I hate making threads like this, but here you have it.

My group and I have screwed up horribly and made a mess in the Koronus Expanse, and since I lost my last ship I'm being given a Light Cruiser now (it sounds like failing upwards, but it makes sense in context). I don't know which hull it's going to be yet (basic idea is workable with all of them, and while we'd all love the Secutor, we're not holding our breath on it).

My group and I are pretty settled on making a mini-carrier, with 2 Launch bays, the Bridge, and the Pilots Chambers and Repair Bay. While it makes us vulnerable to guns, with 2 PCs wanting to become pilots, and a whole host of NPC attack craft, it seems like a good choice (leaving me and the Explorator to man the ship).

For the remaining weapon mount we hadn't talked it over, but I figured I'd go with the good old Sunsear battery since it has a nice long range as a reasonable economy. We're not using mathhammer rules for starship combat, for reference. And if we end up with a spare weapon mount (and enough remaining funds), perhaps some Bombardment Cannons, to bring the pain to anything getting too close, as well as planets that piss me off (there's a few at this point).

We've made a list of possible other bits to add too. Since one of my last ships was lost to boarding that means a Tenebro-Maze is on the short list. And since I now have my very own Inquisitorial minder (who I can't just kill), I'm thinking a temple and/or hymn broadcasters would also be good additions. And other various bits like flak turrets, field bracing, fire suppression make the list as well since I have an eye toward being a bit more survivable in combat this time out.

Mainly what I'm asking for is advice on what numbers of attack craft I should take, as well as other additional ship components...

For attack craft, I had a loose idea of 3 squadrons of fighters, 2 of bombers, and the last one maybe a squad of Gun-Cutters (to use as multi-purpose scouts, heavy transports, and survey ships)? One of my crewmembers will be assembling fighta-bommerz down in the cargo hold, so that craft losses can eventually be made up for, they won't be available for combat, but we can transfer one up from there in at least a day.

Alternatively, take another squad of fighters or bombers, and install a Lighter bay for the non-combat launch capability and storage for the gun-cutters.

As for additional components, while we're all having an eye toward survivability and competence in a fight this time, we also know we're hemmoraging Profit Factor, so trade is in order as well. I'm thinking being able to do some light trading (or privateering) would probably be the best, so we don't have to sacrifice our ability to fight. If we took everything on our short list (everything for a mini-carrier, plus the sunsear, temple, and tenebro-maze) we're left with about 12 space on even the smallest of the Light Cruiser hulls, with more than enough power to spare.

(oh, and there's no way we're going to be able to fit archeotech or xenotech on it at this time)

How are you getting 6 squadrons of fighters from 2 launch bays? Unless you're getting a Defiant then you're limited to Strength 1 Escort Bays. Assuming your GM is nice and gives you the full 2 squadrons per strength, that still only leaves you with 4. I also think your Math is off, because building your ship with the Escort Bays, smallest space essential components, Tenebro-Maze, Temple Shrine, Pilot's Chambers, Repair Dock, Lighter Bay and with a Sunsear brings me up to 57 space, which doesn't leave you a lot of extra component space. Not that you need it because those are a lot of components as is, but it's worth pointing out.

It seems like you've got a pretty solid build (apart from the reliance on not using Mathhammer. Booooo.), but how exactly are you assembling Fighta-bomberz for your use? You're building the fighter that has the maneuverability and construction of a brick, that flies because Orks believe in magic for your own use?

From my experiences with Carriers, they're amazing on offence, but I discovered that if you're up against Raiders or Frigates then you're in trouble. They can outmaneuver your fighters and pick you off at long range, and then move in for the kill when your fighters have to dock to refuel. If you don't have an escort, or don't get the first turn in combat, you can be in a lot of trouble. ESPECIALLY since you're not using Mathhammer.

You can carry a max of 3 squadrons times launch bay strength.

You're probably right about the math, it was very rough (but also didn't include the lighter bay, and maybe the sunsear afterall).

And as for the fighta-bommerz and how I'm going to have them built/used. Well, I have an Ork on my ship for that.

Hm, wonder why I so completely misremembered the squadron rule from BFK. After their disaster with their last carrier (both bays destroyed in the first three rounds of combat) my group has shied away from Carriers so it isn't a huge deal. I hope I'm at least right that it takes a turn to ready and then a turn to launch, and you can only ready/launch up to the strength value.

Orks can build Orkish stuff, but that's not the same thing as saying humans can fly Orkish stuff. An Orkish gun becomes unreliable in the hands of anyone else, and that's far, far less complicated than a starfighter. I don't think there are any rules against it, but I'm surprised your GM allows you to get away with it. If your Ork also has a whole heap of Orks on board to pilot these fightercraft then that probably won't lead to any complications.

