After you knock down the Void Shields of another ship, you can use a Teleportarium to put stuff on that ship.

So... does anybody know what kind of Tech Use test is required to re-wire a torpedo to have a timed detonation trigger rather than an impact detonation trigger?

I think 60m torpedo is a little too much to handle for teleportarium. And it wouldn't fit.

A small nuke or virus bomb on the other hand. Why not?

Also I would say hard (-20) Tech-Use test to re-wire a torpedo.

Well I think you might be able to get the warhead in there if you took it off the missile and out of the case, it hasn't come up yet but Ill probably rule that the teleportarium pad is just large enough to fit a single massive sized vehicle or whatever else can fit in the same cubic space.

So assuming you go with that setup I would go with the armorer skill rather than the tech use skill, and a timed torpedo warhead IED would be something you'd have to spend a few days building.

Main trick would be getting even just the warhead up from the ship's magazine into the teleportarium (and I wouldn't risk teleporting it up from the magazine in-case it materialises inside a bulkhead and detonates - if that's gonna happen, I want it to happen in the other guy's ship). A macrocannon shell's about the size of a Baneblade, a torpedo would be a couple hundred metres long and about a dozen or so in diameter, even at the narrowest point near the warhead. And like Larry said; turning a warhead into an IED would probably take a fair while.

According to BattleFleet Gothic, anti-ship torpedoes max out at a 200 foot length (which is pretty massive). In the scenario I have in mind (teleporting a virus bomb, or perhaps a poor-quality atomic into another vessel) you could dispense with the plasma reactor and rudimentary guidance systems. Which would just leave the warhead. I think that'd be 25 feet tall at the absolute most, but I'm going off of rough estimations based on art I've seen. I could work out a rough equivalency in teleport-able mass, because I have access to Deathwatch, and in the miniatures game you can teleport a unit of 10 terminators at once. Definitely not a job one could rush, I agree.

Anybody going to disagree with the -20 Tech Use modifier to re-wire the warhead? I think that sounds pretty reasonable.

I might adjudicate the cutoff point for teleportable object Size (as per the chart) at Enormous (Drop Pod, Land Raider) rather than Massive (Thunderhawk, Warhound Titan). A land raider can contain 8 Terminators, 10 Terminators can Deep Strike via teleport as a single unit... I think that works out to something approaching the same volume, if not mass. I'll have to think about it, because I'm not sure what codex or novel would even contain a description of a teleportarium. Because dang, would you WANT a Warhound-sized crate of atomic warheads teleported into your hive city? (Leaving aside how hard it'd be to acquire that many.)

In fact, does anybody know where I can find a description of a teleportarium? Not technically a rules question, but a rules-related question.

[Edit: Silly me, I was looking at the Land Raider and Warhound Titan statistics in my Rites of Battle Deathwatch book, and not the size chart, when I was talking about Enormous and Massive things. Massive seems reasonable.]

There are no rules for the Teleportarium, so adjudicate what you think is fair.

An important point to remember with you kids and your rules with "Retrofitting" is that you're assuming your Tech-Priest knows what he's doing, and won't break into a three hour rant about how even modifying the colour on the priming light isn't a terrible affront to the Omnissiah. The Imperium is so amazingly stagnant about technology that they probably could not conceive of violating a torpedo's machine spirit by ripping out "unnecessary" parts, because no machine possesses unnecessary parts.

A very good point, which I had considered.

Then again, while the rules question at hand is best answered here in the Rogue Trader forum (where it's more probable I'll get an answer) I'm asking because of events in a Black Crusade game. The Dark Mechanicus aren't as picky.

My readings from the Dark Mechanicum isn't that they stopped believing in the Machine Spirits, but that they started looking at things and thought "What if I stuck a daemon in there?"

This point has been debated on the forums before, and a few people have come up with a number of home ruled solutions. Ultimately you should go with what works the best for you, though in my mind Teleportariums have always been Star Trek-sized, not vehicle-transporting size. The rules are so vaguely ridden that you should just agree with your players on a way they work and roll with it. I do think that they should be kept as rare as they seem, so if you start using your Teleportarium to solve all your problems then a pirate or Chaos fleet might put together a posse and be willing to lose a number of their ships in order to capture yours.

