I was thinking about changing how crew quarters worked, making them Supplemental Facilities rather than Essential Components. Essentially, every hull would automatically have enough crew space to handle its normal complement and additional crew quarters would mostly be about increasing ship Population beyond the normal maximum.

Here's a quick sketch of how the components would change... they haven't been playtested or balanced, its still just a proof of concept for feedback.

Bilge-rat Quarters

Type: Facilities

Size: 1+

Power: Ceiling(Size*0.5)

SP: 1

Population Modifier: +(Size+1)

Morale Modifier: -3

Special: Reduce Population losses due to depressurization by 2

Clan-Kin Quarters

Type: Facilities

Size: Transport,Raider,Frigate:4; Light Cruiser,Cruiser:5,

Power: Transport,Raider,Frigate:1; Light Cruiser,Cruiser:2

SP: 1

Special: +5 Command aboard ship; Reduce all sources of Morale loss by 1

Cold Quarters

Type: Facilities

Size: 2+

Power: (Size-1)

SP: 1

Special: May restore (Size*5) Population outside of combat, must be refilled with an Acquisition test

Pressed-Crew Quarters

Type: Facilities

Size: 2+

Power: Ceiling(Size*0.5)

SP: 1

Population Modifier: +(Size-1)

Morale Modifier: -2

Special: +10 Acquisition tests to replenish crew via press-ganging

Slave Quarters

Type: Facilities

Size: 1+

Power: Ceiling(Size*0.5)

SP: 1

Population Modifier: +(Size+3)

Morale Modifier: -5 Morale

Voidsmen Quarters

Type: Facilities

Size: 2+

Power: Ceiling(Size*0.5)

SP: 1

Population Modifier: +(Size-1)

I also haven't playtested it, but for what your'e proposing I'm not a fan of it. Most Crew Population loss comes from ship damage, meaning packing more people into the ship still will leave the same percentage of loss from depressurization. Doubling the crew just means halving the available space for people, so more get sucked out into the void or crushed by debris when you're hit by macrocannon salvos.

Also I think they do need to be essential, because you have to sit down and allocate space for your crew when building your ship. For anything Light Cruiser or up you probably won't have a problem with this and it can seem trivial, but for Raiders and Frigates, even an extra 1 space/power for better quarters can seriously impact how you want to build your ship.

Gotta back Erathia on this.

What I wanted to say is mostly in that post.

I also haven't playtested it, but for what your'e proposing I'm not a fan of it. Most Crew Population loss comes from ship damage, meaning packing more people into the ship still will leave the same percentage of loss from depressurization. Doubling the crew just means halving the available space for people, so more get sucked out into the void or crushed by debris when you're hit by macrocannon salvos.

Also I think they do need to be essential, because you have to sit down and allocate space for your crew when building your ship. For anything Light Cruiser or up you probably won't have a problem with this and it can seem trivial, but for Raiders and Frigates, even an extra 1 space/power for better quarters can seriously impact how you want to build your ship.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not really getting your point here though, maybe I'm not reading it correctly.

1) Yes, population loss comes from ship damage. I'm not sure why that matters. Components that add Population already exist (see Arboretum), which indicates that by RAW you can in fact increase your maximum crew size and that doing so actually reduces the "percentage of damage."

2) I did not propose doubling the crew... I proposed more components to modestly increase ship population by a couple points.

3) As for needing to be essential... why? It's already wonky in that 2 space on a transport can hold 30,000 crew while 3 space on grand cruiser can hold 150,000+ crew... so verisimilitude is pretty much out the window there. Assuming the hull already has crew quarters built-in makes that discrepancy a little less jarring. A couple more space for additional components isn't going to upset me either. And one to three extra space isn't going to be game breaking in any meaningful way.

What's the actual purpose of these house rules?

What's the actual purpose of these house rules?

Good question... in fact that's always the first question I ask when others propose house rules to me, so I'm not sure why I didn't lead with that. I guess this comes from two primary sources. First, crew quarters just don't make logical sense to me in their current incarnation. Why can't I have both Slave Quarters and Clan-kin Quarters if I want to? I can visualize plenty of ships in which both would be present, and maybe even some Cold Quarters as well. Restricting me to one type of Crew Quarters seems... well, restrictive. Second, I wanted additional ways to boost Crew Population on a ship other than Arboretum. In my mind, this was an easy way to accomplish both goals.

It's probably worth mentioning here that I'm also considering changing Population to equal Base Hull Integrity * 2, instead of keeping it a percentage value. I left that out originally because I didn't want to confuse the original topic. However now that I think about it, it may or may not be relevant to any constructive criticism.

To me, Crew Quarters are mostly important from flavour-wise. Yes there is obviously enough space for your crew to find a spot to hole up in, but the "investment" of a crew quarters is the space that you allocated on your ship to turn a series of holes in the wall into something that people could actually call a home of some kind. You take extra space to turn it into one particular kind of crew quarters or another, and it influences how your crew views you.

I think obviously you could design a multi-tiered approach to crew quarters, but that would breed a lot of resentment on your ship, and given the Imperium's reliance on manual labour, having half of your crew in Slave Quarters and half in cozy Clan-kins is a good way to breed a lot of resentment.

I think obviously you could design a multi-tiered approach to crew quarters, but that would breed a lot of resentment on your ship, and given the Imperium's reliance on manual labour, having half of your crew in Slave Quarters and half in cozy Clan-kins is a good way to breed a lot of resentment.

Which is great for creating roleplaying situations for your players to engage with. This, right here, is a perfect example of why I think its a great idea to be able to have different types of Crew Quarters on your vessel. Since the players create their own vessel, if they choose the option to have these tiered ranks of Crew, they are obviously interested in the narrative possibilities that these situations create, which makes the GM's job that much easier.