Lab Ship

[phavoc]

If we trust a ship's crew with bringing the destructive equivalent of a small atom bomb (LNG carriers), or 100,000 ton bridge smashers (large container ship) ...

Frankly, we do not trust them, which is why there are mandatory sealane
controls and mandatory pilots wherever such ships could cause serious damage.

Pilots aren't armed. They could easily be overpowered/killed if that was the intent.

Reasons like, for example, that except for in the most extraordinarily rare circumstances it's completely unecessery?

Piracy has been around since there were ships. Even before the Indian ocean Somali pirate rose to prominence you had the pirate-infested waters of Indonesia to deal with. Pirates flourish where there is no political will (Somail) to stop them, and merchantmen who have no defenses are just too easy to take over. Pretty soon the Somali's will start bringing a little plastique to the ship and blowing open those safe rooms to get the crews. Right now they are basically thugs with machine guns and RPG's.

 

[rust]

Pilots aren't armed. They could easily be overpowered/killed if that was the intent.

Which is why pilots usually bring their own communications equipment
with them, and why the harbour security stays in contact with them. If
there is any sign that something is wrong with a pilot, the ship he is on
is treated as a hostile intruder.

That much about trust.

 

[AndrewW]

I used the bridge size from the core rulebook and did not use the standard capital ship bridge rule because I thought it was excessive for a civilian ship. Now that I've designed my first 'capital' class civvy ship, I'm definitely seeing a flaw in the design process. I think civilian ships should have much more basic systems (i.e. smaller and cheaper) than a military one.

There's also the compact bridge option in High Guard.

 

[AndrewW]

I assumed you made the lab rings 400 tons because that's the size of the Lab Ship in the core rules, so you can largely re-use those deck plans.

Simon Hibbs

Yeah, I figured it was a good place to start. And basically that's what I'll be doing, though they'll be slightly modified.

Also the lab ship was redone a bit to match the Death Station adventure in Signs & Portents #87, so there's another version available.

 

[simonh]

Pilots aren't armed. They could easily be overpowered/killed if that was the intent.

Which is why pilots usually bring their own communications equipment
with them, and why the harbour security stays in contact with them.

How silly, when there's a simple solution. Give the pilots guns too. After all, we're talking about merchant seamen from many different cultures who travel all over the world and come into contact with other radically different cultures at the ports they visit, where they may not even speak a common language very well. They might get frightened or confused or there might be misunderstandings. They need to be able to defend themselves. This is a serious problem, but we can solve it by making sure they're all heavily armed.

I don't know why I didn't see it before.

Simon Hibbs

 

[rust]

How silly, when there's a simple solution. Give the pilots guns too.

Right, and the crews of the harbour tugs, so they can defend themselves
against the merchant ship crews with their gatling guns, or against the
occasional mad pilot. And the longshoremen, just in case the crews of
the merchant ships or of the harbour tugs attack them. And the bus dri-
vers who take the armed longshoremen to and from the harbour. And ...
well, just give everyone a gatling gun, and the world will finally become
a safe and peaceful place. :wink:

 

[simonh]

Whenever I see footage of all those people with guns in Somalia and Afghanistan, I'm always struck by how polite everyone is to each other.

Heinlein* would be proud!

Simon Hibbs

* Well, I did have to get this back on topic for SF somehow.

 

[phavoc]

How silly, when there's a simple solution. Give the pilots guns too.

Right, and the crews of the harbour tugs, so they can defend themselves
against the merchant ship crews with their gatling guns, or against the
occasional mad pilot. And the longshoremen, just in case the crews of
the merchant ships or of the harbour tugs attack them. And the bus dri-
vers who take the armed longshoremen to and from the harbour. And ...
well, just give everyone a gatling gun, and the world will finally become
a safe and peaceful place. :wink:

I am assuming that you are just plain against arming merchantmen or perhaps giving them guns to protect themselves. My argument is just the opposite. There's no way (and never has been) to protect all merchantmen from potential pirates. Convoys are currently being run today and still merchants are being captured. Since governments clearly lack the capability and wherewithal to shut down the pirate bases (i.e. to kill them where they live), there don't seem to be a lot of choices.

I had proposed a gatling because it takes almost no skill to hit your target. As I mentioned, you simply point and shoot, and walk your tracers onto your target. You could give the merchies sniper rifles, but unless they are well trained, they are just as likely to hit the water as they are the small boats the pirates are in. You could give them M-16s or AK-47s or H&K G3's, or even a SAW or M60/.50 cal. But if you want to make it as easy as possible for the merchants to fight back you give them weapons that they are more than like to be able to use - and that are effective.

 

[rust]

But if you want to make it as easy as possible for the merchants to fight back you give them weapons that they are more than like to be able to use - and that are effective.

I see your point, but I would prefer a far less lethal approach. One of the
most successful anti-pirate weapons so far have been high pressure wa-
ter pumps, which are quite able to "fire" a "beam" of water over a consi-
derable distance, are easy to handle, and can fill and even sink a small
boat in a very short time - basically the seaborne version of a powerful
water cannon.

