Rogue Trader - Registration and Discussion Thread

[Montresor]

Salt's correct - she's a Sub-lieutenant . . . but that's basically what Peraton has chosen to call her after finding her somewhat mysteriously assigned as his deputy.

Also, Stone Magnet is correct in saying there are about 2,500 less mouths to feed. This will stretch supplies a bit further - but you will also need to repair and refit the ship. It wouyld be very dangerous to go on a long journey without fixing the Life-Sustainers first.

[Garrius Amphael]

Ill edit my post. hold up

EDIT Done, should fit salts post better now

[Montresor]

OK - I'm going away for most of the weekend but will get an update done in just under 48 hrs. If anyone wants to post more for the battle, or if people want to post for their actions or suggestions after the battle (such as what to do with the ruined Havoc, when to begin repairs, or what to do with the prisoners etc) feel free to do so in the meantime.

[Salt]

Salt and the Darksiders will help with the hull damage. She's interested in trying to salvage the boarding shuttles the attackers used.

[Andrea Chan-Gauthier]

Screw the assault shuttles... I want that Havoc.

Zarkov's idea about pulling supplies off there is really smart. That should be step one. Step two is to kill off the prisoners. We're short on food as it is, we don't need to be feeding them too. Unless we can sell them into slavery somewhere close; does the Kellion System need some more miners? (And, of course, keep a few around for interrogation. The more info we can get on the local pirate situation, the better.)

Best case, we can salvage the thing and have two ships.

So, maybe we put a skelaton crew in the thing and limp it to the Kellion System. They're an "irradiated mining" planet, so I'm not sure what kind of repair facilities it will have. At the very least, we can cannibalize the Life Sustainer system from the thing to repair the Invictus. Better would be to get it to a full repair facility (maybe Footfall?) with a skeleton crew and start turning it back into a workable ship. I'm sure the physical damage will take a while to fix; long enough that we can drop off the Alid-Yuril Consortium. I assume that Footfall is civilized enough that we would only need a small force of armsment to guard the thing. Once we're done with the Alid-Yuril Consortium, the Invictus heads back to Footfall, and we start the process of splitting up our experienced crew between the two ships, and then finding a boatload (pun intended) of bodies to put into the thing (and to back-fill the crew who transfered off the Invictus.)

Really, this process would be quite long. Maybe a year, I'm guessing? It almost counts as an Endeavour on its own. But at the end of it, we have a second ship, with as much cargo space as the Invictus, decent weapons, less armor, and it's slightly faster. We'd be foolish to send it out alone, but if we use this as our cargo ship, the Invictus can escort it around and past attacks. And for real, if we want to grow the Amphael fortune, we need more than one ship. Two ships can carry more, fight more, back each other up.

And best of all... we can bypass these factions that seem to be forming. (This is all OOC.) Leave Peraton and his brown-nose nobles on the Invictus where they can suck up to Garrius all they want. Move Zarkov and his faction to the Havoc. Then all of this pissing and moaning about command style and how much starch is in someone's uniform won't really be an issue. Might be more work for Montresor, if we ever decide to split up the party. Half of us on one ship holding seige over a planet while the other runs off somewhere to do something else... but that could be really interesting, too.

[Garrius Amphael]

Na, Garrius wouldnt allow that shit. Move Zarkov and his "Faction" over and theres nothing stop said faction from turning on Garrius, should they disagree with them. By splitting the two factions evenly would keep chance of rebelling down.

A good captain has to think of these things

[Andrea Chan-Gauthier]

Maybe move the senior crew back and forth randomly, to make sure that everybody was watching everybody, and no secret cabals got a chance to form? Heh... put Andrea in charge of it. You know she's loyal. (Probably not very effective as a ship's captain, but loyal.)

Anyway, that's all military / command stuff that falls under Garrius' umbrella. I'm thinking like a Seneschal, which is telling me "two ships is better than one ship".

[Garrius Amphael]

Oh for sure. Two ships would be great.

[Andrea Chan-Gauthier]

Questions:

1. Now that we're out of the Warp, our Auger Arrays can scan the whole star system, right? So we know if there are any other enemy ships between us and the mining colony? Conversely, we can keep track of the corpse of the Havoc until we're done escorting these transports?

2. Assuming we could repair the Warp Drives and Geller Fields on the Havoc, it would need a Navigator on-board to make it back to Footfall? The Invictus can't tow it, right?

