Piracy rules for ACTA

[Kadorak]

Greetings forum-goers!

As I've mentioned in passing in a few threads, I've been working on a supplement entitled "Paladins & Pirates", with new ships, fluff and scenarios for Raiders (mostly ships ported from B5W) plus an ISA fleet based off the Victory/Valen type designs instead of 500 varieties of White Star. This isn't going to be nearly as professional as Rich Bax's incredible work: no formating or anything just a word document. Regardless, I hope it will be of interest to some people as it's certainly been fun to create.

Anyways, I've been working on scenarios and one thing that's going to be important is 'piracy' rules for the Raiders. In SFB, one of the 'staple' scenario types was the Orion Pirate convoy raid, and I want a convoy battle with that sort of feel instead of just 'blow up the convoy ships', which certainly wouldn't make much profit for the raiders! The thing is, the current rules really don't offer a very good formula for pirate-style boarding and hauling off prizes. While I have some ideas and I've been working on a special rule (for those scenarios only) allowing pirates to more easily take over and operate convoy ships to escape with, I thought some of the bright minds on this forum (who probably have more ACTA experience than me to boot) might have some ideas for this that would turn out better.

So, ideas anyone?

 

[Burger]

How about boarding actions with breaching pods?
Or, Stand Down And Prepare To Be Boarded!

 

[Kadorak]

Need to be modified. Currently a boarding action can, at best, leave you a ship drifting on the table 'surrendered' that will get you double VPs. That doesn't really work with the "get in, get out" pirate scenario - they need to be able to operate the vessel. The other thing I was thinking was a rule to help them disable a ship for Stand Down & Prepare to Be Boarded or Launch Breaching Pods and Shuttles, where a pirate ship could (vs. Civ vessels only) fire to disable and only score engine criticals or crew damage or such. The thing is, then (to be able to leave the table w/ the ships) they need to be 'magically' restored in some way. So the other option I was thinking about was a version of SD & PTBB that could be thrown on civ ships if they were at all damaged and had no escorts within a certain distance, or to allow pirate ships in base contact with a civ ship to board regardless of the civ ship's status.

(Sorry this sounds ramble-ish and you might not even be able to understand what I'm saying; it's 6 AM, I'll post a more coherant version later if need be)

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Well, the standard boarding rules are written to represent dedicated marines boarding an enemy ship and doing damage rather than taking the ship for immediate use.

So, just modify the boarding rules to state that once the crew has been defeated you can send over some of your own crew to take the ship to skeleton level and get it underway. Then the escort has to try to stop you getting away with the prize...

 

[dant164]

That could get quite frightening, dedicated assault freighters hijacking a white star? and then eing able to use it? or hijacking a G'Quan.




I love it :twisted: :twisted:

 

[Commador Q]

i'd recomend that once the enteire crew of a boarded ship is eliminated, every turn you can make a CQ check with a dificulty of 8 to take over a civilian or Raders ship, 9 to take over a league of non alined worlds ship and 10 to take over a ship from any other afiliation. once a ship is taken over it acts as a new ship in your fleet, but it is skelein crewed, and if it withdraws you gain triple victory points for that ship.

in a campaigne you don't actually get to keep the captured ship but you get a RR bonus for capturing it (somne portion of wht buying that ship would have cost) as well as the VPs you got during the scenario.

 

[JayRaider]

I would think pirates would keep some crew alive to pilot the ships under there command, at least until they left the area.
Gun to the head etc :!:

 

[Burger]

Rules for walking the plant would be amusing.

 

[Locutus9956]

In space no one can hear you YAARHHHH!!!

 

[captainsmirk]

Rules for walking the plant would be amusing.

The plant? What that and how does one walk it?

Nick

 

[Locutus9956]

Well technically the plank is made from part of a tree so in a way its the same thing

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I would think pirates would keep some crew alive to pilot the ships under there command, at least until they left the area.
Gun to the head etc :!:

No, you'd send over a prize crew. Enemy crewmen couldn't be trusted near the controls even with guards. Easy to do little things wrong, like leaving this vent or that hatch open to space so stealth doesn't work due to emissions of one sort or another, or failing to calibrate jump drives properly so it takes twice as long to charge, etc.

Most ships have a low skeleton crew threshold, so take a Raider ship with plenty of crew, transfer that many off it and withdraw with the captured ship for Raider campaigns and one-off games. Could also do the same thing with special scenarios or campaign games for other races. An interesting twist would be losing that number of crew permanently as they go back to high command with the prize and remain there for months being de-briefed and helping the scientists study the ship. Compensation would have to be built into the scenario, since you get double VPs for a captured enemy ship that's intact at the end of the battle.

 

[Burger]

Rules for walking the plant would be amusing.

The plant? What that and how does one walk it?

Its a triffid, OK

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

Like the idea of prize crews being carried to transfer to captured ships!

Also civilian crews will have a break point when they will surrender. Some guy on a civilian freighter is not going to die to defend his paycheck. Possibly do this as a modification to attempts to get them to surrender (lower difficulty) or a general rule for civilian ships that they will automatically surrender once escorts are destroyed and they have no chance of escaping.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

A modification to the Stand Down and Prepare to be Boarded SA for having no escorts left would be appropriate, or a surrender chance when a ship is boarded and loses, say, 50% of its crew. As long as the Raiders don't make a habit of spacing the crews of captured merchantmen, crews would be willing to surrender.