These "guns" do not kill, are difficult to misuse for criminal purposes, and
are far less likely to trigger an arms race then real guns - and as things
stand, the pirates' leaders meanwhile have far more money to spend on
new weapons than the shipping lines have to outfit each individual ship,
so the pirates would be most likely to win any arms race. Use lethal wea-
pons like gatling guns, and the next pirate craft may well be a speedboat
with a 20 mm cannon mounted on it.

 

[GJD]

You certainly won't get armed security at any research facility where I live, aside from the Army patrols around sensitve military or government facilities. On the other hand, I bet there are plenty of drug production facilities in some Central and South American nations where there may well be artillery grade weapons, with the tacit approval of the local authorities who are either bribed or coerced in to allowing them.

I would imagine that the local Law level will be the final Arbiter of what could be considered acceptable. I know that in 3I the Imperium enforces the Laws between planets, but does that include what weaponary ships can carry in a system, and if so, how do you put that weaponary beyond use if you are heading into a system with a stricter law level?

G.

 

[phavoc]

But if you want to make it as easy as possible for the merchants to fight back you give them weapons that they are more than like to be able to use - and that are effective.

I see your point, but I would prefer a far less lethal approach. One of the
most successful anti-pirate weapons so far have been high pressure wa-
ter pumps, which are quite able to "fire" a "beam" of water over a consi-
derable distance, are easy to handle, and can fill and even sink a small
boat in a very short time - basically the seaborne version of a powerful
water cannon.

These "guns" do not kill, are difficult to misuse for criminal purposes, and
are far less likely to trigger an arms race then real guns - and as things
stand, the pirates' leaders meanwhile have far more money to spend on
new weapons than the shipping lines have to outfit each individual ship,
so the pirates would be most likely to win any arms race. Use lethal wea-
pons like gatling guns, and the next pirate craft may well be a speedboat
with a 20 mm cannon mounted on it.

Sure, they've tried some of those, as well as sonic cannons and a few other non-lethal things. But the pirates have also taken pot-shots at the ships and the bridges. These thugs are armed with assault rifles, which aren't that deadly to a ocean-going ship... but the RPGs they carry are. Merchies aren't armed and a RPG can easily take out the bridge - assuming the guys can hit it too. But even if they are the crappiest shot in the world, it is easy to hit the side of a ship and cause a lot of damage, not to mention there's always a risk of a shipboard fire or some other issue. Granted they are after money, but if they continue to get frustrated they will most likely start taking it out on the ships. As we've seen from recent events, they are starting to get uglier and killing hostages if they are threatened.

Personally I'd rather see them as corpses on the ocean floor than let them get away again and again until they are actually successul in boarding a ship.

 

[rust]

Personally I'd rather see them as corpses on the ocean floor than let them get away again and again until they are actually successul in boarding a ship.

In the end the only solution will be to spend a lot more money and effort
to establish a government in Somalia and outfit it to eliminate the pirates.
Right now the major nations are far more willing to deploy their navies
and to pay ransoms than to get involved in nation building in Somalia, so
the problem is likely to continue. Since becoming a pirate is usually the
best and very often the only job a Somali can get, and life in current So-
malia is life on a battlefield anyway, killing pirates will not stop piracy, it
will only escalate an already extremely dangerous situation to the point
where "who kills whom first" becomes the rule of the game. I doubt
that merchant sailors can win such a game against pirates.

But, well, this is just my opinion, I have no problem at all if your mileage
varies.

 

[locarno24]

(shrug) But it fits with the genre and tech. It's not overgunned, but it's also not a pushover. Merchantships today should have a few pintle mounts for 7.62 gatlings off the bridge to get rid of pesky pirates in my opinion. Why gatlings? Cause you just have to walk the tracers over the target. They are pretty easy to shoot, and 7.62 is of no use against a warship... but death on the high seas for a rowboat.

Course, not like we'll do anything intelligent like that in the near future I don't think.

Again, crew served weapons are eminantly portable, and I recall hearing (but can't provide a reference) of paramilitary firms fielding (temporary) security on such ships. The advantage for governments, obviously, being that said team (and their crew-served weapons) can then leave the ship before it arrives at a safe, civilian port.

In the 3I, fending off a pirate vessel does require big guns - turret-class particle artillery at a minimum - because it's too easy for a theoretical raider to be armoured well enough to simply ignore 'civilian' laser mounts.

We know that private companies can legally get access to, user licenses for and training with TL12-TL13 fleet weapons, because private mercenary companys armed with them exist. Given that, it is not unrealistic for such an organisation to be permenantly integrated into a particularly sensitive branch of a megacorp's operations (say...oh...a bioweapons/anagathics research centre).

The Keith Stone isn't going to be docking or landing - it stays out-system, and anything needed is brought to it rather than the other way around (hence the sizable smallcraft fleet and docking capacity). Essentially, it's more mobile space station than starship.