It has a repeating noise coming from somewhere, every x minutes. Upon investigating it, the players find out something about its past.

After powering it up, a creature starts to make a huge racket in its ventilation system. It's not necessarily dangerous, but boy, is it frightened.

Random parts fall apart when the players first interact with them. I.e. they sit down on a chair and one of its leg breaks.

After powering it up #2, it starts broadcasting a distress signal with some distant coordinates. The players could go there and find out what happened to its previous owners.

Its engineering bay has some tools and weapons they cannot instantly identify. The ship's previous mechanic was tinkering in his free time. He could have made lethal guns like a plasma caster or silly stuff like an assault rifle that cooks popcorn and launches them, instead of bullets.

Some stuff I could come up with from the top of my head.

>>72640431
Describe a few minor things, like the doors not opening all the way unless you give them a shove, bizarre temporary "fixes" for problems put in place by previous owners - possibly with aged notes nearby to explain ("Turn handle 3/4 before lock"). Misplaced items like pictures taken of previous crews, small decorations left behind (common alien creature in the sector, except cartoony and with a bobbing head). Behind interior plating you can have messages by previous crewmembers. Past engineers might have written instructions on various pieces of equipment - or humorous labels like "This machine has no brain, use your own" for something that might typically be automated. Apply minor negatives the first time they try to do something with the ship (like it taking a little longer/stalling) but then describe how the pilot realises that by doing something slightly different as part of the startup procedure they can work around this problem. I've had this before with a ship and it later became a benefit because we realised anyone trying to steal the ship wouldn't know this and would stall - so we elected not to have it fixed as a "free security measure." Like an old house or an old car, the flaws should be minor enough that they don't warrant immediate fixing - and that you can adapt easily to accommodate them.

>>72640431
A seemingly core part of one of the ships systems is missing, yet it still seems to work fine. As if the ship itself was moving along on its own placebo and wishful thinking.

The ships onboard ai system has deteriorated in the computer equivalent of Alzheimers, it refers to players by the names of its old crew and exhibits other eccentricities.

the ships onboard food dispensers produce totally unrelated food stuffs to what has been selected.

scurrying sounds can be heard in the ships cargo hold.

a strange sound can be heard echoing through the ventilation system, it sounds suspiciously like a human crying.

the ship came with a maintenance droid, years of isolation have resulted in being incredibly have resulted in it becoming incredibly lonely, its obsessed with keeping the new crew safe and onboard.

the ship used to be used for smuggling there's a large quantity of illicit cargo stored somewhere in a secret compartment.

the ship contains an outdated navigation system it lists a star system that none of the players have heard of, upon further investigation nobody has heard of this system suspiciously it seems like all trace of it has been removed from all databases.

>>72640431
Traveller has a list of a bunch of these if you’re interested

>>72643635
Sure, why not. As long as they're free.

There's a small alien animal that lives in the reactor. An old maintenance log reveals that the only time the old crew had an issue with the reactor was when they tried to remove it, so they just let it live there for years, without incident. No one knew how or when it got there, but the old crew eventually started calling it the Engineer.

>>72640431
The Autolanding works, BUT It will still blare warnings that SHIT'S FUCKED AND EVERYONE IS GONNA DIE.

but just ignore it

Nav-com software is crushingly expensive. Out of your league.

You have to re-install a free trial every 14 days from a thumb-drive.

This requires a full wipe of the operating system as well to trick the DRM. This takes almost a day and is very difficult to do mid-jump.
In contrast, the control software for the piloting station was top-of-the-line, a gift for a previous job well done. However the supplier recently changed business models to try and better compete with rivals, and is now constantly pushing out buggy, poorly-tested updates with no opt-out clause. Unexpected manoeuvres are now frighteningly common. You want to move to a powerful, open-source solution with a high degree of customisability, but the drivers for the power flow regulators are proprietary and don't play well with other setups.

>>72651072
>You want to move to a powerful, open-source solution with a high degree of customisability
but you know such a thing doesn't really exist.
You try to console yourself with the fact that brand new ships costing 10 times what this one cost when it was new are on the market right now and don't even have inertial stabilizers.

