Trader Ark Tender

Stats

ST/HP Hand/SR HT Move Lwt. Load SM Occ DR fDR Range Cost Loc Stall Total Chase Rolls
15,000* -4/5* 13† 1/150 3,000,000 900,000 +15 10,000ASV* 10,000‡* 20,000* NA (Rating 1) $1.5T 12T9rT* 0 +7

Notes

Trader Ark Tender as Signature Ship

A Tender costs 30 points to purchase a signature ship; the GM may rule this well beyond the availability of a player to access. In general, if a player has access to a Tender, it is through their Rank trait, and they don't own it so much as command it. Given the scale of the ship and the number of people that the owner of a Tender would need to control to properly operate one, controlling it via a command structure makes the most sense. The GM might require someone who has a Tender as a signature ship to take the Rank trait anyway (given the number of characters he commands); this should generally be at least Rank 5, and in such an instance, the GM should be more generous with the crew.

If taken as a signature ship, the Tender comes with a skeleton crew of skill-12 minions, and a few named hireling NPCs, and a couple of shuttles. Characters with high levels of Rank in addition to the Signature Ship should expect more complete crew and perhaps a complement of fighters as part of their rank.

  • This represents an Ark Tender at full, original “Battleship” capability. Most Ark Tenders have sacrificed some of these capabilities in favor of larger numbers of boarded refugees. See the Price of Lives below.

† This represents an Ark Tender in its prime; many Ark Tenders have lower HT than this. See the Weight of Years below.
‡ Nanopolymer armor. Additionally, it has a Force Screen that provides 20,000 ablative, hardened DR.

Electronics:

  • Capital-Scale Tactical Ultra-Scanner: 4000-mile scan, 400-mile imaging/bioscan; 360°;
  • Targeting Macroframe: +5 to hit target with a scan-lock.
  • Hyperspectral Sensors: +9 nightvision, +3 to notice details; ×8 magnification (up to +3 to aimed attacks, if the vehicle aims for three turns).
  • Large Holographic Radio: 10,000 mile range; “conference” sized holographic projector. All communications encrypted.
  • Very Large FTL Communication Array: 300-parsec range.
  • Trader Hyperdrive: Rating 1; requires 4 hour recharge between jumps. Applies a -4 to Navigation (Hyperspace), but halves all other navigation penalties!
  • Fusion Reactor: 250-year lifespan.
  • Security: Complex Electronic Locks and security cameras at regular intervals. Lifepods (but only enough for about 10% of the population).
  • Neural Interface: The pilot must be able to neurally interface with the vehicle to properly operate it.
  • Trader Tech: Characters without the Advanced Tech trait or Cutting Edge (Trader Tech) perk attempting to maintain or repair this vehicle apply a -5 to their Mechanic skill.

Accommodation and Facilities:

  • Command Crew: Trader Sub-Executor (Guildfleet Rank 3); 3 Guild Fleet High Councilors (Guildfleet 3); 3 Guildfleet Navigators (Guildfleet Rank 2; the Triumvirate)
  • Food and Accommodations: Total life support for up to 10,000 and carries food vats which provide food indefinitely, as well as enough cargo space for at least 100 lbs per person.
  • Facilities: These vary from Tender to Tender, but most include a Navigation Ops Center (+2 Navigation), a 100-man diplomatic facility and a very large hospital (at least 1000 beds).

Trader Ark Tender Complement:

  • Docking Bay: All Ark Tenders have sufficient hangar capacity for up to a single SM 11 ship (a cruiser or heavy destroyer) or 10 heavy frigates or 30 to 100 corvettes, etc.
  • Starfighters: Most tenders carry 10 squadrons of 24 Hornet-class interceptors.
  • Additional Defensive Craft: Most tenders carry 10 Scarab-class defense frigates and up to 25 Gypsy-Moth class corvettes.
  • Soldiers: the standard complement for an Ark Tender is 5,000 soldiers and 500 Myrmidon-Class combat robots or Ichneumon-class aerial recon robots, but most Tenders have far more soldiers and combat robots than this!

