Corsair Help Question

[hellbat]

I have a pirate with a 400-ton corsair and want to have a scenario where it uses its variable configuration to pass it off as a common civilian ship of standard design when visiting an orbital high port.

Ideally I'd like to use one of the existing designs to avoid attracting my players' suspicion by describing it as a type they've never seen or heard of before, but I'm intersted in opinions as to what would logically attract least attention from the authorities. I wonder... would it be realistic to disguise as a streamlined ship, even though it's unstreamlined? If a corsair can pretend to be a Type R that would be great, but it seems like a bit of a stretch! Or is it sensible?

(Ideally I should have introduced a new "cover" ship a few adventures ago, but don't have time for that now....!)

 

[far-trader]

I would suggest at this stage presenting it as a Type R, streamlined and all, while in reality it has all the functions of the Type P Corsair.

Outwardly it looks like a Type R, it may even have been one in its past. A casual boarding and inspection party may even be fooled by the interior disguises. And its transponder* and papers are in order, again if not too closely scrutinized.

Some of that "cargo" is actually fuel and drive modules cleverly disguised and ready to perform above the Type R specs if needed. Those "passengers" are actually pirates and part of the crew dressed up as innocent Travellers, with weapons hidden around the ship. And those damage "patches" on the hull of the old Type R will retract to reveal pop-up turrets at a moments notice to supplement the defensive "sand caster" turrets which instead launch missiles. Oh, that plodding innocuous Launch? A fast Gunned Gig of course, again disguised. etc. etc.

* fwiw I think a variable transponder with several faked legitimate Type R registrations makes more sense than a variable physical configuration

 

[Captain Jonah]

First off OTUs and many YTUs are full of ships. Hundreds of types. Every world that designs its own ships adds a new type to the list.

So throw off your players by putting together a list of hull types. When they scan something new they can access the ships library and find an entry. For example.

Designation 812-d47 Medium cargo. 400Dtons displacement. 210Dtons cargo. 6-10 Passengers. 1 parsec jump. 1G drive. Launch. 4 weeks endurance. Licensed design from Sarsen shipyards of Regina. Common in Spinward marches, uncommon elsewhere.

Designation 41-39-042d Medium cargo/passenger. 400Dtons displacement. 150Dtons cargo. 12-16 passengers. 2 parsec drive, 2G. 4 weeks endurance. Licensed design from Corpran Ship builders of Copran 4. Sub licensed variant with improved Jump drive. Common to corridor sector, uncommon in the spinward marches. Rare elsewhere.

Since you cannot actually get visual until you are very close a basic transponder and hull map would give you the above. One could be a subby, the other could be a corsair or a jump 2 transport. So the ships seem legit even if the players have never seen the design before. But then with hundreds or thousands of designs out there the players could not have seen more than a tiny fraction of them all.
Or keep your players nervous and constantly have unknown designs in system so they don’t where the threat is. After all a 400Dton subby could come in many shapes and designs, if you get twitchy because its a three deck design or has the crew/passenger deck as a forward 2 deck set up with the drives midships and the rear is a three deck cargo area then you are going to need to treat every ship as a threat.

For pirates and Q ships something I have used before is small tankers. Outwardly a sublight fuel hauler commonly seen round gas giants and in the asteroid belts of many systems. The ship is a spine with a sublight drive at the tail and a small bridge and life support area at the front, basic hull but tidy enough to gas giant scoop. A small cargo bay under the bridge and the rest of the ship is big 50Dton fuel tanks mounted on the spine.

To the casual eye it is nothing special. However one of those fuel tanks holds the jump drive, others hold armed small craft and a boarding boat. Only the most detailed customs check would scan inside the fuel tanks and that’s what the sensor masking id for. As its clearly sublight it couldn’t possibly be the raider from the next system over. Small craft crew have living areas in the hanger pods. Plus it can sell its real fuel to maintain its cover or use it to jump away. With armed small craft its victims shouldn’t see it anyway.
At 400Dtons one fuel tank can hold the jump drive and most of the jump fuel. One or two 50Dton tank can hold a pair of light fighters another can hold a boarding craft, others could be part fuel and part hidden cargo and others have real fuel so you can visit those asteroid mines and sell them fuel then move off to the next while your fighters can be raiding a ship in another area.

