Since the discovery of Hyperspace Lanes (Hyperlanes) linking distant star systems a number of centuries ago, humans have been able to rapidly expand throughout the galaxy. Distant stars that once would have necessitated expensive and risky generational ships were now accessible with just a few weeks of travel thanks to the Gates constructed at their ends. Nations, corporations, and special interest groups of all flavors utilized the wealth, prestige, and power they had in order to carve out their own private sector of space. An unprecedented era of peace washed over humanity, as most disagreements could be settled simply by paying for the other party's trip to fuck off into space. Ideological conflicts still occurred, but there was little to worry about in regard to scarcity of resources and territory. Hyperspace drives were developed for ships, at best a rural backroad compared to the expressway of the Hyperlanes, and provided humanity the chance to go where no man had gone before.
But some people get bored of stability, of a life without the excitement of staring down death and laughing. Or they just want benefits without the work that comes along with them. Perhaps they're just psychopaths. Regardless, this astounding Golden Age of Humanity was also a Golden Age of Space Piracy. Small factions of like-minded criminals often trolled the space around small colonies and out of the way outposts, preying on the weak or ambushing juicy targets that passed through their area outside of Hyperlanes. These bands of pirates may scrape by, but none of them can amount to
you.
One larger pirate faction within the Sagan Sector, known as The Sons of Sinners, came across a battered, structurally and atmospherically compromised research station drifting alone in deep space. Somehow, intact within was a set of instructions and the resources required to construct a pair of devices referred to as "Lanerippers". A Laneripper let (relatively) nearby ships cut into a Hyperlane without needing to be at the entry or exit points, and with no requirement for additional infrastructure like the Gates. Most importantly, ships within a Hyperlane could be ripped back out and forced into their equivalent location in real space and even pulled back through to their point of origin.
As fate would have it, four oft-used Hyperlanes cut "through" (Hyperlanes are essentially pocket dimensions but still have positioning relative to real space, so this isn't necessarily an accurate description - maybe alongside? Within? Scientists still don't know) the Sagan Sector within range of a pair of star systems.
Also as fate would have it, two distinct and dominant factions within The Sons of Sinners had come to an increasing number of disagreements to the point of outright hostility. In-fighting left most of their ships torn asunder, their resources low, and their numbers reduced. But both Laneripper schematics and supplies survived and, as fate would have it yet again, they fell into the hands of the two now separate factions who limped off to find their own new bases of operations.
After patching the holes in the few ships they had left over,
Ragnarr's Reavers and
The Black Hole Buccaneers found themselves unable to strike a finishing blow without irreplaceable losses on their own ends. They have instead returned to piracy, using their Lanerippers to conduct attacks on shipping and engaging in the occasional skirmish should they come across one another.
As one of the creative minds within the
Reavers or
Buccaneers it will be your job to come up with new tools, vessels, and tactics to ensure your pirates can sustain themselves and thrive in the area - perhaps even enough to carve out a small pirate empire. But your focus will not be one of outright conquest. Instead, you are driven to take what you need/want and deprive your enemies of the resources they need to survive.
Familiarize yourself with the equipment both sides start with, look over the questions you need to answer in your first turn (alongside your standard actions), read the rules, and get to your team threads to start the stellar swashbuckling! If you're worried about forgetting or missing rules, don't worry! I'll go over most of it again as we continue onward.
Small note I'll include here because I know some people don't bother with spoilers anymore: The setting is not quite hard or soft sci-fi and there is a lot of flexibility in interpretation of science, however one thing that is static is the use of "vertical" arrangements of decks within most ships. The engines are responsible for gravitational pull, so they are the "bottom" of the ship. This means that walking around when engines are on requires your feet be pointed toward them. If you want an idea of ships that operate this way, look into The Expanse as opposed to having gravity run perpendicular to the engines for
reasons as in Star Wars. If you don't want to do that, imagine building a skyscraper vs a mall.
