Craftsmanship rules as I understand them:

1. Good craftsmanship supplimental components get -1 power (or +1 power if it's a energy generation component) *or* -1 space for good quality, and best getting -1 to both.

2. Good/best weapons follow same pattern (1 bump for good, 2 for best) from a separate table.

3. Lances and macrobatteries cannot take power reduction.

4. Archeotech is considered best quality -- No upgrades.

Sanity check time:
1. If one has a Jovian 8.3 class plasma drive, one has two direct upgrade paths:

A. Good/Best (allowing +1 power gen, -1 space, conforming with the above as to either/or, or both)
B. Throw "Modified" on there, which makes it archeotech, which would be exclusive to A.

So, would the going concensus be that A/B is true? I ask because I can't decide how overpowered the below might be, and an argument could be made that the drive wasn't archeotech when it was upgraded…

1. RT makes aquisition test for to upgrade his plasma drive to Best quality.
2. RT makes another aquisition test at a later time for an Archeotech component (ie. the parts for 'Modified')
3. RT then arranges the appropriate yard period and payment schedule to have the archeotech components integrated into his best quality plasma drive, resulting in +1 power gen, -5 space, +1 speed.

OP? Rules forbid it that way? I've ruled that you can't do that before, but I figured I'd ask what everyone else thought in case I was being unreasonable.


BONUS QUESTION:

Some supplimental components have only power requirements or minimal requirements to begin with… take the deep void auger for example, at 7 power, 0 space. It's not archeotech, so it's upgradable… but with only a power req, the space reduction bonus is not applicable. Would you guys allow best to be at -2 power?

The method I've proposed but not yet implimented is that for components where power or space reductions make little sense, like space for the auger, or all the 1/1 supplimental components is to identify a function of the device, grant a single reduction in any stat 2 or higher (which must be chosen for Good), and at Best quality, increase the bonus from that component slightly or otherwise add a small bonus to the component based on the function.

Examples:
Deep void auger 7/0 - +10 Detection
Deep void auger, Good 6/0 - +10 detection
Deep void auger, Best 6/0 - +13 detection

Pilots chambers 1/1 - +2 attack craft rating
Pilots chambers, good 1/1 - +5 attack craft rating
Pilots chambers, Best 1/1 - +10 attack craft rating

Please note, the rate of increase on the pilot's chambers goes 2/5/10 due to my time in the Navy, working on a carrier; where it became very clear that pilot training is a major force multiplier. I figured the quality change represented changes in technology, better holographics, better training programs, ability to update training regimens on the fly for them to represent all the threats the ship has seen, etc.

The main problem with your example is that the RT is buying the Modified drive seperate from the Best quality. They are not seperate purchases, if you want and Best Modified Drive you need to make an aquisition check at -60 (-30 Archeotech, -30 Best quality). That is going to keep most players from being able to get such a thing. Note that players may buy up components to best quality at game start, representing a truely amazing relic passed down through their house history.

WilliamAsher said:

True, but at the same time, if the parts being replaced by best quality aren't the same parts being replaced with the modified archeotech subsystems, shouldn't it work? I don't want to be in a position to frown at my players and be all "You can't because I said so." I have, unfortunately, set the bar pretty high in my game by completely avoiding it and finding logical fluff or actual physics/mechanics explanations why they can't do something. Honestly, I'm trying to argue my way into saying no, but I keep coming up with counter arguments I can't easily dismiss without essentially pulling rank… that, and I know, as a player, I'd argue till I was blue in the face if the GM couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation.

Thing is, you can buy a big block engine for your car (= the Jovian 8.3 plasma drive in the example), then swap out all the wiring, rechip it, tune it, etc etc (Best quality) … then turn around and buy a turbo kit (modified archeotech) and install it after the fact…. does that make sense?

