I actually have some pretty set rules for construction time, as my players have massive shipyards over their main colony (Size 10 colony with two support upgrades devoted to the shipyard, with two more support upgrades on other colonies supplying components). They primarily build transports and raiders, while refiting larger hulks. For this I use a formula based on SP cost of the final vessel. The idea being that more complex ships require more time to construct. I then multipy SP by the following modifiers:

Transport 1 Month

Raider 2 Months

Frigate 3 Months

Light Cruiser 6 Months

Cruiser 1 year

This gives a 3 year build time for well equiped Vagabond Transport, 6-8 year build times for Hazeroth Raiders, and a little less than a century for a well built Cruiser. I allow up to 8 'yards' of construction to be in use at once per size 10 Colony Shipyard Upgrade, with a Transport taking 2 'yards' and a Cruiser taking 8 'yards'. This means that the players can have several smaller ships under construction or a single larger ship. So far it has worked for my game.

Is this done with Stars of Inequity, that with some house-ruling, or just stuff you made up? I don't remember seeing ship yards in there, but I could be mistaken, and I don't know if the AdMech really let other people build ships, though they might come along, and build them above your colony. A curious idea; how did your players do it?

House Rules

I don't say this often, but that's actually not a terrible system. I approve.

Although I would expect that - at least in the background fluff - the build times for established forge worlds, swarming with tech-priests and resources, would be somewhat faster.

and I don't know if the AdMech really let other people build ships, though they might come along, and build them above your colony. A curious idea; how did your players do it?

Well, I was always under the impression there is some extent of commercial shipbuilding in the 40k universe. I have one quote now, but i'm sure i could find more. This one is from Battlefleet Koronus

The Carrack class is a recent attempt to recreate the ancient star galleon concept. The increasing impression amongst commercial shipbuilders —in common with many citizens of the Imperium—is that the galaxy is becoming a more dangerous place, and that the end times are fast approaching. Certain Chartist captains place their faith in solidly built, well armed freighters, designed from the ground up to be capable of carrying heavy loads while also tackling light raiders or other miscreants.

I always assumed commercial enterprises simply hired tech-priests to oversee the construction and purchased blueprints from the AdMech. Presumably, the AdMech cares not on whom the CEO name tag is pinned, so long as the cash flows and no tech-heresy is present.

Well, they are known to license certain designs out to lay corporations. It's possible that such a thing'd include hulls and plasma drives for starships, or at least to assembly of parts. Granted, they probably won't let unshriven technicians monkey around with warp drives, but it'll cost less to lease the use of a smaller Mechanicus team to fit warp dirves and Geller fields into a ship being built by other hands than to commission the whole load of shipwrights and shipbuilders from the Adeptus Mechanicus to deliver a finished ship by themselves.

I actually have some pretty set rules for construction time, as my players have massive shipyards over their main colony (Size 10 colony with two support upgrades devoted to the shipyard, with two more support upgrades on other colonies supplying components). They primarily build transports and raiders, while refiting larger hulks. For this I use a formula based on SP cost of the final vessel. The idea being that more complex ships require more time to construct. I then multipy SP by the following modifiers:

Transport 1 Month

Raider 2 Months

Frigate 3 Months

Light Cruiser 6 Months

Cruiser 1 year

This gives a 3 year build time for well equiped Vagabond Transport, 6-8 year build times for Hazeroth Raiders, and a little less than a century for a well built Cruiser. I allow up to 8 'yards' of construction to be in use at once per size 10 Colony Shipyard Upgrade, with a Transport taking 2 'yards' and a Cruiser taking 8 'yards'. This means that the players can have several smaller ships under construction or a single larger ship. So far it has worked for my game.

Any further modifications for "quality", both of the yards, the workers, and the components?

I think we're a ways off from building our own ships yet, but this seems very reasonable to me.

