Has anyone ever run, or been in a campaign where ship morale was an issue, that wasn't something cooked up by the GM, probably as a Misfortune?

When I come up with broken ship components: sunsears, macrobatteries in general, miloslav drives, etc. the single most broken one is luxury passenger components. It's disadvantage is the -3 crew morale, yet a dozen of the things rarely affects a single battle.

I was thinking of running my next campaign with ship morale based on troop morale given in BFK, where incompetent, competent, crack, veteran, and elite crew have base morales of 50, 60, 70, 85, and 100.

Pros: 1) Morale would become important. Mutinies might even occur during battle. Certainly, penalties to Command and BS would come into play. 2) There would be a reason to spend initial PF on better crews. I mean, who ever spends those PF/SP on crew rating? 3) Ships wouldn't all fight until they explode/implode. Anybody ever seen a ship surrender? 4) Quality components could all permanently affect morale without ships having 150 morale. It would make morale easier to calculate.

Cons: I'm worried that it takes morale from unimportant to all-consuming.

Well first, I never knew anyone besides MAYBE an oversealous Imperial Navy battlefleet or Rak'Gol to fight until the ship explodes, i've always had the opponent flee when the chips were down. That said, I have only once had a chronic morale problem, and that was when, when I was GMing RT, my RT rolled a Misfortune, and it was a pretty bad roll, so I decided to make my own misfortune, stating that evidence of a Chaos cult had made its way onto the ship. Well he figured the below-decks death cult would handle it. Which they did. For months (i S**T you not, he did nothing to stop this) the Chaos cult and the death cult had a guerilla war throughout the ship, which usually involved collateral in the form of dead crewmen. so for months, I had to be like "There was another gunfight, they killed the Chaos guys but they also depressurized an entire corridor, 1d5 Morale loss because no one feels safe anymore." this kind of event happened almost daily, and while the death cult quirk helped keep morale losses low, it still piled up when it happens every **** day. Ramble ramble hope that helps answer the question.

Well, most Rogue Traders would be like, "They're just Ratings, and they're taking care of it, what's the big deal?"

Ok, in having an opponent break off the fight and run for it, did any ever escape? Is that because your party didn't give chase, or did it come down to fiat...or...the emergency warp?

In the end, it still doesn't sound like morale ever comes into play. Having now run 3 games, and having played in 1, I can state that from my own experience morale is a non-sequitor. At most it causes one side or the other a -5 or -10 penalty for a single round before they get blown to smithereens.

I'm looking for morale to have a greater effect, and I'm looking for it to maybe fix some of the problems I have with broken ship components, in particular the luxury passenger quarters. It's way too easy to stack 5-10 luxury passenger quarters on a ship, get +1000 achievement points per endeavor for another +10 PF. If morale started in the 50-60 range, you're already starting in the penalty box and further losses could result in mutiny.

I have another quality ship component question for anyone that wants to chime in. How would feel about allowing a ship component to be poor craftsmanship (consuming an extra power factor) but simultaneously be good craftsmanship (taking up 1 less space), resulting in a null SP cost? It strikes me as a way to let the players further customize their ship, and to let them fill that ship up, but at the potential cost of some abuse.

I'm getting ready to GM my 4th game, and I'm getting all the house rules together before we start.

They usually don't get away, mainly because our ship already has a bead on them. I had never thought of it before that Morale really doesn't have much of an effect on the game because it never really drops to dangerous levels.

I had to make it an issue in our campaign. Morale's too easily controlled or bypassed, so I added the fact that the cargo trading ship will be doing long surveys of potentially dangerous systems with my group's penchant for humiliating their enemies (two pirate vessels) by enslaving their crews as ratings.

Oh, and the spared pirate officers too.

I've sent them warnings via the chain of command, a restlessness amongst the armsmen, but the group has thus far ignored them. I had a few midshipmen killed "accidentally" to send the message, and had one trusted NPC talk to the XO, but the powder keg will blow. All it needs is a spark.

In unrelated news, they found some Orks.

No one has commented on whether they thought the morale system needed some work. Do you think I'm nerfing it too badly if I go the 50/60/70/85/100 route?

Has anyone ever run, or been in a campaign where ship morale was an issue, that wasn't something cooked up by the GM, probably as a Misfortune?

I was thinking of running my next campaign with ship morale based on troop morale given in BFK, where incompetent, competent, crack, veteran, and elite crew have base morales of 50, 60, 70, 85, and 100.

Pros: 1) Morale would become important. Mutinies might even occur during battle. Certainly, penalties to Command and BS would come into play.

2) There would be a reason to spend initial PF on better crews. I mean, who ever spends those PF/SP on crew rating?