Craft:
Patchwork Freighters: Relatively small rectangular transport ships with the minimal amount of systems working to be space-worthy. The crew quarters, command deck, and galley are pressurized, but the rest of the ship is not. This includes the cargo bay. A single 30mm coilgun turret is slapped onto the nose and controlled through a console in the command deck. They are very clearly slapped together from what little remained of the original pirate fleet and carry a skeleton crew with space for a boarding party. Common, Unit Size 4 Status: Perfect
Boarding Skiff: Little more than a collection of metal sheets welded together and shackled to an engine. The platform is large enough to carry a standard boarding party. Since platform runs along the same axis as the engine's thrust, rails are places around the perimeter for boarders to brace against. The pilot is in the rear by the engine and can engage or disengage the magnetic clamps under the skiff to attach to target ships. Deployment requires at least one ship with a cargo bay. Common, Unit Size 4 Status: Perfect
Crew:
Basic Boarding Party: A group of eight pirates ready to kick ass and take names (or things). Each one is armed with a basic low velocity 9mm Submachine Gauss and an voidsuit that is barely better than clothing but does have the limbs, torso, and head compartmentalized in the case of breaches in a vacuum. Boarding Parties carry a few plasma torches to cut their way into ships. Needs to be assigned to a boarding Craft before use. Common, Unit Size 4 Status: Perfect
Turn 1 Design: Where did your faction set up their base of operations and install the Laneripper?
A: An abandoned space station in orbit around the local star. The hydroponics module was largely left intact, allowing your band to sustain themselves a little better. The faction produces 1 Food for use each turn. The food from this bonus will not be stockpiled, and will be used before stockpiled food.
B: On a (barely) habitable planet. The environment is harsh [flavored to your faction], but the vast amount of minerals just under the surface are readily available for fabrication. The faction produces 1 Materials for use each turn. The material from this bonus will not be stockpiled, and will be used before stockpiled material.
C: From the bridge of the light cruiser your faction managed to steal away with after the Sons collapsed. The light cruiser (to be named by you if you choose this option) is armed with a spinal 210mm coilgun, twelve torpedo tubes (six fore, two each port, starboard, and aft), and a single fore Point Defense Laser. Armor is light for the class. The light cruiser also has two Cargo Bays. The ship is Unique with a Unit Size 1 and comes Moderately Damaged. As with all larger ships, it requires 1 Fuel to deploy.
Turn 1 Revision: Piracy is business, and the most successful players in the black market know when a good investment opportunity shows up. Why would someone want to prop up a band of pirates? Well, there's a million simple answers for that. How is one of these shadowy businessmen supporting your efforts?
A: Money, obviously. It's what makes everything move (figuratively). Some refer to money as the "meta" of our universe, and that would be a correct assumption for a pirate. The faction produces 1 Wealth for use each turn. The wealth from this bonus will not be stockpiled, and will be used before stockpiled wealth.
B: Fuel. It's what makes everything move (literally). In a cold, unforgiving universe, it's always nice to know you can get where you gotta go and then back home. The faction produces 1 Fuel for use each turn. The fuel from this bonus will not be stockpiled, and will be used before stockpiled fuel.
C: Armor. It's what you use to keep people from making your people stop moving. Your boarding teams replace their voidsuits with Boarding Suits. Light armor is added to protect vital regions (including a reinforced faceplate), and integrated back thrusters allow controlled movement in space while magnetic soles and gloves can be activated to secure oneself to the side of a ship. You can get these supplies on-demand, so they can be used for any of your combat-oriented Crew until you come up with something better to replace it.
Turn 1 Strategy: People think piracy is all crude brutality, but there is plenty of cold calculation that goes into making a pirate band thrive. What extra equipment do you have for your ships that will aid in their successes?
A: High-penetration scanners. Without these you're boarding ships blind. With them you can see the structural layout of any targeted ship. While it does not pick up human signatures, knowing the "terrain" is extremely beneficial.
B: Frequency scanners. Sometimes you just want a target to give up. Sometimes they might even be willing to exchange everything they have for their lives! You'll never know if you can't speak to them before you launch an assault. Frequency scanners allow your pirates to communicate directly to their targets, allowing the potential to see success without firing a shot - should your presence be intimidating enough.
