So right, can someone please explain to me

how the fuck shit like this makes sense.

From MercNet btw.


Reason I'm even asking you all is 'cause some of you aren't completely fucktarded and the thread got locked 'bout an hour ago after it started tanking the servers after that post.

So uh

yeah.

Anybody gonna take a crack at this?

What's to be confused about?

Pirates are lower on the totem pole than mercs.

This guy's got a bit of confusion about privateers, that's it.

He's worried about our appearance when the Blood Pack are one of the Big Three?

What a whiny little bitch.

I'unno it's just really fucking stupid yeah?

Like, the whole spiritsdamn thing was about like

hrm

Kay like, full disclosure yeah? I don't really get this whole schtick of piracy/privateering/whatever being "no seriously the worst fucking thing ever". I mean a lot of the bigger and actually effective piracy/privateers/raiders/fuck it let's call them "dicks with ships" act a lot like a merc group yeah? They've got some discipline going on, they're actually fucking competent, they even take gov contracts against shipping/infrastructure now an again or wage their own little campaigns.

And uh, merc groups kinda do the same thing in reverse you know? Like, pretty much any half decent corp is going to salvage what they can post-battle, if they've got the resources it's not exactly rare for them to knock over some unaffiliated shipping or fringe colonies let's be honest, and generally behave a whole fucking lot like the other dicks with ships.

Plus for like, every shitty freelancer trying to hack it on Omega 'cause no really he's totally a badass, there's another small timer in an equally shitty corvette or whatever trying to hack it out in the Abyss.

There's, uh, not a whole lot of difference between the two really.

So

yeah

dunno why everyone gets their panties in a bunch about it.

Cause once you're taking contracts your a mercenary.

Do it for yourself and you're a pirate.

It's the difference between an armed gang on Omega and one mad polisher with a gun.

Pirates are, fundamentally, a threat to the sovereignty of governments in a way mercs aren't, as they're effectively independent, hostile political bodies with their own agendas. With an economy based on shooting things and taking their stuff. They are the space-borne equivalent, in many ways, of the nomad or hunter gatherer. It's just that their prey is, by and large, large, sedentary convoys and colonies instead of large, sedentary prey animals.

While there are (obviously) parallels made with sea-borne pirates in the pre-spaceflight histories of many civilizations, the comparison is rudimentary at best. They are both ship-borne pseudo-political bodies who prey on the weak, but the realities of modern naval combat mean that space pirates are a potent threat to a nations economic base (Its resource-bearing colonies and trade routes) and have the ability to hold territory in a way that pre-spaceflight pirates simply could not be, and as the Reaper War shows they could, in a pinch, wield unexpected amounts of political, economic and military influence.

Some people, naturally, do not like this.

This kind of whining is typical of those who believe they have inherent ownership of something regardless of their ability to hold onto it. They don't like that the rest of the galaxy does not play into their fantasy, and so they vilify and condemn those that are stronger.

I don't like pirates much myself, but the real reason for that is that they cut into my bottom line. There are other things I'd love to use the navy for instead of escorting shipments and convoys, but the threat of pirates means they must be protected.

Privateers are the same, unless they're on my payroll. They have their uses, but they can be unreliable.

Yeah, basically. Pussies whining that they aren't strong enough to do shit. That's why the Pack gets so much shit.

Mercs are trying to convince these 'soft' people-you know, the politicians, farmers, scientists and whatnot that form economies-to pay them. If they think a company is a threat, or uncontrollable, or even just likely to flake out on the contracted job when they see a soft target elsewhere, no money for them. Also maybe no money AND being shot at by a Navy.

Most people have figured out the average moral level of people who will kill for money alone, so some mercs are going to work really hard to disassociate themselves from pirates, in order to sell themselves as a tool for the power structure rather than a threat to it.

We've all seen Foureyes blather about how his Slaver operation is different, the inevitable Blue Sun WE ARE TOO PROFESSIONALS speech that's due to appear in this thread, same diff.

Yeahyeahyeah piracy is bad and shit. A bloo-hoo-hoo. Sounds to me like maybe people should buy better piracy deterrants to me. Hell, the market for private shipping defense is part of the bread and butter of the Terminus. Simple survival of the fittest. It ain't pretty, but there are no pretty food chains.

Fuck, that's all life is, really. Just one big food chain with logos plastered all over it.

so yer sayin' yer a pirate

gotcha


On a more serious note, I hate to put it this way, but...the merc from War Crimes, Inc. Yellow Edition is right on this particular aspect of things. It's just the fundamental way the galaxy at large operates.