I'm working on a homebrew set of rules for running a teleportarium, I'll post them when they're complete. I think they're going to be pretty good because I've come up with a number of limitations, mechanics and a failure table. I just need to get them in a word document and sort it all out.

Imho PC should face a lot of problems when trying to teleport torpedo warheads. -20 is to easy for a 5 VU range auto-kill. Also I don't think teleporting such objects is a good idea. Like - what stops me from teleporting 100m ³ of acid/toxins to enemies bridge?

The same thing that stops you from designating their bridge as the recipient of a critical hit from a lance weapon.

The same thing that stops you from designating their bridge as the recipient of a critical hit from a lance weapon.

Haven't yet used teleportarium with crit hits table. Nor have some extra void shield around bridge. Am I missing something?

The same thing that stops you from designating their bridge as the recipient of a critical hit from a lance weapon.

Haven't yet used teleportarium with crit hits table. Nor have some extra void shield around bridge. Am I missing something?

I think his point is that players can't say "I fire all of the weapons at the bridge" to ensure that they take the bridge out with a lance hit, even if they have scanned the enemy vessel and knows where the bridge is. So by that logic, you can't use the teleportarium to send a torpedo exactly where you want it, and should be happy you beamed it onto the enemy vessel instead of the void.

Come to think of it, I don't know why you can't designate another ship's bridge as the target of a critical.

In terms of setting stuff, anyway. Or rules stuff.

I suppose/imagine/think/assume/whatever: It is a mechanical reflection of the game design philosophy that taking out a kilometers-long gothic space cathedral in one shot is not only a little unrealistic, but an incredibly boring and anticlimactic way to conduct voidship battles. And if it was an option, I can't see Player Characters doing anything else.

More direct answer = I don't think, "We teleport a Melta-Torpedo onto their bridge," is an imaginative or exciting event in a collaboratively-created story. If it came up, I think my players would agree. If their characters needed a reason, I'd make up something about using a .22 rifle to shoot a needle in a haystack when you're driving past the haystack at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light. But my specific phraseology would be couched in superstitious technobabble.

I think the main thing that stops you from being able to directly pinpoint a specific ship component is because of the ridiculous distances involved - a lot of inspiration was taken from Battlefleet Gothic (and I think they might have gotten a couple of BFG's authors in to work on RT's space combat rules, but don't quote me on that) and that made a point of saying that the models weren't to scale. A ship didn't occupy the same space as its model or its base, but only the stem of it's flying base.

In either game, if two ships are right next to each other (either base-to-base contact in BFG or only 1 VU away from each other in RT) that's still tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometres apart. You're having to aim by sensors at distances where the speed of light actually has to be taken into account - lasers and lances travel at the speed of light and it could take ten seconds or more to cover the distance to the target. Frankly; I think it's a miracle that a ship could hit anything , let alone a specific component.

The lowest two results on table 8-12 (voidship critical hits) allow the attacker to choose any component he is aware of, and render it either depressurized of damaged. This specifically excludes the bridge, plasma drive, and warp drive. Bridges may be depressurized and/or damaged (depending upon the damage result rolled by the attacker) at 8 on the table. Results 9 & 10 allow the attacker to specify 1d5 components which become depressurized & damaged or destoryed, but this once again specifically excludes the bridge.

So you can target specific components with critical hits. Just... y'know... not the really important ones. They have plot armor.

I see that result as more trying to hit a particular component and managing to pull it off through dumb luck. Or just representing them getting very lucky with the shot and it's only the players picking the component, not the characters or their crew.

This subject comes up again and again, and one thing that always flashes through my mind is the conversation between the captain and the tech priest in charge of the teleportarium.

" So let me see if I understand you captain. You want us to take a massive powerful explosive device, drag it into the center of one of the rarest, most treasured, and least understood pieces of halowed archeotech, arm said ship killing explosive with a makeshift timer, while it's still inside our ship and the holy teleportarium as well don't forget, then use the telportarium to rip a brief radiation spewing rift in the fabric of space and time, and stuff the armed and ticking explosive through said rift, hoping nothing goes wrong with the process this time since teleportarium are known to work in less than a perfect manner with all sorts of unexplained phenomena . Is this correct?"

"Indeed my good man, now hop to it."

