Just looking for comments, any suggestions are appreciated. The goal is to make recovery of ancient ships more significant than simply not having to acquire it with the acquisition rules or looting any remaining components for your current flagship. In my opinion, a recovered and fully repaired archeotech ship should be about twice as powerful as a non-archeotech ship.

Dark Designs – Archotech Hull Types

Fluff: The warships of mankind's ancient past are the truest horrors of the battlefield, able emerge victorious from battles with xeno fleets of similar ships. The primary reason the emperor directed mankind towards modern ship designs, was to limit the damage we could do to ourselves when we inevitably fought one another. The best modern ships would need to outnumber one of these archeotech monstrosities at least two-to-one to stand a chance. Even then, the modern fleet must be directed by superior captains and gunners, and the ancient ships had their own ways of compensating for the limits of merely average leaders.

Crunch: The book Stars of Inequity has inspired me to new thoughts concerning truly ancient ships from mankind's past. My intent with these rules to to make true archeotech ships that are roughly equivalent to two ships of similar class. To do this, I've created a new category to add to each full entry on table 2-31, on page 86 of Stars of Inequity, and modifications based on on craftsmanship as well.

Ship Hull modifications based on results from Table 2-31

Imposing – Hull: Use ship component rules (no change necessary)

Compact – Hull: This ship isn't really smaller, however its internal structure is much more efficient, making more space for other components. Increase the ships available space by 10, and all components added with a space requirement of two or greater have their space requirements lowered by one. This bonus does not stack with the space reduction from good or best craftsmanship installation of the component.

Steady – Hull: This ship's basic systems are vastly superior to modern systems. Increase the hull's detection and maneuverability by +10. Additionally, any tech-use tests made to affect the ship durign combat receive a +5 bonus.

Potent – Hull: This terrifying ship has power to spare. In addition to increasing the power generated by it's plasma drive by 10, any unused power may be directed towards any installed lance weapons, or other energy based weapons. Each two points of power directed towards weapons increase their damage by one. This does not stack with any damage boost a weapon may already have due to effects from table 2-31 that the individual weapons may already have.

Swirling Energy – Hull: This ship has energy to spare, and is constantly storing any unused energy in the thousands of capacitors place in any open space around the ship, including charging the hull. Any components added to this ship with a power requirement of two or higher have their power requirements reduced by one. This effect does not stack with any power requirement reductions from installation quality. Additionally, once per strategic turn, the ship's shields may be increased by one. This shield increase even functions on a ship with no shields.

Incalculable Precision – Hull: This ship's system are more finely turned than is possible to reproduce in modern times. The range of the ship's auger arrays, lances and macrobatteries is doubled. Targeting objects beyond the newly doubled range incurs a -20 penalty on detection or BS rolls, and weapon damage is reduced to 1d10, or 1d10-2 if the weapon's maximum damage is already 10 or less.

Indestructible – Hull: It is not possible to truly destroy a ship with this quality. Critical hits that cause a plasma explosion or warp breach are reduced to considering the ship to be hulked. Regardless of the damage such a ship suffers, a hulked indestructible ship's hull cannot be damaged enough to make the hull itself non-recoverable. Additionally, indestructible ships have their armor increase by three, and any test made to put out fires or repair damaged or depressurized components are automatically successful.

Multiple Blessings – Hull: Roll again on the rare blessings table below, and again on table 2-31, treating another result of Multiple Blessings as a result of Imposing.

1 to 2: Powerful shields – The hull has best quality overload shield capacitors already installed and they cannot be removed. These capacitors can restore shields twice per combat, instead of once per combat.

3 to 4: Torpedo Specialist – The ship has an extra prow slot with an archeotech torpedo launcher preinstalled. This does not require any additional space, but does require power. If the ship is not a cruise or larger warship, then the torpedo launcher has half the normal capacity.

5 to 6: Colony ship – This ship was designed not only as a warship, but to carry passengers and cargo to either populate existing colonies or create new ones. This ship has two additional main cargo holds and luxury passenger quarters (or one main hold for raiders and frigates). These components do not require additional space, however, power must be provided. Additionally, as a hybrid ship, it can mount transport components in addition to components it can normally mount. If a component is available for the base hull type and transports, use the one that requires more space. (Roll again if the hull in question is a transport. Keep rolling until a different result is rolled)

7 to 8: Ship of the Line – This ship was better equipped to handle multiple opponents, having two of its weapon slots moved to keel slots (in the case of ships with only one slot, it loses its main weapon slot in exchange for two keel slots). In addition to the weapons that can normally be mounted on keel slots, these slots can also mount landing bays and lances that can normally only be mounted on cruisers. If the hull in question is a cruiser or larger, then it can also mount lances that would normally only be available to grand cruisers.

9 to 10: Dark Age Ship: This ship is just generally better than other ships. It gains an additional keel weapon slot. It's speed, armor, turret and shield ratings are increased by one, and it's detection and maneuverability ratings are increased by 5.

Hoo boy, these are insanely powerful.

Some input:

sren said:

Doesn't this really give it an extra shield all the time? You might shut it down to hold it hidden, but shields regenerate every turn anyway, right?

sren said:

…Though this is also both useful and useless. It's powerful from the Navy's point of view, but not from a player perspective. A hulked ship is still worthless and you'll probably die on it. Making it defendable is nice though. Maybe this actually needs to be buffed…?

sren said:

So this means that a ship with Multiple Blessings gives it TWO rolls on the main table AND one on the special table? Alright, archeotech is awesome but this is almost too much.

