This optional rules module deals with gathering and building the fleets and forces, which the previous modules let you command. It draws some oblique inspiration from Mighty Empire’s Winter Season.
Power
Power comes in many forms in the Imperium. Knowledge is power. Authority is power. Faith is power. Wealth is power. Ultimately, power is the ability to set the gears of the vast Imperial machine in motion, to bend the world(s) to your will.
Power is measured in points. It may be collective, held by the retinue as a whole, or personal, held by an individual character. Track these separately.
Power can be gained in various ways.
There is always the chance for some measure of it to fall into the retinue’s hands by fate. Each year, roll 4D6. If the result is lower than the sum of the characters’ Ranks, the retinue gains 1 point of collective power.
A facility or other feature, such as a planet, they control may give them power, as a one time boon or on regular intervals.
Their missions and actions may result in gaining power, a Rogue Trader successfully using Commerce to seal a trade deal, a mission ending with the retinue in possession of valuable secrets, a Ministorum Priest’s conversion of the blighted heathens of a long lost world to the light of the Emperor.
Power is temporary. Wealth is squandered, favours are forgotten, alliances break down.
All points of power not used in the same year they are gained, are lost.
Power is local. Orders not enforced at gunpoint are mere suggestions, reports not verified by one’s own eyes are lies, friends not kept close are enemies.
A character must be present to spend power. Each step of removal, every proxy used adds 1 point to the cost.
Resources
Where power is ephemeral and transient, felt not seen, resources are solid, countable, measureable, weighable.
Resources are the inputs into the Imperium’s vast clerical-military-industrial complex and are categorised as Human, the masses of mankind to be turned into tools – or weapons -, Material, the sand and stone, metals and isotopes, timber and promethium from which to build things, and Produce, the creatures and their meat, plants and their fruit, sludge and its nutrients to feed populations.
Installations
Installations are the complexes, from strip mines to granaries to refineries, used in the distinctive processes of Extraction, Storage, and Production.
Individual installations can be located on the planetary map or listed in a planetary description if a planet is not fully mapped out.
For each installation, list its primary use (e.g., Extraction of Material for a mining complex, Production of Supplies for a meat plant, or Storage of Humans for slave pens) along with its relevant capacity (e.g., 1D6 Material per year for the mining complex, 2 years worth of army supplies per year for the meat plant, 20 units of Human ressources for the slave pen) and conversion in case of Production installations (e.g., 2 units of Produce needed for every year of army supplies).
For Production installations used to produce troops, note the type of troops that can be produced there. This can be broad categories (e.g., vehicles and walkers) or specific (e.g., Leman Russ battle tanks and Sentinels).
Typical capacities are 1 to 1D6 points for Extraction facilities, 1 to 1D6 years or points for Supplies and Munitions and 1,000 – 5,000 points for troops for Production facilities, and 5 -50 points for Storage facilities.
Conversion rates are typsically 1 to 1D6 points of each needed input per unit of output.
Typically, the needed inputs for producing different outputs are as follows:
Troops – Human for infantry; Human and Material for vehicles, walkers, super-heavy vehicles; Material for robots
Army Supplies – Produce
Ship Supplies – Material and Produce
Orbital Munitions – Material
The Imperium is ripe with inefficiencies, corruption, personal fiefdoms, and internal rivalries. Installations may work year round, pulling extra shifts on holidays to honour the Emperor, but outputs end up destroyed as surplus to quota, distributed to undeserving recipients, diverted to private warehouses, sacrificed on devotional altars, tangled in bureaucratic redtape, or any number of other ways to go unused and forgotten.
To actually gain the benefits of an installation (e.g., a mine to actually extract resources to feed another installation, an armaments forge to produce tanks to go into a Force), characters need to spend 1 point of Power (sometimes more than 1 point) to activate the installation for a year.
Unactivated installations do nothing, falling victim to the Imperial disease of inefficiency. Extraction installations yield no resources, Production installations produce nothing, and any stores kept in Storage installations are lost.
Longterm Projects
Some endeavours of production go beyond the repetitive nature of stamping out lasguns by the ten thousands and putting them in the hands of ten thousands of raw recruits, handled as the routine day to day operation of respective installations. These are longterm projects, such as the construction of spaceships or battle titans or erecting a colony on a new world and generally take a number of years, often randomly determined. However, for progress to be made in any given year, D6 worth of every relevant resource must be expended (roll separately) as well as D6 Power to keep the project moving. Other requirements – such as special installations capable of handling these projects (e.g., orbital shipyards) – may be required as well.