If you happened to run through Lure of the Expanse, or if your GM just happened to know of it, Zayth, and said "I don't need all that, but I have a reason they might go there", if you were to make a deal with the people there regarding trade in their macrocannons, are they any different than the one's in the book?

I know they blessedly load themselves, but I don't know if they are any better. Does the loading mechanism take up more room than the regular cannons? Would there be an advantage to having the crew free to do something else? I guess what I'm getting at is, has anyone written up a fan entry for Zayth Macrocannons, entailing their cost, rarity, special rules, advantages and disadvantages? In LotE, they seem like one of the cooler perks you might get, that actually seem like you could get them, as opposed to the happy "rebuild the Light of Terra" option we all like to talk about, but could be a logistical nightmare, and a 20 year investment.

I reduced the Number of hits and gave them storm. Even just adding 1 hit might be enough. Maybe making them more accurate (+10 BS) due to the quicker loading time. Maybe a bonus to Crew Pop (+5?) since it frees up the crew.

Also they can trade these wonderous maguffins with the with Imperium for 3PF or so. So states are not even needed.

Larkin said:

The reason I was wondering on stats would be that these have a nice detail about them; you can sell them to BLANK for profit, a decent profit, AND, since there are a number of them, you can actually keep some for your own vessel(s), benefiting from the tech you discovered. Often you have to pick one, but that is not the case here, and if you were going to actually mount them on your ship, you might need/want stats for it.

One thing, that I hesitate to mention for the beating it over the head fact that I, and some other people have done, if you were going to, say, reclaim the Light of Terra, or even some other, more believable Hulk, these weapons could prove to be a great option, when your Crew might not be established yet, and automation would be a great advantage.

I like the Hits + Storm option, and also the bonus crew.

WEll I would chose one. Maybe double up extra hits and crew bonus. Storm does some crazy stuff with Macrocannons.

My players really enjoyed the Zayth Macrocannon trade, to the point that they expanded the dealings. They now have a lose coalition of landships willing to work together to produce cannons and other fine weapons for trade. This coalition is also bullying a larger group of landships into not attacking them (there are 6 in the coalition) and to attack the other landships not involved, all by using the imported goods from Naduesh, which has now become a minor outpost for the Dynasty. It's been a good game.

One thing I"ve considered is a lower space requirement, say by 1, possibly 2, indicating that a ship with Zayth Macrocannons can have other goodies aboard since they can reallocate the crew to another component.

Autoloaders could potentially have the following effects, depending on their interpretation:

- Reduce the space necessary by a point or so.

- Reduce crew needs.

- Increase the crit or damage a bit because you get to squeeze more Macrocannons in the same space and/or better use of your gunnery crews .

- Possible fringe benefits could include less crew loss with decompression (since it is automated) or less vulnerable to criticals due to the process being highly structured.

All the pluses should only be a point here or there - possibly a bit more if the component requires more power due to its automation. The rest could just be roleplaying, with a greater presence of the Mechanicum on the gundecks (possibly leading to grumbling amongst the insular gun clans), a description of how orderly the system works or how the cavernous gunvaults are loaded from a massive upper deck reinforced silo in a relatively ponderous but safe manner - no more gunshells the size of habblocks being manhandeld by 500-strong loading crews.

I just treated them as a good quality Macrocannon and picked the reduced size option to reflect the autoloaders. If you've got Into the Storm, you should be able to cobble something together just using the rules for component quality and upgrades.

Cheers,

- V.

I don't know, for me, they don't seem as they should be smaller, as they have tons of extra equipment to do the loading. The chamber may not need as many people in it, but that space will be stuffed with the tech that explains why those people aren't present. As for crew, you don't get more people, just more available people, and the system doesn't make you keep track of Crew, like Power, as a resource, at least not in the same way.

Higher Quality, I like, Storm could be nice, but seems like it could be crazy, too. Hmm…

Pg 17 and 18 of BFK lists Components and Craftmanship. I had planned to use Mars Macrocannon's and Bombardment Cannons with the best quality and size reductions and damage increase (because anything with higher range would be silly, since the ships are normally attacking each other on the planet anyways). Of course, with the Engineers (Enginseers?) assistance, they could conceivably adapt their weapon designs to other starship armaments, within reason. GM discretion is advised.

what about the down sides? like N2A said, they are probably short ranged (line of sight) weps. also what happens when the cannon gets damaged in combat. all those loaders can't be easy to fix quickly. and if it doesn't hit the loader but the gun and the loader tries to load the next shell with the breech closed? if the loader is out can the crew load the cannon? if so they are out of pratice. they might be good quick loading weapons but all good things have a downside.