I actually have some pretty set rules for construction time, as my players have massive shipyards over their main colony (Size 10 colony with two support upgrades devoted to the shipyard, with two more support upgrades on other colonies supplying components). They primarily build transports and raiders, while refiting larger hulks. For this I use a formula based on SP cost of the final vessel. The idea being that more complex ships require more time to construct. I then multipy SP by the following modifiers:

Transport 1 Month

Raider 2 Months

Frigate 3 Months

Light Cruiser 6 Months

Cruiser 1 year

This gives a 3 year build time for well equiped Vagabond Transport, 6-8 year build times for Hazeroth Raiders, and a little less than a century for a well built Cruiser. I allow up to 8 'yards' of construction to be in use at once per size 10 Colony Shipyard Upgrade, with a Transport taking 2 'yards' and a Cruiser taking 8 'yards'. This means that the players can have several smaller ships under construction or a single larger ship. So far it has worked for my game.

@ Venkelos: This is actually based on a set of house rules that williamasher posted some time back. I use them in my campaign and they are very well written! (Sadly, I can't find the link to it right now!)

Personally, I can't really fathom having a colony that makes Profit, and builds ships; few things in the universe cost as much as an Imperial voidship, but I can totally see liking the idea of having repair facilities in orbit, be they upgrades to a colony, or ships/stations built out of BFK that have the ship upgrades needed to repair other craft. While many of my RT types would lead from their flagship, having a "capital world" would also be nice, and better for repairs than having to stop someplace where it is much easier to sabotage my ship, or get aboard, whatever.

Bear in mind; the numbers williamasher posted were with a size 10 colony. That's a Hive world! Even with those numbers it still takes approx. 100 yrs to build a cruiser! It's not likely that a PC group would be around from laying the Keel to completion! In this case, it is far more likely that the Rogue trader would use the prioritization method above to build a capitol ship. I would personally give a Hefty bonus to the aquisition role though, if the RT had a shipyard that he could task with building a cruiser hull to be returned to the IN in exchange for taking the next one off the line at some distant shipyard.

These rules are out of my house rules for Stars of Inequity, but the numbers for build times are based on several sources. They include Battlefleet Koronus, which has a good section about the various ways ships are built in the Imperium. You will note that 'Most void-going ships are built at 'local' shipyards by a planetary authority or comercial concern, perhaps as part of a tithe to the Imperium'. Also note that, 'Building a void-ship from scratch is a massive undertaking; it can take years to complete an escort-class vessel and centuries to build a capitol ship.' (BK, page 46). That means that there are lots of non-Mechanicum worlds where ships are built under the supervision of Tech Priests, but primarily by dock workers outside the Mechanicum. It is all very ritualized, and a riviter may only know the specific ritual for placing, checking, and blessing the rivits are ship armour. That riviter may do that one job for his whole life, as did his forefathers. I also allow Imperial Navy Fleet Bases to build small system defense ships and repair larger ships, just not for new ship construction or Hulk recovery.

The shipyards are simply 'Industrial Support Upgrades' that specialize in ship repair/production, based on the rules in Stars of Inequity. Note that shipyard capacity (and the required Voidship Component Manufactorum to supply it) are based on colony size. It takes a size 6 colony to produce a Transport, and a size 10 colony to build a Cruiser. I actually have several categories of 'Industrial Support Upgrades' and rules for what each type of upgrade can produce based on type and colony size.

I have detailed house rules because my players are trying to create a 'model Imperium subsector' in the Expanse. They presently have 10 colonies in 4 systems, including three size 10 colonies. I have been running the game every Sunday night for 4-8 hours for about 2 years, and the players are withing a session or two from reaching Rank 8. I had to come up with PF costs for new colonies based on suitability of colony site, as well as adjusting time scale to make more sense. I also use a PF upkeep cost for each Warp Capable Voidship or squadron of System Defense Ships the group operates. It helps to keep PF more reasonable, while creating a reasonable cost for maintaining the House fleet. Their fleet is used to guard their systems and convoys, so it has little impact on their exploration. I have run a few fleet combats using their defense fleets or even convoys, which makes for an interesting diversion while giving the players a sense of the importance of those assets. There is nothing better to encourage the players to maintain system defenses than to have a small Ork fleet attack one of their colonies.

@ Williamasher: I mentioned earlier that you once posted a link to these houserules. Could you repost it for others? I have found them to be very useful and am wondering if you updated them at all?

Edit: Found the link eventually, here it is: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3V_7sJZLASUQWl3bnNkbDhHd3c&usp=sharing

Let me know if it doesn't work. The only real change was putting in a bit about PF upkeep for House Fleets.