3. Does the mining colony have the facilities to repair our Life Sustainer?
My thoughts are like this:

1. Let's finish the escort run ASAP. Just so it's done.
2. Let's salvage supplies from the Havoc.
3. Let's interrogate / then kill the prisoners. (Or sell them into slavery on the mines, if that's an option.)
4. Let's fix the Life Sustainers.
5. Let's determine how much work would be needed to repair the Havoc, and then decide if it's worth the effort.
Let's get the Alid-Yuril Consortium to their planet.

6. If it is worth the effort to repair the Havoc, we should leave a small group behind to get back to a repair facility, including (I guess) a junior Navigator and someone from the Seneschal Corps who can handle the financial aspect of a major repair, plus enough armsmen to guard the thing while it's there. [Would it be better to split the party for this, or just assign a group of NPCs to handle it?]

[Montresor]

Questions:

1. Now that we're out of the Warp, our Auger Arrays can scan the whole star system, right? So we know if there are any other enemy ships between us and the mining colony? Conversely, we can keep track of the corpse of the Havoc until we're done escorting these transports?

2. Assuming we could repair the Warp Drives and Geller Fields on the Havoc, it would need a Navigator on-board to make it back to Footfall? The Invictus can't tow it, right?

3. Does the mining colony have the facilities to repair our Life Sustainer?
My thoughts are like this:

1. Let's finish the escort run ASAP. Just so it's done.
2. Let's salvage supplies from the Havoc.
3. Let's interrogate / then kill the prisoners. (Or sell them into slavery on the mines, if that's an option.)
4. Let's fix the Life Sustainers.
5. Let's determine how much work would be needed to repair the Havoc, and then decide if it's worth the effort.
Let's get the Alid-Yuril Consortium to their planet.

6. If it is worth the effort to repair the Havoc, we should leave a small group behind to get back to a repair facility, including (I guess) a junior Navigator and someone from the Seneschal Corps who can handle the financial aspect of a major repair, plus enough armsmen to guard the thing while it's there. [Would it be better to split the party for this, or just assign a group of NPCs to handle it?]

Excellent idea, and I'm very glad that a player threw out something that I didn't expect (i.e. salvage the Havok).

Although I don't like giving players info before their characters find things out, I probably should here. The damage on the enemy ship was severe. The critical roll which killed her off resulted in the 'Space Hulk' entry which, in game terms, means the thing was almost wiped out and essentially converted into an asteroid. It's probable that some of the raider crew are still alive on that ship, but their time would be running out and they would be desperate.

Now, I don't want to say it's impossible to repair the ship (because it isn't), but it will require an enormous amount of time an effort. Obviously that couldn't be done now, and you'd need to get the wreck back to somewhere like Footfall, or a Forge World (if you find one). Also, almost every component on that vessel will have been completely destroyed. What you are left with is a skeleton that needs to have organs, flesh and blood pumped back into it. It will almost be like rebuilding the ship from scratch. Good facilities could see the work done in 2-3 years. In game terms, that's not so long. Keep in mind that you are probably 4-6 months from your destination.

Getting the wreck to a major port is the really chellenging issue.

Also, regarding turning the raiders to slaves - this is not really a problem. The mining facility would probably gladly take them. If you didn't mind some internal squabbles and a large blow to morale (at least in the short term), you might also think of offering the pirates the choice of joining your crew or sucking Void.

1 - the Arrays can scan the whole system and detect any ships there, yes. But it won't tell you who are pirates and who aren't. All non-system ships would be suspect.

2 - A navigator would be almost essential. You only have three, however. Towing vessels would be needed also.

3 - The mining colony can almost certainly help with repairs, but it's not likely that they can patch the Invictus to 100%.

[Montresor]

Hey guys - my apologies but I will have to hold on updates for a day or two. I'm going away to visit my parents but will be able to post there once I arrive and have time to sit down for a bit.

[Garrius Amphael]

All good. I maybe just about to watch the Ultramarines movie for the first time...

[Garrius Amphael]

Character posts over in the prethian thread seem to be OOC with little story telling, what would be the best way to reply? Just with instructions or proper story posts or what?

[Stone Magnet]

Character posts over in the prethian thread seem to be OOC with little story telling, what would be the best way to reply? Just with instructions or proper story posts or what?

I would like to see a story post from Garrius at least, as he's calling the shots in the end. But really, it's whatever people have time for over the holiday season. I'll probably post something around the 4th. As an aside, I can't tell if those posts in the Prethian thread are OOC discussion or in character thoughts...it's no biggie but it would be nice to see out of character discussion and suggestions in [blue text] and character thoughts clearly shown as such, makes the story a bit easier to follow.

