Ship quirk thread

diffusion and interference means that you wouldn't be able to pick that stuff up on even a very sensitive radio at deep space distances...

A namefag AND a buzzkill. Who'da thunk?

...I was pointing out a thing that might be cool for a slightly spoopy encounter.

a voice over the radio when there should be nothing. signals out in the black.

>Guys crossdress to please their amazon dominatrix of a ship
>Dare you enter my magical realm?

I was thinking more like the ship will plot a head on course against a heavily armed pirateship thinking its non existent thick armor will protect it.

That's why they use lots of power, and bounce it off local relays if possible.
The broadcasts are sent alongside something akin to numbers stations, which use modulated radio signals to inject code into relay buoys so they'll repeat the signal and boost it.
Wholly illegal, of course, but the system just keeps re-infecting, even decades after the original station was shut down.

Combine and for even more fun, I say.
The computer was salvaged from the navy of the Amazon Planet.

also that yes I suspect.

perhaps best if the AI was salvaged out of a foreign or even alien polity vessel...so it also speaks a different language.

The ship was a salvaged 30,000 old alien explorer vessel found drifting in space. The A.I. is lonely and suffers 'depression' longing for her long dead companions. It copes by singing sad songs.

Something inspired by ST:VOY Year of Hell. The ship encountered a space anomaly that allows it to assume the infinite configurations from other timelines. This ability can be triggered once per day but the outcome is random and temporary. You might end up as a huge planet killer or as a lifeboat for example.

The emergency escape pods randomly eject themselves, causing all sorts of nightmares especially when docked

This ship was built by a race with a highly efficient digestive system.

There are no bathrooms.

The ship is actually a retired Q-Boat. Once a capacious freighter vessel, the pop-bead chain of cargo units which comprise the midsection of the vessel have been extensively modified to utilize every inch of interior space for missile racks, with the sides hinging open to expose them. While it worked very well at blapping unsuspecting pirates with a hail of nuclear fire, the PC's will be challenged in finding work with such an unconventional vessel. A refit would be prohibitively expensive.

The ship has a rare luxury: An autodoc. However, it is a stolen black market model. While this means the ship needs no medic, and it is an entirely serviceable autodoc unit for routine operations, it can be difficult to explain to passengers why it has so many options for illegal surgeries such as organ harvesting and prohibited augmentations. They also tend to be disturbed upon finding its Hippocratic protocol has been scrubbed, enabling it to perform operations which will result in patient death. It would be bad if customs noticed any of these things.

The ship was formerly used for drug smuggling, and came very cheap after its old crew was incarcerated after being caught, the vessel seized and put up for auction. However, there are drugs still hidden in every nook and cranny of the ship. This not only poses a risk if customs somehow finds some, but every now and then some baggie, capsule, or ampoule hidden deep within the ventilation system will be dislodged and fall into the fans, dispersing a random narcotic into the air. As this tends to occur more often in moments of severe jostling, this creates a problematic situation where combat suddenly becomes complicated by a whopping dose of hallucinogens dumped into the air.

>this creates a problematic situation where combat suddenly becomes complicated by a whopping dose of hallucinogens dumped into the air.
Or aerobraking. Or takeoffs.
Really, whenever you least want it.

At least one weapons system is sentient and believes you are false data. Talking this weapons system out of activating is a routine chore.

The vacc suits are ancient and have muffin tins attached to the chest as part of a patch someone rigged up a few decades back. The crew grew fond of the clunky suits and reject any suggestion that they be replaced by something from this century.

I mean, they seem safe enough, the patches are very solid.

Pic related.

I'm just glad someone else appreciates Dark Star.

The AI has long since modified itself into a heavily armed battleship and is violently overprotective of its new crew. The AI won't say what happened to its old crew, but insists that it won't let it happen again.

The intruder alarms, bioscanners and atmosphere readers are all powered by AAA-Batteries or their equivalent. When the batteries die the alarms start going off. Said batteries are difficult to find due to their age.

