So I decided to come up with a starting ship for a high SP and super low PF game. The idea is that the PC's dynasty has been around for a very long time , but has has hit all but rock bottom. Therefore while they are starting in a grand cruiser, many of the parts are of poor quality, or even none functional.

The story behind this particular ship " Hateful embrace " is that as time got leaner and leaner, the former holders of the dynasty started to prey upon weaker ships, not for their cargo, but the ships themselves. Disabling their prey, then salvaging what components they could to sell.

While the ship seems like a deathtrap for those cursed to be aboard, not all of the ship is a trash heap, and there are several archiotech components aboard.

I gave the ship the planet bound for a millennium, to represent both the fact that it is an ancient ship with rare components, but also to decrease it's hull rating to show how it has been poorly maintained.

To add up the SPs i just went straight down the right side of the chart in ITS, to determine what components where non-functional i rolled a 25% chance for each component. Also reduced crew rating to 20

In the end this ship would cause the party to be at only 12 PF ( it came out to -10 SPs, so trading PF for SP 1 to 1)

I figure there is more than enough room to grow the ship, while not completely leaving the party hamstrung. , If the poor modifiers where removed it would recover 2 more power and 5 space. Would also recover 19 moral.

PF won't matter for this group... they can just bully/fancy their way through endeavors.

So... survey says... no.

I'm nota fan of GM tinkering with the PC's ship, its another character for them, the GM should make sure they stay within the boundaries of the rules. but they should let the PC's decide their ship.

Had a GM randomly tinker with one of my vessels before. I was displeased to see something I have lovingly crafted and spent hours agonising over rules books for Flavourful components that were in keeping with the dynasty only to have the GM come along and go "hmm 10 less hull points and 5 less armour."

Not a good way to start a campaign. Pissing off the Explorator. >_>

Let the PC's build their home. GM's can guide and suggest, but in the end its another character. just one that all the PC's have a say in.

if you Players are happy to let you do so, amazing. I would never do that however.

I'm nota fan of GM tinkering with the PC's ship, its another character for them, the GM should make sure they stay within the boundaries of the rules. but they should let the PC's decide their ship.

Had a GM randomly tinker with one of my vessels before. I was displeased to see something I have lovingly crafted and spent hours agonising over rules books for Flavourful components that were in keeping with the dynasty only to have the GM come along and go "hmm 10 less hull points and 5 less armour."

Not a good way to start a campaign. Pissing off the Explorator. >_>

Let the PC's build their home. GM's can guide and suggest, but in the end its another character. just one that all the PC's have a say in.

if you Players are happy to let you do so, amazing. I would never do that however.

This. PCs only have agency over a limited part of the game world (their characters and in case of Rogue Trader their ship). Tinkering with it, unless you've talked it through beforehand with your group, might incite less than friendly reactions. Think of it a bit like this: if you played in a game, would you be cool if the GM selected your starting class and stats instead of yourself? A ship in RT is more of a group character than possession IMO.

PF won't matter for this group... they can just bully/fancy their way through endeavors.

So... survey says... no.

If you allow the players to bully their way through most problems with just a rusty Grand Cruiser then you are taking it easy on them.

The only thing they're going to bully realistically is other ships (cruisers and transports, since frigates and raiders can just leg it out of range and laugh), which makes sense . You ahve a ship built to be good at ship-to-ship combat, it makes sense that it is. Even so, if you have to make good of your threats, even a cruiser will make a dent in your ship, that you lack the PF to repair properly. Also, soner or alter you will run out of torpedoes and have a hard time replacing them. If anyone thinks it's a good idea to try to bully a shipyard into repairing/resupplying you with torps, I recommend reading 'Fallen Angels'.

Planets? Your best bet is to bluff that you have Cyclonic Torpedoes on board. If the bluff gets called though, you're pretty much screwed. You lack a Teleportarium to make a lightning strike vs the planet's government and you lack the Barracks and Landing Bays to land a sizable force. You lack Bombardment Cannons. Regular Torpedoes (can you even use them vs. a planet?) will run out quickly, so all you're left with is the Lance and the Hecutors. The lance can do precision strikes, but unless you have enough information to select viable targets. The Hecutors I expect to be rather ineffective vs. a planet. For one, it's debatable how well does the plasma shot take atmospheric reentry. Secondly, I assume macrocannons use different (HE) rounds for planetary bombardment. A round designed to penetrate voidship armor will likely just embed itself several dozens of meters underground and blow up there. Even so, I doubt a single ship with macrocannons can bully a world into submission.

Starting with a large combat ship (Even if it's in a bad condition) also opens up a different kind of adventures to pursue: fighting Orks, Rak'Gol, Dark Eldar or Chaos raiders.

