In my first RT adventure, I ran Forsaken and one of my player ask me he try to find information on the ship's computer database about the ship Emperor’s Bounty. During play, I had to invent on the fly an idea but well, is there any computer on 40 K ships ? and if this is the case, how do you look for that kind of information ?

There need not be a computer on a 40k ship. The only essential components of a ship are the ones set out in RT: warp engine, gellar field, void shields etc. Arguably a bridge COULD contain a computer, but it's not necessarily required.

Computer tech in 40k is a thorny issue, with many diferent interpretations according to who you believe. Dan Abnett has a similar level of computer tech to 20-21st century Earth, whereas other writers have more advanced systems, others have less advanced.

Personally I'd say that ship's computers are probably fairly common, but they're likely to be a huge, (room sized) fairly clunking affairs built into the bridge with about the same amount of computing power as a modern laptop. They're probably very specialised devices used for navigation, weapons targeting etc. It's certainly nothing like as sophisticated as the computer in Star Trek or even Star Wars.

Everthing a 40k ship's computer can do would be factored into the normal rules/rolls made for ship control tests as set out in RT.

As for databases, I'd be tempted to say that the database within the computer is very small, and that more detailed records are probably kept as hardcopies.

And when I say hardcopies, I mean on sheets of vellum scribed by drooling, lobotomised servitors. That are kept in echoing vaults in the bowels of the ship patrolled by feral Cherubim carrying incense burners.

There is no such thing as a 'computer' in the imperial linguistic as we know it. There are however “Cogitators.” They are ancient machines that calculate and cognate the vast mathematical formulas that are required to running the massive body of a ship. On a frigate there must be thousands of Cogitators, each slaved to a specific purpose but linked to a single core, which can be accessed from one of two places. The core itself, or possibly the bridge. The interface to a Cogitator by mortals without any data-plugs to speak of is often through something called a Data-lectern (A terminal), or possibly a small data-slate (A notebook sized portable cogitator with the ability to hook up to other systems).

Imperial ship often have a data archive to store vast quantities of data, from navigational information to sensor reading, constantly being filled and filed ever second the ship ventures in and out of port. Though these are vast and complex databanks that often require a great deal of organization. This task often falls under the direct of thousands of Logicians adepts (Think a human calculator or living computer, similar to a dune Mentat) who code and file almost every scrap of data that transmits through the ship.

TK-4117 is right on target with his discription. In some cases, bolted in Servitors will be wired directly into the Core Cognator as a kind of 'subprosseser'. Information will be transmited to the Servitor, who will think about it and perform the relivent calculations before entering the answer into the data-loom the machine/human is sitting at. This has the duel advantages of allowing the cognator to prosses more, and allowing the overseer-adept to monitor each servitors function by looking at it's data-loom screen.

As for a skill check, your looking at a 'Tech Use' to communicate with the archive centers 'machine spirit'. Which will likely involve a small army of servitor going and getting varous scrolls and reading them until it finds the relivent record.

The technology of Imperial ships probably lends them more to something like a telephone exchange as being the only real core, necessary tech component in a ship to yell at minions who run around and do what needs doing when they're told by the officers... not a good modern one either, I'm thinking electromechanical switches, wire spring relays and cross arms that make funny noises and about as reliable as a hammer.

You're sort of thinking more digital iPhone generation and not analogue WW1 battleship, which is what these things are.

Yes they would have dedicated cogitators to some things like plasma drives, comms gear and augers, even some fancy tactical computers for fire control, possibly even a number of central places to house them all, but the actual ship doesn't need a dedicated central cogitator for anything, because it has people. If you get a chance to have a look through a warship, or better yet, a submarine, you'll probably be underwhelmed by the sheer lack of anything involving networking systems. The only real place they come together in one spot is at the bridge.

Although anyway you're trying to sell itand clearly it comes down to how you sell itcomputers are involved. It doesn't matter that you call them something different, just that they serve the same general purpose. Same with servitors and robots when it comes down to itit's all in how you spin them.

With regards to the idea of a centralised "cogitator?" All a "central" cogitator has to be able to do is talk to the other ones. Whether the local users or the cogitator itself decide to follow the central cogitator is another matter entirely.

I for one believe that the technology of the 40k universe is far more advanced than the 21st century first world nations, but it just happens to be obscured behind a more "steampunk" aesthetic. YMMV.

To answer the original question, I do believe that there are computer databases. There is a point where the imagery of the universeas eloquently expounded upon by Lightbringerbreaks down and you're left with ultimately what makes sense to you. When I'm presented with an image of the Imperium held together by medieval scribes that begins to break down. That's just me, though. The wonderful thing about the 40k universe is that it can, if people let it, be remarkably robust and handle multiple interpretations to even something as fundamental as "technology."

