The following is long and tedious, and seeks your educated opinions. You have been warned!!!

So, having a big ship, brimming with guns and armor, is a great privilege to some Rogue Traders, but a big boat is a big target, and both the Imperial Navy and our own naval armed forces frequently use smaller gunboats to escort their bigger brethren, lest they be overwhelmed by little hordes, and lost. Rogue Traders are often no different; both Lady Sun Lee and her nemesis, Lord Admiral Bastille, are known to have their cruisers escorted by one or more other vessels, and I can only assume that other Rogue Traders with the resources to afford it would try todo this, as well. Thus, I am wondering if I should/could do the same?

The RT character I give the most attention to, at the moment, is Qel-Drake. His flagship, the Exalted Wyrm is a Tyrant cruiser, packing Hecutor plasma batteries, Titanforge lances, and a prow-mounted set of Mars-pattern torpedo tubes, loaded with melta torps. This makes the ship a decent powerhouse, in my own eyes, anyway, able to hit targets at great range, and packing armor-piercing lances for those enemies that close with him, but it still seems plausible that one might want an escort vessel, and so I thought I might make the Wyvern .

The Wyvern is a Cobra-class raider, and I picked it because it is small, mobile, and rather cheap on the SP; the fact that its class name is a reptile might also not be lost on her dragon motif master, but described as a military destroyer raider vessel, and often packing torpedoes. While the book prattles on that "most Rogue Traders lose the large torpedo systems for increased stowage", and yada yada, primarily, I think because the rules for them were put into a different book, and they are spendy to maintain, I'm intentionally keeping it as an offensive support vessel, and so she will maintain the Gryphonne tubes she would normally have, and load plasma warheads. It's "like a breath weapon", a nasty surprise, and I have a fondness for torpedo boats. It'll be long-voyage prepped, like the Exalted Wyrm , and some of its space might go to storing emergency stuff, and possibly some extra torpedoes, since it won't be "raiding" as much. I'm thinking of giving it extra armor, but it'll still be faster than many things, and able to either do little jobs alone, or get to an advantageous position for the Exalted Wyrm's benefit.

Since the Wyvern is a bodyguard ship, currently sporting one long-range armament, what should I put into the dorsal mount? What would compliment the duo's already established armaments? Long range? Short range? Should I risk the speed loss, to give it the extra armor? It would surpass a number of frigates, and approach some cruisers in armor, while still being faster than many non-raiders, but it will sit there, backing up a cruiser, much of the time. Can you conceal the tubes, maybe trick the enemy into thinking its "just another Wolfpack raider", until you pepper them with torpedoes, or are they OBVIOUS, like Nova Cannons? I like the Cobra, but might there be a better option? As I said, it got the job because the books says its SUPPOSED to carry torpedoes.

Lastly, when you have a party, and they acquire an escort vessel for their own ship, what sort of individual commands it? Would they build more like a Warrantless Rogue Trader, or use more Void Master stuff, even though you use Rogue Trader to make a captain?

Firstly- yes. Escorts are really important for serious capital/supercapital vessels. For an example, the infamous Planet Killer was considered an invincible menace until it got caught without its escorts (and was repeatedly torpedoed up the tail-pipe by a squadron of Cobras).

For a ship like a Tyrant (and for that matter, as a general task for escorting larger warships), the escort's job is going to be to herd ships away from the larger vessel's vulnerable stern aspect. I would keep the Wyvern tucked in relatively close, and be prepared to take the speed hit for extra armour. In general, I would give a Cobra something long-ranged like Sunsears, but given that the Wyvern will be staying fairly close, I might be tempted to give it something with a little more short-ranged oomph if you can find the space.

(As an aside, escorts for civilian ships/transports should be prepared to range out and intercept threats to their charges far away, so I wouldn't necessarily take the extra armour if that is the purpose)

Torpedo tubes are generally fairly obvious, but it is possible to fit false plating to conceal the ports until firing. However, the plasma drives of the torpedoes will leave fairly obvious scorching on the prow around the tubes, so it could well take a drydock and refit to re-conceal them after use, unless you were to take make sure the prow is already blackened so that the marks don't show. Alternatively, it might possible to just make it look like a stylised figurehead (for example, a large skull, with the tubes concealed in recesses of the eye sockets, with the orbits of the sockets blackened).

Finally, it's a matter of party preference- my players gave their escort/scout ship to the Seneschal.

Well by RAW you could totally cover up the torpedo tubes if you were lucky and got Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. Remember, you're gunning for people at 30,000+ kilometers away: they won't see the scorch marks, their augurs will simply register as no prow armament. And then they die screaming. But yeah, up close it's pretty darn obvious, but at that point they're either about to ram and board or their boarding shuttles are closing in, neither situation being good for torps.

But back to the question of escorts. Yes, since your main ship is a nasty long-range menace to societies the sector over, your raider should be bulked up with armor and given short range but heavy hitting weapons to balance out its torp armament. If you have the inclination, some Pyros Melta Cannons could be good fun or a standard plasma battery would be sufficient as well.

As to whether it would be like a warrantless rogue trader. I would say no, he would a bonded vassal-captain as I call them (since a voidship is like a city, I tend to treat captains as a sort of count, ruling over his or her county, and a rogue trader as more of a duke) so the PC you give the Wyvern to is going to be your sworn captain, though I would say he has full rein on his own ship so long as you don't give some grand overarching order.

