Hi there. This is my first time posting on these forums, since I couldn't find an answer anywhere else.

I'm GMing a Black Crusade campaign, where things went a bit out of hand and long story short, my players now have a hardly-working light cruiser at their command. They are a paranoid bunch, mostly because we've all played various RPGs for the past 10-15 years and have our fair share of experiances with ambushes, traps and evil GMs. To keep themselves from getting ambushed by hidden ships, they were thinking about constantly running active augury sweeps ... The thing is, this sounds fairly reasonable, but it would basically light them up like a forest fire in the night. My question is, are there any other negative effects of that? Any reason, that they couldn't run active scans? Or any reasonable counter-argument whatsoever?

They're practically broadcasting "We're here attack us", if their ship is in a bad shape an there more than one enemy in system. I'd say its a bad idea. What if an imperial patrol shows up half-dozen or so raiders vs. lame-duck cruiser better start praying what vile power they serve. If they run silent they might avoid combat entirely (time to evoke submarine combat feeling).

--At0miclich

They're practically broadcasting "We're here attack us", if their ship is in a bad shape an there more than one enemy in system. I'd say its a bad idea. What if an imperial patrol shows up half-dozen or so raiders vs. lame-duck cruiser better start praying what vile power they serve. If they run silent they might avoid combat entirely (time to evoke submarine combat feeling).

--At0miclich

Good enough, thanks.

The thing is, they aren't technically full-blown heretics ... They're still renegades, not really paying any heed to the Dark Gods. Though I am slowly nudging them into worship, one little trinket, one little piece of advice and one little dark whisper at a time. I must say, those two are probably the best players I ever had the pleasure of GMing for.

But back to the topic at hand. Any ideas, how I could convert profit factor into Black Crusade terms, or how to handle large scale acquisition outside of RT?

I haven't played or looked at the book for BC in over a year, but IIRC the infamy system is virtually identical to the Profit Factor system. It seems like you should be able to just port it over. Alternatively, you could give them Profit Factor on a separate track, which could lead potentially interesting conflicts of interest. (if we kill them, we gain infamy, but if we capture it we gain Profit...)

Also i belive active augury is directional (small cone), takes half-an-hour per 'section' and is not particularly long ranged (20 VU or so). A smart raider would silent run until they were 21-25 VU away, wait for the active scan to pass their direction, then dart in the rest of the way to assault them. Most raiders can go from 25 VU to firing distance in a single round.

I haven't played or looked at the book for BC in over a year, but IIRC the infamy system is virtually identical to the Profit Factor system. It seems like you should be able to just port it over. Alternatively, you could give them Profit Factor on a separate track, which could lead potentially interesting conflicts of interest. (if we kill them, we gain infamy, but if we capture it we gain Profit...)

Also i belive active augury is directional (small cone), takes half-an-hour per 'section' and is not particularly long ranged (20 VU or so). A smart raider would silent run until they were 21-25 VU away, wait for the active scan to pass their direction, then dart in the rest of the way to assault them. Most raiders can go from 25 VU to firing distance in a single round.

Active augury can also be increased in range by 5 VU per DoS. I'm looking at the core book right now and it seems it's omni-directional. Focused Augury is directional.

The real problem is, they have some infamy, but almost no resources, so I'll have to keep a seperate track of those. Another issue however is, how to even get resources, or profit factor in the first place. They have 2000 people backing them currently, who were, just as the players, abandoned by their employer/warlord. They mostly hold together now, 'cause they have no other choice on the matter, if they want to survive ... Tensions are high.

Ah, focused was what I was thinking. Well, other than the need to make an average of 1344 rolls per system visited, and potentially burning out their Augury array that isn't designed for that kind of workload, and as At0 noted, screaming "I am here!" to the system. There's nothing really stopping them.

Personally, I'd hit them with deadfall torpedos, deadfall bomber and blitz-raiders. It'll be really easy for anyone to track their position and anticipate where they're going to fly through.

It's entirely possible they don't have a source of Profit Factor. In that case they simply can't make large scale rolls (anything other than infamy rolls). That would mean restocking the ship requires making landfall and pilliging. Restoring crew requires slave-raids, etc. Just keeping the ship running becomes a constant threat and drive to the party.

It's entirely possible they don't have a source of Profit Factor. In that case they simply can't make large scale rolls (anything other than infamy rolls).

They are in the middle of not getting killed by a surprisingly merciful warlord at this moment, a rival of the one, who abandoned them. I was thinking, that he could become their benefactor of sorts, since they do share a common goal, which is WAY too long to write down now unless you want to know. They do plan on raiding a nerby agri-world, but that presents a whole new level of trouble. Thankfully the world is fairly isolated and would probably not be defended that well.

I should probably move to the GM forum for this. Thanks for the help guys.

Sounds like they're rogue traders, but without a Warrant of Trade, friendly port-of-call, docking privileges, lines of credit, etc. So as Quick has pointed out, they are in the perfect situation to become renegades, who with the proper pressures for being hunted felons, will most likely also become heretics, just to stay alive and operating, and the slippery slope is now traversed.

I love the trade-off idea on profit factor and infamy.

I'm also with Quick on the active augury. They are broadcasting their position. And, they can't be up 24/7 so at some point they will have to rely on their crew rating. Crew rating is something I leave mutable in games, but the players have to really focus on it to raise it...or survive many battles.

I'm not with Quick so much on the ambushes. While that would be the objective of probably any group that wanted to attack your players, silent running doesn't seem so easy to pull off. Maneuver is almost impossible so you'd have to make a precisely correct long-term navigation decision to intercept. Course corrections are easy to spot in the absence of gravity, vectored travel being what it is (yeah, I know we don't actually maneuver that way...no one wants to do the math, but I still assume it in strategic movement)