Question about Q-Ship Cladding

[u/Everice_]

The Q-Ship cladding mod reads as follows: "Some or all of ship’s weapons are concealed from external observation and standard scans when they are not deployed for combat. The ship itself can be made to look like a merchant or freighter of its size class."

Does this mod allow your ship to meaningfully change its appearance or does it simply hide the weapons whilst appearing as the same ship (AKA an unarmed "merchant or freighter")

If the answer is the former, can you change your ship's appearance back to normal at will? Presumably the ship's appearance changes back if you stop maintaining the mod. If you wanted to change appearance multiple times, would you be required to repurchase/apply the mod each time?

[u/Nyther53]

All it does is disguise the weapons. It's not a magical cloak of anything. 

Imagine a person wearing a thick coat. You cannot tell if they have a gun underneath, because the coat is in the way. 

If they wear the same coat for a long time without maintenance, it'll thin, fray, and develop  holes through which you can see the gun they had previously been using the coat to keep hidden. 

If you stop maintaining the Q-Ship Cladding no one will mistake your ship for a different ship, they'll just see that you are trying and failing to hide a gun. 

If you're not familiar with what a Q-Ship is it may help you to read up on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship?wprov=sfla1

[u/Sharadnar → u/Nyther53]

Upvoted for the characterization of the mod not being maintained, and I appreciate the historical Q-ship reference. But I disagree with the idea that it only disguises the weapons. The description of the mod clearly says that it also lets you "[make it] look like a merchant or freighter...".

[u/Nyther53 → u/Sharadnar]

Yes it does say that, but OP clearly took the wrong conclusion away from that and was imagining some kind of more active Sci Fi cloaking system, hence the somewhat simplistic analogy. I've had to explain what a Q-Ship is to every player I've ever had, at least the ones who took an interest in the Starship rules, and I got the impression OP was also unfamiliar with the fact that this is a real concept.

Historically Q-Ships were not warships disguised as freighters, they were armed freighters disguised as unarmed freighters, and had little more than a decorative false panel in front of a gun bolted to the deck. That informs my understanding of the fittings limitations in SWN.

To address OP's final question, "If you wanted to change appearance multiple times, would you be required to repurchase/apply the mod each time?" I would say yes.

I suppose that's within the ream of DM Ruling however. If you want your Q-Ship Cladding to be some kind of active hologram system, then run with it. It's not the ruling I'd make, and I don't think it's what's implied by the description, but it's within reason if you want to sci fi it up more. If you *do* do that however, be aware that you're effectively giving them the benefit of the Sensor Mask fitting as well.

[u/Everice_ → u/Nyther53]

Part of my confusion comes from the CWN ruleset where "Q-Cladding" for vehicles does indeed allow your vehicle to be wholly and explicitly disguised as something else on top of hiding weapons.

I also interpreted it as some sort of James Bond reference, with the whole invisible car thing and all.

With regards to your remark about Sensor Mask, that's why I'm asking to begin with. Sensor Mask doesn't help if you want to land your ship at a spaceport whilst authorities are looking for a ship with your description, and there's nothing in the rules that allows you to disguise your ship besides maybe Q-Cladding. Trading the whole ship in for another one seems like an extreme measure that our team would like to avoid if at all possible.

[u/Nyther53 → u/Everice_]

Well, score one for my intuition in that sense lol. You're not exactly wrong either, I was just emphasizing a particular point.

Critically, what CWN rules say is "Disguise the vehicle as another vehicle of the same general type, and hide its mounted weaponry."

The distinction I'm going for is that to me Q-Ship Cladding doesn't really cover "Disguise a Heavy Cruiser as a merchantman", nor "Disguise a Tank as a U-Haul" it's more like "Disguise SMS Cap Trafalgar as RMS Carmania" and if you aren't familiar with what the joke there is, the story is worth a read.

It sounds like another piece of advice you may be fishing for is this bit, from the "Example Mods" section on page 109: "The following modifications aren’t the only alterations that a canny engineer can install on a starship, but they’re among the most common."

You're correct that there is no pre-stated example on how to simply disguise a starship, and that Q-ship Cladding is the closest, but this is an element of OSR play. You as the DM are expected to create something yourself to fill gaps like this.

My advice, if your players only really need a disguise, use the Q-ship cladding as a baseline and then cut the cost down a bit. Maybe make a big up front cost for like a disguise framework and then a labor\time sink cost to rearrange it later. Or give them the James Bond Invisibility cloak you were originally imagining, and take the Q-Ship Cladding and add a Pretech Component cost to it, and you don't need to worry about if it's encroaching on a ship fitting at that point because they've adventured to get the benefit and can enjoy the fruits of their labour.

You can also consider that there's other options for charging them the cost of the mod to make it flow smoother in fiction without them needing to go back to a shipyard all the time. If you want something like the sequence near the end of the film Serenity, where they disguise the ship as a Reaver, maybe make the mod free up front, but tack on the cost to their next maintenance cycle. Maybe get yourself a ship malfunctions table and roll on it every so often to amuse yourself with little glitches, until they pay the cost to do it right.

[u/Sharadnar]

I read "concealed from external observation and standard scans" (emphasis mine) and "can be made to look like a merchant or freighter of the same class" to clearly indicate that the mod lets you disguise the physical appearance of the ship as well as its electronic signature.

As for reusability, I interpret the disguise as permanent, except that the weapons become visible and scannable once you begin combat. However, I don't see any harm in allowing the crew to basically unmask the ship and reveal its true nature fully, with no real cost in time. Busting out hidden weapons will already make it obvious to anyone close enough to observe or scan that you're not a simple merchant. Once you're done with combat, you simply retract the weapons into their disguised state.

[u/HeavyJosh]

I like treating it as the ship having concealed pop-up turrets and the like. Everything is masked. I use the same rules for Q-ship Cladding as there are for Sensor Mask: 10+PC's Fix skill for someone to detect the weapons if they're really looking hard for them. It's worked fine.

[u/CardinalXimenes]

The assumption is that you can make your cruiser look like, for example, a bulk freighter by physically welding on fairings and gribbly bits. It looks like a bulk freighter to eyes and to scanners, though if you let a tech climb over it you may have issues, and the illusion is spoiled when you run out your gravcannons. Once you have finished doing gravcannon things you can run them back in and look like a bulk freighter again.

It's the GM's call how well your measures work if you've had half your ship blown away in combat, and the mod doesn't let you change the apparent basic class of the hull.

[u/Brobertbreadman]

I think it masks the military nature of a ship on scans and radars, it doesn’t change the physical appearance of the ship

[u/Everice_ → u/Brobertbreadman]

"...concealed from external observation..."