I'm looking to expand my fleet.

Currently I have a Sword with 2 Sunsear Laser Batteries, and a Q-Ship with a Jovian Missile Battery and 3 Main Cargo Holds (coz it never said I couldn't)

I have my eyes set on some sort of carrier-type. I'm rather poor for an RT, so i'm looking into something no larger than a Light Cruiser, or a Cruiser if it can be done on a budget.

Does anyone have any ideas besides a Defiant Class Light Cruiser?

Well "on a budget" you could do an ambition, but once you put the landing bays in you might as well go for a Dictator and get the extra armor, detection, and hull integrity. If all you want is a light Carrier though, both the Dauntless and the Defiant are both about the same bang for your buck (after you factor in the cost of adding the bays to the Dauntless). They've got slightly different stats all told. but the differences aren't major.

There's no such thing as a carrier on the cheap. Not a real carrier.

Yes there is...

At Honest Alpharius, Used Ships and Cruisers!

The cheapest ships this side of the Eye of Terror!

Honest Alpharius....

The most honest name in dishonesty. Honest!

Cheapest ships this side of the Eye....

I would hate to see the interior. Probably got gore on the walls, and the leather on the captain's seat is all cracked and generally unpleasant to sit on. Its cheap coz they never spent the coin to make it look nice. I know this game, used-ship salesman. YOU WILL NOT GET ME WITH YOUR TACTICS.

Now, tell me about the warp engine. Does this class have an upgrade package? I love a good Miloslav.

@Errant Knight

I CAN spend the money to get a good one, i'm just looking for...what's the word....I just don't want to cripple myself, well, more than one already does when outfitting a VOIDSHIP.

Basically, does anyone have a good idea for a pure carrier-type of vessel, beside MOAR LANDING BAYS?

What's your PF? Also, how do you pay for ships? Do you pay maintenance as well?

I'd favour the Secutor or Dauntless, but then those cost almost as much as a full cruiser.

You want some cheap starships providing carrier-capacity ?

You buy Orions. Put some longe range macrocanons, and replace their free Main Cargo hold with a the special Launch Bay.

Sure, they will be very fragile.

but you've got fast, cheap, nimble escort ships, covering your rears thanks to keel weaponry, and that can also bring you money thanks to their transport capacity. and also fit the theme of an impoverished Rogue Trader. you can get 2 of of them for the price of one fitted Light cruiser...

Honest Alpharius....

The most honest name in dishonesty. Honest!

Cheapest ships this side of the Eye....

I would hate to see the interior. Probably got gore on the walls, and the leather on the captain's seat is all cracked and generally unpleasant to sit on. Its cheap coz they never spent the coin to make it look nice. I know this game, used-ship salesman. YOU WILL NOT GET ME WITH YOUR TACTICS.

Now, tell me about the warp engine. Does this class have an upgrade package? I love a good Miloslav.

Blood? no no that is just...red paint, yeah. Red Paint. Now also available in Grandfathers's Green Grime, Bruised Flesh Purple and "Color of the Warp" Wich is very nice but a bit hard to describe...

We use only the best flayed skin for our captain's command thrones. Human or Eldar skin for that silky smooth feel, or rugged ork hide for longlasting quality. All our Warp engine are of the highest quality!

How can we keep our prices so low? Most of our ships don't have Geller fields! Our usual customers don't seem to need those for some reason...

I second Mordechai's suggestion. An Orion gets you the fastest Carrier around. You're only limited to a single, one strength landing bay, but the SP cost will be at least half of what a Light Cruiser would get you. You can take a Lathe 2a Drive, and be able to fast-deploy torpedo bombers in combat if you need to.

Also, Orions can mount Torpedoes. With an Empyrean Mantle it makes for a great flexible ship.

@Marwynn

I pay for ships using the 10's place of their base ship point value, so 60 SP=6 PF. for maintenance, i actually use you method.

Since we elected to start out broke (the last game got ridiculous about PF) i currently have 15 PF open for expenditure. I'm not looking to get one right at this moment, i'm planning for the near-future if my Egarian Dominion looting endeavor goes to plan (I smell Rak'Gol happening) To be honest though, i have never paid for a voidship yet in this playthrough, apart fom my frigate during creation. i pulled the q-ship out of the Battleground after a tense fight with some pirate/looter vessel. Never doing that again, let me tell you! Almost cost a ship to get a ship....

@ Mordechai Von Razgriz

That is a convincing argument, i'll have to look further into an Orion.

@Robin Graves

No Geller Fields??? Good Emperor how deliciously risky!!! Oh, and can you do Tyranid skin? That would suit me better I think. What's your deal on Lathe Sprint Trader drives?

Ahh, cool! If you have that kinda leeway go for a Battlecruiser. An Armageddon has 63 PF, and if you're using DFO that's 8 PF for maintenance. Even if you round up that's the full 15. The question is where are you going to get a battlecruiser--that hasn't been pre-owned by heretic.

Or even a Repulsive Grand Cruiser, if you're willing to burn an extra PF. But that's just me and my "big ships" fascination.

The sanest choice is a Lunar or a Dictator if you really want to. I'll caution you about carriers though, those acquisition tests for replacement attack craft have some hefty penalties.

Doesn't any given battlefleet have a few battlecruisers mothballed away, just sucking up money and space? I have good ties with those space-yokels......

I imagine those tests are no worse than trying to keep yourself in melta torpedoes, or indeed, normal torpedoes. or anyhting fancy and nice for that matter.