Add fuel purifiers and scoops to find your own fuel and away you go. With limited on board cargo spaces this sort of ship is after either small high value cargos or the ship itself.

Players or NPC ships are ambushed by fighters and a boarding craft, they never see a mother ship. So the fact that they flew past a tanker earlier and maybe even bought fuel from them becomes just another ship out of the dozens in this area.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Type R spec can include hulls that look like the Type P. Wing shape and pop-turrets, as well as fake damaged patches, will allow a Type P to pass like a similarly-hulled R that it carries registration for.

 

[Hopeless]

Essentially a Q-ship ala On Basilisk's Station or Honor Harrington's first novel

Most probably has extra plating or coverings so it can pass a visual examination of its exterior, since your PCs aren't going to be local customs they're not going to be in a position to run the kind of scan that could spot it, but that doesn't mean they haven't got contacts in every port allowing them safe harbour as long as they don't raise any suspicions.

 

[Hans Rancke]

I would suggest at this stage presenting it as a Type R, streamlined and all, while in reality it has all the functions of the Type P Corsair.

Outwardly it looks like a Type R, it may even have been one in its past. A casual boarding and inspection party may even be fooled by the interior disguises. And its transponder* and papers are in order, again if not too closely scrutinized.

There's no way you can conceal the nature of a Corsair to an on-board customs inspection. The jump and maneuver drives and power plant is a dead give-away.

Some of that "cargo" is actually fuel and drive modules cleverly disguised and ready to perform above the Type R specs if needed.

Doesn't passs my plausibility test. I might swallow the fuel tanks disguised as cargo if my referee really begged me to ("Captain, please open that container for me, so that I can verify that it actually contains what it is supposed to." "Ah, Inspector, 'suppose to' is a relative concept. Perhaps the manifest is not completely accurate, but I can assure you that that container certainly contains what it is supposed to..."), but a drive is an integral whole. If it is made up of separate modules, those modules are connected by big power cables. And, incidentally, placed in a separate compartment from the main cargo (the engineering section).

Those "passengers" are actually pirates and part of the crew dressed up as innocent Travellers, with weapons hidden around the ship. And those damage "patches" on the hull of the old Type R will retract to reveal pop-up turrets at a moments notice to supplement the defensive "sand caster" turrets which instead launch missiles. Oh, that plodding innocuous Launch? A fast Gunned Gig of course, again disguised. etc. etc.

But a corsair that visits a starport disguised as a merchant without performing merchant-type transactions is very likely to arouse suspicion even if the customs inspection was lax enough (or corrupt enough) to overlook all the clues. Those passengers are expected to debark; that cargo is expected to be unloaded. Sure, every once in a while there'd be a legitimate merchant along with all its passengers and cargo destined for the next system, but that'd be rare enough to arouse suspicion in most places (There are, of course, a few systems that are nothing but stepping stones).

A disguise relies first and foremost on not arousing suspicion, and a merchant that doesn't act like a merchant is as suspicious as a 3-credit bill.

The real problem is that a disguised Corsair MIGHT go through a visit to a starport without being spotted, but then again, IT MIGHT NOT. All it takes is for the corsairs to be unlucky once and it's all up for them. This is a stunt that might be attempted by heroic (in the literary sense) corsairs aiming for a specific score -- one big enough to justify running such a risk -- but it's not going to be a routine stunt.


Hans

 

[far-trader]

There's no way you can conceal the nature of a Corsair...

A casual boarding and inspection party may even be fooled by the interior disguises. And its transponder* and papers are in order, again if not too closely scrutinized.

etc. etc.

