Fresnel said:

Considering the general theme of half understood technology, sustained by ritual for thousands of years, I'd be surprised if there isn't some loss from the system, the obvious one would be sweat, leaks and of reserves in case of combat damage causes a loss of water. Some additional water supplies will be needed.

Fresnel said:

I don't think you can extrapolate from this is the way the modern army does something to how the Imperium does things. The average is probably closer to 19th century Naval rations (might even be worth.) It’s not volume of food which is the limitation, it’s how well it lasts, or at least how long until the more perishable items have gone off.  Then the system is inevitably going to have waste: from the feasts of the Rouge Trader and the upper tiers of the ship, vermin, mundane corruption, Refrigeration devices breaking down and more exotic means of contamination.

If nothing else this limits the worlds you can stock up from, feudal and feral worlds can be sufficient to replenish supplies but neither of them is going to vacuum pack it for you, or dehydrate it, or even be able to can it. Only some agri-worlds will have the technology, and Hive and forge worlds while advanced enough, most of them are food sinks rather than sources. I believe the RAW assumes you can restock at any world.

Still assuming you are have found a supply the problems don’t end there. The demand for any form of easily preserved and transported food is going to be in the highest demand relative to supply possibly even in comparison to some luxury items: isolated mining worlds, campaigns of the Imperial Guard, Explorators and other Rogue Traders. Most Quartermasters aren’t going to want to spend more than they have to on their serfs meals. The meats probably going to be cheaper salted rather than irradiated, Fruit and Veg is probably whatever is available cheaply at the time, and I wouldn't be surprised if a fair amount of that was seasonal produce that went off.

Also if the quartermaster doesn't have a good knowledge of modern nutrition(Fairly likely), health problems could start long before the food starts to run out. For instance if the long term fruit supplies to prevent scurvy was lime juice rather than lemon juice, it's not going to work (Now consider that food variation is going to be greater in the Imperium than on earth, due to non terrestrial varieties.). The Imperium is generally ignorant and RT is fairly clear that leaving something to underlings is probably going to go wrong, a Seneschal working together with a Magos Biologis could probaly supply a ship far better but there are other demands on both their time.

Again probably not insurmountable problems, however the chances of you drifting up to a planet and it having 3 years of military grade rations for your ship are definitely not guaranteed. Now if you have time to sit around an wait you could almost certainly achieve such, a vessel in for long repairs leaves options like buying a proportion of next years harvest. The point however is that when leaving food below the abstraction level, something you ignore, it probably isn’t military grade rations.

So this does mean stocking up for longer journeys should be possible, but it's not a matter of cargo space, the problem is using rarity from Inquisitors Handbook military grade rations for a spaceship would basically start at +0 and go to -20 (Before quality), and that’s before you start taking into account scale in terms of period that the rations need to cover. 5 years rations are going to be more of a strain on resources than 1 month’s worth. (I’d be tempted to make it 0-6 months -10, 2.5 years -20, 5 years -30.) I’d reduce the penalty if they have a considerable amount of time to stock up.

Now this would be a greater boom than it seems, having these rations aren’t filling up your grain cellars or your meat larders. Nothing stops you filling up on food every time you hit a habitable system, 5 years of military grade rations could be enough to smooth shortfalls out to a decade of exploring or more. Similarly you could do it as an endeavor, or colonize a planet to stockpile vacuum packed food for your next venture, and get into the habit of stopping at that world.

In conclusion supplying a ship for a long journey is within a rouge traders capabilities, but for practicality, cost and the Imperium being fairly primitive for a Sci-fi setting it probably isn’t standard practice.

Water supplies are probably needed for ship systems too. Water may be a significant consumable. However, recall that the crew live in a pressurised vessel - if there was significant leaks, air would be the major issue. Oxygen can be got from water, so again water might well be an important consumable, but not for just for drinking.

However, ice can also be found virtually everywhere, so restocking water can be done between ports - in realspace. But again I point to the vastness of these vessels. The crew are ants in a cathedral. Their water needs are tiny.

Your point about common rations being near Tudor navy style takes the Grim/dark setting too far imo. We have Genetors capable of all sorts of Genetic engineering, but basic nutrition is a lost science? Advances in preserving food and the importance of good nutrition was driven by the 19th century navies. It wasn't about being humane to the crew, it was about effectiveness. You cannot whip a sick man to health. 

Rations can be acquired at poor to best quality. I imagine 'common' being military grade rations (with shelf life measured in decades) to be made by every agri-world in the imperium. Thats a lot of worlds, servicing the Imperial navy and guard, and RT would be dipping into the vast export market for these. A place like Footfall will have Transports coming in with nothing but military grade rations imo - a staggering amount.

Ymmv of course.

