Pirates of the Carribean, Return of the Tall Ships Options

[Cheops]

The real problem with using missiles is that unless you are talking about point-and-click targeting, which I don't think you guys are, then you have to be able to get a sensor lock on the target.

According to the table on p 162, without house ruling anything, the best modifier that your sensors get is +0 to see the ship (+3 for large, -3 for Electric powered/metahuman).

You need to see the Dutchman from a ways off in order to have time to react before it gets too close. Say that it is using a sat uplink so that Signal isn't a factor. Merchantmen don't normally post look-outs but since they're in the Carib and the Dutchman might be around they do but not actively perceiving since it is hard to stare at a radar screen all day (+0). The Dutchman is concealed (-6). If you are relying on the drone brain you have at most 6 dice. If it is a non-adept you probably aren't looking at more than 7 dice (and those are completely maxed out stats for perception). If the Dutchman is trying to hide then you are rolling that against 8 dice (since we maxed out merchantman we max out Dutchman - Infiltration 7 + Reaction 7 - 6 (double handling penalty of yacht)).

Keep in mind that this is maxing out the crews for sensor warfare. That's highly unlikely but even then the Dutchman still has the advantage.

[Thane36425]

The Pirates handbook did say that Corps expected to lose some cargo to pirates and didn't much worry so long as the priates didn't try to steal the whole ship, badly damage or sink the ship or kill the crew, or a combination thereof.

To deal with the Dutchman, a Corp coudl mount light naval cannon, like 3" guns, on their freighter. They have a pretty good range and can carry a lot of ammo. To get around the concealment problem, have a mage on the bridge using astral perception. They coudl give a a bear and rough range to the Dutchman and then give adjustments to walk the rounds into the ship. Keep in ming that the ship might be concealed in the real world but will still stand out on the astral.

For that matter, the Corp could have a couple of gunboats tailing a frieghter that are concealed by spirits. The Dutchman makes its move and the gunboats attack.

[Cheops]

The gunboat thing isn't too effective unless you know which freighter it will attack (set up an ambush by feeding false info or such not). Mounting the guns is probably the best bet but you'll need a good gunner/mage tandem to walk in the fire because of how fast the Dutchman is going (upwards of 1.5 miles per minute).

[Austere Emancipa...]

Long range missile combat in Rigger 3 does not use the same system of attack resolution as most combat in SR3, allowing (in an uncharacteristic display of realism) the missiles to find their actual target only just before impact.

Assuming extended vehicle combat rules for the 4th Ed function at all similarly, this allows a missile to be fired when you have a good idea where the target might be, and then a rigger or AI steers the missile according to updated information either from the missile's own sensors or any other sensors in the Weapons Control Network. All it takes is one sensor in the network to get a glimpse of the target while the missile is within one CT's movement (~3-7km with a supersonic missile).

For a merchant vessel defending itself against the Dutchman, there'd probably be no WCN (unless those have become a lot cheaper since the early 2060s). On the other hand, the Dutchman wouldn't be hiding and there'd be direct LoS. No idea how that affects the sensor tests in SR4, but in SR3 it helps a lot. If nothing else, that and the very short range (for naval combat) would make manual gunnery reasonably effective.

[Fix-it]

any pirate worth his salt would use a surplus Chinese or Russian boomer submarine.

get rid of the missile launchers and you have plenty of space for cargo, launching raids, etc.

no worries about the satellite either, even on thermal imaging. go deep and you disapear.

topping off the tanks might be difficult, to say the least...

[Thane36425]

[Thain]

The missiles the RIM series are designed to shoot down are things like Scuds, afaik. I'm talking about much smaller missiles.

[FlakJacket]

Since people have been debating the whole looking for the ship visually by satellite thing, how would something like the old Soviet Naval Space Reconnaissance and Targeting System (MKRT) - what NATO called RORSAT - satellites fair? IIRC they were paired with ELINT systems so if they used any fancy electronics they got caught but even if they went silent then radar could still spot them. By having the radar in low earth orbit you neatly sidestep the whole horizon problem.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[nezumi]

[PBTHHHHT]

Depends on what you're protecting, the largest container ship may carry good worth up to 300 million... I'm sure they can splurge for higher priority ones.

Heck, don't put on a corporate mage, hire 'contractors' for short term protection, what would a runner/merc team contract be? Give them free room and board for a few months and some good nuyen.

[Cheops]

[PBTHHHHT]

Oh, was reading some stuff on the Savage Worlds forums and they had one thread about tramp freighters/ship based games. One guy made a pdf file about Tramp Steamers (from the pulp 1930's era) for gaming. Thought, y'all might be interested as a possible 'target' for your dutchman. Yeah, you'll have to do some modification but it does have some interesting info, especially for the smaller/independent merchant ships.

[Thane36425]

[Cheops]

We've also danced around the obvious problem that the Flying Dutchman could always join one of the established pirate gangs and suddenly it isn't just a lone wolf but part of a fully functioning network or pirates.