3) Ships wouldn't all fight until they explode/implode. Anybody ever seen a ship surrender?

4) Quality components could all permanently affect morale without ships having 150 morale. It would make morale easier to calculate.

Cons: I'm worried that it takes morale from unimportant to all-consuming.

Yes, for morale and crew pop is always an issue if Your ride is a Grand Cruiser.

Meaning that Your Crack crew would go mutiny after suffering 1 point of morale?

1) Morale is more important on larger ships while not being an issue on smaller ones, Your system just makes riding a Grand Cruiser without Elite crew almost impossible. Besides it is stated that mutinies do not occur during combat.

2) Nope, just more reason to pay 5SP less and instead acquire a Servitor Crew. I do, more than that, I buy Veteran Crews.

3) Well I don't know what are You playing but in RT they mostly just go silent instead of exploding - becoming a space hulks that is, unless You are deliberately hit them afterwards.

4) That is in fact a very interesting idea.

In it's current form Morale, like crew population and the extended storage vault, are for a particular type of play that most of us don't use: the long void run. If you can't return to a nice planet to let your crew blow of steam, the stacking morale of a dozen small skirmishes, hunger and months of monotony can actually take their toll. Instead most of us run to a civilized system to lick our wound after the first punch in the nose, and I've rarely seen anyone talk about a multi-year endeavor that didn't involve two dozen ports.

Reducing the starting morale level isn't going to change what morale does during a battle. It's still very easy to mitigate the results. You've also created a situation where anyone who doesn't have a veteran crew is starting with a command penalty. And you're still not going to see vessels surrender or shift any more than they do already.

Given your specific complaints, what I think you really want is to make Morale more dynamic, rather than just lower. Consider tripling all morale loss & gains instead. This would actually make morale a concern after even a minor combat.

1) I don't see morale as being more important on large ships. I just see that small ships cease to exist before morale becomes the prominent issue. And crews don't mutiny after a single hit (and of course they don't actually mutiny until the end of the battle), they just start suffering command and BS penalties. Mutiny still comes down the road. I like the idea of post-battle command checks to keep the crew in line.

2) Acquiring a servitor crew is an upgrade and technically can't be done with a starting ship. I'm glad to hear someone out there considers Veteran crews a viable option. In the 4 games I've GMed/played, I haven't seen that yet.

3) I don't consider Silent Running a viable option for NPC ships. The PC's always find the ship, and the PC's usually get away when they go with that option. It's the skill level thing again. NPC's aren't very competitive in that market without more house rules.

And yeah Quick, the extended voyage is the only play strategem that brings morale into play and I've yet to see players go that route, even if I set up an endeavor that way. They say, "screw this" and head back to port for repairs and replacement crew.

You have a good point. I guess my biggest complaint (other than the broken luxury passenger quarters) is that hull integrity damage and crew morale damage being about equal makes for a pretty pat and boring post-battle result.

1) I don't see morale as being more important on large ships. I just see that small ships cease to exist before morale becomes the prominent issue. And crews don't mutiny after a single hit (and of course they don't actually mutiny until the end of the battle), they just start suffering command and BS penalties. Mutiny still comes down the road. I like the idea of post-battle command checks to keep the crew in line.

2) Acquiring a servitor crew is an upgrade and technically can't be done with a starting ship. I'm glad to hear someone out there considers Veteran crews a viable option. In the 4 games I've GMed/played, I haven't seen that yet.

3) I don't consider Silent Running a viable option for NPC ships. The PC's always find the ship, and the PC's usually get away when they go with that option. It's the skill level thing again. NPC's aren't very competitive in that market without more house rules.

And yeah Quick, the extended voyage is the only play strategem that brings morale into play and I've yet to see players go that route, even if I set up an endeavor that way. They say, "screw this" and head back to port for repairs and replacement crew.

You have a good point. I guess my biggest complaint (other than the broken luxury passenger quarters) is that hull integrity damage and crew morale damage being about equal makes for a pretty pat and boring post-battle result.

1) Or that, anyways it is unproportional - raiders will probably never have problems with it, Cruisers+ on the other hand will have much more. Actually in Your rules Crack crew has a starting morale of 70, and 69 is a first time You have to make mutiny tests.

2) Quite the contrary - You are allowed a one +0 acquisition per character, and there is Cost is No Object rule (ItS p223) that lets You add +10 to acquisitions test for each 1 PF burned, meaning -5 SP costs of the ship at the price of 5 PF that allows You to buy a Best Quality Servitor Crew from the start for virtually no cost. Broken as is, it's in the rules.

