Knapp wrote:
I have not been on this list long enough to know why pirates don't work in traveller. What are the reasons?
Massive empires that can afford to buy many powerful warships. These empires also have massive economic power, and can thus crush 'pirate worlds' and the like even without military action.
Long sensor ranges combined with high accelerations mean that a pirate's window of opportunity to subdue and capture a merchant is very small if there's a warship in-system.
Large warships can (and do) mount weapons that can vaporise smaller ships in a single hit, armour notwithstanding, and be agile and armoured enough that only a swarm of small ships (that costs about the same as the big ship) can hope to kill it.
Spaceships cost a great deal relative to personal wealth, so even minor combat damage can wipe out any profit. Thus neither merchants nor pirates can afford to actually shoot it out, and getting into a fight with a patrol vessel will bankrupt a pirate (or privateer) even if they win.
Cargos cost very little compared to the vessels, but stealing vessels is considerably riskier and harder because you must capture it in a jump-capable state (i.e. jump drives intact and with jump fuel onboard), but if the ship is in that state it can almost certainly escape you. However, transferring cargo take a long time (probably too long to be safe).
The above two points mean that having a ship sitting idle (lying in wait for a merchant, for example) loses you money very quickly.
Thus piracy, at best, is limited to systems where the empires have no military or meaningful economic presence, have no local military, and yet have enough trade to make looting their shipping worthwhile.
Now, there are counter-arguments, but I'll not go into them (partly because I can't remember most of them). Also, I'm listing these because the question was asked, not because I want to go into whether they're counterable, etc., etc. No piracy debate, please.
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