Asajev said:

What is this 'Ship Role' you speak of?

That would be Ship's Steward, Into the Storm pg. 232, Right Colum subsection Benefits on the PDF version of the book.

Fresnel said:

Fresnel said:

Water being on the vessel doesn't mean its in the life support system though, these are city sized ships not in the life support system or in a body leaves an awful lot of places water could collect (an obvious one being as ice round any part of the vessel that is below freezing.) Half flooded passages which aren't important enough for anyone to care.

Fresnel said:

I'm talking about the Imperium not being homogenous. By RAW you can restock supplies on a Primative world, on an uninhabited world, neither of these are going to irradiate it for you. While you are spending the 3 weeks over the uninhabited jungles of Kaldesh to replenish the crew morale, orgainised hunting/foraging expeditions would replenish the larder, and definately fits the setting.

Yeah get an Tech-Priest as Quartermaster and the advances of the Genetors are suddenly relevant, otherwise not so much, Mars functions because they have a monopoly on knowledge, and even then they don't understand that machine spirits they tend to are Tech Heresy by their own definations. The reason the crew is so huge is because absurd tasks are achieved with man power, descriptions about hundreds of men being used to open an automatic door that no one understands any more litter the setting. The entire setting is a multi-layered anachronism, it's not technologically coherant as all. Besides the social structure is pre-19th century in many ways.

There's no standarised education, I mean Tech-Use and literacy being advanced skills tells you all you need to know about the setting. The Seneschal doesn't have Tech-Use as standard, the skills nutrition probaly falls under are rank 4 at best. The Quartermaster could have a great grounding in Nutrition, have good relations with a tech priest who performs basic nutritional analysis on unusual food stuffs, or he could be the 17th indiviudal in a long line to hold the posistion who stocks the ship by rote, has no understanding of the reason behind the tradition and acts hostily to any attempt to change anything. Which is fine because the High Command are too distracted with more exciting things to realise how much food is being lost due to poor storage.

Besides it's not that simple, there is no internet, even if you have a quatermaster who understands nutrition their probaly relying on their own records to work out the nutrition value. There will be things they haven't encountered, either completely unknown species, or just nutritional variation from years of genetic variation (or being planted in a completely different enviroment), what were lemons when the world was founded, might no longer have Vitamin C, but because the yield is high non of the farmers noticed. Thats before you consider GM crops. If your vary the port you restock at (Or restock at a major trade hub even.) To fully understand nutrion of your supplies you probaly need your own nutrition lab on the ship, not really fitting with the setting is it? Then you throw in human varation, remember the Imperium on it's search for mutants isn't persecuting those with a different makeup of digestive enzymes. Genetors exist routine genetic testing, you have to be kidding me, you could easily restock for a planet where alchol dehydrogenase is rare and suddenly find that the nutrients you were assuming they would get from there beer isn't going to happen.

Fresnel said:

Interestingly the only references to Technology on Agri-worlds (Although there are probaly some I have missed.) One explictly salted food (and held the wheel to be too advanced but used frieghted the meat by air. One only refers to having one large settlement which was a vast fortification, and the final one is advanced enough to have turned a dessert world into fertile plains. An in system agri-world (and there are a fair number of these in the fluff.) Might not bother because the world it's supplying is close enough that theres no advantage to the addtional processing.

I based the avalibility off the avalibility given for explicitly military rations, which has the disadvantage that Dark Heresy has more variation in food prices than RT (Not surprising food generally falls under RTs abstraction level, it's designed to be handwaved and since DH is the game about bullet counting it seemed the place to find out how much miltiary quality rations are (Also just for a neat fact a years military rations for a sword class vessel are worth around 47 million thrones (although by that point you are probaly getting a large bulk discount.)

My point was never it was unmanagable, just that the default does the world have food check, get NPCs to collect said food while we have adventures doesn't makes the same assumptions you are making, there are plenty of reasons why you might not have the supplies you assume. 1 years worth of supplies is a safe estimate, you could go to any world with food in the Imperium and be able to stock up for a year. If the players get actively involved they could almost certainly do better, but thats fundamentally one of RT guiding principals, if you want a job done right do it yourself.

