Pirates need to be more piratical!

[Donvale]

After a couple of threads about pirates I started kind of paying attention to pirate missions.
They really seem to be very similar to any other factions missions.
It would be really nice if they could only offer mission types flagged as pirate appropriate, too many of them are kind of governmental or political in nature or just generally to much to do with helping people, not the kind of thing pirates engage in very often.
There are plenty of missions that are appropriate so it would just be a case of preventing the ones that are clearly none pirate enough!
You could of course do it the other way round where you flagged inappropriate missions as none pirate.

 

[mjbroekman]

The orbital strike TA missions from pirates are always funny.

Pirates: "We have a warship in orbit to do an orbital strike."
Me: "Um. Okay. What do you need me for?"
Pirates: "Go distract the <faction>"
Me: "Um. WHY? You're PIRATES. WITH A WARSHIP!"

 

[Havamal]

The orbital strike TA missions from pirates are always funny.

Pirates: "We have a warship in orbit to do an orbital strike."
Me: "Um. Okay. What do you need me for?"
Pirates: "Go distract the <faction>"
Me: "Um. WHY? You're PIRATES. WITH A WARSHIP!"

Theory: The pirates, they SAY warship. But if you look at it, that's not what you'd call it.

 

[AngeliDiAvanti]

Theory: The pirates, they SAY warship. But if you look at it, that's not what you'd call it.

A Scout-class jumpship with some huge metal-plates mimicking the boxy look of a warship.

 

[Havamal]

A Scout-class jumpship with some huge metal-plates mimicking the boxy look of a warship.

Dilapidated too.

 

[Donvale]

To be fair though all an effective orbital bombardment really needs is a large enough rock pushed in the right direction...

 

[AngeliDiAvanti]

To be fair though all an effective orbital bombardment really needs is a large enough rock pushed in the right direction...

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rocks_Are_Not_Free!

Rocks are NOT ‘free’, citizen.

Firstly, you must manoeuvre the Emperor’s naval vessel within the asteroid belt, almost assuredly sustaining damage to the Emperor’s ship’s paint from micrometeoroids, while expending the Emperor’s fuel.

Then the Tech Priests must inspect the rock in question to ascertain its worthiness to do the Emperor’s bidding. Should it pass muster, the Emperor’s Servitors must use the Emperor’s auto-scrapers and melta-cutters to prepare the potential ordinance for movement. Finally, the Tech Priests finished, the Emperor’s officers may begin manoeuvring the Emperor’s warship to abut the asteroid at the prepared face (expending yet more of the Emperor’s fuel), and then begin boosting the stone towards the offensive planet.

After a few days of expending a prodigious amount of the Emperor’s fuel to accelerate the asteroid into an orbit more fitting to the Emperor’s desires, the Emperor’s ship may then return to the planet via superluminous warp travel and await the arrival of the stone, still many weeks (or months) away.

After twiddling away the Emperor’s time and eating the Emperor’s food in the wasteful pursuit of making sure that the Emperor’s enemies do not launch a deflection mission, they may finally watch the ordinance impact the planet (assuming that the Emperor’s ship does not need to attempt any last-minute course correction upon the rock, using yet more of the Emperor’s fuel).


Given a typical (class Bravo-CVII) system, we have the following:

Two months, O&M, Titan class warship: 4.2 Million Imperials

Two months, rations, crew of same: 0.2 MI

Two months, Tech Priest pastor: 1.7 MI

Two months, Servitor parish: 0.3 MI

Paint, Titan class warship: 2.5 MI

Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.9 MI

Total: 9.8 MI


Contrasted with the following:

5 warheads, magna-melta: 2.5 MI

One day, O&M, Titan class warship: 0.3 MI

One day, rations, crew of same: 0.0 MI

Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.1 MI

Total: 2.9 MI


Given the same result with under one third of the cost, the Emperor will have saved a massive amount of His most sacred money and almost a full month of time, during which His warship may be bombarding an entirely different planet.

The Emperor, through this – His Office of Imperial Outlays – hereby orders you to attend one (1) week of therapeutic accountancy training/penance. Please report to Areicon IV, Imperial City, Administratum Building CXXI, Room 1456, where you are to sit in the BLUE chair.


For the Emperor,

Bursarius Tenathis,

Purser Level XI,

Imperial Office of Outlays.

 

[Justin Kase]

Dilapidated too.

What does being bald have to do with it?

To be fair though all an effective orbital bombardment really needs is a large enough rock pushed in the right direction...

 

[Havamal]

What does being bald have to do with it?

Dilapidated. Not Depilated.

 

[Justin Kase]

Dilapidated. Not Depilated.

 

[BobaFatt]

The orbital strike TA missions from pirates are always funny.

Pirates: "We have a warship in orbit to do an orbital strike."
Me: "Um. Okay. What do you need me for?"
Pirates: "Go distract the <faction>"
Me: "Um. WHY? You're PIRATES. WITH A WARSHIP!"

