one of my RL players (who never played/know about 40k games) asked me if we could welded together 2 ships (like 2 frigates) to make a bigger, longer ship.

I told him that due to the dogmatic nature of the machine spirit (he's playing en Explorator) he cannot do something like that, yet, combi-weapons exists, and a few ship hulls are modified versions of another model.

I'm jsut wondering; with the ressources, can welding 2 ships together be accomplished without being heretek/illegal?

Id say no, just no.

Cobbled together ships are orcs or space hulks.

Is there any idea in real life, aka common sense, where it would be a good idea to cobble two perfectly functioning ships together to get a better result?

If you had too badly damaged ships of a similar make and cobbled together a functioning one out of the parts while scrapping one that'd be sensible. I think the problem is that regardless of any dogmatic reasons the two ships systems would have to be linked up perfectly or they might work against each other. Also systems would have to be modified such as the gellar field, if half your ship is flooded with daemons the first time you enter the warp you'll feel quite foolish.

If you want a bigger ship selling one of the ships and buying a light cruiser or something even bigger would be more sensible. With a lot of work regardless of heritek notions the welded together might in theory work, not necessarily well though.

Combi weapons aren't them looking at a functioning bolter and a functioning melta gun and making one combi weapon they are built from the ground up like that.

Still another frigate can accompany the party's own or be sent on npc endeavours or if it is badly damaged maybe the party would consider getting it attached to Footfall or something as a base of operations there? Just an odd random thought.

Voronesh said:

Voronesh said:

Get a bigger one, just to have a bigger ship, like 2 raiders together, instead of having all that cash burned on a single cruiser?

Ok based on the assumptions you dont want to use 2 badly mangeld ships (salvaging them would be a great idea and get one working ship for free).

I really dont understand what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to fake a cruiser by throwing two raiders together? (2 raiders are as expesnive in SP as a single cruiser)

Gaius already mentioned many important points.

I can only smell some ruleswrangling to get something for a cheaper price than written in the rules.

But its your game, so if in your Imperium cobbled together ships that resemble space hulks are common, go for it. Its just not canon though. And i wouldnt wanna have to sift through all the complications of this rules amalgam.

(But i also flatly refused any aliens in the group or Inquisitors or Space marines)

I refused it; I don't see it as something ,legal' for a Tech-adept to do anyways; jsut wanted to have some other opinion on the matter.

The structural integrity of a proposed welded ship would be terrible. Bear in mind that Imperial ships start construction as a single long spar of solid adamantium (keel or spine). Simply sticking two halves of those together will have a fatal weakness that enemies could easily exploit with a little auspexing. Forget the tech heresy and violation of the ship's machine spirits, it's a terrible idea in practical terms.

Decessor said:

Nice! Excellent info right there; at least now it's a more 'logical' reason why that's a bad idea, rather than simply using the 'dogmatic' nature of the Mechanicus...That should be a more potent answer for my player; alongside his EMP grenade idea (which is IIRC, does not exist in the Imperium, short of the Haywire Rifle, Eldar Haywire Grenade)

Never mind the legality (or lack thereof); I have trouble seeing how it would be physically feasible.

Quite aside from the possibility of "chop-shop" jobs bodging two hulk halves together (with the potential problems outlined above), the description you gave of the request suggests two fully functional ships being welded together to make one, larger ship.

There are some flaws to this, which vary depending on the alignment when they're attached:
+ nose-to-tail has one ship's engine array firing plasma directly into the prow of the other, and given how integral the primary drive tubes are to the ship's structure I doubt it would be possible to remove them without ripping off the back third of the ship... which includes the enginarium, so you'd have issues powering it all.
+ spine-to-spine requires re-siting the command decks (and the Navigator's Eyrie, and probably the astropathica cloisters), and means that there's going to be an (at the least) odd and annoying interface between two gravity fields aligned 180° to one another. It'll also block any dorsal weapons batteries, and probably a fair few point-defence turrets.
+ keel-to-keel has fewer issues (you don't need to shift massive critical decks, only the keel fin/stabiliser, which will reduce the ship's maneuverability in the warp), but it'll still block off any keel weapons, and the problems of two battling artificial gravity systems are still going to be there.
+ keel-to-spine is probably the simplest method, as you don't have any worries with the AG fields, and only need to remove one command spire (et al), and one warp keel. Yes, you still lose one possible dorsal and one possible keel, and some point-defence turrets, but the biggest problem is going to be the lack of that keel fin/warp vane.
+ abeam is the last possible one that wouldn't simply tear them apart, and has pretty much the same problems as keel-to-spine, although the loss of weaponry is likely to be more pronounced (far more ships have broadsides than dorsal/keel armaments), but stability and maneuvering in the Empyrean (and on entry and exit) is going to be far more severely hampered (as instead of losing one keel stabiliser, you're losing a pair of lateral fins)

On top of all that, it'd drastically alter the mass distribution of the vessel, meaning balancing thrust to keep them under control is going to be a pain, even assuming that welding them together hasn't overly skewed and screwed the mass/thrust ratio (which'd reduce the ship's possible acceleration ...*sigh* Ok, the Speed).