3) PCs can find a Silent Runnig ship only when it's in range for their auspexes - that being 30 VU AFAIK.

A) You can make Your PCs go on an endeavour when with each step they can gain more an more potential profit but if they withdraw they'll lose it and everything the have already invested in it, some recommendations from me include a race-like scenario (LotE for example) or just making a scenario that makes PCs invest in it heavily with each step for getting awesome potential profits so that their decision to say "screw this" is much harder to make with an example being "13 Sins" movie

Ah, you're right. I'd forgotten about the morale level checks. I'd modified them, too, and forgot to mention it.

Technically, the initial acquisition is for a "single item." I'm sure we all fudge on that rule when our players get creative, but you are quoting RAW to break something that isn't.

I think it's 20 VUs, but that's still rather easy. PCs also have the faster ship, care of the Extended Action: Flank Speed. If you keep track of action position, time, and checks the PCs always find their man...though maybe not their Eldar.

I'm as guilty as the next GM, but I do conscientiously try to keep from railroading or presenting the players with options that are contrived to give them only certain options. And I definitely want to avoid any endeavor that offers the party large PF rewards. That system is already tough to keep under control. I really didn't like LotE. Miloslavs alone break that module to pieces and every party I've run or played in took Miloslavs to start with. I've house ruled Miloslavs. I took away the x2 speed and the players still buy it every time just to save on power, the only exception being when I (for a short time) ran Navis Primer RAW and that system was so broken from the outset that Miloslavs or not, they'd have been screwed anyway.

By fluff and battlefleet gothic, finding a Disengaged Vessel (as opposed to silent running, where they're still active) is essentially impossible. It's also how 90% of battles end. If you're considering house rules, I would look into that direction. It also has the benefit of helping prevent the players from accumulating Battlefleet Mine in the first few sessions.

Part of the whole thing of disengaging is to dramatically change direction then shut everything off. (The equivalent of come to new heading) That way you are drifting on a random vector that your enemies don't know. Don't forget that by RAW cruising speed for all imperial ships are essentially the same - once an escaped ship is far enough away to not be engaged, they can fire up the engines again and make for system's edge.

Interestingly, my party also went for veteran crew as soon as they could (they started with incompetent for storyline reasons) because of 1 check per player during void combat. That and crew skill is what I use when they try and find an onboard NPC for a check of any kind.

"As soon as they could," Quick, so they didn't spend their SP/PF on it, and that's the initial purchase option. I'd assume most players go for upgrades ASAP. And, that extra 5 SP/PF for starting with an Incompetent crew wasn't applied to their starting ship?

But you're right, disengage as an option is probably the way to see that all battles aren't fought to the finish. I've always backed the notion that 40k sensors were awful (telescopes?). Still, it would hard to hide these ships. I've often thought the turning radii of ships is a bit too kind, though we wouldn't have very exciting battles otherwise.

Actually, the extra 5 SP were applied - they started with the almost-fully-stripped hull of the dynasty flagship in drydock. Besides being appropriate for background, they needed the 5 so they could afford the hull and a single macrocannon battery to put on the prow.

I feel the turning radii is small in part because there's no penalty. I wish power-resource-crew management came more into the performance of the ship than making a roll for everything. I find the current method provides some excitement, but removes nearly all tactics. Fly at the enemy and make all the rolls is always the answer.

Anyway, the fluff does seem to indicate that 40k sensors are not exactly up to modern sci-fi standards (Star Trek this is not). The 40k universe also has a lot more sensor distorting phenomena in space then our universe does. Warp fluctuations causing realspace sensor ghosts happens often. In addition, I think you overestimate how easy it would be to find a vessel that isn't emitting radiation (or emitting minimal radiation). It's equivalent to looking for a speck 1/100th the thickness of a human hair on a football field.

Weeeeeell now, I don't think it would be all THAT hair on a football field comparison thingie. I'm pretty sure that NASA and similar agencies have a pretty good handle on all the mile-long asteroids between here and the Moon, and they aren't exactly emitting much radiation. Between here and the Moon is way more than 20 VUs. And, those plasma drives would take some time to cool down. In the meantime, they are leaving a plume.

Still, the point is well taken. 40k detection technology is pretty primitive stuff, relatively speaking. And we do need to maintain the Rule of Cool. Honestly, vectored thrust and acceleration would make for pretty short combats. Either you disable and chase or they are gone anyway, tumbling away into the void. If you've played Traveller before, you know this, especially if you played any of the old video games.

One way to make the "run back to port and lick their wounds" tactic less easy or less desirable...AND a way to make crew and morale loss matter more is to just make Warp Travel kick the **** out of the ship more often. That's how my GM runs it.

