Especially from freeing slaves or indentured servants from captured ships.

I remember this from a sci-fi book I read years ago. Only a small percentage of people could even physically withstand "hyperspace". Consequently most ships were chronically undermanned and Spacers were always in demand. If a ship surrendered to you giving the captured spacers (the non-officers anyway) a billet on your ship was standard procedure, as was them accepting it. It wasn't uncommon for even a naval warship to have crew (non-officers at least) from 5 or 6 different nations aboard, sometimes even from the nation you were at war with, and nobody thought anything of it. A Spacer's loyalty was to the "spacer's guild" as a whole and to the individual ship you happened to be on at the moment.

I used this concept fir a specific group of pirates called blood raiders. They reside in one astroid feild terrain to lure ships in to steal supplies and crew. Other groups were just outlaws or crime syndicates that modified public ships with paints and anything they wanted. One syndicate called the eclipsed had their own ship designs since they owned a planet and did anything for profit.

@@Generalphoenix8438 "I used this concept fir a specific group of pirates called blood raiders. " You might want to look up EVE Online's Blood Raiders.

Hey, you’re mentioning Starsector a lot! It’s great! I let the developers know about your Dreadnoughts video and they were tickled pink! Maybe you should talk about the various varieties of space magic sometime, like SS’s drive field and AM canisters any dude can carry. I think it compares favorably against settings like Star Wars where the space magic is explicit but unexplained and inconsistent.

Used to roleplay as a pirate/privateer way back when. Pull traders from SC, ask for a donation or payment and I'd escort them to the target station. Community goals were great for that.

Wonder how that would work for explorer types like me the only thing I'm collecting is data and fuel through scooping (I havnt played in a few years)

@@aarondavis8865might be asked if you have any valuable info or just take what pocket money you have?

@@boxinthefield In a late-90s game called "Terminus" someone in the most powerful type of ship camped outside a main space station and charged people to enter. I told them I would do it so they wouldn't be suspicious as I dive-bombed them with a missile that heavily damaged them and a friend finished them off.

Sometimes if you have a high combat rank and a good ship they'll fly up to you, scan you and be like "oh, uh sorry, I'll be on my way now...". Had that happen once while I was hunting pirates at a hazardous resource extraction zone.

I was coming down here to say the same thing. Such a wonderfully terrible forgotten movie!

Seriously, I'd have guessed the fans of that movie number in the low double-digits and people who remember it in the low three digits... 😆

You mean Billy-Bob?

It’s getting a video game.

Terrible, but a classic :D

"Too late do I realize that me children are me only real treasures."

In that case, it's also mutually beneficial for everyone involved. The passengers knowingly pay to see a rare spectacle, since there are so few active pirates remaining; the pirates "commit an act of piracy", allowing them to legally keep their letter of marque active; the liner company gets a cut from the insurance; and the Navy stays out of it because nobody's actually getting hurt. They'd be called privateers in any other story, but Japan doesn't have a historical equivalent to privateers.

Also love that the real space battle is hacking Guns are neat and all but if you can remotely control the enemy's life support systems, you just win

@@dappernecromancer5364 Doesn't work very well if the target isn't stupid enough to connect their life support to the modem though.

@@davehood2667 While you are correct, that kind of thing happens more than you would expect in real life Places where you would expect very tight cybersecurity practices are often complete shambles

They also still serve military/political purposes, the 'pirate' shows are just the bread and butter work.

I've never seen it

He is a Badass

@@blagojpejov4155 real

@@andrewreynolds912 you should! I’ll give you some links!

"All hand's listen up: The Captain has taken the Helm. You know what that means." *cuts intercomm*

I'll be in my bunk.

Must be that time again! Shiny!

Gotta get flying again.

Like the survivors of the wrecked sleeper ship "Hispania" in Freelancer, their ship malfunctioned due to sabotage and drifted off course. Half of the population abandoned the ship and became nomadic privateers and the other half stayed on the ship until they could reach a planet, but with the misfortune that they arrived at a toxic planet, where their DNA was altered, and now depend on that atmosphere to survive. And they became a criminal syndicate trafficking drugs synthesized from plants native to their toxic planet.

Also makes sense to use RL examples where they were mostly mercenaries working for other opposing powers during times of war. Then there was the Barbary Coast pirates /nation-states who plagued international shipping until the US decided to say "Hands off our boats"

@@Klaaism That's also a pretty good point. Pirates in sci fi settings might just be more like privateers or para-military organizations.

In Star Wars home made junk ships are called uglies. They are usually flying coffins, with some being just barely average and some just barely functioning.

