I am not altogether happy about those. They are a bit like d100 BFG and don't always accurately reflect what is said about crafts in the BFG fluff. I would have expected the rules to add a bit more detail (as voidship combat in RT adds detail vis-a-vis BFG) too.

I am not sure how much to add though in order to not bog down the combat and that's where I would like to have some input. What would you like to see out of Attack Craft rules? Or are you satisfied with as-is?

The more detailed method I have in mind right now is sort-of a mini-game within voidship combat rules. Basically each round every side makes more than three rolls or so and there is some tactical options and some bidding system involved. Would that be too much?

Alex

Starship combat is already a slog - adding any more mechanics to it seems like a no no to me.

For the most part, it seems that, at least to me, attack craft are mostly just a little modifier to big-ship combat. They get blown up easy, are often piloted by nobodies, and you probably expect to launch them, lose them, and resupply the "clip" the same way you do torpedoes.

I, too, wish that they mattered a bit more, but with their size, and the sheer ludicrous size of ships in 40k, what more can they really do? Either they are small and maneuverable, able to dodge incoming fire, and strike critical points, rendering the big ships ineffectual, or they are small and maneuverable, but their armament can't pierce the megatonnes of armor that the capital ships bear, and thus they don't do a lot, except occasionally intercept incoming missiles. Also good for boarding actions. I like to think more fights between ships than not are decided by boarding actions, and crews battling one another, rather than blasting valuable ships apart.

One probably could do better if they get used to harass ground-based targets, which is often where I think I'd use the stats for them.

Unfortunately the stats for them and the fluff both confirm that the imperium uses different craft for aeronautical flight and void flight. I mean the starfury is something silly like 12m long, has multiple crew including a telepath for long range scouting and armed with long range lascannon and ship-to-ship missiles... not really all that useful in an atmosphere. Conversely a Marauder may carry several tons of ordnance for bombing ground targets, but if you used its engines in space for anything other than returning to an orbital carrier it'd be outmaneuvered by an ork exhaling really hard and it's payload would be useless against capital ships.

It's important to note that 40k isn't Star wars. The Chaos Planet killer Battleship does not have a long cooling tube that allows Suk Liewalker to fly down it's length and destroy it with a well placed BB gun! You could certainly write a scenario that works that way but it's not Canon. If you really want to have players engaging in Dogfights, Perhaps create a 'flashpoint' type scenario whereby players who are Attack craft pilots are allowed to conduct a short (maybe 3 rounds) encounter where they engage enemy craft in space. the winner (most destroyed or disengaged enemy craft) provides a bonus to the command check for the engagement. The Star fury in ITS lists a crew of 3/2. I believe that is meant to reflect that the Engineseer and crew chief normally remain with the mother ship while the "flight crew" operate the craft during engagements. Such an arrangement would mean that the interplay between Flight crew members would be very similar to that "Top gun" feel from the 80's era F-14 Tomcat. (Again, BFG was written in that same era so it's no surprise that their fighters would reflect that!)

Starship combat is already a slog - adding any more mechanics to it seems like a no no to me.

It can be, absolutely. The trick is to pare down the mechanics some - which I do in my games. In a 1v1 fight, a strategic turn shouldn't last any more than 2 or 3 minutes.

I rather like attack craft. They are very effective, though they sometimes take heavy losses. I wouldn't want to complicate them more, though. Before the players in my last campaign decided to get themselves a carrier, they got into a fight with a space station that had hangar bays. They got handled very roughly. They became converts. They had been torpedo enthusiasts before that moment. They were a bit disillusioned when their torps were largely intercepted and shot down.

Our group uses 2 main rules to keep our combats fast. First, shields stay down for the whole round, not for each firing ship. Secondly, ships can only use as many actions as the first digit in their crew rating, no matter how many PCs are aboard the ship. So, if the crew is competent (rating 30), then only 3 actions can be performed, even if there are 5 PCs aboard that ship.

Squadron rules also greatly speed play, but we don't often use them. They seem to have been designed to give the NPCs a fighting change against PC ships with several characters on board, and our rules already take care of that problem.

Attack craft are important, for example, for the Tau. Anyway, my thought is that there should be various methods to resolve different aspects of void combat. Often I will want to resolve something like Attack Craft combat by making a dice roll and moving on. Rarely, I will want to play it a Hit & Run action in every detail. But it happens. And sometimes, maybe, I want something in between.

Anyway, I don't consider void combat to be much more of a drag than personal combat. But still I'll focus on the fast, abstract method first, which means modifying BK stats for Attack Craft a bit, I guess.

Alex

In our group most of us were wargamers before RPGs were even invented. That probably explains why we like starship combats. I understand people liking the boarding actions more. Styles vary.