I still think if you're bulding a Light Carrier then you're taking the Defiant, otherwise you're in trouble when it comes to actually getting fighters into the Void.

I wouldn't recommend launch bays on anything less than a full cruiser. Two squadrons will do fine against smaller targets, even if they're just two bomber squadrons, but they're easy to damage and you may struggle a bit with replacing them. But if your heart's set on it, go for it. Especially, if you have Orky pilots for your Orky craft.

I'd recommend an Endeavour or even the Defiant with the built-in launch bays. For the Defiant, I'm of the opinion that it deserves to have two Prow slots.

@ Erathia: Per BFK most launch bays are capable of holding Three squadrons per strength point though they can only launch/recover one at a time. So that's where they are getting six squadrons from. (BFK: Pg. 11, Sidebar: Room in launch bays)

How you outfit your light cruiser depends heavily on the style of the game. One problem is that the only launch bay you can mount is the Jovian pattern escort class launch bay. This will seriously hinder your launch capability and thus your naval combat effectiveness. That being said, It is possible to configure your Secutor as an Astartes strike cruiser: Jovian Launch bay forward/ Bombardment cannon dorsal mount/ Port and starboard sunsear batteries. This will work fine if your game is combat oriented.

If your game is more exploration oriented, I prefer the standard Dauntless since that's what it's more or less designed for! It's faster, so you can outrun a cruiser rather than engage it and excersize your savior pods again! A typical Dauntless (AKA; BFG configuration) would have Port/Starboard Sunsear laser battery (For range) or Port/Starboard Rysa Plasma batteries (for heavier damage.). The Prow battery would typically be a Titanforge lance battery. Since the Prow weapon can actually fire to the broadside on a light cruiser, this makes for a respectable broadside! (Equal to a Lunar!) Your Build should also include a lighter bay and extended supply vaults. Since this is a standard (Corebook) build and is in fact the most common Imperial light cruiser pattern, This should be something your gm should not have a problem with! It's also likely that this is the quickest thing the Inquisition could have ready for you anyway!

Bays come with 1 squadron per strength, 2 if the GM is nice, or 3 if you choose what's behind door #3. You have an Ork, so door #3 is probably an option.

Light cruisers don't make good carriers. It's hard to beat Sunsear broadsides with a Sunhammer lance combo.

Current group objective is to make money. Which I'm going to funnel into building a new fleet, so my Rogue Trader can possibly survive the whole debacle that led us up to this point (our group lost everything we weren't carrying, and created a powerful threat to the Imperium in the process).

The Bridge allows me to use the escort bays to work toward profit as well as combat, with the right craft on hand. And a hold and/or lighter bay is my thinking to further expand on that money making potential.

And you're right about no1 having enough Orks for more than maybe 1 fighter... which is why I'm going to get more. My Rogue Trader specialized in crazy plans, and spinning some BS in his favour if that doesn't work... and I created such a mess that the Inquisitor doesn't care about a few Xenos on my ship (yeah, it's that bad).

Maybe I could do something about making the ship more stealthy? Run silently, laying out in wait among debris or other good places in a system, letting the attack craft do their work.

And all that said, we haven't ruled out going with another option than a light carrier. With 40 PF left (rolled 60 to start with, so we kinda got carried away with being ridiculously wealthy), I'm willing to burn it all the way down to 20-25, if it gets us an excellent ship. My RT has several bargaining chips, and enough moxy to get himself a good price at Port Wander. The ship we're getting is from the Dynasty's fleet though, of an unknown light cruiser hull with only the essential components supplied. As the heir apparent he's made everyone look bad, and they're taking the whole affair very seriously (fail again, and he's getting tortured forever).

Silent Running wouldn't be too good an option for a Carrier, because a fighter craft can only be away from its bays for four Turns before being required to turn back. It's a little vaguely worded on if that means that it completely runs out of fuel after four Turns, or if it has the equivalent of eight Turns but will be lost if it's not back by that point, but I choose to read it as it has four Turns of full operations, and then goes to a non-combat mode in order to return to the Carrier.

So if your Carrier is in Silent Running, either the defenders have to massively fail a spot check to not notice where the attack craft are returning to, or your attack craft are not going to be able to find the carrier and are screwed.

Also if you're just out to make money, according to the fluff a carrier is the worst way to do it, as fighters require constant maintenance. I've toyed around with the idea of imposing a further ship maintenance penalty to carriers to reflect this, and I may now go through with it since apparently I mixed up how many squadrons a bay starts with, with its maximum.

