Piracy Thread - Vector Thrust

A game mode specifically for light aircraft and helicopters!

Sailor wrote: Life on the Mushroom Kingdom's coast is pretty hard, to say the least. You have to worry about taking your iodine, the scarcity of fish, and those pesky pirates. So of course, you have to move your container ships in formation. It makes collisions more likely, but it's more secure this way. It's a lot safer having those PMC outfits hanging around, even if some of them are just cowboys out for a thrill. It's better to have them around as a nuisance than not have them when the savages from the Kingdom come out to make trouble.

So this is a randomized, scenario based game mode (though I guess it would be interesting to see what could be done with an open ended rogue-like experience). You are a pirate out to make yourself a cool profit. You will be flying helicopters and very light aircraft (trainers, COIN, very light VTOL etc). You're not a national military, after all. The name of the game is capturing ships and bringing them back to your base of operation in the Mushroom Kingdom. Since the Kingdom is a non-intervention zone, no one can officially touch you after you make landfall.

Your goal is to defend your boarding parties on the sea while they capture the ship in question. Sometimes it will be a lone, unguarded ship; other times, it might be a fleet of a half dozen with escort boats; and when you're really unlucky, you'll run into a warship disguised as a freighter, at which point you'll want to run as fast as you can.

There will be certain commands that you can give your boarding parties. Namely, which ship to board, whether they should kill or take hostages, whether they should scuttle the ship, or if they should just abandon the ship or flee.

Now, that's all that's really required for the game as a fun little mode to pad out the Quick Action button that no one really bothers to press.

Pirate Mode (as a proper gameplay mode)

Now, this is more akin to another game altogether, so consider this as simply a flight of fancy.

You are an ambitious pirate. You live in poverty and see these massive container ships floating on the horizon, symbols of the outside world's power and luxury. Naturally, you begin with capturing boats using small boarding parties and taking the ships. You sell the ships for scrap, and you ransom the hostages. Unfortunately, the ships become increasingly harder to take. At first it was hoses and loudspeakers, now it's armed guards and military patrols. To deal with the escalating danger, you buy aircraft, and so the merchant vs. pirate arms race begins.

The mission select screen is a map of the coast line with various lines representing the routes of targets, with dots showing where on the route the target currently is. On this screen you can choose to either wait or to attack a target. The passage of time is pretty important in this game mode, since there are tangible reactions to your actions. When it comes to waiting, you can wait for an hour, half a day, a full day, and a week. Where particular ships are will also affect your decision to attack, since there are other pirates and there's the military to be aware of, along with the Kingdom boundaries. From this screen you can also access your account books where you purchase and sell units, maintain your forces and do your book keeping. High tech weapons are expensive, so you are not going to go out with sidewinders on your rails all the time, nor are you going to be using many torpedoes. You're in this to make a profit, after all. Your resources drain over time based on your forces, so waiting can not go on forever.

I think I might have been unclear about how military reaction to piracy works. Once you capture a ship, the military is alerted, at which point they will react and scramble to assist. If they reach you before you pacify your target ship, then you will have to fight them then and there. If not, the mission will end. The wrinkle is, that the game will then calculate if your captured ship will reach land before the military patrol catches up. If you reach land, the mission is complete. If not, the action will restart, and you will have to fight them at the location the game figures you will be at when they catch up.

At the start of the game, the ships will be relatively easy pickings. You are one of the first truly threatening pirates to emerge. Most of the time, these ships will have only a few PMC personnel onboard. Mercenaries, if infantry is not implemented, will simply be a factor as to how successfully you can capture a ship with the people inside of it. Your fast boats or helicopters will offload their men and the men will trade blows with the mercenaries in a manner similar to the boardgame Risk, except with stats for those engaged in fighting. According to the stats of the respective combatants, the pirates and the mercenaries will fight until one side is gone or surrenders (in the case of pirates they flee). So each mercenary, ship crew member and pirate has two stats: Courage (how likely to fight and to continue to fight) and Competence (how deadly they are and how likely to intimidate the other side). Each sides' stats will be shared en bloc by the members of each of the three groups and the proverbial dice rolls begin.

