New player here and I too have some niggles on the subject of pirates and piracy in general. I may have missed details or simply failed to properly expose my thoughts, and so, dear reader, I invite you to raise any weakness from the following text so I can happily address them.
The problem.The existence of pirates in the context of the sector is hard to be believable considering the high overhead in supplies and fuel. I suspect that the IA isn't bottlenecked by those two parameters though, and I understand the reason. However from a lore point of view, pirates shouldn't be able to function as they are now.
I've seen this issue being raised on these forums every now and then, but without any realistic proposition to have the whole piracy make sense. This message as for object to do just that: I aim to suggest a different approach.
What needs to said before anything is this: if pirates can successfully create an outpost days away from any civilized world, why would they bother traveling to harass so called civilized worlds? It is simply not practical, and such groups should really not be referred to as pirates. More on that later.
How pirates comes into and out of existence.Pirates are not a faction, but rather an assembly of misfits and/or outlaws.They inherently exists wherever and whenever civilization occurs. As such, any system with a colony will inevitably generate a local populace of outlaws. That being said, piracy only matters in the void and not in the ports and local pirate gangs could be allowed to dock so long their status aren't well known.After all, where would they sell their ill gotten gains?
However it stops once the gang becomes famous, do too much piracy and see yourself blacklisted from local ports. The denial would possibly generate three outcomes:
- The local gang stocks up on fuel and supplies then move to another system, to either continue their piracy or simply settle down with their ill gotten gains.
- The local gang, if successful enough, creates an outpost somewhere in the system. This outcome would realistically happens only if either the system's stability is low or if there is no law enforcement around to make an outlaw's life harder.
- The gang dissolve as the group can no longer hide from authorities.
What current pirates ought to be.I drive this section from the
Belter, from the show and novels
The Expanse. If you haven't already seen the show, I would vigorously invite you to do so. It is expertly made and relatively realistic on how politics and culture would evolve within an interplanetary solar system.
Following the lore, and if I understand it correctly, the sector got cut off from the rest of the galaxy leaving a core of well developed worlds amidst a group of partially colonized worlds. We can see the outcome by exploring and finding both remnants drones and worlds in ruins. However ruination isn't the only end that could befall previous colonization efforts. Indeed, the sector dynamics could find a real life parallel with the European efforts of exploration and colonization. As such, a well off civilization can support upstart groups, which historically found their own independence either brutally or peacefully. The sector, though, got its independence by being cut off brutally from their support, with the most developed worlds unable to sustain ongoing colonization efforts. Which cascaded into the dramatic outcome of remote worlds being lost.
However some worlds might have survived the brutal event, managing to centralize efforts into an eventual space-faring civilization. With the memory of being abandoned still burning within the populace's mind, they would see the core worlds with nothing but scorn. Still, unable to be outspoken and brazen about their feeling, their stance if they want to remain independent from any interference it to be politically neutral. Being too far away to be lorded over,destruction would be the only outcome if they were to be made into a enemy of a core faction.
Thus being unaffiliated would be the official stance of those previously lost worlds. However, being so far away, scarcity of resources would drive people into expeditions to "acquire" those needed resources from the core worlds,usually in an illegal way. Those groups would be officially denounced by the lost worlds, and unofficially welcomed.
More over, any independent faction within the core worlds would have quickly been absorbed by a major power. There is no reason to leave resources to unaligned forces.
