Re: Pirate Havens in FT

>If I were a band of Pirates in the Tuffleyverse, where would I spend my
>downtime? Some out of the way planetoid hideout? I Pirate "base" or
>safe haven port that no one messes with even if they kinda know where
>it is? A "mobile base" (stolen ship dock or with welded on engines, or
>converted bulk frieghter/repair facility)?

 Books by CJ Cherryh might be worth reading. In the
 Chanur series there is a spacestation, Meetpoint,
 which is neutral territory between various alien
 species. Most of the trade is on a "no questions"
 basis as to where the goods came from, since there
 are no extradition/banking/etc treaties. In the FT
 universe you could have somewhere similar on the
 borders between hostile human states and/or aliens.

 Rimrunners and Tripoint in the Alliance/Union
 series deal with the remnants of a military fleet
 that have turned pirate/buccaneer. (The first is
 about the hunters, the second about the pirates.)
 In the books there are old space stations built
 before faster than light travel, now disused since
 the star systems in question don't have any useful
 planets and everybody now jumps past them to more
 interesting places. One of these places isn't even
 a star system, just three big bodies with enough
 gravity to distort hyperspace. In the FT universe,
 the first FTL pioneers presumably wouldn't have
 jumped very far at a time so might have built
 similar stations until they'd explored further out.

>>Does anyone know why	Spain never took out Port Royal, or other such
>>buccaneer centers?
>
>You can mount a lot more guns and armour on something that doesn't have
>to float.

 I think there were political factors as well. The British,
 (and maybe the French too?) had some kind of claim on the
 area containing Port Royal. Since the buccaneers were
 mostly giving the Spanish grief, they didn't care about
 cleaning it up themselves. But if the Spanish had tried
 to move in and take over such a good port, the British
 would quite likely have intervened. As already noted, the
 Spanish were a bit overstretched already elsewhere.

 (Corrections welcome, this is based on hazy recollection
 rather than recent study.)

 Shouldn't be too hard to find a similar place in the FT
 universe.

	Hugh