Hey there, I have a question about civillian hammer’s and mercators. In the tech index, it says that these craft have no armament. At the same time, a number of life paths suggest that Civillian space craft like these are sometimes armed, specificly the Gunner, which is a Spacer life path, even though Spacer’s fly civillian craft and all Civillian craft shown in the Burning Empires hand book have no armament. What rules, if any, are there to adding guns to a civillian space craft, and if there aren’t any how would you do it?
The technology burner has the rules for this:
Adding the ordanance trait is covered on page 384, and the weapons themselves is on page 382. Adding obstacle penalties or other restrictions can also be described here if the mount is sub standard or jurry rigged, or to reflect that the mercator doesn’t have a large enough power plant to power all of the weapons at the same time - or any other restriction you can think of if the cost is too high.
Unlike military ships civilian ships don’t come with the ordanace straight - they require (in Han Solo’s words) “some special modifications”.
Explaining to the port master why your civilian mercator has a Artillery Battery mounted on its nose is a different matter…
Or, obviously, you could burn civilian ships pre-modded with lazer gunz. End result is the same, whether you take a civvie ship and burn the mods, or just burn the whole thing.
There’s no ship burner as of yet. The current canon is that you take a template and modify it.
Right, but you could burn a separate Device as a mod to the ship:
Secondary Fusion Turbine
This aftermarket (and legally questionable) modification consists of a small magnetodynamic turbine* which can be lowered into the plasma exhaust of a starship in order to bleed off engine power, diverting it to certain high-drain devices, the nature of which your dealer is careful not to discuss. However, she seems very eager to cut you a deal to reinforce the ventral structure of your Mercator at the same time as she installs it.
Device: Enhancement (acts as Ordnance trait) 8pts
Categorical Limitation: Vehicle must have Space Speed (-1pt)
Categorical Limitation: Energy weapons only (“Engine” ammo type) (-1pt)
Obstacle: +2 Ob to vehicle Speed tests in Firefight (-3pts)
Total cost: 3pts
Or, you know, you could just pay the three points to get a weapon mount put on without the limitations (but since I burned all this without checking that price, here it is anyway). If you wanted to be lame like that. Maybe there’s some circumstance where you might want to do this instead of buying it as a vehicle upgrade, but clearly weapon mounts aren’t among them.
*May require periodic neutron-flow polarity reversals, see attached maintenance schedule.
Emphasis my own.
Raise eyebrow