C: Signal jammers. The best way to sow chaos among an enemy force is by suddenly removing their ability to hear. Signal jammers prevent communication among civilian ships as well as lower-tech combat vessels. Each jammer can target an individual ship's (or smaller craft's) external comms.
Each turn is made up of five phases, except for the first turn, which will only have four. These phases are Preparation, Design, Revision, Strategy, and Combat. The first turn does not have a Targeting Phase.
Preparation Phase: In this phase you will be presented with rough knowledge (very rough if you don't develop better means of identifying potential targets) of the best targets to hit in each of the four hyperlanes are for the turn. This is when you will select which lanes you will attempt to commit piracy in as well as which resources to designate for repair/recruitment and resolve any Captures from the prior Combat Phase. Once you have a rough idea of what you will be facing you will move onto the
Design Phase: In this phase you can propose ships, weapons, crew, weapons, armor, weapons, weapons, and all manner of other things to help your pirates do their jobs better. Once your team has chosen two designs to move forward with they will be given a difficulty and rolled for to get their final results (all defined further below in Designs and Revisions). After you see what you've got to work with you then progress to the
Revision Phase: In the Revision Phase you can modify, improve, alter, augment, bullpup, or otherwise mess with the equipment that exists within your armory. Once your team has chosen two revisions to move forward with they will be given a difficulty and rolled for to get their final results (all defined further below in Designs and Revisions). After you've worked with your gear you then deal with the
Strategy Phase: Once you know everything about your available forces you can assign them to the lanes you selected in the Preparation Phase. Further details about the Strategy Phase can be found in the Piracy And You spoiler below. Once you divide up your forces, you finally reach the
Combat Phase: This phase requires no work on the players' end. Your actions will receive summaries and reports in each team thread as well as a general update in the core thread (this one). The Preparation Phase will immediately follow.
Design results are also modified by difficulty. Generally the results of a Normal Design scale as below:
Utter Failure (2): Nothing much is gained but the knowledge of how not to do it next time.
Buggy Mess (3): The design functions, just not too well at all. At least some experience is gained.
Poor (4): The design can be used without being a threat to anyone handling it. Still, it is far from reliable.
Below Average (5): It works, but there is clear room for improvement.
Average (6,7,8): The design functions as intended.
Above Average (9): The design works, and something about it works out better than expected.
Superior (10): It works much better than intended, and a lot is learned in related fields of research.
Masterwork (11): This is the perfect design.
Legendary (12): Development of this design goes so well that some sort of extra benefit is provided to the side building it.
The difficulty of the design modifies the roll for +4 (Simple), +3 (Trivial), +2 (Very Easy), +1 (Easy), 0 (Normal), -1 (Hard), -2 (Very Hard), -3 (Theoretical), -4 (Ludicrous), or -x (Impossible). Difficulty is based on the ambition of the design as well as how experienced you are with similar concepts. Impossible designs will always fail, but they may still result in some sort of progress on a higher roll. Impossible does not mean impossible within the scope of the game, just that it is an unattainable goal at that point in time. I will always let you know if something is not doable in the game or if, on the other end, a proposal would functionally do nothing.
You get Two Design Actions every design phase, and two votes to reflect that. You cannot stack your votes on a single proposal.
Revisions use the same 2d6 and rules as designs, but are restricted to altering preexisting designs. Results on either end of the spectrum of rolls are also generally less extreme. As with Designs, each player is allowed two votes for their favored Revisions, with the most popular Revisions being rolled for.
The four resources are:
Food: Crew can find themselves taking losses while engaging in violent illegal activities. Over time these losses will drop the unit's efficacy from Perfect until they're Undeployable. It is a flexible scale based on the Crew in question, but generally gets worse from Green to Yellow to Orange and Red before becoming Undeployable. Food is used to entice pirates to fill empty roles and will fully restore the status of a Crew.
Material: Craft can find themselves taking damage while engaging in extralegal patrols. Over time these losses will drop the ship's efficacy from Perfect until they're Undeployable. It is a flexible scale based on the Crew in question, but generally gets worse from Green to Yellow to Orange and Red before becoming Undeployable. Material is used to patch and repair damaged Craft to full condition.
