That is an excellent answer.
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Raiding as a domain may be a bit fishy, but we know it does exist.
In the novel the Atreides perform a raid on Geidi Prime to destroy spice stockpiles.
Geidi Prime is probably one of the most heavily defended planets in the Imperium (even with a chuck moved elsewhere in preparation for the attack on Arrakis) due to the Harkonnens reputation and number of enemies.
As a side thought we know that the Heighliners are neutral territory, no fights may occur in them under threat of Guild Embargo. How far outside the Heighliner does that protection extend?
Could you essentially have a neutral zone around a Heighliner that the raiders need to reach for safety? It would make it easier to pull off a raid.
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I’d add that the Guild doesn’t really care what happens as long as it doesn’t endanger its ships and they get paid.
Many raiders can travel to a planet, land and kidnap people for the slave markets, return to a heighliner, and if they get there before getting caught there is little anyone can do until they leave it. There are plenty of brutal planets in need of more workers who happily pay for them in the slave markets. There are some very very unpleasant places in Dune.
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Both of you bring up great points. Would you run a space battle as a basic skirmish with the Heighliners being an end game for the raiders to escape to, sort of a run the gauntlet? Using assists like a shield space frigate for example. Is a laser shield interaction still a war crime in space with no damage to the planet or the Heighliner?
I would recommend looking at Masters of Dune, Chapter 8 as it discusses some scenarios similar to this. (Act II: Hunting the Pirates & Act III: The Mercenary Base).
It also adds a few new Assets (From Light Gunships & Frigates through to Battlecruisers & Station Cannon Emplacements) and some space skirmish maps.
So having a running the gauntlet style skirmish sounds like it would work great.
The scenario also specifies that the Heighliner arrival point is a few hundred kilometres away from the main Guild/CHOAM exchange station that most ships use. Moons with asteroids clustered around them (The pedant in me wants to specify that these should technically be satellites or submoons) complete the scene.
As a side point the system used in the scenario is a divided one, with multiple Major & Minor Houses having fiefs, which adds a layer of complication to who controls the space outside them.
On a purely technical reading of the Great Convention lasgun/shield interaction probably isn’t a breach, but you would need to prove it was an accidental L/S and not an atomic. De facto however the Powers That Be are unlikely to be so generous. No-one wants to set a precedent after all and you are still targeting people in the ships and not merely a terrain feature.
The vessels that Modiphius provides use the keyword Missiles for their main attack. Personally I have always described them as using mass drivers and relying on brute force to either overwhelm a shield or just inflict sufficient kinetic force to send the ship spinning out of control, damaging crew & components.
It isn’t an area that Frank Herbert really discussed. It was just ignored in most of the early books and when you get to the scattering the Great Convention is dead and it is a free for all with Atomics, Lasguns, stone burners and whatever they used to scorch Rakis.
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I appreciate the detailed response. I have not purchased the Masters of Dune, but I will buy it now. That gives me a lot of food for thought and really brings some campaign ideas to light for me. I am thinking a house that has a primary domain of space craft production could be an excellent target for raiders and pirates. I will see what my potential players think. Is space craft production to large of a domain, should it be smaller like Space Frigates or Battlecrusiers?
I’ll never run it as a campaign in itself, but it has a lot of good chapters that can be raided. I took ideas from all over it in my campaign.
Unless you intend to make a plot point out of wanting a lot of opposing Space Craft producers then a generic Space Craft Production Domain should be fine. Especially if you are a Major House.
If you want to make rivalry between producers then narrowing the focus to a class of ship would allow you to have both more rivals as well as throwing in a shadowy cartel that the players House can oppose.
Also a smaller focus would be appropriate for a Minor House.
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Until, for whatever reason, they DO decide to care about your House and precisely what you’re transporting where and why.
The Guild isn’t a monolith - like any organization it has its own internal factions and its overall goals can change over time. And it’s not omniscient, despite the prescience of the Navigators.
But from the point of view of any House of the Landsraad, you have to treat it as though it’s both of those things, because from outside there is no way to know what their current objectives and desires truly are, or the exact scope of their powers of observation and surveillance. Especially because the potential penalty for angering them is being cut off from all access to interstellar transport, possibly forever.
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That makes a lot of sense, thank you!