I agree with the above 100%, i would never force this ship on a party. But assuming that the party agreed with starting off with this ship, what would be a good match to demonstrate just how under powered they are ( assuming there is no tech-priest PC to repair all the components)

Given that their crew is largely incompetent (rating 20 and lacking the usual stuff to make it better), I'd start with anything that needs a skill one of the PCs don't have.

Also, what effect do these 'damaged' components have? I'm not familiar to what rule you're referring to here.

One of the character concepts I've long wanted to run with is that of a Rogue Trader whose ancestor went insane and burned through the entirety of the dynasties profit factor having an amazing ship built... the most amazing flagship for any dynasty ever.

Unfortunately at the end of the ancestor's 300(ish) year lifespan the flagship is only partly complete. The hull is all done and it has all the essential components (best quality archotech of course) but it has only the bare minimum of the supplemental components... and of course the dynasty has a profit factor of zero.

I never worked out if it would be possible to run a game where you have one of the best hulls in the known universe and some incredibly choice components but no money/contacts to keep yourself safe and only limited weapons for defending yourself. Especially in grim darkness of 40k.

One of the character concepts I've long wanted to run with is that of a Rogue Trader whose ancestor went insane and burned through the entirety of the dynasties profit factor having an amazing ship built... the most amazing flagship for any dynasty ever.

Unfortunately at the end of the ancestor's 300(ish) year lifespan the flagship is only partly complete. The hull is all done and it has all the essential components (best quality archotech of course) but it has only the bare minimum of the supplemental components... and of course the dynasty has a profit factor of zero.

I never worked out if it would be possible to run a game where you have one of the best hulls in the known universe and some incredibly choice components but no money/contacts to keep yourself safe and only limited weapons for defending yourself. Especially in grim darkness of 40k.

Well that's interesting. But if you truly want a ship that can do everything, you'll probably need some homebrew components. Also remember that, even without archeotech, there's things that can go above 'best quality'. Personally, I consider a Strike Cruiser probably the 'best' ship. If it's good enough for Astartes, Arbites, and Inquisition, it's probably the best in the Imperium. Give it (using mathammer rules), three Best/Finely Wrought/Cruel Ryza Plasma Batteries (one as the 'lance', with damage/range, two as the 'macro', with strength/range, perhaps. Maybe crit for one of those?), with best quality targeting matrix and turbo-weapon batteries, and you don't NEED a Lance...

Well that's interesting. But if you truly want a ship that can do everything, you'll probably need some homebrew components. Also remember that, even without archeotech, there's things that can go above 'best quality'. Personally, I consider a Strike Cruiser probably the 'best' ship. If it's good enough for Astartes, Arbites, and Inquisition, it's probably the best in the Imperium. Give it (using mathammer rules), three Best/Finely Wrought/Cruel Ryza Plasma Batteries (one as the 'lance', with damage/range, two as the 'macro', with strength/crit), with best quality targeting matrix and turbo-weapon batteries, and you don't NEED a Lance...

Perhaps a homebrew hull with special rules like the Goliath (Powered by Stars) and perhaps a Secondary Power Genetorium like the Universe but the existing components should be by the book... and mostly absent. Those weapons seem like they'd be good choices for an end goal but the point would be to start out terribly outgunned and with a lot of potential (and a prize worth taking) and see if we're smart enough to hold onto the Fractured Legacy and can work our way up to it's potential.

If you've used 100 ship points on a ship, you WON'T be undergunned.

One of the guns might be MISSING, but there will be at least one existing gun that is awesome!

In the real world people don't choose their own name, for the most part; but they do in games. The same thing goes for the ship. The RT inherits it, so gets no choice in it; but the game allows for it, so I'd give it to them. Good games are about interesting choices, and the starting ship is a buttload of interesting choices.

Games are about playing the guy you want to be, and for a RT, who he is includes the ship.

From my experience, the more choice the players have in building their characters, the happier they are.

The only way I'm a fan of the GM building the party's ship, and even it is a bit ham-fisted, would be to say "this is what you guy's start with. This clunker is what your father spent a century striking out across the Expanse in, and this is what he left you, along with the Warrant." Then, OoP, the GM says "okay, so you guys should get an idea of what ship you want, and maybe it'll be your first capture, or I'll work into the game how you come across it, and perhaps move your flag there." If you somehow need to get started quickly, but you need a ready ship, that's about it. Otherwise, let the players do it, or they'll effort to just steal/commandeer a "better" ship, and ditch the one you gave them, that they don't like. If you have to sweeten the clunker pot with some nice archeotech bits, that also happen to be too big to move to whatever other ship the grab, something is wrong.

If you've used 100 ship points on a ship, you WON'T be undergunned.

One of the guns might be MISSING, but there will be at least one existing gun that is awesome!

