Components, Upgrades, and Compatibility

No crew keeps a ship exactly as they bought it. Something breaks and gets replaced with what was available. A salvaged system goes in because the original burned out three sectors ago. A contract pays enough to afford a proper upgrade. The ship becomes a record of decisions made under pressure.

This chapter covers the full system for modifying, upgrading, and integrating ship components. Module Slots, hardpoint upgrades, builder compatibility, system grades, illegal modifications, and long-term upgrade projects.

Module Slots

Module Slots represent the meaningful optional installations a ship can carry: systems large enough to matter, power-connected, and significant enough to affect what the ship can do. A medical kit does not require a Module Slot. A functioning medical bay does.

What Module Slots Represent

A Module Slot is not a cubic meter count. It is a prepared interface: structural support rated for the module's mass, power connections sized for its draw, crew access routes, maintenance protocols, and compatibility with the ship's diagnostic systems.

A ship can carry a salvaged EW suite without a proper Module Slot. The engineer just has to figure out where to run the power conduit, how to keep it from interfering with the sensor array it is wedged next to, and why the crew cannot run the heat sinks and the stealth package at the same time.

Slot Counts by Scale

These are design guidelines for Models, not minimum entitlements. A civilian freighter may have many open Module Slots; a military escort may have none.

The upper end of each range belongs to builders whose signature is modularity. Antaean Openframe hulls run high in every band because module slots cost Antaean two points instead of three, and Viridian and Kharos hulls sit above the middle for the same reason. A hull well above the range should be explicable by a builder discount in Chapter Thirteen. One that is not deserves a second look.

Module Slot Grades

Some Models distinguish between Standard, Enhanced, and Military module bays. This is a characteristic of the hull, not of the module itself.

Standard slots accept any module meeting the Scale and compatibility requirements.

Enhanced slots are pre-wired for heavier power draw and more complex systems. Military-grade modules installed in enhanced slots do not add the normal +1 Bane Die for military-in-civilian-context installations.

Military bays are found only on military hulls. They accept military modules as native integrations.

Civilian hulls do not have military bays. Installing military modules in civilian hulls is always at least an Open Integration (see Compatibility below).

Installing a Module

A clean commercial module installed at a proper yard with open Module Slots requires no Craft Trial when the installation is certified, compatible, legal, and properly sized. The crew pays the price and receives professional work.

A Craft Trial is required when the module is:

• Salvaged, damaged, or incomplete
• Installed in the field without proper tools
• Built by an incompatible manufacturer
• Restricted or illegal
• Missing necessary parts
• Being concealed from inspectors
• Installed while the ship remains operational in combat conditions

Installation difficulty:

The Module Catalog Overview

The full module stat blocks appear in Chapter 16. This section gives the rules framework for each module category and what the category provides mechanically.

Cargo and Freight Modules

Cargo modules add or expand cargo capacity. They require Module Slots, and most are Internal installations.

Power considerations: Refrigerated modules draw 1 Power Load while active. Other cargo modules have no Power Load.

Passenger and Habitation Modules

Habitation modules affect how many people the ship can sustain comfortably and for how long.

Long voyage effects: A crew spending multiple weeks in transit without a Crew Comfort Module may develop morale complications at GM discretion, particularly on cramped Scale 3 ships.

Medical and Continuity Modules

Medical Bay rules: A Medical Bay provides 1 Boon Die to Medicine Trials when the bay's equipment applies to the task. It does not provide Boons for first aid in a corridor.

Engineering, Repair, and Salvage Modules

Workshop rules: A Workshop removes 1 Bane Die from Craft Trials when the task involves tools or facilities rather than skill. It does not add Boons; it removes the Bane imposed by poor conditions.

Exploration and Science Modules

Exploration module rules: The Trials named above belong to the six-step exploration procedure. Corridor Trace and Locate Candidate Seam are in Chapter Seven; the full procedure, including Arrival Survey and Body Survey, is in the GM Guide. A ship with none of this equipment can still explore: it runs Corridor Trace only from a terminal seam or a Rumored entry, and its Body Surveys stop at the Failure tier.

Security and Law-Enforcement Modules

Stealth and Electronic Warfare Modules

Drone and Small-Craft Modules

Drone bay rules: Each drone bay stores a specific type of drone and provides launch and recovery capability. The number of drones and their rules are covered in the defense systems section of Chapter 8 (for defense drones) and in Chapter 17 (for utility, sensor, and combat drones).