A happy Festivus to you all!

[Montresor]

I agree. All OOC needs to be clearly marked as such. I'd prefer planning to be done IC, to give everyone a chance to pitch in IC.

I nominate that ass Peraton to run the armsmen until Drak-Kung is better.

He was very brave in the battle, hiding behind me and mine. And he's a noble. He'd make a great commander. His talents are wasted on shuttle pilots and turret gunners.

Haha. That made me laugh. Of course, he'd never agree.

Festivus for the rest of us!

[Stone Magnet]

^Yuss!

[1 - Salt's preliminary exploration of the wreck of the Havok has revealed that most of the vessel is utterly ruined. Small pockets exist with failing life supports, and there are a few hundred raiders still clinging to life therein. The entire vessel is awash with high levels of radiation from the leaking plasma drives. As such, all supplies on the Havok would be posionous to those who used them. There is very little that appears to be immediately useful in the drifting wreck, and deep exploration of her would be extremely hazardous.]

In light of the week minimum to repair the Life Sustainers, I think we have a little time to head over and collect the few hundred survivors still on the Havoc. They either surrender quietly, or we leave them there to starve. Should be a cake-walk, except for the danger of just being over there in the first place. Then we sell them and the other prisoners to the mining colony.

Good points, but I see several problems with this plan.

-We need to go to the mining colony first to get parts/work to repair the Life Sustainers. Then double back to locate the Havoc floating near an asteriod field.

-Retrieval of prisoners would be seen as more stalling, and be extremely unpopular with the Alid Yuril members.

-A few hundred more irradiated pirate slaves on top of the 60 or so healthy ones we have now probably won't be worth much more (the mining colony can't pay much for them), certainly not worth the risk of more Invictus personnel in a rackety radioactive space hulk. Morale is already cut to ribbons from casualties.

[If the pirate fleet really is likely to exact revenge, they'll start with the mining colony. And really... them making threats like that is only likely to get us to open the airlock. If they're all dead, the pirate fleet won't think we abused them. They'll just think we defeated them in a fight.

Undisputable logic. I like it. However the other two ships know that there are men left on the Invictus. They will know that we would have taken some prisoners. Whether they care or not... (they cared enough about their crew to abandon them).

If destroying a prized Havok raider isn't enough to provoke a "grudge" from the pirate fleet (i'm not saying it isn't, though Calidus seems to be), I don't think a few prisoners here and there will make a difference.

[Andrea Chan-Gauthier]

For clarity's sake, I edited my post to show that it's all OOC. Sorry for the confusion on that; I had figured that since Montresor posted all those OOC comments, that an OOC response was expected. (And yes, he did his in blue, which I skipped out of laziness.)

So... I'm honestly not sure how we COULD discuss this IC. I guess we'd have to assume that Garrius called a meeting of his senior staff? (And that somehow Salt was invited also?)

Or do we just create a series of scenes where Andrea happens to have a chat with Zarkov to discuss a few points, while they pass in the hallway, then later Zarkov and Praetus chat about some other things?

Would Garrius or Praetus welcome Andrea's suggestions on which route to take? Would ANYBODY welcome Salt's suggestions? I guess in the end, it's really Garrius' decision, so all we can do is make arguments to him? Maybe a staff meeting isn't such a bad idea... just so we have a forum to discuss stuff IC. And it would mean that our decision would reflect stuff like one character's bias towards or against another character, in spite of the merits of that character's point.

[Stone Magnet]

^Yea, you are right. Garrius kinda needs to post first as to his orders - though theres nothing stopping you from taking him aside IC and informing him of the state of the ships supplies etc (Seneschal stuff) and your suggestions. Do it politely though. Haha. It would be nice to get Garrius' direction though. As for Zarkov, I think he's gonna take another tour of the ship and see how much of a hit morale took...

[Montresor]

As for Zarkov, I think he's gonna take another tour of the ship and see how much of a hit morale took...

Go armed. Zarkov is the one who cut life support to a ship's component...

As for a meeting - why not just write something on the bridge, assuming everyone is present. Salt would be there because she's Peraton's delegate to the Bridge.

Just remember to refresh your knoweldge of the Bridge's layout. It's a very large place, and sometimes this doesn't come across in some PC posts.

[Andrea Chan-Gauthier]

As for Zarkov, I think he's gonna take another tour of the ship and see how much of a hit morale took...

Go armed. Zarkov is the one who cut life support to a ship's component...

I think there's your answer.