Arris Station was once a precious molecule extraction satellite around a gas giant. After changing hands a dozen times as companies rose and fell, it eventually came under the control of a private citizen. It is now a refueling station for passing starships as well as a place where one can buy and sell gently used cargo. Officially it was considered a trader zone but unofficially it is one of the prime locations that a pirate can offload some cargo.
Quarter Mistress Danica used to be an inventory supply clerk for a holonovel company but that was before she was press ganged into military service for the crime of public flashing in traffic. One mutiny later, she was now the Quarter Mistress for the pirate ship, The Reroll. Duncan, no, Captain Grognard had promoted her and tasked her with the job of selling the loot they had recently acquired. She would rather spend her days talking self holographic photos but at least as a pirate, no one complained about her short skirts any more, or if she was even wearing one to begin with.
Still, the Captain had offered her a commission on anything she sold so was eager to make some money so she could buy more transparent clothes.
“380 MegaCreds is outrageous!” she yelled.
The Tricon in front of her shrugged. The center head scowled while the head on the left tried to look apologetic. The head on the right was snoring.
“That’s the best I can do,” the center head said.
“A lot of your goods still have trade tags on them,” the left head said. “It will cost us money to scrub them.”
Danica shook the cargo manifest in her hand. “The penile enhancement drugs alone are worth 300 MegaCreds.”
“Fine,” the center head said. “I’ll offer you 280 MegaCreds.”
“That’s less than what you just offered!” Danica snapped.
“That’s right,” the center head said. “Want to keep haggling?”
“Look,” the left head said. “300 MegaCreds for the drugs is retail. If you own your own trader station, hire your own staff, pay the generator bills and bribe the local Star Navy, then yeah, you can charge 300. But since we are the ones selling it, we have to make a profit. We can offer you 380 MegaCreds for all of your cargo and I think you will find that is a fair deal.”
Danica thought about it. The center head was still snarling at her but the left head made sense. “Fine, that works. Now what can you give me for the freighters? We don’t need them.”
“We can give them a wash,” the center head said.
“Freighters aren’t worth much,” the left head said. “They don’t have jump drives and quite frankly, they don’t sell. Pirates don’t want them and real merchants would rather have something new rather than something that pirates had already proven they can capture.”
“Well we sure don’t want then,” Danica said. “Make me an offer.”
“8 MegaCreds for all three,” the center head said. “Final offer. We can sell them for scrap.”
Danica sighed. She looked at the inventory list of the things that Arris station had to sell. “Throw in the invisible dress and you have a deal.”
“Done,” both heads said. The third head kept snoring.
***
Welcome to the bookkeeping phase of my Space Pirates game. Fortunately Star Navy is light on the bookkeeping which is fine with me. I tend to over complicate things and maybe the sparseness of these rules will reign me in.
The total cargo haul came up to 380 Cargo value. I had the matter of the three merchant ships I had captured to consider. I didn’t want them in my fleet which suggested to me that their retail value wasn’t much either. After years of watching people beg to sell their outdated crap on Pawn Stars, I decided to take a hard line and create a simple rule.
Pirates can sell Captured Merchant Ships for a Cargo Value of the ship’s Class.
So the Class 5 Grand Freighter is worth 5 CV. The Class 3 Freighter is only worth CV 3.
Now it is time to determine the Pirates Campaign Morale. They used the Patrol Mission which tasks them with resolving every PEF in the sector. I am going to interpret that as they need to investigate and identify every PEF, not necessarily defeat them. In other words, an unsuccessful pirate mission is when they go home and there are PEF’s out there that they don’t know about. The crew will grumble because surely that last blip was the Grand Freighter carrying a cargo full of Sex Droids but noooo, their Captain is too much of a turduken to check it out.
The pirates roll two dice plus they get to add one for having a successful patrol. They get three successes so their moral goes up! Captain Grognard has succeeded! His merry band of mutineers enjoy being pirates.
For now.
Now we go to the recruitment table to see if any more pirates join The Reroll. We roll two dice against the Pirates’ Morale of 4. We only get one success so no one joins but hey, no one leaves either.
Now I looked at the After the Battle rules to see if I can repair that one shield I lost. It is now that I realize that I am supposed to roll After the Battle after EACH encounter. Which means I could have repaired that shield a lot earlier but also I had the chance of having my adventure cut short if I took more significant damage. Oh well, wargaming is all about the learning.
The Reroll rolls two successes and gets fully repaired. We are ready for our next adventure!
Now on to the most important part: how do I feel about the game?
It’s been ages since I have played a spaceship game and I have to say that I enjoyed Star Navy a lot. It doesn’t have the super complexity of Starfleet Battles or the lumbering bluntness of Battlefleet Gothic. It is a fast, sensible game that has some depth but not a crushing amount of it.
I enjoy the randomness of the PEF system and it works very well for solo play. It is the first solo game in ages where I felt challenged. I am tempted to make some more missions for Pirates but for now I will stick with what is recommended in the book.
All in all, I enjoy the game a lot and I would recommend it for solo or group play.
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