i have been considering sending my friends for a loop. After their jaunt in a penal leagon on a chaos infested world, iam planning on having them end up on a off planet cruser that "mysterlsy" runs out of fule just as they enter orbit around a enormous space-hulk, that just so happens to hause the last remnents of a tyranid hive fleet, a very small one at that. How should i go about this?

Oh oh oh i'm new and i am very pleased to "meet" all, so let me know on the idea.

Benjamin Beerg said:

Sounds interesting, though you might want ro replace "runs out of fuel" with breaks down, or just mysteriously wont move. I'm pretty sure that Plasma drives don't just run out of fuel.

Though I am curious, are they playing Rogue Traders? This sounds more like a Dark Heresy Campaign.

You could have some component break down on their ship. Luckily they are near a space hulk where they may be able to scavenge up a part. Next comes then fun part where they begin to explore the dark halls of the space ship. They begin to hear sounds and see movement out of the corner of their eyes. They finally find the part they need. Their suspicions that they are not alone are confirmed when they are then attacked by several gaunts. As they haul the (preferably heavy) component back to their ship the Tyranid attacks get more ferocious. Just as they get back to the ship waves and waves of Tyranids start pouring out. They have to hold them off for a short period of time for whatever reason you come up with (probably with some help from the crew and heavy weapons). As they attempt to fly away several bio-ships may break off the space hulk and engage them. Have fun.

A ship will probably have 'fuel' - even if they aren't using reaction mass for propulsion. Considering the amount of energy involved in acccelerating several millions of tons of ship even a fusion reactor will need a lot of hydrogen to fuse. Plasma thruster seems like they would need something to plasmatize too, which would eat an even larger amount of mass.

The most likely candiate for that would be water (reasonably compact, harmless, easily handled and ubiquitous in most star systems).

Which means refuelling can easily be done as long as there's a comet or icy asteroid to be found - which is the xase in most star systems. So either you're short on it and in the middle of nowhere with the 'hulk as the only likely source, or you'd better go for the 'need some specific part' trouble. Though I'd doubt the PC could find the exact part they need : even if W40K's tech is static, finding the same system would be pure luck - but something that an explorator could tinker with to fit the bill is likely. Even if that sort of tampering is a near-heresy that would give an orthodox Mechanicus adept a hissing fit and prompt several extra dose of blessed oils and incense to appease the frankensteined machine spirit...

yes they are playing Rouge Trader and thank you for the idea

Benjamin Beerg

hello me again, i left out an important part about the nids. the stats and most important the color sceme for them, so could i have some more help with this delema, so please respond with some very interesting materal that i could use (or use as a base) thank you again.

Benjamin Beerg

Benjamin Beerg said:

In my signature, below, is a link to my web-page. There you can find, amongst other things, a document called "The Great Devourer". It's a collection of rules and background for representing the Tyranids in Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader. It's an earlier version (I've not added in the creatures from the newest Codex yet), but it should more than adequately serve your purposes.

The Deathwatch preview material has a lot of Tyranid mechanics. It's freely available on the website for download.

Have them go over to the hulk to get the components they need, and have someone activate the core cogitator and discover that someplace on the hulk is an STC. They then just have to find it.