So, a Rogue Trader can have a almost anything they want, circumstances willing, including even worlds. I know that some of the bigger personalities, such as Winterscale and Chorda, might very well own part of, or entire worlds, depending on what of them is valuable, but what sort of places are really worth the effort? In your games, what planets proved to be worth claiming in your own name?

I have two Rogue Traders who I have fleshed out, Edric Korvallus and Aedan Qel-Drake, and each owns at least a small handful of worlds, of note. The thing is, they both turned out to be "volcanic, mining worlds." As I think on that, what is the value of them? Almost everything in 40k is either made of adamantium or cardboard, so other than some decorative gold, who will use any granite, basalt, or whatever other rocks your mineral world is rich with? And even if you do have it, what's to stop the AdMech, the only people likely qualified to make much out of it, from just taking the source, and not having to pay you? While I certainly like my Mustafar-knockoffs, and for Qel-Drake, I'm actually obligated to keep it thus, for story reasons, what might they be doing with the resources?

To sum up, if you are going to claim a world for your dynasty, what sort of ones are you interested in, that both have something worth it, but also not so well defended as to repel you in your efforts (say Vaporious, or certainly Zayth), or having something the AdMech will just seize, because they can?

Well the people who are going to want stone and the like are like most things, rich people who want to say they paid to have this floor shipped in from a far of dangerous world to impress the rivals and one up them so there are always markets for anything and everything. Now the key with the AdMec is showing that it is easier and more efficient to just have you do it and buy it off of you then go through the whole effort of taking and running it themselves. While they are capable of running anything they want themselves they are probably not interested in running every iron mine in the IOM as it would ultimately weaken them so give them a good enough reaosn and they will more often then not leave you to your work.

The Imperium has many more industrial hive worlds than Mechanicus forge worlds. It doesn't seem unlikely that most planets worth colonizing would fit that bill. Given the way the charts work in Stars of Iniquity or the GMs Guide it's also likely that the system has other oddities worth harvesting, maybe xenotech or archaeotech ruins. They all seem profitable. Even a cold uninhabitable moon orbiting a gas giant, but with huge amounts of hydrocarbons, could prove an interesting agri-world. Of course, you'd need to import a space station.

To sum up, if you are going to claim a world for your dynasty, what sort of ones are you interested in, that both have something worth it, but also not so well defended as to repel you in your efforts (say Vaporious, or certainly Zayth), or having something the AdMech will just seize, because they can?

The best way I can think of to stop the AdMech from just taking your mining planets is to sell the idea that it just isn't worth the effort. For example, saying that the planet has a population of feral orks that requires security measures and difficult raids to assult their strongholds to avoid harming profitable veins of resources is generally enough to make them consider if it is worth trying to run the place themselves or just benefit off the planet without having to deal with the planet itself by buying off of you.

Orks do get everywhere after all...

The question generated enough curiosity in me to go lookup world types in the Imperium of Man. There are sooo many ways you could turn a world profitable. I'll skip the world types that are delineated by their technology (feudal, feral). A feral world might also be a death world, or a potential agricultural world or industrial world.

A death world might at first seem unprofitable, but since some of the Imperium's finest troops come from such places, any population already there might be a profitable export in the form of mercenaries. Then you have to consider the things that cause it to be defined as a death world, since the flora and fauna might be exploitable resources, in the form of arena contestants, pharmaceuticals, furs, or other specialty luxury goods.

Ecclesiarchy worlds can be developed from scratch in frontier regions. Maybe an Imperial saint once visited the place. You can make it into a pilgrimage site. Maybe your Dynasty throws their influence behind others trying to see someone in contention declared a saint so that world you discovered can be transformed into a profitable shrine world.

Then there's the rare garden world. Sure, you might easily turn it into an agricultural world, but the profits might be higher if you turned it into a pleasure world for the adjacent sector's effete elite.

Worlds with plentiful hydrocarbons are one of my favorites, and Saturn and Jupiter both have them in spades in their atmospheres. We usually see gas giants in 40k as sites of promethium refineries, but 40k tech probably has hive worlds being fed with bars of refined hydrocarbons. Seriously, imagine the number of traditional agri-worlds it would take to feed Necromunda. Hydrocarbons apparently rain down into lakes on Titan. Most scifi genres use these hydrocarbons as alternate fuel sources, but several through the decades also used them as food sources.

Now I never liked the differentiation between mining worlds and industrial worlds, but that's the geographic economist in me. It's just inefficient to transport resources from a mining world to an industrial world. Now industrial worlds that run out of resources might find it profitable to continue supplying their own needs with imported resources, but they aren't going to compete on a galactic scale. Mining worlds will all eventually become industrial worlds, and their exports will become manufactured goods, but sure, you can make the argument that in their early stages they will be exporting resources until they accumulate the capital necessary to build their own industry.

