Hi, this is my first post here, so don't be harsh with me ^^U. I've been trying to use the search option, but I found no answer to my questions, so I decide to start a new thread.

Also, the characters we use are from Dark Heresy, but it's a question I think is more related to Rogue Trader since a ship has more servitors than a group of acolytes (and also we are "fortunate" enough to have our "own" ship, a frigate quite... lethal. She only has two lances, but...).

So, our playgroup is small (a gamemaster and two players), and composed by a passive character (the GM's, since the position rotates. Until now, it has been "our" psyker) and two PC's, an imperial guardsman and my techpriest (I'm next in GM duty this summer). Until now we have played some "home cooked" adventures extracted from inquisitorial books (one about a geneastealer plot to infect all the flowers used to make a drug, flowers you can only find in one or two planets in the whole Calixis sector; the second involved a missing inquisitorial agent in a remote world with a refinery, an incoming Ork attack and, as we later found, a Necron infestation), both have been solved with ease (I'm quite adept "reading" when not to go to the catacombs... well, I tried to overload the necron core, waking them all, but... let's not talk about that XD).

Currently, my implants consist in a good MIU, a medical mechadendrite, a Calculus Logi and a Good Cortex Implant (don't ask. The corpse burnt in a frozen planet full of orks and necrons anyway ^^), and of course all of the default ones (Vox unit, Respirator unit, Mechanicus implants...).

Anyway, being a techpriest I have some doubts easily solved and some... not so easy. The first ones, about crafting weapons and armor, I assume use craft (armour) and craft (weapons) and the rules at the end of the Inquisitor's Handbook cover it all. The seconds are about servitors.

I already saw some posts about servitor's creation, and I was going to use the "default" ones anyway xD. The problem comes with the "software": How can I make programs for servitors and servo-skulls? How do I upload them into a given servitor? How does servitors transfer info to each other?

Essentially, my (not even a sliver of) pure intentions consist in a program which makes the following:

1.- Propagate itself to every servitor the servitor carrying this program encounters.

2.- Block any attemp by the servitor carrying this program to harm or allow harm to come to the carriers of a codified signal I can alter before the mission (the signal can be almost anything, easily made by a Vox unit, an Auspex or a custom-crafted micro emitter).

3.- Emit a signal marking the servitor as carying the program once a signal is given by me.

4.- Destructing any servitor not carying this program oce the signal has been made.

5.- A table of priority targets to attack once the signal has been given (targets I can pre-progam or upload using my Vox).

Yeah, I know this can be a real pain in the ass aboard ships massively using servitors. The good news to the Murder-Servitors is, they don't probably give enough time to anything near them for the program to upload itself. The bad news, any servitor can be a killer if not readily protected... Which takes us to Question 2:

How do I make protection programs for my servitors, and how are those programs overruled? I think it would be a contest of Tech Use skills (or Techno-Lingua) between the installed protections (rolled by the GM in secret, unless it's a failure or a botch) and the attacking "program", much like the robots depicted by Isaac Asimov in his books about the "pre-history" of the Foundation (I got this idea from playing Cyberpunk 2020 and watching Ghost in the Shell... Yeah, I'm a Sci-Fi addict XD), but the interface method between the servitors and the people (and between themselves) is quite critical here.

Thanks in advance for your help, and I hope everybody is enjoying this game as much as me (even when I was quite worried about the character's survival rate... well, we have still time to die xD).