Yeah, carriers are military investments, because the military can just "raise taxes", and pay for whatever (In the Imperium, anyway.) I say that, and yet even the Imperial Navy seems to frown on carriers, in favor of bigger gunboats. Personally, I love carrier vessels, and several ships among the handful I've made are "dedicated" carriers (both the Hammerfall and the Passage of Judgment , one because it was my first carrier, and that RT had reason, and the other because the main protagonist of that story is a Fighter Ace, even id those aren't so much a thing in 40k), but there is, and has to be, a certain investment in that style of vessel, and if you aren't military-oriented, preferably military-integrated, and on good terms with them, you probably shouldn't have said ship.

As for fighter flight time, I suppose I can see either way. I can easily see players pushing six turns of combat out, believing that they can just "go get them", once the enemy is neutralized, and if they don't have a player/critical NPC in them, they can as easily be brushed off, losswise, as your torpedoes, but I do prefer four turns of action, surrounded by fractions of four turns of getting there and getting back.

My maths is 100% here as im using an old spreadsheet ship builder and don't have books to hand but if you take a Defiant hull you should be able to squeeze on the following for an efficient dedicated carrier:

Plasma Drive - Jovian 3

Warp Engine - Strelov 2

Gellar Field - Standard

Void Shield - Single Repulsor

Bridge - Flight Command

Life Sustainer - Vitae Pattern

Crew Quarters - Clan-Kin quarters

Augur Array - R-50 Multiband

Prow - Sunsear Laser Battery

Port - Jovian Escort Bay

Starboard - Jovian Escort Bay

Armour Plating

Armoured Prow

Augmented Retro Thrusters

Barracks

Brig

Crew Reclamation Facility

Drop Pod Launch Bays

Flak Turrets

Manufactorum

Medicae Deck

Murder Servitors

Pilot's Chamber

Small Craft Repair Bay

Tenebro Maze

This gives you an incredibly tough but still relatively fast and manouverable carrier vessel. It can handle fighting off larger carriers or multiple smaller carriers as it has Flak Turrets and boosts to Craft Ratings. The Sunsear may not pack a big punch but it can hit reliably out to a long range and combined with the heavy armour and incredibly heavily armoured prow means you can weather return fire with ease. Clan-kin Quarters, tenebro maze and murder servitors mean you are brutal in hit and run and boarding actions.

Other supplemental components boost a variety of warfare related activites and provide lots of roleplaying hooks on your ship, and give minor boosts to Trade and Exploration and a bigger boost to Military Endeavour Achievement Points.

I must thank you all again for all the help. My group and I aren't getting the ship as soon as we thought, because our GM feels we haven't been punished for our carelessness enough (to be fair, we really deserve it). Which gives us more time to plan out our ship design.

The armoured prow is something I hadn't of at all, but makes a lot of sense, as the ship doesn't have guns on its sides anyway, so is free to keep it front toward the enemy.

Another idea we've kicked around lately is Mars Broadsides and a Bombardment Cannon (possibly good quality for all, to save on space). With enough additional toughness for the ship to speed into range and begin chewing its target apart with concentrated fire.

Simple rule of naval warfare... a carrier, by itself, dies by itself. If you have one shop, it should be a good old fashioned gun boat. Do yourself a favor, regardless of hull type, mathhammer. Macrocannons, with extra macro and cannon.

Prow - Sunsear Laser Battery

Armoured Prow

Imposing: A ship with this Component may not have Prow macrobatteries or lances.

Nice try, but no

Well, no Armoured Prow on a Light Cruiser anyway, so that should go without saying.

A Reinforced Prow maybe, but not an Armoured Prow.

As i said, didn't have books to hand, just an old spreadsheet but even a reinforced prow will buff the armour a bit

is there a thread or other repository anywhere of maxi ship builds?

IE. a ship cranked up for trade, and another statted up to excel at crime,

and a creed-worthy ship, and an intimidation ship,,

and a boarding mastery ship,, etc ,etc

I saw a ship the other day that was like +750 on Trade endeavors, and wondered if there

were other examples out there.

in other words, ships built to maximize a certain activity to the probable expense of others.

Like this?

