Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
I think they have to be licensed, in order to dock at an Imperium starport.
Merchants weapons
- Thread starter tytalan
- Start date
MonsterX
Emperor Mongoose
It is possible to check if missiles are radioactive. You could keep them in a lead-lined magazine (a good idea anyways), but this is likely to arouse suspicion. If they're stored next to the fusion plant, the radiation might be hard to differentiate. But storing your missiles next to the fusion plant instead of the turret is kind of suspicious in itself. If customs want to check, it can. Penalties for smuggling nukes might be a little harsh, given that this is likely to be strongly associated with terrorism or insurrection.
Not only ships' weapons but the ship itself is a WMD. Ram it into a city after accelerating 6Gs for a few days and you'll get a big crater. Planets will have at least minimal defenses against this if they can afford them - even if they have to important them from expensive high tech planets. I assume that basically every planet with any kind of decent economy and or infrastructure is protected well enough to prevent a typical PC ship from succeeding at doing this kind of thing.
Not only ships' weapons but the ship itself is a WMD. Ram it into a city after accelerating 6Gs for a few days and you'll get a big crater. Planets will have at least minimal defenses against this if they can afford them - even if they have to important them from expensive high tech planets. I assume that basically every planet with any kind of decent economy and or infrastructure is protected well enough to prevent a typical PC ship from succeeding at doing this kind of thing.
Firedrake
Mongoose
Depending on which version of M-drive you're using, the ship on its own is also a WMD (either as a high sublight kinetic weapon or by hovering over a target). But if you follow that chain of reasoning, you don't get independent merchants, you get starship captains picked and trained like ballistic missile submarine captains.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Automated mass driver bay, to place a couple of boulders in the way.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Is it economical to carry around an oversized power plant for the laser you never use? For the price of that extra power plant you could pay for a lot of missiles.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
A starship is in itself a weapon of mass destruction. A single beam laser on the ground is a weapon off mass destruction.
Imagine a free trader sitting on the ground in the middle of a city with its laser turned on burning through building after building...
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
The difference is the nuke is a one off, the energy weapon can be fired every combat turn until the power runs out. A month of non stop ship scale energy weapon or laser into a civilian area...
Polities seldom licence weapons by the munitions they COULD use. Many places will allow you to own a shotgun with less rigid control than a rifle. Most of those places still ban incendiary ammunition shotgun loads. If you wish to use lethal ball or slugs in a shotgun in the UK the type 1 license is for the ammunition, not the gun itself.
Ammunition based weapons are only more expensive than deep magazine weapons like lasers if you actually fire them. The majority of the time a missile is just going to be sitting there adding a few credits onto the monthly maintenance fee. If you have to fire a deterrent then it hasn't worked. The vast majority of the time you don't meet pirates (if we are to believe the encounter tables). Good sensor rolls and M-Drive means you could avoid even the few you meet.
For any turret you sacrifice 1 DTon. Fixed mounts do not require that minimal investment. 1 DTon is 2 low berths and for merchants on the margins that might be significant. Given the low likelihood of attack (and the limit benefit of any defence) then sacrificing any cargo is likely to be unattractive.
A direct weapon like a laser requires someone to have Gunner skill for it to be effective (and presumably the Cr1000 per month pay check for bringing that skill). A missile doesn't.
A triple beam laser gives you an attack that does 1D+2. Most pirates will shrug that off. A triple missile turret will potentially put 3 x 4d6 weapons which is harder to shrug off (if they hit).
Even a single missile launcher on a firm point may be enough to discourage opportunity piracy at very little capital investment and no cargo carrying impact.
Sensible pirates will not wait until the point of attack to decide if the threat is worth it, they will have figured that out well before. Given a choice between an unarmed merchant and one with a single missile launcher even the minor extra risk of the pathetically armed one makes it a less profitable choice.
Against a well armed pirate it would still be better to surrender and negotiate a cargo transfer, but you would feel a bit of a numpty if you had to surrender to a beam laser equipped Launch because you left your Derringer in your other pants.
