The costs of ship components and ships are in Ship Points. They don't have a rarity designation.

So, if the PCs want to replace component A with component B, are there rules in the books to cover this? I haven't seen them, but may have missed them.

During creation, the players can turn one unspent Ship Point into one Profit Factor. I'm assuming they can reverse the process later, to get Profit Factor back in order to buy new components or even a new ship.

And what if they end up with a spare component they want to trade in? I'm thinking a 50% loss on the item, tracked in Ship Points, but I just made that up.

And if they get a second ship, any rules for moving components from one ship to another?

Thanks!

All unspent ship points at the end of character creation are converted into PF. It's not a choice, really.

Ship components have no scarcity. They also have no quality modifier. The only modifier is located on page 274 of the core book.

-30 for Macrocannons/Lances/Torpedos/etc.

-20 for Auspex Scanners

-10 for Warp Drives, Void Shields, Plasma Engines

0 for most non-weapon supplemental components, bridges, armor, etc.

A new ship hull is 1d100 < Profit Factor-the hull's SP cost.

At the end of ship generation, there shouldn't be any "spare" components lying around. The essential components are already included in the cost of the ship hull selected, unless you choose to upgrade to one of the components that costs 1-2 SP such as a better life support system. You don't get "both", y ou either get the basic model or you choose the newer/shinier one and spend the extra SP to acquire it. Supplemental components are selected by spending SP.

There aren't any rules for "trading in" old components for new ones, but if it were me, and the player character doing the haggling had [barter] or [Commerce] or some other relevant skill, I'd adjust the modifier by +5 or +10, or increase the PF for that roll by the number of successes (there are rules for this on P. 273)

Also, re: shuffling components from one ship to another. I don't think it's that simple. "Moving" a component from one ship to the next would mean months in drydock as laborers took powersaws to the bulkheads to strip out the component you want removed and replace it with armor plating and bulkheads and corridors. In addition, ship components are never "one size fits all", especially not Archeotech or Xenotech. Each ship has its own unique history and construction. Even two Baneblades made on different forge worlds will look very different, so I can only imagine ships will similarly look unique to whatever shipyard they were produced in. The macrocannons you purchased might not even be recognizeable once they've been installed on your ship when the construction crews had to shear off the base of the turret to get it installed. Once a component is installed on a ship, as far as I know, it's good for that, and only that ship.

SP are used only during character creation. Unspent are turned into PF, no choice, no debate, it just happens (unless you have a child of dynasty, then they just vanish, so best use them).

Once out of character creation a new ship (hull only) is obtained by making an aqusition roll with the SP cost as a penalty and no other adjustments (Except for a bonus from commerce or similar rolls, and the burning of PF for a bonus).

To equip a ship requires an acquisition roll with rarities listed in table 8-8, modified by table 9-36 and nothing else (Except for skill and PF burning again) for each component.

Trading components from one ship to another is theoretically possible, though never specifically stated. I would require an acquisition roll to hire the people required for such a job, which should range from abundant on a forge world to unique on more low tech worlds.

There is no stated bonus of any kind when selling a component that is no longer needed, but I might personally be inclined to give a bonus of +10 per SP cost of the component to a single acquisition roll made for another component at the time to represent the extra money made from the sale or discount for trading in (kind of like when you trade in a used car).

Thanks both of you. I will indeed have them shop for talented workers to transfer components from one ship to another. I've already told them to expect five months in drydock.

Rereading p 274, on purchasing a new starship, I'm not sure about what components would come with a ship. Karoline, you say they get the hull only. The example of Trask buying a Havoc-class Raider *seems* like he's buying a working ship, engines and other components included. I think your idea makes sense. Otherwise, a ship with amazing components will be as easy to get as an empty hull.

Most of the time, I would say a ship will have some or a full complement of components. I'm thinking that maybe the components work, maybe not. If the PCs miss the roll for a component, it's there as slag.

Like I said, when you buy a hull-class, you get all the essential components for it included in the cost. If you want the essential components that cost SP instead of being no-cost, simply add them to the SP cost of the ship. Note the distinction between supplemental and essential components.

Essential: Void shield, warp drive, plasma drive, bridge, auspex, life support, quarters

Supplemental: Macrocannons, cargo bays, murder-servitors, etc.

