Okay its late, the best title I could think of was Space Balls. Anyway...

Happy days, within the month, maybe 6 weeks, my DH party will be moving over to RT. Really excited, the games going to be balls to the walls, not too serious but with plenty of hard hitting rp points. I digress (again)

Space Battle is probably the thing Im most looking forward to and I want my players to have the same passion for my encounters as I have.
On to it then!

What makes a Space battled memorable?

Are there any major does and donts that arnt at first apparent with the rule system?

How do ships measure up against each other? Can a Raider with equal SP to a frigate pose a threat? Can a Frigate take out two Raiders with an at least reasonable chance to make it off the battle field.

Where can I find rules/stats for space stations and other orbital facilities?

Many thanks =D

Reverse order:

There's a space station in the core book, and that's about is as I recall. Sadly.

I'd have liked some guidelines on building stations, but by now I've had to make my own.

Raiders measure up to frigates very well, but there's a big IF there.

RAW makes macrocannons superior to just about all other weapons when deployed in bulk.

Certainly lances aren't worth their expensive price tag and requirements.

There are a few fixes for this - I usually just houserule that you can't add multiple macro batteries into a single salvo. it's easy and it works OK. There is a more thorough fix - by mathhammer IIRC - which I'm sure someone will link you to it soon enough.

How ships measure up against eachother depends to some degree on how closely you follow the movement rules in space combat. if you hand wave it it will have a very different 'feel' compared to sticking closely to the rules and measuring out distances etc.

The full space combat system is based on old Battle Fleet Gothic, which I still contend is the best game GW ever made.

As a heads-up- unless your group is familiar with stuff like the aforementioned Battlefleet Gothic, or comparable space/vehicle combat systems (such as that of Traveller, or Twilight Imperium), it will take a while for them to get up to speed (pun intended) with RT space combat. Unless it's a major part of campaigns, so people can get used to it, a lot of the time combat lasting more than a couple of turns will likely wind up lasting a fair whack of your session time, particularly when you factor in things like boarding actions, ordnance, etc. This was true from BfG as well, and was one of the weakest parts of the system (it can easily take forever).

Not to discourage you though: if you can keep your group enthusiastic and get them au fait with it, it can easily be one of the most awesome things going.

Other useful tips- pay attention to the minimum moves ships have. Everything moves, and the opening portion of any ship's move is rather predictable. It is really quite simple, for raiders, at least, to set up on high-speed firing passes that let them shoot up cruisers and disappear into their rear fire arc without the cruisers getting a shot off in return..

I would actually disagree with Tenebrae's point on lances (although I'm aware I'm likely in a minority here). They're awesome for going up against something heavily armoured- but unless the opponent has deliberately built a ship for Tanking (and there is a pre-written NPC from Lure of the Expanse who has done exactly that), the odds are that you're looking at cruiser-weight and above. Cruisers generally have sufficient mass/power to spare to play with lances, but anything maybe Light Cruiser or smaller is better off going with macro-cannons unless they're built to go and punch out something well above their weight. Personally, if I were raider/frigate sized and offered the chance to go hunting for stuff that much bigger, I'd go for Torpedoes (from Battlefleet Koronus ). Actually, if given the option, I'd go for torps over lances even up at battlecruiser/grand cruiser levels: ordnance warfare (carriers/torps) is awesome, although it can bog the game down.

Oh, and even if you don't normally use minis or a tac map, I heartily recommend investing in something to keep track of space combat.

There may be more in the way of space stations buried among supplements (Frozen Reaches, perhaps? I haven't done much with pre-written adventures), but there are fan-conversions from BfG floating around here and Dark Reign

Frozen reaches has stats for the Bulwark yeah. And it's a beast.

I agree that torps are awesome.

Very much.

For handling space combat movement I use miniatures (you can use tokens, or whatever works for you) and measure distances with a measuring tape. 1cm per Void Unit works ok if you have a nice sized table.

For power levels, it depends a lot on how they are played. Torpedoes work well to equalize combat, but get expensive and can be hard to replace deep in the Expanse. That being said, Melta Torpedoes can tear down pretty much any ship due to the number of fires they can start. My players have captured a few burned out hulks that way. Hit and Run attacks made by high Command characters can also be extremely brutal (particularly with Murder Servitors).

Cool cool guys thanks for the advice! =D

One issue that has arrissen:
Macrobatteris being awesome. Yes I agree but my RT has gone straight for the Sunsears on his Frigate which means 9VU to the front, port and star and in the mock battle we did to see what the combats like, he salvoed twice dealing about 40 then 60 hull damage. Any weapons that I can tantalize him with that are awesome in some way other than op raw damage?

Oh! And is there any way to gain a bonus to your hit and run rolls to combat those **** Turret Ratings and increase your chance to actually getting to the opponents ship?
I decked out a frigate with a crack crew (40), 2X Barracks and Murder Servitors making it a beast in hit and run, but due to the high number of Turrets the ship had, it couldnt make contact. I was sad =(

I strongly, strongly, eternally support switching your campaign over to the Mathhamer changes . All high-strength Macrocannons can very easily destroy another vessel with one good salvo. With this change, it makes capital ships actually feel different from escort ships. You don't need to make all of the changes, just the one with +12 damage and all shots counting individually against armour will be enough.

Hit-and-Run can be improved by pre-emptively murdering enough of the enemy crew in an opening barrage to give you a difference in crew strength, and by having a Teleportarium... but that is almost certainly a can of worms better left unopened.

Some comments/responses:

1. Most Raiders are pretty much an equal match for most Frigates. The firepower difference is pretty much nothing, and what the Frigate has in armor/hull, the Raider counters with speed/maneuverability.

2. With smaller vessels (Raiders/Frigates), space combat is short and brutal. One strategic rounds of great/terrible rolls can essentially end the battle. I suppose that's how its supposed to be, but it feels a anticlimactic when it happens.

3. Space combat generally sounds more awesome than it really is. With capital ships, it tends to be slow and, at times, frustrating because there's rarely "kill shots." Again, I suppose that's how its supposed to be, but it can end up eating up a whole session.

4. Macrocannons are king at the start, but lances are what you want for killshots. Ignore armor means 1 decent damage roll and you hulk the target... or worse. Harder to do that with macrocannons.

5. Hit and run is a very overpowered combat mechanic. As most crews have a "command monkey," you can nearly guarantee success with that "attack." If your ship can stand up to sustained fire for a couple rounds, you can pretty much win the battle with hit and run crew-kill actions. At the same time, the use of hit and runs to disable components is probably the better use of the maneuver, at least IMO.

6. Torps are great vs. big, slow targets. They one-shot smaller/faster ships, but you have to be a close range to make that work very well - otherwise, you're just wasting ammo.

Note that when using torpedoes, Fast Burn Melta Torpedos are a -25 Aquisition (-35 if not on Forge World) and have a 15 VU range on the round fired. That outranges many other weapons and they get a +15 at that range. Each torpedo will cause a fire, as well as a better than 36% chance of causing another crit. They aren't cheap, but I have seen them tear apart a cruiser just by setting 3 fires on it and burning it out. As the crew morale and population damage goes up, the ability of the crew to put out a fire goes down.