Question about starship power usage

By player359820, in Rogue Trader

During starship construction, can you add more items than you have power available?

a ship would not use its warp drive all the time, only for warp travel. Therefore, why would that power always be allocated to the warp drives, when it could be allocated to retrothrusters or weaponry, or whatever else?

...and on a similar note (not wanting to hi-jack someone elses thread but also not wanting to start another one when the title of this one is basically spot on for my needs) are there rules for re-allocating power?

I know this isn't Star Trek and, hell, I wouldn't want it to be, but are you able to put "all power to engines!" or "transfer power to shields" and such, or are these covered in other ways?

My book was despatched on the 6th so I haven't had it as yet, and I'm sure this will all become aparrent in time, but until then just a simple yes or no will suit me just fine if anyone could oblige?

Many thanks in advance!

Remember though, the warp engine would constantly need power in order to keep it stable. An unstable warp engine would be.... not good.

But can you realocate power; and if so, can you add more components to a ship than can be all powered at once?

From how I read it, and general understanding of 40K technologies; It seems like your stuck with that concrete limit of power and unable to shift power as you want to. Star Treks technology was made for ease and was also not dominated by a machine spirit. Imperium ships were made by something that seems to despise any idea of humans ever having it easy.

And as previously stated, if the core lost power to keep it stable well... Character creation is not that hard

Well i dont know if it would could do it, but i would say it was a bad idear, when you got all you power used expet on you warp drive, and then out of no where comes a giant army of sneaky ork freeboterz, ofc any rogue trader with a "littel prowd" would take up the fight, but when suddenly you Void master yell that there is not just the 2 small raiders in front of you but also the giant flying space hulk behind you. Well okay then you think that we just take all the power from the weapons so our warp drive can set up, then you command you crew to do what you just was thinking, and all go as planned you take a turn to the warp, but you got the felling of something is wrong, when suddenly all power go off and you hear evil screams all over the ship..... Gellerfeilds need power to.......

>.<

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

During starship construction, can you add more items than you have power available?

a ship would not use its warp drive all the time, only for warp travel. Therefore, why would that power always be allocated to the warp drives, when it could be allocated to retrothrusters or weaponry, or whatever else?







I will stop using caps if you people start correcting your typo's.

I read more closely into the book, and you CAN NOT design a ship with non-powered components.

RT rulebook, Constructing a Starship, pg 193, top right paragraph, second line

"The sum total of all the Component's requirements may not exceed the Space provided by the hull, or power generated by the drive."

So, no. You cannot have components that in total draw more power than the drive generates.

Just for fun and dramtic affect, I would allow a vessel with enough hull space to carry components it can't actually power simultaneously, but I would make the ship correspondingly riddled with technical problems. Arcing power mains, constant shorts and surges, and flickering lights would be common as the overtaxed power-grid struggles to compensate for shifting voltages and amperages. This would be a classic "jury-rigged" vessel, and shifting power from the cargo bays to the guns would not be a simple press of a key, but rather a (challenging +0) Tech Use test for the engineer and his crew. Failure could result in serious reprecussionas as D5 systems suddenly power down. or a main blows out and starts a fire somewhere in the ship.

In other words, I would allow it, but make it a story element and often more trouble than its worth.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

I will stop using caps if you people start correcting your typo's.

Or, apparently, once a moderator changes it and deletes your other spam threads ;)

I like Nillius' idea though.

However you explain it, Power Allocation would bog the game down which is why it's not in there. It works for Star Fleet Battles, but FFG didn't want a ship battle to take 3 hours and/or be complicated like a SFB game.

I'm cool with it. Nothing stopping the kindly GM from letting the players power down the Teleportarium to keep the life support going though. Like everything else, it's GM discretion.

Hello!

This is the way I´d do it too with my group. (Whenever RT comes to Europe . In the moment I have just the "selfrunning" adventure from the free gimmicks here)