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[Man of Paper]

Core Thread

The Reavers have finally split from those treacherous Buccaneers. You must rebuild and strengthen your band of pirates and outwit, outplay, and outlast your rivals.

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 icy hellscape with blinding blizzards and unbearably low temperatures, but the vast amount of minerals just under the rocky 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.



It is the Design Phase.

In addition to providing an answer for the above, you can also propose Designs. Some guidance will be provided this turn in the form of feedback regarding difficulty and plausibility of proposals. Remember that you will be selecting Two Proposals.

Spoiler: Arrrmory (click to show/hide)

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 INDEX:
Turn 1 Design

[Maximum Spin]

B.

[NUKE9.13]

Rafmagn's Restrictorizer:
There's no need for violence. Let's all calm down, cool off, and hand over the cargo.

Rafmagn's Restrictorizer is a cannon that launches 'EMP Shells', designed to disable rather than destroy opposing vessels. As the rapidly fluctuating magnetic fields of a coilgun could interfere with the electronics within the shells, it is a railgun. The shells have a 140mm diameter, with grooves in the side that engage the rails. Proximity sensors (activated a few moments after being fired) cause the shell to 'detonate'- with no explosive force, but a considerable electro-magnetic burst that will interfere/scramble/fry electronics nearby. A single hit might not disable a spaceship, but will disrupt operations, causing the engine to briefly stall, weapons to stop firing, and sensors to malfunction. Several hits in quick succession are more likely to cause permanent damage to electronic systems, potentially leaving a ship dead in the water- unable to flee or fight back until electronics are replaced in critical components.

An idea.

Tractor Beam:
Utilising the latest (read: actually fairly old, but the latest we've managed to recreate) in quantum super-stabilising velocity-equalising technobabble, the Tractor Beam is a... weapon(?) that equalises the velocity vector of the firing ship and the target. This requires more energy the greater the difference in velocity vectors, but once active, it is requires much less energy to maintain (so the opposing ship hitting the gas is unlikely to break it free (though it would cause both ships to accelerate (at the same rate))). Currently, the range is fairly short, and there is no way to 'reel in' the opposing vessel, but it makes it allows for a more relaxed effort to force a surrender- especially if the opposing vessel is locked in an unfavourable orientation.

Another idea, in the same vein, mostly to compare difficulty to help determine how soft the setting is (and/or how high-tech our tech base is).

Example-Class Corvette:
This very real proposal is definitely not purely intended to gauge difficulty.

The Example-Class is slightly smaller than the Patchwork Freighter, but does not include a Cargo Bay. It is- compared to a refitted freighter- a sleek, military-looking vessel. It is typically painted in intimidating colours by the crew.
Engine: BETTER THAN PATCHWORK
Armour: Light, BETTER THAN PATCHWORK
Armament: 1 50mm coilgun turret on the nose, four 30mm coilgun turrets around the circumference (about a third down from the nose)
Crew: Larger crew than the Patchwork. The command deck has a rack of guns with which to fight off boarders.
Sensors & Stuff: Decent medium-range sensors, basic comms gear.

[Man of Paper]

The Restrictorizer is Theoretical, well within the realm of reality but a larger ask technologically for a pirate band just starting to (re)build itself. Time and some buildup alone would make this easy enough to drop to Very Hard, and working with weapons and electronics systems both would likely be related in some way enough to impact that further.

The Tractor Beam is Normal. It's a solid and acceptable sci-fi tech that isn't quite cutting edge, and has intentional drawbacks and set rules in the proposal that keep it from being hit with a difficulty any higher than that.

As-written I'd say the Example-Class is Very Hard, since it appears to be attempting to make a ship improving or modifying every aspect of everything you have to work with (and not just a proposal mining for difficulty) wrapped up in a new hull. This is assuming "better than" means a minimum amount of change required to make a fairly noticeable difference.

[Kashyyk]

Guess I'll be a Reaver today.

I've been thinking about the backstory options. Going for the Cruiser, Fuel and Frequency Scanner sounds like a solid bet, as we will be able to pretty much guarantee one easy Loot a turn by bullying whoever we target, and probably winning any fight with the Buccaneers in the first few turns.

Alternatively, setting ourselves up with the Wealth boost means we can roll a bonus on one of our 4 designs/revisions every turn. Which is the same as reducing difficulty by an average of 2 points. That's almost a required choice imo.

[Happerry]

My personal preference is probably Materials, Wealth, High-penetration scanners myself.

And here's a design or two!

Pirate Informers
One of the most important problems a pirate has is, quite simply, knowing who to rob. One of the easiest ways of getting around that problem is simply having people who tell the pirates stuff. By seeding local ports with people willing to report back on what is going on in said ports for a cut of the resulting loot, just being given a living wage, or not having the blackmail released, it is possible for pirates to keep a loose but omnipresent eye on the local shipping as well as keeping aware of the local rumor-net for things like 'wow the navy is moving in' and 'Company X is trying to set up a convoy because they hit a big haul'. After all, if you don't know who's shipping what, it's quite hard to steal it.