>The A.I. is lonely and suffers 'depression' longing for her long dead companions. It copes by singing sad songs.

youtube.com/watch?v=IRN3Co1F8qE

Or alternately,

youtube.com/watch?v=boZuPl2cRdQ

You are a new crewman and sign on to an old, but well maintained ship. Surprisingly, the mortgage has been paid off and whatever the crew is doing seems to be profitable. You stay at your station most of the time, especially during the rather drastic maneuvers the ship goes through around the middle of most voyages. But whenever you put into port you notice the crew has new stuff to sell which wasn't on board when you set out. What gives?

>They also tend to be disturbed upon finding its Hippocratic protocol has been scrubbed, enabling it to perform operations which will result in patient death.
Worse still, the risk-taking treatment options it can - without informing anyone - take during surgery tend to result in above-average outcomes.

With that in mind, fixing the bot is a nuanced decision.

There's a small shrine tucked away in the most obscure recesses of the ship, devoted to some deity no-one's ever heard of.

Small acts of prayer and thanks towards it make you feel better about life, the universe, and everything. Things seem to go a little better for you, but that's probably just because you're happier.

The ship possess a junior engineer nobody knows exists, because she logged in with the night shift in engineering because she's shy and lives in a small recess, sleeping on a hammock and cooking food off a thermal exhaust manifold.

Every crewmember who's died in the line of duty, and any ex-crewmembers who request it, have been cremated and their ashes stored in a unique gargoyle-style decoration, peering down from the abnormally wide & tall main corridor of the ship, glaring (benevolently?) from the corners of common areas, or decorating the bridge.

If no ashes were available, a ship's cat or other useful small animal would be acquired and named in their honour, being cremated upon its death to fill the space.

Owned by a paranoid shipping magnate, this capacious space yacht has unusually dense and resonant hull structure. This is almost entirely to defeat detailed scanning of the interior and to help disguise the fact there's a concealed weapon rack in every area. They've been found, tagged and emptied in 40% of the ship.

It was a large freighter designed for containerised cargo. Some serious accidents left it without a bridge, engineering section, crew section, shuttle bay... but hey, the main cargo framework is intact! Just mount some containers with in-built life support, link them up, and you've got a floating brick composed of standardised shipping containers. There are two direct fore-aft chains running the length of the ship to provide access to containers with ship components rather than cargo, some containerised engines, sensors and living space, but mostly it's just a giant floating mass of cargo containers.

>a ship's cat
The ship's cat takes random dislikes to people. Like the navigator. Vicious, mean-spirited dislik, that often involves claws and teeth and leaping from air vents.
You screwed the grilles back on, but this cat is polydactyl. It has THUMBS, and undid them.

The cat came with the ship, and you don't know where it sleeps half the time. The other half, it's on the captain's chair that nobody else dare use if it's on there, or on the engineer's bed, or in the engineer's clean laundry.
You tried just not feeding it, but it doesn't seem to rely on human feedings anyway. The ship's probably feeding it automatically.
You wanted to try 'accidentally' locking it in the airlock and flushing it, but it's a voidcat. Along with the thumbs and the claws that enable it to climb metal vents, it can withstand vacuum for a while. You suspect it's got increased intelligence as well.

The fact that the ship was in the cat's name was kind of telling. The crew said it was a way to dodge tax and liability, along with the ship being registered on Phobos despite the fact that terrorists flung that into the Pacific ocean ages ago, along with the space elevator attached to it.

>the ship being registered on Phobos
>the ship being registered on Deimos
>the ship being ex-UAC
when will people start noticing these giant red flags and getting the fuck out ASAP

The ship doesn't have a mess. Or staterooms. Or living quarters in general, although there is a decent head, shower & locker room. It does have a portal to an interdimensional inn where you can get some good food and hear weird stories from elves (and wizards, and robot crystal people from the distant future of another galaxy), get a cheap comfy room, and sit by a roaring fire. You can't get out of the inn to go anywhere else, though, you can only go back to the ship.

A microscopic alien civilization has taken up residence somewhere in the ventilation system and occasionally sends tiny spaceships into the crew areas to scavenge for supplies. The ships do respond to radio transmissions, but so far nobody has been able to translate the language.

There are plaques with this written on it located in multiple places within the ship.

That's a nice ship.

Similar thought to The ship is near constantly checking it's intercom systems, yet there's never any test noises coming out. The crew only finds out after shipping a colony of bats that the ship likes to sing to itself in a pitch so high that the crew don't hear her

The ship once carried the biggest pop sensation of the century on their most famous tour, and has fans - of the pop group, and a few of the ship - at every port.

