Pirates forces Antallos/Port Krin circa 3025

[kaliban]

Where can I find references for the pirates forces operating from Antallos circa 3025. Is there a good sourcebook for this?

[DOC_Agren]

I will say Royalty and Rogues has the best info, even if it a bit further along 3055.

[Elmoth]

The original The Periphery is the one that has the official info in it. Sparse, though

[Daryk]

Antallos can accommodate pretty much ALL of the scum of the universe you want to pack into it.

[Colt Ward]

If I remember the stories set on Antallos, to get in the proper mindset you just borrow from another scifi property . . .

'Port Krin, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany.'

Such places are IMO trope collections- Mos Eisley (SW), Port Royal (IRL), the underworld of such franchises like Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in a Shell, and others though the tech has to be toned down.

[SlightlyIrritatedCat]

My view is perhaps colored by the past but I tend to view a lot of the 3025 periphery locations as something like Africa in the 1960s.  Or other places in recent history vacated by a former larger power propping them up.  Central power only really exists in the immediate vicinity of the capitol.  Outside you largely have various local warlords who pay lipservice to the central "authority" but how much they actually listen to it very much depends on whether they need something from it at that moment, and whether that central authority has any of its limited loyal forces nearby.  Meanwhile places like Antallos crop up inevitably past the edges of those powers ability to project lasting force.  And they fill up with everybody that can't even superficially maintain a place in that power structure.  Yes we have some very limited examples of forces known to exist on those planets.  But assume that those are only the largest or most brazen forces.  Antallos is a fat dog coated in mosquito attractant and dumped in a marsh.  For every group of pirates, criminals, mercs, and troublemakers big enough to get mentioned in our sourcebooks assume that there are a dozen smaller but just as bad groups you've never heard about.  Each and every one of them impatiently looking for their slice regardless of what they have to do to get it.  Basically assume pretty much everybody on Antallos is a criminal in some fashion, everybody is just looking for the right back to put their knife into, and it's teeth all the way down.

[Kovax]

Ultimately, the extent of the forces on planets such as Port Krin depends entirely on the needs of the story.

Realistically, there is no way that the planetary economy could support the major groups already spelled out in the novels and sourcebooks, much less the myriad of vaguely referenced "other" groups.  Also realistically, any new group showing up without sufficient firepower to conduct a decent war would be swallowed up for salvage and slaves in a matter of hours or minutes by the existing groups, and the whole mess would rapidly degrade into cannibalism and equipment failure for lack of organization and sufficient infrastructure.  That wouldn't make for a very interesting "OPFOR", though, so Port Krin is forced to utilize FASAnomics principles taken to the extremes.

[kaliban]

Ultimately, the extent of the forces on planets such as Port Krin depends entirely on the needs of the story.

Realistically, there is no way that the planetary economy could support the major groups already spelled out in the novels and sourcebooks, much less the myriad of vaguely referenced "other" groups.  Also realistically, any new group showing up without sufficient firepower to conduct a decent war would be swallowed up for salvage and slaves in a matter of hours or minutes by the existing groups, and the whole mess would rapidly degrade into cannibalism and equipment failure for lack of organization and sufficient infrastructure.  That wouldn't make for a very interesting "OPFOR", though, so Port Krin is forced to utilize FASAnomics principles taken to the extremes.

Probably it only works if the place is taken as a safe heaven for pirates and there is some kind of "non-agression" agreement to avoid that they backstab each other.

It is a planet-size hostel for scum and villainy

[DOC_Agren]

basicly the smaller groups pay protection to the more powerfully groups and kinda acts as a farmteams.  That why when a new major force arrives everyone place is up in the air

[Daryk]

That... makes sense!  8)

[CVB]

I would read up on RL pirate heavens like Port Royal.

[Daryk]

Well... a pirate crew on one ship wouldn't exactly qualify as a "major power", even in Port Royal.  The orders of magnitude involved when bringing that term to the 31st century don't exactly translate...