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Microscopic aliens have built a high-tech civilization somewhere on board the ship. After discovering that the crew didn't want to exterminate them, the aliens don't feel any need to hide their presence and openly send tiny ships into the crew areas when they need supplies. The aliens have started doing a lot of the minor repair jobs on their own, and sometimes you see miniature battle fleets keeping the ship clear of vermin.

>>72640431
The clock is stuck at 4:20

>>72652614
The previous crew were stoners and some areas of the ship constantly smell of weed/local equivalent. You've tried scrubbing every surface to get rid of the smell, but to no avail. Air freshener work but only for about half an hour, if you're lucky. "Little Trees" type stuff work for a couple day but then it just gets mixed with the smell and it morphs into fragrances that shouldn't be known to man and the ventilation struggles to get rid of them. Incense can be used to mask it but it often make things worse, as the fumes travel through the ventilation system and invade every room on the ship.

>>72652121
I love this. I'm totally using a tiny alien race having a miniature battlefleet.

>>72640431
Running a diagnostics program will crash the main computer. Best way to find problems is to turn off heating and produce a thermal imaging scan with one of the auxiliary computers.

Many of the screws on ship were proprietary safety screws made only by the original manufacturer some fourty years ago. Most of the screws holding the bridges flooring on place has been cannibalized at some point or lost. Only thing holding some half of the floor tiles on place now is the adhesion caused by decades of rust and grime.

>>72651072
>You want to move to a powerful, open-source solution with a high degree of customisability
The GNU implementation of space navigation is available. It's just insane trying to get support for it. "User friendly" is a distant memory, and errors throw up codes you can't even begin to decipher.
The community is 99% clueless, possibly dying users screaming for help. The other 1% are gurus offering the perfect solution, if you can solve their ARG/do jobs for them gratis.

>>72640431
Ships maintenance robot fleet originally consisted of 8 units (though there was room for expansion, up to 16), but only one remain, codenamed "Geoff". Not any robot can link with the obsolete docking adapters etc., in fact only a few models made decades ago will suffice, and as such searching replacements for the lost units is an ongoing project. Occasionally the crew manages to find one from scrapyard, antique shop or garbage pile, almost always barely salvageable, but loosers can't be choosers. What's strange that after such relics are carefully repaired into working order, it will take a few weeks on average untill they suffer an accident that destroys the unit totally. The main engineer jokes that Geoff must have been sabotaging them, but that can't be the case. It doesn't have consicious mind to pull that off, right?

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>>72643520
>It's cold outside
>there's no kind of atmosphere

>>72640431
Sudden decompression.

>The unplanned nature of some of the ship's upgrades means many of the portholes/windows only have a few inches of space between them and another part of the hull
>The AI for the automated food-dispensary was salvaged from an alien war-machine. It has nothing but seething contempt for its meatbag crew, but is incapable of anything but producing fine meals that flawlessly meet the expectations/orders of said crew
>The cutting-edge comms-antennae has no room for mechanical actuators, so tuning it in to long-range signals means sending an ensign out to fiddle with it until the picture clears
>Much-needed reinforcement to the ship's core has elevated the captain's chair on the bridge so high that the captain's head is constantly scraping against the ceiling, and video-conference calls begin with the camera pointed at his crotch until he dismounts
>For whatever reason, one of the automated medical-suites is capable of cutting and styling hair
>Restructuring of interior supports means one of the dorms is twelve meters long and one meter wide
>Impromptu repairs means some of the major bulkheads have been replaced with screen-doors
>Behind one of the 'break glass in case of emergencies' containers in the medical/scientific sections is a pump-action shotgun
>The hydroponics facility has been neglected for so long that it has its own self-sustaining ecosystem
>One of the old crewmembers is still squatting in the ventilation, he's a friendly guy though

>>72652912
or
the ship reeks of weed no matter how much cleaning you do. the crew finds some weed hidden in a tool box and upon smoking it the room smells like fresh citrus and smokey cinnamon. the effect lasts for the rest of the day before it reeks of weed again.

