I have been seeing ship names like the 'Hessian Cruiser', 'Rogue Cruiser', 'Lane Hacker Battleship', and 'Dragon Battleship'. At first I thought it was cool for pirates to be getting capital ships, then it hit me:
"Pirates aren't designed for full-fledged combat. They like fast little ships that are tough enough to prey on the weak and get out before the cops show up."
In history, pirates never had three masted ships or larger. They had two/one masted sloops that let them harass a trader, board, then load up as much loot as possible. And a larger ship for a pirate would not be feasible for this reason:
"A pirate would not have enough resources to get MILITARY grade ships."
Three masted frigates were not available to civilians or pirates. Manning them, equipping them, and making them seem harmless was just too hard for your average pirate. If a ship like a frigate were seen in civilian hands, it would have been destroyed/impounded unless proper papers were presented. This brings me to my next point:
"Even while pirate factions wage war with each other, they have periods of time where they do pirate things."
You can't pirate in a cruiser in this mod. This TOTALLY eliminates the purpose of a pirate character in this mod. Yeah, I can kick the living crap out of a Navy ship, but I can't make money from helpless traders. That's not a pirate, that's an anarchist. This leads me to my proposition:
"Instead of making capital ships, why not just oversize/tweak/modify gunboats?"
We can have gunboats that can mount two cruiser weapons to give a 'powerful' feel of a normally cap-ship ineffective vessel. Maybe we can have gunboats that can mount one battleship weapon. A gunboat with a heavy mortar wouldn't be able to fire often, but it could be devastating if there were five of them and the fired at the right time at the same topic. Bigger is not better. I've seen three bombers dismantle a cruiser in a matter of minutes. Imagine five gunboats that equal the power of three battleships with more maneuverability. So you should make light, medium, and heavy gunboats. Perhaps this is the weapon system:
Light: All gunboat weapons. Most pirate gunboats have 8 weapon mounts. Let's use this balance for the sake of this topic.
Medium: 2 cruiser turrets and 4 gunboat turrets.
Heavy: 1 battleship turret and 2 gunboat turrets.
Just chew on this for a bit and see if it would be feasible. These would be the resources and methods available to pirates. Battleships and cruisers would be useless to pirates in the sense that you can only do ONE thing with them: Kill your enemies when and if they do show up. With this, you'll be able to easily chew up a capital ship then pirate traders afterward.
"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THESCIENCEIS LEAKING OUT!"
Pirate capital ships are used to kill other capital ships and to supply smaller ships. They are not used for piracy - why would one bother?
By the way, unlawful factions do have power and influence, and have combat-ready populations. They aren't as underpowered as people think.
"In-reality" arguments do not apply, as we are flying space ships in a made up universe. Pirates in Freelancer cannot be compared to pirates in the past or present.
Despite what you may see in game, many of the above capital ships are supposed to be incredibly rare.
The Lane Hacker battleship (spyglass) as I recall, is supposed to be ONE of a kind.
The Blood dragons have their old battleships left over from their military days
The Corsairs and Outcasts, though you didn't mention them, are on the scale of small houses and could reasonably be expected to produce a FEW capital ships as a LAST resort defense in their HOME system.
But generally, in canon, not necessarily in game, unlawful capital ships are supposed to be rare, often flagships, or are last-ditch defenses.
Gunboats on the other hand, are seen as a "effective method of mass deployment" and should be common enough. However, I feel that your overpowered gunboats to be extreme, as a gunboat with enough power to fire a heavy mortar could probably chainfire cruiser weapons.
I believe a better solution would be more ships like the P-trans. Heavily armoured transports that are well capable of piracy,
' Wrote:Despite what you may see in game, many of the above capital ships are supposed to be incredibly rare.
The Lane Hacker battleship (spyglass) as I recall, is supposed to be ONE of a kind.
The Blood dragons have their old battleships left over from their military days
The Corsairs and Outcasts, though you didn't mention them, are on the scale of small houses and could reasonably be expected to produce a FEW capital ships as a LAST resort defense in their HOME system.
But generally, in canon, not necessarily in game, unlawful capital ships are supposed to be rare, often flagships, or are last-ditch defenses.
Gunboats on the other hand, are seen as a "effective method of mass deployment" and should be common enough. However, I feel that your overpowered gunboats to be extreme, as a gunboat with enough power to fire a heavy mortar could probably chainfire cruiser weapons.
I believe a better solution would be more ships like the P-trans. Heavily armoured transports that are well capable of piracy,
my $.02
I didn't mention Outcasts for THAT reason.
As for P-trans, that could be feasible. Just make variations of them for each faction. I've been pirated by them multiple times.
"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THESCIENCEIS LEAKING OUT!"
There is talk of the blood dragon capships being taken out in the next mod.
I protest.
Not because I want to be a capwhore (well partly that and I have a great RP story for a bd battleship)
But yes. The blood dragons are apparantly meant to be a rising force in Kusari (from my point of view). Asking why the BD have battleships is like asking why the council have battleships... because apart from the naval forces, the BD are a rising movement, with their movement growing stronger due to the war with bretonia. They do need a few capships at least.
Not that i've ever seen a bd battleship in space of course...
From what I can tell from vanilla pirates didn't have caps because they lacked the industry to make, maintain and crew them with trained personnel, but Disco seems to have multiplied pirate factions military production capability's.
' Wrote:In history, pirates never had three masted ships or larger. They had two/one masted sloops that let them harass a trader, board, then load up as much loot as possible.
Both Henry Morgan and Francis Drake commanded entire fleets, comprising of large vessels. They were both pirates/privateers/whatever.
The LR themselves aren't too found of the Mollies/LR Cruiser. The only reason why it exists is to protect Cassinni (which is why there must be 4-5 of them in our guard system) and to use them as forward bases.
Quite Frankly, the Liberty Rogues are happy with Barghests, and we prefer pirating with P-trans than with GBs because the P-trans is superior to the GB in so many ways. (A good P-trans pilot can take on a casual GB, & we won't even get started about the Slave Liner's versality...)
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