All in all, far more trouble than it's worth, and that's without going into the oddities of internal layouts when two ships are so affixed, or how that might affect morale and crew efficiency... I'm honestly not sure how the Nicassar, Stryxis and Dark Angels do it.

Braddoc said:

Ahh now i understand ^^.

But great ideas have already been given. Also the rules do not work in a linear fashion. Double the space on a ship doesnt really mean twice the space. A Lunar class cruiser has 20 times the volume of a firestorm.

A welded together ship has to withstand the stress of two independent engines. The Retrothrusters are out of alignment on half the ship (the one welded to the other one) with no guarantee of working correctly.

And as already mentioned the welded together area of the ship cant be as armoured as it could be. It will be mostly patchwork, a weak spot easily targetable.

Pardon me for throwing a spanner into the works...

There is a game called "Dark Heresy". You know, 40K universe, Calixis sector, Inquisitorial acolytes, that Dark Heresy? Well, the Dark Heresy core rules devote a couple pages to a ship called the Misericord. It is precisely such a mismash; essentially its a small, controllable space hulk composed of a handful of transports bodged together. There is also precedent for occupied, controlled space hulks. Orks and Chaos reavers have used them as massive assault craft on occasion. So, it can be done...

...but that does not mean its a great idea. For the reasons already outlined in this thread, such a bodge job will have structural integrity that is much worse than a normal ship. And, maneuverability should be utterly wretched. The combination of an unbalanced, asymmetric hull, plus a structural integrity that cannot take much stress, means your bodge job will have speed and agility comparable to an Ork Rok.

Just my 2 thrones worth,

- V.

He actually wanted to remove the front (since he's far from liking the Navy's armoured prow form) and removing the enigne at the back and the weld the 2 ships...which would have given him 2 weak sports on his 'frame'

Vandegraffe: This I know it exists, and would allow it; but the Misericord is a system voidship; it does not goes into the warp, nor really suffer combat that much; he wanted to weld 2 ships and take it in the warp.

Just on another note, who would actually do the rebuild in game, if attempted? You'd need the Trade (shipwright) skill to have any hope of designing a semi-functioning ship afterwards and a lot of labour. Even if a heretek shipwright could be found, could they be trusted for skill or loyalty?

Decessor said:

The Explorator player; but I suspect he'll try to hire competenet workers for that at first, at least until he gets the shipwrith skill

Braddoc said:

So basically he has half the thrust then. Anyone ramming his fore OR aft half puts extra stress on the ship.

He basically has a "break here" mark on his ship. The single slab of adamantium that forms the keel/spin of teh ship is there for a reason.

Dont let such a monstrosity near an Ork ramship. Itd break instead of allowing a boarding action.....

Voronesh said:

He also wanted to have the hit and run crew soldier glide to the other ship via some sort of glider; of course I did told him that 1 VU is about 10k kilometers, and that they don't have to only dodge incoming fire, but also space particules and such; something an armoured shuttle can protects agasint, but not a space glider and a void suit.

his idea on that take is that in a shuttle, if it blows up you loose everyone; while on gliders, you send a swarm of 100 gliders; now you're way mroe certain at some will manage to land and do the hit and run.

Allow him to use gliders.

Then have him loose all troops send to the hit and run. (They cant return after all)

Voronesh said:

Not to mention using a glider in space to close a 10k-50k km gap distance will take more than a single round and is, to me, a compelte waste of time/resources

Just a quick note, the Misericord is not in fact a system ship. Its a chartist vessel that moves along a set trade route between Scintilla, Sepheris Secundus and Iocanthos. So I'm pretty sure its warp capable...

There are also tons of fluff novels, stories and blurbs mentioning spacehulks. Most hulks are considered very dangerous, but this is as much attributed to the sheer size of the things as it is to the many unknown factors a hulk might contain. Compared to a warship, the size of a spacehulk is completely out of proportion. Hulks might take some time to destroy, but the actual amount of firepower they are able to bring to bear can vary enourmously and they are little more then slow moving battle stations.