Carried Craft

A ship carries small craft in one of two ways, and the choice is a design decision with different costs.

Internal bays enclose the craft. It is protected by the parent hull, it cannot be targeted on its own, and it launches and recovers through a controlled bay.

External Docking Cradles hold the craft against the hull on a prepared interface. A cradle costs one slot instead of two and is available a Scale lower, which is why small commercial hulls carry their shuttle this way and capital ships do not.

Capacity is set by the module, not by the hull. A cradle holds one craft, a Shuttle Bay two, a Fighter Bay four, an Expanded Hangar eight. A hull carries what its bays and cradles hold and no more. Fit a second module if you want a second pair.

A cradle is designed around a craft. A hull built with cradles is built to a cradle pattern, and the craft it was designed for docks, launches, and recovers with no Trial under ordinary conditions. That craft is meant to be there; it is part of the ship, and most commercial hulls that ship with cradles ship with the shuttles to fill them.

Only cradle-fitted craft can use a cradle. A craft without the interface cannot dock at one at any difficulty. It needs an internal bay, a station, or a docking collar.

A mismatched craft costs something. A cradle-fitted craft of a different configuration or a different builder docks, but:

• Launch and recovery Trials add 1 Bane Die
• The parent ship adds 1 Bane Die to atmospheric handling and to Signature Management while the craft is aboard
• A craft from a Rival builder adds 2 Bane Dice instead of 1; see Integrated Architecture and Patchwork Ships below

Externally carried craft are exposed. A craft on a cradle is part of the target profile and may be attacked in its own right. A craft in an internal bay cannot be targeted while the parent hull is intact. Combat handling is in Chapter Fifteen.

Embarked crew count toward complement. Pilots and aircrew for carried craft are crew or passengers aboard the parent hull and count against its complement like anyone else. A carrier's complement includes the people who fly what it carries.

Navigation and Slipstream Modules

Hardpoint Upgrades

Weapon Hardpoints are part of the ship's structural architecture. They can be upgraded, but doing so is not simple.

Upgrading a Hardpoint Tier

Upgrading a Light hardpoint to Standard (from 1 to 2 Hardpoint capacity) requires rebuilding the structural mounting, power conduit, and cooling access to handle the heavier weapon's demands.

Requirements:

• Dry-dock access or a field installation at Hard Craft Trial difficulty.
• Appropriate structural materials (available at most established ports; may be harder to source on the frontier).
• Time: 1d4 days in dry-dock, or twice that in the field.
• Cost: Moderate (Standard upgrade), Significant (Heavy upgrade), Major (Capital upgrade).

Craft Trial for field installation: Hard for Light-to-Standard, Severe for Standard-to-Heavy, and a Calamity risk for Heavy-to-Capital.

On success with Banes: the hardpoint functions but carries a complication. Power feeds may be inconsistent (+1 Heat per firing), the structural rating may not be quite right (weapon cannot use Burst Fire or max power without Craft Trial), or the installation may be inspection-visible.

On failure: the hardpoint remains unupgraded. The materials may be salvageable.

Downgrading a Hardpoint

A crew that wants to reduce a Heavy mount to Standard to recover 1 Hardpoint for another weapon can do so. Downgrading is a structural modification that requires the same time and tools as upgrading, but is slightly easier (one difficulty step lower).

Weight savings: A downgraded hardpoint reduces the ship's structural load slightly. This does not improve Speed or Handling meaningfully for most hulls, but on a small ship with an already-strained weight budget it may allow an additional module or cargo capacity.

Integrated Architecture and Patchwork Ships

Every ship has a relationship with its own components. That relationship is either working in harmony or creating problems.

Integrated Architecture

A ship achieves Integrated Architecture when:

• Its Model belongs to one builder.
• At least 10 of its 13 major systems come from that same builder.
• It has no Forced or Forbidden integrations.
• All required firmware and service standards remain intact.

Integrated Architecture benefits:

1. Remove 1 Bane Die from maintenance and repair Trials involving native major systems.
2. Once per encounter, remove 1 Bane Die from a Trial involving one of the builder's Signature systems.
3. Reduce normal maintenance cost by one step when serviced through an authorized yard.

Each builder also provides a unique Integrated Architecture benefit:

The tradeoff: A ship with Integrated Architecture has made a sustained commitment to one builder's ecosystem. Every salvaged part from another builder potentially costs the ship this status.

