A rather harrowing idea in WH40k, but what are the consequences of the dreaded order 'abandon ship'?

Clearly, one should not even contemplate doing this in the warp. Even if escape craft could be shielded from the dread inhabitants of the immaterium, they would be lost forever, waiting till their coccoons ran out of air. The only slim -and very, very slim- chance would be a shielded stasis pod, hoping you'd be picked up. But the chance is so minimal that we can safely assume this will never be a ready to use emergency option. So, as far as the travel through the warp goes, I think we can decide that within the immaterium there is no hope of escape.

That leaves us the void. The vast universum where chances of survival seem minimalistic. Why spend resources on safety measures if the only result will be a slow death far away in the endless void? Although this is absolutely true, there are some mitigating factors.

Firstly, most void travel takes place in systems, many of which are highly advanced. I think we can even say that most basic void travel takes place in advanced systems, as they have the greatest need of interstellar communications. Feudal worlds with a subsistence economy will not see the traffic of a Forge World. The combination of these two facts increases the chance that in case of a mishap there is still a chance of aid being directed to the survivors.

Secondly, most fights and battles also take place in systems. These are the spots worth fighting for and these are the spots where ships have a fair chance of finding each other. This means that ship abandoned in battle will mostly be found close to other ships and in inhabited star systems, often with a decent technological base.

Combining these two elements, we can conclude that there is a very good chance that when ship has to be abandoned it sails in an area where there is a chance of rescue, So, what are the chances? And how can a ship (and of course, the players) increase their chances?

I fear that we have to admit that saving most of the crew of a starship will be impossible without outside help. With a crew of 60,000 you would need no less then 600 craft each capable of holding 100 men...clearly impossible. Nor will there be enough vaccuum suits -not that they will help much- for the crew. So, if there are rescue craft, they will be for the lucky few, the Rogue Trader and his trusted entourage, possibly extended to his trusted officers and guards (i.e. the people he has to command to stop other people getting in his escape module). Logically, these rescue craft would be close to the command decks, on the higher spires of the ship, easy to acces for the bridge staff. One might envision rescue 'balls' of sorts being shot away, or even a whole part of the spire detaching itself to form a great rescue craft, and anything in between. Obviously, getting away from the ship fast would be vital, as it won't help a lot getting of a disintegrating cruiser only to be blown to bits by a plasma explosion or ripped to shreds by the warp drive imploding. Once 'safely' drifting into space, there is the manoeuvrability question. Can these craft cross reasonable parts of system space (interstellar is obviously a nono)? Can any of these craft make planetfall (which will add considerably to the complexity of the craft)?

Of course, a better option might be to rush for your flight decks or lighter bay and try to grab your private gun cutter, but that would be an adventure on its own. Getting there from the bridge through a panicking crew and a ship that is falling apart as you speak would be a harrowing experience, disregarding even the problems of launching it from the disintegrating ship. Droppods would be a fair bet too, when close to a planet. Slightly cheating the odds would be using a teleporter to enter another ship or habitable planet.

In each case, it is a good thing to consider both as a GM and as a player as to what you would do if the ship starts taking catastrophic damage, there are orks aboard and the Master Enginseer has told the Lord Captain he can hold the reactor room for another half hour at the most, when he will blow up the ship...

Friedrich van Riebeeck, Navigator Primus, Heart of the Void

My players love their ships. They would *kill* me if it ever came to abandoning one of them!

In our game, the players have worked to get more than one vessel, the starts of their own fleet. This means that there will be, in theory, a friendly vessel with them at all times to help with any evacuation.

I think one thing that would greatly increase the chance of survival would be the presence of an astropath. Frantic dial-ups and the cashing in of every favour would be the order of the day.

Finally, isn't it the noble thing to do, for a captain, to go down with the ship? If the captain just also happens to be a Rogue Trader, then he/she might be more concerned with the safe extraction of the Writ than with their own life. Better that the Writ survives to be passed down to the next in line, and the captain dies a noble death, than they return, in disgrace, their incompetence having cost their House a ship - possibly even the Flag Ship, if it was housing the Writ! You could have a wonderful scene, with the final moments of the captain's life spent fighting off mutineers; below decks crew who refuse to die for the captain's glory.

Peace!