 

Asajev said:

In the absence of a special rule to the contrary (such as with increasing Unnatural Characterisitics), the standard rules for mathematics apply. If you double an amount twice, you've quadrupled it. D&D has made many gamers fall into thinking its 'additive multipliers' rule applies in those games too, but that's not necessarily true.

thank you mate, so a ship with Extended Supply Vaults, Arboritum, and the Ship Role for rationing would give the ship a base of 48 months or 4 years?

Asajev said:

What is this 'Ship Role' you speak of?

That would be Ship's Steward, Into the Storm pg. 232, Right Colum subsection Benefits on the PDF version of the book.

Fresnel said:

Fresnel said:

Water being on the vessel doesn't mean its in the life support system though, these are city sized ships not in the life support system or in a body leaves an awful lot of places water could collect (an obvious one being as ice round any part of the vessel that is below freezing.) Half flooded passages which aren't important enough for anyone to care.

Fresnel said:

I'm talking about the Imperium not being homogenous. By RAW you can restock supplies on a Primative world, on an uninhabited world, neither of these are going to irradiate it for you. While you are spending the 3 weeks over the uninhabited jungles of Kaldesh to replenish the crew morale, orgainised hunting/foraging expeditions would replenish the larder, and definately fits the setting. 

Yeah get an Tech-Priest as Quartermaster and the advances of the Genetors are suddenly relevant, otherwise not so much, Mars functions because they have a monopoly on knowledge, and even then they don't understand that machine spirits they tend to are Tech Heresy by their own definations. The reason the crew is so huge is because absurd tasks are achieved with man power, descriptions about hundreds of men being used to open an automatic door that no one understands any more litter the setting. The entire setting is a multi-layered anachronism, it's not technologically coherant as all. Besides the social structure is pre-19th century in many ways. 

There's no standarised education, I mean Tech-Use and literacy being advanced skills tells you all you need to know about the setting. The Seneschal doesn't have Tech-Use as standard, the skills nutrition probaly falls under are rank 4 at best. The Quartermaster could have a great grounding in Nutrition, have good relations with a tech priest who performs basic nutritional analysis on unusual food stuffs, or he could be the 17th indiviudal in a long line to hold the posistion who stocks the ship by rote, has no understanding of the reason behind the tradition and acts hostily to any attempt to change anything. Which is fine because the High Command are too distracted with more exciting things to realise how much food is being lost due to poor storage. 

Besides it's not that simple, there is no internet, even if you have a quatermaster who understands nutrition their probaly relying on their own records to work out the nutrition value. There will be things they haven't encountered, either completely unknown species, or just nutritional variation from years of genetic variation (or being planted in a completely different enviroment), what were lemons when the world was founded, might no longer have Vitamin C, but because the yield is high non of the farmers noticed. Thats before you consider GM crops. If your vary the port you restock at (Or restock at a major trade hub even.) To fully understand nutrion of your supplies you probaly need your own nutrition lab on the ship, not really fitting with the setting is it? Then you throw in human varation, remember the Imperium on it's search for mutants isn't persecuting those with a different makeup of digestive enzymes. Genetors exist routine genetic testing, you have to be kidding me, you could easily restock for a planet where alchol dehydrogenase is rare and suddenly find that the nutrients you were assuming they would get from there beer isn't going to happen. 

Fresnel said:

Interestingly the only references to Technology on Agri-worlds (Although there are probaly some I have missed.) One explictly salted food (and held the wheel to be too advanced but used frieghted the meat by air. One only refers to having one large settlement which was a vast fortification, and the final one is advanced enough to have turned a dessert world into fertile plains. An in system agri-world (and there are a fair number of these in the fluff.) Might not bother because the world it's supplying is close enough that theres no advantage to the addtional processing. 

I based the avalibility off the avalibility given for explicitly military rations, which has the disadvantage that Dark Heresy has more variation in food prices than RT (Not surprising food generally falls under RTs abstraction level, it's designed to be handwaved and since DH is the game about bullet counting it seemed the place to find out how much miltiary quality rations are (Also just for a neat fact a years military rations for a sword class vessel are worth around 47 million thrones (although by that point you are probaly getting a large bulk discount.) 

My point was never it was unmanagable, just that the default does the world have food check, get NPCs to collect said food while we have adventures doesn't makes the same assumptions you are making, there are plenty of reasons why you might not have the supplies you assume. 1 years worth of supplies is a safe estimate, you could go to any world with food in the Imperium and be able to stock up for a year. If the players get actively involved they could almost certainly do better, but thats fundamentally one of RT guiding principals, if you want a job done right do it yourself. 

Asajev said:

OK. I got it now. Yes, all of those should stack, so 2x2x2=8x6 months = 48 months. Since NPCs can fulfill these roles (see the beginning of the Ship Roles section), I have to wonder: What ship wouldn't have a Steward (and thus why isn't 1 year the standard)?