Ammunition based weapons are only more expensive than deep magazine weapons like lasers if you actually fire them. The majority of the time a missile is just going to be sitting there adding a few credits onto the monthly maintenance fee. If you have to fire a deterrent then it hasn't worked. The vast majority of the time you don't meet pirates (if we are to believe the encounter tables). Good sensor rolls and M-Drive means you could avoid even the few you meet.
For any turret you sacrifice 1 DTon. Fixed mounts do not require that minimal investment. 1 DTon is 2 low berths and for merchants on the margins that might be significant. Given the low likelihood of attack (and the limit benefit of any defence) then sacrificing any cargo is likely to be unattractive.
A direct weapon like a laser requires someone to have Gunner skill for it to be effective (and presumably the Cr1000 per month pay check for bringing that skill). A missile doesn't.
A triple beam laser gives you an attack that does 1D+2. Most pirates will shrug that off. A triple missile turret will potentially put 3 x 4d6 weapons which is harder to shrug off (if they hit).
Even a single missile launcher on a firm point may be enough to discourage opportunity piracy at very little capital investment and no cargo carrying impact.
Sensible pirates will not wait until the point of attack to decide if the threat is worth it, they will have figured that out well before. Given a choice between an unarmed merchant and one with a single missile launcher even the minor extra risk of the pathetically armed one makes it a less profitable choice.
Against a well armed pirate it would still be better to surrender and negotiate a cargo transfer, but you would feel a bit of a numpty if you had to surrender to a beam laser equipped Launch because you left your Derringer in your other pants.
If you have a beam laser that only does 1D+2 damage to a ship close enough to board you then you have absolutely not paid for someone with the gunner skill. Even with a skill of 1, no dex DM, no weapon mods and no fire control software the roll should be made at +9, meaning the worst roll will be doing 1D+5. A roll of 5 or more is doing increasingly expensive criticals. A good gunner with an average roll at adjacent range will just instantly turn off your sensors or destroy every weapon you have, all but ending the fight.
Missiles? Not so much.
Missiles? Not so much.
Merchant ship owners will want the least costly deterrence available to them. Merchants have been notoriously cheap, err, fixated on cost-effective pricing and operations, for as long as their have been merchants.
Sand and lasers offer the most effective use of credits since they can be both offensive and defensive weapons. Missiles are expendable and to a merchant using a missile, even if getting away, would most likely seem like an anathema to them. Or at least to most. While sand is expendable, it's also cheap - which makes it dear to any merchants heart.
I'd suspect that most merchants are going to be slow and unarmed/poorly armed because that's what is most cost effective in the long run. Enough armaments to make a pirate potentially work for their prize, but not much else. Only PC's ships would be armed/armored merchants because that's how the game is structured. The Navy and system patrols would be required to do the rest. Insurance for a lost ship would just be built into the overall economic model, and if a sector become too pirate infested it would simply get abandoned by merchants as not cost-effective to operate in.
Sand and lasers offer the most effective use of credits since they can be both offensive and defensive weapons. Missiles are expendable and to a merchant using a missile, even if getting away, would most likely seem like an anathema to them. Or at least to most. While sand is expendable, it's also cheap - which makes it dear to any merchants heart.
I'd suspect that most merchants are going to be slow and unarmed/poorly armed because that's what is most cost effective in the long run. Enough armaments to make a pirate potentially work for their prize, but not much else. Only PC's ships would be armed/armored merchants because that's how the game is structured. The Navy and system patrols would be required to do the rest. Insurance for a lost ship would just be built into the overall economic model, and if a sector become too pirate infested it would simply get abandoned by merchants as not cost-effective to operate in.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If pebble canisters did one dice of damage against spacecraft hulls.
Interpretation is somewhat uncertain.
Interpretation is somewhat uncertain.
Not sure how you are getting up to DM+9. I made it beam+4, Gunner+1 and Short+1. If the pirate is big enough to be giving +3 size modifiers then turret criticals won't affect it.