Gauss Harpoons
Merchant ships tend to be very rude and try to run away from pirates when pirates show up. To prevent merchant ships, or anything else the pirates want to keep around, from escaping one method the pirates can use comes down to what is simple a pair of giant harpoons fired out of magnetic launchers, attached to the firing ship with large and stout chains. Once a target ship has the harpoons embedded into its hull, the harpoons can either be reeled in to start pulling the victim towards the pirate ship, or simply kept at their current distance to keep the victim from fleeing while the boarding shuttles are dispatched.

[ConscriptFive]

My instinct is B, B, B.  We can make the ship or hardsuits, and probably wouldn't need them that early.  Wealth seems like it would be easier to loot than Fuel too?  (Though as Kashyyk highlights, the wealth design credit math in interesting, and I need to look at it more.) The third choices I'm pretty flexible on, as I haven't seen what an engagement is like.

Seeing as GM is looking for a more ramshackle theme:

Design: "Jam Jar" Rocket Battery

To be the guy jumpseated on a skiff, riding hard against the unknown in search of fame and fortune... naught but a few millimeters of metal between life and sudden death.  'Tis a dangerous proposition, but far less dangerous if our prey is blind.

The "Jam Jar" Rocket Battery is an externally-mounted disposable box of six solid-fueled rockets.  Upon the cannoneer's ignition, all six rockets are fired as a single salvo, propelling a spread of rockets against a single target.  This spread provides multiple points of impact on easier targets (large, slow, no point defense), and a higher chance of a hit against harder targets (small, fast, point-defense capable).  Upon impact, canisters of "Pirate Pitch" spill thick black adhesive formula thickened used motor oil across the exterior of the vessel.  The tar-like "Pirate Pitch" coats and fully obscures optical sensors and portholes, and as you would expect, interferes with a variety of other external ship systems that need to stay clean, such as solar panels, radiators, or exposed mechanisms.

The "Jam Jar" Rocket Battery may not be some fancy milspec coilgun, but our homemade self-contained rocket box is small enough and simple crude enough to be welded to a skiff without issue.

[Man of Paper]

Pirate Informers would be Easy. There's nothing too difficult about getting people to slip you some information on a regular basis outside of them being in the right places at the right times.

Gauss Harpoons are Easy, being what are ultimately physical tractor beams with all the vulnerability that would imply.

The Spaceballs reference is just over the line into Normal on account of being a fancy new type of weapon for your faction to be producing in-house (rockets/missiles), but simple crude enough to avoid being a real hurdle. Being single-salvo goes far to reduce complexity as well. Just about any weapons development experience would probably see it tip downward.

[Kashyyk]

A somewhat less ramshackle, but on brand pair of ideas:

Just about big enough to fit a single marine and an (comparatively) large thruster, the Coffin is a tiny metal can that hurtles through the void before impacting with the target ship at a bone-jarring but not harmful speed. This should be a lot quicker than the Boarding Skiff, and thus he harder to evade, whilst also being more durable by virtue of having plating on all sides. Once contact is achieved the marine will disembark upon the Hull with the included magboots and create their own entry using the also included plasma torch.

Corporations are naturally interested in "Loss Prevention". This they all have their own versions of Security Corvettes, small armed vessels responsible for scanning targets and ensuring they aren't resounding for loss of corporate profit.

This is our own version, modeled after one of the local Corps to elude detection. By submitting target ships to "Random Searches" we should be able to walk a boarding party straight through the open airlock.

Naturally, the ship is lightly armoured, and has a punchy engine. It has no cargo bay, but space for a squad of boarders along with two turreted 30mm Coilguns (one ventral and one dorsal). In addition it has a basic Comms array to hail ships for inspection, although it will need a Freighter to assist it in carrying the resultant loot.

[Man of Paper]

The Coffin is on the high end Very Hard, as it would require training the "marines" to also be (basic) pilots on top of developing the pod. Otherwise this isn't asking for much.

The Scummer is somewhere in the Ludicrous zone. Creating a ship is one thing. Making one convincing enough to pass off as a corp security ship all the way up to boarding is another thing entirely. Possible, but currently a bit of a stretch.

[Kashyyk]

And now for a few more.

This system tightens up internal electronic signatures and puts baffles around the drive exhaust to limit what angles it is visible. It is also designed to beef up a ship's existing thermal management, however that's merely a secondary affect to support the option of disabling the radiators and instead dumping the heat into an internal Heat Sink (really a giant block of ice). This will make the ship a lot "quieter" in pretty much every spectrum, and thus make it easier to sneak up on targets.

