Acquiring a large ship as a major campaign goal

[Murphy]

I've recently started a sandbox campaign in the style similar to West Marches: a community of explorers based out of a single outpost, episodic adventures with crew varying from mission to mission. We did two sessions and it goes rather smoothly so far.

But players keep asking me if there will be an overarching plot. So I want to expand the scope from just scientific exploration into politics and eventually merge the campaign with the other one I run (Pirates of Drinax, on hiatus since January).

I've got a few in-game years before the two campaigns converge in time, so I decided to introduce a major goal for my players to do in the meantime: achieve the status of a significant power. I envision them to eventually become a nomadic belter/explorer community based on a large factory-ship instead of a stationary outpost. They would then migrate from Foreven into the Reaches.

What stepping stones can you envision in getting your own big ship (5000dt+)? I imagine something along the lines of Oberlindes and their Azhanti cruiser, on a smaller scale, i.e. getting several favors with the Navy and pulling them to acquire a destroyer-class ship. How might an organization outside the Imperium possibly acquire such favors? I figure since the year is 1105 they could play a part in pre-war intelligence gathering...

 

[Reban]

Interesting.

Quick question. Are they acquiring a factory ship or a destroyer type ship?

For a small party I think what I'd favor is having a larger organization actually own the ship and use the PCs as its command crew with the power to decide where it goes and what it does (within reason, obviously it has to further the goals of the owner).

This way the PCs don't have to worry about things like finding crew and routine maintenance costs. Plus you as Ref can always threaten them with losing the ship if they go off the rails and do something the patron organization might object to; literally "You're fired, get off my ship".

There's also the salvage option which can be a campaign in itself:
1. Research rumors and locate a wrecked ship.
2. Register your salvage claim (fun if theres a competitor involved).
3. Actually salvaging the ship.
4. Refitting the ship. I could be fun to give your characters a budget and see what way they equip their new toy.

Parts 3. and 4. may call for lots of Engineering skill and problem solving, even if the PCs don't do the refit work themselves they'll have to liase with the dockyard to get the results they want.

I'm sure all the Imperial intelligence agencies run shell companies and "contractors" outside Imperial space. The most likely candidates would be the Scouts. Mercenary companies might always be on some kind of "retainer" so that their services are available when needed.

 

[Murphy]

Quick question. Are they acquiring a factory ship or a destroyer type ship?

I think a factory ship is more suited to serve as a mobile base. Destroyer type ship won't be able to fabricate spare parts, process ore, grow hydroponic food or in fact sustain itself in any way other than mercenary work or shipping.

For a small party I think what I'd favor is having a larger organization actually own the ship and use the PCs as its command crew with the power to decide where it goes and what it does (within reason, obviously it has to further the goals of the owner).

Naw, this is contrary to what I want them to have. They already work for an organization and I no longer want them bound to a subsector with the headquarters, so I am moving the entire organization. It is feasible considering it's an exploration and mercenary agency (basically an association of adventurers for hire)

I want it to relocate to the Reach for a few years of adventuring before I tie it in with the Drinax campaign.

Basically the ship will be like any free trader, except it'll be a very large trader considering it needs to accommodate the whole organization (dozens of people) and serve as a base of operations.

I think I'll be prompting the whole thing with a major NPC shareholder acquiring a large ship hull, and the PCs will do a series of missions revolving around getting all the fittings for it.

 

[rancke]

Basically the ship will be like any free trader, except it'll be a very large trader considering it needs to accommodate the whole organization (dozens of people) and serve as a base of operations.

You'll want to change the life support costs or provide them with an external source of income.


Hans

 

[Murphy]

You'll want to change the life support costs or provide them with an external source of income.

How do asteroid habitats cope with that? Orchards and hydroponics instead of chemical/mechanical life support?

Perhaps we could implement that, at great expense in crew capacity.

 

[McPerth]

They can also not be able to afford a ship, so needing to salvage (or adquire)not one, but several of them to cannibalize parts (each part needed beign a different adventure) to end up with a fully functional ship.

E.g.: they can find a salvageable ship, but with many not working systems (drives, sensors, power plant, etc...), needing to replace each of them (parts that are, off course, out of budget)

Of course, this will work better in an environ like hard times (or Rebellion at large) or post FFW, where there are wrecks to salvage, but parts can also be obtained as payments for several missions, favours owned, etc...

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

How do asteroid habitats cope with that? Orchards and hydroponics instead of chemical/mechanical life support?

Perhaps we could implement that, at great expense in crew capacity.