What Patchwork Integration Costs

A mixed-builder ship trades easy maintenance for customization. Components from different builders carry integration penalties when installed in a non-native hull.

Power Load penalties for patchwork: A ship running more than 3 non-native major systems (Rival or Open integration status) should carry 1 persistent Bane Die on any Craft Trial where two incompatible systems interact. This represents the ongoing friction of systems that were not designed to work together.

Converting Patchwork to Integration

A crew that wants to move their ship toward Integrated Architecture over time can do so as a long-term project. This requires:

1. Replacing non-native systems with native ones, one system at a time.
2. Each replacement is a proper Core System Upgrade (see below).
3. The ship must eventually reach the 10-of-13 threshold and clear all Forced/Forbidden integrations.

This is measured in downtime sessions, contract payouts, and port access. It is a legitimate campaign arc for crews who want their ship to become increasingly capable.

Builder Benefits in Upgrades

When a ship installs a third-party component into a native hull, the component's builder benefits do not apply. A Kharos engine in a Crown Meridian hull does not receive Kharos's Signature engine benefit. It receives no benefit and no drawback from the foreign builder. The hull's own builder drawbacks still apply: a Crown Meridian hull with a Kharos engine still has Crown Meridian's poor Signature Management, because that is a characteristic of the hull, not the engine.

When installing same-builder components into a mixed ship: A Crown Meridian Damage Control system in a KR-41 hull receives no benefit. The benefit requires a native hull. The system works normally: Standard performance, no modifier in either direction.

Targeting Integrated Architecture after a mixed history: A crew can restore Integrated Architecture benefits by replacing foreign components with native ones. Once the 10-of-13 threshold is met, the per-encounter Integrated Architecture benefit becomes available again.

Raising a System's Rating

Improving a system means replacing its component with a higher-rated one. That is a long-term project, and the ratings themselves are in the Component Catalog below.

Power and Heat are the systems crews upgrade first, because they gate everything else. Raising the reactor, power distribution, and thermal management together produces the combined effect below. Upgrading one in isolation gives partial improvement at GM discretion.

Each step raises the reactor by +2 Power Capacity, +3 Heat Threshold, and +1 Heat Dissipation, as listed in the Component Ratings table below. Steps accumulate: two steps is twice that, three steps three times.

How far a hull may be pushed is set by its operator tier caps in Chapter Thirteen, not by any limit here.

Raising a Rating One Step

Requirements:

• Major port facility or corporate shipyard.
• Significant cost (2 to 3 contracts' worth of fees or equivalent cargo value).
• Time: several days of dry-dock work.
• No Craft Trial required at an authorized yard with proper parts.

The ship sustains heavier combat loads without hitting thermal limits as quickly.

Raising a Rating Beyond Your Hull's Availability

A hull may carry components at its operator tier's Availability as standard. Going above that is where the trouble starts.

Requirements:

• Military shipyard access, or a black-market specialist with restricted parts.
• Major cost (campaign-level investment).
• Legal consequences: fitting Restricted or Military components to a civilian hull is a Forbidden Integration. Authority heat applies.
• Craft Trial at Severe minimum, even at a proper yard, if the hull is civilian.

The ship's combat endurance improves markedly. So does its sensor profile, and so does the interest the authorities take in it.

Illegal and Restricted Modifications

Not all modifications are legal everywhere.

Requiring a License

The following modifications require specific authorization in most power territories:

• Military weapons (Heavy and above in most systems; all plasma capital weapons)
• Military ECM and EW systems
• Disruption weapons (some powers restrict all; most restrict Heavy and above)
• Gravitic and phase weapons (restricted everywhere; military only)
• Military-grade armor
• Slipstream Interdiction modules
• Strategic ordnance magazines

Operating without the required license in a territory that enforces it is an inspectable offense. The consequence depends on the power: fines, confiscation, crew detention, or in some powers, immediate military response.

Flat-Out Illegal

These modifications are illegal in all five major powers' territories:

• Gravitic or phase weapons on a civilian hull without military authorization
• Slipstream Interdiction systems on any non-military hull
• Strategic ordnance aboard a non-military vessel
• Phase Veil Generator (Jaziri military technology; civilian possession is a diplomatic incident)
• Military Shadow Package without authorization
• Transponder spoofing systems while in an active port or traffic lane

Inspection risk: Ships with illegal modifications who are caught in an inspection face consequences. Most powers impound the ship, confiscate the illegal equipment, and charge the crew. In some territories the consequences are more severe.

