How many armed ships are there in your setting?

[Infojunky]

So the title has it. What percentage of ships are armed in your games?

We spend a lot of time talking about Naval assets, but they are the exception rather than the rule in terms of total shipping. A lot of of popular fictions arms everything, but in the real world most governments get real hinky about armed ship's in their territorial waters much less docking at their ports. (Hint there is a whole buncha diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing about agreements for even allied naval assets visiting a port.)

Have you ever given this subject any thought?

 

[sideranautae]

In my main setting most ships are armed. The reason being the same as why most ocean going ships were armed 400 years ago.

 

[tuz_sen]

In the setting a friend and I are running/building every ship has weapons. Partly because most of them could end up being called in to military service and for the rest if 98% of ships have weapons its the ones that don't that will get attacked by pirates or for that with the very common novel conflict commerce raiders.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

My personal setting has almost nothing armed bar light lasers etc.

The big dedicated warships (which are almost totally automated) certainly exist, but are not really ships that the PCs encounter other than as a piece of "wallpaper".

I'm not into Military Sci-fi, so there's no need for much. Players have usually found out (the hard way) that space battles are lethal and best left to the "big-boys".

 

[dragoner]

Mine is a frontier setting, so most of them; better to be armed and not wanting it, than to not be armed and needing it.

 

[Condottiere]

Armed is almost a given; restrictions on what type of weaponry is permissible and/or needs to be licensed.

 

[DivineWrath]

Installing a basic weapon isn't too too expensive. A basic weapon can cost less than a million Cr (including the turret). I've checked the core rulebook and I haven't seen a ship in there that costs less than 10 mil, not even small craft. If you have enough money to own a ship, then it shouldn't cost you much more (relatively speaking) to install a basic beam weapon or missile weapon. The maintenance costs for a 1 MCr weapon would be 1000 Cr, so it shouldn't be too much of a burden to keep one around (I could be wrong).

 

[sideranautae]

Installing a basic weapon isn't too too expensive. A basic weapon can cost less than a million Cr (including the turret). I've checked the core rulebook and I haven't seen a ship in there that costs less than 10 mil, not even small craft. If you have enough money to own a ship, then it shouldn't cost you much more (relatively speaking) to install a basic beam weapon or missile weapon. The maintenance costs for a 1 MCr weapon would be 1000 Cr, so it shouldn't be too much of a burden to keep one around (I could be wrong).

Plus you are quoting price for a brand new weapon. You should be able to pick one up used for much less.

 

[Reynard]

In most adventure universes there are hostile forces behind every gas giant and asteroid waiting to jump out and make the player sweat and tingle. Also goes for everyone with a sidearm strapped to their hip.

I, coincidentally, just watched an old Wanda Sykes (comedian) video and one bit described modern ocean piracy. It does sound funny when you realize guys in speedboats and assault weapons take over vessels a million times bigger and unarmed. Guess what else? No well armed patrols. Now put that in space. Imperial Second Amendment/Stand Your Ground.

 

[Epicenter]

So the title has it. What percentage of ships are armed in your games?

In the setting I'm currently creating/running, a fair percentage overall. The percentage is much higher in "free trader" style vessels which tend to have a certain mystique around them and can only operate profitably in any number out there in the frontier regions; many "frontier traders" are captained by people who live in various states of delusion about how various levels of armament will make them safe.

So, in "frontier" regions, quite a few ships with some level of armament. In more Coreward regions, no ships are armed.

Although most starship operators are unlikely to ever encounter it, in a state the size of the Imperium, there's dozens of incidents every year where some captain who is intoxicated / emotionally unbalanced from operating a converted Scout alone for too long / can't make his payments / learned his or her SO is cheating / got into a dispute in a card game or whatever decides to run back to their "fortress" and turn their weapons on the bar / hotel / auction house / ship of their rival / whatever. It only has to happen once before most populations on Core worlds decides it's simply unsound to let people flit around with privately owned anti-starship lasers and missiles with a "reactionless" maneuver drive that can turn the ship itself into a "reasonably percentage of the speed of light" bullet.

In response, the Imperium has various "plans" for starports to make them more palatable to local populations. They still run the starport, but creating various "plans" to handle interstellar trade makes joining the Imperium easier as well as provide peace of mind to both traders and local populations. They offer various combinations of downports (facilities on the surface, great for trade and unskilled local labor but puts the offworlders in close contact with your people), highports (facilities in close orbit, safer than downports but still can be kinda close if you're concerned about the character of traders), and farports (puts a significant dent in free trader activity, with facilities in very far orbits such as independent solar orbits or in orbit around another body, providing work to a local class of "stevedores" who pilot in-system jump ships to bring goods and passengers to the mainworld). Starports are administered by the Laws of the Imperium for various purposes, but a big factor is that the Impeirum is a single government with a single set of laws and theoretically a single administration. Once you know the laws in one starport, you know them all. Some "armed trader" can't do something terrible then simply Jump away to some other port and expect legal immunity.