>>72640431
Finding replacement parts is nearly impossible. The players can attempt to Macgyver a solution using the parts they have, but they'll have to deal with all the other patch jobs other owners have made over the years.

the speakers play annoying alien music low enough to not bother anyone but loud enough that everyone hates it and eventually they figure out its a coded message to treasure

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>>72640431
If there's a kitchen, it should smell like Indian food, and they can't ever seem to get the smell out.
Anyway, you should just do the same kinds of things you would with an old car. Maybe it doesn't turn over right away when they try to fire it up. Maybe some of its landing gear falls off when they try to land. Maybe some of the hatches refuse to lower or raise. Maybe the climate control is broken. Maybe the radio was stolen.
Things like that.

>>72640431
before going to ftl the ship begins to sound like its falling apart and warnings begin to blare, however nothing actually happens and this was the security system previous owner put into place to keep people from stealing his ship

May I direct you gentlemen to these fine old threads?
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/35407266/
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/26937160/
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/36990938/

The ship's automated maintaininance AI kicks in at some random point, hijacking the ship and setting course to the manufacturer planet/space-dock which is in ruins, it won't leave until given administrative permission to do so.

>>72640431
Well, my first car was buick Skylark...had to source spare parts from junkyards.

I had critical components that would overheat and burst as if by design and I could set a clock to it.

>>72652614
>The clock is stuck at 4:20
The SECOND one of the pcs starts pulling this routine
https://youtu.be/shCYA2J-De8
He's out the fucking airlock

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There is an extremely malevolent AI onboard that was trapped by the last crew to something completely safe and mundane.
Trying to physically remove said compoment short curits something in the ship and it refuses to work, so snarky, antagonistic AI it is.
The AI's actually very protective of what was it's original crew, and has come to the misguideded conclusion that everyone on board since is responsible for her original crews demise. Working through with enough evidence or jumping around to find what happened to the original crew will bring her closure, a much better running ship, and a friend

>>72640431
Its heat management system is shot to shit, so the entire water reclamation system has to be used as a heat sink on long journeys. The hab has hot and scalding hot running water. Where possible, the ship can really benefit from docking on a metal-rich asteroid and conducting waste heat directly into it. Even better if you can do this with a comet.

The ship's computer hardware and software haven't been supported in decades. All outside media and hardware needs to be daisy-chained through a few different adapters.

And in classic Apollo 13 style, the escape pod is a different make from the ship, so none of its pipes or ports are adaptable with the ship.

>>72640431
one random metal panel rattles like crazy until you hit it hard which stops the rattling for a good while.

>>72640509
>It has a repeating noise coming from somewhere, every x minutes. Upon investigating it, the players find out something about its past.
Terminus is the best short story by Lem, and Lem is the best sci-fi author, period.

Someone gutted the explosives from the ship's self-desteuct system and replaced it with an extremely janky fire suppression system. You have to enter an elaborate security code to put out a fire, which will blast the ship's interior, weapons, and engines with liquid CO2.

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>>72640431
Two competing species of vermin have taken up residence in opposite ends of the ship; it's a common sight to see a number of them coming out of nearby vents to engage in an animal gang war. Both species in question don't really seem to steal much food and don't interfere at all with the ship's functioning; their comical fights often spring up with little warning and make for amusing diversions for the crew to watch. They can't even draw blood against one-another and fight with the efficacy of drunken newborn pups with the dexterity and grace of a frightened red panda. They're only considered vermin because on their planets of origin, they often take up residence near to sentient populations and get underfoot quite often, leading to accidental trips and falls at the worst of times.

For bonus points, make both species some level of cute or endearing.