However I've noticed I treat the Imperium differently from most others in that respect. These are of course guidelines that make sense to me. If you like em, have at it.

I'd make the wyvern stealthy rather than tanky personally. Give it some stuff that lets it easily intercept incoming attacks. It should be something that hides it's full abilities from enemies, even it's entire pressence. It'll lend your capital ship an extra layer of scariness if you play it right. People will think that it's a lone power, able to take on anything thrown at it, that bad things just happen to happen to anyone trying the old 'torp up the tailpipe' method.

I actually make a distinction between vassal-captainship and wholly owning an escort. If you buy a ship, the captain is your employee. You are responsible for the vessel and it's crew in it's entirety, for any action performed by them, they are completely under your command. I treat vassal captains someone who joined the Dynasty with their own ship and crew. Thus, they have full authority over their ship and crew, but follow the RTs directions and/or cut them in on the profit in exchange for the weight and protection of the your Warrant.

At the moment, I'm planning on falling back on the cliche that the Captain of the Wyvern is another hard-luck case that Aedan assisted in getting out of hot water, and while she no longer owes him anything, and they both feel that way, she chooses to stay out of a sense of "it's never boring with this idiot around". The Wyvern is Qel-Drake's and he permits her to captain it for him, to serve as his vessel's escort, or ranging assistance, but she could freely leave the ship, and his employ, if she wanted; Aedan even has decent severance packages, but who'd WANT to give up captaining a void ship, and getting to take part in the exploits of a crazy, boisterous anime space pirate? It's sad, as I think about it, how well that describes him, but sometimes I feel the 40kverse, as I see it, could use a little "anime jolt."

As a side note, with a cruiser and a raider being rather different in size, I wonder if there could be a way to have the escort latch onto the cruiser's hull, possibly as power conservation, but mostly to avoid a second auger ping, and then separate for show time, when needed. Surely not during warp travel, but in conventional void movement. Hmm. Could a smaller ship like this hide in the shadow/wake of its bigger sibling, to fool augers, at least for a while?

Escorts can be very handy, but not absolutely necessary. By chance, our Dynasty wound up running with a Conqueror and 2 light cruisers...no escorts. We were fine. We ran a CL as an escort.

The right ship for your escort(s) is dependent on the ship in question and your standard MO. You've stated that you go for long-range kills, which implies you like to stand off. That means your opponents will want to close, and fast. Alasseo pointed out one tactic your opponents could use. Give you something big and threatening to fire at and let the little guys swarm your stern, where you can't fire at them. Hence, you need a stern guard for that eventuality.

Filliman came up with a decent tactic against that method. Get yourself an escort (personally, I'd go for a Sword for this duty, but you don't always get a choice...the Turbulent would be equally good) and load it with short-range heavy hitters, since your opponent is going to close to your range anyway. If you use Mathhammer, then melta, plasma, or Stygies batteries are nice for this option. Consider a quality upgrade on the weapon damage...once again range won't be a factor, since your escort isn't the real target anyway.

Funny thing is a Dauntless would actually make a pretty decent, if expensive, escort. Why? Because in addition to decent armor, speed, etc, it has really good detection. The enemy can always use silent running on you too, especially if they want to slip in close to negate your range advantage, and the Tyrant doesn't have terribly great detection.

None of the raiders except the Shrike and the Viper have decent detection, and honestly none of them have the sort of durability to stay in a fight alongside a cruiser and/or against the sort of things that would make an assault on a big showy RT ship. Shrike might do in a pinch if you're willing to negate most of it's speed and manoeuvrability with excess void armor. The Viper is just too weak to be anything more than a mobile sensor station, although nobody does it better.

I like the Turbulent for the job too, though I'd be more concerned with boosting it's speed just a little than further improving it's armor. Not much, just another +1 so it isn't immediately left in the dust when engaging a squadron of raiders.

For the Wyvren? I'd keep it to long range and give it an empyrian mantle and a good auger array. Don't worry about extra armor since you're hoping to be siting in silent running, keeping the enemy at arms length, or punishing them while they try to push in close to your cruiser.

As a side note, with a cruiser and a raider being rather different in size, I wonder if there could be a way to have the escort latch onto the cruiser's hull, possibly as power conservation, but mostly to avoid a second auger ping, and then separate for show time, when needed. Surely not during warp travel, but in conventional void movement. Hmm. Could a smaller ship like this hide in the shadow/wake of its bigger sibling, to fool augers, at least for a while?

Well they have the Space Dock Piers in one of the books (BFK i think) which mentions ships docking. Ramming and boarding is similar to it also, as described in the main RT. Alas, both actions require little to no movement to continue the actions. As a house rule, you could say that a significantly smaller craft could latch onto a mother ship with the right components.

As for ships hiding other ships, that happens all the time in the real world. Airplanes masking other airplanes radar signatures, cars masking other cars (either intentionally or un-intentionally) from police speed detectors, etc etc. I’m pretty sure in some the 40k Novels and short stories it mentions similar things happening. So yes, theoretically it can be done. No rules for it though. Both ships would obviously have be going at the same speed and in very close proximity, possibly using a Pilot test to successfully pull it off. Size would matter as a larger and heavier ship using a bigger engine would not be able to hide behind a smaller craft using silent run.