Asajev said:

OK. I got it now. Yes, all of those should stack, so 2x2x2=8x6 months = 48 months. Since NPCs can fulfill these roles (see the beginning of the Ship Roles section), I have to wonder: What ship wouldn't have a Steward (and thus why isn't 1 year the standard)?

I find that someone did a poor job editing the Navis Primer's travel times with a lens of logic. Travel time from Footfall to Damaris is 200 days and it's a Surly route. From Iniquity to Damaris is 3 days. Within these constraints Damaris becomes a horrible place for an Imperial-style system to have survived on its own without a very large system defense fleet, and an even worse one to establish an Imperial base at, which is somewhat the objective of yet another scenario.

Additionally, the Magoros system isn't even mentioned, although it's the destination of the Intro scenario. Of course, if it was mentioned, it would negate the travel time of that already established scenario, so I can see why someone "forgot" to add it. It was all about simple embarrassment.

The Ragged Worlds is entirely left out, which is a shame because two published scenarios go there.

And of course, the travel times for in-system travel is completely silly, given that all the ships have listed maximum sustainable accelerations from 2-6+ Gs, all without FFG having tackled the inertia problem. Of course, we all just play as though artificial gravitation devices are ubiquitous, but there's no line for them in the damage tables. Given this artificial gravity and inertia compensation, those 6 Gs would make travel time from Sol to Pluto about a week.

So that I'm not being entirely negative here, my solutions for the following problems have been to assume artificial gravity and intertial compensation. Add a line into the damage tables. Make my own table for the Ragged Worlds. Fix the travel times in the Foundling Worlds. The last was the most difficult, but I explained to my players that their map was 2-dimensional and didn't portray how far above or below the map's plane said planets actually were.

I've recently also posted on the problems with the Encounter table in Navis Primer. I'm working on a new for our campaign. That alone should fix those problems.

All in all, I'm disapppointed with the Navis Primer. It is a mediocre book. It did add good stuff, but even the good is incomplete. Some of the stuff is just bad.

All the talk about foodstuffs and nutrition remind me of a conundrum I once threw at my party. The planet they restocked their vessel was fond of spicy food and the foodstuffs they purchased were too hot for the crew. There were riots on the decks before the ship reached a new destination where they could replenish with food that was palatable to the crew. The Rogue Trader executed a few of the crew responsible for testing food before purchase. All in all it was an enjoyable experience for the players involved.

This isn't even the second thread on travel times, lol. I did the math in http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/95355-real-space-travel-time/ as well. Remeber that the ships all have a maximujm sustained acceleration in thier description. I usually allow the players to increase that in proportion to 'stable' speed increases. I don't alter it for speed changes that seem like they would be a strain on the drives (Energistic Conversion Matrix). A basic derived equation is:

Time=2*the square root of distance/Acceleration. This works out to 68 hours for 1AU at 1g of acceleration. Note that traveling from the Primary Biosphere to the Inner Cauldron should probably be more like a week average, not two.

Normally you would think that ships use efficient acceleration curves and orbital mechanics to minimize fuel use while reducing travel times. In an emergency you could get a Sword Class Frigate (Acceleration of 4.5g) from the Kuiper Belt (outer edge of system) to Terra in 230 hours. Note that you will be doing 10% of the speed of light at your midpoint decceleration turn. You would also be faced away from your destination for the last half of the trip, which could make ambushes interesting for the single round you would be in range. Unless they just towed an asteroid into your way...

For a game, I think it is sufficient to say that travel times in SoI are based on 2-2.5g max sustained acceleration and allow players with faster ships to make the trips faster. I divide 2g by the players acceration and then multiply that number (System Travel Modifier in my game) by the 'normal' travel time. This rewards faster ships and allows the players to feel like they get a real advantage while keeping the math simple. For emergencies I use the more specific math, but rule that pushing the drives harder requires Tech-Use checks. It is really about how much detail you want in your system.

