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The tradeoff however is that the armed merchant fleet is outclassed by the pure military strike taskforce, which has dedicated interceptors corvettes frigates destroyers carriers battlecruisers etc. The merchant fleet is just cargo ships with guns and autoturrets welded to them - you do not need a shipyard to do this, I just assume a shipping combine operates some maintenance repair and modest refitting facilities. Against pirates you may be about evenly matched... though some are said to operate captured military vessels with scavenged and rebuilt parts...
What is required are the defense weapins systems or more precisely the blueprints, software ie design templates, fire control subroutines etc. You think if you can secure something like this, or outright purchase it (via some underground / black matket arms trade channels) you can rapidly convert the Shipping Combine into an armed fleet.
