I confess: I'm a newbie to the ship-combat system. I understand it's mostly BFG rules, but I never played that either.

Just how would one go about disabling and capturing enemy ships? Hit'n'Run and Critical hits will not let you choose Engines as a target as far as I can understand, and so the only options seem to be either battering the ship until it has 0 hull integrity and hope to get lucky on your crit-rolls (and avoid plasma drive explosions) or to lead a boarding-action.

Am I missing something?

A crippled (0 hull integrity) vessel has it's speed reduced by half and it's weapon strength severely reduced. Additionally, it cannot make warp translation.You may be able to force a surrender at that point assuming that your ship is still mostly functional. Other than that, yeah, it's pretty much a boarding action after you cripple an enemy ship.

Ships can surrender due to morale loss. The NPC / PC has to make a Command test at like (if memory serves me correctly) 70, 50 and 30 morale. If failed, a mutiny occurs, and as in cases with NPC ships they normally surrender. It's kind of hidden in the rooms rules somewhere about the mutiny thing.

Use Murder Servitors in your hit and run to disable engines. Since they allow you to select your Crit hit.

I always hated the bit about Murder Servitors getting to pick their own crits. I mean, if free-willed individuals can't have a choice, how do programmed half-machines get one?

But yeah, surrender, boarding...capture. You blow the crap out of a vessel and take it. They can be fixed. They key seems to be getting the Geller Field back up and running so you can tow the thing home through the Warp. If you blew up the power generators on the ship you might need to run power cables over there, too, and power down something on your own ship.

In my first campaign the players didn't even think to bring a ship back for repairs. They always went the salvage route. So, I had a rival RT Dynasty do it and let the players see the results...the rival RTs ship towing a defeated enemy into Port Wander.

I think the idea about the murder servitors is that they don't break, they have a clear goal, they aren't distracted from it. They also are given their target info right at launch, and they go there. A group of humans goes in, and deals out merry hell as best they can, then retreats.

Sometimes that info is off and the plan requires adjustment, but you can't do that with Murder Servitors. The humans go to another door down the corridor on the right while the Murder Servitors deliver their lethal attack on the janitor's closet.

I hate to point this out, but the interior configuration of a starship is unlikely to change so radically between being scanned and the layout programmed into the murder servitors and their actually arriving via teleportarium as to lead to heavy assaults on broom closets.

The layout wouldn't change, Baron, but the analysis of the deckplan might have originally been incorrect, and that's not difficult to imagine when studying the blueprints of a ship with hundreds of miles of tunnels.

Or a Tenebro-maze. Augurs can be humorously vague at the best of times, and if your ship's insides are all twisted from good, AdMech-designed basis...

Based on conversations from the past, this is also a good time to remind, in your game, to find out how these actions will be viewed by the public/competition. We've had posts and threads on the laws of the Imperium, the power of the Warrant, the power of both beyond the Imperium's borders, and stuff like that. As a snippet of that, towing a Chaos Raider into Port Wander is one thing, towing Bastille's Colossus is possibly something different. In your verse , is his ship Imperial territory, making you a pirate, and giving you Imperial enemies, as well as Bastille's other enterprises on your throat, or will your Imperium shrug it off, and say "what happens out there is between Rogues"? I don't want this thread to turn back into that one, but knowing how you two can interact that way, first, is important. Bastille would probably blow you up, just because he can, but would some of the other published Rogue Traders leave you to rot, or seize your ship, and if so, would they get away with it, and why? Just make sure you know the laws of your setting, as some games might vary.

The way I see it? Given how the imperium normally deals with stuff? It honestly wouldn't care provided you didn't interfere with whatever their warrant stipulates they must do for the warrant, then they're not going to be too miffed. His allies in the imperium might, but the imperium as a whole not so much.

It's like planetary rebellions. The imperium at large REALLY does not care if planetary governor Pleb is overthrown, provided that the rebels are still faithful to the imperium and will keep up with their tithe payments.

I'd overall agree with that, but we've had this chat, as a community, all the same, so sometimes it's just good to bug your GM a minute and say "as we run things, how would this be viewed?" A Rogue Trader is a powerful individual, and a peer of the Imperium. In many ways, attacking him is like attacking the Imperium, not much different than besieging a Navy vessel, and since their actions are, titularly, in the name of the Imperium, you ARE interfering with yada yada yada. To some, this statement might look like BS, and to others, it was grounds for the Imperium seizing you, and you ill-gotten goods, as soon as you pulled into Port Wander, to get repairs. All I'm blabbing is, it's a good thing to get the 411 on, from your GM, before you start acting like a privateer, and he, through the authorities of your 40kverse, starts acting like you are a pirate.