Omni Scale Orion Buccaneer Gunboat Flotilla SRZ

The Pirates of Orion cover the entire Alpha Octant, but by the time of the General War, few of them were actually Orions. Orion originally joined the Federation as an ally during the First Romulan War. Because the Federation needed Orion technology, ships, and shipyards, the Federation made a deal that gave the Orion province special autonomy. Among other things, this meant that the Orions (not the Federation) enforced Federation law inside Orion space. Pirate organizations based on Orion took advantage of this, becoming the headquarters of a far-reaching criminal operation including piracy, smuggling, and creating illegal mining colonies on unclaimed planets.  The Orion Pirates are a network of fiercely independent criminal cartels, each led by a crimelord.  Each minor pirate is supported by the cartel network which buys stolen or smuggled goods, repairs damaged ships, buys and sells captured freighters, and trades intelligence information on shipping schedules and police patrols.

Gunboats are small ships with firepower out of all proportion to their size; six of them can destroy a cruiser or cripple a dreadnought in a single battle pass. Being short-ranged defensive units, they were of little interest to the Orion Pirates until someone figured out how to carry them on larger ships using docking links added to tractor beams. Once that happened, Orions began building their own gunboats (and sometimes using those captured from the empires) and carrying them on their heavier ships. The gunboats make convoy raids easier as they overwhelm the defenders and allow multiple freighters to be boarded at the same time. They were also used by enforcer ships to eliminate pirate ships operating in a crimelord's territory without a franchise.

This tree of gunboats is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.