Re: Companies in Spelljammer

> Wouldn't it be more profitable for the pirates to attack the supply
> ships
> with the finished goods rather than set up camp on the place where
> the goods
> themselves originated?  What's the difference between pirates that
> have a
> base on a productive asteroid farming or mining and a colony that is
> on a
> productive asteroid farming or mining.  There's only so many mangos a
> person
> can eat, and eventually even a pirate will start trading his goods.

The point is it's a good place to make part of your territory.  Maybe
you live in the region of abandoned asteroids.  They probably wouldn't
be your prime targets but great targets of opportunity.  Wait until the
ship is almost full of harvested breadfruit (or whatever) then strike
while 90% of the crew are off cutting breadfruit, hauling them, or
tired from just having got off shift.  I just think they'd be places a
pirate would watch, not the sole way pirates make their living.

> As for slavers, the question needs to be asked again, which is more
> valuable, the slaves or the stuff they are producing by working the
> asteroid.  The neogi might very well send down some umber hulks and
> claim
> the products of the colony as their own (and maybe introduce some new
> labor
> unfriendly policies) rather than just take the individuals as ship
> slaves.

Why not take both?  You really don't think slavers didn't also take the
valuables of the enslaved, do you?  With the PoTs, Company of the
Chalice, other slavers, elves, and so on, it's not profitable for
slavers to run colonies outside of some unknown or otherwise secured
area.  And since they are slavers, they're probably selling the slaves
to the people who run those slave production areas.  Slaving must be
very profitable for people to do it in SJ, otherwise they wouldn't.

> It's also not impossible that if there was an area with valuable
> colonies,
> the local space-faring power (the EIN, human worlds, etc) would be
> around
> patrolling them.

The point was not to debunk his ideas, just note he hadn't accounted
for such things as pirates and slavers.  If those powers are around the
asteroid will probably already be colonized (at least IMC, habitable
asteroids are very rare).  So he's setting up in unpatrolled space
(where slavers and pirates hide) and he hasn't provided any means of
defense for the colony.  Hiring even a dozen marines and outfitting the
locals for militia duty could dig deeply into profits.

> Pirates and slavers are definitely a problem, but they also follow a
> certain
> supply and demand.  If there aren't any colonies, and hence not a lot
> of
> production, there aren't going to be many trade routes, and thus less
> for
> pirates to plunder.

As I said above, I wasn't trying to debunk his ideas, just show they
left some things out.  I think they need more fleshing out.  They are
definitely a new twist on SJ trade and I like that.  But I think other
factors should be accounted for also.

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