I'll have to find a clearer way to word the swirling energy bonus. I intended for the bonus from swirling energy to mean "against one attack per strategic turn, you can increase your shield rating by one". My understanding of the rules is that your shields regenerate between attacks, so your shields might regenerate several times during a turn. This would increase your shield rating by one if you only had one opponent who always fired all of his weapons as one barrage. Against multiple opponents, then you have to choose which oponent you get the bonus against. Its not very disimilar to the bonus from castellan shields.

Would increasing the armor bonus for the indestructable feature make it more in line with the others? I thought three extra points of armor was a little high originally, so I'd be reluctant to increase it further.

For multiple blessings, the intended result is only two rolls; once more on the main table and one on the multiple blessings table (maybe I should have called it additional blessings). I based the powers off the table in Stars of Inequity, but I felt that two rolls on the table would be way more powerful than I intended. Other than "Dark Age Ship", all of the possibilities on the multiple blessings table shuold be weaker than the possibilities on table 2-31.

Since Void Shields regenerate between attackers, specifically, maybe you could word it as "against one attacker of your choice per turn" or something similar. I understood what you meant, at least - that your shields are one higher against a single enemy per turn, kind of like Good Craftsmanship Armour (personal armour, not ship armour).

Perhaps instead of hulked, you could make a custom "nearly hulked" category… all Components are Damaged, Depressurized, and Unpowered, and 1d5 Components (besides the Bridge and Plasma Drive) are Destroyed. Reduce Crew Population to 1d5 and Morale to 1d5-2, to a minimum of 1. Essentially, only an enginseer or two and whoever was on the bridge is still alive, besides a few randoms around the smashed-to-pieces ship that had voidsuits on. (The people on the bridge are also dead if they didn't have voidsuits, but hey, who DOESN'T wear a voidsuit when their ship gets engaged?) That should give you enough leeway to spare the party and make the ship repairable, eventually, although it may have lost some valuable components and might a ride back if it's not already in-system with a port that can make the repairs.

I understood your Multiple Blessings - once on the new table, and one more time on the original table.

I like the idea a lot, but some of these ships seem quite overpowered. Further, there seems to be a lot of fuzziness about archotech itself. Are we talking dark age tech? great crusade era? pre dark age? personally, I would find ships from the pre dark age so powerful that they are basically plot devices. FTL drives, deadly accurate weapons and targeting and invulnerable shields are all things these ships could conceivably have.

I would suggest that simply giving the compact ship +10 space is plenty, without the space reduction for new components as well.

Steady bonuses are good, enough to be appreciated, but I might consider giving them a +10 bonus to affect the ship during combat.

Potent. this one is quite OP. also, taking away bonuses makes little sense unless they are from similar sources (e.g. enhanced capacitors etc). Perhaps double the strength of any lance/macro cannon weapons and increase the range? or make the exchange rate a lot steeper. two power for one damage is not a lot. I've always found it strange that the power increase is the same, regardless of the size of the generator. It might be that you decide to simply increase power generated by 25% or even 50%, giving the ship the option of carrying a full bank of the heaviest weapons..

Swirling energy. Again, I can't see why this effect would render other bonuses useless, perhaps to stop a lot of zero (or one) power components? why not give it a set of castellan shields (double shields against one target a turn) and say that the components cannot become unpowered for any normal reason. It could also protect against small craft and torpedoes by giving extra armor/turrets or making them not ignore the shields.

Precision. quite Op again. double ranged bombardment cannons anyone? I can see what you’ve tried to do for the energy bleed, but still, game breaking. extra space, power and maneuver would all be good bonuses for this quality as would extra morale and crew quality. you could even conceivably given them another weapons slot.

Indestructible. not op. I likes this one as it offers the effects of several components and upgrades simultaneously. I think it would also make a good endeavor to recover a ship like this after a defeat or some such. It might be worth specifying that no further (inferior) armor can be added.

the multiple blessings table is good, perhaps it should rolled on for all ships as well as the main table (extra blessings could become owners choice?)

This thread also raises another thought, we have good quality component rules, but not craftsmanship rules for hulls. Surely not every single ship in a given pattern is the same? To that end, I would suggest the following,

Good: A good quality hull costs an extra 20% in SP at creation and imposes a similar penalty amount of the profit factor roll to acquire a new hull. This is in addition to any backgrounds that the players may wish to purchase.

A good quality ship hull can choose three of any of the following bonuses once:

+1 armor, +3 maneuverability, +1 turrets, +5 detection, -5 to enemy detection attempts, +3 Hull points, +2 space, +2 power, +25 achievement points for: Trade, exploration or criminal themed objectives (choose one).

A best quality Ship hull can choose six of the bonuses, up to twice each:

+1 armor, +3 maneuverability, +1 turrets, +5 detection, -5 to enemy detection attempts, +3 Hull points, +2 space, +2 power, +25 achievement points for: Trade, exploration, military or criminal themed objectives (choose one). A preinstalled component up to 3 space that cannot be removed.

An Archotech ship can choose up to twelve of the bonuses, up to three times each.

+1 armor, +3 maneuverability, +1 turrets, +5 detection, -5 to enemy detection attempts, +3 Hull points, +2 space, +2 power, +25 achievement points for: Trade, exploration, military or criminal themed objectives (choose one). A preinstalled, Archotech component up to 3 space that cannot be removed (counts as three bonuses).