obvious I suppose I was speaking of Starships. The Spaceship loophole is illustrated by this example. I usually also lump Government with Imperial Navy and MegaCorp but neglected to stipulate such which would also play in this example.
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I've always gone for "soft" limitations. That is, there isn't some stringently enforced Imperial edict which spells out precisely that A can only install B aboard C while X can install Y aboard Z. Instead, the limitations IMTU are primarily created by issues like cost, availability, parts, maintenance, operations, training, control systems, and so forth.
Putting it another way, Cap'n Blackie isn't going to have a TL-15 PAW turret mounted on The Running Boil more because he can't afford it, can't find someone who will sell him one, can't maintain it, doesn't have a crewman who can operate it, doesn't have the control systems for it, or other such issues and less because Redtape Q. Bwap of the 117th Ship Weaponry Auditors Corp won't stamp the proper forms.
These "soft" limitations doesn't mean that weaponry aboard ships doesn't generally scale as ownership scales from individuals to corporations to governments. And it also doesn't mean that starport authorities of all stripes across Chartered Space won't look very closely at certain ships, require some to some to remain in orbit, and even require others to stay further out.
IMTU and in my campaigns, I categorized ship weaponry into 4 classes whose boundaries definitely "bled" into each other. These categories were a direct result of our adoption of the HG2 combat system for our campaigns' Mayday/LBB:2 sessions.
The first category is single weapon/single turret batteries. Most civilian small ships fall into this category as do most PCs' ships.
The second category is multiple turret batteries. Most corporate and paramilitary ships fall into this category while PCs/NPCs could "upgrade" their ships in.
The third category is weapon bays. Government and some corporate ships are in this category.
The fourth and final category is spinal mounts. While there are exceptions like Oberlindes' Emissary, government ships primarily make up this category. Spinals IMTU are pretty much the only weaponry you won't see in civilian hands.
