So our game's winding down as the second set of vacationers leave. Won't re-start until September or so.

The thing is, everyone has a case of ship envy. The Blessed Enterprise was alright but it lacks the firepower. Upgunning it with a dorsal mount seemed like a good solution, considering the GM has failed to reward us for just about every single game we've had. It's just us collecting.

At this point in time, there are two Blessed Enterprises and "ours" is living off the scraps of a war-torn system. There's no fleet, despite all our previous hard work. We're ribbing our GM about this, but he promises we'll earn enough PF to maintain some semblance of a fleet.

We have our final game tomorrow night before two leave this weekend. When they come back, a year would pass in game.

How would you guys modify the Blessed Enterprise ?

I'd work on getting the crew rating up and getting 'upgrades' like Crew Improvements, Atomics, Storm Trooper Detachments and that sort of thing.

The ship itself seems to be good at what it does (tear ship apart with lances and swarm small craft into the void for offence and defence) but getting those crew ratings up and getting more bonuses to certain things would be awesome.

Atomics could in theory be deployed by small craft, allowing for 'death star trench run' style encounters if any characters want to pilot small craft.

We do have a few upgrades, Common Stormtroopers, Crew Improvements, and Star Charts (for some regions). The GM has a hard "No!" on Atomics which is fine. It'll probably be used against us and well, we're okay with not having it.

The Crew Rating's at 43... not the greatest. I had ignored that, thanks.

This is what the proposed refitted Blessed Enterprise would look like, with a dorsal mount and such. And it looks like we'll have to go back to Calixis to pick up the damned nova cannon if we want it.

Biggest change from the OP is that "FInances in Arrears" is gone and in its place is "Wrested from a Space Hulk" which is part of the backstory anyway, and will be made a reality by the nice forge moon we just liberated.

I have 2 Space and 2 Power free and I'm not sold on the nova cannon.

Is your main gunner disgustingly good? If not, I'm not a huge fan of the Nova cannon either..

Well, no. But her rolling is insane. I think we may have missed one shot per month of gaming so far. We hit what we aim at, though we don't always damage it (despite what my chronicle says).

Nova cannons are iffy things. Hugely powerful under the right circumstances ... but not particularly flexible weapons.

Depending on how good your support structure/connections are, I'd say consider forgoing the nova cannon for torpedo tubes and a liberal supply of virus torps. Remember, slamming hostiles with virus torps is a quick way to depopulate their ships for the taking. Admittedly, the first waves of boarders will need to be in well-sealed suits, at least until you take the bridge to dump the contaminated atmosphere, or devise a means to collect the virus bodies to load into new rounds.

Plus, the versatility of the various torpedo options. I'd say spring for including the capability to launch guided torps, but don't have all of them be guided.

If your reammoing capability isn't that good, I'd say go for either another lance battery or a laser macrobatttery (staravar if you can, else sunsears) ... unless you want to be a tad more evil and go for an ion cannon disruption macrocannon battery. Although, if you're planning on operations against planets, you may want to go for bombarment cannons for practical reasons.

If you can, see about getting your macrobatteries turbo upgrades.

Yeah, I'm thinking of torpedoes as well or perhaps another lance. To answer your question about re-supply, we just saved Vail (better known as Cog) in the Svard system. The forge moon is very thankful.

The GM gave us this on our wednesday night game, the last one for about a month. Unlike the other ships I post, he made this one all by himself. I should note that the damage we dealt to this ship was very superficial. We only crit the lance, and that was chosen by the GM.

Since we turned this ship over to the Mechanicus, I think we may be able to bargain for that Warcruiser. I also get the feeling that this was supposed to be a long-term threat and not a prize that delivered itself to our doorstep. Can't cry over launched torpedoes, as they say.

Your ship doesn't seem to include content from later books - have you looked at the ship upgrades from Hostile Acquisitions for example? While many are at best frowned upon and at worst outright heretical they do offer ships some amazing options.

We have the Laboratorium installed there somewhere, that's about it. Anything in particular you'd like to recommend?

I'm thinking of plugging in the Modified Warcruiser drive, if I can, and then installing Excess Void Armour on the Blessed Enterprise .

That'll give us an armour of 24 all over with a speed of 5. With Mathhammer that makes us nearly impervious to a lot of things. Even an average torpedo roll would do nothing but scratch us.

The trick is convincing the GM, of course.

Our Navigator player sent us an email at 3 in the morning with the subject line "we forgot about the orange" and "space apes" in the body.

Hilarious, but yeah. What an oversight. I figure they've been doing something aboard ship, and I have to factor that into my purely fanfic "Into the Strom".