Black Market Upgrade Availability

The black market for ship components is active across most frontier territories, Antaean League ports, and fringe space. What is available:

Black market components carry additional risks: hidden trackers from the original military supply chain, unknown damage, missing firmware keys, hostile integration quirks, and sellers who may inform to whoever pays more.

Long-Term Ship Projects

Upgrades that take multiple sessions represent investment in the ship as a character in its own right.

What Crews Can Accomplish in Downtime

If doing the work themselves: A crew with Engineering skill can tackle upgrade projects during downtime. The project requires:

• A Workshop module (removes tool-quality Banes from Craft Trials)
• Parts availability (at port or from salvage)
• Time (measured in downtime sessions, not hours)
• Craft Trials for each major installation

Scale of work vs. time:

• Module installation: 1–2 downtime sessions (days)
• Core system upgrade: 2–4 downtime sessions (days to a week)
• Hardpoint upgrade: 2–3 downtime sessions
• Raising a system's rating one step: Multiple downtime sessions plus proper facility

If hiring the work done: A crew that contracts a shipyard avoids the Craft Trial in most cases. The cost is money rather than skill. The timeline compresses to what the yard can accomplish professionally.

Project Milestones

For large upgrade arcs, the GM may set milestones: specific parts that must be sourced, consultants who must be found, tests that must pass. This gives upgrade projects narrative weight.

Parts sourcing: The most interesting part of a major upgrade is often the parts. A military reactor requires military supply chains or a successful heist. Rare phase-weapon components require contacts that themselves require favors.

The record: Modifications to a ship leave records. An authorized upgrade appears in the ship's official maintenance log. An unauthorized upgrade does not, but evidence of it remains visible to a thorough inspection. A ship's history can be read by a sufficiently experienced inspector.

The Component Catalog

A ship's stats are not abstract numbers. Every one of them above the hull's baseline comes from a physical component, and every component can be bought, sold, salvaged, installed, and ruined.

This is what makes a ship upgradable. Pull a reactor out of a corsair you killed at Harrowspan, get it working in your own hull, and the Power Capacity on your sheet goes up because the reactor on your ship is now a different reactor. Three years later somebody still mentions where it came from.

What a Component Is

A component is one line. It has a builder, a system type, a rating, an availability, a condition, and an output.

A component contributes only stats that are already on your ship sheet. Installing a better reactor changes Power Capacity, Heat Threshold, and Heat Dissipation. It does not add a new number to track. The sheet never grows; it only gains a history.

Two Axes, Not One

A component answers two unrelated questions, and they need separate answers.

Rating is what it does, expressed in whatever unit that system naturally uses. A sensor suite is rated by how far it detects. An AI Core is rated by how many crew it can help at once. A reactor is rated by the Power Capacity, Heat Threshold, and Heat Dissipation it provides. These are different units because they are different machines, and forcing them into a shared vocabulary makes all three worse.

Availability is who is allowed to own it. This uses the same four tiers as ship acquisition, in Chapter Sixteen: Open, Licensed, Restricted, Military.

The two axes are independent. A sensor suite that reaches to Long range is entirely legal to own; one that reaches to Extreme is not. That is four rating steps against two availability tiers, and it only reads strangely if you expect capability and legality to march in step. They do not, in this setting or any other.

Component Ratings

Rating is expressed as what the component contributes above the hull's Scale baseline, per step. A component at baseline rating provides the baseline and nothing more.

Ratings are open-ended. Steps accumulate as far as the hull's operator tier caps in Chapter Thirteen allow, and no further. There is no ceiling in this table, which is why a Safa interceptor reaches Speed 7 and a Directorate cruiser reaches Armor 6.

Sublight Engine grades. A Sublight Engine carries two rating units. Speed steps and Cruise steps are separate build-point lines. Cruise is set by the engine's drive class, and the class sets its availability.

A fusion engine cannot be raised past Cruise 3. Cruise 4 and 5 require an antimatter engine fitted as a full replacement, not an upgrade step. What Cruise does is in Chapter Six.

Three systems are rated by what they contribute rather than by steps, because their effect does not accumulate.