Commonly used when asteroid mining to cut off chunks of promising material, we can easily repurpose this high powered cutting beam to slice off chunks of ships. Suddenly losing a piece is bound to cool any resistance, and even if they do get away we can capture the separated parts.

I have no idea how these work, I'm just a pirate. But, I do know this here Generator produces a bubble around the ship. When stuff hits the bubble it gets bounced off, and the Generator both draws a bit more power and gets hotter. These controls here let you open temporary "windows" in the bubble, both so we can see out and so our skiffs and coilgun rounds don't just ricochet off of the inside of the shield. You don't want it running all the time, because the "interstellar medium" has stuff in it that'll sap your shield, but when you're about to get into a fight, you pull this big ol' lever here and they can't touch you. Just make sure you tell Command when you do it.

[ConscriptFive]

Since "Pirate Informers" were Easy, let's turn it up a notch...

Design: "Fellow Traveler" Infiltrators
You know what corporations really want?  Cheap non-Union labor they can pay under the table.

On the surface level, our Fellow Traveler Infiltrators are just that: able hands that can be picked up on short notice without pesky contract negotiations and fired without catching shit from the Union.  Right to work and fire at will; what a beautiful thing, eh?

But ultimately we're selling them to rope we'll use to hang them with.  Our Fellow Travellers relay intelligence port-side and ship-side on their employers, highlighting ships of interest amongst other collection priorities.  Should a Fellow Traveller be aboard a ship looted by us, they can finger location of high value cargo, and tattle on smuggling compartments they witnessed aboard life on the ship.  (Never again will our looters miss personal stashes of space coke and xenopornography.)

[Man of Paper]

Pressure Cooker is Normal. That's about as standard an advancement as you could make at this point.

The Scalpel is Very Hard/Theoretical due to the implied power of the laser (slicing off pieces vs gouging into the ship)

The Deflector Shields are Hard/Very Hard. It is a (relative to where you're at) high tech development but not having the shield be a magical 1-way wall of protection does simplify things to the point where I might err closer to Hard.

The Fellow Travelers are Very Hard. While getting people to watch what comes and goes around the Hyperlanes isn't a difficult thing to do, embedding people into other ships is. It's not harder than that since it's not like every large freighter is going to deep dive into every crewman's backstory and require they have flawless covers. Some do though.

[dgr11897]

Just about big enough for a marine, a large thruster, and a crude guidance system, these pods are essentially just a big missile with a marine instead of a warhead. These have three things going for them, Speed, how small they are, and how cheap they are to deploy. Once the pod rams into a target the marine can exit onto the surface of the enemy hull. The Guidance system is ripped from an old shuttle's autopilot, specifically its velocity matching function, used to make docking with another ship quick and easy. We had to rip out a lot of the code relating to keeping the ship at a good distance and monkey with it so that it will overshoot its target in order to get it to function in this role. As a result it can be... Inaccurate. Thankfully it comes equipped with an emergency radio beacon the marine can enable should they get stranded.

You know what's the ever working brain of a ship? Its computer systems, and most civilian ships don't exactly have good protection for those. Thus the Slicers, hackers equipped with a laptop, spacesuit, the nastiest malware we could find, and an array of cables to let them plug into a ship. While they can't really be used on their own, when mixed into other forces in a boarding party Slicers can cut into a ship's computer systems and make them go haywire. While this doesn't extend to meaningful control over most systems, it will disable security lockouts on things like doors, disable cameras, and disrupt a crew's ability to control their ship or call for help.

[Kashyyk]

Okay,  cool.  Let's keep throwing ideas out there.

Little more than a trash can stuffed full of comms equipment, the "Cry Baby" can be remotely triggered to broadcast a variety of distress beacons and pe-recorded messages, as well as acting as a relay for any of our vessels with comms equipment.

Having something loud and demanding on the scope will give our ships a better chance of approaching undetected, may sucker other ships into an ambush, and will force Escorts and security craft to choose between chasing a pirate and rescuing an "un-powered passenger liner".

Another "Missile without an explosive" design, this one shoves as much malware as we can find into it, along with comms and some basic hard-contact jacks. Once the 'Limpit' has attached to the target it starts forcing its way into the their electrical systems and unleashing its malware to cause merry havoc.

We can improve on Basic. Each breaching team is a 4-person squad of our largest and toughest pirates. Their voidsuits are upgraded with hardened plating on the front, including torso, helmet and limbs. The back is left unarmoured, cos why would you need armour there when you're always pushing forward?

Given a quick crash course in "Rapid Application of Violence", they carry space-cutlasses as backup for their high-velocity guass shrapnel cannons (or just regular shotguns if the budget doesn't stretch that far). Finally, one of the four carries a fusion torch, and another carries a "boarding shield" (aka, hull plate with handles) to handle both physical and projectile based obstacles.