>>72653895
A bridge directly aove the reactor? God, that reminds me of how the Trabant had its gas tank right above your legs. Which reminds me:

>it's got no fuel gauge, just a window where you can look at the level of fuel directly
>Also, it can't use standard fuel unless you manually mix it with a special space two-stroke oil
>The manual says it can handle atmospheric flight, but the manual doesn't know that several hull panels were replaced with a rather flammable composite that includes paper

>>72640431
I based the entire first episode on my part finding the means to pay for their shitheap and get it flying again. It was a total blast. The ship is a super old war relic that is still kept functioning through patchwork riggings. It has corrupted ship logs that are slowly leaked to the players over the course of the game to share its history, there are murdered bodies stuffed into the service compartments that have yet to be discovered, a deactivated murder robot that will resume its programing if they get it working again and a mysterious digital apparition that haunts the ship interiors. My hope is to turn the ship into one of the focal characters for the series.

>The ship's AI is surprisingly racist, and refuses to take orders from non-humans.
>The inner door on the starboard airlock is sealed with duct tape, and its controls have a note taped onto them that just says "NO."
>Water from the showers has been rerouted to the hydroponics lab.
>The warp drive stalls unless its throttle is set to exactly 92%.
>The air ducts run alongside the coolant pipes that go to and from the engine, meaning that half the ship is really cold and half the ship is really hot.
>The wiring is not color coded anymore; you just have to follow the wire.

>>72656792

That last one is especially good. "The ship's previous owners 'fixed' something and they aren't around to warn you" is a good formula.

If you want it to have real soul you should make it so that some of the quirks are positives (it has illegal weaponry, the navigation interface is harder to learn but more efficient, you can overclock the engine to out-run other ships of the same class, etc)

The ship was designed for a crew of (party size minus one), but has been modified to spread out the workload and utilize some extra position. Maybe they ditched the targeting system and added a dedicated gunner. Maybe it's just a coordinator or navigator type role who sits back with his head in the 'net fielding questions from the other crewmembers. Maybe they weaponized the tow cable.

Alternately, it's designed for a crew of 2, but the old owner made a bunch of modifications and added some software because he wanted to fly solo.

>>72653780
Sudden overcompression, as the faulty computer tries to repressurize spaces that already had air.

>>72640431
Oooh, Traveller has a system for this. A few favorites
>Sensor Ghosts
Occasionally sensors pick up something that’s not really there, but sometimes they detect something that their hardware logically shouldn’t.
>Troubled Past
This ship’s previous owner was a fuckup somehow. Maybe he was a thief or smuggler, maybe he was a pirate, maybe he was on the wrong side of a war, maybe he stole it, or maybe he just didn’t want to pay mortgage this month. Whatever the reason, the ship has warrants. Up to you who has them, with the age of the ship it could be stolen from a long dead man or pirated against a since defunct state. Like if Madagascan pirates hit Rhodesia.
>Jump Specters
Kinda like warp ghosts. This ship is old and there’s been a lot of souls on it, and possibly murders. God knows i’ve Killed guys in my engine room. Anyway, for whatever reason the ship remembers them, or maybe they remember the ship.
>Cryptic Computer
Some of the ship’s data entries are incorrect or out of date, but there’s some information squirreled away here that’s very interesting... if true.

One of the crew cabins has a separate atmospheric control unit that is set to mix gases in a way that's slightly off for most air breathers. Being in the room feels fine at first, but after a few hours, you start to feel lightheaded, and eventually start feeling like you can't breathe, and generally hyperventilate at that point. It starts to get dangerous for most people shortly after that. The controls are hidden behind a panel near the door, which is unlabeled and doesn't even really look like an access panel. This atmospheric adjustment happens locally and the ship's general controls are entirely disconnected from it.

One from a crappy looking spaceship in my setting: Key components attached to the exterior are disguised as components of a different nature, ie a thrust vernier disguised as a strut for mounting equipment, or vice versa. This is a useful feature for avoiding higher docking fees associated with certain classes of ships at ports (Especially if the disguised feature is a weapon or used in smuggling), but can result in the vessel being short an extra strut, or sensor probe, or gravity generator, etc.

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>>72640431

I work on and sometimes fly on 50+ year old aircraft for Uncle Sam. Every aircraft has its own personality and quirks.

