Can you guys see any problem with letting my players temporarily empty half their Extended Supply Vaults and fill them with cargo? They haven't got a dedicated hold on their CL but I don't want to close off Trade Endeavours entirely.

I did some maths (based on WW2 Japanese army supplies) which indicated the total amount those vaults could hold is somewhere around 110,000 tons. Obviously tons aren't a measure of volume but does 55,000 tons sound reasonable for a cargo hold - ie, how would it compare to a Main Cargo Hold?

Ta.

Main Cargo Holds aren't uniform. Well, they are uniform in that they all take up the same number of spaces, but that then varies depending on the ship it goes into. A MCH is about 1/8 the volume of a frigate, but only 1/16 the volume of a galleon, but the galleon has more than ten times the interior space of the frigate.

For what it's worth, a single cargo hold in the galleon (it has 2) can hold over 100 USS Carl Vinsons, and possibly as many as 400 (ship height being somewhat indeterminate, both for the galleon and the Carl Vinson).

Hey, you do what you want in your campaign. I'd point out to my players that they are wanting a ship component to act as 2 ship components, depending on the circumstances they find themselves in. Is a MCH just an big open space, or does it have container racks full of containers (empty and/or full), cranes, landing pads, and all sorts of assorted mega-warehousing equipment? What were they thinking when they installed Extended Supply Vaults? I'm guessing they perceived a greater and more concrete advantage to that component than the unknown advantage a cargo component would bring. Now I'm guessing they think otherwise.

Hey, there's a skill for this. It's called Trade (Shipwright). Does someone have it? If so, have them modify the ship. It might take weeks, months, or years, depending on the available facilities, of course. In the end, I'd let them do it, but there just has to be consequences. Maybe without the correct facilities the improvised cargo hold has a much lower capacity, meaning it doesnt give the same bonus a MCH would give, say +50-75 AP instead of 125. That seems a reasonable penalty. There might be other aspects I'm not considering.

I'm a bit amused over the notion of Japanese supplies in WWII. Supplies were something they were notoriously short of, so I'd think the numbers are deficient. I can give you a rule-of-thumb for supplies on WWII. Divisions were logistical formations. Operational formations were smaller, regiments and brigades. US, UK, and German infantry divisions at full TO&E strength ate up 100 tons of supplies per day when operating on the offensive, while mechanized formations ate up 150 tons per day, the extra being POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants). I specified national formations because other countries had varied formations (e.g. a Soviet corps was closer in size to a western division).

Actually, getting my players to even create their characters was like pulling teeth and took six months; I designed the ship to save myself another half-year of harassing them. As for the idea to convert half their Vaults to a Hold, that was entirely mine, but I could see it coming up!

I deliberately based my calculations on the Japanese army's desired supply volume, as they had notably lower supposed-requirements than other forces and I figured a voidship isn't exactly a holiday camp. My figures allow for 4.6 kg of supplies per man per day for a year, and mean that a Baum lifter holds exactly one day's supplies for the whole 65,000 crew, at 300 tons. I have no doubt that they're barely ballpark (I've just now realised ESV include ship's spares) but they work for me

I don't use AP for ship components, so there's that.

And I figure supply vaults to be a combination of many different facilities - large holds for dry goods and spares, vast cisterns for fresh water, huge but low spaces for meat animals - which would obviously affect what could be done with them, but I figure they'd still need cranes and racks and so forth; I can't see why 'storing crates of cargo' would be much different to 'storing crates of supplies'.

I was trying to feel out the general opinion and see if there were any unintended consequences I had overlooked.

Yeesh. I spent over a year developing my current campaign. My players drew up their characters in a single 4-hour online session.

I still think the conversion wouldn't be efficient. Cargo containers are standardized, and you pointed out that the vaults have varied storage facilities. Either there's a huge tear-out and remodelling job coming, which is pretty much Trade (Shipwright), or there's a lot of lost space. Other than that, I don't see any problems. It would happen at a shipyard in weeks.

I'm running an open sandbox so I used the time to grok the FFG setting. I have a gazillion ideas for plots but I want to encourage the sort of play you mentioned in another thread - they bring Endeavours, or at least their seeds, to me.

They've got 10 space left so they could install a separate hold, which I guess is what they'll have to do for any significant haulage. I'm glad I left them that much, I suspect that space will see a cycle of components depending on the task at hand

My players in past campaigns have found Trade (Shipwright) to be an indispensable skill. The Void Master doesn't get it until a late rank, and the Explorator doesn't get it at all (IIRC). It's a great elite advance buy, either way...get it early.

I'll poke my cogboy.