Anyways, my actual take on the Pirates vs. Mercs thing: Pirates are (pretty much without exception) psychopaths who got into the piracy gig for shits and giggles. Profit is a secondary concern. Think of who we're talking about: The likes of the late Velor Vedevix and such.

I mean, sure, I know a lot of mercs, and the vast majority of the ones I know are decent guys who just happen to hold and shoot a gun for a living - no different from a C-Space military. Basically, it's exactly the same fuckin' thing. You hold a gun and shoot at who you're told. End of story.

in b4 patriots and c-spacers all chew me out for saying it

Now that that's out of the way, I'll say this. Just because you're a merc, it doesn't make you the bad guy. The question is how you go about it. Blue Suns, Eclipse, Blood Pack - pretty much without exception, all three have committed some war-crimes-level stuff and have financial interests beyond actual mercenary work (racketeering, smuggling (nothing inherently wrong with this one), etc.), so they're more like militarized crime syndicates.

I'll be the last guy to say anything about the job (not being a career merc myself), but I'm not gonna bitch a guy out for needing to pay his rent, know what I'm sayin'?

Do it to pay rent = OK, do it for grins = Not OK. The distinction between a merc and a pirate pretty much rests there and there alone. Unless we get into vigilantes, which are a whole different area.

I'm sure you'll draw a line SOMEWHERE. I'm sure you'e not saying it's alright to do any shitty, asshole thing as long as you're drawing a paycheque. Do you get moral points for hating your job? That's kind of ridiculous and doesn't really matter to the person who gets shot.

...And since in any system, the sellouts will outnumber the psychos, they're going to do the bulk of a damage, whether their souls are with them or not.

It doesn't even work as a classification. Abattoir! Wasn't the answer to "why is he doing this particular thing now" usually money?

Ey, whaddafuck? So just because I've got job satisfaction, I'm worse than the guy with the sob story about paying the bills, even though we're both doing the same shit? Doesn't seem fair to me. Besides, don't think it makes much difference on the receiving end if the guy's doing it for the money or doing it for fun.

It's like you never actually dealt with pirates or something.

There were plenty of them out in the DMZ during my CDEM days, and it's not like these people were just doing this for shits and giggles. You know how many credits they could make if their smuggling runs paid off? They were definitely in it for the money. And like Capice said, so was Abattoir, and he was a monster. But I'm sure he'd rather have called himself a mercenary.

The only difference between the two is the type of contract you write up.

Oh, I'll absolutely draw lines. See the constant mentions of stuff like war crimes on the part of the Big Three, and my general dislike of people who do it for kicks. As long as you don't cross very specific lines? No real problem with it. 'Don't shoot civilians. Don't commit war crimes. Don't enjoy what you're doing.'

I figure, if you're being given money by bad people to shoot other people that happen to be bad, there's no problem, right? Racketeering, and all the general criminal stuff you see mercs doing 'on the side?' Not actual merc work. That's just normal criminal activity.


I agree, but you can't argue on that point simply because the galaxy at large doesn't give a shit where that particular concern is raised. It sucks, I know, but it's just the way things work. You need to have this kind of attitude out in the Terminus because it's the foundation on which everything functions.


Almost certainly. Doesn't mean that the sellouts are inherently bad people. They're no different from C-Space military personnel in this respect. They've got bills to pay, kids to feed, and a retirement fund to build up. It's just a matter of who's signing the paycheck and the exact details of what they're doing, so if they feel like compromising their own morals for the sake of money? It's on them and not their hundreds of thousands of mercenary colleagues who happen to be doing their own thing.


Yeah. Doesn't mean it wasn't a shitty answer.


Actually I deal with them on a frighteningly-common basis. They keep offering me hacking jobs I turn down and don't seem to get the idea I don't work for people in their particular line of work.


So they could continue to finance the psychopathic things they could do for fun. Plus, y'know. Gotta eat and fuel the ship.


Again, you can't base the opinion of the whole industry and trade on one particular psycho. Look at Terrorbyte. He can't possibly have colored your perception of the hacker trade as a whole all that badly, because you sat down and played a game of Skyllian Five with me once and didn't really complain, argue or evidently even think about what I did for a living despite knowing that I was doing less-than-legal things at the time to pay my rent.


Almost certainly. He rather would. Doesn't make him right.


False. See all of the above.

