hidden compartments

[Koloth]

Has anyone made a pirate ship or any other ship that has hidden compartments?
If so how would that work?
are thier any rules for them?
one of my players wanted to be a smuggler, but he also wanted a ship that would be able to hide things if he was ever to be boarded.
so if anyone has any info that they can give me that would be great thanks.

[Sea Tyger]

If you're talking about smuggling compartment, I'd just say that he buys extra cargo space, and just designates said extra cargo as smuggling compartments.

Or, you could also make up a two-point starship edge that turns one-fourth of the ship's cargo space into smuggling compartments.

[Tobian]

I'd say any cargo bay could be designated as a 'hidden' cargo space, but over 1 point spent (equating to the size of the ship in cargo units I believe) it would be bloomin obvious to anyone that vast swaths of the ship were 'missing'! Therefore I'd say that was a practical limitation on how much could be stored on any one ship! The other issue is how well it's hidden: Startrek era sensors would make a mockery of a 'secret door' unless it is particularly well hidden and the missing location, unless simply representing hidden caches round the ship would again be noticed by sensor scans, because even a cleverly screened cargo hold is still going to register as a 'missing space' begging for investigation.

Shielding technologies would be your enemy or your friend.. the more advanced they are the more obvious they become if uncovered. a 'Hidden door' could be as simple as a removable pannel.. a survey team could easilly miss one of hundreds on an average starship that just happened to lead to a small cache. using duranium bulkheads, sensor distorting fields, cloaking devices, holographic doors etc all depend heavilly on the technology being used to detect them. I.e. a TNG federation ship would make short work of a reconditioned Romulan cloaking device from the 22nd century - most smugglers can't afford the best or the newest technology!

Going off that 'd say for 1 point of space you hide your 1 point of cargo space.. for 2 points you get a passive defence (diranium bulkheads, monotanium deflector coatings) 3 points you get an electronic countermeasure - such as stealth circuits, simple cloaking shield or a basic holographic system and for 4 points you'd get a holographic simulation which shows false space, hence making it appear there's no missing space at all.. of course powered units would fail when your power was down...

Sound about right?

[Koloth]

Thats great, I'll take that under concideration.
Would any one have any idea about TN rating for visual scans or sensor scans?
I know they would vary, but hey whats the point of having a forum if you can't ask for input
Another thing I thought of was that you could have some cargo that would disrupt scans.
And I was also thinking that the TN for any kind of test that involves visualy searching for the compartment would increase if you make the player who is concealing the stuff roll for his conceal skill.
So if say you have an average hidden compartment in the deck with a fake sensor reading the TN would be... lets say 5 then you would get the player to roll with his skill of 5 plus what ever he rolls for the total TN dificaulty... what do you think?

[Tobian]

Tricky subject, but it is needed!

Generally, hiding something with the Conceal skill is not really a factor if you have a specially constructed location, because it's construction not your skill is the factor. Conceal would be used when you DON'T have a specially constructed hiding place!!

For sample TN's I'd say go with the cloaking device TN's (which I can't remember off the top of my head) - so the standard 1 point edge would give you a TN arround 15, though you might be able to offset this with a GM approved engineering modifyer (the engineer having conceal obviously would confer a bonus in this case of +2) to try and hide it better, his roll setting the new TN, but only as a one off, since it would have to be paid for with points to have permanently.

For the 2 point edge I'd say a base of 18 for 3 points 22 and 4 points 26.. feel free to suggest alrternates, but that's a rough idea.

There would be situational modifyers in there too. if a crew were scouring the ship deck to deck then I'd impose a general -2 penalty on the concealment, as a thorough search, especially aided by a tricorder, would reveal missing space. If you wanted to buy more than 1 point of cargo space (usual cost) i'd say imposing an additional -2 to the target numbers for each point as it becomes increasingly hard to hide evidence of the space being there!