@@empirednw6624 I love those too! My favorite is the double B-wing, but I still have a soft spot for the cobbled together junkers

@@beanlord4347 I like the tie wing lol. The worst preforming one but it’s a tie fighter cockpit with two y wing engines.

Yooooo fellow Starsector enjoyer! I like some of the pirate designs, in that they’re just transport ships with their mounts converted to weapons from cargo (like the colossus mk2 or the atlas mk2) as well as their fleets consisting of lots of smaller vessels (which are really fun to bulldoze through with Flak and fighters). Honestly, a big part of why I dislike the Legio Infernalis from the Tahlan Shipworks mod is that they’re far too strong militarily, given that they’re a pirate raider faction that routinely pisses off every other faction in the sector. And yet despite that they have some really strong ships and can outfit most of them with Alpha-core equivalent AI. They feel too organised for a pirate/raider faction. Then again I suppose I’m not really in a position to cast all that much judgement on account of enjoying the UAF capitals (especially the semibreves)

Kitbashing is PERFECT for pirate ships.

Or there could be a manufacturing plant on an asteroid which has been redirected. The products are produced en route. Future piracy could be stealing the whole factory.

I’m not sure id want to intercept a mass accelerated projectile, the risk of damage is too great. First thought would be interception at the orbital insertion point, but any thought out universe or a competent corp would have defenses set there

@@CMTechnica ah, they deleted my comment about intercepting asteroid based factories ;_;

@@CMTechnica No you shoot a laser at it to make them miss their target an go to where your accomplices are waiting for it at a matching speed.

@@CMTechnica While generally in that sort of situation while you are unlikely to have the ability to match speed at a reasonable cost. You don't actually have to catch the projectile, just change the course so it ends up somewhere you or your coworkers can acquire it. Because you only need to adjust the speed a tiny amount to change where it ends up there are a lot of ways you could go about it. Hit it with an exhaust plume, have dust in the path, laser it, have a ship pass nearby and project a strong magnetic field, launch a smaller projectile that will match speed and attach an engine. Of course depending on the aim of the piracy you may not need to make the cargo end up somewhere you can get it. With this sort of interception delaying cargo getting to market could be profitable via market manipulation.

No way in hell would any reasonable space faring civilisation allow pirates to get their hands on carriers or battlecruisers. Hell, I think even them getting their hands on a light cruiser would be a stretch. Among other things, no pirate would want the heat called down on them from owning a ship that big. Too high profile. Especially when they can earn enough for beer and prostitutes by plundering much smaller vessels with much smaller vessels. The only reason you'd see Pirates with something as big as a cruiser is a sort of space version of what's going on with Haiti rn where criminal gangs control most of the country, except they're not really criminal gangs, their warlords by this point. By the time a pirate group has got up to the point of owning something the size of a cruiser, you could basically consider them a minor space warlord.

Exactly. Anything that makes for a real-world good fast commerce raider equivalent makes for a good pirate ship.

Upgunned freighters or patrol craft would be right. As pirate ships also must be stealthy and unassuming for ambushes and traps, only revealing their true nature when close enough to their prey that it cannot really run anymore. Because successful piracy has 3 main components: speed, surprise and fear. Quick in and out again is key to evade anti-piracy forces. And a suprised victim that faces a credibly fearsome opponent is more likely to just yield and comply without actually using any force, which always comes with risks. Of course, small pirate fleets would probably be most effective in having dedicated combat and pursuit ships to catch and disable the prey, while the actual transport craft are waiting at a safe distance to pick up the cargo. Or tow away the captured and possibly disabled ships.

For pirates with actual warships, one can easily go with a nation that used to be relatively formidable, but collapsed due to infighting. And all of a sudden a navy admiral might set themselves up as a warlord that does piracy

The same things that make a good pirate ship make a good merchant ship and vise versa. If you can, just steal one of those.

The ttrpg has an entire fantastic adventure revolving a space pirate

And that is why Onaka is one of my favorite characters.

Plus, he asks for payment in spice as opposed to credits, because spice can't be traced and the value of credits can change depending on the outcome of a war (either through military victory/loss or the impact of said war on the relevant economies).

Honestly I think his lack of shits to give is what led to his crew falling into the unruly stereotypes.

Lois McMaster Bujold did just that with Jackson's Whole in the Vorkosigan Saga.

@@maigretus1 ohh that old book i loved that bookseries.