Also: I would forbid them to "Transfer" archeotech components. First of all, a frigate drive doesn't fit in a cruiser hull. Or it would, but presumably it wouldn't produce enough thrust to move the mass of the cruiser. So you can't let them get away with that. Second, archeotech components are so ridiculously rare that to have them simply be interchangeable between ships would severely depreciate their value (you're only allowed to take archeotech components on a successful reliquary of mars roll anyway)

I agree with Fortinbras, you would likely get the bare bones most basic essential components as part of the deal. I'd personally have them do acquisition rolls for the higher grade essential components to represent being to find them and everything else as normal. Otherwise they can get what should otherwise be fairly rare and expensive components for a barely noticable -1 or -2 on their acquisition roll.

This is why I love this board.

We've been playing awhile, and my brain has a map of the rules we've been using and a blind spot for those we haven't needed yet.

BTW, I know I muddied the waters with my talk of Ship Points. I have an ongoing campaign, and my players have two frigates and the captain wants to swap some components around and buy some new ones. Nothing crazy like archeotech.

Should they ever buy a new ship with an Acquisitions Test, I'll have it full of standard components, and let them go shopping for the supplemental ones.

Sounds neat. And yeah, it is amazing how blind spots like that can develop. For instance, when I first read through the rules, I actually skipped the combat section entirely. I was far more interested in the aspects related to the fact that you're a Rogue Trader like acquiring vast wealth and such, and so my combat rules knowledge is a bit shy, while my mastery of acquisition rules are quite good

Nojo509 said:

Buying new ships isn't a problem, because a mostly empty (excepting essentials) hull waiting for new stuff to be fitted makes sense. Buying used ships is more of a problem, because it doesn't really make too much sense to assume that they are always stripped of everything non-essential before going to auction.

That's a good point. GM could throw on some random components, or assume the old ones were all destroyed and will need replacing anyway. Or, since components are transferable, could be bought with the understanding that any components that aren't paid for (with an acqusition test) will be striped out for use in other ships.

I don't agree with assuming that you can't transfer archeotech components between ships. If you couldn't, you'd have to assume the same about xenotech components - but we know those can be transfered between ships. If you couldn't transfer xenotech components between ships, there would never be any on Imperial vessels in the first place. And archeotech components - being human in origin - are doubtlessly easier to integrate into a human ship than a non-human component would be.

EDIT: the Imperium also works with Archeotech all the time (in the form of STCs such as the Rhino); their problem is in redesigning / reproducing the technology. Not necessarly in working with it or repairing it per se.

Cannonball said:

Apologies if I put words in someones mouth, but I think the intention was more that you cant put a modified drive from a frigate in a crusier because it is a frigate drive and not a crusier drive, more than it is a modified drive instead of a normal one.

Cannonball said:

My understanding of archeotech was that it's not reproduceable, only salvageable on ships that are able to be gotten back up and running. Hence, why you have to pick Reliquary of Mars on the core book ship origins table to be able to be allowed to take an Archeotech component, and why you have to pick Xenophilious to pick up a xeno component.

No, that is what is required to start with one. To obtain one during play simply requires devistatingly difficult acquisition rolls, perhaps combined with pulling some strings through RP, or finding the components elsewhere. If for example you were able to capture a xeno ship you could bring it back to a (appropriately xenophilic) forge world or similar place and start hauling over components. It would take a long time, the components would be difficult to repair or even maintain, but you could do it.

You can check it out in the books. They are difficult to obtain, but not impossible. It seems to be largely a way to force players to leave themselves somewhere to advance to. They can't start with a cruise chocked full of xeno and arecho components, they have to work long and hard to obtain that. Otherwise the components wouldn't be nearly as cool.

I disagree, specifically the book (P.206) says that the GM should "severely restrict" player access to archeotech unless the ship has the Reliquary of Mars background, the players "earn" it through the course of the game, or the GM consents (AKA word of God). You cannot simply roll an acquisition to acquire one.

Hence my opinion that archeotech is mostly irreplaceable tech that can not simply be reproduced by a Forge World and at the same time is not very modular. Another example would be Castellan Shields, the fluff specifically says that they're from the Great Crusade. If only the oldest Imperial ships have Castellan shields, why couldn't they simply be ripped out and placed in a brand new (40K timeline-wise, 500-1000 years old?) ship? A component is more than the sum of its parts. You can't just place an American carrier's reactor into the Ark Royale, or swap the catapult systems of the Enterprise and the Ronald Reagan. Each ship is designed differently from the other in the details, and to say you can just swap frigate drives between two ships of differing class, construction, and design era strikes me as playing fast and loose with the spirit, if not the rules of the 'verse.

This isn't to say that archeotech should only be available as part of the history of a ship's "creation". I do feel that ship components should be salvageable once or twice on their lifetimes (namely between the initial place it was installed and being retrofitted onto the RT's ship), but after that, you're practically jerry-rigging it, because after one or two retrofits parts of the component have been cut away to "make it fit" in that other ship, which was of a wholly different design than what it was originally created for.