I would still argue that they would have some stuff, in case of abandon ship, because people need the illusion of safety; even if their survival doesn't have a prayer, if there wasn't at least a small bit of assurance that something was in place, in case of an emergency, no one beyond the Trader would join your crew, no matter how good the money is.

Also, depending on how your ship is kitted, you might have a few options, besides numerous escape craft. First, and my overall favorite, if your ship happened to have that rare (yet amazingly common) piece of archaeotech, the teleportarium, you COULD perform a number of long-range transits, saving at least large percentages of your crew by beaming them to the nearest "safe" planet. Barring that, I believe many ships would have the necessary escape buoys, just because the Imperium has been a space-faring realm for this long. It could be like Star Trek, where segments of the hull are designed to hold a few people, and jettison off, or they would have enough small craft to squeeze everyone in. If you are in the Warp, one of your Navigators (hope one is still living) had better initiate warp drop, and force the ship to fall back into realspace. At the worst, you might argue that an operating warp drive is necessary to remain in the Immaterium, and scuttling the drive would cause you to translate back into this dimension, violently, and with no control as to where, but then what's left of your ship's crew could initiate debarkation. Launching escape buoys in the Warp, they might fall out, due to a lack of warp engines. Of course, one could end up proving that the Imperium is actually the Romulan Star Empire, and then the crew is doomed; Romulan craft do not bear escape pods, either you succeed at your mission, or you do not come home. You are so good, the idea of needing such an apparatus doesn't even figure in. Hope that the Imperium, even with its practice of hurling men at a problem, hoping to at least slow it down by gumming up enemy treads with the gore of its own fallen dead don't feel so cruel toward its space-traveling sons and daughters.

I think this is the spot where the book said "usually, Imperial Ships are durable enough to survive anything, and such an order would be unlikely." If it did become necessary, though (the rule of stupid = consequences), I'd assume that the ships have the necessary stuff, even if it would seem a logistical nightmare; every aspect of the Imperial Guard/Navy seems to be a logistical nightmare, and they still soldier on, day after year, after millennium.

Lower decks people 'joining' crews? Are there really volunteers amongst them?

But, on a serious note, the illusion of a last chance would indeed be an encouragement. Sadly enough, I am not so certain that the Imperium of Man considers the individual humans important enough to make to many provisions for their security. This only applies to highly valuable individuals with unique skills (or connections). Don't forget that this same Imperium has no problem whatsoever to declare a planet Exterminatus and pull it through. Not equipping voidcraft with enough rescue capability for all its crew seems a minor foible compared to the extermination of billions.

Furthermore, I am not so certain that shutting down the warp drive will translate a ship back to the materium. As far as I 'understand' it a warp drive will open the bounderies between the materium and the immaterium and propel the ship through the warp. It is as such as vital to have a working warp drive to enter the warp as it is to exit the warp (excepting of course warp portals, a recourse only taken by the desperate). Disabling the drive would in my opinion only strand the ship, so if an abandon ship sounds in the immaterium, your only hope is that the warp drive still works. And just hope you have a good navigator so you don't end up even worse. Although, gravitational pull of a star or the warp...guess I'd go for the star.

In each case, I think that it is better for the story if the destruction of a ship is linked with a mad scramble for survival. Both from the cinematic and action point of view, as from a more serious perspective. WH40K is partially grand adventure and space opera, but remains a very dark and gritty roleplaying world. And a confronting the players with the moral choices of their characters remains an interesting part of these games. I shudder at the thought of mercy killing most of the staff of my Navigator if there is no space for them in the shuttle. I hope sincerely he never has to make that choice, but ****, it will make for memorable RP if that might happen.

FvR

P.S. For the dramatic possibilities, check 'Seven Waves Away' on IMDB. An old one, but terrifying.

In terms of lifeboats, there was an example of a saviour raft jettisoning from a Navy transport ship in Death or Glory . It's grossly under-filled, but from the description is intended to save somewhere between 20 and 60 people, and get them safely to the nearest habitable planet in the system in one piece. Most impressively, it was built to do so primarily on auto-cogitator control, on the not unreasonable assumption that space pilots are considerably rarer than ratings, and more likely to be found near a proper boat bay.

