I am curious how other GM have handled adding ships to the player's fleet.

For example I am working up an NPC ship that the players will be able to recruit. Now the ship obviously is going to have components that aid in certian types of missions. Would you allow the players to combine these bonuses with the bonuses from their ship to determine acheivement point totals?

My plan in this particular interest is to have the players reduce their profit factor by 3-5 points, this would represent a sharing of future profits with the captian of the NPC vessel.

Any thoughts?

I do not allow components on NPC run ships to add achievement points unless they are actually necessary (not just helpful) to the current objective.

For instance if the current objective required a cargo hold to move some goods and the players ship did not posses one I would allow them to bring a second ship (hired or dynasty) and get the bonus from its cargo holds. If however they already had a cargo hold or holds on the PC ship then they would get no extra benefit from the NPC ships holds. They could still bring the NPC ship if they wanted too just no extra points.

I would however allow them to run the actions of their other ships as a background endevour (see into the storm).

If the Explorers had to risk an acquisition roll to get it, I think they're owed some sort of tangible benefit to having made that acquisition.

So usually additional ships are negotiated on a mission-specific basis on a successful commerce/barter/command/charm roll.

Fortinbras said:

I agree

What you have just described is basically the guts of a background endeavor.

For the OP lets take the example of bringing along a NPC transport to use its cargo holds (trade endeavor) and run through it as a background endeavor.

The PCs need to get the ships services. Lets say they make an acquisition roll to hire the ship for a single run.

Determine the quality of the NPC the ship has a good captain and a crack crew. (good quality)

PCs give them detailed instructions, Your navigator goes over the rout they are taking (makes navigation roll), your senschenal goes over exactly what and how much they are to buy (makes commerce roll) etc.

The RT then makes a command roll with bonuses for quality and successful supporting actions. Which determines the chance of success (with the likely close supervision in this case I would give a bonus to the command roll). Figuring out how long it takes here could be for the extra time taken to load/unload a whole second ship and if they do it fast or slow, or perhaps after they have the goods they will go to another port to off load goods, or they may get through the warp faster or slower than the PC ship.

Determine success..

Profit!! In this case I would award them achievement points equal to the component bonus or 1 PF depending on the situation.

Our groups has managed to acquire a second ship for his dynasty, and we've allowed them to collect bonuses from both ships. However to compensate most serious threats have received a bit of a boost to keep things threatening.