I think we're expressing two slightly different ideas. The concept I'm thinking of would be more along the lines of how do I spend all my ship points and still have as much empty space for future upgrades on my ship as possible? Remember the idea is that the ancestor went insane. Perhaps the ancestor always planned to finish the ship and get it to it's full potential but he just didn't live long enough.

For instance things like superior damage control, Cogitator Interlink, micro-defence grid etc... Things that enhance the ship itself without loading up on components that either make it an effective war machine or a tool for grinding profit factor.

The point is to make a ship that has the potential to be amazing but right now isn't. Sure it should have one weapon but given that most ships have at least one void shield one weapon should be largely irreverent.

I'm nota fan of GM tinkering with the PC's ship, its another character for them, the GM should make sure they stay within the boundaries of the rules. but they should let the PC's decide their ship.

Had a GM randomly tinker with one of my vessels before. I was displeased to see something I have lovingly crafted and spent hours agonising over rules books for Flavourful components that were in keeping with the dynasty only to have the GM come along and go "hmm 10 less hull points and 5 less armour."

Not a good way to start a campaign. Pissing off the Explorator. >_>

Let the PC's build their home. GM's can guide and suggest, but in the end its another character. just one that all the PC's have a say in.

if you Players are happy to let you do so, amazing. I would never do that however.

I agree, to an extent. I cap what the players are allowed to start with - generally, never anything above a Light Cruiser. What they do with it from there is up to them. The only components I limit are xenotech and archeotech.

I honestly don't see this one as much of a junker. It has three archeotech components, extremely powerful primary components and though things are "damaged", that's just about a month's work for a decent starting Explorator to fix up.

I would make this ship really look like it's been through the ringer. Rather than damage it, take a good starting build and then imagine the crew has been through some hard times and had to make sub-optimal choices in order to keep their ship going. Their shields are now only a Dual Void Array. Their weapons are asymmetrical (this drives people crazy) because it was that or have an unprotected side. There's a section of the ship that's just the exploded remnants of a Munitorum, and that space can't be reclaimed until they manage to safely fix it and there's the danger of a few unexploded macrocannon shells just waiting to make the situation worse.

I started the game I GMed in a similar way (Cruiser), with the idea that the last couple Rogue Traders had been slowly stripping and selling off the ships and components to pay for their lifestyle. Technically, they started the game with no weapons, though I for the first adventure I said the Navy was in the process of removing the prow batteries, and if they were quick they might be able to negotiate it down. They ended up going to have to 'spend beyond their means' to get them to leave the cannons they hadn't removed yet, dropping their PF by 5 until they could come up with the money to pay off the Navy for the guns, leaving them with a cruiser with the worst of every critical component (save for bridge) and a single thunderstrike battery equivalent for defense.

To help the idea of it being a 'lost flagship of fabulous technology' (which was part of the backstory) I did work with the players to select a couple of Archotech critical components 'ill maintained' or 'partly removed' and therefore counting as the lower versions, letting the Explorers just come up with the PF to 'buy' the replacement parts to get them up and running to full capacity, rather than having to hunt down an Archotech Life Support system or the like.

I think it depends on the group - I play with people who really just want to roll some dice and don't read the rule book unless they have to. I *have* to give them a ship of some kind and then let them figure out what they really want.

Not very combat-effective Repulsive. Weapon ranges are all different. Prow torpedo tubes will be hard to fill with torpedoes given low PF. You will routinely get in trouble during warp travel with your combination of fast-but-dangerous warpdrive and poor-but-dangerous gellar field - and by "get in trouble" I mean daemons getting onboard, crewmen assailed by nightmares, plagues and madness, and ship itself getting hull damage. With morale already far from normal it is a disaster waiting to happen. "Hit me with everything you got"-pattern augur array is also dangerous.

In general, a single cobra-class torpedo boat making good use of evasive maneuvers (which do not affect torpedo guidance), virus/melta torps (which are easier to buy for low-SP captain), your poor crew rating (which is used when shooting down torpedoes) and superior agility can wreck this repulsive any day.

Not very combat-effective Repulsive. Weapon ranges are all different. Prow torpedo tubes will be hard to fill with torpedoes given low PF. You will routinely get in trouble during warp travel with your combination of fast-but-dangerous warpdrive and poor-but-dangerous gellar field - and by "get in trouble" I mean daemons getting onboard, crewmen assailed by nightmares, plagues and madness, and ship itself getting hull damage. With morale already far from normal it is a disaster waiting to happen. "Hit me with everything you got"-pattern augur array is also dangerous.

In general, a single cobra-class torpedo boat making good use of evasive maneuvers (which do not affect torpedo guidance), virus/melta torps (which are easier to buy for low-SP captain), your poor crew rating (which is used when shooting down torpedoes) and superior agility can wreck this repulsive any day.

That was somewhat the point. oh and you forgot the -5 maneuverability penalty from having a salvage system aboard.