Honestly, our group hasn't felt bored by starship combat at all and only two and a half of us are BFGers (and players of other, more crunchy games).

Especially since we adopted the Into the Storm and Navis Primer actions for our Navigator and Astropaths, starship combat is becoming our favourite. We have house rules, but nothing that speeds up gameplay.

So, I'm kinda thinking that, for my Dictator Cruiser, the Hammerfall, I might have her armaments consist of the two hangers, with whatever assortment of bombers and fighters seems appropriate, set up with Hecutor Plasma Broadsides and a prow-mounted Fortis or Plasma-Accel Torp Tubes ( I believe they are separate); she originally paid for a Nova Cannon, but I'm not as fond of them, and am saying that it was demolished in a specific mission Korvallus flew years ago. Afterward, he decided to retrofit the prow mount of his flagship to have her carry torpedoes, rather than the big cannon. Does this sound doable and decent? I COULD go all bays, like the above stuff said, but I'm still just not sure I want my dyed in the wool warship to be packing so little of guns.

Hecutor Plasma Broadsides are Battlecruiser and higher only. I wanted them on the Blessed Enterprise too but alas. The battery is only Strength 3, I don't think it's actually worth it.

So, I'm kinda thinking that, for my Dictator Cruiser, the Hammerfall, I might have her armaments consist of the two hangers, with whatever assortment of bombers and fighters seems appropriate, set up with Hecutor Plasma Broadsides and a prow-mounted Fortis or Plasma-Accel Torp Tubes ( I believe they are separate); she originally paid for a Nova Cannon, but I'm not as fond of them, and am saying that it was demolished in a specific mission Korvallus flew years ago. Afterward, he decided to retrofit the prow mount of his flagship to have her carry torpedoes, rather than the big cannon. Does this sound doable and decent? I COULD go all bays, like the above stuff said, but I'm still just not sure I want my dyed in the wool warship to be packing so little of guns.

The Prow mount on a Dictator can't be a hangar bay anyway- RAW, bays have to go into port/stbd mounts- no dorsal, keel or prow.

You could go 4 hangar bays and a prow Bombardment cannon. That's going to hurt anything that gets close.

I actually like going with a non-dictator cruiser with 2 port/stbd mounts and a prow, and putting two hangar bays on one side, prow macrocannon and putting in a bunch of lances on the other side.

I cover the topic in fair detail in this thread. Post #19 in particular goes over specific builds that use two bays with heavy weapons. Four bays in conjunction with prow torpedoes might be nasty though.

Hecutor Plasma Broadsides are Battlecruiser and higher only. I wanted them on the Blessed Enterprise too but alas. The battery is only Strength 3, I don't think it's actually worth it.

Hmm, do I say I didn't notice, or lie and call it a typo? Yeah, I wasn't paying attention, I suppose. I could knock it down to Hecutor Plasma Batteries, I suppose. I like some of the lances, but think I'll be served better with big shells, in this case lobbing plasma, but whatever have you.

So, I'm kinda thinking that, for my Dictator Cruiser, the Hammerfall, I might have her armaments consist of the two hangers, with whatever assortment of bombers and fighters seems appropriate, set up with Hecutor Plasma Broadsides and a prow-mounted Fortis or Plasma-Accel Torp Tubes ( I believe they are separate); she originally paid for a Nova Cannon, but I'm not as fond of them, and am saying that it was demolished in a specific mission Korvallus flew years ago. Afterward, he decided to retrofit the prow mount of his flagship to have her carry torpedoes, rather than the big cannon. Does this sound doable and decent? I COULD go all bays, like the above stuff said, but I'm still just not sure I want my dyed in the wool warship to be packing so little of guns.

The Prow mount on a Dictator can't be a hangar bay anyway- RAW, bays have to go into port/stbd mounts- no dorsal, keel or prow.

You could go 4 hangar bays and a prow Bombardment cannon. That's going to hurt anything that gets close.

I actually like going with a non-dictator cruiser with 2 port/stbd mounts and a prow, and putting two hangar bays on one side, prow macrocannon and putting in a bunch of lances on the other side.

I cover the topic in fair detail in this thread. Post #19 in particular goes over specific builds that use two bays with heavy weapons. Four bays in conjunction with prow torpedoes might be nasty though.

Yeah, I was pretty sure that the prow couldn't hold bays; I've never been too sure on why, but I'm assuming it's some mechanical thing that actually makes sense. Probably better to exit in the mothership's wake, rather than try to accelerate ahead of her, and such. My all-bays idea was with torps in the prow.

I read the post, and I can say I do like some of what I read. I can't say I have a good reason for it, but I still think I'll stick with a more "traditional" layout. While I love to make all numbers serve me, only me, and crush my enemies, some stuff I like more as "yeah, the standard way to do it looks like this," and I also like some range greater than the bombardment cannons allow for.