After arriving at a common port, a stowaway droid arc-cuts it's way through an exterior hull section and escapes into the starport.
An investigation reveals a previous owner must have sealed the droid in there with a hook into the navigation systems and a delayed program to deliver itself on that planet.

What the hell did you just smuggle?

They sometimes try to get in, or carve their names on something.

The live album cover art was them doing a Beatles Abbey Road-style shot in your cargo bay. You might have to clear out the hold to get it right, but you can make a few quid letting people take their own shots there, or take selfies in the staterooms ONCE USED BY OH MY GOD I'M RIGHT HERE WHERE THEY WERE THIS IS AMAZING

Theres a pair of texan steer horns mounted above the captains seat in the main bridge, its laced with RFIDs and without its presence the ships computers refuse to boot, engines refuse to ignore and the comms array will not send or receive.

The ship is made from a hollowed out asteroid. This means it has terrible shear strength and integrity, but a lot of ablative mass and room for interior upgrades from mining away rock.
This might be the biggest fixer up in space, but you got a capital-class hull for a corvette investment.

The deck department consists of uplifted primates, giving a new meaning to the phrase "Deck Apes". The Bosun would like it if people would stop leaving a yellow hat on his rack, thank you very much.

It's an AG-less ship, so no internal gravity. That wouldn't be *too* unusual, except it used to have gravity... and water. It was originally crewed by swimmers (dolphins, if you're using Uplift), so everything was designed with a gravity bias, and there are some quite complex ducting and sealing systems. It just got sold to some zero-g users who drained it, stripped out some stuff they didn't need, and happily float around all day in a nice cozy atmosphere.

An atmosphere-tight container in the cargo hold that isnt on any of the manifests opens to reveal several vintage airbikes/G-bikes in mint condition.

Several ex-members of the crew and revealed to be living inside the survival shelter stowed on the lower deck, surviving on scraps from the galley and processed nutrient.

The automated announcement system only speaks in languages other than english and never one language on a consistent basis.

During emergency repairs its revealed that the only thing in the emergency supply cabinet is a swiss army knife and roll of duct tape.

During routine maintenance on the ship's computer a technician finds 30, 600hour AOL Trials that have been granting internet access to the ship.

Heat sources more intense than an incense stick or tumble dryer trigger fire suppression systems. In some sections, this involves venting atmo.

All of the electrical systems were built using high temperature superconductors. They all work very well, but only if the average temperature in the crew compartment is kept below 120 Kelvin.

That's pretty awesome.

saved.

Here's an album that was posted in the thread that helped inspire the creation of the song.

youtube.com/watch?v=D5p8YhhaVlA

My favorite from the album is Dawson's Christian.

The A.I installed to run navigation system is defiant and wants you to convince it to do whatever it is you want it to do

If it only runs navigation, that means I can threaten it with a hammer. Checkmate robo-scrub.

>leave an empty can on the table
>come back to find a toy-sized mining ship cutting it up for scrap
>aliens recognize you by now, don't seem to mind if you watch
>just don't touch the ship. The shields aren't dangerous but they are painful

This, but it's really just doing it for the attention, because it's incredibly bored/has a crush on someone, and it's the only way it knows how to get people to talk to it.

But then how are you gonna get to where you wanna go?

Slide rules and paper.

The ship has a glovebox mounted in the captains console that opens to reveal several ampules of laudanum.an unregistered needle pistol and a fake ID chit for "Sancho Sanchez",

You gonna calculate what speed you need to go in order to not hit anything as well as arrive to your destination in this millennia on paper?

If you can go to the moon with a slide rule you can go to another planet. It ain't rocket science,

I feel that this old clunker would have a lot of charm, right guys?

In the far future of mankind there is only Desert Bus: Space Edition.

I think it's RIPE for charm.

I was planning on having my party that I am DMing find this ship after crash landing, the various large cargo areas are going to have the remains of what were once homes in the abandoned ship.

I like the idea of raiders on ATVs, caravans using trucks. Unfortunate that this mod is for version 12, I wonder if it can be updated.