Here in the glorious IMPERIUM OF MANKIND, ALL THE GOOD S**T GOES TO THE MECHANICUS AND INQUISITION! TROLOLOLOL

Only cruiser (or the galleon) make for good cruisers and here's why. A light cruiser is what, 60 spaces of ship? And it carries what, 6 squadrons? A cruiser is 80 spaces of ship and carries 24 squadrons. The light cruiser is just not enough bang for the buck. You're better off loading it with 2 broadsides and a lance (a swivel one). It's about efficiency.

The best carrier is the Conquest Galleon. It's the hybrid cruiser/transport. You can put 4 landing bays in it, and still fit the cargo landing bay component for non-battle craft (i.e. aeronautica), and still have a main cargo bay left over for making money. It's a win-win scenario with an extra win thrown in for good measure.

You can run the numbers any way you like. Give your squadron 2 cruisers and 1 light cruiser, or 1 cruiser and 2 light cruisers, or 1 cruiser, 1 light cruiser, and 3 escorts. You're not going to have as many batteries bearing as if you convert a larger ship into carrier duty. The thing about carrier efficiency is that ALL spaces can bear on the enemy in a single round. Only a single side per ship can engage an enemy vessel. All small attack craft can bear against the target simultaneously. It's like getting to shoot all your weapons at once. And once you get it down, you'll have broken the game. If you don't break the game, you're doing something wrong.

We have a game now, coming to a conclusion, where we have the Conquest Galleon as a carrier. It has 8 Fury, 12 Starhawk, and 4 Shark squadrons. It can send out, in two rounds, 4 attack groups of 1 Fury and 3 Starhawk squadrons. At most, 1 squadron will get driven away per attack group. Of course, that's the Furies. "The bomber always gets through." That's 4 attacks at Command 110 or so. That's an 80% chance of 6 hits at 1d10+4 PER ATTACK (or x4). At worst (1 chance in 100 million), you'll only get 16 hits. On the average you'll score about 22-23 hits.

Oh, and that still leaves behind 4 squadrons of Furies for CAP (CVP) unless you want to launch your Sharks, too. I usually save the Sharks for landing parties. That's 1600 troops per wave, landing about 30 minutes apart. Oh, and did I forget the Aeronautica? Well, those Sharks can go in escorted by 120 Thunderbolts and 60 Marauders. Shock and awe, baby, shock and awe.

What was that? The sound of game breakage?

I have some house rules for small craft in the next game. Simple, but they bring it back around to where it should be.

By the Dark Gods of Number Crunching......that may be just enough dakka.

A trick from battlefleet gothic: Don't send your small craft out in wave after wave (as they will get shot down) but have your fighter/bomber waves form up into a large swarm and then overwhelm the target with lots of small craft.

Another trick is usuing the swarm not just agains enemy attck craft but to stop incomming torpedos aswell.

And that is why I'm house ruling blast markers from BFG.

I'm with you in spirit Marwynn. I really wanted to recreate the effects of blast markers without the clutter of the markers. A friend and I played a few thrown together scenarios and came up with the following for the next game. #s 5 & 6 are our current fixes for attack craft and blast markers. I'm not going with Mathhammer this time around, but something that still accounts for the Mathhammer fixes.

Starship Combat

1. Macrocannon damage only stacks per weapon component; multiple components can no longer salvo together.
2. Lances have no range modifications and each strength point fires separately. DoS count only for crits.
3. Broadsides' Strength are halved and fire twice (STR 5 would fire twice at 3 STR and 2 STR).
4. Shields go down for the entire round.
5. The Abstract Method is used to keep track of small craft losses. Attack craft used in battle (or even just flown through the battle) always make a maintenance check after that battle. Small craft form Wings made up of squadrons. A Wing can have as many squadrons as Flight Crew Rating/10 (rounded down). Bomber squadrons can only stack damage together from the same Wing. The damage of bombers is 1d10 + Flight Crew Rating/10 (rounded down).
6. Ships firing or being fired at are at -10 for augur checks.

And Robin, while that is an excellent tactic in BFG, it is entirely unnecessary in BFK. Escort ships can't help with their turrets. You can't use main guns against squadrons (I left that out in our house rules fix; we originally were going to include that...it added an element back in but was unwieldy...the maintenance check at the end of battle was good enough to account for that and blast markers, we felt). Turrets are pretty weak in BFK, unless you have a very well-trained crew. Now, if you have intercepting fighters, that's a whole different story. Still, I like the essense of the tactic, and it fits in well with the early days of the carrier battles, where squadrons spent time circling their intended targets while the torpedo bombers (always the slowest planes in an attack wave) caught up. I've considered adding a rule where shooting turrets at each succeeding attack WING is at -10 BS. It would fit in well with other multiple task rules in the game.

BTW, I won't be allowing torpedo squadrons in the next game. I just can't come up with house rules I like on them that aren't bulky rules. They should have smaller torpedoes with smaller warheads and shorter ranges. They should do more damage than bombers when they hit, but not as much as ship-launched torpedoes. They should be able to better avoid (or completely avoid) turret fire since they can launch outside their range (say 3 VUs). But, they should be extremely vulnerable to interception and escort fire. I have added the Mechanicus Fleet Defense Turrets as a special component, but they are Very Rare items. In the final tally, I just don't like the 3 plane squadrons, and I haven't come up with a fix for that. Feel free to make suggestions.