Hot Rodding is dead?

[MasterGwydion]

I was just looking through the refit rules in High Guard and I realized that you cannot hotrod your starship. By game rules, it seems to be impossible. "Those items covered under a major refit cannot be increased in size but they can be reduced." HG pg. 72. Hot-rodding is all about putting larger engines in stock starships.

Doesn't this rule contradict the write up of the Far Trader? "While normally a modified free trader, the far trader has a series of modifications that have become accepted as standard and many free traders are either modified to this specification or are built this way from new. The far trader swaps cargo space and low berths for a larger jump drive and fuel tank, allowing it to reach systems a basic free trader cannot travel to." Core Rulebook pg. 196.

Why are rules being made that make it impossible to modify ships as stated in their description?

 

[Vormaerin]

I don't much like the refit rules from a gameplay perspective. Maybe you couldn't actually armor up a ship post construction if this was real life, but players shouldn't need to buy a whole new ship to make their stock free trader into an Armed Trader (Adventure Class Ships) or a Soho-class Armed Freighter (TAS vol 1?) that are just variants of those base ships. It's just bad gameplay, imho.

 

[Condottiere]

Minimalism means less volume.

Less volume, greater performance.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Minimalism means less volume.

Less volume, greater performance.

Explain that when you want to switch out your stock engine for a big block engine.

 

[Condottiere]

Optionally, you can weld it to the primary hull.

Could prove challenging for the control interface and power sockets, but it's canon.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Optionally, you can weld it to the primary hull.

Could prove challenging for the control interface and power sockets, but it's canon.

Doesn't matter if something is Canon if the current ruleset forbids it.

 

[Condottiere]

Pieces from different spacecraft are, sometimes literally, welded together with power lines and hydraulics strung between them in an effort to build something quickly and cheaply that will move under its own power and, hopefully, be able to identify enemies and fire something at them.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yes, and the description of the A2 far trader is that it's a refit of the Free Trader, but that type of refit is expressly against the current refit rules.

 

[Condottiere]

I considered the issue.

It actually bypasses it.

You can't alter the hull.

And you aren't.

You're just attaching something to it.

 

[Vormaerin]

In which case, all that is addition to the volume of the ship, reducing its engine performance and requiring other things to be recalculated as well. So even if you just flat out ignore that it says Armour can't be added in a refit on a technicality, you are still adding 15 dtons to the free trader by adding 6pts of crystaliron to the vessel.

Of course, I just ignore the rule because its bad gameplay, but I'm not pretending it complies with the rules as written.

 

[Geir]

Yes, and the description of the A2 far trader is that it's a refit of the Free Trader, but that type of refit is expressly against the current refit rules.

What it actually says is:
many free traders are either modified to this specification or are built this way from new.

With the former of these statements being the problem. Yeah. The 'A frame' for the far trader and other more specialised offshoots ought to have more flexibility built in. In a perfect (retconned?) world, this would involve having the space behind a slightly shortened main cargo area be bulkheaded off and - if not technically 'modular' then at least configurable to include drives, fuel, extra cargo, low berths or whatever in a set of standard modifications. Updated deck plans - as drawn, the jump drive is equally large on both plans when it should be 5 dtons bigger for the A2.

The cargo hold and/or upper deck could then also be carved up differently within reason (if you want better sensors, they'd go in the upper deck common area or forward stateroom, for instance, and I'd want to ditch the expensive crane for a cheaper and smaller loading ramp or two - but since there is no game mechanic that covers the advantages of either, they're just background colour unless the Referee creates some custom mechanic for them).

(The geezer in me wants to go off on a tangent about the CT definition of 'standard' hulls as being divided into 'standard' engineering and not engineering sections, but that's not the issue here.)

 

[OriginalCaruso]

I’m coming to the conclusion that playability is more important than adherence to canon or hard and fast (inconsistent) rules. I’m inclined to treat rules as guidelines - I don’t want the rules to get in the way of a good gaming session

Drawing inspiration from Blades in the Dark or Dark City means a rules-light style of game. So long as the players don’t behave unreasonably and try to break or bend the general game context I try to let the game flow

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, yeah. In CT, engines had defined sizes rather than being % values of the hull they were on.

It makes sense to me that some of these major refits are not feasible, though some of the things done with naval refits is pretty impressive...

However, I'm not really that interested in that. My thing is that I'd like my players to be able to upgrade the Millenium Falcon when they have the resources and need, not sell it for a new ship.