>The backup AI is better in some ways, and worse in others

youtube.com/watch?v=76RiaO7yego

youtube.com/watch?v=y6g5oOPN9To

> After a while, you just stop using the recycling bins
> Instead, you take to just leaving recyclables in a taped-off area of the cargo hold to let the vent aliens take it
> You're not sure what they're building with all that scrap, but you hope they have something to do with all the maintenance that you scheduled a day to get on with, and then found it'd all been done
> Ship's cat ventured into the alien's territory, came out at speed being pursued by a small fleet

Due to hardware limitations at the time it was designed, the ship's AI has the intelligence and personality of a labrador retriever.

The ship's coffee machine was made my an alien species who's language has long been forgotten. Trying to get any coffee is essentially a gamble between the best espresso you've ever tasted, or a cupful of motor oil.

godamn it Veeky Forums

now I wanna read about the adventures of the space borrowers

Wasn't there a Veeky Forums setting about the multi AU long ship and people living in the ducting? Sort of backwards, but relevant.

>dock at a spaceport for repairs
>decide to eat in the food court while they're fixing the fridge
>as you head back to the ship, you feel something drop into your pocket
>ducking into an alley, you reach in after it and pull out a chunky-looking cargo ship
>you don't remember bringing that with you
>realizing they've been caught, three more rise up out of your backpack
>as if to explain, one rolls over to show its belly, then opens its cargo bay
>two sachets of barbeque sauce
>they must have grabbed them while you were eating. No one on the ship eats barbeque sauce

Well, there's plenty of posts left before we hit the bump limit. I'll see what I can do for you, user. I'm sure other writefags will join in.

> Send a probe into the vents to find those little fuckers and see what they're doing with all the scrap
> Probe gets a little way into the vents, then ambushed by a defensive fleet
> Obviously there to defend against the cat (which has never been into the vents since it's tail got lasered an inch shorter)
> Sneak the probe past them
> Camera feed suddenly cuts out
> They've spotted it
> Feed returns a little while later
> Probe is unresponsive, camera pointed at a sign made of macaroni
> You're pretty sure nobody bought macaroni
> The sign's in their language; all blobs and squiggles
> Shut the probe off after a while, figuring it means 'stop spying on us'.

> A few days later, the probe is sat on the dining table, cable unplugged and coiled next to it
> Scorchmarks all around it, like a tiny heavy-lift operation got it there.

> Decide it's time to learn to communicate
> Leave 'english for beginners' books in the taped area
> They're gone the next morning

> Preparing to dock at a small station way out in the Oort cloud.
> Wave of tiny ships flies out of a vent, shooing the helmsman away from the docking controls, and knock the molly guard back down over the button to start docking
> While you're still confused about what's going on, the station starts firing chunks of ice at you from it's mass driver
> Helmsman gets the controls back, and you GTFO.
> Chunks of ice that were embedded in the hull are gone come morning.
> Ice dispenser on the fridge is full to the brim
> Trays of ice in the freezer
> AC works way better than it used to
> Get the feeling that you're not actually the owner of the ship

I was going to make a new thread but this might be the place to ask instead.

I want my players to get a outlaw star/ bebop home base ship. but id like for them to earn it so it means more to them and I can get an adventure or two out of it.

does anyone have any suggestions, I was thinking of something like and oceans eleven shipyard heist, but id love any ideas.

Have it promised to them as a reward for an extended quest.
When they get back with the macguffin of power, have the quest-giver screw them over, and require being chased down. The party then takes the ship they were promised after making him stick to his deal.
But there's one issue. It's in awful shape, and they have to get it fixed up by finding parts, and hauling cargo to pay for stuff.

yes please!

SSSSSPPPPPAAAAACCCCEEEE BUMP!

Where did Halo go wrong, lore-wise?

id say after they decided to continue using MC after 3. kinda diminishes the grand "finish the fight" vibe they had going when the fights not finished.

Didn't they change the ancient aliens in the setting from being humans to, well, aliens?
I need some kind of comprehensive breakdown: there's elements of the lore I'd like to borrow from, I think.

a surprise inheritance, they are the last surviving relatives of a small shipyard company, almost all the inventory goes into liquidation to cover debts. they can potentially argue a ship as sole retained asset. if they chip in all of their personal savings

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
they were in a catastrophic space-port incident.
all the pods were disabled or taken, all they had left was an as yet unpainted, un-equipped, and un-supplied ship, fresh off the assembly line.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
they won a small lottery.

they can afford a too small, NICE ship.

or they can afford a comfortably large space-clunker.

let the earning be in getting a large empty ship to be a comfortable living space

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
the ship is/was a pirate or smuggling vessel they stole.

it can forge it's own paperwork and signatures, but because of some certain reasons it cannot be reported as stolen.