No, I'm not tired of the puns with the Strom name yet.

The Jokaero have had 3-4 months of relative peace and quiet. I'm thinking they may quietly slipped off once we won and settled on a moon.

[The game is under new management, namely me. We're restarting in the Jericho Reach, with 2 new players. This is what we've come up with, and it's actually exactly 73 points.]

NEW HOPE

Conquest-class Star Galleon

It is a tumultuous period. The destruction of the space hulk Midnight’s Lair has reduced several prominent Rogue Trader Dynasties to near ruin, leaving the Expanse open for the taking. The ones that lead the charge against the Midnight’s Lair and its insane master are themselves guilty of grave crimes. Their punishment is to serve for no less than ten years in support of the distant, and rumoured to be failing, Margin Crusade.

Only the Margin Crusade has ended in disaster years before. The Achilus Crusade, conducted in the Jericho Reach on the other side of the galaxy, is the true destination of men and materiel being harnessed in the Calixis Sector.

With the Strom Dynasty’s flagship Blessed Enterprise heavily damaged in the final battle against Korrad Vall, the dynasty was given a chance to select from their depleted fleet a temporary vessel to base the dynasty's operations. The choice was between a still-burning corvette or a twisted ruin of a light cruiser. Had the Adeptus Mechanicus not intervened and delivered one of the many hulks carved out of the Midnight’s Lair , the dynasty may very well have been rendered bankrupt trying to buy even the smallest voidship.

Christened the New Hope , the Conquest-class Star Galleon is ancient and feisty. Few of its archeotech systems survived its time as part of the space hulk (fewer still remained after its time with the Mechanicus). For their part, the Lathes consider whatever debts they may have repaid in full.

Now, the ancient vessel is finishing its preparations to lead a small convoy back to the Koronus Passage.

SPEED 6

MANOEUVRABILITY 18

DETECTION 8

TURRET RATING 1

SHIELDS Repulsor Dual Void Shield

ARMOUR 17

HULL INTEGRITY 61

Skill Test Modifiers

Ballistic Tests +5, Command +5, Manoeuvre and Detect Stellar Phenomena +5,

Achievement Bonuses

Achievement Bonuses: Trade + 350 Crime + 100 Creed + 200 Explore + 100

Essential Components

Modified Jovian Pattern Class 4 Drive

Good-quality Miloslav H-616.b Warp Engine (Space)

Gellar Field

Command Bridge

M-1.r Life Sustainer

R-50 Auspex Multi-Band Auger Array

Pressed Crew Quarters

Supplemental Components

Main Cargo Hold x2

Luxury Passenger Quarters

Temple Shrine to the God Emperor

Observation Dome

Arboretum

Complications / Past Histories

Ancient and Wise, Wrested from a Space Hulk

Weapons

Port

Mars Pattern Macrobattery

Sunhammer Lance Battery

Starboard

Mars Pattern Macro battery

Sunhammer Lance Battery

Heh, like the pun.

The folder for my game is called "voided warranty." It nicely sums up the PC's treatment of just about anything around them and their headlong rush into potential censure from various factions from the Admech to the Inquisition.

The rogue trader dynasty is the Bligh dynasty, so I expect I'll get a little mileage out of that some time.

Space Combat House Rules: Click Here !

Feedback from the group went into compiling these rules. There will be more class specific actions as well. Apparently, they do enjoy the tactical challenges of space combat, and Errant Knight reminded me of Blast Markers from BFG so I threw them in there.

Ahh, I love rude awakenings!

We ran a shortened tutorial campaign (redid the Forsaken Bounty with no rewards) this past Thanksgiving weekend to familiarize the new players with the rules. Turns out, the old players could use the rules refreshing too. We spoke about their plans and how we used to run things.

A lot, and too much in my opinion, was handwaved away in our previous campaign including Profit Factor. Everyone was cool with, in essentially a new game, to run with 20 PF to start with. And they wanted to colonize stuff tout suite!

So I asked them how they wanted to pay for that new colony. As a result, the New Hope was modified. It has Sunsear Las-batteries all around, has lost the Crack Crew Rating, Good Warp Engine, Luxury Quarters (which I reduced to +50 anyway), and the Temple Shrine. We're currently at 62 SP and 31 PF and they feel more comfortable with that.

Gives the ship some room to grow and won't cripple them in the beginning too much.

I've given them the option to use the Daring instead. It's listed as a Comet-class light cruiser, which is really just a Dauntless, but I think they'll stick with the star galleon.