[CVB]

But there weren't any major powers on Antallos in 3025 (OP). In 3025 most of the factions were city states and groundbound roving bandits, and the Controller of Port Krin was negotiating with the DC for several battlemechs. With these, "Port Krin could become the dominant political state on the planet." (The Periphery, p. 140)
Factions like Vinson's Vigilantes and Vance Rezak's Band of the Dead were decades in the future.

[SlightlyIrritatedCat]

Yep in 3025 you're not dealing with pirate battalions running around.  What you do have is many small groundbound forces anywhere from lance to company in size.  They're scattered across the planet here and there, mostly attempting to keep their exact location hidden except when they move to strike somewhere.  They'd have paid informants here and there in Port Krin and other city-states, and when a dropper comes by those informants would let the bands paying them know.  Soon after the various bands would begin contacting the dropper and propositions and terms would go back and forth as the various parties negotiated on what each side was willing to do and what they wanted.  Eventually the dropper would have a band of "scum of the earth" to take somewhere on a raid in return for payment of some kind.

And people need to stop thinking that a planet is a small place where everybody trips over everybody and there's not enough room.  You could have multiple pirate battalions running around on a single planet and the vast majority of them not knowing for sure where the others were operating.  Because planets are huge and you can hide a great deal on them.  It's stupidly easy to hide the size of forces seen in most battletech units when you have an entire planet to obfuscate exact locations with.

[kaliban]

Yep in 3025 you're not dealing with pirate battalions running around.  What you do have is many small groundbound forces anywhere from lance to company in size.  They're scattered across the planet here and there, mostly attempting to keep their exact location hidden except when they move to strike somewhere.  They'd have paid informants here and there in Port Krin and other city-states, and when a dropper comes by those informants would let the bands paying them know.  Soon after the various bands would begin contacting the dropper and propositions and terms would go back and forth as the various parties negotiated on what each side was willing to do and what they wanted.  Eventually the dropper would have a band of "scum of the earth" to take somewhere on a raid in return for payment of some kind.

And people need to stop thinking that a planet is a small place where everybody trips over everybody and there's not enough room.  You could have multiple pirate battalions running around on a single planet and the vast majority of them not knowing for sure where the others were operating.  Because planets are huge and you can hide a great deal on them.  It's stupidly easy to hide the size of forces seen in most battletech units when you have an entire planet to obfuscate exact locations with.

if you want to hide, you go to an abandoned world and there are plenty nearby. If you go to Antallos, you are looking for something (from spare parts to sex, drugs and rock n'roll). For me makes more sense that these pirates go directly to the bigger cities instead of hiding far from civilization to take the risky of landing in a planet full of criminals in exchange for nothing.

[SlightlyIrritatedCat]

You're making an all or nothing fallacy in your thinking.  These are not reputable mercs on an orderly world, or house troops in garrison.  These are pirates, and most of them won't have their own transportation Dropships are much rarer than mechs and combat vehicles.  They need to be somewhere that Dropships and Jumpships willing to transport a pirate crew pass through regularly enough to stay operational.  Somewhere that has enough people and commerce they can maintain their gear, resupply, and sell off their loot.  But it also has to be somewhere with little to no central authority or rule of law otherwise them being pirates is not going to go well for them.  Anywhere that anarchic which attracts pirates is dangerous as much as it's an opportunity.  Think of Somalia at its worst, then remember these are pirates with battlemechs.  The bigger bands will have openly operating fronts in cities but that's not where the majority of their mechs and vehicles are going to be cause cities aren't great for armored forces.  Most of their hardware is going to be outside the cities just to give them room to operate.  The smaller bands will operate entirely out of the countryside and will do their best to keep their bases hidden though they will obviously send their people into the cities for resources and R&R.  The big reason for this is that they are pirates, and they will absolutely attack each other if they believe they have a chance, being pirates they all recognize the potential dangers posed by other pirate bands.  So they aren't going to want the place they keep their battlemechs to become known, that makes it a target for every other band of desperate pirates looking for an opportunity.