I have some qustions:

1. What is the best career for a healer type character and how the characters should be configure to use the medicae skill? Should all the explorer take the medicae skill or some?

2. What are the prerequsite for a character to have MIU and can a single MIU take both a weapon and power armor?

3. For an offensive type pshihyker what career is best ? Should I choose a navigator or astropath?

4.Should other careers outside navigator or astropath take any pshihycher powers or it is useless?

5. The critical table for ship components said that a component that is known is damaged? How do the enemy know witch component to damage and to hide important components?

6. How do an active empyrium mantle help a ship during combat (outside silent runing )? How much time does powering and depowering a empyrium mantle take and how much time powering a weapon like a lance take?

1. Missionary has the quickest and cheapest access to Medicate, with Explorator coming in a close second. Explorator tends to make a better medic though because the skill is based on int, and explorators tend to have a high int anyway, while Missionaries only have a middling one. The only real requirement to be really good at it is a high int and a medkit.

2. There are none, and not sure about multiple connections. It is never mentioned spesifically, but I figure it can handle as many connections as you want to put proper jacks on your body.

3. Well, a Navigator isn't technically a psyker, but even so it would be your better choice early on. Astropaths are stuck in a fairly non-combative discipline until rank 3. With a Navigator however you automatically pick up a combat power to start with, and depending on your house, you could get improve it greatly or pick some other combat powers. The renegade house is particularly good in this role.

4. Well, they can't just 'take' psyker powers, they have to bet on getting the wyrdling mutation or spending a ton of xp to grab the witch liniage. The later seems overly expensive, but if you can get the former through spending 200xp on the origin path, it can be handy. In particular there are some divination powers that can give great bonuses to other actions. I'd keep out of it for brute force powers as another career though, as a laspistol will generally be more effective and reliable.

5. You know there is a component if you can tell that it exists. If for example a ship fires weapons at you, you know it has weapons. If its void shield blocks some of your shots, you know it has a void shield and so on. It is difficult to hide components from an enemy for targetting. Best bet is to grab a tenebro maze and then you get to pick what is hit instead of them.

6. It doesn't help you in combat, other than making scans against the ship and stuff like that a bit harder. I'd say not enough time to really matter. If you want it on in a particular round (which is 30 minutes) it'll be on.

Karoline said:

To ascertain components you have to know where they are through an active auspex scan. The number of successes determines how many components are revealed. Otherwise the only things you can actively target are weapons that have been fired at least once. (Or engines, but you can only damage those on a crit of 5+, crippled vessels only)

Also, this is my own personal opinion, but there are two components that I would heavily scrutinize upon taking: Teleportarium, and Tenebro-Maze. Unless your ship is likely to be crippled or you have a Munitorium I wouldn't bother wasting the space on that. There seems to be a fetish for hit and runs and boarding actions on this board that a good GM should prevent players from abusing.

The maze doesn't help with offense at all. It only helps in defense, so I don't think that is much of an issue. And the teleportarium is an arechotech component, so difficult to get in the first place generally.

As to the targeting for crits, you're correct, except that there is a bit of an oddity in the 'otherwise effect' part. If for example you use a teleporterium to send over Murder Servitors, then they obviously know that you have those, and thus can theoretically target them, though it doesn't make sense that they would know where the teleportarium actually is. Same with void shields in that they have an obvious effect, but that doesn't mean they know where the generators are. Still, I'll take that as an unintentional meaning of the statement, and that you'd need some way to pinpoint the location even with knowledge of its existance.

On the other hand it could be a guess based on standard ship design, and thus why the maze lets you redirect criticals, because you've messed with the normal layout.

Karoline said:

My interpretation of the same passage is that void shields don't correspond because you see the shield, but not the generator. Presumably if you see a ship fire, then you know the points at which the battery-fire originated.

I'm surprised you can't just see the guns themselves, but I figure they aren't just sticking out of the side like old fashioned ships

As I said though, I do agree that I think you should need some way of pinpointing the location, and with weapons you simply look at where they came from.

So, in regard to the 'what good is the mantle in combat' it is good because it makes a scan against the ship more difficult which makes locating any components besides the weapons harder.

Edit: And while I understand it from a game balance perspective, can anyone think of a good IC reason that you can't target ship engines with normal crits?

Nope. Except possibly that it's pretty thickly armored, what with being a gigantic plasma furnace and all.

I even recall reading in a novel, that the plasma drives' heat-output was so great, that some of the incoming macrobatteryshells were simply burned away (or something like that). Maybe you first have to cripple the ship, in order to expose the drives enough to really do some damage on them. Murder Servitors, attacking from within the ship, can at least do enough damage (though not destroy them) to hamper the ship's movement, until it is repaired again.

Otherwise I'd say it's clearly a matter of balance. Your Rogue Traders wouldn't want to be blown up after just one focused augury and one attack action...

1. Another question if we want to salvage the righteous path and the forsaken bounty what are the stats for those ships(components, how badly damage are those , what to repair first , where to take the ships for repair,how much to pay)?