 

[Infojunky]

So what do y'all consider "Basic" weapons?

 

[Reynard]

Cheap...

 

[DivineWrath]

Plus you are quoting price for a brand new weapon. You should be able to pick one up used for much less.

Are there rules for buying stuff used?

So what do y'all consider "Basic" weapons?

My thoughts were a single turret Missile Rack or Pulse Laser (retconned to deal 2d6 damage in High Guard). Both would cost less than 1 MCr to install and cost 1000 Cr yearly maintenance. Nothing fancy really. Just something to say that you could hurt them back (if the trouble makers are determined, they might settle for less to avoid damaging their hull). I'm assuming you are not planning on running around picking fights with other ships (otherwise you should invest in more).

 

[Condottiere]

It would be interesting if pop ups were counted as concealed weapons, though would seem de rigueur for yachts.

 

[Balfuset790]

I'd say that most Trade ships wouldhave at least minor armament. Nothing more than a Double turret housing a pulse laser and a sandcaster - which is what my current group has on their Far Trader.

If nothing else, as far as I'm aware Imperium law is surprisingly lax, an effective law level of 2? And anyone who's stupid enough to try and engage in large scale destruction on or nearby a starport is going to VERY quickly get the attention of SDB's and other naval vessels, that or port defence cannons or ground security forces.

Granted, Class D and E starports are probably going to be less well defended than a class C+ but then we are talking about the Frontier where the law is a little bit more of a suggestion than anything explicitly enforced. Very much a Second Ammendment situation, I'd say.

 

[Pyromancer]

In MTU, the only ships that are unarmed are those that travel between "civilized" planets. If you have a fixed route and all systems you visit have a working police and you don't plan to visit the outer system and the gas giants, you don't need weapons. 1MCr doesn't sound much, but it is still a lot of money you can spend on other things.

That said, most small ships and tramp freighters in the "PC class" have at least a double laser turret to scare the weakest pirates. If you don't have a fixed route and travel where cargo or patrons lead you, you have to be prepared.

 

[Anonymous]

Infojunky, apologies for taking the thread OT.

What are the laws for arming a merchant ship in the modern world?

I know this has only vague relevance to the thread but I'm curious. The legality of arming a ship has never come up in any game I have played, it's pretty much a given that all ships are armed.

 

[dragoner]

IIRC, an armed merchantman is a warship, by maritime laws. I could ask my son though, he is a marine engineer.

 

[Infojunky]

Infojunky, apologies for taking the thread OT.

What are the laws for arming a merchant ship in the modern world?

They vary from country to country. Often it is illegal for foreign flagged vessels to have arms aboard while in territorial waters.

As I understand it there are only 3 or 4 Armed Merchantmen currently in operation right now and all of them are Nuclear Materials Transports.

Also Note that Having Armed Guards aboard is a big issue in the Maritime trade right now as per my 1st sentence.

 

[Epicenter]

So what do y'all consider "Basic" weapons?

A million Credits is a million 1978 US Dollars. That's a huge amount of money. While you will not be able to retire in style on Capital or Vland with that kind of money, you certainly could set yourself up in style for decades on end just living off of that. If you invested it wisely, you certainly could get away without actually "working" for the rest of your life, I suspect.

Such expensive ship upgrades of dubious use aren't invested in by most captains. Most starting captains of merchant vessels dream of having lasers in a turret and so on, but the cost makes them balk. If they install things in turrets, most captains invest in a more powerful maneuver drive, sandcasters, and similar measures that will (hopefully) allow them to evade attack. Many captains along the frontier will get weapons if they can get them cheaply, however.

While the rules only describe 'new' weapons, I would imagine that captains who do a lot of speculative trading in systems without any kind of naval protection do actually have the odd starship-scale weapon or two. Typically, such weapons consist of things laser weapons that they bought on some world "outside the Imperium" that's a bit dinged up and quite old ... and everyone knows that it was removed at some point from some Imperial "war grave" from the Frontier Wars, or perhaps sold off by Sword Worlders after the end of the last war and they were really hurting for money. They might have missiles with a similar source in some corner of engineering or the cargo bay, carried as insurance against "a rainy day." These are simply "kicked out" of a cargo airlock by crew wearing spacesuits and the targeting is handled by sensors jury-rigged onto the main sensor suite.