You won't really have to worry about military patrols because the security has become pretty lax, but as you become more successful and become a greater and greater problem for shipping in the region, the military presence will intensify, up to and including aircraft carriers and ship escorts.

As the game progresses, the tactics used by the merchants will change. Maybe you'll find ships traveling in groups so that they might help each other in case of boarding, by sending their men over to assist, or you will find lone ships fitted with bolt on turrets or camouflaged weapons. As you are found to be more dangerous, the ships will become more heavily armed and guarded, though this will vary depending on the companies you choose to rob. Each ship will have a displayed value under their names, which can also be seen in your mission select map, this is the estimated value of the ship and its cargo. This allows you to be particular about what risks you choose to take, and what conditions are the best to make them in. At the same time, these numbers can't be proven until the ship is brought back to port. Sometimes the ships will be worth almost nothing, and other times they will have valuable cargo, making them worth many times more than the estimate.

At the highest end of private security, you will begin to see formations of container ships with bolt on weapons (including short range SAMs) and a small fleet of deployable boats for defending against pirate attacks and a couple helicopters or VTOL aircraft to engage you directly. You can counteract this by buying more boats, reducing exposure time with helicopter landings, or investing in building your own small air force to neutralize the PMCs. During periods of particularly high activity, your actions will attract the attention of the military, and each flotilla will be accompanied by an escort of some kind. At that point, it is better to wait until security dies down than to directly engage, as the losses you will incur will be much greater than the profits you could gain. The high end military threats are almost always going to outgun you, and they have no qualms about tossing a couple million dollar torpedoes at your pirate brethren.

This is where the waiting game is important, since the more vicious you are and the more frequently you attack, the longer the patrols last, and all the while, you will need to maintain your fleet and pay your workers. If you expand too quickly, especially if operating with low overhead, you can easily starve your force to pieces. And when I say pieces, I do mean pieces. You may be the first truly dangerous pirate, but there are others following your example. Their movements will also be shown on your map. This allows for you to intercept their catches, or to destroy rival units, but the same can happen to you. Alliances can be forged and broken. You can even choose to attack their home bases, and vice versa.

Then finally comes the kicker, becoming a privateer. Under certain circumstances, your country might hire you as a privateer, capturing ships and turning them over to the country. As a privateer, you leave no ships behind, scuttling any that you can't bring back and sinking those you can't take. This is because the government is guaranteeing your wage and bankrolling your arms. You have access to certain supports and a fair amount of armament you won't normally have easy access to, like guided weapons or proper attack aircraft. With this rise in capability comes an expectation to engage more heavily defended targets. At a certain point you are less the leader and a mere participant in a battle. Privateering comes with both benefits and disadvantages.

I'm sure that I've forgotten something, but that's it for puking out all the odd pirate stuff.

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Some additional details I forgot about economy. You can choose which of your acquired units you wish to bring on a specific mission. Since each sortie consumes money according to what units you used, how many losses you had, and the fuel consumed. It makes no sense to pull out your entire fleet to catch a lone vessel, or risk more forces than necessary during periods of heightened security.

Edited by: IbizenThoth

The best arr-yarr piracy gameplay example I've seen so far in a video game (and not in a typical pirate simulators like Sid Meier's Pirates! or AssCreed IV to a certain extent) is Independence War 2. Might want to take a look there for some ideas (even if it's obviously a space sim; i.e you don't need boarding party to 'persuade' someone to drop their cargo since that's for what a cargo ship with tractor beam and a ship with gun are for)

Edited by: Nergal01

I have to say, just watching a couple lets play videos for it, it's pretty impressive for a 2001 title. Haven't really seen any real piracy, gameplay yet, but I have to say, it's interesting to see an honest to god tutorial being delivered so well.