Nice! But I think I like my fleet maintenance better: Entry # 10 here: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/107255-how-big-do-rt-fleets-get/#entry1098770

Ah, I remember that thread. I use a different system because of how my players tend to distribute their fleet. They rarely take a bunch of ships with them on an endeavor. Doing so tends to result in more attention than they want brought to their actions, as well as risking expensive ships that may not have the stealth or speed to avoid an undesirable fight. Both their main ships are fast (11 or 14 speed) and very stealthy. I find in my game that the players maintain large defensive and escort fleets to prevent pirates and orks/Rak'Gol from smashing their colonies and trade fleets. Probably because I have run a few attacks on colonies and trade ships where they have to play their ships without the bonuses of having their PCs on board. After the first mauled trade ship (luckily a Hazeroth that was able to get away), they placed a lot more priority on defense ships.

They presently pay 46 PF in upkeep costs for their fleet, including escorts for trade routes, system defense ships, research facilities, mapping out better trade routes, and their exploration support/salvage ships. When they do take ships with them I generally don't include those ships AP bonuses. Those ships instead tend to be necessary parts of their endeavors, or allow the players additional options (such as salvaging hulked ships to strip or refit). They also maintain several salvage rig equiped ships to move system ships from their primary shipyard to other systems where they do not have shipyards. This tends to take quite some time, but allows them to fortify important systems or new colonies. Note that only those ships that are not assigned to an existing endeavor can be used, as taking ships from another endeavor causes that endeavor to stop generating PF and may very well cause that endeavor to fall apart. This causes them to pay constant upkeep on a pool of ships so that they can use those ships when the endeavor calls for it or to move resources around. That pool of ships allows them to quickly set up an endeavor on a target of oportunity, or even set up a new colony system complete with orbital assets and system defense ships. Of course, setting up a new endeavor utilizing those trade ships often locks those ships into that endeavor.

As an example, their typical system defense force includes 9 Wolfpack raider equivalent system ships (Damaris Pattern), 3 Shark System Defense ships (Wolfpack raider system ship modified for stealth), 1-2 Frigate or larger size Warp capable warships, 1 Trade station per colony, and 2 Orbitals with landing bay (Str 2) per world. This costs them an upkeep of 7 PF.

I, too, have never understood why so many people seem to want to build voidships from scratch in this game, BUT

I do think it's possible within the framework of a campaign.

Given that a campaign might last a few years over the course of achieving 8 ranks, and play once per week, or 50 times per year...

If the players go through 2 months of game time per session, and half of that time is spent in the warp, that would be...

Over 150 years of time passing in real-space.

People often seem to forget the guideline: Divided all 40k fluff text by 10.

We can build complex aircraft carriers in 10 years here and now.

So in the future, with advanced tech, they can still build a warship in 10 years.

Even though the starships are geometrically bigger, the shipwrights tools

have had many centuries of advancement as well.

So the fluff text should be seen as wrong yet again and should be ignored.

Starships can be built in 10-23 years. Why 23 ?

Add up the Hull Pts, Space and Ship Points. Divide by 10 = years to build.

So the lowly Vagabond takes 10 years, and the mighty Exorcist takes 23.6 years.

Vagabond = 40 + 40 + 20 = 100. Exorcist = 85 + 80 + 71 = 236.

Simple, and not ridiculous.

I've always found that the only way to make building ships work for a single campaign is for the dynasty to essentially buy an under-construction ship, or buy a hulked one and have it repaired to specifications. Otherwise, it's simply not feasible. Perhaps a Raider can be built from scratch in 3-5 years, but something akin to a Cruiser would take many decades.

On a similar topic - I've seen that ship components take d5 days to install?

Is this true (my example is a Warps Bane Hull)...

Players feel it only take d5 days to do - granted they are in the orbit of the Lathe Worlds - so maybe its possible?

Just a quick question...

Morbid

The mental image of a giant void ship's gun-deck or engine being torn apart and rebuilt in a single day is alittle hard to swallow, but you are at the Lathes so does make sense, but when you're out in the stix it begins to break the sense of disbelief.

Personally I would be happy to leave it as is, handwaving it with convenient excuses.

To a large degree, the answer depends on the component, as well as the degree of available dockyard support.

