I've searched the forums and seen where people have talked about their group salvaging the Light of Terra (LotE) in broad brush strokes. I know my group will want to do this as well, and it fits their piratical nature to steal that which is not theirs. What I'm struggling with is all the various components and repairs they'd need to make the ship 1) barely functional to return to port, and then 2) fully functional. I realize this will likely take decades. My knowledge of 40k fluff is fairly light, so I don't know what thingamabobs a battleship needs to function. No idea too crazy

Here's the info I threw my players, let them work off of this for about six months out of game. It was great! I didn't have to do anything!

This is, of course, aimed at my group - so feel free to change names, dates and places to suit

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To: All Command Crew
From: Auger-master Frankel Villanova

Please find attached for your review a summary of our detailed scans of the 'Light of Terra'. The following shall contain a small selection of information about the Emperor-class Command Carrier, the damage that has been detected by our augers and an addendum from Magos Karostas in regards to steps to restore the 'Light of Terra' to working service.

The Emperor-class Command Carrier has been in service in various naval fleets since before the rise of the Imperium of Man. The technology to build them from new is all but lost, almost all Emperor-class ships that are put into service are recovered hulks such as the Light of Terra. Only four shipyards across the Imperium are still capable of creating the Emperor-class and two of those shipyards are within the system of Holy Terra itself, the Jovian shipyards and, of course, Mars.

The Emperor-class is twelve kilometres long and measures 1.8 kilometers across the fins. It has an ideal crew capacity of 250,000 souls, but can run a skeleton crew of 50,000. Each Emperor-class has a maximum acceleration of 1.6 gravities, less than a third of that of the Fata Morgana. The Emperor-class has significantly weaker armour than other ships of the same size category and is considered underarmed by many naval commanders.

The standard armament of an Emperor-class consists of a Mars-pattern broadside to port and starboard, as well as a series of turreted Mars-pattern Macrocannon along a set of dorsal mounts. The primary use of the Emperor-class comes from its many launch bays and hangar decks. The Emperor-class can hold up to 120 Fury Interceptor and 40 Starhawk bombers (Naval standard outfit) or equivalent.

The most notable feature of the Emperor-class is their unique Auger system. This technology is lost to the Imperium, fortunantly most recovered Emperor-class ships still retain enough of their Augers to repair.

The Light of Terra appears to be, in almost every regard, a standard make of Emperor-class. Notable alternate components include:
-The Command Bridge has been routed through a significant MIU hard-link to the admiral, closer to the hard-wiring that many Titan crews choose to undertake.
-The Dorsal Macrocannons have been replaced with light Lance turrets.
-There is an extensive set of Cold decks for the storage of cryogenically frozen crew.
-A set of stasis chambers.
-A set of barracks, indicating the Light of Terra probably contained Assault Boats and other specialised boarding craft.

Damage to the Light of Terra is significant. Scans have confirmed the original suspicions - the ship was indeed damaged as the result of an emergency warp translation in the turbulent area surrounding this system. Approximately half of the ship - primarily towards the prow - is depressurised. The superstructure has taken dramatic damage approximately half way along the spine. The outer hull armour has been badly damaged by asteroid impacts. All scans of the interior of the ship show similar levels of damage. Many of the aqueous resevoirs have burst, flooding several of the central decks. Most of the plasma reactors in the enginarium have gone into emergency lockdown, with only one stil firing, albiet irregularly. All the weapon systems have been destroyed, although with time it may be possible to repair the starboard macrocannon battery and one dorsal lance. The turret systems seem largely intact, but have been drained of ammunition. The plasma drives have taken superficial damage to the outer housing, but nothing that cannot be repaired - indeed, should power be restored to the drives, the Light of Terra would be capable of moving under its own power, although without the ability to turn. The geller field has burnt out and will need to be replaced, but the warp engines are only requiring power to reactivate. Currently, no systems are powered, including life sustainers. I currently estimate that if we do not interfere, there is enough oxygen left on board for a further two centuries of life.

To: All Command Crew
From: Magos Ceitums Karostas

Needless to say, leaving this brutalised machine here without throught or plans to comehow revive her is not just criminal but blasphemous.I have gone over the deep auger scans and have come to the following conclusions.

Point one: We do not currently have the capacity to repair the Light of Terra. We do not have the material resources or the crew. Whether we could train some of the local natives to assist with repairs or bring some of the inhabitants of Zayth to work on her matters little in the long run. We need more tech-adepts and dedicated Magos we can trust to guide the repairs. We would also need to ship in a great deal of raw materials that do not currently exist in this system.

