Pirate Fleet Ideas! (Mercenaries, Independent Companies, etc.)

[MajorMcNicol]

(I am also going to post this on the Spartan forum - sorry for any overlap!  But I hope you guys enjoy looking at it and will offer any feedback!)

So for the last few weeks I've had pirates/mercenaries/independent companies for DW on the brain.  I have been working on building two classes for an independent mercenary or pirate fleet, but while these are works in progress I thought I would get opinions and suggestions on the rules for such models.

My thinking is this: large capital vessels would be extremely rare - or simply non-existant - for these non-state forces.  Such fleets would largely be limited to salvaging (or perhaps prizing) other small and medium class ships and refitting, or building off of, them.  With this in mind, I imagined this independent fleet as being based around cruiser-equivalents.

Ship Idea #1: a pirate "pocket cruiser" - 1 large turret, somewhat rugged (but vulnerable to major ordnance), significant compliment of assault personnel.

"Pocket Cruiser"
Squadrons of 2 to 4;  45 points each, Medium class
DR/CR    HP    AP  AA  CC  RR 
  4 / 5       3       5    2     1     0
Mv: 8", 2" minimum
Main Turret (P):  6 / 5 / 2 / -  (270

[Stitch_Reloaded]

My thinking is this: large capital vessels would be extremely rare - or simply non-existant - for these non-state forces.  Such fleets would largely be limited to salvaging (or perhaps prizing) other small and medium class ships and refitting, or building off of, them.  With this in mind, I imagined this independent fleet as being based around cruiser-equivalents.

My take on this would be a type of mother ship with limited flyers and or excels at boarding attempts, but has low offensive capabilities.  This would re-enforce your idea of captures vessels being used.  I'm thinking of something that looks like a floating dry dock ship.

Also something else that comes to mid would be a ship that could "house" a per-determined number of smaller vessels that could be brought into play during the battle.  Perhaps small boats that doubles as bombs and uses "Boat tokens" like the flyers.  Kinda like the Necrons coming from the monolith.  I know this would make them more like the other powers but with the world in the chaos of a world conflict, many nations would ignore them till they became a thorn in the side or could even employ them to harass the opposition. This would open them up in many ways both in large and small conflicts.

Stitch

[MajorMcNicol]

Thanks for the reply!

Interesting - your mothership idea seems to be right in line with the Italian's Carrier, and those torpedo boats, too!

Soon(ish) I will post some pictures of the models I built for the pocket cruisers and the super destroyers. 

[Landlubber]

This is a fascinating idea.  The first thing that comes to mind for me is the British East India Company.  Maybe they could use British models, but with different stat lines?  As they were a commercial company, maybe they would have weapons designed to incapacitate crews instead of damaging the ships, allowing them to more easily capture vessels.  Maybe some type of sonic weapon?

For pirates, maybe you could include some sort of boarding enhancement--I'm thinking steam-powered grappling hooks.  They would allow the boarders to scramble across rat lines to the target ship, thereby negating their target's use of AA fire (as they would be coming over on a relatively straight horizontal line, as opposed to arcing through the air).

Definitely looking forward to whatever you cobble together for these groups!

[Ruckdog]

I think those are all neat ideas! I'm interested to see what the rules for the Aussies turn out to be too.

[Ruckdog]

Just posted a report on our test game for these rules on the blog!

http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2013/06/02/pirate-attack/

[MajorMcNicol]

It was fun playtesting with Ruckdog!  Some changes need to happen, though - the mercenary vessels were too expensive for their abilities.  Here are some updated stats:

"Pocket Cruiser"
Squadrons of 2 to 5;  45 points each, Medium class
DR/CR    HP    AP  AA  CC  RR 
  4 / 5       3       5    3     2     0
Mv: 8", 2" minimum
Main Turret (P):  9 / 6 / 2 / -  (270