In terms of life-support endurance and consumables, it successfully made the trip in-system from out in the jumpzone (further than the warp limit, in fact) to the planet in a couple of weeks, and not only had sufficient supplies for the people actually aboard it (admittedly, there were only two of them) for the trip to the "safety" of the ground, but also to feed them (and, for that matter, an additional squad of people) for several days/weeks and fully load a captured ork warbuggy.
Granted, it obviously wasn't loaded anywhere near capacity, but given that one of the people aboard was Gunner Jurgen, the smelliest man in the Imperial Guard, it's air purifying system must be up to scratch for a full load for a week or so.

All that said, the odds are that most ships will be woefully under-equipped with escape craft (especially ones as good as described above), not merely for the logistical reasons you outlined above, but also to reduce the risk of desertion- remember, the majority of IN issue void suits are only fitted with 6-8 hours of breathable air, on the grounds that if you're in vacuum for longer than one watch/work shift, you're likely going to be dead of other issues or trying to desert by going for a Dutchman. The same source ( Cross the Stars ) notes that the best time to desert is after a battle, in one of the escape shuttles. If people realise you've gone, they'll either think you were killed in action, or (if you're found) "Oops. We took some local damage, and had to evacuate- this was the best way. Thanks for bringing us back to the ship," may work as an excuse.

As much press as exterminatous gets it's not really all that common, remember habitable planets are comparatively rare in the galaxy so the imperium will throw manpower at the problem unless there's soem motivating factor otherwise. This is one thing that I think hasn't been played out all that well, only when a planet threatens to go full on demon world do I think they consider exterminatus as an option or when the invasion would render it non habitable such as in the case of the 'nids.

As to lifeboats and the like, i can definitely see them happening especially in upper levels of the ship where skilled ratings (as opposed to the pressganged masses of the lower decks) live. It will also be a cultural thing, a ship equiped with crew kin quarters for example might eschew lifeboats as the crew would rather fight for their home to their last breath. Finally there's just scale issues involved, even in the event of massive hull breaches huge swaths of a ship might still be varying degrees of habitable long after the initial event leading to space hulks. In those cases it's considerably safer to stay ont he ship and hope for rescue.

IG transports like the one in the Cain novels are a different beast because their designed to ferry a huge surplus population into a warzone which means a greater priority is put on getting the troops to the surface then saving the ship in my opinion. The ship is valuable don't get me wrong and the crew is sort of but certain losses are to be expected in planetary invasion and they have to plan for it. Most of the rest of the empire never "plans" on loosing a ship.

Lifeboats migth make a neat luxury component or thing to aquire that costs space and wealth but enhances crew morale perhaps at the cost of higher crew losses when hull points drop below a certain value (representing those who bail out without authorization).

So, to summarise: there aren't enough for everyone. Just the important people, so maybe enough to shift ten or twenty percent of the crew. That's still a lot of people, but nowhere near enough. Talking about configurations, lets say the ship carries 20,000, has a generous allocation of lifeboats that can take 4,000. Fifty souls to a boat, that's eighty boats. A quick figuring gives four lifeboats a side on each deck, each spaced five hundred metres apart, available on ten decks. A Jericho transport is 0.3km on the beam, pretend that's the same for the height, five metres per deck with 25% wasted gives forty five decks.

Hoo boy. That's a long jog when the place is falling apart around you.

Additional speculation: the boats will vary from miniature (for Imperial standards) in-system craft to simple boxes of air with emergency transmitters. Some may even be parts of the ship, as suggested earlier. Priority is given to the worthies, so the upper decks will usually have more access to boats. And a captain who abandons his ship and survives will tend be haunted by the fact for the rest of their days.

I would rate upgrading (or downgrading) lifeboats in the same way as crew quarters in all aspects. No need to muddy the waters with extra rules.

Couple of points:

By the time a Voidship is suffering catastrophic ("Critical") damage there are not many of the crew left according to the space combat rules. I would assume that the ship has "Savior pods" (As mentioned in several novels) sufficient for the surviving crew. My Idea of a "Savior pod" is something that resembles a Space Marine "Drop pod". Basically it is a simple capsule that is built into the hull at construction. Unlike a true drop pod the savior pod is designed to bring survivors down somewhat slower and deposit them on a planet's surface after a (Relatively) soft landing. Such a pod could probably not survive more than a day or two in the void as it's purpose is solely to get survivors down to a planet. The Life raft mentioned above would probably also be present but only in sufficient numbers for senior officers and luxury passengers (If the ship is equipped for carrying such).