Re: Letters of marque

From: KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de (K.H.Ranitzsch)

> I have a bit of problem with pirates, letters of marques and
privateers 
> in
> space. Historically, pirates and privateers financed their business by
> selling their booty and prizes. This requires that you capture them
> reasonably intact. You either get your victim to surrender at the
first 
> shot
> or you have to use boarding actions. The chances in space for either
of
> these to happen successfully seem a bit slim to me.

Depends on the nature of piracy and private shipping in space, and the 
nature of interstellar commerce. If you assume that a frigate class ship

with a needle beam and a class2 beam outguns almost any civilian ship in

space, then piracy in open space is only a matter of finding your victim

(Needlebeams are pretty useless in most FB scale games, but as Genre or 
backstory weapons, they enable pirate storylines). Pirates aren't going 
to go after tungsten ore or tennis shoes, but hi-tech blueprints? 
nanodevices? Ming vases? Sure. Not to mention basic theft of starships. 
Needle out an FTL in open space and jam the coms, and the transport is 
at your mercy. Put the crew/passengers in a hold (or space them if 
you're bloodthisty), and FTL tow the ship to your base with a slaver 
ship.

Also, for some (maybe not the most legal) interstellar shipping, all 
matters to the shipper and reciever is recipt of goods - they're not 
going to care that the ship it left on is not the same as the ship it 
arrives on. The deliverer gets paid.

Zone Miner Garb   (what Noam R. Izenberg wears in the Zone MInes)