Something relatively plug'n'play, like pulling thunderstrike pattern macrocannon and upgrading them to mars or stygian (or swapping out for something fairly self-contained like a jovian missile battery), in a major shipyard like the lathes- sure, d5 days sounds about right.

Fitting out a ship with new torpedo tubes (or nova cannon, or even installing lances where there were none) is a bit more major, as it requires a non-trivial amount of work redesigning the interior compartments, re-laying power conduits and potentially cutting holes in (and fitting airlocks in the holes) the thickest armour plating on the ship. Likewise fitting something like a tenebro-maze, or replacing the auspices or the void shields (potentially. It may well be possible to do in a relatively plug'n'play manner, depending on the volume and power requirements, but I wouldn't bet on it), simply for the amount of work it would take, distributed all over the ship. Even in a major dockyard, that's going to be at least a week's work (potentially a couple of months).

Fitting or removing engine components, a gilded hull or a warpsbane hull is pretty **** major though. In the case of the engine refit, it pretty much comes down to a complete rebuild of the aft third of the ship, followed by re-connecting (potentially wholly re-working the layout of) the power conduits.

When you're doing major work that affects the entire outer hull (potentially/arguably replacing it completely), it's going to take a while (if for no other reason than you may well need to take precautions regarding decompressing the inner compartments), but attempting it at somewhere like the Lathes is going to be the most efficient place to go about it, as outer-hull work makes it easier to just throw work crews at the job without worrying about them getting in each other's way. It should therefore be possible to do it faster than an engine refit (weeks-months rather than months-years), with the major bottleneck being blessing the parts as they go in. Sure, assuming you could afford the number of servitor crews it would take, you could potentially have yourself a brand-new warpsbane hull fitted in maybe a couple weeks, but all those anti-daemon statues on it would have to be pre-blessed, or else you'd spend the next few months as the few Ecclesiarchy peeps go round activating them properly (or head off reliant on just the Omnissiah and some vac-boiled-to-nothing machine unguents and gun-oil). Arguably, it'd be faster/more efficient to seek that fitting at a naval base rather than an AdMech world.

Of course, that's just how I'd play it in my campaigns. YMMV.

Might also not be taking into thought the slow, religious, and possibly ridiculous ways the AdMech do some of these things, and the extra time that can take. Also, some cells of the AdMech might sabotage others, even on something as trivial as your ship modifications, either because they might have stock in your opponents' endeavors, or just because, like everyone else, the AdMech is not the unified whole it should be. This isn't taking into account that many of the AdMech have forgotten how to do various things, and while I'm not going to sit here and say "these AdMech have forgotten how to install macrocannons", because that is probably stupid, part of me wants to say in many ways a plasma gun is a plasma gun is a plasma gun, and yet there are several versions of them the AdMech don't remember how to make. They crank out war surplus for the Guard, and yet there are possibly two "common" turret designs that the AdMech can barely remember how to make, and that's with there being physical, working models to examine. How someone so "tech-savvy" can't build something with a working model for reference is beyond me.

I don't know, I sort of prefer the plodding, helpless, duplicitous AdMech, as it fits in well with the rest of the beleaguered Imperium, often its own worst enemy, in a galaxy filled with people lining up to take it out. One thing I will say in favor of slow builds, if they were so quick to build, Chaos would have a fleet to dwarf them. I personally like to think that the only reason for things to go bad for Chaos, in the warp, is because their masters are capricious mega-dicks, and they are often their own worst enemy, too. Otherwise, they shouldn't get lost in the warp, end up in some weird locale, or arrive before they left. With the mutable nature of time in the warp, and these fools serving its masters, why doesn't Chaos have a fleet of monumental size, and just steamroll the Imperium? Because, for some reason, even they can't.

This is a pretty interesting thread. I think I fall in the "it depends" like Alasseo said - some components, especailly huge or widely distributed ones, like crew compartments or Engines should take a lot longer than d5 days.

For anyone who's actually worked in a major industrial facility (Like a dockyard), the idea of ANY project that requires their facility being completed in 1d5 days is pretty funny! To my mind, any trip to the yards for anything other than basic repairs is going to take more like 1d5 months for the more simple stuff (plug and play type components) and 1d5 YEARS for more major stuff (like engine refits!)

I agree with Radwraith - I used to be in the Air Force and from that perspective I concur with those timetables...