Strange aside, but I had the thought. If your ship has extra room, maybe space you aren't using, or maybe room left in a nice cargo area, can you store extra ordnance there? If I am planning for a long voyage, and not sure when next I'll get a chance to make port, and restock on my limited torpedoes, can I allot space to hold another batch of them, understanding that I'll still need time out of combat to have them moved to the right place, and loaded, or can you ONLY carry what the torp tube Component can store in its confines, and in the tubes? The Fortis carries 48, so it might not be so bad, but you CAN go through those in eight volleys, and some of the others can only carry a dozen, or two. While I accept that an aspect of NCs, torps, and AC is you have to be stingy with your limited assets, a massive ship with cavernous holds should be able to carry some stuff, if you were willing to sacrifice the "cargo room" other stuff might need. Perhaps I'll fake a Component, "Ordnance Stockpile", or some such. I can cost the same as the tubes, but function purely as an extended magazine, if you will. Sort of up to the player how the space in their ships is spent. Would also need to make two separate Acquisition tests to refill both, so it might not be too cheesy.

That's why you bring a tender with you. If you can afford 50 torpedoes or more, you can afford a dedicated supply ship.

According to the torpedo bombers entry in BfK, Munitoria can hold torpedoes. Cargo holds can as well, but since they aren't designed for cargo quite so explosive, if you take a crit to the component you pretty much risk critical existence failure (9 torpedoes detonating simultaneously within your hull? Yeah you're done). If you don't feel like keeping a tender around, build in more Munitoria.

Well, Korvallus is an NPC for story purposes I invented, so he is, to some extent, made of money, and while he isn't so rich as say Winterscale, Chorda, or LS Hax, he does have a rather high Profit Factor. That said, while I have considered having him be able to field an escort ship, or two (back in the story days, when rules were poof!, I planned for him to have two missile destroyers, probably Falchions, escort his carrier, and he had the Nova Cannon), I sometimes choose to err just barely on the side of something between believable and rules-possible, so fielding two or three ships, each frigate or cruiser-class, seemed a bit much, even compared to the RTs in Lure, though Bastille does. So, the story changed to the Hammerfall going on a special journey, and when it returned, battered and broken, some refits happened, and not too long after, Korvallus withdrew to a more administrative aspect of his dynasty, allowing lieutenants to fly in his name.

That BS translates to 3 ships with AC, torpedoes, and an NC became just one with AC and torps. Like I said, for torpedoes, the Hammerfall can carry a good number, so I'm not too worried; I just didn't know if it was possible to carry more outside the component. Short of making up a world, I wasn't sure how many places out there had a place that "sold" torpedoes, to restock, and I like to play Rogue Traders, comfortable with their nigh-limitless power, often cringing at the idea of entering Calixis, read "Imperium" space, where many of their powers are null and void, even a straight-laced, impossibly good guy like Korvallus. Perhaps I will write up a Falchion to escort the Hammerfall , if for nothing else than story-purposes.

According to the torpedo bombers entry in BfK, Munitoria can hold torpedoes. Cargo holds can as well, but since they aren't designed for cargo quite so explosive, if you take a crit to the component you pretty much risk critical existence failure (9 torpedoes detonating simultaneously within your hull? Yeah you're done). If you don't feel like keeping a tender around, build in more Munitoria.

Is there a stated number of how many torpedoes a cargo bay can hold? Or is that up to your GM?

Munitoria and cargo bays can hold 9 if, IIRC Cruiser sized or larger (might be light cruiser). Six if smaller. The value is the same in each case, which annoys me- RAW, that means that distributed bays, a cargo hold and lighter bay, smugglers bays, or in fact any kind of hold component holds the exact same number of torpedoes.

Let me rephrase that: this annoys me rather a lot.

The Argent Crusader in DW's Ark of Lost Souls has its primary launch deck in its Armoured Prow. But then again it's an ancient design.

Alex

The Argent Crusader in DW's Ark of Lost Souls has its primary launch deck in its Armoured Prow. But then again it's an ancient design.

Yeah, the power-armoured mary-sues always did have to be special little snowflakes. Even in BFG.

Well, 10K-old ships have their advantages, regardless of who is the owner.

Alex

With an asymmetric cruiser build using two macrocannon broadsides on port and two hangars on starboard, how hard is it to roll the ship to invert the arcs? It should be far easier than making the 180 degree turn and reversing direction, right?

I should think quite easy, but I don't know that the game system allows for such maneuvers.

With an asymmetric cruiser build using two macrocannon broadsides on port and two hangars on starboard, how hard is it to roll the ship to invert the arcs? It should be far easier than making the 180 degree turn and reversing direction, right?

A very valid question. It should be very easy.

Alex