And as it expands, it starts to have a larger and larger "civilian" population who aren't really pirates themselves, but who run industries that the pirates depend on. Because these are so important, the pirate captains know they shouldn't antagonize them too much, so they lay down frameworks of rules for how the pirate crews interact with the civilians, establishing an early code of laws. As the pirate fleets and their settlement grow, shipping traffic through the region isn't enough to fully sustain them on piracy, so their industries continue to grow, making more and more of what they need through mining, farming, and manufacturing. Eventually they realize that exporting the goods they produce could be a new source of profit, so the pirates, who by this point have been operating for decades and have a level of experience and professionalism rivaling some navies, establish safe zones where merchants can trade without fear of attack, so long as the pirates get a modest cut of the profit. Soon enough the pirate navies are spending more time patrolling the safe lanes and enforcing customs fees than they are committing acts of piracy, and before you know it, the pirate base has become a nation state all its own.

Remember that keeping a low profile gets much harder with size increase.

It warms my heart to see so much appreciation for this show in the comments, especially given the utter lack of it in the video itself!

I love that the heroes know that pirates have to be at least smart enough to operate a starship but still have their doubts on that sometimes.

And when pirates used actual warships from bargain-basement star nations that are a dime a dozen in the Silesian sector, (though not anymore as it's been carved up between the Andermani and the Manties!) those Mickey Mouse navies focused on throw weight for offensive weapons over defensive fits, which meant that when they came across real warships they were good and screwed even with their heavier broadsides, as superior point defence did short work of the pirates' missiles, while warships' missiles were pretty much coming in in complete impunity. And then you got the likes of Aivars Terekhov who lures them in within the effective range of bad breath and hammers them with graser fire.

@@patrickdusablon2789 That's a tactic that will either work brilliantly or end poorly for everyone involved. The example of the later that comes to mind is what happened on Honor's snotty cruise on board HMS War Maiden (CA 39). Yeah they got the pirate CA, but only barely. And War Maiden had to spend time in a yard afterward. Better to simply let them get far enough into missile range they can't escape and then simply hammer the pirate that way.

@@jkirschy not saying the War Maiden/Aivars Terekhov maneuvers are the ideal way of doing things, but it's one of those high risk/high reward propositions. They get within knife range, if you get the first shot off it'll be decisive and end it right there. The safer course of action you mentioned, hammering them from missile range, only works if you've got the ordnance to burn and your missiles can burn through whatever defences the other guys are throwing up, and you've got enough of a range advantage and point-defence capability that you can deal with their return fire.

@@patrickdusablon2789True enough on the high-risk/high-reward option. It is just there is a lot that can go wrong, unnecessarily, especially if you don't get that first shot off. As for the safer option... Given that the preferred anti-piracy patrol ship in the Honorverse seems to be (at least for the RMN/GSN/RHN/IAN) a heavy or light cruiser I imagine that your criteria should be met. Something like a Saganami A/B/C, Mars C/D, or Verfechter class should have ample magazine/pod capacity and missile capability to defeat any pirate ship they come across, short of a BC (and even then I'd probably take those odds). Heck even an older design like a Star Knight/Prince Consort/Crusader/Broadsword/Warrior, Jason Alvarez, Mars A/B, or Sword class should have plenty of magazine capacity and missile capability to deal with a typical pirate. Even something like a Avalon/Apollo/Courageous or a Conqueror/Charles Wade Pope class light cruiser should be adequate for the task (depending on when in the timeline you want to talk about). Especially since as I believe you were the one who pointed out, pirates even when they got their hands on warships, typically were using older designs with the emphasis on offensive throw weight not defensive capability. Even when it comes to the defensive aspect for the anti-piracy cruiser, its doubtful most pirates would have the latest/most capable missiles or enough of them to batter through the defenses of an RMN/GSN/RHN/IAN heavy/light cruiser, especially late in the series when the rise of pod-salvos meant missile defense becomes a VERY IMPORTANT THING (I believe that's how Runs For Celery would use caps in this situation). I'm not saying it couldn't happen if you had a pirate with say an ex-State Sec heavy cruiser or even a Sileasan heavy cruiser who decided to shoot his magazines dry. Just that most pirates, using an older Sileasan frigate, destroyer, or light cruiser (or a civilian ship modified to be a pirate) would probably really, really struggle to do it to the point the odds would be pretty decisively in the favor of the RMN/GSN/RHN/IAN (and maybe even SLN) cruiser.

Heinlein's novel Citizen of the Galaxy has a great solution for capturing ships. In the story, pirate ships are armed with an extremely powerful paralysis beam that works at short range but can instantly disable a ship and its entire crew if it hits properly. It basically solves most of the problems with boarding a ship as long as the pirates are fast enough to get within firing range then are fast enough to board the ship and neutralize the crew before they recover from paralysis. To combat this, trading ships are armed with long-range missiles that can pop a pirate ship in one hit, but of course the pirates also have countermeasures for the missiles. So the game is to control the missile spread smartly to defeat the pirates' anti-missile systems before the pirates get close enough to fire their paralysis beam. Pirate tactics don't really work against proper military ships that have sophisticated automated targeting and a heck of a lot of missiles, but traders can't legally own military targeting equipment (and missiles are expensive), meaning they are dependent on manual fire control. This makes a good fire controlman - basically someone who's really good with math and orbital mechanics - very valuable for the ship.

