penny wrote:Jonathan_S wrote:I can't see interstellar pirates being a thing until after hyper travel became reasonably safe.
If it's going to take generations to reach a colony and more generations to bring back any loot - you'd never be able to capture anything worth committing generations of pirates to capture. You can't even use the victim's colony ship to haul away more loot because those were only built for one-way voyages - they're not going survive the long flight back to civilization.
Even after effective cryo-suspension was developed and became widespread what can pirates possibly loot that's worth spending several centuries in cryo-suspension (and how would you be sure that the loot would be valuable after you'd hauled it back to civilization to dispose of it?)
Piracy, or even raiding, wouldn't become economically viable until after hyper travel was refined to the point where you could be reasonably confident you'd be able to raid and get back with loot of sufficient value to justify the up-front costs. Or until there were hyper capable starships you could pirate and then either use to capture more or sell for money along with their cargo.
Were the first hyper capable ships frigates?
Well the very first hyper capable ships were undoubtable research vessels and then hyper scouts (like the one that surveyed Manticore before its cryo-sleep colony ship
Jason set out.
But we don't have any stories set in the appropriate era to know what people called the first hyper capable warships - nor what their combat capabilities were. However, the earliest ones I think we've had mentioned were called frigates -- the four frigates that Manticoran Colony Trust of Zurich purchased in 1389 PD; and were there to meet the colony ship
Jayson when it finally arrived in the Manticore system in 1416.
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Background info
Hyper travel became possible (if still slow and risky) in the 700s PD. But you're still talking years of travel as the early ships could only go at about 2.76 c. They had to use reaction drives and fuel scoop fields (the later didn't work in hyper), so they had very limited ability to accelerate once in hyper. The bulk of their velocity was the residual after (slowly) working up in normal space to 0.3c, the fastest possible speed you can enter hyper, then jumping up to the Beta bands (losing 92% of that velocity entering the Alpha bands and another 85% of the remainder entering the Beta bands -- leaving just 1.2%, or 0.0036c (for an effective 2.76c); plus whatever little they'd add by burning stored fuel.
Hyper travel didn't become safe, and faster, until the late 1200s or early 1300s PD. At that point ships were still limited to the Beta bands, but now thanks to Warshawski detectors, sails, and impellers, they could move much faster in them, allowing effective speeds in the hundreds of times the speed of light.
But we've had no stories set in that time period, so no insight into the first hyper-capable warships. There obviously were ships called frigates pretty early in the safe period of hyper travel; but whether there were warships in the earlier period we don't actually know.
Were any of the ships sent to help Earth after the Final War armed and considered warships?
Maybe.
Did any system build hyper generators into some of their armed 'coast guard' type ships back before warshaski detectors made it safe?
Actually they probably did - especially after impellers were developed. It'd let them move around the outer system far quicker - and they'd know whether the local hyperspace around their system was safe to use.
But we just don't actually know. Nor do we know what weapons, defenses, and sensors those first 4 Manticoran frigates carried - nor how those compared to possible other warship types of the era.