How can merchies possibly make it?

[zozotroll]

As it seems pirates can operate with relative impunity, how can a merchant survive? Not make money, but just live for a while?

Incompetent navies, uncareing goverments, powerful pirate ships, weak trader armor, and aperently merchants to stupid to avoid pirate hotspots.

So how do you justify any merchants at all? Or are they just lemming like morons that blissfully sail into all those pirates clutches?

 

[SSWarlock]

Space is very big and pirates have to figure out when a decent target will be where it can be intercepted. Then they have to intercept it. And hope the target doesn't get in one (or more) lucky shots. And doesn't have an escort. And isn't part of a convoy.

And isn't a Q-ship. :twisted:

 

[simonh]

As it seems pirates can operate with relative impunity,..

I don't think anyone has suggested that they can.

Simon Hibbs

 

[atpollard]

As it seems pirates can operate with relative impunity, how can a merchant survive? Not make money, but just live for a while?

Incompetent navies, uncareing goverments, powerful pirate ships, weak trader armor, and aperently merchants to stupid to avoid pirate hotspots.

So how do you justify any merchants at all? Or are they just lemming like morons that blissfully sail into all those pirates clutches?

Is this the place for a discussion on Somalia? :wink:

 

[Duroon]

How well merchants can operate or how well pirates can will be rather subject to how the referee of a campaign runs them. I don't think it has as much to do with the core rules as the OP is making out.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

WHERE the pirate operates is key.

You will probably not find a Pirate ship operating at a Class A-C starport, too much traffic and too much system defense.

If a Merchant is going to visit a Class E starport, then maybe he is asking for trouble...

This is why my Merchant ships all have weapons.

 

[Jeff Hopper]

Well, if you are just using the Core Rulebook, all of the military ships listed (Police Cutter, Mercenary Cruiser, Close Escort) would give a Corsair a good run for their money in a fight. Plus, I doubt that the Navy would be incompetant or else their would not be any trade due to the risk of pirate attack, piracy suppression being one of the navy's main jobs.

Governments would have to care about piracy if the world economy is based on interstellar trade.

With that said, the concept of a world supporting piracy in its area in order to provide justification for an increase in Naval presence is always a fun plotline to pull on your players.

Or a world which does not have its own Navy and must grant pirates letters of Marque and Reprisal in order to allow them to be privateers for that world's protection is a good scam as well.

Lots of room to play around in with piracy in Traveller.

 

[EDG]

Ships basically arrive in a system after a jump at random locations (though the arrival points would all on the same side of a star given the relative location of the departure system), and it's a bit fuzzy on whether they all come out at the star's 100D distance or if they can come out more distant than that.

There may be a slim chance that pirates can hang around at the 100D distance between the two separate systems in the hope that they can quickly pounce on a ship after it comes out of jump, but it'd be a bit of a longshot given the volume of space to cover.

What you really need is a better bottleneck - a region in the system that ships have to come to. Maybe a gas giant would work, though I'm not entirely sure why a ship would really go out of the way to refuel at a gas giant when it's often much easier to find water at the mainworld.

 

[serene_muse]

All IMTU:

Player character merchants? They supplement trade and take on new cargo by adventuring, taking on risky ventures, and the occasional resorting to petty and not so petty crimes. Pirates (and PCs) are often ethically challenged merchants. All of which builds the campaign.

Pirate ships are there when needed by plot, same as for Navy ships, be they system or intrasystem, independent or funded by Megacorp or various governments.

NPC merchants? I'm not terribly interested in them except again as they hew to usefulness in campaign. The 'verse operates as it needs to and if I want to detail an Imperium wide trading scheme I'll use GT's Far Trader + spreadsheets, or go play some 4X computer game.

Also there's IIRC a two tier system of merchant trade. The huge ships, basically big containers with jump drives on the end, that ply the heavy routes, with megacorp backing, funding and protection. The pc level is far below that, smaller ships usually not devoted solely to trade, that take on what jobs they can to get by wherever there's credits to be made.

Very modern small wars / modern pirate & black or grey market trading, Hornblower and Age of Sail, Han Solo in Corporate Sector, Alfred Bester, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop et al. And yes I do like some background sense of a universe going on external to while still responding to the PCs actions. I just don't detail it too much or too far in advance, as the players' action will invariably go beyond what I have in 5 minutes of play or less. :shock: 8)

 

[AKAramis]

IMTU, pirates are USUALLY a non-issue. They work by deception, rather than overt action, except in certain backwater systems.

One of my favorite "pirate" tactics is rather nasty: leave a cargo pod at the 100D jump point. It is a portable stateroom, and some sensors and batteries, and a small maneuver drive. SysTrafCon has it monitored, and it's awaiting pickup by a vessel, said vessel not announced.

If the PC's pick it up, guy screams bloody murder.... kidnap, etc. Claims the PC's are the pirates. Pirate ship comes in to "rescue" Mr. Solitude. If PC's have removed him from the container (requires force), Pirates will call to get permission to storm and board to rescue their "passenger". (it's been previously arranged with SysTrafCon...) Once permission granted, the pirates, neé privateers, inform the PC's they are kidnappers, stand to, and prepare for boarding. Locals award 10% as prize to privateers, and sell ship out from under the characters as a pirate vessel. Or, if the PC's cooperate, merely seize and sell their cargo out from under them, but leave them the ship.

If PC's leave him in the box in cargo, he tries to sneak a gander at neighboring manifests, and sets them up for a hijack on the outbound run or a theft right after sale.

If PC's ignore him, locals make snide remarks about lack of common decency and leaving flotsam.

Pirates, in short, usually work by scam. Usually at C, D, and E ports.