Fellow BC players/GMs, please provide me with creative ideas on how cause trouble wreak havoc to an RT group to which I GM.

You are to hunt down a Rogue Trader crew using a damaged Dictator-class Cruiser (full of dangerous Starhawk Bombers) provided you have a Slaughter-class chaos cruiser at your disposal (you are working for Karrad Vall).

Vall has deals with a corrupted RT in which taking down this dictator would not only mean access to its hulk but also to being gifted with a brand new imperial free trader ship with registries and all (which would mean free access to planets in the Calixis Sector for your group).

Obviously, losing or heavily damaging your Slaughter Cruiser is a terrible idea and its original owner (Vall) would have your soul balls for it.

You have the rough location of where this ship may go within the Koronus Expanse and your sorcerers/demons are being able to reliably (but with some delay) follow the tracks of this ship in the warp to planets like Vaporius (heathen desertic and feudal planet) and Processional of the Damned (enormous, unnatural, nurgle-owned voidship graveyard).

You've also managed to drag a blasted worthless hulk of a system-ship to a path through which the RT may pass...

You can have 5-20 people passing as crew-members at the enemy ship. These people can have a mission and are able to receive/transmit messages whenever the ship specifically enters/leaves the warp through some very specific sorcery.

Does Karrad Vall care how damaged this wounded Dicator-Class is? Also, what is my Slaughter-Class equipped with? (i don't really know much about chaos ships)

A slaughter - assuming it's still standard-to-pattern - has massive but close-range weapons batteries. Essentially, you'd outgun the dictator-class massively even if she was undamaged, and you're a faster ship to boot.

The problem is that a slaughter has no fighter capacity and her defensive armaments are fairly light; if the dictator spots you at standoff distances, then repeated bombing runs will blow you to scrap metal long before you reach accurate gun range.

You need to plan an ambush, ideally whilst her bombers are busy elsewhere. This involves not merely tracking the rogue trader but getting ahead of it to set your trap. Finding out the Rogue Trader's goals is key.

Hiding a cruiser is not easy. A system with dust clouds, the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, or a complex system with multiple moons are all useful places to seek to engage. Drawing off the starhawks involves providing them with a target - the system ship might be useful for this. Don't try and attack the dictator directly with it, instead have it attack something distant the rogue trader will want to protect - he won't be able to manouvre his ship to intervene, so his only option is to launch his attack craft in support.

That's when your slaughter-class moves out of concealment nearby to engage the carrier. If you can stack the deck with sabotage - either of the ship's systems or the reserve bombers, so much the better. Finding out any blind spots to help you sneak up on him is probably the best option, other than that you might want to have them help your assault teams get on board (letting a party of elite troops in through service airlocks to attack the bridge whilst the "main" attack comes in through hull breaches and gun ports.

This actually gave me some good insight on hitting them with that boarding action (make a distraction and then hit the bridge directly... or maybe attract the troops and then have the saboteurs blow some airlocks open)!
Also, there could probably be some bombing which could leave the launch bays damaged or unpowered during an attack.

I am currently preferring planet-side encounters as the Ascension is quite a baddass ship even without its bombers (long range las broadsides coupled with a good lance weaponry and an archeotech voidshield).

Additional complications:
The "Ascension", Flagship of the Waldorf Dynasty

Dictator-class Cruiser

The Ascension has been known for being stoic (often ignoring hits that would normally cripple other voidships of the same class)

Essential components:
Jovian Pattern Class 4 Drive
Miloslav H-616.b Warp Engine (this warp engine is the thing leaving tracks in the warp)
Gellar Field
Castellan Shield Array (Archeotech Voidshields that provides double protection)
Flight Command Bridge
Vitae Pattern Life Sustainer
Voidsman Quarters
BG-15 Assault Scanners

Supplemental components
Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay
Barracks (filled with 2000 Zaythians - a War World people, and 1 Mechanized Infantry regiment - who doubles in voidship combat with about 18 000 troops)
Manufactorum*
Small Craft Repair Dock*
Pilot's Chamber*

Weapons:
Port: Sunsear Las-Broadside
Starboard: Sunsear Las-Broadside
Prow: Sunhammer Lance Battery

Hmm...