Armaments

  • Spinal Cannon: Most Ark Tenders were built around a fixed, central cannon. The specifics of the weapons vary; the oldest and newest might be a pulsar cannon; others might be a blaster or mesotronic cannon. Wrapped in a Distortion Mesh, penalizing sensor attempts to detect it by -6.
  • 6 Super-heavy Pop Turrets; four may face any side-on target, all six may face a forward or rear target (Total ROF 18). Wrapped in a Distortion Mesh, penalizing sensor attempts to detect it by -6.
  • 12 Capital Pop Turrets; eight may face any side-on target, all twelve may face a forward or rear target (Total ROF 48); Wrapped in a Distortion Mesh, penalizing sensor attempts to detect it by -6.
  • 12 Plasma Flak Turrets; three may face any target at a given time.
Weapon Dmg Acc Range Ewt. RoF Shots ST Bulk Rcl
Spinal Pulsar 6d×1200(3) burn ex 9 100 mi 250 kt 1/10 5 M -10 2
Spinal Blaster 6d×600(5) burn 9 100 mi 250 kt 1/10 5 M -10 2
Spinal Muonic Blaser 6d×300(10) burn sur 9 100 mi 250 kt 1/10 5 M -10 2
Super-Heavy Muonic Cannon 6d×70(10) burn sur 9 170 mi/500mi 5000t 3 NA M -10 2
Capital-scale Muonic Cannon 6d×35(10) burn sur 9 60 mi/180mi 500t 4 NA M -10 2
Plasma Flak 6d×10 burn ex NA 2000/6000 100t 20 NA M -10 1

The Price of Lives

Millennia ago, when the Traders still had a homeworld and waged war upon the Alexian Dynasty, they deployed great and mighty battleships. After the destruction of their homeworld, they fled to their Arks and repurposed their great battleships as refugee ships: the Ark Tender.

The Ark Tender above is very close to the original design of Trader Battleships. Most have traded away weapons, force screens and engine capacity for necessary living space for more Traders. Because their weapons are use pop turrets and are surrounded in Distortion Meshes, it can be difficult to tell just how many Traders are in a ship and what, exactly, its armament is.

Use the following exchange rates to determine the actual capabilities of a Tender. The maximum number of Traders aboard an Ark Tender is 100,000.

  • Reduced Engines (Hand -4/5; Move 1/50 (+8); Total Chase Roll +4): +10,000 ASV.
  • Reduced Force Screen (fDR 10,000): +10,000 ASV
  • Removed Force Screen (fDR 0): +20,000 ASV
  • Reduced Armament by 3 Super Heavy Turret and 6 Capital turrets: +10,000 ASV
  • Removed Spinal Cannon: +50,000 ASV.

The Weight of Years

Trader Arks and Ark Tenders have endured thousands of years without proper maintenance and retrofitting at a sufficient spaceport. Jubilee station does what it can, as do other races, provided Traders can pay for their wares. But given the complexity of Trader technology, even given their facility with “cobbletech” and using what they can find as well as their own industrial capability, Arks and Ark Tenders slowly degrade over time. Use the following suggested values to determine an Ark Tender’s actual HT.

  • Well Maintained: The Ark Tender has a top-notch guild aboard and has traded well. +1 HT (maximum 13).
  • Poorly Maintained: The Ark Tender has endured periods of great hardship and lack of resources, or has a lazy Guild aboard. -1 HT.
  • Up to 30 years old: Since the rise of the Empire, few new Arks or Ark Tenders have been built, but that doesn’t mean none have been built.. A few of their newest Arks and Ark Tenders are this young. +0 HT.
  • Up to 100 years old: During the Slaver Wars, the Traders armed up and built more Ark Tenders; these tend to be more militant tenders. -1 HT.
  • Up to 300 years old: During the high era of the Galactic Federation, the Galaxy opened its ports to the Traders, and they replenished their Guildfleets with more Arks and Tenders; these tend to be more civilian tenders. -2 HT.
  • Up to 1000 years old: During the death throws of the Alexian Dynasty and the War of the Four Houses, the Traders were largely left to their own devices and focused on militant Ark Tender production to protect themselves from Maradonian aggression. -3 HT.
  • Up to 3000 years old: These are the oldest tenders and arks, dating to the first war with humanity and the height of Trader power. These tend to have the most advanced technology (such as pulsar spinal cannons) but also tend to suffer the weight of their years. -4 HT.

