Raiding pirates-- what sort of skywatch are they likely to have?

[Korzon77]

Let's assume fairly established groups, not "lone guy with his mech".  Do they have a skywatch of any sort?  How could they go about detecting that group of dropships burning in and bringing an RCT full of dinner guests?

[snakespinner]

I assume you mean what skywatch capability pirates have.
Depends on the pirates.
There are groups with significant assets, Black Warriors, Oberon pirates, Tortuga Dominions.
Then there are the normal pirates, a lance to a company with mavbe an aerospace fighter or two.
But that would be extremely rare as fighters are high maintenance and easy to lose.

[Trace Coburn]

Let's assume fairly established groups, not "lone guy with his mech".  Do they have a skywatch of any sort?  How could they go about detecting that group of dropships burning in and bringing an RCT full of dinner guests?

  IIRC, cray has always maintained that a decent backyard telescope and a star-chart to compare the 'current' picture to the 'proper' background will do the job pretty well on a budget.  If you're looking for something a little more up-scale, a full-sized astronomer's observatory is also 'good enough', but doing that in a ground-station requires the sort of infrastructure investment capital most pirates would rather plough into (stealing) more 'Mech parts.

  A couple of visual-recon satellites (even jerry-rigs cobbled together in a workshop, and someone in the band would have to be a pretty decent 'tronicist to keep all that killware working) would be a decent substitute; they're not going to have Hubble-grade resolution, but they only have to be able to see the commonly-used jump-points and have enough communication-bandwidth to report any anomalies to a ground-station (which could probably be part of a planetary traffic-control station).  IIRC, TRO:VA has a couple of satellite designs that would probably be overkill for the job but give you a good yardstick for the sort of costs and capabilities it would entail.  Stick one or two of those at each of the main jump-points and set up a network of several more around the home-planet (or moon, or asteroid) watching the whole sky, and you're away laughing.

  And of course, if this pirate-group actually expects to get anywhere to be pirates, they'll have their own JumpShips at or near the main jump-point(s), ready to report any new arrivals at the same jump-point(s).  Assuming the duty watch is awake enough to radio a spotting report to the planetary base before they get swarmed by the guests' fighters, that's about all the 'skywatch' they'd need.  ;)

[ANS Kamas P81]

Kick a WSP out of the orbiting DropShip, let it do its thing.  Be sure to collect the poor schmuck before the orbit decays and he makes the biggest DFA never recorded.

[cray]

Per Strategic Operations, the sensors of a standard DropShip or fighter would be plenty to give several hours' warning (drive plume detection) and perhaps days if the jump signature was in range. Something equivalent to a standard fighter sensor suite in orbit would be reasonable for major pirate groups; otherwise, they'll be almost blind until the Bad Guys land.

Korzon, do you have Strategic Operations?