The oldest in the fleet was also the original prototype. After Depot stopped major structural testing, they took as much of the test equipment off, they sent it to us as the final aircraft. It had a bunch of extra outlets, mounts, and wiring for clip in subsystems and test equipment. Sometimes those were used for super classified equipment. It also had the least combat hours, was a major hangar queen at home, but still holds the record for flying a combat mission every day for 200+ days downrange without breaking hard.

The first operational aircraft liked being home. She'd hardly every break at home station, but start breaking hard when it was time to rotate overseas. She also hit a T-barrier with her wing, and the fuel tanks were never the same again. Was also the first aircraft to get retired.

Another was the first aircraft I swore hated me. Tools would get lost inexplicably, Nothing wanted to work. I one time lost an apex bit under the floorboards. We ripped out the floorboards and found several screwdrivers, flashlights, gloves, an Playgirl Magazine, several dip cans, and an old TI-83 calculator. This plane found a woman who got captured by the bad guys and flew the mission covering ground personnel rescuing her. was also instrumental in finding a really bad guy.

Another was regarded as a PoS until I got to the aircraft. Once I stepped on board, everything would stop failing or oscillating. One time I got a gear and flap rub to magically just stop simply by flying on it. I never had to do real work o nthat aircraft besides time-change items.

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>>72651072
>You have to re-install a free trial every 14 days from a thumb-drive.

I have legit done this on actual airplanes. None of the Windows software is registered.

The climate control in one crew cabin is broken, meaning the temperature randomly fluctuates between cold to boiling hot.

The water piping (toilet, sink, shower) in one cabin or room is hopelessly broken, causing all dispensed water to have a varying amount of dark reddish waste in it.

No matter how many times you start the engines it always make the same struggling sound as if it hasn't been active in decades.
Cables and wires hanging out of everywhere due to repairs and hotwiring where the previous owner never bothered to re-attach the panels.
Things like throttle and breaks you have to go by feeling and experience rather than the displays
The warning lights for different systems are always on, even when you know they are perfectly functional.
Essential parts are very damaged but functions perfectly until someone tries to fiddle with them.

>>72658639
>>72658658

Bless you anon.

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I've been working on old ships for years, and here's some of the quirks i encountered.

Door to the bridge needed a shove to unlock precisely at the same moment you're turning the key. Officers did this without blinking an eye, but new people struggled to get in if they got a key.

There was a panel that stood out a little on a wall near Chief Engineer's cabin. It was once opened during customs inspection, and subsequently opened numerous times more, as extra scratches made it more suspicious. There was never anything behind it, you couldn't smuggle more than couple of packs of cigarettes in that space.

But in a seldom-used cabin there actually was a hidden compartment meant for smuggling. Nobody used it in my time becausee it was a bit too obvious.

Some outside metal parts were literally just rust held together with paint. Their maintenance consisted of adding more layers of paint.

There was a common shower that had tepid water at best. On the pipes you could find a couple of extra valves. Some guys said that by some arcane manipulations with taps and those valves you could actually get hot water, but nobody could prove it.

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>>72659728 cont.

The gyrocompass was so old that we literally got the last existing refurbished spares. It was a high-quality machine though, and service engineers loved it.

Electronic charts were pirated, and the trick to keep the license active was to push the date on PC back to start of the year. So it always showed 2006.

There was a new piece of hardware installed on the bridge, cheapest the company could find. It soon started to have issues and producing annoying alarms all the time. Crew promptly turned it off, as nobody needed it for work. Numerous attempts to fix it were made, all parts were eventually replaced, but problems persisted. We ended up jury-rigging the thing before every inspection, hoping it would hold up without alarms.


Ships usually change their name a few times during their lifetime, so you could sometimes find old documents or signs with previous name(s).

Also signs in weird languages from original countries where ships were built.

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>>72659954
Oops, meant to post this photo. Anyway, i might remember more stuff later.

Love all these mentions of people using trial software.

>>72660128
Yeah, nothing like the permanent dread of civilization holding it together by ignoring the software warnings to complete your day...

>>72658658
Some of the best things I've seen on an aircraft.

