[gurps] Building a pirate/raider-friendly universe

[Onno Meyer]

Pauli replied to me:
> 
> 'Official' GURPS distortion field technology only affects radars and
> bio- or chemscanners, as per (3e) GURPS Ultra-Tech page 86 under
> 'Distort Belt'.
> 
> Allowing a TL10+ Distortion Jammer to affect PESAs and Radscanners
> in addition to AESAs is a houserule.

VE59 has the deceptive jammer, and chapter 13 lists the effects
on various sensors.

> Yeah. It might make sense to have a houserule that one jammer
> could cover at most a certain (large) surface area of a vehicle,
> meaning that huge vehicles would need a network of several jammers.
> 
> Perhaps something like one jammer per 50 000 sf of hull surface
> area at TL10 would be plausible?

If such a rule was introduced, I'd say the listed deceptive jammer 
is good for a heavy bomber, to the tune of a B-52 or B-1. Call it  
5,000 sf. But for a proper house rule I'd need some research, and 
I dislike house rules anyway -- they mean that you can't re-use 
vehicles in/from other settings. 

And Pauli wrote elsewhere:
> In a large frontier area the size of a dwarf galaxy (millions of
> solar systems, vast majority of which are unused), it is very
> much possible for the same pirate crew to keep on practicing their
> 'job' for a long time and eventually get very good at it. Ship they
> will be using would propably be the best one they can afford at the
> moment (with the x0.05 or so effective cost modifier for a stolen
> and 'hot' ship, maintained with stolen spare parts) - At first just
> a relatively low cost civilian transport/yacht or a tramp freighter,
> later on a bigger customized freighter and perhaps after a decade or
> more of plundering they might be able to use the equivalent of a small
> warship like a destroyer or even a cruiser. Targets the pirates choose
> would slowly get bigger and more ambitious along with their skills and
> ships.

That fits historical precedents, but it works best if the pirates
can transfer weapons etc. from one hull to the next. Start with a
little ship and a few guns, attack a merchant ship with a larger 
hull and slightly fewer guns (because it carries too much cargo), 
mount all weapons on the prize and go for the next bigger prey
with the combined broadside on the new hull.

To make this work out, it must be possible to add weapons from 
one ship to the other, and lots of relatively small weapons must
be a credible armament. Fighters could be such a weapon, but how
many traders have a small flight of fighters, and can it be taken
intact? Missiles are another option, but of course they would be
bad for boarding actions.