If you have a triple beam turret pirates are not going to try to board until they have knocked it out. If you can get criticals then they can get more as they will have good gunners, fire control software etc.
Beam lasers are great for the +4 but a hunter is going to be using pulse lasers as they can stand off. It doesn't matter if you get a +2 advantage over them if you cannot reach them. You will need a lot of thrust to be able to close the gap if they decide to keep you at arms length. Even more if you are replying on getting to short range or less to get your criticals.
Against a credible pirate a single triple turret is just going to annoy them enough to trash your ship and sift through the wreckage. The outcome will be the same if you fired your triple missile launcher at them, but at least you can do that from further away.
The vanity laser costs you the same as a triple missile launcher per month (once you take in the cost of the Gunners minimum wage) but it requires you to forgo the cargo. A single missile turret is far cheaper (and still gets DM+1 on the attack roll).
If you take Long Range or Advanced missiles the extra cost is not significant but it significantly reduces the time to target and at Pulse Laser range prevents ECM as they arrive before the Action Step. The trade between extra damage for Advanced missiles or being able to get extra missiles on target at distant with Long-Range missiles will determine which you choose, but Advanced missiles are probably the better bet since you don't want to be shooting at people at Distant range if you can run instead.
If you never intend firing the weapons then the missiles are a better bet. A single missile is plenty and costs you under Cr3500 per month for your fig leaf.
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There are plenty of options but I was going for the basics: the pilot should use his manuevre point to skill chain and the sensor operator should get a sensor lock. You have +6. I assumed a basic +1 for the skill chain (and the sensor lock gives +2), which gives +9. Obviously, that could be +11 but I went for the basics.
Even on a merchant ship a beam laser will not just "annoy" pirates. Even just +9 - which assumes a pretty basic gunner - an average roll is doing 1d+10 damage and a level three critical. If that is a hit on the jump drive - one of the more common results - that's a destroyed jump drive: millions of credits of damage to replace, and no escape when the like SDB burns out to get you.
There is a better than one-in-four chance of that being a level 5 or 6 critical: computer destroyed, jump drive destroyed, all cargo destroyed, or power reduced to zero etc (plus all of the lower-tier effects for whatever system is hit.)
Now it's possible to say "well they might be very unlucky and roll four, or the pilot might fail their roll, and they might not get a critical, and only do 1d+7 damage". Sure: nobody is saying that the beam laser in the hands of a mediocre gunner and crew is a guaranteed win. And a sandcaster might get a very lucky roll and block all the damage (unlikely on a crit doing up to 1d+13, but you never know!) But it is far more likely to do hideous amounts of expensive damage than a missile launcher, especially if the pirates had even a mediocre gunner on board as well, and there is very little risk of a triple missile launcher ending the fight and mission-killing (or even outright killing, if they get runaway on hull damage) the pirate with its first shot.
I also take huge issue with your presumption that the pirates "will have good gunners." We are told all over the place in the sources that pirates are usually hard luck stories, like desperate traders who are behind on their payments and driven to petty piracy as a last resort.
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I think everyone is in synch with lasers being the armament of choice for many reasons.
Sandcasters *can* affect that equation though. A pirate with a sandcaster or two has decent defense against a target with only one or two laser turrets. 1D plus effect extra armour vs lasers. They're mostly not about blocking the laser damage entirely, but reducing it to lower or no critical hit thresholds. And slowing those 10% hull value criticals (only 8 points on the standard 200 ton traders).
SOME pirates will have para-warships and decent gunners. Most will not, but those aren't the ones where you need to care about what weapons you're fitting. If they detect a ship is armed, they generally stay away. They are the reason you DO mount a laser or two.
So any serious discussion about pirates should assume you're NOT facing some scruffy mutineers in a stolen Beowulf, but the professionals.
They are likely to have a Thrust edge, so can choose the range that suits them. Once at that range, they can use extra thrust to impose an evasion penalty on the target ship, or aid their own gunners. Both ships can play at this, but the ship with the biggest legs gets to pick how that plays out.