>Fuse that's been replaced with a Twix wrapper, transport that flew all the way from Iraq.

>Cockpit wouldn't pressurise, turned out that the glass wasn't original, had been made by a local firm that made house windows, and was held in by double glazing window putty.

>Owner couldn't get a replacement tyre, so had made one from glued together bike tyres

>Seat had a switch underneath that turned off the transponder and radio, for smuggling

>Pressure seal maintained by layered coke cans welded to the inside of the plane.

>Plane that rattled and occasionally lost rudder control, turned out to be a screwdriver left inside from previous maintenance trapping the cables.

>Balancing issues fixed by pouring sand into one side of the tail.

And my personal favourite
>Incorrect fuel gauge fitted
>owner had drawn over the glass with a marker pen so that he knew what it should be reading.
>he'd gotten it completely wrong.
>Plane came down hard when he realised he had nothing left in the tank.
>Nose gear shaft had stayed intact but torn through the structure of the plane.
>Could literally see daylight from underneath the aircraft.
>Welded everything he could back together.
>Flew it for the next two months with the front wheel locked in the down position.
>Submitted it to us for routine maintenance.

A long time ago, I used to have a car. It was a nice model that lasted longer that it had any right to, and during that time it acquired a quirk.

Sometimes and specially when not moving, the air coming from the vents would star to come out hot. This was midly irritating on a 30c weather, but what it meant was an imminent shutdown of the car if you didn't accelerate it. Fun times in traffic, I tell you.

The problem was, of course, that the radiator was on its last legs. So the motor would overheat, heating up the air conditioning unit and (unrelated) triggering emergency shutdowns when it reached critical temperatures.

I figure that a spaceship having similar issues (eg: It can not fire while staying still due to faulty heat capacitors) would be interesting.

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>>72652614
Good nyborg, man

>>72661315
Have an old car that loves me, but hates all my female friends. Refuses to catch if they're in the car.
My cousin's old impala is similar: refuses to start or run right for her husband, but the instant she put her hand on the wheel, it purred like a kitten. There are witnesses in both cases.

There's a streamline buildup that builds up pressure in the line every deployment and isnt ever fixed during refit
Leaky san tank with soft tank bolts
Whenever the cooks burn something the smell travels straight to the comms room and the radioman try and guess it
Cooks store potatoes in bilge and crabs that somehow got on steal them
Dive officer made his own chair on the conn
Various enlisted watchstations have chairs stolen from the officers study
One of the missile tubes is supposedly haunted, every other maintenance procedure on it goes wonky

>>72652121
Sounds useful as long as they don't get into a civil war that starts taking down bits of the ship or crew member's things as collateral damage.

>>72659728
>>72659954
Thanks.

>>72659966
according to google translate.
STÖÐVA is apparently stop in icelandic
MJÖG HÆG is very slow
VIÐÚBNIR no idea what this is, Maybe I spelled it wrong.

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>>72656759
>They can't even draw blood against one-another and fight with the efficacy of drunken newborn pups with the dexterity and grace of a frightened red panda.
>For bonus points, make both species some level of cute or endearing.
Nigger, keep fluffy analogues out of my scifi!

>>72640431
The sound system turns on whenever the ship jolts around too much, and it's only got one really repetitive alien song on it

>>72653565
I'm all alone, more or less.

>>72664262
VIÐBÚNIR is stand by, according to google. I guessed so because it's a pretty standard engine telegraph, but was never sure.

>>72665090
Let me fly, far away from here


>>72653565

There should be a slightly fucked up AI. Exactly how broken it is is debatable as it's not actually killed anyone by accident yet. It's personality is friendly enough. It is buggy as as fuck but it also exaggerates for reasons the crew haven't been able to determine yet.

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>>72640431

The water recycling system is so stodged-up that it's healthier to drink Dutch beer.

>>72666895
Space weevils have gotten into the ship's grain store. For lunch it's grilled space weevil.

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>>72640431
>>Fuse that's been replaced with a Twix wrapper, transport that flew all the way from Iraq.