As far as supplies, I have used the rule that if you use your Cargo Hold for supplies you add 4 months (Less efficient than Extended Supply Vaults) to your endurance. I have yet to see a group that doesn't have an Arbetorium though. Most of them opt for a Best Quality Arbetorium. I would also assume that players would want to get charts for stops along long trips for supplies. My players turned making a route to Damaris into a Grand Endeavor. They now have Colonies in Lunicera (near Dolorium) and Hemelshot to provide fuel, supplies, and trade for ships making the trip to Damaris. By going around the major Warp storms they cut the trip by 40-60 days depending on which way you are going. They also provide supply trade stations in the Outer Cauldron to minimize the ammount of time you waste refueling and resupplying. The majority of trade with Damaris now goes through their systems. Problems like travel distances are just oportunities for players to make a profit.

I find that someone did a poor job editing the Navis Primer's travel times with a lens of logic. Travel time from Footfall to Damaris is 200 days and it's a Surly route. From Iniquity to Damaris is 3 days. Within these constraints Damaris becomes a horrible place for an Imperial-style system to have survived on its own without a very large system defense fleet, and an even worse one to establish an Imperial base at, which is somewhat the objective of yet another scenario.

Additionally, the Magoros system isn't even mentioned, although it's the destination of the Intro scenario. Of course, if it was mentioned, it would negate the travel time of that already established scenario, so I can see why someone "forgot" to add it. It was all about simple embarrassment.

The Ragged Worlds is entirely left out, which is a shame because two published scenarios go there.

And of course, the travel times for in-system travel is completely silly, given that all the ships have listed maximum sustainable accelerations from 2-6+ Gs, all without FFG having tackled the inertia problem. Of course, we all just play as though artificial gravitation devices are ubiquitous, but there's no line for them in the damage tables. Given this artificial gravity and inertia compensation, those 6 Gs would make travel time from Sol to Pluto about a week.

So that I'm not being entirely negative here, my solutions for the following problems have been to assume artificial gravity and intertial compensation. Add a line into the damage tables. Make my own table for the Ragged Worlds. Fix the travel times in the Foundling Worlds. The last was the most difficult, but I explained to my players that their map was 2-dimensional and didn't portray how far above or below the map's plane said planets actually were.

I've recently also posted on the problems with the Encounter table in Navis Primer. I'm working on a new for our campaign. That alone should fix those problems.

All in all, I'm disapppointed with the Navis Primer. It is a mediocre book. It did add good stuff, but even the good is incomplete. Some of the stuff is just bad.

I think it's important to note that Rogue trader is not Traveller. Artificial Gravity, Inertial compensators and foodstuffs could all generically come under the heading of life support. (As well as water recycling and waste disposal.) There fore any hit that damages this component would affect all of these functions until repaired. As to the Mathmatical constant acceleration, deceleration formula, yes I agree. The slowest acceleration I can find in the Core book is 1.6 G's (The Jericho transport). Assuming 1g acceleration/deceleration standard the time from Earth to Pluto is approximately 15 days. This tells me where ffg got their "Standard" Transit time. Since the equation is exponential, Transit time at 2g comes down to about 3 days. My Math is a bit rusty but you get the point. Note that at these distances the ships speed becomes near relativistic so the crew's perception of time may be skewed.

I suspected travel times had been discussed before, but the search engine here is less than ideal.

I don't much care for the mid-point turn-around concept. It makes perfect sense in a real world, but it just doesn't fit the way WH40K fleets operate in fluff or in BFG. Everything about WH40K ships speaks of atmospheric maneuvers. I just pre-suppose the use of inertial dampeners somewhere in those huge engines they don't begin to understand. Call them space brakes if you like, or gravity anchors.

And yes, they do list maximum sustained acceleration. I thought I said that. They're silly.

I love these discussions, but I think the most important lesson to remember is: If you try to apply real world physics or logic to 40K, you're in for a (million) world(s) of pain.

I'm disappointed that FFG can't be a little consistent on this matter (it was just as bad in Dark Heresy), but in the end you have to fall back on the rule of cool, and turn all the dials to 11.