Kage

I must admit, in my view of 40k, the word "computer" doesn't refer to the same sort of thing it does today, but to a man/servitor with a slide rule (i.e: "one who computes", the original meaning of the word), leading to a wonderful moment in a DH game a while back: my players were looking for the "computer hall" to get their hands on the Bad Guy's data. Having found their way there, they announce that they were going to hack the computers; cue screaming as every drone and scribe scrambles desperately over the desks and away from the blood-soaked maniacs who just announced their intention to dismember everyone in the room.

In my campaign, cogitator is what we think of as a computer, although they can be of wildly differing tech levels: some may be Babbage-esque difference engines, some will be vacuum tube driven monstrosities the size of an aircraft hangar, and some will be solid-state molecular circuitry jobbies that work on principles of quantum entanglement (or similar technobabble). However, the most advanced cogitators will be (almost wholly) reserved for the inner ranks of the Tech-priests of Mars, and even there, they will probably be hidden inside a steam-punk style casing (remember, the AM depends upon its monopoly of high-tech to remain a separate and viable (though subservient allied) polity) in case anyone not privy to the innermost secrets of the Mechanicum happens to visit.

Now, because (as a general observation) the more advanced tech is, the harder it is to repair it in the field (as it were, although for some thing the last three words before this parenthesis can be ignored), the stuff likely to be going a long way from a suitable point of repair (viz, one with the capability to repair and keep the details of that repair secret) is not going to be particularly refined. So while a starship is certainly going to have a large number of cogitators, which may or may not be networked in some sort of central database, the odds are that those computers are going to be using bulky PCBs that wouldn't look out of place in an 80s mainframe.

I would note, furthermore, that given the importance of data, and the sheer number of hazards that could corrupt or wipe important data (I don't know about you, but I wouldn't like to be aboard a ship whose cogitator has "lost" the program governing Geller Field regulation), non-volatile memory is probably going to be non-magnetic, probably tonnes upon tonnes of punched index cards (but that's probably just me), or massive libraries of scrolls, updated by autoquill every shift change. This would make the ship's database more like the indexing system in a library, which I rather think I like, as a concept.

That said, 40k is the realm of schizo-tech, so we can't really assume that every ship is going to be like that. It is, however, how the majority of the ships in my campaign world will function, if the matter arises.

Cogitator is what your looking for and there are terminals on human ships to access them. A good read is 'Death or Glory' a Ciaphas Cain novel. He uses a Terminal to look up info on the vessel he is on when it drops out of warp unexpectedly. Of course he has to 'speak the catechism of activation' before slapping the On button (activation rune). Artificial Intelligence is heretical so don't make the machines smart or too helpful, think command line, but they can have visuals, usually do because most humans won't understand the complexities where pictures can make things a bit less nebulous.

bobh said:

I've often thought a good equivalent of a highly advanced and interactive machine spirit are the Virtual Intelligences in the Mass Effect games. Personable and helpful within their realm of knowledge; absolutely useless beyond their scope.

-=Brother Praetus=-

The 'voice recognition' command line is actualy a pritty good discription of it. In that way, very simmilar to how its described in the Forsaken Bounty adventure. Except for the most advanced (read old) versions, they're going to be extreamly litteral and quite possibly finiky on word choice. But Preatus is right that the Mass Effect VIs are a good cross example, if you make them dumber and replace the pritty hologram with a decaying servitor with plugs in it's head.

My take, for whatever it's worth... imagine the most advanced computer system you can. Now imagine it running DOS. The ships cogitators are fast, powerful and has near infinite memory but the operating system is so amazingly clunky and user-unfriendly as to be almost useless to the uninitiated.

Or you could refer to the Ciaphas Cain novel 'Death or Glory', remembering that things built on one world could be MORE primitive or MORE advanced than others, and read the part about Cain on a ship's escape pod. The controls were made to be used by someone with NO training at all and the onboard cogitator designed to teach a 'pilot' about its systems using pictograms. Most of the technology mass produced by the Imperium falls into this category. It is as 'stupid' proof as they can make it because the HAVE to make it that way. Ignorance is a virtue after all.

well thing is... you have a thing called cogitator or whatnot and basically it's a host to a machine spirit (which behaves like aliving thing).... you then don't have programmed interfaces to make access as easy as possible like on pcs today but you have some interface to communicate with the machine spirit

these interfaces can range from a simple screen and a few buttons to a neural interface to have direct brain access... but you still communicate with something behaving like a living thing...

getting your machine to do what you want it to is like getting your girlfriend to make dinner with an interface that consists of a screen and some buttons...

basically you make a lot of compliments tell her how "whatever" she is and finally plead that she makes dinner... only that you don't want dinner but informations on subject xy

this is how I understood it