I think they cope by operating at a loss to support a profit making operation (asteroid mining, shipbuilding, ect).

so, the factory ship example could make its support costs up by fabricating parts for small colonies it passes. or doing repairs on starships (if it has shipyard capabilities).

 

[aramis]

How do asteroid habitats cope with that? Orchards and hydroponics instead of chemical/mechanical life support?

Perhaps we could implement that, at great expense in crew capacity.

rules for that are in T4's FF&S2.

 

[salochin999]

I think a trashed factory ship or ex military repair ship could be cool - one where entire decks are wrecked and maybe full of critters, there's a rope ladder to engineering down the elevator shaft and literally nothing works but if they could get it fully operational it would become a major power in itself or as a mother ship to a small fleet of belters.

That could then drive a lot of the action - getting parts, getting money for parts etc.

#

I played a video game many years ago whose name I forget which was like hunter-gathering in space. You had a massive ship which could fabricate anything but everything required certain amounts of different minerals, gas etc and you had four ATVs you could put down on planets to collect stuff and four asteroid mining ships to do the same on asteroids and probes to see what lay ahead etc.

So if the ship had some facilities like that then once some of those facilities were operational they could be used to create the parts to repair the ship itself as long as they were fed the raw materials.

e.g. if the players get the power plant partially working and one of the ship's gatherer ATVs and one of the asteroid miners and one of the refiners and fabricators then the ship can create spare parts to repair the rest

#

How do asteroid habitats cope with that? Orchards and hydroponics instead of chemical/mechanical life support?

I'd take the standard life support costs to mean how much it costs if you buy it all ready prepared - TV dinner life support - so I'd imagine the alternative would be swapping the convenience of that for either time or space: either you sacrifice physical space for systems to provide food, oxygen etc like big hydroponic pods or you sacrifice time to hunter-gather the base ingredients you need to fabricate food, oxygen etc yourself so in this case you don't just need to stop and refuel you need to stop and replenish the ingredients you need to fabricate air / water / food etc.

Both would probably require extra space on top for the refiners and fabricators.

For example in the hunter-gatherer version the ship might have a food processing plant that can turn even the rock mold from mostly barren planets into nutritious goop and a food gathering ATV rigged out to collect ingredients but any time the ship passes a system with animal or aquatic life the ship stops for a hunting expedition.

(which is very age of sail-ish)

 

[rancke]

I think they cope by operating at a loss to support a profit making operation (asteroid mining, shipbuilding, ect).

so, the factory ship example could make its support costs up by fabricating parts for small colonies it passes. or doing repairs on starships (if it has shipyard capabilities).

That doesn't explain space habitats. People living in generic space habitats have pretty much the same earning potential as people living on the surface of a Human-norm world. Their per capita income is the same, so I think their living expenses have to be pretty much the same as well.


Hans

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

That doesn't explain space habitats. People living in generic space habitats have pretty much the same earning potential as people living on the surface of a Human-norm world. Their per capita income is the same, so I think their living expenses have to be pretty much the same as well.


Hans

My assumption was that maintaining the closed environment of a space habitat was more expensive than providing the same standard of living on a earth-like planets surface, where things like supply of air and water are significantly cheaper (or even effectively free).

I accept that it may not be more expensive than the costs of providing a given standard of living on a planet that is NOT earth-like, depending on the exact nature of that planet. a hermetically sealed dome on a airless rock may well cost as much as a orbital habitat, especially if the inhabitants need transport to orbit every day to get to their place of work.


my other assumption was that someone built the space habitat, and was planning to profit from doing so, either directly form rent or indirectly by housing workers for a profit making enterprise.

 

[flykiller]

My assumption was that maintaining the closed environment of a space habitat was more expensive than providing the same standard of living on a earth-like planets surface

in traveller energy is cheap and space-going engineering problems, construction and habitability and maintenance, are all well-solved. but the only reason to have a space-going "habitat" is for it to be mobile, and therefore mobility would be the primary point.

 

[rancke]

in traveller energy is cheap and space-going engineering problems, construction and habitability and maintenance, are all well-solved. but the only reason to have a space-going "habitat" is for it to be mobile, and therefore mobility would be the primary point.

The simplest reason to have a space habitat is to have a place to live. Some space habitats may have started as mining ventures, but as the mines run out, people adapt them to live in. Others are built with the primary purpose of providing living space.


Hans

 

[flykiller]

The simplest reason to have a space habitat is to have a place to live.

the simplest habitat is the planet-side version.

Some space habitats may have started as mining ventures, but as the mines run out ....