Point two: Assuming we can somehow reclaim this ship, the Adeptus Mechanicus, Imperial navy and Ecclesiarchy will all lay claim to it. The Warrant of Trade, I am told, allows you to hold on to her, but there are more than enough parties who will not care about the legalities of such matters.

Point three: Even IF we manage to find a source of skilled adepts, a willing Magos, enough raw materials and battleship sized components to repair her, we still cannot transport all those things to this system on the Fata Morgana. This ship is simply not capable of transporting that much raw material. A skeleton crew who could do little more than have the Light of Terra manoeuveur out of the planetary ring of the world we orbit comprises of nearly double the Fata Morganas current crew. In addition to all of the crew required are rations for each, water purification plants, security teams to keep everyone in line. We would need a transport vessel, possibly two, just to keep the process alive.

There are some advantages in keeping the Light of Terra where it is. By restoring power to its turret systems and supplying them with ammunition, it can remain hidden in the planetary ring. Scans in the Zayth system showed damaged void capable mining settlements - there may be enough salvagable material to set up a mining rig on the Light of Terra. This would allow us to start refining raw material. With more assitance from our allies on Zayth, we may even be able to set up a small manufactorium, or larger magnafactoria, to process this material into components we can use. Needless to say, this would require us to leave a sizable fraction of our own crew there as overseers and tech-adepts running the operation which would use captured natives from the Light of Terra as a workforce.

Should we obtain a suitable number of transport vessels, set up a mining rig as detailed above AND obtain the appropriate workforce, I estimate we could have the Light of Terra warp capable in less then three years. It would not be a comfortable warp journey, nor would it leave the Light of Terra unscarred, but we could limp her to Zayth and, Omnissiah willing, use their manufactoria to fix her entirely. I estimate, with minimal assistance and crew, that it would take thirty standard years to bring her to working condition. With better facilities and crew, of course, that time could be reduced, potentially halved.

I have compiled a list of the materiel we will need to organise for the Light of Terra restoration works. Needless to say, some of these materials are far easier to obtain than others. I have attached potential sources for these materials where I am aware of such a source. I have also taken the liberty of calculating Adeptus Mechanicus personnel requirements.

Raw Material requirements:

Adamantium Ore
6.8 Megatonnes post refining

This is one of the largest raw material requirements for the restoration. We require well over three times the total mass of the Fata Morgana just to repair the spine of the Light of Terra. Fortunately, Platea is rich in Adamantium. Less fortunate is that said deposits are safely in the hands of Allied Minerals and they are known to be canny traders. This amount of ore will cost us dearly.

Cogicator Components
See attached file xx::/rest.light../ck/cg0012b (requirements of cogicator repair)

One of the more troublesome set of items we shall require. Which the cogicator circuitry itself is relatively easy to create, we will need to source an independent contractor or set up our own manufactoria to produce these components. The raw ceramite required for these parts is freely available from the first moon of Zayth, actually piled up as spoil from where it was collected as a by-product of plasteel manufacture.

Thorium Extract
220,000 litres

Thorium extract is primarily used to modulate plasma temperatures though long distance conduits. The misfiring reactor that is still active on board the Light of Terra is showing critically low Thorium levels. This extract can be purchased from several sources, but the only supplier that could likely provide the volume we require operates out of Lithore station. It is worth noting that the levels we will require will indicate either a battleship sized drive or that we have begun to outfit our vessels with super-fired plasma weaponry. It is a suitable cover story, but could lead to complications down the line.

Ceramite plating
15 acres, three meter depth
Ceramite, as noted above, is easily obtained above Zayth. Fashioning the reinforced plates required to rebuild the plasma drive thrust tubes will be slightly less simple and will require dedicated manufactoria.

Photonic Hydrogen
300 giga-litres

Photonic Hydrogen is the fuel consumed by the main plasma drives. Currently, the Light of Terra has under 2% remaining in the drives, good for slightly over five years at maximum power without activation of the warp drives. We will need to add more fuel at some point during the rebuilding, but it is not an immediate priority. As is well known, Lithore is the best source of Photonic Hydrogen, although the star CCX-804 also appears to be a suitable candidate for stellar farming.

Promethium
Unspecified quantities required W

hile the Light of Terra herself is powered by the sacred plasma drives at her heart, the ancillary vessels within require promethium fuel to operate. The Light of Terra, in addition to her large and well armoured carrier bays, also maintained several hundred arvus, halo barges, lamprey cargo vessels and shark assault boats. We will need to bring many of these vessels up to working condition before we can start to affect many of the required repairs. Most of the required spare parts will still be on board, but their fuel has likely denatured by now, rendering it useless.