Fuel: Fuel is required to deploy larger Craft. "Larger" is loosely defined based on the purpose of the vessel. Warships carrying a large gun or variety of weapons will often be considered "larger" even at a smaller size than a strict transport would based on sheer mass, but no Unit will ever need more than one Fuel to deploy regardless of size/number. Heavily damaged ships will probably not have much fuel left to pirate.
Wealth: Why was a Wealth Meta mentioned before? You can use Wealth once on any action to add 1d3 to the final result. You have to determine whether or not Wealth is used within the proposal. Just don't get too greedy. Or do. I'm not your boss.
Rarity comes in four flavors: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Unique. Each level denotes how many units you can choose to deploy.
Common = 4 Units
Uncommon = 3 Units
Rare = 2 Units
Unique = 1 Unit
In the case of Craft, a Unit is made up exactly of the number used. So the Boarding Skiff for example allows a deployment of four units of four skiffs, totaling sixteen skiffs.
In the case of Crew, Unit Size denotes the amount of Craft they can be assigned to, with the specific number of people per unit provided in the description. This means that a single Unit of the Basic Boarding Party would consist of four teams of eight individuals and would be assigned to four boarding craft. Since they are Common, that would mean you could deploy up to four units of four teams needing their boarding craft, meaning they would need sixteen craft if deployed all together. And just to be completely thorough with the description, a focused attack of the Basic Boarding Party would result in 4(Common)x4(Unit Size)x8(People Per Unit)=128 dudes on the offense.
Planning is very important if you want to be a successful pirate. During your Strategy Phase you will determine a general approach you wish to take with the units assigned to various lanes. When determining what you are using, you can also choose whether their goal is to Capture the target, Loot the target, or, if you're just doing it deny others the goods (and their lives), Destroy the target. More options to determine your approach will be added as/if you develop them.
The first "round" of combat occurs within the confines of the Hyperlane as a chase of sorts. The ships can engage or communicate (if possible) during Hyperlane travel. Smaller craft may be able to avoid detection while approaching targets, but larger vessels will almost certainly be detected. The entire group of ships will eventually be torn out of the Hyperlane before leaving the range of the Laneripper, usually, though not always, resulting in the engagement unfolding in a second "round" in open deep space. Sometimes celestial objects wind up in the vicinity of the battlefield.
If your goal was to Capture your target, upon success you will be given the ability to choose between selling it on the black market for Wealth and keeping the cargo or scrapping it for Materials and/or Fuel (depending on its condition) as well as whatever cargo was aboard. Capturing ships is the most difficult option, as it requires boarding, minimal damage to the target, and total submission of the opposing crew to the highest degree.
If you successfully Destroy a ship you're a cold bastard who just wanted to make sure whatever they had wasn't used by anything else. You get nothing except restless nights. Boarding Parties won't be used unless absolutely necessary. This definitely won't piss people off or make things harder in the future.
Trying to Loot falls firmly between the other two. The only goal is to get the cargo, so they'll utilize whatever means they're equipped for to get it. If the enemy willingly surrenders that works, but your pirates will also gladly cripple their ship to advance "negotiations". Looting will require boarding parties regardless of whether the goods are being transferred peacefully or by force.
Your plans in the Strategy Phase do not need to be highly detailed. While more can help, all that is needed is whether the target is to be Captured, Looted, or Destroyed and what is being deployed to do it.
If there are escort vessels with your target they will either be looted or destroyed, whichever comes first and helps most with the primary objective. The tactics will tend more toward destroyed unless stated otherwise.
Sometimes other pirates come to take your mark. The goal is always to kill them dead. This is the only time going into a situation already prepared to murder is beneficial. While not a guaranteed victory, being dead-set on a fight leaves you slightly better prepared and able to launch the first strike.
Losing sucks, but remember! It could always be worse if you didn't have access to convenient teleportation technology!
Time to pick a team, stick to their thread, be a good sport, and have fun!