Harrad's correct. People don't become pirates because Shits and Giggles. Coming out of Gruul piracy was incredibly tempting as an option, not because I somehow get off on hurting people (I run a security service that protects them, after all), but because we were poor, we had a combat capable ship and it would have been, if we'd done it, an incredibly easy route to relative economic prosperity.

The only reason we didn't (Instead of crews like Vedevix or Cherkon, who did) was because one of our bosses had an absurd sense of morality, the other was an incredibly good trader and, frankly, we lucked out repeatedly early on, so we didn't have to.

Otherwise? We wouldn't have had much of a choice but to become pirates.

Which is the issue with a lot of pirate suppression tactics (And also attempts to bring down the slave trade by shooting a couple slavers here and there), it doesn't address why people become pirates, it just shoots them after they start killing people. While groups like AEGIS and pre-war Light of Purgation and NoN were hilariously ineffective at stopping the slave trade. They just shot slavers instead of going after the slave market.

Why not?


The difference here being that people in the military have to answer to their commanders, and ultimately serve their entire government. Mercenaries and pirates serve themselves. There's no added bonus to their existence.


Like what? You're waving your hands and shouting "psychopaths!" but not actually offering any evidence here that they are. If you listened to yourself, you'd see you're saying "if they're a psychopath they're a pirate, if they're not they're a mercenary". Which is just stupid.


Doesn't make you right either.

Oh right

this thing, forgot about it.

I guess, I mean like, there's nothing hard 'n fast about either of them though. There are pirates who contract themselves out an mercs who raid.

I can get that I guess, I mean it fits I suppose but I don't.

Hrm.

It's just like

that though. I mean plenty of people have said the same kinda shit about merc groups too. 'Specially the Three.
?

The fuck?

It's uh, it's not like a corp can't do both I mean fuck that's just common sense lizardboy. Don't dick around when you're on the job. Do shit for the corp itself when you're between contracts.

...what?

Fuck off, I don't like agreeing with yellowbellies.
No blink. I'm saying that getting pissy about one or the other about shit both do is fucking retarded. An trying to shove groups inside one fucking container is also spiritsdamn retarded.

........

hahahahahahahahahaha

hahahaahhHAAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.

You're a fucking idiot. People don't go pirate or go merc or go whatever for the kicks of it, mean fuck if they did they'd probably find something easier to do than getting shot at every other fucking day. We/they/whatever do it 'cause it pays well and because we're good at it. And hells, who the fuck says we need to whip ourselves for liking something that, 'gain, pays well and we're good at?

...the fuck are you even on about? It's like you

Oh. Oooooooooh. See now that makes sense. You're a fuckin pussy who works behind a terminal 'n couldn't cut field work to save his spiritsdamned eyes but thinks he's tough shit and a holy type 'cause he never had to really get in the shit.

So you're not just stupid you're a fucking liar too.

Good job blinkie. Good job.

Just gonna leave this here then

Spiritsdammed beautiful isn't it?

Because no-one's an inherently bad person (Well, almost no-one. you get the occasional exception). Everyone is trying to do right by someone or something.

The bombardment gun operator from Gruul is trying to secure a better future for his family. The pirate from Nimbus is trying to make a better life for herself in a galaxy gone mad. The salarian union terrorist is trying to bring democracy and freedom to his people.

They're not doing it because they're evil, they're doing it because they think they have no better option, or that they have something so valuable that they're willing to do horrible things to protect it, or they've been convinced that they're doing the right thing.

It might still be a horrible thing to do, but if we just dismiss criminals as inherently bad people, or inherently evil we'll use it as an excuse not to fix the problems that cause them and constantly wonder why they keep showing up.


Large enough mercenary forces are effectively governments. The Blue Suns, Eclipse and Blood Pack hold territory, collect taxes in the form of protection money, wage warfare for political reasons as well as private ones (See turf wars on Omega, for example)

In addition, mercenaries in professional companies do have to answer to their commanders. A mercenary company has a defined hierarchy that it follows, and everyone is responsible to their commanding officers. That some mercenary companies have more moral command structures than others is basically irrelevant.

Pirates are, by and large, beholden to their captains, and pirate crews (Especially in large flotillas or fleets) are effectively a government, often with civilians and territory.


You hold territory, have laws, take taxes (Well, effectively take taxes), have turf wars to gain resources and have a centralized government (via a bureaucracy and corporate structure).

You...basically are.

Thank you.

Fucking hells. Someone gets it.

I wasn't disagreeing with you man was more like

okay

I'm saying that this:is pretty much the same as this:
Which is probably what you're saying too but uh a. I'm hungover and b. not exactly a fucking scholar at this either.