Delta-VII Plasma Conduits
4.28 Kilometres

As you are aware, the majority of the Plasma Conduits onboard the Light of Terra have been damaged beyond repair. While there are sufficient conduits to power a fraction of the systems - notably the main drives, cogicator core and bridge systems - the vast majority of the Light of Terra's systems will not be able to draw power until we install new plasma conduits. The standard conduits for a ship of this size are the Delta-VII conduits which are now impossible to have produced. The only source for these conduits are old ships and hulks. It is not impossible that the space hulk orbiting Xibalba will have conduits onboard we can use, but it is unlikely.
If we are completely unable to source existing conduits, we have a limited number of options open to us. We can use Delta-VI conduits, usually fitted to battlecruiser class vessels, most notably the Mars-pattern battlecruiser, although that will reduce drive efficiency notably. We can strip out the Light of Terra's current drive and replace it with a number of cruiser drives, producing the same power, with much easier power transfer, at the cost of significantly increasing the size of the enginarium. We can search for an archeotech drive, possibly locating one in the Xibalba hulk, but I do not give this option a great chance of success. Alternately, that are some non-imperial options, although I shall leave those as mere rumours unless more information is requested off the record.

Haemo-synaptic fluid
400 litres
This rare fluid is used in one of the most essential parts of the Geller field. Sourcing such a liquid should be simple enough - simply get on the hulk at Xibalba, find any surviving Geller field generators and drain the liquid. I would recommend that you engage minions with a delicate hand, as the liquid does not react well to the touching of flesh.

Servitors
Est. 250,000 required
While Magos Nathaniel is better qualified to give exact rundowns on the types of servitors required, I have estimated we will need at least a quarter of a million servitors to perform the repairs required. For smaller numbers, up to around 20,000, I would say that our newly acquired Servitoria would be sufficient. For these quantities we must deal with House Phra Hui or Mezoa directly.

Personnel:
The following lists what will be required to source from the Adeptus Mechanicus in terms of a workforce to bring this holy vessel back online. The adepts should be no trouble. The Magi, on the other hand, are certainly trouble. They will need to be convinced to not simply go running back to Mezoa with the news of what we have found. If possible, we should attempt to locate and Explorator Fleet and source the Magi from there. The less ties they have to a Forge World, the better.
Tech Adepts (approx. 50,000)
Magos Etheria - Required for the repair and blessing of warp drives and Geller field generators.
Magos Metellurgicus - Required for the knowledge of repairing such damage as the Light of Terra's spine has taken.
Magos Animus - Required to reawaken the cogicator core and repair the interface links to the bridge.
Magos Ordinatos - Required to reawaken and bless the varied weapon systems and carrier bays aboard the Light of Terra

One final matter:
There is one final matter I feel obliged to bring to your attention. The current bridge of the Light of Terra is set up for one thing and one thing alone - to route information through to the captain. A decision must be made - shall a new bridge be installed, or shall a new, sane captain be physically installed in the Light of Terra, to never again leave the command throne until death? I shall leave that in your capable hands.

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Restoring the Light of Terra
Grand Endeavour
-10 Profit factor

OBJECTIVE 1: Obtaining a workforce
Theme: Trade

A sufficiently large workforce must be gathered to repair and crew the Light of Terra. Tech-adepts in the tens of thousands, trustworthy Magi, hundreds of thousands of ratings (and sufficient security personel to keep them in line), fifty thousand or more servitors and hundreds of shuttle pilots all need to be sourced, just to have the craft repaired.

OBJECTIVE 2: Gathering Transport Vessels
Theme: Trade

Transporting the workforce and sufficient raw material to the Light of Terra will require a large number of transport ships. At least four transport ships will be required, although more would be a significant boon. The greater the number of transports, the greater the risk of pirates, so a frigate or two to guard the convoy may be helpful.

OBJECTIVE 3: Gaining a supply of raw materials
Theme: Trade

The Light of Terra needs millions of tons of raw materials of various types. From ceramite cogicator compontents, to adamantium bulkheads, to photonic hydrogen for the reactors, material must be found and processed. A supply must be negotiated with the largest material traders in the clusters in order to fill your holds.

OBJECTIVE 4: Holding off Competitors
Theme: Military

No matter how well the Light of Terra is kept a secret, eventually the tales will leak out. Many people, and even a few Xenos, would view the Light of Terra with greed, not the noble and righteous purposes of your dynasty. Eventually they will come to take her and you must be ready to defend her.