>that pic
>port is the right

MAXIMUM JIMMY OVER-RUSTLE

SHIPS GODDAMNED LEFT IS PORT
STARBOARD IS IS RIGHT

Oh god I didn't look until you said anything, now I'm furious too!

thanks for the suggestions I really appreciate it. Ill probably start with the extended quest idea then cap it off with a catastrophic space-port incident and give them a few decent but "well used" options to choose from so they can upgrade customize and make it there own.

Which may or may not be the beloved ship of a medium to high member of one the crime syndicates, pirate guilds or military commander who REALLY wants their ship back.

actually, a way they could have several choices that are mostly stripped of equipment(and therefore not overpowered by default) would be an impound auction or government sale.

>local military puts it's technically functional derelicts in
>police seizures
>company fleet sales(my company did this with old trucks)

all of them stripped of illegal hardware of course, but still equipped with the odd slot or bracket or empty bay or smuggling compartment.

expensive, custom, or specialty hardware is usually removed and sold separately to maximize profit.

in a sale like that, all the vehicles(or at least most of them) are brought up to date on all maintenance, and inspected.

combined with a "full tank of gas to drive off with" that lots of those sales include means that the party will probably end up stealing something with the following traits
1.) fully fueled, and provisioned with atmosphere
2.) at best, only armed up to the limit allowed to civilians
3.) not equipped with any special features
4.) neatly combines "wanted by the police" and "wanted by the smuggling cartel/rich previous owner that owned it last time"
5.) fully inspected and equipped with all safety features
6.) likely to be particularly quirky
7.) starting out with a need for supplies like food, weapons, registration papers, advanced components, mattresses.

...

that's actually a great idea thanks! I was wondering about when to really give them the ship but all this talk has given me a great plan. the first adventure/session assuming they succeed with net them a good bit of dosh and more importantly a bit of fame/notoriety this will catch the attention of a mysterious and shady benefactor to give them the quest for session 2.

in session 2 the party grabs the macguffin and goes to return it to the quest giver at the designated space station/space port/ auction impound lot only to get screwed over and a chase ensues, the macguffin activates causing problems now they need to escape thus they grab one of the ships and blast off.

congrats they now have a ship. it has no supplies and is probably wanted by the mob/pirates/police/military and or shady benefactor session 3 can focus on getting out of the contested space dodging whoever's after them and getting supplies and outfitting the ship.

...

>you don't mind a few stowaways, but you don't want to accidentally sit on one if it happens again
>buy a foam case and cut hatches so they can open it from inside
>put model ships in some of the compartments
>leave it outside the taped area a day before you're scheduled to land
>take it with you when you leave, then put it back as soon as you return
>the first two times, the case is empty
>the third time, a small warship decloaks and flies back into the vent when you open it
>the fourth time, one of the cargo ships is waiting when you pick it up
>this time the aliens have written something on the ship
>you don't know what it says but you hope it's something friendly

I ever run a game with space-travel and aliens this shit is going in there...

I wonder how much nutrient there is in a BBQ-sauce packet, or the fungus mat that grows in the air-ducts.

that and, could you eventually pull a "Harry Dresden the Pizza-Lord" with them....

Halo was good-tier sci-fi, everything went to meh after 3.

I read the books, never played the games. the science was comfortably firm for me to enjoy, and the story is just below my peak threshold for convolution.

is the answer to and a way they could have done that was having games(possibly whole trilogies) around the other SPARTANs and the SPARTAN-II and III troopers

>this time the aliens have written something on the ship
"Huh, it says RED DWARF."

although the bit where some nanobots shrunk red dwarf down and drove it around lister's laundry basket was from one of the later series, and early red dwarf was better.

>someone left an empty carton of soya milk in the kitchen
>they also left a miniature fusion cell inside

Due to a liability scam by the previous captain, the maintenance droid legally owns the ship.