I would think that the reason why you don't usually slap archeotech components onto a 'new' ship is because 'new' ships suck in comparison to old ships. Quite simply WH40k has a very distinct decrease of technological achievement over time.

For a similar case, imagine modern times and cars, only pretend that instead of starting with the Model T and working our way up to hybrids, we started with hybrids and have been working our way up to the Model T. If that's the case, would you really want to (as a mechanic that revears cars, especially old ones like hybrids) take the engine out of the hybrid and try to fit it into the Model T? Or would you rather do everything in your power to make the hybrid work again?

This is why Archeotech components are so rare outside of ships that come with them. I do admit it should require something more than an acquisition test, but I don't think they should be held out entirely. They are extreamly rare, and so start at a -30 with no scale or quality modification, but instead the component modification which can throw up to another -30 on the test.

I think I'd run it as something like: If you've done something to help out the Adeptus Mechanicus, then you'd be allowed to make an acquisition roll for an archeotech (or maybe even xenotech) component. If you manage to find an archeo/xenotech component (capturing an eldar ship for example) then you could make a (much easier) acquisition test to get the people to work on it. Either way it would mean quite a while in port.

Fortinbras said:

Table 8-8 on page 207 would seem to contradict these two points, wouldn't you say?

Fortinbras said:

I think these modifiers may be intended for a more "fast and lose" sort of play. Don't know. They might even be intended to be in addition to the ones from page 207. That would make ship components rather difficult to come by.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Given how difficult ships are to come by, I'm fairly sure they are supposed to be combined.

Brother Praetus said:

Only if you think a macrocannon should have a more difficult acquisition roll than a standard cruiser hull.

Although I know the math that would make -30 = -60, it isn't generally accepted as actually being correct, so unfortently, no, macrocannons are not as hard to obtain as a cruise hull. They are as hard to acquire as single best quality very rare things, which, you know, sounds alot like what a macrocannon is. Actually, a macrocannon battery sounds like it should be harder to find than that, yet it isn't. Actually I suppose it sounds more like a middling number of very rare things of normal quality, which is in fact how difficult they are to find. Seems like it works out quite well to me.

Fortinbras said:

Well, let's see. Macrocannons are Supplemental Components costing 1 SP, and so would be Scarce by table 8-8. Scarce items suffer +0 modifier to their Acquisition per table 9-35 on page 272. Then per table 9-36 we impose the additional -30 for the component being a weapon system. Total modifier to the Acquisition roll would be -30.

A Lunar-class Cruiser has a Hull SP of 60, which acts as the modifier to the Acquisition roll; translates to a -60. Table 9-35; if it applies to Hulls as well, would then modify this along the lines of "Structures" and thus impose a +0 additional modifier. Total modifier to the Acquisition roll would be -60.

So, exactly how is the Macrocannon more difficult to acquire then the Cruiser Hull?

By the way, right there on page 274 it says:

• Acquisition of Starship Components - Few things acquired or maintained by the Explorer's dynasty compare to the astronomical value of their void-ships. When the Explorers wish to acquire new components for their vessel, or commandeer a new vessel, the GM should wourk out the Acquisition Modifier as normal using Availability and Craftsmanship (Availabilities for Starship Components can be found in Chapter VIII: Starships). However, in place of the Scale Acquisition Modifier, he should use the modifiers detailed in Table 9-36: Starship Component Acquisitions based on the kind of system being acquired.

Yes, Availability and Craftsmanship do affect the Acquisition roll. However, there are no specific mechanical effects for different quality Starship Components, so common quality is typically the default. What doesn't effect the acquisition for Starship Components is the normal Scale Acquisition Modifiers, this is replaced by the modifiers on table 9-36. This said, if you want Poor quality components, then expect the GM to penalize you somewhere along the way.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Now I have dreams of acquiring a best quality cruiser outfitted with best quality components, including of course best quality xeno and archeotech.

How much profit do you get selling fully equiped ships?

Profit Factor isn't a value, it's a stat. You aren't trading your Profit Factor to get a ship, you're using it to leverage your Acquisition of one. In the unlikely circumstance my players ever want to sell a ship (Seriously, they've had about 4 and they elected to ram one into a space-station rather than sell it) and assuming they could find someone willing and able to take it off their hands, I'd give them a temporary Profit Factor boost relative to the SP cost of the ship.

How much is that profit boost(percentage of the ship and ships components SP)? Maybe they want to make themselves in the good graces with an imperial organization or wish to boost their profit for the aquisition of better or new ship components or desired ship hulls.