I'm not writing a ship book... unless someone is buying it

So I didn't detail it out but I could address all you concerns quite satisfactorily if I did. You've made presumptions based on a quickly dashed off post that are not in fact in evidence and even apparently incorrectly interpreted some of it (the bold I highlighted above... edit: wow, bold really doesn't show up well here, change that to underlined).

...it's not going to be a routine stunt.

Agreed.

 

[Hans Rancke]

There's no way you can conceal the nature of a Corsair...

A casual boarding and inspection party may even be fooled by the interior disguises. And its transponder* and papers are in order, again if not too closely scrutinized.

So I didn't detail it out but I could address all you concerns quite satisfactorily if I did. You've made presumptions based on a quickly dashed off post that are not in fact in evidence and even apparently incorrectly interpreted some of it.

I admit that I did jump to the conclusion that you were arguing that disguising a Corsair as a merchant was a viable tactic. :lol: Which I maintain it generally isn't.

...it's not going to be a routine stunt.

Agreed.

In that case your point escaped me (and still escapes me). Sorry.


Hans

 

[far-trader]

...it's not going to be a routine stunt.

Agreed.

In that case your point escaped me (and still escapes me). Sorry.

My fault for sake of brevity and my own presumptions of the OP situation

Briefly, I took it as required for a single instance of encounter with the PC. The disguise measures would not be intended to fool any serious checks, but might be enough even then if the inspectors were lax or could be otherwise distracted (for example... "There's a hundred credits in it if you ignore the smell of... "spices" from this container guvnor." <wink wink>). That is realistic enough (at least for the graft driven TU).

Generally, I'm against the very idea of a Corsair class of ships, outside of Vargr raiders perhaps. Corsairs are generally going to be standard ships that have turned piratical and been modified to that task. Some will retain enough of the original to be passably honest (the Type A2 upgrade for example). A few may attempt to look the part through Q-ship type subterfuge (this Type RP for example). Most will be unchanged though and only engage in piracy when opportunity drops the chance for a quick easy score in their lap.

 

[hellbat]

Thanks for the quick replies everyone!

Yes, the ideal would have been to establish a 400-ton lookalike class in advance, but as I said, I didn't do that, and the character is established as having a corsair; I want to use its deckplan, etc.

Say, what do people do when a player character rolls up a Corsair for their pirate? It kind of seems like such a difficult design to actually USE, as it's so unique. I mean, presumably there is a legitimate class of "light mercenary cruiser" that it was based on, but that will attract attention.

On the other hand, with 160 tons of cargo capacity on 400 tons, it does have enough cargo space to pass as a merchant: its cargo to tonnage ratio is about the same as a Type A free trader, and it might even make a profit given it's been paid off or stolen in the first place! Filling half of the tonnage with legit or low-cost speculative freight might actually be worthwhile; it can always jettison the stuff in space if it finds better loot while perhaps using the legit cargo cannisters and such as "cover." If it's been successful it can unload semi-sanitized "stolen" cargo into a warehouse at the port (assuming no customs inspection until it crosses the extrality line). Actually, one trick might be to take 80 tons of cargo (say) and use the rest of the big bay as a sort of onboard chop-shop to repaint, relabel and repackage loot as much as possible.

What's the best justification for the original ship design the corsair was based on? Unless it's Vargr, p. 129 of the Core Rules: "intended as a raider and pocket warship" - but that sounds a bit off - its lack of armor, streamlining and small craft seem to make it rather dubious for the warship or raiding role if it's likely to take any sort of fire, and it can't land and take off again on any world with an atmosphere. It does look like it could make a dandy "pocket mercenary cruiser" for a grav armor platoon: 20 troops and maint. techs in low passage and some officers in the staterooms, and use the cargo space to carry a platoon of grav tanks or g-carriers and their supporting scout vehicles, ammo and supplies...

I guess the best cover might be "we're a mercenary company en route between X and Y" - but a merc company is probably likely to attract more attention than you'd want from authorities - or would it, if it was "just passing through"?.