HMS Thunderer, a history of the Royal Navy's engineering school, is one of my favourite military books because it's full of tidbits like this. My favourite anecdote is during the Falklands War when a frigate's SAM launcher was repaired using the heating element from a toaster.

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>>72667183

Funnily enough, this is also a plot point in Gregory Benford's "Galactic Center" novels (i.e. the books that Tsutomu Nihei based BLAME! off of). Killy's tribe acquire a spaceship - it's a brilliant vehicle which can sustain them in comfort that they've never known before in their entire lives, but as they're all techno-savages who barely understand how anything works they reduce their palatial transport to a barely-functioning slum. One of their mistakes is when one of the crew is rooting through a storeroom and experimentally opening cans - however, she can't read, and so she doesn't realise that one of them contains suspended-animation soil-turning insects intended for terraforming. The bugs escape into the ship's agro-dome and so thereafter everyone's got weevils in their food.

>>72640431

Make a few of them not just funny "quirks", but genuinely irritating inconveniences.

For instance, the pneumatic system for closing the bay doors has a leak so they cannot fully shut automatically and a player has to go down and manually crank it shut to form the necessary seal so they can take off. An inconvenience at the best of times, dramatic when you're under fire and trying to escape the launch pad.

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Some thirty percent of the fasteners have been rethreaded, using a different standard.

The ship contains an underlying system with old but still authorized transponder setup, for a hostile nation.

The standard bridge was struck by a weapons/meteoroid impact, that compartment was hastily sealed from the outside and a re-routeing or bypass of control and sensor systems has allowed for the construction of mostly functional bridge in the mess hall.

The entire vessel has been subjected to the the equivalent of a body kit modification, making it appear as if it is a different type of vessel entirely.

One of the shuttles has had the majority of cargo and crew space removed to (barely) accommodate the bulk of a single, poorly salvaged but millitary-grade capitol class weapon. Neither appear to have been activated since their joining.

>>72657104
>Water from the showers has been rerouted to the hydroponics lab.
All spaceships reuse grey water like that though

>>72658098
>>72667983
A large, silhouette defining feature of the outer hull, like a nacelle or weaponlike structure, is completely decorative

One ship in the Rogue Trader game I was in was very very haunted. The holds would fill with ghosts of cargo past. Everything from whales and passengers to metals and artifacts potentially appearing as glowing non-solid apparitions.

some imperial cults among the crew divined meaning from what appeared and when.

>see this thread
>reminded of a pbp game I played on a forum where we were all dirty space truckers
>go through it to find examples of quirks
>remember it died after two months because two of the players kept trying to ERP on the ship and the GM abandoned it
;_; i liked that game a lot

>>72660389
>>Submitted it to us for routine maintenance.
And I suppose he expected you to bring it back to brand new factory condition, and cheap.

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>>72660389
Private aircraft? The Military is generally more stringent on repairs, but I've seen my share of sketchy repairs. Like duct tape used on bleed-air ducts. Scary as hell.

Also, using 9-volt batteries to test the power cables for explosives. While explosives are installed.

My personal favorite is the oldest planes backwards wiring. Flip the switch for the left-hand jamming pod, but the right hand one powers on. It was just too time-consuming and costly to move power lines around, so it was made into a permanent info note for the airplane.


>>72667983
>Some thirty percent of the fasteners have been rethreaded, using a different standard.

This triggers me. Fuck you GM, using standard on the car frame, but metric on the engine block.

I have likewise seen coke bottlecaps used as rivet caps on older Russian fighters.

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>>72640431
Original IFF transponder setting register as something that shouldn't exist (anymore), when the PC move back to a civilized system they are welcomed by:
a) a full squadron of the space fleet ready to intercept and kill the most hated individual
b) a god-like alien ship with magic-level technology who expected to rescue the previous owner
c) a fleet of mixed-race space trader who were all fans of the previous owner and want to retrieve the ship
d) all of the above

>>72653018
While working away from the ship, the players discover a number of tiny battleships hiding in their inventory. It seems the aliens are worried about their new friends.
To their credit, it isn't just a symbolic gesture. The main guns are a lot more powerful than they look, although it does take them a few minutes to recharge after firing.

