I am posting this here and not in the BC forums, since it seems more appropriate.

My players have recently acquired a barely space-worthy light cruiser and they need both resources to sell off or to barter with and crew. The thing is, they have 2000 renegade Skitarii backing them ... Don't ask, long story. And they are trying to decide on where to go from here.

Where could they go, to get at least some starting capital? Could they even effectively raid a small colony or agri world? And what of possible recruits? They can't rely on slaves, when they hardly have any crew to keep them in check. I could really use all the help you guys can offer ... Thanks to my job, I don't have nearly as much time to think about Warhammer as I used to.

1. Raiding isolated colonies and salvage.

2. They could, if they put their minds to it.

3. My mistake, slave labour should be ok, as long as they don't overextend.

EDIT: I should also mention, that they posses and have enough space for 2 Arvus Lighters and 17 Gun Cutters. They also have a very large hole in their ship, that they can't fix by themselves.

EDIT 2: I forgot to mention, they are hoping to build a Manufactorum on their ship, to be able to repair armour and weapons more easily, as well as perhaps produce equipment in small quantities. My question here is, what kind of limits does a Manufactorum have? Battlefleet Koronus is not much help on the subject. So how much equipment could they produce, at what cost and would it be faster than following standard crafting rules?

Sorry for all the questions, I just really need help here. I can put something together on my own, but would prefer, to have a different perspective on things.

Cold trading, Transporting, Mercenary work, bounty hunting, escort, participating in a crusade, shipping pilgrims, blackmaling a colony (pay up or eat macrocannon!), asteroid mining, treasure hunting.

They could power down close to a well trafficed shipping lane, activate their emergwncy broadcast and wait for someone greedy enough to check them out. That big hole in the side would provide nice camouflage.

Thanks, but half of those aren't even possible with 4% of the crew, 1 working weapons battery and 15 hull points.

Then their best bet is to strip it, sell it off, buy a smaller ship from the parts and run with it from there. Sorry, but they're in deep dung unless you fudge it a little.

Wolfhellm, you've started a non-standard campaign with no experience running a standard campaign under your belt. What you've already said raised several red flags. I can come up with ways for you to run your campaign, but I'd be writing a book.

Instead, I'm going to cop out and advise you to start a standard campaign.

Wolfhellm, you've started a non-standard campaign with no experience running a standard campaign under your belt. What you've already said raised several red flags. I can come up with ways for you to run your campaign, but I'd be writing a book.

Instead, I'm going to cop out and advise you to start a standard campaign.

This campaign has been running for well over 20 sessions and only in the past 3 have they claimed the ship, cleaned up the mutant infestation and then spent 2 sessions RPing on the ship, pondering mostly what to do and scrounging for resources. The truly hard part, is getting the players to understand the scale of the game, when they are used mostly to DnD and WFRP ... And even though they played similar things before, nothing compares to the massive scale of WH40K.

I have checked through the books and can cross the Manufactorum out of my questions. My problem was due to an oversight on my part. And don't worry, I'm not asking due to a lack of experience, but simply to gain a different perspective on things, since I'm just one person in the end and can't think of everything.

But one thing is true, this is the first campaign, that I'm running, where I didn't want to shoot myself, because of a power-tripping player, either a mage or psyker, ruining everyone's fun, before getting kicked after a few sessions.

Though I am considering as many options as possible, but I don't really have high hopes, that they'll be able to keep the ship. Though as always, I'll give them a completely realistic chance and so have to prepare for that possibility.

And yeah ... Reading my first post now ... I really came off as confused and lost. Sorry about that, I wasn't really thinking, what I was writing.

Then you either need to fudge it, give them an opportunity to repair and get the ship running somehow, perhaps they direct the ship to a scrapping yard or debris field, salvaging it for parts and repairing the ship.

Flying the ship on cold running shouldn't cause too many problems provided the enginearium and gellar field are intact. From there you can get them to get it operational. Not pretty, but operational, and then they can run off into one of the expanses and work to survive.

They might need to "Jabba the Hutt" this up a bit, and go find some big cheese in their circles, and scrape for starting resources from them, in return for a large portion of gains collected. For a little while, they might feel owned, and they will be, but once the ship is more up and running, and they have a crew, some experience, and hopefully some profit under their belts, they'll have some good standing, and then they can buy their way out, or run for it; these don't catch me as the most honest, decent, abiding people in the Expanse, though that might just be because you mentioned the BC forum. Right now, they seem to need a benefactor who will believe they are pulling all the strings, and then they'll get what they need, and alter the arrangement.

They might need to "Jabba the Hutt" this up a bit, and go find some big cheese in their circles, and scrape for starting resources from them, in return for a large portion of gains collected.

That's actually a good idea. There is a a guy, who would be interested in helping them, for a bit, since they have knowledge on his rival's whereabouts and at least partial information on his military assets. I forgot he even existed, since he was just on paper and never came into the game.

Most light cruisers have crews that are in the 60,000 range for crew.

They might need to "Jabba the Hutt" this up a bit, and go find some big cheese in their circles, and scrape for starting resources from them, in return for a large portion of gains collected. For a little while, they might feel owned, and they will be, but once the ship is more up and running, and they have a crew, some experience, and hopefully some profit under their belts, they'll have some good standing, and then they can buy their way out, or run for it; these don't catch me as the most honest, decent, abiding people in the Expanse, though that might just be because you mentioned the BC forum. Right now, they seem to need a benefactor who will believe they are pulling all the strings, and then they'll get what they need, and alter the arrangement.

Most light cruisers have crews that are in the 60,000 range for crew.

Well, if you feel up for the challenge then best of luck to you.

Crew can be had pretty easily, though they'd be ill-trained and probably mutinous. Good crew is not so easy to come by. There are plenty of places to hole up and repair. Hull points are about the easiest thing to fix on a beat-up ship. Then it boils down to fixing or replacing broken or destroyed components.

The easiest part for you will probably be coming up with adventures for them to increase their PF and ways for you to take it back away (the Misfortunes Table). Published adventures are great sources of ideas, even if most of us here have problems with most of the adventures. I mine them for ideas and then re-use them as background flavor.

Maybe the hardest part is coming up with a starting PF for your party, but others have already floated ideas on that.

press gangs are a way to get crew.