Snoop ships... vs. the MA.

Haven't seen a recent thread on the subject and my eyeballs are about bleeding looking for one.... Thought this would be fun.

Seeing as our favorite transport for Mssr(s). Zilwicki and Cachat is a 'tramp freighter" and the BSC's using fake slavers, and we want to find the MA's hidey-holes, I think it's a fair assumption that identifiable warships are out of the question...

So your job as the GA's head of the ship procurement for the Department of SSBH [Spooks, Sneaks, and Black Hats... ], short term is... whaddaya got, where'dtheycomefrom, and howyagonna use 'em?

I can't see how using tramp freighters as snooping spy ships would help the GA find the MAlign hideaway. Any freighter right now, tramp or otherwise in the SL is busy carrying freight. Those SL merchant ships are likely making money hand over fist because they are the only ones able to haul cargo and passengers. So right now, a tramp freighter poking around hauling partial cargoes is going to look damned odd given the need for legitimate cargoes the Manty's abandoned.

Zakharra wrote:I can't see how using tramp freighters as snooping spy ships would help the GA find the MAlign hideaway. Any freighter right now, tramp or otherwise in the SL is busy carrying freight. Those SL merchant ships are likely making money hand over fist because they are the only ones able to haul cargo and passengers. So right now, a tramp freighter poking around hauling partial cargoes is going to look damned odd given the need for legitimate cargoes the Manty's abandoned.

Agreed, plus they're too slow and would need significant refurbs (?) to be useful as intelligence gathering assets. Plus we need to get whatever "snoop ships" into SL space to begin with, and at Lacoon 1 the RMMC hulls have been withdrawn. Also the Trojans like Wayfarer and any follow ons don't exist any more (other forum threads) so they're not much help either....

SharkHunter wrote:

Zakharra wrote:I can't see how using tramp freighters as snooping spy ships would help the GA find the MAlign hideaway. Any freighter right now, tramp or otherwise in the SL is busy carrying freight. Those SL merchant ships are likely making money hand over fist because they are the only ones able to haul cargo and passengers. So right now, a tramp freighter poking around hauling partial cargoes is going to look damned odd given the need for legitimate cargoes the Manty's abandoned.

Agreed, plus they're too slow and would need significant refurbs (?) to be useful as intelligence gathering assets. Plus we need to get whatever "snoop ships" into SL space to begin with, and at Lacoon 1 the RMMC hulls have been withdrawn. Also the Trojans like Wayfarer and any follow ons don't exist any more (other forum threads) so they're not much help either....

I thought our favorite transportation for the galaxy's premier spy duo was John Brown class frigate RTN Pottowatimie Creek!

Don

A former Silesian Confederation auxiliary might have military grade particle shielding and hypergenerator and a good bit of cargo space. Plenty of them got "lost", so one of them roaming far, far from Silesia (and arrest warrants...) would not look that odd. (Or at any rate, it wouldn't look suspicious as a GA spy ship - it's got a shady story already, one that won't leave someone looking for another one.)

Otherwise, you can tailor the ship to the location to check out. Yana's yacht was cover for a trip to Mesa. If you're checking out a place with a plausibly tourist draw, something like that will work.

An apparent slaver has every reason to be skulking around outside well-policed places - you can use it for shadier spots, though you wouldn't want to use it in better ones. (And you'd want to take pains to make sure you're not caught by well-meaning but insufficiently briefed RMN or RHN warships - much less Torch or BSC ones.)

JeffEngel wrote:A former Silesian Confederation auxiliary might have military grade particle shielding and hyper generator and a good bit of cargo space. Plenty of them got "lost", so one of them roaming far, far from Silesia (and arrest warrants...) would not look that odd. (Or at any rate, it wouldn't look suspicious as a GA spy ship - it's got a shady story already, one that won't leave someone looking for another one.)...

I like that idea. It also benefits from the fact that with so many "pocket size former Silesian navies", it would be easy to slip other ships into a list, for example "corrupt governor so and so has ship names on his books" but for which there's no corresponding ship ever built, pirated ships captured and said to be disposed of [and documented poorly]. Some of the sneaks and high tech are aboard, and then you boogie the ships out of Silesia because "that d--- RMN Admiral Sarnow's pressure is making corruption progressively less profitable".

Once they reach SL space, Captain Blackhat So and So reaches out to find more BadGuy contacts, because hey "we're Silesian free ships, we can still use the wormhole network legally, we'll be glad to sell our freight carrying ability to the highest bidder, oh and whatdayawanna know about the goings on in the Haven Sector?..."

Another thought, how about the Ad-Astra class Q ships from Haven that they used to take Trevor's star? Maybe take one of those and do our forum based nifty/nasty conversions a la Wayfarer or Sirius except leaving enough cargo space that they would leave some actual cargo space for delivery into a target system and deliver it (the rest is for the next system, so system X doesn't have the right to inspect it, of course...)

SharkHunter wrote:Another thought, how about the Ad-Astra class Q ships from Haven that they used to take Trevor's star? Maybe take one of those and do our forum based nifty/nasty conversions a la Wayfarer or Sirius except leaving enough cargo space that they would leave some actual cargo space for delivery into a target system and deliver it (the rest is for the next system, so system X doesn't have the right to inspect it, of course...)

Could work. Haven's civil wars and StateSec regime aren't too far past. You'd have to be leery of trying to impersonate People's Navy in Exile shipping, since Manpower had fingers in them, but there were still rebel bits of the People's Navy, and one of them making off with some old Q-ship is plausible. ("Yeah, one time, even Theisman fell for the freighter act! Buy me more beer and I'll tell you about it.")

Of course, in that case, that it's really a Q-ship is the cover story beneath the top cover story. That it's really got Black Victor as that creepy purser, that you don't find out til it's too late.

JeffEngel wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Another thought, how about the Ad-Astra class Q ships from Haven that they used to take Trevor's star? Maybe take one of those and do our forum based nifty/nasty conversions a la Wayfarer or Sirius except leaving enough cargo space that they would leave some actual cargo space for delivery into a target system and deliver it (the rest is for the next system, so system X doesn't have the right to inspect it, of course...)

Could work. Haven's civil wars and StateSec regime aren't too far past....Of course, in that case, that it's really a Q-ship is the cover story beneath the top cover story. That it's really got Black Victor as that creepy purser, that you don't find out til it's too late.

Big guffaws on this side of the keyboard, but nah, we need Black Victor in the man storyline. Captain Yana the Amazon and her evil-looking first mate...

The best way to gather intelligence using freighters isn't to repurpose the freighters for intelligence work, it's to give the Manticoran freighter captains and crew ways to report on what they see. A freighter that's actively spying is going to be a bad freighter and thus easy to spot. A freighter which is actively a freighter and passively spying is going to be a much more reliable source of intelligence - and you'll have a lot, lot more of them.

(As I understand, this is already a function the Manticoran freighter fleet serves, intentionally or not.)

Another thing to consider is that with Mesa under possible siege and the MAlign pulling in its horns, the Manpower Inc is effectively dead and any ships they run/use are no longer useful by the MAlign. So tracking those ships isn't going to be particularly useful to try and find the MAlign's hideout. Given that they know the SEM/GA is looking for them, as well as the AE, the MAlign isn't going to take any chances on leaving a trail that could lead back to their hidden world. At the most, the spy ships the OP is talking about would pick up the scattered remnants of Mesa Manpower's shipments.