Fluff-wise, I could see replacing a bunch of the standard cabling with superconducting line, which, thanks to the lower line losses, nets you +1 power produced… and refactor the generator section using better parts, -1 space… and, IIRC, the modified archeotech replaces the standard imperial tech plasma dewars (the bulk of the space with a plasma drive) with ancient ones, lined with some odd stuff, maybe with a slightly different internal geometry or better magnetic compressors, allowing smaller plasma flasks that burn hotter without introducing danger, thus allowing better atomic emission (+speed), and much less space from the flasks…

So, gen/wiring upgrade = +1 energy, -1 space… modified dewars = -4 space, +1 speed… no overlapping components.



I see it as something similar to installing a munitorum for the +1 dmg for macrobatteries… you didn't need to buy the munitorum at the same time you did your macrobatteries, right?

I think you're putting a great deal of todays knowledge into the Mechanicum's practices - and forgetting the fact that Archeotech is literally a holy relic. If people put in the effort to get a ridiculously awesome archeotech item - so purchasing it as Best Quality (-30), Archeotech (-30), Power (I think -20) for a total of -80 to the roll, then fine. But everyone is going to know that you have that awesome super mega item, and a lot of them are going to be envious. Envious with guns. I wouldn't allow getting the bits seperately then combining them.

But to cut up a holy relic in the hope that you could somehow improve on the Beauty, the Majesty, the Intelligence of the Omnisiah's Magnificent Archeotech would be Heresy. Better hope that your PC Mechanicus is cool with it (& all his/her subordinate NPC Mechanicus) & point him/her towards the Heretek alternate career

Or for a less religious arguament, they may function on different (and incompatible) design principles - standard design uses fission or fusion reactions, Archeotech designs have a captured black hole they mine for energy* (or something else suitably strange - Infinite improbability Drive?). So sure, you can rip the wiring out of the archeotech, and it'll help you mine black holes better, but your system uses fusion reactions, so whatever? A bike and a tank do kind of the same thing, but I don't think there'd be too much useful in one to improve the other, without compromising it's function.

*= I'm a strong believer that Archeotech should be really, really weird. Or really standard by today's technology, that everyone treats as incredibly insane and completely not understandable to drive home the differences in the setting ("And you call this a… Hair dryer? Ingenious! What does it do?"

From a competely rules standpoint you are missing a big point. You don't buy a 'Best' component to your drives, you buy the drives at the Best Quality. Item quality is a modifier to the component that must be purchased when you buy the component. Modified Drives are a component, not a modification on standard drives (or a 'turbo kit'). A 'Modified Drive' is just another way of saying 'Ancient Holy Relic Drive that we can't make anymore'. If you want a 'Best Modified Drive' you buy a 'Best Modified Drive' (at -30 for Archeotech, minus another -30 for Best quality). There is no 'Parts being replaced'. You are replacing your entire drive unit. This is just like buying a Best Plasma Gun (at the same cost as a plasma gun -30), you modify every component you buy according to quality level. Now, normally that quality level is assumed to be Normal (+0 Modifier). If you buy any other quality level then you modify the cost and item by the rules in BK. That is RAW. Your RT goes out and finds some Forge World that owes his dynasty a major favor (or needs one) and rolls to determine if such a thing is available first. Note that there probably aren't any Best Modified Drives sitting around for you to buy. The overall aquisition modifier for such a drive is -60. That is just short of unique. That means that there might be 1-3 in the Calaxis Sector. The odds that those drives aren't being used is very, very small. If it is available (Thank the Emporer!!!), then you have to convince the Forge World to release this Holy Relic of the Lost Age into your keeping. This is the Aquisition test at a total modifier of -60 (-30 for Archeotech Component, -30 for Best Quality). This is all RAW, and pretty much how the game is described.