 

[ottarrus]

There's a hell of a lot you CAN upgrade.
And since when do referees hand out the multi-million credit bonanzas necessary to upgrade power plants and drives? Most ships don't have the power to spare to just load a hot drive into the hull, so usually [but not always] you're gonna have to shove a bigger power plant into the ship in addition to the drive.
Even back in the LBBs simplified ship building system, there comes a point where it's more cost efficient to just build a new ship from scratch.
OTOH, if your campaign is happier 'hot-rodding' your ships, go ahead and do that. There's no one stopping you.

 

[MasterGwydion]

There's a hell of a lot you CAN upgrade.
And since when do referees hand out the multi-million credit bonanzas necessary to upgrade power plants and drives? Most ships don't have the power to spare to just load a hot drive into the hull, so usually [but not always] you're gonna have to shove a bigger power plant into the ship in addition to the drive.
Even back in the LBBs simplified ship building system, there comes a point where it's more cost efficient to just build a new ship from scratch.
OTOH, if your campaign is happier 'hot-rodding' your ships, go ahead and do that. There's no one stopping you.

Only the rules stop you. Rules in a game are like the physics of the universe. They are how the universe is defined. In this particular instance, Mongoose created their own problem that didn't exist before. Simply remove the rule from the book that forbids increasing the size of major refit components. Problem fixed. I have no idea why they thought that little bit of extra text was even required. It adds nothing to the game, but it does prevent people from being able to build the Millenium Falcon from a stock ship.

 

[MasterGwydion]

There's a hell of a lot you CAN upgrade.
And since when do referees hand out the multi-million credit bonanzas necessary to upgrade power plants and drives? Most ships don't have the power to spare to just load a hot drive into the hull, so usually [but not always] you're gonna have to shove a bigger power plant into the ship in addition to the drive.
Even back in the LBBs simplified ship building system, there comes a point where it's more cost efficient to just build a new ship from scratch.
OTOH, if your campaign is happier 'hot-rodding' your ships, go ahead and do that. There's no one stopping you.

Gambling for a Type N Hyperdrive on a remote desert planet on the Outer Rim? Tons of examples of stuff like that in sci-fi stories.

 

[Vormaerin]

There's a hell of a lot you CAN upgrade.
And since when do referees hand out the multi-million credit bonanzas necessary to upgrade power plants and drives? Most ships don't have the power to spare to just load a hot drive into the hull, so usually [but not always] you're gonna have to shove a bigger power plant into the ship in addition to the drive.
Even back in the LBBs simplified ship building system, there comes a point where it's more cost efficient to just build a new ship from scratch.
OTOH, if your campaign is happier 'hot-rodding' your ships, go ahead and do that. There's no one stopping you.

Salvage and finding lost ships have pretty substantial payouts (whether in cash or shipyard favors or parts upgrades) and are hardly weird or unusual. And, yes, I can sell off the old Millenium Falcon and just buy a new Centennial Eagle. But a Free Trader, Far Trader, and Armed Trader are all versions of the Type A. No reason why it should be illegal to make those modifications post construction.

And I'm aware that no one is stopping me. In fact, I explicitly stated that I just ignored that rule. The point of this topic is to raise the question of why that limitation was added to the game. Presumably, you add things to the game to serve some purpose. It is not clear to me why you would take away options that previously existed.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Salvage and finding lost ships have pretty substantial payouts (whether in cash or shipyard favors or parts upgrades) and are hardly weird or unusual. And, yes, I can sell off the old Millenium Falcon and just buy a new Centennial Eagle. But a Free Trader, Far Trader, and Armed Trader are all versions of the Type A. No reason why it should be illegal to make those modifications post construction.

And I'm aware that no one is stopping me. In fact, I explicitly stated that I just ignored that rule. The point of this topic is to raise the question of why that limitation was added to the game. Presumably, you add things to the game to serve some purpose. It is not clear to me why you would take away options that previously existed.

Heck, using the Traveller rules as written (with the options available such as hyperdrive), you could more or less play Star Wars-style.... except for being able to upgrade to a Millenium Falcon. (No option exists for that. Anymore.) lolz

 

[Vormaerin]

I just used the name to indicate a ship the players would have loyalty to rather than any interest in Star Wars gameplay. Could have used Firefly instead Mal's player is gonna be happier upgrading the engines on the Serenity than selling it and buying something else.

 

[Arkathan]

Rule Zero.
The upgrade rule impedes your fun? Ignore it.
We are not playing tournament WH40K where the mini-police inspect your models for purity.
I hate that engines and power plants cannot be used in modules. I understand the logic behind engine restriction (although other systems allow such things), but not the power plant restriction.