>>72640431
The ship is a shapeshifting alien.

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>>72668588
>Like duct tape used on bleed-air ducts. Scary as hell.
I've got a formation as an aircraft mechanic and I know we possess god-like duct tape. Only used for quick repair so you can bring the plane back to hangar but essentially as strong if not stronger than a normal wing.
you probably meant regular duct tape thought, because I've also heard stories from people with lot of experience

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>>72668937

>>72668937
>you probably meant regular duct tape though

Yep. Especially on a duct that gets really, really hot.

>>72648914
It's when the warnings STOP that you really have to worry,.

>>72640431
The food replicator / kitchen / Galley is haunted. While there are no outwardly visible signs, the spirit of the former cook still stubbornly influences the functioning of the replicator. The former cook a.k.a. "The Master Chef" had a solid career in the local space Navy and has very specific views on how the crew should be 'enjoying their coffee'. And that is 'Black' and strong enough to strip the paint of a Space Dreadnought's hull. Any member of the crew other than the Captain who attempts to order any form of re-caff, de-caff, latte, etc. will simply be dispensed a straight Black coffee. Repeated attempts to repair / reprogram the device will never seem to clear up the issue. Observant PCs may however notice that anyone who compliments the replicator's beverage choice or general food quality while in the Galley will receive an extra portion of Ice Cream in any flavor of their choice from the replicator's extensive library of options. A very through search of the galley might turn up an old and tattered image of a burly and tattoo covered former crew member wearing a chef's hat and smiling next to the replicator.


If you want to truly terrify the PCs, have one of them discover a long forgotten and highly destructive "Smart Bomb" tucked away in a hidden cargo hold. Said device has developed self-awarness, and serious mental health / abandonment issues from prolonged isolation. Demands to be wired into the ship's coms in order to communicate freely with the crew, or to be placed in front of a 'view port' so it can "see where we're going" could be just the start of many misadventures.

"Crewman Warhead here! It's 3 a.m. and I still haven't killed myself in a blazing inferno of nuclear hellfire! You're welcome!"

>>72640431
A major moving part causes some noise and vibration. Not bad but the rhythm changes slowly, constantly.
There’s a cask of vacuum-distilled booze in a little-used, non pressurized compartment, disguised as a standard container. An autonomous system bleeds off vapor when the ship is is in jumpspace. It’s good booze, and genuine void-liquor will net you a pretty penny. There’s all sort of superstition surrounding it.
Deep in the water reclamation system is a body. Stored in a special cloth that is in most ships’ stores it’s quite mummified. The dead man fought hard and was beaten to death but no specific attempt has been made to conceal his identity beyond cutting off one tattoo.

>>72670325
>Crewman Warhead

kek

This thread is gold.

>>72668937
>>72669076

I wonder how many people saw someone use a roll of speed tape to patch up a plane that worked fine afterwards, and never once questioned their assumption that the thing patching up part of a fucking turbine was just regular ol' duct tape.

>>72669076
If you pick the right brand, the plastic will fuse and carbonize before melting and sliding off. It's not duct tape, it's a "cured expoxy adhesive patch".

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Watching Lucky 13 again and thinking of you guys. This is the best thread on /tg/ right now.

>>72677540
>curious
>warch something on it
>ship looks like it's made of actual plane bits
>EGPWS warnings et al
Alright redpill me, what is this?

>>72678564
Literally says right there. Love, Death, and Robots.

>>72678940
Well I meant more what it was about

>>72678564
>>72678952

It's a 20 minute short, you can't say much without spoiling, but it's about a rookie pilot who gets stuck with a "cursed" transport ship. It's set in a sci-fi warzone, I think there's one cheesy part (Star Wars-tier plan that wouldn't actually work) but the rest is just groovy.

And the ship isn't old or tinkered-with (don't want you to wait for that part and be disappointed), it's standard-issue, but pilots are superstitious.

>>72679181
Alright I'll just give it a shot later then.
It looks cool either way.