... people leave them to go where the work is.

Others are built with the primary purpose of ....

... providing living space in a particular location for a particular reason. if the particular reason in the particular location ends then the primary purpose of the habitat is no longer served.

 

[rancke]

the simplest habitat is the planet-side version.

Except in systems with crappy planets. And on crappy planets the life support challenges are identical with those of space habitats.

... people leave them to go where the work is.

Not always. If they've been living there for generations they have gradually turned to manufacturing.

... providing living space in a particular location for a particular reason. if the particular reason in the particular location ends then the primary purpose of the habitat is no longer served.

And the secondary purpose of providing living space becomes the primary one.

Space habitats for residental purposes is a common SF trope. It's also, IMO, the only way to explain systems with billions of people living in asteroid belts (or millions for that matter). It's also something several of the habitats in Glisten exemplify.

And getting back to the original point, life support costs in space habitats, people visiting Koenig's Rock pays no extra life support costs, and most of the population are not miners extracting valuable ores but people engaged in quite ordinary secondary and tertiary occupations.

There really is no support for the notion that people in space habitats pay starship life support costs.


Hans

 

[Meeko100]

If the habitat doesn't move, and it has space for manufacturing and other support, then it wouldn't be more expensive then a planet. Its practically a planet, but man made in space.

If it moves, or lacks space for the support systems like hydroponics and other profit building enterprises, then it does have a significant cost to have it exist. Refueling station vs Belter outpost.

One is made for a single purpose, and is needs to be making money to support itself. The other COULD cut themselves from the world and work out fine. They have hydroponics support, and other manufacturing services to supply a decent life to those on board.

 

[Timerover51]

I've recently started a sandbox campaign in the style similar to West Marches: a community of explorers based out of a single outpost, episodic adventures with crew varying from mission to mission. We did two sessions and it goes rather smoothly so far.

But players keep asking me if there will be an overarching plot. So I want to expand the scope from just scientific exploration into politics and eventually merge the campaign with the other one I run (Pirates of Drinax, on hiatus since January).

I've got a few in-game years before the two campaigns converge in time, so I decided to introduce a major goal for my players to do in the meantime: achieve the status of a significant power. I envision them to eventually become a nomadic belter/explorer community based on a large factory-ship instead of a stationary outpost. They would then migrate from Foreven into the Reaches.

What stepping stones can you envision in getting your own big ship (5000dt+)? I imagine something along the lines of Oberlindes and their Azhanti cruiser, on a smaller scale, i.e. getting several favors with the Navy and pulling them to acquire a destroyer-class ship. How might an organization outside the Imperium possibly acquire such favors? I figure since the year is 1105 they could play a part in pre-war intelligence gathering...

Are you also going to give your players all of the headaches in running such a large ship? With being a significant power should come major headaches. Or are those going to be ignored?

 

[samuelvss]

Are you also going to give your players all of the headaches in running such a large ship? With being a significant power should come major headaches. Or are those going to be ignored?

Well, they need not be running it, but running off of it. I had a scheme where the 3I had linked Cerebin/Reft 0217 in the Usher Subsector with Zuflucht/Reft 0921 in New Islands through a series of AHL's leapfrogging, and staying on station to act as a mobile highport, to link it in three J2's. (Same thing on the trailing side of the Old Islands, but in 4 J2's). Another ship had to be posted in 0923. It took A LOT of AHL's to run, and the idea was, over years, to leave a covert deep space fuel cache such that fleet couriers and then battle fleets could jump the J7 and J8 to link Core and Spinward Marches while skipping the detour through corridor.

As a result, over a period of many years, the Old Islands would be accessible to Far Traders, et al, through these "Deep Space Lightnings." Some great chrome that I never used..... :nonono:

 

[aramis]

Are you also going to give your players all of the headaches in running such a large ship? With being a significant power should come major headaches. Or are those going to be ignored?

Most of which can be relegated to downtime activities.

OER/EERs, supplies, personnel action resolution, duty rosters, routine duty logs,... all can be overlooked/abstracted as downtime actions until they become story relevant. Pretty much the same as is done in military fiction, both written and filmed.

 

[rancke]

There really is no support for the notion that people in space habitats pay starship life support costs.

In any case, making space habitat life support cost as much as starship life support isn't going to affect the OP's problem, since the PCs' ship would already be paying starship life support costs. To run a non-commercial starship, the owners will either have to have some alternate source of income or some external source of support. In either case, reducing life support costs from the official rates might help with the verisimilitude.


Hans