What it actually looks like is a 2G, Jump 2 merchant ship (160 tons of cargo on 400 tons is twice that of the free trader at 200 tons, and only 40 tons less than a Fat trader) for operations in frontier sectors well off any mains . . . that got 'souped up' with a bigger power plant and an extra 1G and some milspec sensors. (If only the standard design was streamlined!)

- I agree a corsair's drives can't be hidden to an internal inspection. Fortunately, fooling an internal search isn't an issue: in my Traveller universe the Imperium is a bit more into individual liberty: it doesn't let member worlds charge duties or engage in customs inspections on goods coming or going into a starport or highport (that's a violation of Imperial law). Similarly, IMTU, Imperial authorities only search inside a ship if they have very good reason to believe crimes against Imperial high are being committed there; random spot checks only exist in systems under military rule, a terrorist threat from the Ine Givar, etc.

- Instead, the customs inspect occurs when moving goods from starport to planet, and what the local customs patrol are watching for is small craft or ships that refuse to land at the starport. This can lead to some nice chases on worlds with small 'coast guard' level navies as a ship dives from orbit and tries to vanish into the ocean or pass low over territory to drop off a few grav trucks or boats full of smuggled goods before zipping back to orbit again, and local fighters or customs cutters try to intercept, but it's not what our pirate is doing...

 

[GypsyComet]

In that case, there is no reason to establish a "lookalike" class. Type Ps are present in their thousands across the Imperium, mostly engaged in legal trading in fringe systems where being able to move quickly is a survival trait. Each has that same standard deckplan, and they all have wings, fins, and paint schemes that vary considerably. The variable features of the "Corsair" allow it to look like either a pirate, using chameleon hull to turn black and show either the skull and cross bones (Terra), the flaming eye (Vilani), or the skull and circle (Vargr) and showing a particular set of fin and wing shapes, or as a legit fringe trader with some other color hull and a different *and recognized* set of wing and fin shapes.

You don't hide your drives. You do hide the fact that you have a chameleon circuit hull and shiftable wings and fins, and a maneuver drive with a variable emission spectrum (recalling "Train Job" from Firefly). You get annual maintenance done with only carefully chosen shipyard crews. Ship crews are a disreputable bunch already, as far as many worlds are concerned, but pretending to be passengers or some sort of long-term charter can certainly be used to justify or hide a larger crew than normal.

Hide in plain sight.

 

[far-trader]

Say, what do people do when a player character rolls up a Corsair for their pirate?

Simple (and not so much so)... it's not a Corsair in MTU

The ship has a long history as a Type P (for Provincial... who would advertise the fact it's a Pirate ship with the lable?) Trader. As you note it has respectable cargo capacity. Add to that reasonable passenger space with about 6 Staterooms and 20 Lowberths for pax. It's only a Corsair by employment in MTU, and "Pirates" in MTU are usually Merchants who've hit the skids. The design is not that successful and prone to commercial failure which makes this design one commonly pressed into piracy and often suspect for that reason.

A "Pirate" profession is not something I give much credence to, again excepting perhaps Vargr.

IF a player had their heart set on being an Imperial Pirate in my game they would in fact be a Privateer/Commerce Raider in MTU. A fine distinction that permits a more purpose built ship along the lines of the classic Corsair with all it's tricks, and support through Imperial bases. IF they were to later turn on the very Imperium that set them up and embrace piracy, well, that has adventure written all over it too and would be the source of the traditional "Pirate" encounters.

 

[Hans Rancke]

Say, what do people do when a player character rolls up a Corsair for their pirate?

Simple (and not so much so)... it's not a Corsair in MTU

Indeed, in my campaigns it's not even a ship unless I'm going to run a free trader campaign (which my players rejected violently the last time I suggested it; they became troubleshooters for Oberlindes Lines instead). A ship is far too campaign-shaping a tool to be handed out randomly, so they become rerolls in non-trader campaigns and shares in the ship I'm going to give the party anyway in a trader campaign.

The ship has a long history as a Type P (for Provincial... who would advertise the fact it's a Pirate ship with the lable?) Trader. As you note it has respectable cargo capacity. Add to that reasonable passenger space with about 6 Staterooms and 20 Lowberths for pax.