And these are the exact tactics that Raiders in B5 employ.

LANCER MENTIONED RAHHHHHHH I LOVE WELL WRITTEN SCI FI AND MECHS

@@yeetyateyote5570 i think well written is a stretch, its a bit confused ideologically

I mean stationary raids are basically heists except the getaway cars have a lot of guns.

@@sabotabby3372 what part are you confused on, it’s very clear in its ideology?

@@sabotabby3372 the ideology just happens to be radical leftism and a lot of people dislike that

Me too. Love the nod to Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Man that was a favorite when I was a kid. Can’t believe it only went one season.

And being THE most advanced grappler ship meant the crew of the Outlaw Star was always short on money and/or in debt because of the horrendous repair and ammunition bills.

You forgot to mention that most ship-to-ship combat tend to devolve into kungfu-fighting using grappler arms.

I like the cut of your jib.

@@gregoryvn3 Thanks dawg

It's also much easier to make a phone call demanding a wire transfer than to navigate a hundred thousand ton cargo ship into port when your only training is on speedboats and several military vessels are hunting you down, and that's before the hassle of unloading it.

Are you talking about the Arquitens/class 546 class cruiser that the Mandalorians took from Moff Gideon at the end of season 2?

@@jkirschy no, the one used by the Pirates in S3

I believe thats a geonosian frigate from episode 2.

@@egoalter1276it looks simmilar, but I dont think it is

@@kaltenstein7718 Really depends only on what they say it is, we only see a brief side profile of the ship in the movie, and the model for tzhe backgroud prop in republic commando is identical to the one in the mandalorian.

You and me both. I'm editing the draft of a sci-fi anthology that I plan to publish at some point, this channel and The Sojourn served as the main inspiration for the worldbuilding aspects that each story is set in.

Glad to help! - hoojiwana from Spacedock

thats why the new republic fell again.

The closest we see of this is Din Djarin offering his and Grogu's services to Captain Carson Teva, who accepts under an off the books agreement.

I've had that impression too... "solo mercenary" or "hired gun" seem like more accurate terms. Maybe the actual bounty hunting is more respectable, so they use the term?

I remember that was what they did in the Independece War games, target the transport proper and the pods would jettison when they either surrendered or died.

Star Citizen has a series of ships designed as an equivalent to modern container ships. The bow and stern of these ships extend on a telescoping spine to deploy long cargo arms that are then loaded with shipping containers (kind of like ornaments on a Christmas tree). Pirates will eventually be able to shoot off containers like taking candy from a pinata. When not carrying cargo, these ships can retract back into a much smaller form (they can't land while carrying cargo).

And you don't want to kill too many of the merchies if you mean to take the ship for ransom/selling through a fence or complicit government. That way you don't need too many of your own for a prize crew.

@@patrickdusablon2789That assumes the merchie isn't designed to run with minimal crew (and it probably is). After all merchant ships, unlike warships, wouldn't want to have to pay a crew that is any bigger than it absolutely has to be since it would cut into the profit margin. A prize crew is probably going to be an engineer or two, a pilot/astrogator (or two), and some muscle to keep any surviving crew in line.

@@jkirschy I definitely agree with the notion that merchies would operate the smallest crews they can get away with. But where I was going with this is that of there's this "culture" that if one plays nice once the pirates have boarded, one's crew won't be mistreated until they're ransomed off, the prize crews can afford to stay smaller than if they would have to be dealing if there was more of a culture of resistance.