2. How do you conduct hit and run with your murder servitors without having a teleporterum? It is feseable? Can you acquire a fleet of ships for yourself by taking over the ships that attack you without a teleportum and how to do? Or the ship must acquire as soon as possible ?

3. The raiders that attack you into the maw what stats do they have and what components do they have? Can you feseable conduct hit and run on then with murder servitors without a teleportum, or can you feseable capture one of those raiders at least?

4. How do you salvage the pilgrim vessel and what stats do the pilgrim vessel has? Can you complete the endeavour while you salvage the pilgrim vessel as your own ship , or it is better to repair it and give it back to the church for a reputation boost?

5. What is for a tyrant cruiser a good weapon configuration in terms of firepower;range;space and energy consumed?But when it is part of a fleet(along side with a raider)?

First of all, my character is currently part of the adventure "Into the Maw" and so I have no idea of the actual stats of the ships, etc... those parts are guesses based on my observations.

thor2006 said:

1. As I recall from the description our GM gave us, the "Righteous Path" is a Grand Cruiser (though one can't be sure, because our GM might have modified the adventure... and we haven't found it yet), some of it's weapons were removed to make room for the (hopefully) great treasures the Rogue Trader has stolen. There are no stats for a ship of this size and as long as you don't want to wait until the new starship book will be published, you have to either houserule it yourself or use one of the houserules for bigger-than-cruiser ships made by others here or elsewhere on the internet. the "dark reign" site has some good suggestions for a lot of hull types. I don't know, what exactly is damaged on this ship, but as an obvious choice for repairs I'd suggest the warp engine, geller field and life support, if you want to salvage it, instead of just taking as much of its cargo to your ship as possible. Maybe you should spend some time to repair as much as possible (all of the non-destroyed components) if you want to salvage the whole ship. Repairs on damaged components take 1d5 rounds in combat situations, so you can repair the whole ship in a day, if the components are not utterly destroyed.

2. Murder servitors don't need a teleportarium to work (though it's a very good combination, in terms of power gaming. try barracks, too;)) So without the teleportarium simply follow the normal rules for Hit&Run actions. Conduct a pilot(spacecraft) test and then an opposed command+20 test. If you win, you can simply chose a crit result between [1; 6]. On the other hand, you never can take over a ship with a simple Hit&Run action using your teleportarium. You have to use the boarding action described in one of the black boxes in the starships chapter. I think, the teleportarium is one of the best components in the game, but you can survive without it and it is not required for any actions in combat, but rather gives bonuses to them.

3. Again, I'm not sure, which stats my GM really used, but I think it was the standard "Wolfpack Raider" on page 209 of the Corerulebook. Of course, you can Hit&Run them and you also can board them in order to capture their ships.

4. Our GM told us, the pilgrim vessel was a transport of some sort. We offered the survivors to come with us (and cover some crew losses from the battle against the pirates). We didn't want to salvage the transport and so used it's components and parts to gain a bonus on our extended repairs after the battle. I guess saving the pilgrims was enough of a reputation boost for us. Of course, this is a subjective question and I'd let the players make the choice as a group. Remeber, you also have to have the vast crew at hand to man such a new vessel. If you choose to substitute your vessel for the pilgrim ship, think about the time needed to get accustomed to a new type of ship and all of it's components...

5. This question almost deserves its own thread. It depends on your choice of tactics in combat, for example, you could take the armored prow if you want to conduct some fearsome ramming actions, but that means you'll lose your prow slot. Still, I think this thread is not big enough for #5 and all the other questions at the same time

In Lure of the Expanse if you kill the captain of the light of terra how many people must you fight to get to your ship from the descendants of the crew to the location where you have your shuttle parked? Can you still get the rewards from the Hidden Holds and can you get all the rewards( the ship doesn't leave anywhere and you can roll the search test for as many time to get all the rewards)?

Can you move the hulk a short system away so that your rivals will not likely find them so you can go back and claim it latter? If not how much profit(percentage) will be gone when you return from the Lure of the Expanse?

Can you easily (without doing any tests )equip your ship with the needed vehicles, shuttles, interceptors and your be able to continue the Lure of the Expanse endevour?

These are honestly questions that should be handled by your GM, if that's not you. There's no canon ruling on any of these things, so just go with what feels right.

Errant said:

Right. I think, thor2006 is the GM, or at least plans to run these adventures. Sometimes these simple things aren't covered within the adventures or the core rules. Sometimes, when you're the GM and can't decide whether something works or not (like hiding the hulk), throw the dice. There is probably a chance, that they will be found and their loot is gone. Just think about how probable it is, that the hulk is being found and roll a d100.

I think, every space vessel has some sort of shuttles, cargo lifters and even some vehicles on board, without the need to make aquisition rolls for each of them. After all, you need these to load/unload your ship and execute some of the everyday's tasks. You as the GM have to decide, just how many there are and if the PCs have some of them at their disposal at the moment they are needed. If they want to aquire some personal craft, which are always ready to use for them, use the charts given in the core rulebook for availability, rarity and time needed to buy them.