In "Lure of the Expanse" adventure, pg 64-65 tell of making a deal in order to get autoloader tech for macroweapons.

How do various people game this? My way (which players don't like) is to say that any macroweapon armed with a an auto-loader has no need for 100 crew per spaqce weapon takes up. If a player wishes to they may either use that crew for replacements or use half the number saved for additional armsmen.

My players seem to think that if I let them have additional armsmen, I should let them have a morale boost as well due to tighter disipline.

Thoughts?

Kencyr said:

It's ultimately up to you, although you could make the argument (as I have done) that because you now have dedicated Armsmen your Crew Population goes down by an equivalent amount because now instead of attending to ship duties they are now being armsmen and less able to function in critical roles. As for morale boosts, your new armsmen might have high morale for being armsmen, but the rest of your crew might resent this select bunch who now do not have to spend their whole days toiling in the Plasma Conduits conducting the sacred quenching of the Machine Spirit's Thirst (stoking a boiler) every fourteen minutes and fifty-one seconds exactly.

My group hasn't gotten an auto-loader yet, but anything you want to rule is alright, but then you might also want to consider that if your auto-loader breaks and can't be repaired then your entire macrobattery will stop being useful until it works again. Alternatively although the Auto-Loader saves on manual labour, you stlil need crew to oversee it or be noted on your official manifests as loading the macrocannon so as not to arouse the anger of the Mechanicus.

I would say if you want it to effect crew behavior have it effect competance, bump up the competance bonus one +10 notch when making tests related to ballistics with the macrocannons. My logic here is that you've replaced hordes of raggity ratings being herded around by a bunch of whip carrying bullies in favor of a machine that does the same job with alot less confusion and bull assuming it's properly maintained.

The armsmen should probably give you benefits aboard the ship outside of combat, except not in terms of morale but in terms of dealing with the crew via intimidation tests when morale drops below the 70,40,10 thresholds and they become disgruntled. Unless of course the armsmen are disgruntled too, then I guess that should cause an equal penalty.

macrobatteries are VERY powerfull, so be carefull what you give your players. Personally I would go for the equivalent crew per space can be used for something else:

e.g. 100 Space (total) and 100 Crew, with a MB space 2, that means that 2% of the crew is available for something else… maybe half of that cause of supervision.

In addition, you could say :

- that if the MB gets depressurized, it still functions (with e.g. 10% fail chance per attack),

- if its on fire you can vent it without morale loss

BUT

- if its damaged it will take more time/extra penalty to repair due to lack of crew.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I would definitely not bump up any ballistics. But I do like reassigning (a bit) of the crew.

I find the the ideas for depresserization/ fire/ damage to be inspired.

I counted them as quality upgrades. You can get a good-craftsmanship macrobattery that takes up 1 less space or a best-craftsmanship macrobattery that takes up 2 less spaces.

Now this I would disagree with. Quality is determined when purchasing, I look on this as more of a ship upgrade such as those found in Hostile Aquisitions pg. 76-78. Something done to personalize the ship.

Lure of the Expanse states the land-ships have macrobatteries with the same stats as Mars-pattern macrobatteries.

Therefore, I would say adding autoloaded macrocannons to your ship simply means that the crew usually designated for loading the macrocannons, can now be used for other things, or removed, such as replacing them with armsmen, or replacing their quarters with a ship component.

Depressurization could still mess with the components, so I'm not sure about that, but I do tend to agree that you could vent it without morale loss.

Autoloaders work faster according to the fluff, add one strength or so

I wouldn't put away the gun rating s and crews just yet. There's a reason why that fell out of favour, and it isn't just because the Imperium of Man felt like being more inhumane.

These things will break down, get damaged, be possessed by daemons, even all of the above at the same time.

I wouldn't be so quick to reassign those guys.

I just went with them being best quality with best quality turbo upgrades.

I wouldn't count on freeing up too much crew honestly.

On a small ship of 15,000 I'd say 500 might have the job of being a gun loader (because the people firing, aiming, etc., aren't being made obsolete remember).

And of those 500 I'd say at least 100 of them would need be assigned to maintenance work on the autoloaders. And even as you scale things upwards, I don't see it making a hugely significant difference.

I think its best to abstract crew numbers and work with percentages. BFK explains shipboard rotas and breakdowns of the crew and while i can't remember the exact numbers its something like for everything 100 crew you have 10 armsmen and a couple of officers. So 10% of your ships crew are combat capable, a tiny amount are smart/well trained enough to issue and carry out the commands that keep the ship operational - the bulk of your crew (some 85% at least) will be manual labourers and specialists.

I'd echo previous comments that an auto-loader system would simply give a +10% bonus to BS tests when firing weapons that have them, as the crew can focus on aiming and firing more than reloading. I wouldn't adjust the crew ratios (labourers/armsmen etc) and simply reduce the overall crew number listed for that ship class. This would make re-crewing your ship easier without changing game play (ie % of crew that can do a given task).