First time posting here, hello everyone.

So, let us suppose that one of my players and I sat around talking about acquisitions one day, and the subject of buying a tank to ride around in came up. Because why wouldn't it, right? Sadly, we discovered that there aren't any tanks in the RT books, but there are in Only War, which by luck I also have.

When I went to try and puzzle out how just how hard it would be for him to get his hands on a tank, I discovered there aren't any availabilities listed for the vehicles in the Only War books. Am I missing something? I have no problems with saying that a Leman Russ might be Very Rare or a Baneblade Near Unique off the top of my head, but if there's official material out there that would make things more straightforward.

Tanks aren't a "Availability" thing in OW, as much as a Unit Type. Astartes can do what they do, and requisition a Rhino, a Land Raider, or a Thunderhawk, but, for the most part, only Armored Companies will have access to their Leman Russes, while Mechanized Infantry would get a Chimera. Losing one isn't likely to be seen as simply roll for a new one, and other unit types probably won't have one, at all. Because of that, I'd guess, they didn't throw in Availability of vehicles; your unit either receives one, and you get it, or doesn't, and you have to foot-slog. Perhaps, when Shield of Humanity, and its new tanks/personnel carriers comes out, those vehices will have such, and maybe an extra little table will cover pre-printed ones. Otherwise, Chimeras would be Very Rare, Leman Russes probably Extremely Rare, the other variants maybe that or Near Unique, and other vehicles, you can guess.

It also depends on whose in the area. Elysians use Tauros, but I don't know if many others do. If you aren't the right unit type, your Operator, if you have one, might not be knowledgeable of tanks. The IG is not a universally trained force, and if your group didn't grow up near those tanks, you probably don't know; that training came from your homeworld, so Attilan didn't have them, thus you might know how to steer a horse, but not a tank.

Okay, I'm done prattling. Since RT (as I just remembered that's where I'm typing ) IS about getting whatever you want, I feel that the above rarities SHOULD work, or figure out what for a regiment of the Guard, and skip the troops part. Otherwise, Into the Storm has Rhinos, among other things (p.185), and they are nicer than me, though vehicle acquisition is always an additional -10 to the Acq test (ItS p.179).

There are really two ways you could handle this: Into the storm has rules for vehicles. The Rhino NPC is listed as Rare (With a -10 modifier). You could, as Venkelos suggested, extrapolate the aquisition modifiers from there. Alternatively; Battlefleet Koronus has rules for aquiring whole ground armies! If you created an Armored regiment then you could certainly "borrow" one of your own vehicles (Or a whole Platoon if you so wish!)

There are really two ways you could handle this: Into the storm has rules for vehicles. The Rhino NPC is listed as Rare (With a -10 modifier). You could, as Venkelos suggested, extrapolate the aquisition modifiers from there. Alternatively; Battlefleet Koronus has rules for aquiring whole ground armies! If you created an Armored regiment then you could certainly "borrow" one of your own vehicles (Or a whole Platoon if you so wish!)

Thanks for the idea, Radwraith, but I feel certain he'll want his tank before he has the space on a ship to be hauling an armored regiment around. Not to mention this will probably end up being some tricked-out obscenity like a gold-plated Baneblade with an on-board wetbar. Because "subtlety is for plebes." At least I can't say he's not getting into character. So it's probably better to track it as an individual item for the time being.

There are really two ways you could handle this: Into the storm has rules for vehicles. The Rhino NPC is listed as Rare (With a -10 modifier). You could, as Venkelos suggested, extrapolate the aquisition modifiers from there. Alternatively; Battlefleet Koronus has rules for aquiring whole ground armies! If you created an Armored regiment then you could certainly "borrow" one of your own vehicles (Or a whole Platoon if you so wish!)

Thanks for the idea, Radwraith, but I feel certain he'll want his tank before he has the space on a ship to be hauling an armored regiment around. Not to mention this will probably end up being some tricked-out obscenity like a gold-plated Baneblade with an on-board wetbar. Because "subtlety is for plebes." At least I can't say he's not getting into character. So it's probably better to track it as an individual item for the time being.

Well.. I would treat said Baneblade as a Near Unique Item (With a -10 modifier). Alternatively I might recommend a Stormlord (OW: No surrender pg. 135) which is already a troop carrier so It has the space you need.

Honestly, for special stuff like this I'd make it a small endeavour instead of an acquisitions roll. A lot more fun to say help out a Logis who miscalculated the amount of resources a forge world needs and you have to run around and clean it up so he'll introduce you to the Magos who's having a bit of a problem with the servitors going insane and murdering things occasionally.

Acquiring equipment and such should be what the acquisition tests are for, I feel. Special, characterful items (like a personal Baneblade, gold-plated no less) deserves an endeavour.

Personally, I'm going to try to acquire a Thunderhawk as a limo of sorts for my Rogue Trader.