While theoretically possible, welding two ships together is not as simple as say...making a catamarang out of two canoe hulls. If this is how your player is thinking, I think you should point out that spaceships are more like aircraft. There are dynamics, engineering aspects and balancing thrust versus resistance (and I'm sure a ton more things) that just don't have as much of a factor with boats. There is a reason that we make a single airplane fuselage when we want a bigger plane...rather then taking two perfectly functional smaller sized planes and then either sticking them nose-to-ass or welding them side by side...

Even in the case of ships, point out that it took ship-builders quite a long time to figure out how to make long hulls. For centuries, ships that exceeded a certain length were destroyed by the shift and gravity of waves moving underneath the hull. It wasn't until shipwrights figured out how to make a hull that shifted and moved slightly with the waves that the length of ships could be increased.

The long and the short of it, is that those kinds of modifications are possible but will in every situation result in a larger, heavier, clunkier and less durable vessel. In short, the mass and resources used in the "double-ship's" construction would result in a less overall efficient result then just making two smaller vessels. Such a ship would be less manueverable (which is a huge part of a ship's combat and civil efficiency...even if the rules don't lay heavy emphasis on it) and considerably less efficient (which would hit the bottom line of any rogue trader operating the vessel). If it was possible to "lego block" the size of ships rather then build new ones, that's what the imperium would have done long ago: Mass produce Raider sized vessels, and then just stick them together when they needed a frigate, cruiser or battleship.

The engineering and science of the setting just don't support that kind of approach though. In short, it can be done but should be an act of desperation or necessity rather then "the best way"...

In my opinion it should be possible as long as you keep the changes limites in scope : basically taking off the armored prow and replacing it with the other ship's prow. It won't get you much (maybe an extra space or three), but it won't alter the size and balance of the ship much. It will also keep the original keel whole, preventing most structural problems.

If you go for something more ambitious, you're going to lose speed (say you add half the original spaces, you'll lose at least one third of the speed) and a lot of manoeuvrability as the engines will have a lot more ship to move around. The armor will also remain what it was before the alteration, maybe even get down a bit as the franckenship's seams intrudce weak points. To make things worse, the orginal engines will probably have a hard time powering whatever equipement gets packed into those extra spaces.

It can be done, but the end result will a poor ship - barely stronger than each of it's components and maybe worse thanks to the sluggish handling and limited power.

Yes you CAN technically wield 2 ships together and get them to move. Doing this however will have a few effects:

- more space (its 2 ships and some components do not need to be duplicated eg the brig, while others need to to compensate for the size, eg life support)

- less speed and a lot less maneouvrability (there is no way you expect it to move as well do you?)

- equal or less HI and armor than 1 ship (all that wielding doesn't really help structural intergity and armor)

- single drive (how are you going to control 2 at the same time and ensure that you don't tear up the wielding?)

- same class (just cuz u wielded 2 frigates together does not mean you now have a cruiser, you have a big ass frigate)

- less than total number of weapon slots of 2 ships (overlap causes some weapons slots to be obstructed)

- months in dry dock (this is a pretty big project)

All in all you will get a ship with maybe 1 or 2 more weapon slots, and a lot more space, in the process you junk almost every other stat. Is it worth it? thats up to you really....

Chopping up the ship and reattaching bits back is even worse. Firstly, you have just destroyed the keel of the ship which means that your ship is now held together by just wields (at least if you wielded 2 ships together you had 2 keels supporting the mess of wields, now you have no keels). Your ship now has a greatly reduced HI and can now can suffer damage from maneouvering and gravity wells and other external forces. Aside from the rest of the penalties listed above, because you didnt use the whole ship you have even less space and weapon slots too.

All in all it is much better to have the 2 ships seperate.

To continue with the comments on space hulks, the Soul Drinkers scuttled their fleet when they found the Brokenback . It took them months of preparation to get it spaceworthy (which included linking all the component ship's bridges together into one and making the necessary alterations to coordinate all the propulsion systems at different angles). Not to mention cleaning out genestealers and daemons and transferring their goods from their old fleet (armory, librarium, etc).

And the glider idea? If you adapt it from eldar solar sail technology, i'd allow it for creativity (and give them the same speed as a fighter). But they will be very fragile en route and have no real way of defending themselves (unless someones lugging a lascannon on their hanglider). Furthermore, they'd have to cart around cutting equipment to breach the ships hull.

It sounds like your characters don't have the skills or facilities to do it themselves. So they have two choices: find one like they want, make one. That means outlaw techs or Mechanicus. The AdMech would likely laugh at them if not beat their ass for such abuse of the machine spirits of both ships. The outlaw techs are their best bet.