From a fluff point of view, you need to understand that Archeotech is stuff that we lost the ability to create over 10 millenium ago! In your example there are thousands of people who can not only build, but design every part of the car…there is no person in all of Humanity that can hope to understand how to design an Archeotech drive. There are probably some poor quality records that have been transcribed by hand over 100 times by servitor that tell you how to turn it on and adjust settings. But, no one in existance today can tell you what is really going on in that drive. They can guess, and usually rely on rituals that have been handed down for more than twice as long as we today have had written language. Those rituals can be perversions of some habit that a sucessful engineer had so many years ago that his homeworld's name (the world itself, not just the fact that he was from there) has been forgotten in all writting in the Imperium. And that Habit may have actually been for him to have a quick drink before he cracked open the main plasma housing shields to fortify his courage, knowing that #3 plasma reactor internal shielding had a flawed relief valve that could possibly dump 1200C coolant on him if he was unlucky. Now the techs prepare specialized cleaning solutions made from single malt scotch to use to buff the Holy Triads Inner Shell of Protection in the name of Scottius Sigma Severus the Wise and whisper their prayers to. The fact that the scotch regularly catches fire and burns their hands is seen as a sacrifice required to satisfy the machine spirits, not a sign that the coolant flow is backing up again. So, they don't know to backflush the coolant line. Therefore, sometimes the coolant spikes and pressure forces 1200C coolant through the flawed relief valve and kills the Tech Priest standing there. They assume that he offended the machine spirit and tell the Engiseer that the drive is irritated and he goes and prays for its forgiveness. The pressure drops do to the relief valve, and the reactor returns to normal operation. That is the reality of dealing with Archeotech (and to some lesser degree, all advanced technology). You may have an incredibly inteligent Engiseer who is literally the best tech in the sector. He may have studied the drives for decades and learned all their foibles. He may even have grasped that some of the rituals are actually not necessary, and can be ignored. But he will not really understand how to completely reroute coolant flow to fix that problem…and neither will anyone else in the Imperium. The vast majority of items manufactured in the Imperium are created by copies of copies of copies of technical schematics and manufacturing diagrams passed down through the hundred centuries of the Ad Mech. There are modifications and alternate patterns created, usually by the desperate or genius, but they aren't allways better. Often, they result in yet another desperate mission for Inquisitional Agents trying to stop the destruction of yet another world by flesh eating servitors designed to be able to recharge by eating trash.

Another concern with Archeotech is it often uses concepts, materials, and methods that are unknown or outlawed by the Ad Mech. Here are a few basic examples that are very likely to be true in the 41st millenium:

The concepts might be using the byproduct electromagnetic field of a nearby power converter to fortify the magnetic bottling effect used in the primary power cell. That concept hasn't been written down in the last 5000 years, and is the only reason that the four power converters are located around the primary power cell that way. Now, to reduce power run length and reduce power losses, it might make complete sense to move the power converters closer to the engines. Doing so, however, would cause the primary power cell to become unstable and might destroy the drive completely the next time you go to flank speed. This has, in fact happened several times over the millenia…but no one survived to report the issue. That is one of the reasons that research and modification of Archeotech components is restriced or even prohibited.

The Archeotech drive almost certainly has components made out of exotic materials that allow shortcuts in engineering that would otherwise not be possible. Without knowing both what the materials are, and why they allow these shortcuts you can't recreate them without copying the entire design…which they don't know how to do. Those materials may no longer be available, or the techniques for shaping them may have been lost. Alternate materials may not have the strength, conductivity, magnetic interactions, gravity lensing effects, or resonant frequencies needed for the drive to safely function. The failing of those materials may result in catastrophic drive failure. Superconducting power lines are pretty standard stuff for ship's power conduits…but the Archeotech drives may use plasma power emission grid monitored by dedicated machine spirits.

Archeotech was built during a period when Mankind utilized AI and Warp Tech as a matter of course. While ship drives probably don't use Warp Tech, they may very well have machine spirits so advanced they skirt the line of Silicon Animus (or even cross over, although no one today realizes it). Those machine spirits are both advanced, and tempermental. Over the millenium they may have built up corrupted files and data flow backups that cause this. It is also possible that the war against the Men of Iron touched this ship's drives, and that there is malignant scrap code waiting to cause problems that you have no way of anticipating. Making those modifications may very well allow the machine spirit complete control over some power subsystem that controls life support… The code for those machine spirits may be shackled with strange code limits put in by the surviving humans after the drive attempted to do just that. These code limits may reduce ships power and make no sense to a Tech Priest today, but may be essential to keeping the 'fleshbags' of the ship alive.