I'd go with the Endeavour route. I'd also be wary that a Baneblade is a monumentally heavy piece of kit and so would require massive cargo vessels to ferry it to and from the ship - meaning you'd need dedicated hangar bay components, as the default "shuttles and berths = the tens column of your ships Hull Integrity" rule just covers personnel shuttles.

Something based on the Chimera or Leman Russ hulls would be much more transportable, and if a Rhino is Rare, i'd say Leman Russ are probably produced in similar if not greater quantities should also be Rare, with a Chimera being one or two steps more available (maybe sans all the weapons installed).

Battlefleet Koronus, p11, sidebar(box) entitled Room in Launch Bays , in the paragraph Ships without Launch Bays tells us that:

"...a ship has room for one lighter, shuttle or heavy lifter for every 5 points of Space its hull has."

I've added my own emphasis there. A heavy lift shuttle is generally large enough to carry an imperial guard infantry company, if not a mechanised infantry company. They're certainly large enough to carry a mechanised infantry platoon.*

Organisationally speaking, a super-heavy tank such as a Baneblade is considered equivalent to a platoon (more or less), with a squadron of 3-4 of them being equivalent to a full company.

In terms of gross physicality**, a Lucius-pattern Baneblade (without gold-plating, for now) is 13.5m long, 8.4m wide and 6.3m high, with a mass of 319 tonnes (which makes it 3 tonnes heavier than the Mars-pattern). Now, a Mars or Gryphonne IV-pattern Chimera weighs in at 38 tonnes apiece, and a platoon is up to 7 of them, for a total of 266 tonnes, plus the infantry and gear loaded thereupon (potentially 70 men, plus any supernumaries like priests, enginseers, commissariat). It adds up, but probably not to the ~320-330 tonnes of a Baneblade.

...and I've just also looked up the listed capacity of a Halo barge. 40 tonnes. Wow. I keep seeing references to them being heavy shuttles, but that is fairly piddly in comparison to the tonnage capacity needed. It'll carry a basic Chimera, plus a squad of guys, but that's about it. It won't carry a Leman Russ (~60 tonnes).

I was working up to an argument that it should be possible to carry a Baneblade without too much trouble, but, well, I've pretty much shot that down myself. I believe we need bigger shuttles, ladies and gentlemen.

As to getting one; I also agree with making it an Endeavour, at least for a Baneblade or similar highly-limited-production super-heavy. That said, as an intellectual exercise, I had a look and play around to see what the RAW would make it if you were to just roll Acquisition, based on the rules in BfK: a single Baneblade (plus support and maintenance crew) is a Platoon-level Acquisition (+10), of Heavy (-20) Modern (-10) Armour (set, per BfK as Rare -10), for a net modifier of -30.

Wow. That is... surprisingly cheap.

For reference: a Leman Russ would be a Squad-level (+20) Acquisition, of Medium (-10) Modern (-10) Armour (-10), for a net of -10; a Chimera (and probably at least a fire-team for back-up) would be a Squad-level (+20), Medium(-10) Modern (-10) Mechanised (-10), giving it the same net of -10. If you wanted to go with something a little more nippy (say... a Salamander, either Scout or Command), then it would be Squad-level (+20), Light (+0) Modern (-10) Armour(-10), which would technically be cheap enough that you could pick it up as your free starting Acquisition, if your GM allowed (not sure I would).

*Per numerous novels, but most notably the Ciaphas Cain series, which generally has large cargo shuttles carrying at least 1 company of the 597th Valhallan (a mechanised infantry regiment), with Caves of Ice using shuttles carrying 2 companies each.

**taken from the datasheets in Imperial Armour volume 1. Because I like that source. I neither know nor care if it has been superseded in whole or in part when it comes to the fluff therein.

May i suggest that this ship gets statted out?

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Devourer_Dropship

Yeah, the Halo barge is not meant to carry armies, its primary purpose is to transport goods and people (although I suppose to some the two are indistinguishable).

Do we know what those mind-bogglingly massive dropships we see on the cover of the Imp Guard codex are called?

*edit*

Really should've clicked on that link before I said that.

Yeah, I think we all have issues with the amount that the "Halo Barge" is supposed to lug around. 40 tons? A Cruiser could have 14 of these. That's 560 tons of cargo for all 14 barges per trip. How is that in any way efficient?

I don't know if the Devourer's the solution here, it's apparently pretty large, at least a few hundred metres from the looks of it.

Yeah, I may just houserule the Halo as Enormous, rather than Massive.

I'd say that the Devourer is about 40 meters tall, and 200-250 meters long... just as a rough estimate though. I'd give myself a 25% margin of error at least.

The barrels on those Lascannon turrets are twice as long as a Leman Russ... So, I don't know, 10d10+15 Pen 9 Blast(5)? No clue how to handle weapons on that scale. You can see why the Imperial Navy commissions massive Freighters for the sole purpose of transporting these monsters. A ship would need to be given a special bay for the sole purpose of launching those things.