@@patrickdusablon2789I think there are a couple things you're assuming that are not a given. The first is the professionalism of the pirates. The second that there will be a culture of resistance if you simply kill most or all the merchant ship's crew when you take the merchie. The final assumption is that pirates will be interested in ransom. The first assumption is that pirates will act with the sort of professionalism that you would see from say regular military, say marines in this case. I rather doubt this. We'll assume that the pirates are as technically competent as merchant spacers since they have to operate at least one ship, however they're not military. They almost certainly won't have that kind of discipline. If they did, they'd be in a regular military, getting regular pay, food, healthcare, and other benefits for themselves and their families. They'd also probably be less likely to be blown-up, shot, arrested, or simply spaced when they run across a warship/police patrol ship/etc... unless their nation and the warship/police ship/etc...'s nation are actively at war. Or they'd be merchant spacers earning an honest wage. Maybe not as good as a pirate could get depending on how successful the cruise goes, but certainly with less risk of being blown-up, shot, spaced, or imprisoned. Historically pirates have fallen into at least one of two categories: poor sailors who need to earn money but can't do so legally, and so turn to piracy, or hardened criminals who don't fit into regular society. Often it was both. So its probably more accurate to think of pirates as either mafiaso or gang-bangers in space than disciplined professionals who aren't going to commit atrocities (AKA rape, torture, slaving, murder...) on potential witnesses who can identify them to a civilian/military court. The second is that if you simply kill any/all crew members you aren't planning on keeping locked in a cell while they are "being used as entertainment" as soon as you take the ship, you're not likely to have to deal with a culture of resistance. You might have pirates who keep a couple of "pretties" alive for a while to use as entertainment either on the prize or on their ship, but if the pirates aren't interested in ransom or if ransom is a difficult/time consuming thing to arrange pirates are probably more likely to simply space/shoot the merchant's crew and simply put a minimal prize crew on long enough to transit the ship to a system where they can "dispose" of the cargo and/or ship rather than trust that prisoners will cooperate with you and not find some way to sabotage/retake the ship. You might argue that this sort of brutality might motivate a merchant ship's crew to fight, but the odds are a merchant ship won't have much to resist with. After all, mass and cubage spent on weapons is mass and cubage that can't be used for things that turn a profit. Finally you (and spacedock) are assuming that pirates will be interested in ransom. I can understand why, given that modern pirates off Africa ransom prisoners. However that isn't something that can be taken for granted with space pirates. If ransom is something that will take a long time to arrange, is difficult/time consuming to collect, leave an evidence trail linking the pirates to a specific attack, and probably draw the (unwanted) attention of a government which can afford to send a few warships (or a few squadrons of warships) to do anti-piracy operations dedicated to hunting the pirates in question, then pirates may decide its more trouble than it is worth, kill the crew and leave the bodies floating in deep space. I'm not saying that would be the case, just that its a possibility. There are a lot of variables and a lot depends on the environment you're operating in. I'm basing a fair bit of this off of stuff I've read on piracy in the Caribbean during the period from 1550-1800AD and David Weber's Honor Harrington series. Change those factors and you may get a different result.

Considering what a merchant vessel could save with that gate he could have charged a huge price for each ship getting through and the merchants would still make a large profit.

@@Dreamfox-df6bg EXACTLY!

Depends on how your artificial gravity works. I assume Enterprise and similar CAN'T manage a radial gravity field, or maybe it has unpleasant consequences, like making the crew seasick as they deal with the odd perspectives.

@@stevenscott2136 Well, even non radial. From an engineering standpoint. The reason I love Arcadia with Captain Harlock is the gun turrets. Think stars etc. Ships can roll, but functionally a 2D plane vs spherical coverage. Older thumbnail can see that. In the CG movie however is pretty cool. They have turrets, but they rotate fully around the ship for complete coverage. Bridge etc running on a central spine. Is a design we see all the time in non combat realistic sci vessels that doesnt seem to carry over into sci fantasy.

"We're the literal children of one of the three goddesses who created the universe, so we'll go and steal stuff from ships!" I mean, really?

@@andrewsuryali8540 See, Washu had limited herself in order to better understand the world from a mortal's persective. She ended up being imorisoned within her own ship by Kagato, her partner. Because Ryoko was created by Washu artificially, Kagato was able to control her by using Washu's technology.

Back before Britain achieved naval supremacy over Spain, the English mostly used piracy/privateers to fight their colonial wars. In fact, it was the end of these wars that began the "Golden age of Piracy". The Caribbean and American colonies suddenly had an abundance of suddenly unemployed privateers who decided to go into business for themselves!

I never thought of that scene as an act of piracy, but it really is.

the Macross Universe is basically ancapistan in places, you have pirate-poaches with access to military fighters, ships, and literal nuclear weapons. (also something something SMS "We'll become pirates!"- Pirate King Ozma)

@@datkat2001 What is an ancapistan?

Such a good series, weird as hell but in all the best ways.

Spacedock did an entire video on space battleship Yamato & depending on which continuity you follow it does exist in Harlock's universe. Although mostly as an Easter egg.

@@ManuelRivera-df1ky I wasn't referring to Yamato. 😉

Ok, didn't think you were, but I can't think of what ship you're hinting at . Thanks for the reply.

Are you talking about the trains that are part of the galaxy railway? (E.x. the galaxy express 999)

@@erikschaal4124 and he’s got it, well done. 10/10