Then there's the waste worlds and penal worlds. Both are repositories of the Imperium's unwanted detritus. You should be able to make a profit administering them, but you need a supply, meaning you either need industrial, forge, and/or hive worlds in abundance.

Imperial worlds labelled by environment aren't useful for purposes of defining profit, though they would very well affect that profit. A desert world or ice world might be more expensive to colonize. The habs need environmental controls, possibly even sealed or even shielded, reducing PF, but they are still mining, industrial, agricultural (etc.) worlds.

In the final tally, the PF of any world is...(ready for this?) location, location, location. Many worlds can be useful, but are they correctly positioned within existing trade routes to be profitable? If not, can your dynasty swing the necessary traffic to add another trade route to the web of already existing trade routes? And then there's the question of stepping on other peoples' toes. Your goods hitting the market just put someone else out of business, unless that sector, sub-sector, or what have you is devloped enough to handle the extra traffic.

You can throw virtually any kind of planet and/or system in front of your players that could prove profitable. Of course, your players might not be economists or financial experts and don't see the potential in the treasure you've provided. That's where NPCs come in handy. Most dynasties are going to have expert bean-counters in their employ. Let them explain the details to your PCs and see if they want to run with it.

And btw, I don't see the Ad Mech grabbing up planets will-nilly from dynasties. Colonies cost a lot to develop and defend. The explorator fleets were in the Expanse a long time before your players' dynasty was. How do the players keep finding systems those Explorator fleets didn't?

Also just out of curiosity can the AdMech come in and just take a planet you've claimed for yourself outside of Imperial claimed space?

The answer might very well be yes but I would have thought the Warrant of Trade would have been good protection against this?

Well the admech is not actually part of the imperium, more of a necessary ally. That said, your Warrant would, in my opinion, allow you to tell the cogboys to eff off. Whether they listen or not is a matter of how powerful you are: what would be the consequences for letting the madman keep his world versus invoking his wrath? Also when I think about it, a world laid claim by a Rogue Trader is in effect a world of the Imperium of Man, not the Machine Cult. I don't think they could legally take from you to begin with, and if they do, bury them alive in the paperwork and ignore your compacts with them until they give it back.

Weeeelllll, I'd hate to get into a spat with the Ad Mech. There's a lot of people working on your ship that belong to the Ad Mech and if you upset them your ship might not work that much longer. But really, the Ad Mech has better things to do than mess with your piddly worlds.

Weeeelllll, I'd hate to get into a spat with the Ad Mech. There's a lot of people working on your ship that belong to the Ad Mech and if you upset them your ship might not work that much longer. But really, the Ad Mech has better things to do than mess with your piddly worlds.

Absolutely true.

Get into a dispute with the AdMech, and if you anger/offend them enough, they can pull effectively all your tech people off. They might shut things down safely before they leave, but if they don't, you either need to make nice with the AdMech in a hurry, or find sufficiently trained hereteks to replace them. Oh, and if the AdMech is really unhappy with you, they might yank tech support for your entire Dynasty - and that's a quick route to being assassinated and having your successor present the AdMech with your head.

On the other hand ... the things the AdMech is likely to care enough about to break you/your Dynasty over ... a colony world probably isn't one of them, and those that are, the AdMech is likely to richly reward you for finding/recovering anyways. Except tech-heresy, that's not going to make the AdMech happy at all.

The AdMech might hire you to find and start establishing a colony for them, but that's a different issue.

I, too, would hesitate to anger the AdMech. I don't know if a ship in RT has the same thing the Lycurgos did, in Only War, but I would see the Machine Prayer of Auto-Annihilation (OW: No Surrender, p.110) putting a bad end to a potentially already crappy day, and it is painfully easy in OW, though probably just for plot purposes.

I think a world you claim would be a future-part of the Imperium, until more "official" leadership arrives, such as when the area becomes a Sector, and once that happens, your powers poof, too. This statement is at least my interpretation of things, where many of a Rogue traders powers are tenuous inside the Imperium, thus another reason to stay out, and keep adding to the Imperium's growth. Therefore, they can take it if they are strong enough, or you can hold it, if you are, and someday, maybe, the Imperium will actually collect it, and maybe the leaders will be your hand-picked reps, meaning you still benefit, like any high-up Calixis people who are also Rogue Traders, or related.

One does suppose that the AdMech, or several other organizations, could be placated with a good deal, especially as their "holding forces" are not so infinite, way out there.