Look and Feel

Many non-Traders believe Ark Tenders to be Arks. To be sure, these gargantuan behemoths dwarf even Imperial vessels, but they are not the largest vehicles created in the Galaxy. Indeed, in a true Guildfleet, three to ten of these Ark Tenders will accompany the vastly larger ark (usually 3 to 30 times as large!).

Ark Tenders serve multiple roles. Originally designed as the battleships of the Trader people, they escorted Trader Arks and defended them from assault from capital ships. However, as the Trader population swelled and the refugee crisis worsened, most were repurposed to some degree or other as “small arks,” containing around the tenth the population of larger Arks. Some still remain armed, and their armaments lie hidden in distortion-shielded pop turrets, making it difficult to tell if one attacks an unarmed refugee transport, or a lethal warship.

An Ark Tender resembles a long, triangular spike. Its engines fire from the rear. Near the rear, a great ring rotates around the body of the Tender: among the original Arks, these provided the necessary hyperspatial configuration for the earliest Trader Drives as well as projecting an artificial gravity field onto the Tender. Today, they still assist the Trader Drive and act as observation decks. In all configurations, the full ring isn’t necessary, and many Ark Tenders sport “broken” rings with missing sections worn away or damaged over time. The pop turrets are scattered at intervals across each of the three sides: 2 super-heavy turrets and 4 capital-scale turrets per side, as well as three always visible flak turrets per side. As one reaches the front of the Ark Tender, its fine, geometric appearance begins to break up as openings and sensor antennas break up the clean profile of the front of the “spike” giving it a ragged appearance.

Ships that wish to dock with the Ark Tender arrive through the ragged front of the spike, and two thirds of the industrial and cargo capacity reside here in the front of the Tender. Some Tenders have one, great hangar bay capable of housing an entire cruiser, but most have broken these up into smaller bays, each large enough for an SM +9 frigate. The sounds of industry and labor ring out in these hangar bays. Most Ark Tenders sport a few shops and restaurants near their hangar bays, to break up the industry and to host arriving guests, but the majority of the living space is deeper in the Ark Tender, and can be reached by a transit rail. The nature of the Ark Tender’s living space varies. Some are just endless honeycombs of cabins and bunk spaces, but others have great gardens and open vistas. The Engineering section sits in the back, far from the living space, and bustles with more industry, wandering robots and working Traders. Each section contains as much space an entire Imperator-class Dreadnought.

The Ark Tender’s commander, typically a Sub-Executor (or “Mother” or “Father”) resides in a palatial luxury cabin that overlooks as much of the living space as possible, and typically contains conference rooms, the navigation ops center and the like. This section also houses the controls of the entire Tender. The Sub-Executor typically has a large control bridge in his “estate,” tended to by between ten and one hundred Trader Masters (or “Uncles” and “Aunts”). Seven neural interface pods stand like pillars in this central space, the “Quorum,” which each Trader Navigator controlling a section of the ship. At least three navigators (the “Triumvirate”) must be present for the Ark Tender to operate.

One can immediately tell the age and wealth of an Ark Tender by simply walking it. Healthy Tenders have a fresh, crisp, if slightly recycled scent to the air. Sickening or aged tenders become overly humid and warm and begin to get a fetid or moldy aroma. Water leaks from pipes and visible corrosion begins to set in. Sections in the living, industrial and engineering sections will be abandoned, usually locked off, and left to rot as the population focuses on the parts of the Tender that they know work best. Dying ark tenders begin to grow cold and smell of dust and decay, and might even have choking vapors as life support fails outright in certain sections. Power begins to fail, leaving sections of the ship cast in flickering lights or outright shadow. The dead may be left to lay where they died, especially if the Tender suffered catastrophic damage.

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