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Moderators: L`aquera, Stormbringer, Ehlanna, lyllamarie
Lloathe wrote:First off, I imagine Pirates would not have much in the way of actual military-grade hardware or mages. At least not NPC's. Siege weapons might damage or sink a ship, and thats a bad thing when you wanna steal the ship and everything on board (including the crew!).
I imagine most Piracy would be at bow/crossbow range and involve boarding, given the time period.
Lloathe wrote:This allows one to identify a ship's markings and style, possibly even its actual crest before hitting it with weaponry. (What? Its the Scooty Booty? Thats an Imperial Ship! Raise the friendly flags!)
Now, this would still involve a long and involved chase, fear and tension on the part of the hunted merchant vessel, and likely some ill-feelings. Privateers were not always the most popular people. Furthermore, many governments would overlook an occasional 'accidental' raiding on the part of Privateers...if they were useful and wanted. Still, being a Privateer is a dangerous thing, as you are a criminal for your country...in another country's territory. As soon as relations with your one-time enemies warms, you become a liability...and an expendable one. Good luck getting back into your country!
Ishtori wrote:For simplicity sake it would be safe enough to assume there would always be Pirates in imperial waters and while such exists it would be pointless to hunt down a privateer which doesn't directly hurts the empire (only indirectly because of the trade disruption) rather than hunting down pirates which will attack any ship they come across.
Ishtori wrote:Yes they are all good points but there are severe limitations to pirates, especially when we consider the number of weapons on a ship... For example, merchant ships can have 2 ballistas, 3 for pirates and 5 for imperial ships. Now if we look at things how they were, in most cases pirates had a lot of guns on their ships, much more than normal navy ships of any country. Queen Anne's Revenge (Black Beard's flagship) was a merchant class vessel, captured by the french and refited for slave trading and then recaptured by the english latter to become Black Beards ship. Now when he got his hands on that ship he refited and mounted it with so many guns that it had more guns than a man-o-war class vessel. Only the ships of the line which were intruduce in the latter years of piracy had a comparable number of guns or more than Queen Anne's Revenge... Also it's safe to assume that pirate ships had more crew than any normal navy ship cause pirates needed numbers to board ships and there was always casualties if th prey was foolish enough to fight back even though most merchant ships simply surrendered and hoped to get out of it alive.
Ishtori wrote:Normally Pirates didn't fought any countries navy for the simple fact that they were in a fleet and the pirate, even if they had 2 or 3 ships were generally on their own, they would be sunk by the combined fire power of the navy though 1 on 1 they would likelly stand a much better chance since their guns usually outnumbered the enemy and their crew usually not only was far larger (except if they were hunting for a specific pirate) , but also they had better training. While the navy had some combat training, it was just training, pirates were out in the sea puting their lifes on the line in every fight they got so their training comes from actually experience which we could say that in a way, most of them will be like veterans in fighting at the open seas.
Stormbringer wrote:For simplicity I think I would take a view that all pirates are pirates. A pirate who obtains a freelance job from the empire via the Fleet Commander is considered a privateer for the duration of that job, and wouldn't be a target of the navy whilst it was ongoing. The rest of the time, they're pirates and take their chances.
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