[Thain]

And who's to say that the shaman/mage who created our Dutchman is even interested in pirating mere chattle?

Kidnap for ransom, for example, is an extremely profitable crime engaged in bypirates throughout the world today. Nap the executive vice-president of a AA megacorporation off his pleasure cruise, and net a few hundred thousand nuyen selling him back.

Further, an Awakened villain - such as I assume our Dutchman wouldbe captained by - can have all sorts of other motives. Maybe (s)he just wants to capture some swarthy sailor-types to use for his/her own twisted ends... shedim, blood magic, insect spirits... who knows.

Heck, it needn't even be a capital-t Threat Tradition: a hermetic mage or similar could do all this, and be scouring the Carribean for some lost artefact, or something, and willing to sinkanyone that gets in his way. A bit of piracy when the opportunity arises could just help pay the bills.

Or, with a radical eco-shaman and some TerraFirst! type crew, we could have a sort of reverse Captain Nemo. Nemo, as you'll recall, used incredibly advanced technology to sink warships of all nations to protect the oceans, and in a twisted plan tobring about world peace. Our Dutchman could be the mirror image: a shamanic Captain Nemo using advanced magic to protect the sea, and punish the corporations who've dispoiled Gaia....

[Cheops]

/signed.

[maeel]

The most effective weapons against pirates would probably be neurostun, slip spray and means to lock yourself in for an extended period, while your drones mop the wannabe boarders up.
This way the boarding party has the choice, being shot to shreds after being stunned or while slipping around the deck..... :evil:

[hyzmarca]

The most effective defense against pirates is a picat. The second best defense is being a submarine. The pirates have to board in order to capture the loot and that can be very complicated if the target ship is underwater.

[maeel]

true, but i believe subs are not as cost effective as container ships....

[nezumi]

I don't know what a picat is, but it sounds very tasty.

A submarine is horribly inefficient when it comes to hauling cargo. The necessary crew size and skillsets, equipment and fuel costs and legal hassles go waaay up, the speed, efficiency, cargo-capacity and safety go way down. At that point, I think it would be cheaper to just use a jet.

[kigmatzomat]

This sounds like a weapon in search of a target. What we have is a relatively lightly armed vehicle with high stealth and speed but little survivability otherwise. It has a largish crew complement with limited ability to steal cargo. It can work in conjunction with smaller craft but the lesser craft will suffer the same kinds of limitations.

This leads me to believe there are two primary roles for the Ghostship: hostage-taking and hijacking. Hostages take little in the way of cargo space and can be done for either profit (selling a trained navigator back to the company) or terror (making the crews vanish). Hijacking for profit would require targeting pleasure ships or smaller cargo vessels that are easier to move on the open market. Terrorist hijacking would involve sinking the vessel, possibly along with the crew, with the intent to drive away all shipping from the area or stir up troubles. It could be combined with profit by giving tipping off local salvage operations.

I'll point out that arming merchant ships with missles is a good way to start a war. All it takes is a cagey individual with enough EW gear to make an innocent vessel appear to be a pirate so they get shot by a third party. I doubt the cargo vessels would be that adept at dealing with sensor ghosts.

[Austere Emancipa...]

It would take quite a bit of electronic warfare gear indeed, or else hacking directly into the sensor and weapon control systems (in which case the hacker could simply launch the weapons themselves anyway). Seems unlikely any merchant vessel under normal circumstances would fire their defensive weaponry except when under a direct threat, which would require 1) an ID of the target; 2) a clear declaration of hostility by the target -- e.g. repeated commands to surrender or be fired upon, incoming fire, etc.; 3) failed warnings.

[maeel]

speaking of weapons on civil ships, i saw a report about a nonlethal weapon system to repel pirates, being installed on luxury liners such as the Queen Mary 2.

still, in order to protect merchants, i think the most vulnerable part of the pirates is the flesh and bone boarding party. There are numerous ways to deal with them and the corps are really experienced in it, since they deploy the same systems to keep their installations secure.

so taking on big merchants would be similar to land based B&E.

Smaller merchants are a different story, but honestly, what would keep the captains of these vessels from forming a convoy and hire one Merc ship to protect them all..?

[FrankTrollman]

Here's the part I don't get: why use a wooden ship backed up with magic when you can already use a metal hull that is backed up with Magic?

Seriously, you could bust out a cast-off light container freighter left over from before the awakening (which goes at ~16 knots, or ~30KPH) and then conjure a Force 6 Loa of Agwe and pump that up to 180 KPH, which will get you from Tortuga to the Nicaragua Canal in 8 hours.

There is no reason to use a wooden galleon, because a crappy 20th century vessel can benefit from all the same magical augmentation, and goes faster, carries more cargo, is more resilent to attack, fits in better with normal ocean traffic, and is better suited to mounting modern weaponry.

Yes, the available technology and magic of 2071 is such that you could probably pull off some successful piracy with a galleon. But you'd still be way better off going into a mothball fleet of merchant marines and retrofitting a less archaic steel transport.

-Frank