Pirate use of Empire ships

[Zarathustra Suicune]

I was wondering if there any rules for Orion pirates using the ships of the other empires, having either salvaged them from battle fields or capturing them when attacking convoys?
I have an Ramius that was a bit dodgy cast (impulse gone ) and was missing the third engine, mongosse's customer service was great, but am now thinking of sracthbuilding it into a reliant kind of ship, with a justification it being either a merchant/pirate found a crippled/hulked ramius/Burke drifting and his repaired/refitted it. 9I'm modeling it any way, but was wondering if there was any way to use it other then in special scenarios.

 

[billclo]

I put an inquiry about this on the SFU BBS, so hopefully I should hear something about this and I'll pass it along to you.

 

[billclo]

Doesn't appear that they did. Here is what Steve Petrick (the guy in charge of SFB) said:

"Off the cuff, I would say the OK6 was some kind of stunt since, from the Orion point of view the standard warships of the various empires are not suited to Orion operations (no "stealth") even if you converted various systems to make room for cargo bays to haul swag.

The "False Flag" concept does not really work since the Orions cannot be sure of having the right codes for a given day."

 

[Da Boss]

Sounds like a fun idea to em - look forward to seeing it.

re stealth - well the Orions have access to the Cloaking Device so thats not a major issue if they want to invest in using a converted warship .

Obviosuly Klingon and Romulan warships would be best for this.
I don't know how active the Orions were in the major wars - I can imagine its a time of opportunity and danger - great for rolepaying

 

[Stu--]

As far as I remember they had their own ships.

In F&E (the strategic game of 'the war' in the SFU) they were raiders and only a very, very periphery power. More of a nuisance than anything else. As you'd expect - they're pirates.
Now that's not to say that they never captured any empire ships, just that their MO is not to fight something that might hurt them - they run away from anything bigger than a POL basically.

 

[dix]

Captain' s Log #25 has an SFB article about how to convert captured Orion ships to different empire's technology. That's not exactly what you are looking for but could be used as a basis for reverse engineering, as it were, a conversion to Orion technology. Based on that, I would speculate that you would replace the Photon Torpedoes with Weapon*, Arc F. I am not sure if the ship would have the Orion Dilithium bonus. In SFB, only Orion-built ships in Orion service can use it. However, ACTA may do it differently. That particular rule is shown in the ACTASF rule book as a general rule for Orion ships (similar to the Klingon forward shield rule) and not as a specific ship rule.

Cloaking Devices are always possible but I have no idea at what cost.

There are no guidelines on point costing such a conversion so you'll just have to wing it.

 

[billclo]

It was pointed out to me that the Wyn did some conversions of Empire's ships. In case you didn't know, the Wyn bought various small warships from the neighboring Empires. Mainly E4, Kzinti FF, DD, perhaps some others (I don't have SFB and my memory is hazy). They converted and upgraded the heck out of any hull they could get their hands on. Even converted freighter hulls into auxiliary warships.

The Orions set up a shipyard in the Wyn Cluster, I believe, and eventually the Wyn built proper warships based on Orion technology.

In the game F&E it is possible for the Wyn to purchase smaller warships from ANY Empire, provided that they can get to the Wyn cluster in the first place. In practice mainly Klingon, Lyran, and Kzinti ships get sold there, but the rules allow for any Empire to do so. So theoretically the Feds could have sold some surplus hulls to the Wyn for some fast cash, though I don't see it being very likely given how pressed the Feds are for any kind of warship hulls.

 

[firekite]

the "Brothers of the Anarchist" articles from Captains log may be your best bet for this. If i remember correctly these were written to allow players to convert capture ships for use in their own fleets during a campaign. you should be able to find them starting around issue 20 to current.