I would probably just consider Archeotech to already be Best Quality - it is what current Best Quality is trying to emulate, after all - and leave it at that. Archeotech can't really be made Best quality without downgrading it, because the path is almost literally Poor < Common < Good < Best < Archeotech.

er… I've written Quality where I keep meaning to put Craftsmanship again. You get what I mean. T_T

memespawn said:

memespawn said:

Part of the problem is that I'm an electronics tech by training, so I end up having issues drawing a line between where the 40k gameplay "We're so retarded we can't understand basic tech" trope ends and the "Devs/players have no idea how X actually works or would work, so they're just winging the hell out of it and making a mess of it" begins.

My main sticking point was that the flavor text explicitly listed the plasma flasks being the archeotech bit, but I had a discussion with one of my other friends. Granted, it was a 20 minute conversation and you'll probably facepalm, but he convinced me that installing said flasks would necessarily make the entire component considered a holy relic by the ship's enginseers… combine that with the potential that all the "upgrades" I was thinking about might already be part of the flask installation as a necessity, then it's impossible to upgrade what you already have with what you already have.

Sorry seeming dense, guys. Guess I just needed someone to translate it into terms I understood. And WilliamAsher, your post was pretty similar to the chat I had with my friend, so thanks As for the RAW when it comes to Archeotech, I've always ruled that Archeotech counts as Best Quality to begin with unless otherwise specified.

So, I'd like to thank eveyone for addressing the main point in my OP… which leads me to ask if anyone has any opinons on the bonus question in regards to components where their power/space requirements don't jive with the craftsmanship rules? (Ie. power only reqs or space only reqs, so you can't reduce one of the stats for best… see the OP for a more in-depth explanation)

Glad it helped.

On the point of component quality levels I am pretty much a RAW GM unless the players can give me a very good reason to change them. If a component takes 0-1 space/power, then there is little benifit for taking improved quality. Auger Arrays are a prime example, they only have power ratings so Good Quality is the best you are really going to buy. There are a few components that benifit from being higher quality, such as Laboratoriums (we use the DH rules for item creation), but most of time they don't. I don't assume that Archeotech is automatically best quality. I see lower quality Archeotech as gear that has had damage or function loss due to age/use. Good and Best quality Archeotech is just a bit better than normal quality. Realistically, even during the DAoT they must have had different levels of quality.

My assumption is based on the fact that Archeotech is roughly one or two steps better than Best in most cases AND that Archeotech of less than the period's Best Craftsmanship has probably not survived to the current day - there's a reason it's rare, after all.

WilliamAsher said:

Not entirely true. A crazy high Morale from Best Quality components coupled with a Crew Reclamation Facility means it takes a long time before your ship starts to experience penalties from getting murdered in ship combat. Also it's a great way to remind people you're a totally awesome ship captain.

Erathia said:

I was under the impression that the Morale bonus for a Best Quality component was a temporary thing, not a permanent increase to Max Morale.

Flail-Bot said:

That was my impression from reading the RAW as well. Great for repairing sagging morale, but doesn't help you if you're at max cap already. Honestly, you'd think that having something best quality on the boat, if it repaired lower morale, would have a minor impact on things overall… like a +1 to max morale or something. *shrug*

I'll worry about that later… been working on the last week working on a way to unify the DH/RT games under the Only War paradigm. Got all the skills/talents from DH/RT meshed into a single spreadsheet, though it's a bit messy as I'm correlating merged skills and talents that were dropped… then evaluating the dropped talents for change/merger into the unified system. Started biting into Blood of Martyrs and the Inquisitor's Handbook and decided it was a bit too much to bite off for today.

So long as you allow NPCs to have the same advantages (which means a lot more book keeping & alteration of printed ships on your part) then fine.

One thing about allowing much greater effectiveness of weapons & fighters/bombers/assault is that small increases in effectiveness can have a much larger than you'd expect effectiveness.

One thing about messing with allowing extra space/power savings is that it means that people will be able to jam more things that give them positive modifiers onto their ship. Which can also quickly stack together.