This subject comes up again and again, and one thing that always flashes through my mind is the conversation between the captain and the tech priest in charge of the teleportarium.

" So let me see if I understand you captain. You want us to take a massive powerful explosive device, drag it into the center of one of the rarest, most treasured, and least understood pieces of halowed archeotech, arm said ship killing explosive with a makeshift timer, while it's still inside our ship and the holy teleportarium as well don't forget, then use the telportarium to rip a brief radiation spewing rift in the fabric of space and time, and stuff the armed and ticking explosive through said rift, hoping nothing goes wrong with the process this time since teleportarium are known to work in less than a perfect manner with all sorts of unexplained phenomena . Is this correct?"

"Indeed my good man, now hop to it."

In all likelihood, the PC Rogue Trader would not be this polite to the NPC raising objections.

This subject comes up again and again...

...when typing the word "teleport" into the search feature might otherwise save everyone involved immeasurable time.

This subject comes up again and again, and one thing that always flashes through my mind is the conversation between the captain and the tech priest in charge of the teleportarium.

" So let me see if I understand you captain. You want us to take a massive powerful explosive device, drag it into the center of one of the rarest, most treasured, and least understood pieces of halowed archeotech, arm said ship killing explosive with a makeshift timer, while it's still inside our ship and the holy teleportarium as well don't forget, then use the telportarium to rip a brief radiation spewing rift in the fabric of space and time, and stuff the armed and ticking explosive through said rift, hoping nothing goes wrong with the process this time since teleportarium are known to work in less than a perfect manner with all sorts of unexplained phenomena . Is this correct?"

"Indeed my good man, now hop to it."

In all likelihood, the PC Rogue Trader would not be this polite to the NPC raising objections.

That won't necessarily change the NPC's mind. An AdMech NPC might balk at the idea and never be convinced. A PC playing the Chief Mechanicus on board should probably think about what his character would feel about it,r anther than defaulting to "order the NPC to do what another PC said."

This subject comes up again and again, and one thing that always flashes through my mind is the conversation between the captain and the tech priest in charge of the teleportarium.

" So let me see if I understand you captain. You want us to take a massive powerful explosive device, drag it into the center of one of the rarest, most treasured, and least understood pieces of halowed archeotech, arm said ship killing explosive with a makeshift timer, while it's still inside our ship and the holy teleportarium as well don't forget, then use the telportarium to rip a brief radiation spewing rift in the fabric of space and time, and stuff the armed and ticking explosive through said rift, hoping nothing goes wrong with the process this time since teleportarium are known to work in less than a perfect manner with all sorts of unexplained phenomena . Is this correct?"

"Indeed my good man, now hop to it."

In all likelihood, the PC Rogue Trader would not be this polite to the NPC raising objections.

Who's raising an objection? The Admech raised not a single objection, he's just ensuring that he understands the captains orders. Maybe he's doing it in such a way as to remind the captain that he's actually taking a horrendus risk to his own ship when he could just send a couple hundred expendable raiders accross to plant some melta charges for more or less the same effect without any risk to his ship or irepplacable archeotech component.

If you can't use the teleportarium to send soldiers or servitors accross loaded up with det packs and melta bombs and automatically deal damage then I don't see why it would suddenly work when you take away the soldiers. A hit and run is a hit and run, fluff it however you want.

This subject comes up again and again...

...when typing the word "teleport" into the search feature might otherwise save everyone involved immeasurable time.

Nope, that would be too easy. I actually thoroughly enjoy reading this time and time again. It's almost like a feeling of deja vu, only without the after taste.....

No, not funny? Dang.

So embarrassing admission time (mostly for you the viewer's amusement).

You know the avatar used by Erathia and others? The guy in the red hood?

It took me ages to figure those black things comming out of the hood are supposed to be braids of hair. For a while I thought it was cables. Admech right? But no, it wasn't that. What was it? And then I was gripped by the insane notion that they were tiny little deformed-but-muscular arms, flexing away. I mean, look at the horizontal one. Is that not a bicep right at the edge of the hood? But why are they black? Cybernetic ear-arms I guess. Man, warhammer 40k is wierd.

I eventually figured it out, though I still think it doesn't look much like hair, but now I can't unsee the little flexing arms. Which is doubly hilarious when paired with the super serious expression on the guys face.