Sensors and AI Cores have hard limits where the rest do not: detection stops at Extreme because that is the threshold beyond which nothing is detectable, and Active Channels stop at four. Their full capability tables are in Chapter Seven.

Quality is separate from reach. A component may carry an Advanced tag, which adds 1 Boon Die to Trials using that system without changing its rating. An Advanced sensor suite rated to Long does not see further than an ordinary one; it sees more clearly at every band. Corporate survey outfits buy sharpness rather than reach, and pay for it.

Component Availability

Price hangs off Availability rather than capability, which is the honest way round: a military reactor is expensive because it is restricted, not because restriction is a feature.

Your hull's operator tier sets what it may carry as standard. A Civilian hull fits Open components, a Professional hull fits Licensed, a Military hull fits Restricted and Military. Fitting one system above your hull's standard costs 8 points and gives the ship a paperwork problem that any competent inspection will find. See Illegal and Restricted Modifications above.

Provenance Tags

Two older labels are not ratings at all, and are better read as facts about where a component came from.

Improvised means field-fabricated, cannibalised, or built from mismatched parts. Price ×0.4, and integration carries the risk described under Salvaging Components. Most fringe ships are wearing at least one.

Experimental means prototype, unlicensed, or poorly understood. Price ×4.0 and upward, availability at GM discretion, and it does something nobody has fully characterised yet. Whether that is an advantage depends on the session.

Strategic components are not sold, priced, or acquired. They are campaign events.

Builder Identity

A component carries its builder, and that matters at installation rather than in output. A Kharos reactor and a Crown Meridian reactor of the same grade produce the same numbers. What differs is how hard each is to put into your hull, which the integration table under Salvaging Components governs, and whether it breaks your Integrated Architecture.

Name components builder first: a Kharos Professional Reactor, a Crown Meridian Military Hull Plating set.

Condition

Every component exists in one of three states. Condition is not a number and never degrades in steps; it is what the thing is when you find it.

Repairing a Damaged component takes a Craft Trial at the same difficulty as its integration, plus parts, plus yard or workshop time. Until then it is installed and running, just not running well.

A Destroyed component yields nothing on its own. But on a Breakthrough during Extraction, the crew recovers enough salvageable material to repair one Damaged component of the same system type. Not a working unit: the one intact part your broken one needed.

Breakthroughs fire whether the check succeeded or failed, so a crew can botch the extraction and still come away with the piece. That is deliberate. It is the difference between a dead ship and a story about the time the engineer went into a burning wreck and came back with a coolant manifold.

Installed Systems Are Components Too

The three conditions map directly onto the damage states of systems still aboard a ship.

This is one vocabulary read at two moments, and it means a boarding crew already knows what a prize is worth. You shot out their engines, so their sublight engine is Damaged, and you knew that before the airlock cycled.

Component Prices

A component's price is its build point cost multiplied by the credits-per-build-point rate for its Scale (Chapter Thirteen). Nothing new to look up.

A Professional Reactor for a Scale 4 hull provides +2 Power Capacity, +3 Heat Threshold, and +1 Heat Dissipation, which is 6 + 6 + 4 = 16 build points. At the Scale 4 rate of 2,250cr, the component is 36,000cr new.

Components are Scale-specific. Scale compatibility and the penalties for forcing a mismatch are in Chapter Three.

Salvage Value

What a component fetches depends on its condition and on who is buying.

Military-grade components have no legal market outside sovereign channels. A fringe buyer will take one, at a price that reflects what they are risking, and the transaction is a fact about the crew that exists afterward.

This is a living. A drifting hulk with four Working Professional components aboard is worth more than most cargo runs, and it does not care about market prices at the destination. It is also somebody's grave, it may be a trap, and the reason it is drifting has not stopped being true.

Worked Example: The Life Support Problem

The crew's life support is Damaged after a fight. They have no spare and eleven days to the nearest port.

The ship they disabled has life support too, and it took the same hit: Destroyed.

The engineer boards the wreck and attempts Extraction. It is a battlefield, so the difficulty is Severe. She fails the check, but the roll produces a Breakthrough .

She does not come back with a life support system. She comes back with enough intact scrubber assembly to repair the crew's own Damaged unit, which is a Craft Trial, some hours, and the parts she is holding.

Had their own unit been Destroyed rather than Damaged, the Breakthrough would have bought them nothing, and the eleven days would have become the problem the session was about.