There would also be technological modifiers. Each era seperate would produce a +-5 modifier.. I.e. a 21st century 'lead box' would help block sensors due to it's density but at a -5 to -10 in the 24th century because it's old technology.. whereas it would block a cera-specific X-ray machine. A 26th century device would equally havea +5 bonus because it's far in advance. This would be a factor if the smugglers ship was old or from a less technologically advanced society.. as I said before smugglers don't always get the best stuff!! the 4 point edge should only be available to 24th century era ships anyway, as an effective countermeasure. Yes 22nd holographic technology existed, but that would have a -10 pentalty in the modern era because it couldn't fool modern sensors.. NB: Those modifyers only would apply IF they were using tricorders and or starship sensors.. a hand search would still be just as hard!

[wolfe]

I'd say any cargo bay could be designated as a 'hidden' cargo space, but over 1 point spent (equating to the size of the ship in cargo units I believe) it would be bloomin obvious to anyone that vast swaths of the ship were 'missing'! Therefore I'd say that was a practical limitation on how much could be stored on any one ship!

not necessarily..
take for instance some of the galaxy class ships built during the dominion war. some of them went into action with some of its interior not used..couldnt access it because there was nothing there to acces..

the same would happen with demilitarized/decomissioned or just plain independant hauler vessels that some of these beings may acquired.. you would have space that isnt used..


just because starfleet keeps their ship more standardized doesnt mean a transport company is going to have all its ships of the same class standardized..and one could guarentee in independants hands there will be as wide variety of the spaces used in a class of ship as there are types of ships in space.
as one saying goes.."no such ting as a stock frieghter boy"

[Tobian]

I see what your saying but the Galaxy class or indeed a larger vessel are fairly a-typically large! Most 'smuggler' vessels are going to be smaller and therefore utilizing all that space. But not just that, empty space is just that, it's empty, it has nothing in it and you could scanit as such, filling half of a galaxy class would make her weigh more, and much denser, hence it's a hard thing to mask.. It would be possible to do that with advanced technology, but that neccessarily comes at a cost. Even the empty sections of a galaxy class vessel would be inspectable.. If you've been 'stopped by the Police' - the relevant authorities could, if they so wished, demand to inspect any space they wished in your vessel.. Imagine telling the Klingon squadron they can't go into the depressurised area! Get real!

[Koloth]

Somthing that has been bothering me when reading SOME of the replies is that people are puting way to much faith in sensors.
They can be fooled... when people build better scanning equipment their is usualy some one who builds better jamming eqiupment... or just tech that can fool the sensors.
I have seen many episodes of Star Trek were they were not able to scan a vessle because somthing was stopping it, or they would scann it but get a fake reading.

.... Just a thought I had to get out into the open...

[Tobian]

It's a valid point but where I was coming from is these are designed to be smuggling compartments and not sensor blocked locations. There are a thousand and one ways to block sensors, jam them, fool them etc. But it creates the old lead box scenario..

You go through an airport checkout.. You place your secret weapons staches inside a lead box.. the airport security sensors can't detect it BUT they still know there's a lead box in there, so they're going to want to open it. Ok so you can make your secret weapons out of special plastics that don't show up on their x-rays, but the problem is a smuggler can't change the physical properties of his cargo, he simply has to hide it.

Yes it would be simple to block an oposing vessels sensors so they can't penetrate your hull, that's covered in cloaking devices and monotanium armour plating etc (or in game you could pull a special shield modulation) but the problem is most smugglers are small poorly armed vessels VS top of the line starships of that particular government body. Imagine a Cardassian starship being told they were not allowed to board and inspect a vessel which they couldn't penetrate with their sensors. This type of method is a red flag which only draws attention to yourself. The aim of a hidden compartment is to NOT draw attention to youself and make them believe there is nothing.

That said you raised a good point, susbpace transponders can also relay false information. I would group them with holographic projectors however as they need to be activelly powered.. So for example if your ship had been pursued by an Angry Klingon ship, and they'd fired on you and knocked out your OPS or power, then there's a good risk that system could lose power too, revealing your hidden cargo to their scans.

What your cargo is of course, can make a huge difference on it's detectibility. People could be hidden in plain sight with some prosthetics or even personal transponders to fool sensors.. the cargo it's self might come in it's own self contained sensor proof coating or again with transponders, or it might simply look innocuous and appear to be something it's not, or be so tiny that a casual starship or even tricorder scan might not spot it, but then that's story driven and not 'hidden compartments' which is what was asked for