More to the point,

Incomprehensible Layout : When a Component on this
ship is selected to be affected from a critical hit, it is chosen
by the ship’s controller, not the attacker.

How exactly is the ship controller choosing the component affected by a crit instead of the attacked?

Only circumstances where the attacker gets to choose the affected component that I know of is with murder servitors doing hit&run.

When you roll a weapon's crit rating you get to roll 1d5 (so random, not chosen) and when you shoot a crippled ship you get the result corresponding to the damage roll (so once again, not chosen)

Am I missing something, or is Tenebro Maze only good against murder servitors?

Hi,

I don't have the book with me, but i'm fairly sure that if you're the attacker, you cannot select the type of critical damage (with the notable exception of Murder Servitors), but you get to chose which component is affected by the critical damage, among the components listed under that specific critical on the critical damage chart.

The whole point of Tenebro Maze is to safeguard your most important components from being disabled or destroyed (Munitorum, engines, bridge…) and somewhat redirect the critical effects to a less needed component.

Example:

Attacker: I fire my lance upon your ship. It's a critical hit! *roll on critical hit chart" A Fire! I can select which component i want to be on fire. Well, i decide that it's gonna be your munitorum, i expect it to generate a chain reaction that will cripple your ship.

Defender: well done, but thanks to my Tenebro Maze, what you thought was the Munitorum was actually my Trophy room…

Tristelune is entirely correct. I'd say you don't let the Tenebro-maze choose your target on Hit-and-Runs (I mean, they physically ran around your ship until they found the correct Component, and already took a penalty from the Maze for doing so), but remember that on a 1d5 critical roll, that 1, 2, and 5 each say "The attacker chooses one Component" to apply that critical to. The Maze makes that "The defender chooses one Component" instead - not a bad deal at all, especially with the bonuses against Hit and Run and Boarding Actions as well.

gatherer818 said:

Each round lasts "roughly thirty minutes". During this time the hit-and-run boarders need to travel tens of thousands of km to the enemy ship, burn through the hull, fight past nearby defenders, plant explosives in key locations, and return to their own ship. There's not a lot of time left over for running around the (enormous) enemy ship looking for a specific target.

I think for the purposes of fluff the concept is that your ship has an excessively complex set of systems with all sorts of redundancies and options, and so in addition to it's outward incomprehensability you can kind of reroute **** on the fly. Like you can send that devastating power surge someplace else, it has to go somewhere and it has to **** something up but you can direct that process.

Although personally I don't know why you'd take this componant, if I recall it's very space intensive and space is always the first thing you run out of or want more of.

Amazing Larry said:

I'd say it's practically mandatory for a warship. You can't afford to lose a key Component in mid-battle just because the enemy got lucky.

I think I'd rather just buy more firepower, manueverability or armor and give them less of an oppertunity to get lucky in the first place. That and for whatever might be the case for a warship the game isn't about major naval confrontations and your ship has to balance that sort of thing with all sorts of other considerations. A Rogue Trader's ship is also the most expensive and precious thing he owns not to mention his largest financial responsability, I don't know why you'd ever engage in combat that wasn't a sure thing, or why you wouldn't just run away if the other bastard has a much more powerful ship.

Yeah, but for someone that does a lot of ship combat the Tenebro-Maze is a huge life-saver. I mean, turn 1, enemy wins initiative (maybe a surprise round?), basic Manuever so the Void-Master is free to Focused Augury, identifies your Munitorium / Auxiliary Plasma Vents / Nova Cannon / Tubes with Torpedoes already racked up, Master at Arms bounces macrocannons off your shields, then rolls a 25 on the lance. Important parts start exploding. It's much safer to be able to redirect that to your Temple-Shrine to the God-Emperor or, if you're flying empty, your Main Cargo Hold.

All the options you listed (running away, bigger guns, better manuevering, thicker armour) didn't help…. Your starship is your Trader's single most important investment. Given the option to choose what parts get damage instead of allowing hostiles to choose? Worth it. Add that to the ability to throw off Boarding Actions and ignore Hit and Runs (because, if you have a decent ship, swarms of smaller fighters using those tactics are the easiest way to lose a fight) and you have a must-have pick for Cruisers and higher, and I'd personally take it on my Light Cruisers as well.

Personally I wouldn't build a character or a ship primarily around trying to negate dumb luck by hostile NPCs, that's what fate points are for.

There is a major difference between trying to avoid loosing a critical component simply because your opponent managed to get a lucky hit and building an almost identical ship ( for the points spent ) and not being able to avoid loosing your engine or life support because of a random roll of the dice.

That is the same difference between buying a well built SUV and putting insurance on it and buying a slightly bigger SUV, and thinking its larger size is enough to avoid paying more in hospital bills.

The entire idea, is not to avoid any damage ( that never happens unless your GM is giving the game away ), but to make the damage the ship does take, more survivable.

Edit: Sure you can spend the money and the points, to increase armor and other things that make it harder to take damage, but sooner or later you will take damage that threatens to your ability to run or fight - and when you do its a good idea to have some way to deflect it.