The Adventure points you in the right direction. It should take a while, and if they're not ready for it, they'd have to return to a port and gather the right equipment to repair the ship and get it in working order. As was brought up in my thread, this risks the Dread Pearl being claimed by another Rogue Trader.

Wow Professor, that's....amazing. Exactly what I was looking for. Larkin, I gleaned some nice info from your thread as well. Thanks to you both!

I'm no expert on 40k fluff and indded have only partially read the adventure but I would presume the biggest problem the players will face is I doubt the warrant of trade allows the explorer's to claim formerly navy vessels without a write of claim signed off on by the Munitorum/High Lords/Admirality. Now they could always flaunt that, repair the ship change it's colors, and hope for the best but at the very best gain the "benefit" of the Implacable Foe portion of the vessel of the fleet ship package. That is to say that the imperial navy is going to know they stole their ship even if they can't prove it, and who's to say that accidents don't happen out int he voids of space even if the navy doesn't have direct legal remit to act against them.

Looking at the real world for example, you can salvage a commercial vessel free and clear after a certain period of time, but at least here in the states and presumably in the UK as well where much of the WH40K military style is drawn from, especially the Naval stuff, once a ship is a warship of the government it remains a warship of the government until they say otherwise.

Thanks! I hope there's stuff in there that will be useful for your group!

On the same subject, so you guys would allow an increase in profit factor for recovering a ship? It seems like the ship itself should be the net effect of the endeavor when theyrecover it. Otherwise would could logicly make the argument that profit factor should go up when you "buy" a ship, as rarely as that actually comes up as an option.

I'm just trying to get other GM's thoughts on this as I plan on letting my players do ship recovery at some point. Heck in our discussion someone even posited the potential with all the scrap ships int he expanse of having an endeavor to gain access to a mobile refurbish ship which I was intrigued at.

If you're referring to Professor_kylans's endeavour list up there, note that completing the Endeavour actually costs them Profit Factor unless they're able to exceed the AP requirements by over a thousand. Personally I wouldn't ever have a mission like that reward them with profit factor unless they were very clever and able to use their resources to mitigate the vast cost of rebuilding such a ship.

As Errant pointed out, I put a dip on the profit factor for the group if they actually decided to make this thing happen, because refitting a ship that size would bankrupt most imperial worlds, let alone one family. I alos ended up putting in fairly nuts rules about maintaining such a vessel (the group needs 2 transports at all time to just run supplies, personel and various other materiel to the Light of Terra or its running costs start chewing several hundred achievement points off each endeavour it's involved in, as a brief example).

Salvaging other, smaller ships shouldn't really cut so badly into profit, but it shouldn't really enhance it either - that's why you fill the holds with cargo and the heathens with macrocannon shells, after all.

Ah I apologize for missing that, I just saw the 10 and didn't translate it mentally into negatives.

Roughly, I pay out 1/10th of the hull's SP when my group sells ship, including any modules still in working order. I estimate Battleships at about 100-120 SP for the hull. Now my group repaired the ship and then handed it over to the Navy immediately, so they got an appropriate reward from the Navy, as well as the PF rewards for recovering the ship's log.

But on the other side, when refitting ships it does represent a massive investment in time and PF. The reward ships they got from the Navy were a couple of Dictator Cruisers and they spent (aka burned) almost 30 PF refitting the vessels in a minimum amount of time. And the number was just a bit more than the entire PF reward they had eeked out from the Adventure itself.

professor:

Do you have the exact stats for the Light of Terra?

auer said:

I found it.

*grins* If you found the stats I wrote up for it, you should probably be aware that they weren't overly loved by most of the people here and there are a number of stat lines that have been thrown around for the ship. I'd recommend having a look at the different ones that are lurking about the place and see which one is best for your game (Disclaimer: Although like everyone else who's made up ship stats, I think mine are still the best )

I'm statisfied with he stats, I don't argue about it must -30 manoverability or just -15. I planned a campaign about the finding, claiming, refitting. But. I asked my RT he want to steal this ship from Winterscale (the basic of the adventure: Winterscale find it and send to SR-651 to broke it pieces and sell it, the party must steal the ship from there) and he said: No if not very neccessery so, I freeze this theme now, maybe in the future.

Wow, this is going much better than when I posted a similar thread . On mine, it was all just "the player's can't acquire a Battleship-class vessel; that's just too powerful for them to be allowed to have." Granted, the Deliverance did have a nifty "extra" in it, but oh well. This is a very interesting read, and if I ever decided to run "The Emperor's Deliverance", this could significantly aide in the fleshing out of how the party would/could go about restoring a battleship.