When entering the warp means that you have a good chance of having to drop out of warp to avoid a massive demon punching your ship into oblivion (as happened to my poor Enterprise ) then zipping back home every time you lose a few hundred ratings is less popular. Finding a world with a human population suddenly gets REALLY exciting - crew restoration! YAY! Hell, just finding a life sustaining world is amazing, because you can give the crew shore leave and get some fresh vituals!

That's why I love the Navis Primer so much, though our group had to modify the psychic trials to basically play round robin - starting with the navigator, then rotating through the rest of the group (I.E, the first psychic encounter is dealt with by the navigator, the second by the person to the navigator's right, then their right, and their right and so on.)

The downside, of course, was the 2 hour Warp jaunt that...again, ended with the giant demon face punching that killed half my bridge officers and 9,600 ratings.

But, hey, if your players have to SERIOUSLY consider going into the Warp as opposed to toughing it out, then that means the really interesting and fun rules involving morale, crew, and supply crop up!

Worth a shot, at least.

EDIT: Oh, also, all this stuff? Repairing in orbit over gas giants and giving the crew their three weeks of vacation on a oceanic planet, and such?

That eats up time. It lets the players grow old and train, and catch their breath, and roleplay. AND, it means their crew eats up their victuals, and gets everyone a step closer to scurvy!

In other words, THERE'S NO DOWNSIDE...FOR THE GM!

I was thinking of:
While in combat, if morale =< 70, roll a test a "morale" test and if the test fails a random comment in the ship will not function that turn as efficiency drops unless there is a PC there (which can solve the issue with a challenging Intimidate or Command test).

Errant I think your 50/60/70/80 is really harsh alright. If I was to go that route, I'd only drop it a little bit. incompetent at say... 75 80. competent at 80 95, above that at 100. or better yet have the morale depend on where the crew is obtained, how factions they came from feel about the RT etc. but I do like the keeping it at 100 and having each morale affecting thing affect harder. maybe x3 like stated earlier but more relative to the reason of the drop. almost completely remove the numbering system and keep it in your head. give the players an arbitrary number close to what your feelings of the crew currently are etc.

I'm actually having a hard time with this myself. what with the party not really caring about their crew, basically considering them more cogs and wires in the ship waiting to be used. NPC officers personifying that morale helps when you can get it in there

Firstly, are you not using the expanded "NPC Starships" rules? These allow for Orders that can replicate things like Flank Speed (although NPCs can perform Extended Actions anyway) but also suggest Morale/Population loss limits before they surrender or flee.

Secondly, I don't understand how your players are staying so well-supplied. Let's say they're heading to an unexplored system... Port to drop point is around a month, then say a month in the warp to cross half a sector, then another month into the system once you jump back to realspace - that's half their supplies gone and only a 1 in 10 chance that the system has a habitable planet to let them restock. So, what, they immediately spend another three months returning to port? Not exactly living up to the spirit of the Warrant of Trade... As Zoombie said, it shouldn't be 'we go back to port', 'okay, you're there', it should be a long, worrying trip - especially with low Morale.

Finally, I'm highly dubious about 'stacking' Luxury Passenger quarters; I know they aren't marked as such but I'd only allow one per ship - once you have luxury quarters, you have luxury quarters. Same with Barracks or Cargo Holds.

I'm fine with stacking Luxury Passenger Quarters. The logic there being that you're giving over even more precious ship space to extravagant luxury that the average crew member on the ship is never going to receive. The more quarters you allocate, a few more people can live in luxury at the expense of the remaining tens of thousands being even more cramped.

Yeah, fair point. I was just thinking of them as an upgrade rather than a 'component'.

Well my players are obsessed with capturing any human vessels they can get their grubby little hands on. So morale is actually important for the purposes of who wins when ships are hooked up and duking it out. Besides that it doesn't often come up for me. You'd have to GM fiat a warp storm, which with this game I would say is totally fair game. There's warp storms all over, and in the expanse that goes triple. Of course you're going to get stranded sometimes.

Well my players are obsessed with capturing any human vessels they can get their grubby little hands on. So morale is actually important for the purposes of who wins when ships are hooked up and duking it out. Besides that it doesn't often come up for me. You'd have to GM fiat a warp storm, which with this game I would say is totally fair game. There's warp storms all over, and in the expanse that goes triple. Of course you're going to get stranded sometimes.

Fiat? Based on some stuff in Navis Primer, the GM might have as little say as to the surgence of a warp storm as the players.

That is indeed true, if you use those rules. You don't really have to contrive a reason to get them lost, they'll do it all on their own.