Kind of makes previous comment go double: Those Sunsear lasers give it massive reach, whereas a slaughter-class generally carries shorter range but more potent 'hard rounds' macrocannons; again, getting up close and personal will be critical.

The archeotech void shields are an issue, but you did mention she's damaged so hopefully that will equal things out. A bigger issue is the fact that she carries a lance mount in her prow rather than torpedo tubes - again, ordnance would be a big threat to a largely defenseless slaughter-class, but if we're already saying a close-range ambush is key, then the fact that the Ascension packs two cruiser weapon mounts rather than one is a big deal - normally you could trust your void shields to take more or less anything it can throw from a single macrobattery (especially lasers) but not if there's a lance shot coming in after it.

Two good things:

• She carries a BG-15 auspex rather than a naval sensor array. A Dictator's detection rating isn't exactly poor, but at least she's not carrying anything to increase it further.
• That cargo hold refit will impair her manouvrability, too, so if she doesn't see you coming you'll have an edge in trying to keep an advantageous tactical position; a slaughter is **** manouvrable - one of the fastest human ships larger than a raider or light cruiser, in fact - and a dictator isn't - so the opposed checks will be on your side.

The barracks...yeah, well, it's a Rogue Trader's flagship. A barracks component - and hence a regiment of troops - is pretty much a given if he expects a fight. Key to success will be not letting them get involved in the first place. Depressurising an entire regimental barracks is going to be difficult (although it's a very worthwhile target for critical hits!) but cutting off their access to key regions of the ship is possible.

Depending on the nature of their relationship with the Rogue Trader, suborning the Zaythi might not be a bad plan; you'd have a couple of thousand well-trained soldiers whose training basically revolved around capturing, destroying and boarding mechanised megastructures already based inside the enemy ship. That would probably depend on a suitably gifted Heretic and minions getting aboard somehow.

Hmm....Stoic, stoic....that save against criticals could be an issue with any sabotage attempts or trying to punch out key systems with your opening broadside. However, it reduces the profit factor Waldorf receives from endeavours. In addition, he's operating a cruiser-class flagship, and in addition to the addition, it's damaged. That means he's going to be running shy on funds, which in turn is (theoretically) going to make him extremely sensitive to threats to his pocketbook. That may be a way to lead him round by the nose into a trap. What's the Ascension's history?

Of course, you don't necessarily have to take him out yourself - if the Waldorf dynasty collapses, the other major rogue trader houses will swiftly move in and pick over their holdings. Why not see if you can arrange for this to happen the other way around - make Winterscale and/or Chorda (or both!) think Waldorf has picked sides in their ongoing little war and is fighting for the other side. If he's got no safe port to repair and re-arm, can't draft replacement crew and is forced to plunder his troops to make up deckhand numbers, you're stacking the deck further in your favour. Karrad Vall may not be that patient, though.

Equally, you may be able to find cannon fodder allies for your attack by looking at the Waldorf dynasty's enemies - if he's a militant rogue trader, he'll have plenty. Don't forget trying to pull strings via the Navigator houses, or the Enginseer Prime's home Forge, too.

Also - one last suggestion: Vall is a pirate, but the Heretics may have more far-reaching if less powerful contacts. With my Heretek hat on, consider contacting the Hollows (if you know anyone there) and acquiring cultures of the Obliterator Virus. Releasing that stuff covertly in the Ascension's engineerium decks should be good for a giggle.

Hells just releasing anything Chemical/Viral in the ship, Lower Decks or not, is going to give the guy pause and royaly cramp his Big Hat Style while hes trying to cure/kill off all the crew that are infected. Take those possible infiltrated pawns and you could have 5-6 different diseases running rampant all over the ship taxing systems and personel making fielding that many bombers an actual issue or even screwing with the gun crews til they are having issues. And hey the ship dosnt list a medciae deck so its going to be difficult to stop the infection in that large a population.

Thats a great way to get them into position for say a "Mago's Biologis Medical Research Station" or a Planet with a Doctor of renown on it, Aka that really nice big cardboard cutout you put up for them to find conveniently. And the best part is even if el capitan goes paranoid and just shoots it out of space...then he likely has a crew moral problem when the crew "Conveniently" finds out their captain shot up their own hope for survival like a mad man with no reasion.

All these of course also play into the BC crews faith in Nurgle to add spice to it all

welp posted that in the wrong thread....