Orion Star Clipper

Speed: 11

Maneuverability: +30

Detection: +10

Hull Integrity: 36-1d5

Armor: 12

Turret Rating: 1

Power: 40

Space: 40

SP: 70

Population: 102

Morale: 100-24+15+3d5 (+3d5)

Rating: 30

Planet-bound for Millenia: +10 Maneuverability within 5 VUs of a planet

Component

Power

Space

SP

Notes

Modified Lathe 1 Drive (40) 8 * +1 speed

Bridge of Antiquity 1 1 2 +10 Command and Social, +5 Maneuver

BC Miloslav Warp Engines 7 9 2 x2 Warp speed, encounters every 3 days

Warpsbane Hull 1 0 2 Navigation (Warp) +10, roll twice and choose

GC Repulsor Shield 5 1 1 No maneuver penalty for celestial phenom

BC Vitae Pattern Life Sustainer 3 1 2

GC Voidsmen Quarters 1 2 1

GC M-100 Augur Array 2 0 1

Main Cargo Hold 2 * *

8 x GC Luxury Passenger Quarters 8 8 16

GC Tenebro Maze 1 1 3 +10 Command v. Hit & Run, choose crits

GC Empyrean Mantle 2 0 3 Silent Running 2 degrees

Teleportarium 1 1

GC Arboretum 1 2 2 +2 pop, x2 endurance

GC Voss Torpedo Tubes 1 4 2

BC Disruption Macrocannon 4 2 4 +1 strength, +1 damage

Achievement Bonuses:

Trade 925

Creed 800

Criminal 850

It's quite by the RAW and it will net you +25.75 PF on the Into The Maw introductory scenario. It's also obnoxious, although I allowed it. Of course, I had to house rule PF from that point on and charged them lots of permanent PF for ships and colonies, and made them return to the Calixis Sector every trip for more colonists...and...and...it's why I say the Achievement Point system is broken.

And it can still be improved on.

The problem is the luxury passenger quarters, of course. You could save another 4-6 spaces, fill them with even more luxury passenger quarters and have yourself a ridiculous time.

only with much tweaking did my ship designer make that ship . Excel RTSU-V1-41r40

Min-maxxing the ship offends my sensibilities as a player. And probably my GM as well, since he's not likely to let such a one-trick pony get by for long and knows how to beat such cheap and cheesy tricks. Besides.. seriously, macrocannon spam got nothing on my RT's ability to talk people into loading his ammo supplies on board their ship, thinking it's his cargo.

As for the infamous PF machine posted above, I wouldn't let it last one session before a pirate ship ran her down and looted her, and the players would deserve every second of pain for passing in something like that.

It's not as easy to simply run down a ship as you might think. PC Explorator's can make ships go really fast. Of course, you can always fudge the dice as the GM, or simply set up no-win situations for your party to lose to. That's cool, right?

And I'd far rather deal with a group that min-maxes as a group in order to do well than deal with THAT player who min-maxes as an individial in order to be the shiniest snowflake in the drift. The former is intelligent team play, albeit at the cost of playability (but that's my job as GM). The latter is a psychological deficiency no game can help with.

And we've all seen RTs with 80 Fel, +20 Charm, +10 Talent, +30 circumstantial bonuses mostly through cheesy equipment. That's not good play, either. I found ways to deal with their cheese the same way your GM finds ways to deal with yours. So save your indignation for Sundays. Egyptoid asked for an example and I gave him one.

Speaking of which, what did you mean, Egyptoid? Your excel spreadsheet didn't want to allow the ship or what?

It's not as easy to simply run down a ship as you might think. PC Explorator's can make ships go really fast. Of course, you can always fudge the dice as the GM, or simply set up no-win situations for your party to lose to. That's cool, right?

And I'd far rather deal with a group that min-maxes as a group in order to do well than deal with THAT player who min-maxes as an individial in order to be the shiniest snowflake in the drift. The former is intelligent team play, albeit at the cost of playability (but that's my job as GM). The latter is a psychological deficiency no game can help with.

And we've all seen RTs with 80 Fel, +20 Charm, +10 Talent, +30 circumstantial bonuses mostly through cheesy equipment. That's not good play, either. I found ways to deal with their cheese the same way your GM finds ways to deal with yours. So save your indignation for Sundays. Egyptoid asked for an example and I gave him one.

Speaking of which, what did you mean, Egyptoid? Your excel spreadsheet didn't want to allow the ship or what?

Best guess is his spreadsheet was iffy with the good/best quality component power/space modifiers.

That said, a ship with those kinds of modifiers is going to make itself an attractive target for pirates and rival/hostile rogue traders. It's pretty much going to require a PC crew and/or capable escorts in the long run.

Miloslav + Runecaster + Starcharts = Overdose of Speed ?

what else boosts speed ?

Make the ship Skittish, it lowers combat speed but also reduces transit time by several weeks. Anything that adds to the Warp Navigation tests too.

Markov drives, but you can't have both them and Miloslav