This TA bugs me a little bit in general, aren’t orbital bombardments outlawed by the Ares Convention? Isn’t there a tool tip that shows up on the load screen to remind us of this? Yet we have great houses casually comitting war crimes because they’re too cheap to just send a full company to destroy it?

Devils advocide here; it actually makes more sense for this TA to be pirate since they’re less likely to care that they’re comitting war crimes...

I wouldn’t mind seeing the wording of this TA tweaked to something like an aerospace bombing run, or an artillary strike, or something though...

 

[Havamal]

This TA bugs me a little bit in general, aren’t orbital bombardments outlawed by the Ares Convention? Isn’t there a tool tip that shows up on the load screen to remind us of this? Yet we have great houses casually comitting war crimes because they’re too cheap to just send a full company to destroy it?

Devils advocide here; it actually makes more sense for this TA to be pirate since they’re less likely to care that they’re comitting war crimes...

I wouldn’t mind seeing the wording of this TA tweaked to something like an aerospace bombing run, or an artillary strike, or something though...

In the Periphery...


Sarna:

The Ares Conventions were a treaty signed in New Olympia on the planet Ares during the Age of War, aiming to reduce the loss of civilian life by establishing a code of conduct during warfare. The effects of the Ares Conventions were mixed. On the one hand compliance was almost universal and reduced both the human and economic costs of war. Unfortunately, the Conventions also had the effect of legitimizing warfare as a means of resolving even the slightest disputes. The end result was a century and a half of constant but low-level fighting between all of the major powers.

The Conventions were upheld until the Reunification War when the Star League chose to wage total war against the resistant Periphery states,[1] and were formally renounced at the beginning of the First Succession War.[2] Despite being considered no longer binding, the Ares Conventions continue to be seen as the guide for civilized warfare.[3]
...
In the centuries after the Fall of the Star League, the articles of the Ares Conventions were used as shorthand for "civilized warfare", while two different codes of conduct replaced them.

Sheer necessity caused the development of an informal code called "Honors of War" during the Third Succession War. This code, based on the Ares Conventions, was created in an age of ever-decreasing technological knowledge and manufacturing capability, necessitating a code of conduct which would ensure the survival of both knowledge and the increasingly irreplaceable 'Mechs and JumpShips. While created with different aims and lacking the means for oversight and less violent conflict resolution, both were successful in preventing further massive civilian death tolls. [12]

In Periphery regions that are not on the primary public IS maps at this date I wouldnt expect many conventions to always be upheld except No Nukes. Who would ever know. We are in the currently unmarked frontier.

 

[BobaFatt]

In the Periphery...


Sarna:



In Periphery regions that are not on the primary public IS maps at this date I wouldnt expect many conventions to always be upheld except No Nukes. Who would ever know. We are in the currently unmarked frontier.

I guess... but when the client is a great house and the target is too, you would think someone would report that... there’s gotta be BBQ Beckys in the periphery, right?

 

[Havamal]

I guess... but when the client is a great house and the target is too, you would think someone would report that...

Report that their covert forces got stomped during a secret proxy war in the periphery?


The Concordat and the Magistracy would care, but they wouldnt like the meddling either.


Just my opinion.

there’s gotta be BBQ Beckys in the periphery, right?

 

[BobaFatt]

Report that their covert forces got stomped during a secret proxy war in the periphery?

Well... continuing to play devils advocate here... almost half the map isn’t actually periphery, it covers portions of Marik, Liao, and Davion space....

I guess part of the problem is the game doesn’t differentiate between targets... I mean, sure, obliterate a pirate base on an uninhabited world, no one would notice, or care if they did notice. But bombard a Liao base, in their territory on orders from Marik... that’s gonna draw some attention...

But honestly the best argument for keeping it the way it is, is that the animation is just so d*mn pretty...

 

[Havamal]

..

But honestly the best argument for keeping it the way it is, is that the animation is just so d*mn pretty...

Well yeah, there's certainly that.

 

[mjbroekman]

The Ares Conventions forbade orbital bombardment except against vital military targets which were not anywhere near populated areas

The other thing is that the Ares Conventions were renounced during the First Succession War and are not really binding.

 

[The Shadowhawke]

The Ares Conventions forbade orbital bombardment except against vital military targets which were not anywhere near populated areas

The other thing is that the Ares Conventions were renounced during the First Succession War and are not really binding.

Renounced in the early Succession Wars; chiefly the 1st and 2nd war, where the houses took the intensity and destructiveness of the fighting to heinous levels, but sort of came to their senses since for obvious and practical reasons...remember that the total renouncing of the Conventions also made jumpships free targets.

Since then, true violations have slowed as the Inner Sphere largely began to watchdog its conduct. If a House resumed indiscrimininate bombing and nuking of urban centers, its rivals would return the favor, and let the genie back out of the bottle.

On our end, that of the merc, flagrant abuse of the Ares Conventions may or may not violate individual contracts, but you can bet there will be consequences with the MRBC.