I don't know. I think part of the fun is having to pick & choose between the various options & making tradeoffs between excellence in firepower & ability to trade & explore & etc.

Depends how much extra work you're prepared to put in & how many eggs they want to put in their basket. At some point it becomes a better idea to get 2 (or 3, or 4) ok ships than 1 mega dreadnought.

memespawn said:

Regardless of the RPG system, I've always handled encounters dynamically…. fudge a few rolls here, invest a few oddbal monsters there so no one knows what they really are capable of… ignore a crit against a party member if I don't think it's the right time to kill them yet for the story's sake… or auto-gib one of them because they've dug the hole and now get to lie in it. Getting away with that last part without major party drama… not easy. Random mook mobs, I'll boost a stat here, modify a roll there… critters/people who they're actually supposed to be facing, folks like bosses or other important NPCs? They get their own character sheet.

I look at this in terms of what you see when you play horror FPS games… you don't get good stuff, ever. If you get good stuff, it isn't good stuff: it's either a trap or the only thing that's going to give you a chance to fight the messed-up room of horrors you're about to walk into. Horrors like…

I have a split-off of the Tyranid Hive that is purely parasitic in nature, implantation followed by gradual loss of control and eventually becoming part of this new hive. It *hates* Tyranids and will attack them above any other target… and they're varied. What race was the host? That gives you an idea, but they're far worse. Their warriors, while melee only, can roll to parry or dodge anything thrown at them, no limit per round, and on successful dodge/parry may move up to half it's agi bonus in meters during your turn. Sure, empty that mag on full auto. Hope you hit it. Oh, and it can cling to almost any surface, Certain subspecies can camo, though they haven't run into those yet. 6 AP, 4 TB, 30-50 HP ea. Hits like a truck.

Our party's introduction to these guys? Imperial destroyer came out of the warp but wasn't answering hails. They boarded the ship, life support was on, most of the lighting damaged, plenty of blood… no bodies. They found them on the bridge, all of them, suspended from the ceiling and flensed apart. Worse yet, some of the victims weren't quite dead yet. Now, every time they go to board a ship, someone prays to the Emperor that they don't have to deal with the Meat Forest again.


I've always frowned at the folks who run games where everyone has eleventy-billion GP, a +11 Longsword of Winning, and their +5 Codpiece of invulnerability… while all they ever face is plush teddybears guarding boxes of XP… and I've done my best to avoid doing just that in my games. My players groan when they find loot, especially if what they've found is something far more powerful than what they've got now. They have long learned: Either someone is going to try to take it from them, or they'll need it to kill something… or both. Or sometimes the goggles really do nothing. It's broke, but you don't know it yet. I may or may not have screwed the party by having all those at once a time or two. They know whatever I give them may not be enough if they don't play smartly.

The battlefields of my game are littered with the corpses of the unprepared and the overconfident.

Erathia said:

Not entirely true. A crazy high Morale from Best Quality components coupled with a Crew Reclamation Facility means it takes a long time before your ship starts to experience penalties from getting murdered in ship combat. Also it's a great way to remind people you're a totally awesome ship captain.

I was under the impression that the Morale bonus for a Best Quality component was a temporary thing, not a permanent increase to Max Morale.

Odd, I always had the understanding that increases to morale from a ship component, was permanent as long as the device in question was installed and working.

That being the case, such improvements to morale ( and to a more limited extent ship population as well ) above 100% would act as a buffer that allowed more negative hits to taken before the ship starts experiencing problems due to loss of morale.

Example:

Components are installed that increase morale from 100% to 110%, and it stays at 110% until those component stop working or removed. Thus, if the first penalty for loss of morale is at 80% morale ( I don't have access to my rule book ), then instead taking the penalty after the loss of 20 morale, with morale at 110% it would require the loss of 30 morale before it had any effect. In game terms this is easily explained by the pride and confidence that the crew has in those particular parts. At the same time, if circumstances slowly drops morale to 85% and then the ship take a hit and the parts stop working, all of a sudden morale drops by another 10 to 75%, it's now time for 1 or more die roles.