Most likely they have invested in better electronics and have made sure they have a good, dedicated Sensop, so the pirate is probably the one controlling the sensor lock bonus. A typical merchant may not even carry a dedicated sensop, although that's a good job for the Astrogator to do in combat. But in many cases, it's another job the Pilot/Captain has to cope with.
Sandcasters *can* affect that equation though. A pirate with a sandcaster or two has decent defense against a target with only one or two laser turrets. 1D plus effect extra armour vs lasers. They're mostly not about blocking the laser damage entirely, but reducing it to lower or no critical hit thresholds. And slowing those 10% hull value criticals (only 8 points on the standard 200 ton traders).
SOME pirates will have para-warships and decent gunners. Most will not, but those aren't the ones where you need to care about what weapons you're fitting. If they detect a ship is armed, they generally stay away. They are the reason you DO mount a laser or two.
So any serious discussion about pirates should assume you're NOT facing some scruffy mutineers in a stolen Beowulf, but the professionals.
They are likely to have a Thrust edge, so can choose the range that suits them. Once at that range, they can use extra thrust to impose an evasion penalty on the target ship, or aid their own gunners. Both ships can play at this, but the ship with the biggest legs gets to pick how that plays out.
Most likely they have invested in better electronics and have made sure they have a good, dedicated Sensop, so the pirate is probably the one controlling the sensor lock bonus. A typical merchant may not even carry a dedicated sensop, although that's a good job for the Astrogator to do in combat. But in many cases, it's another job the Pilot/Captain has to cope with.
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Ok. In that case why would they move to the range where you get all those DMs or can even attack at all? You won't get to fire as they will stay out of the way. Pulse (or missile) beats beam.
Missiles can also critical. A volley of 3 is adding DM+3 to the roll. Sure they aren't getting the +6 for gunner, weapon and short range, but they get all the other DMs. So they are only getting -3 effect compared to the the equivalent ship armed with a beam weapon and as you say that is plenty.
Your comparison is very range dependent and encounters don't typically occur at short range. Closing to even long range is indicative of hostile intent. If the encounter happens at long range (which is much more likely) missiles end up with the same DM as the beam laser all else being equal, they have the same chance of a critical, or would be if the beam could even reach that far. Missiles are DM+2 compared to a pulse laser all else being equal.
The beam laser armed ship NEEDS to get the critical. If it gets effect 3 then it does 1D+5. If the triple missile gets effect 3 all 3 missiles hit and 5d6 from the advanced missile damage is multiplied by 3 (average 50+). That is over half the Hull points of the type A and Most of the time that will be well over the 10% required for a sustained damage critical. Unless the opponent is very large then it will probably be enough to result in several criticals (I believe if you do 60% hull hits you roll 6 criticals not just 1).
My assumption is that petty piracy is not attacking an armed ship. If you cant afford your payments you can't afford repairs either. If you have beam lasers then you can sell them to raise capital.
Petty piracy is getting cargo by threats, take a small space facility or planetary base or attacking unarmed ships. My assumption is that normal pirates are corsairs that are doing this to make a profit and know what they are doing. Good gunners are cheap if that is your primary source of income, any Navy or Naval Academy washout is Gunner 0.
If the pirate is a merchant and it also has beam weapons and for some reason decides to close to short range to use them then it will likely come down to initiative and either ship could be crippled in the first volley. No same captain would put themselves in that position voluntarily (and sensor rules mean it will only happen if someone is asleep on watch).
In any other case the beam weapon armed ship is at a disadvantage over a ship armed with anything else, largely because of the lack of range of beam lasers. At long range a missile ship will be able to put damage on it and get multiple criticals with basic hits. With effects of 2 or 3 you double or triple the damage and the criticals. Advanced missiles cannot be stopped by ECM at long range, you can only rely on point defence. If you are using your beam lasers for point defence then you are not able to use them to shoot.
So missiles are great for merchant on merchant fights, merchants might as well not be armed in serious fights.
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