One dumb question, though; will/did your players just slaughter everyone aboard? The crazies might make for troublesome pests, and if you get certain systems repaired, I seem to recall that the Lord Captain, in his ravings, powers up the ship's engines, and prepares to jump to oblivion (I can't actually find my LotE, right now, so I might have embellished a bit). That being the case, short of killing them all, keeping the prized vessel long enough to do anything with it, and NOT killing everyone aboard, seems a bit dicey, at best.

As for getting to keep the ship, I would be willing to say, at least for my game, that cagey RTs, if they were willing to inform the Imperium of their find, could RP to get a Writ of Claim, and if they were willing to pay out of their own pocket to fix the Light up, the Imperium would let them keep it. Otherwise, it's another logistical nightmare for the Imperium to assemble a salvage crew of its own, locate the vessel, and hold it through repairs, and will still take decades to finish, at the Imperium's expense. They might toss in a few caveats of their own, such as "but your can't bring it within Imperial space", as they might see it as overly threatening, or you can keep it for a term, and then give it up. Maybe they'd send a group out to strip it of some choice systems, in the name of keeping classified things classified, but in the end, it would be better to just not gripe, as the Imperium should rather want it with the RTs than some even more Radical d-bags, and at least the RT is vaguely under the Imperium's control. At least then it's an asset accounted for; they know where it is, or who has it, and maybe, if the RT in question has positive ties to the navy, they could call on the RT for aide, in the form of the LoT showing up, and assisting.

My party's only real problem would be the Deliverance's "extras", but the Navy is unaware of them, as is the bulk of the Adeptus Mechanicus, so to the Navy, it's just another lost battleship, and one that the player's would more likely have to use as a space base, rather than a mobile oppression palace, for a decent amount of time.

As a last bit, how does a Battleship compare, stat-block wise, to other ships? Does it have double weapons-emplacements? Extra generators? Do we even know?

venkelos said:

FFG has posted nothing official on Battleships. Nothing. However, the old Battlefleet Gothic game has all of them fully statted out. Since most of the old BFG ships have been converted into Rogue Trader stats, it shouldn't be too hard to do a conversion. Let me go dust off my copy of the BFG rules...

...'ere we go. First off, battleships are dead 'ard. They've 50% more hull integrity than a cruiser. [bFG stats, standard battleship has 12 hits, standard cruiser has 8. More to the point the standard battleship has got 4 void shields, and 4 or more turrets. They are also very slow to answer the helm [bFG stats, cannot use "Come to New Heading" maneuver] and they tend to be slower than a cruiser.

Assuming the Light of Terra is an Emperor class battleship, it'll look something like this in RT terms:

Speed: 4

Maneuverability: -10

Void Shields: 4

Detection: +25 (The Emperor class has a mess of long range detection gear replacing the armoured prow)

Armour: 20 all round

Hull Integrity: 105

Turret Rating 5 (Confirmed. Five. Can you say "lotsa dakka"?)

Weapon components: 1 prow, 1 dorsal, 3 port, 3 starboard. Default loadout is 4 launch bays in each broadside, which takes 2 slots each. There are long range and powerful weapon batteries in prow and dorsal, and in the remaining one port and starboard slots. Something like a Sunsear las-broadside ought to be about right.

Cheers,

- V.

Wow, yeah that is a bit cheesy, in the cool way. I guess I could see why my idea got a couple of its objections, beyond my additions. i wonder how much other stuff the hull/generator would have room for? I might also have to sit down, and calculate how many SPs my extra was worth. It almost seems like a ship of that size, for combat, should use segment rules, acting as several characters over a turn, to reflect its sheer size, and weapons emplacements. Anyway, very cool, and thank you for your effort.

When I was working on my own stats, I came up with 2 dorsal weapons and only 4 turret rating, but otherwise the same.

As far the the LoT, my guys took off the Void Walkers, AND managed to impress the Wargars enough to get them as well. Both tribes were kept on seperate ships to avoid issues. They taught the engine tribe (whose name I've forgotten) the basics that they would need, and left the mutants in the holds. They also killed the captain before everything was up and running and he was able to make the jump.

My Rogue Trader is a charming bugger, and managed to get the disparate factions on his side (well, to be fair, the female Explorator wowed the Iron Kin). The group is now leaning towards salvage rather than repair, as it'll be quicker to make a profit. Still, they could change their minds!