I am mainly looking for second opinions on my ideas, for obvious holes, that players find, or obvious improvements, that should be there as such.
I don't really think the simple pirate-jumpship setup can work in traveller. Repair and maintance depend too much on facilities that can be watched too easily by the Navy. Jump-Ships that don't have a papertrail of legitimate business, are too suspicious. Eventually papertrails on the ship, can be checked against papertrails in starports, so pirates will be found out to soon, to make that setup viable. If you simply mask the ship as trader, it will be suspicious, that the ship is always where the pirate attacks are.
It get's a little better, if they have a fence, who either runs a "legitimate" merchant vessel or has a base somewhere, and meets them occasionally to exchange loot for supplies. Though having a ship, without a good cover identity is still very risky and it is quite likely that Navy intelligence will find it peculiar, if someone buys large amounts of spare parts for jump-drives and hardly ever sells them..
What could work is steal, hijack or otherwise comandeer a vessel, use it for 2 or 3 hits, and then loose the ship before the navy gets into gears.
I could also see a setup with a trade ship equipped to transport small non jump ships (fighters, modular cutters ect). Such ships have legitimate reasons to exist, as non-jump ships still need their annual maintanence and they are not always in systems with starports equipped for it. Then use such ships for your raids. You can bring them into the system and take them out at some time difference from the actual attacks. You can disguise them as owned by a goverment, where you have bribed some official, when you need to have them repaired. And there will be way more such vehicles then armed jumpships, so all hiding will work easier.
The challange would be, how to explain them to custom officials, when they happen to see (or not to see) them in your hold (you either want to have them longer on your cargo mainifest then they actually are, or not at all) But if you have a large container, that goes from one system to another, paid by some accomplices letter box company, cusom officials will only check what is or isn't in there in systems you pass through, if they already have reason to suspect you.
One mans groundfloor is an other mans earthmissle @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Johannes Trimmel @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
