Hello,

What happens if the Life Sustainer System is damaged by a Hit and Run action or a lucky ciritcal during the space battle? I don't think it's cripple the ship immediately cause it would be easiest way to destroy an entire warship with only one action.
No result, at all, the damage of this essential compoment will come up within days and weeks, when the air and the water slowly fade away.

thanks for the answers!

Huh. I would have figured as climate control went down, the plasma engine would cook everyone in the ship (Machine or not - you Explorator bastards really don't need any more advantages) within a handful of hours. Either way, I always figured it'd be a problem for after the battle.

It really does suck if it ends up getting destroyed, though.

During battle the crew would have to don their voidsuits, so you might impose a penalty to Crew Rating for the duration. I guess you' have to ask yourself if the whole crew even has access to voidsuits. As I recall, one of the Life Sustainers (Clemency Pattern?) specifies enough voidsuits for just that occasion.

Of course, after battle it would become a priority repair job.

I don't think it would be a biggie. As lame as it might be to think that losing such a critical system isn't really so critical, the cavernous nature of the Imperium's bigger void craft means that a lot of resources are in ample supply. Even with hull breaches, you could cordon off that area with heavy blast doors, and not keep losing environment. The Light of Terra was without power for millennia, riddled with hull breaches and worse. There was still enough air and supplies for the people aboard to live, and become the people they are now. Even thousands of people can live that way, apparently.

For food and water, my guess is that the cargo vaults are stocked with such things, and you might need to sac a bit of the crew, but if the rest of the damage wasn't bad, I think you'd make it to getting repairs, or your Explorators would suit up in their power armor, and take care of the maintenance. Your mileage might vary, of course. As for the plasma drive overheating, I'd think that the servitors and PA-clad Tech-Priests could survive in vacuum, so vent the compartment into space, allowing the heat to dissipate, while your engineering staff do the work. No different than doing exterior work, at that point.

Vacuum doesn't actually conduct heat very well - that's why the ship would heat up quickly in the first place. Venting the compartment would probably make the problem worse, depending on a number of factors of ship construction.

Losing the life sustainer shouldn't mean everyone suffocates or overheats in a few space combat turns, figure you have about a day to solve the problem at that point before the problem becomes acute and maybe two maxium three before it finally becomes lethal as hell. That is unless half the ship is also on fire and/or venting into the void, that's going to accelerate the timetable quite a bit.

Losing life support would mean that no fresh oxygenated, scrubbed air is being pumped into components of the ship. Places on fire should theoretically actually get a bonus to being put out as there is less oxygen, but lets ignore that keep it simple. I'd say that having no life support should increase Morale and Pop losses by +1 any time a further crit occurs, as the crew struggles to breath without void suits and is generally more frantic.

It's not written anywhere but logically a voidship has high pressure tanks containing lots of oxygen or chemical reaction style oxygen generators because a componant can become depressurized but can then be repressurized on the same void run. So clearly it's not all about endlessly recycling one irreplaceable atmosphere, push comes to shove there is some sort of stockpiled breathable air resource.

This is why I take the view that while the life sustainer is neccesary for a long voyage you can probably live without it for a couple of days if you really have to.