It'll work for free traders as long as they don't have to pay off a bank loan for the new price. I'd still like to know what it was designed for. The 3G maneuver drive is bigger and more expensive than a merchant would like, require a bigger and more expensive power plant than a J2 drive needs, and requires an extra percentage point in power plant fuel tankage (That is, the last isn't the case IMTU; I simply don't believe in a fusion power plant so inefficient that it gobbles up tons of hydrogen in a mere month. But still.).

A "Pirate" profession is not something I give much credence to, again excepting perhaps Vargr.

Amen, Brother! But pirates are fun, though.


Hans

 

[far-trader]

I'd still like to know what it was designed for. The 3G maneuver drive is bigger and more expensive than a merchant would like, require a bigger and more expensive power plant than a J2 drive needs, and requires an extra percentage point in power plant fuel tankage...

Yeah, that's a puzzler. I'm not even sure it's enough to make a difference tactically in either running down a 1G merchant or outrunning the 4G patrol that comes after you. I thought I had it figured out once but can't recall how now. Maybe I just ignored it

I do know that I always had it pegged as a subbie. And in MTU that means it needs to meet the needs of the world(s) it may be called upon to defend by force. Generally more paramilitary than civilian in design (better computer/electronics, better weapons, etc.).

I might be able to justify the 3G with a limited reason, perhaps as a subsidized design that is required to make a long run to a world deep in a large stellar jump shadow. Somewhere that 1 or 2G would just take too long economically or for scheduling purposes.

...pirates are fun, though.

True, but best used sparingly of course

 

[IanW]

Piracy is viable, but not around Mainworlds.

Pirates and smugglers exist together, as both need to hide from the Navy.

Imagine there is a valuable mineral deposit on an Outsystem moon. Its owned by a Megacorp, and sooner or later they will develop it, starting with a sensor system and enough defensive weaponary to secure the area for 100 diameters around.

In the meantime, a sticky-fingered clerk has stolen the file, and an entirely unofficial mining colony is there. If the official owners find out, they'll be upset. If the navy finds out, at minimum they'll tell the official owners.

Its deep in the outsystem, so the mainworld is unlikely to see anything unless someone lights up an active sensor or ships explode.

Free traders will supply that world, in exchange for cut price black-market product.

The only security they have is the security they can bring.

All the things that make piracy around mainworlds unvialble do not exist here, deep in the Outsystem where smugglers lurk.

 

[GypsyComet]

All the things that make piracy around mainworlds unvialble do not exist here, deep in the Outsystem where smugglers lurk.

It gets even better when the mainworld is "average" according to the pop die roll, and only has 100,000 people to begin with.

 

[Hans Rancke]

It gets even better when the mainworld is "average" according to the pop die roll, and only has 100,000 people to begin with.

That simply means that the average mainworld is visited by very few merchants. And since the average mainworld can't afford substantial system defenses, the merchants who do visit will be armed.


Hans

 

[GypsyComet]

I don't know about "simply", but an underpopulated system (pop 6-) is also likely to be specialized and not in possession of extensive survey astronomy equipment. As far as they are concerned, the rest of the system is just navigation ephemera. Outer system clandestine operations are that much more likely to go undetected by the mainworld. They do need to be careful even then, since the system data an incoming ship will have available won't have any explanations for stray signals from remote outer moons.

Of course, there is also the possibility that the mainworld hired the claim jumpers in the first place...

 

[Hans Rancke]

At a population level of 6 a world should be able to afford a small system navy. Depending on exact GWP (which depends on population multiplier, TL and trade classifications), anything from a couple of patrol ships/SDBs to 15 full squadrons (@ 8 patrol ships/SDB). Though in the latter case it would probably just have 3 or 4 such squadrons and some bigger vessels for the rest of the money.


Hans

 

[GypsyComet]

That level of local coverage would come with a C+ starport, but not everyone has one of those.