Re: Stategic Thrust - Pirates, mercs, and Letters of Marque

In a message dated 97-09-03 21:28:15 EDT, you write:

<< > In other words, if a spin-off group doesn't have any starships or
the
 > means to manufacture and/or maintain starships, then what relevance
do
 > they have in Full Thrust?
 > 
 > StarGrunt is a different story -- assault rifles are cheap and
plentiful
 > (from the point of view of a splinter faction, anyway), and you could
also
 > make a case for Dirtside II, but I really don't see how the Free
People's
 > Republic of Madison, Wisconsin is going to get into space.
 
 Little relevance to FT, esp. brand new colonies. But older or rebel
 splinters could have ships, good for small fleet actions. And just
getting
 to a colony could be an FT senario itself -- say one splinter group,
 already established, attacking the colonial fleet/ship of a rival group
to
 continue hatreds/disputes from Earth. Eg. one Balkan (Yugoslavian)
group
 vs another, in old little ships, in some asteroid belt somewhere...
 
 And  SG/DS ideas are natural, and even easier, esp. SG. 
  >>

My thought is that a look at the naval situation in the 18th and 19th
Centuries where letters of marque were issued by all sorts of powers (
even
some land locked ones I'm told!!) One doesn't have to be a pirate, one
could
cover onesself with the figleaf of legality by obtaining a letter of
marque
from some splinter colony with more grudge than brains (besides, a
letter of
marque generally involves giving a percent of the loot to the issuer of
the
letter!!!) Next posit a mercenary company who solicits letters to keep
itself
in business. I could see a light cruiser, several destroyers, and
merchantmen
coverted to carriers in their fleets. This might not appeal to the big
gun
boys ( my superduper dreadnaught can beat your regular super
dreadnaught!!)
but I can see a lot of cutting out actions using SGII on spacestations
and
ground actions. Squadron level fleet actions & convoy actions with
Q-ships in
FTII. 

Let's see "John Teach, Inc." or "Blackbeard, Ltd." with the ship
designation
LM (Letter of Marque.) Do you think the head of the company would call
himself Admiral Naismith, or would that be too much of a steal? Oh yeah,
that
causes me to think of another reason for the merc companies, plausible
deniablity! This is how the merc companies gain access to ship class
weapons,
but I would suspect there is a real size limit to the weapons sold by
the
major powers (no capital vessel weapons!) On ground actions I suspect
that a
merc co. would be no larger than a reinforced co. but a fleet might hire
a
couple to form a composite battalion for larger actions. This sort of
scenerio would be good for a campaign or RPG players. 

The mission parameters of the merc's would be quite interesting, just
how far
could they go before their Issuer of Letter would pull their letter and
declare their action piracy? They would have to get a certain amount of
loot
or they would loose, military ordinance is verry expensive!!

Anyway I thought a little political background for the small scale
warfare
going in the fringe areas might help.

Admiral Hughes
Fleets R Us, Inc.