I'm not sure if you miss some rules, as I haven't memorized the handbook but here's my two cents:

1. & 2. You haven't broke the system. RT system is unbreakable.

I cap all bonuses at +60, so in your example target value for PC roll will be 60 (strengh) + 60 (bonus) + 10 (ordinary test) = 130; giving statistically: 8 DoS + 2 Dos from Unn Strengh = 10 DoS

Opossing commander will statistically get 3 DoS.

10 DoS - 3 DoS = 7 DoS : statistical combat outcome.

If my math is correct the only way for your PC to lose in this combat is a natural roll of 100. But you have to consider that it is a match between experienced PC leading sort-of specialized troops (also Ork's rules are considered broken by some members of this boards) and a RT newbe (50 command for RT - really?), so it's result is quite obvious.

3. IMO: yes, as hit and run actions are in the enemies turn.

4. IMO: yes, as you pointed out it's quite logical.

5. I skip the initiative question as I'm not good at this sh*t and usually just hand wave it.

I house ruled it to give bonus to ship with higher crew population, because giving bonus to a Orion with crew value 100 boarding a Universe with crew value 99 is ridicule.

1. & 2. You haven't broke the system. RT system is unbreakable.

Wow. Really? That is a profoundly... weird... statement, because there are tons of parts all over the system where it breaks, and saying it is unbreakable after patching it with houserules is, uh, evidence that it is breakable without houserules?

Answer 1: Sounds like you are doing it right. And yes, the system is broken…

Answer 2: The max +60 (and max -60) to skills tests applies to everything. BS, Search, Dodge, Common Lore, etc etc. However, in your example above, if the PC obtained the max +60, the negative modifier is subtracted before you implement the max.

Example: You Ork Freebooter has a base skill of his Str which is 60, plus whatever you are implementing which add up to +90

The enemy has turrets and other defenses that total a -20 to the test. Net is +70 (90-20=70); however, using the max +60 rule you now have a +60 to your test, with Unnat Str which is an auto 2 degrees.

Note: IIRC, in DH the Unnat stats were auto degree success; however, in RT, they are +10 (or +20) to a test, and so it converts back to that +60 rule. Going to have to get back to you on that after reading the RT book again.

Answer 3: Depends on what actions you have performed, and how your GM wishes to interpret them. Meaning, a Hit and Run / Boarding action or defending against a Hit and Run / Boarding action would, IMO, take up your whole 30 minute strategic turn for that character(s).

Answer 4: Depends on how you and your GM have discussed the RAW with RAI.

Answer 5: Utilize the KISS method here. I had the problem of trying to rationalize why a ship heading N at 9 speed would be stopped by ship heading S at 4 speed, with a boarding action, and would need to make a test to break free and continue his movement.

To answer the ship size, there was a discussion about that, and a similar issue with the Crew Pop and Morale, a while back. I copied the persons rules, which was to just increase the Ship Crew Pop and Morale bases on its size. This fix also attempted to correct the issue of larger ships losing all crew pop due to combat attrition, way prior to it being destroyed.

Size Does Matter

The size of the ship does correspond to the Crew Pop. And Morale rating. A breakdown of benefits to ship size is shown below.

Hull Size Crew Pop. Morale

Light Cruiser +20 +20

Cruiser +25 +30

Battlecruiser +30 +40

Grand Cruiser +40 +50

Battleship +50 +100

Space Hulk +100< +200<

I must state though, that I never used the max +60 rule. Or the max -60 rule.

As far as I can tell (somwhat late at night here, so tired), you're absolutely correct by the rules. This is why you want to avoid orks boarding you, unless you have your own ork. And why NPC ships desperately need "named crew" - especially ork ships.

Also, I believe the turrets are a bonus to the defender's roll, not a penalty to the attackers. But I'm not sure - it's been a while. I'm also of the general opinion that its far too easy of a roll to activate a boarding action, as well as being too dependent on player stats.

Boarding actions can get very one-sided. There are many components that give a bonus to offensive boarding, and few that give a bonus to defense versus boarding, which is weird since defense is generally considered a benefit.

And then there's the PC stat issue.

Easy enough solution. Draw up NPCs relative to PCs (at least if you are looking to give them challenges), mitigate the offensive bonuses, and introduce some of your own defensive components.

I have no problem with my players sometimes have an easy time of winning boarding actions, since they tend to want to board easy targets anyway, in order to capture them (usually merchant ships). They don't want to board plague ships for some reason, though. I always have to try to initiate boarding actions in these instances. Well, there was that time they boarded a ship not knowing there was a plague on board. I take a certain pride in having kept a straight face during the whole action.

Thanks for all your responses, much appreciated.

About the maximum modifiers, I know that in Deathwatch and later games it was stated very clearly that skill mastery and Talented (x) raise the characters base value, and do not count towards this limit. That has also been stated by Nathan "N0-1_H3r3" Dowdell (co author of many RT books) as the intended rules for DH and RT.

Somewhat off-topic rant:

And it's the only interpretation that makes sense, or you will see specialists perform worse than their generalist friends in optimal conditions:

Consider 2 characters, both with Fellowship 35 and Command as starting skill.

Character A spends all his XP on Command +10, +20, Talented (Command) and Iron Discipline. Character B raises his Fellowship by 15 instead. Both are placed in charge of a Boarding Actions with sufficient other bonuses to max out the +60 cap.

Character A, the Command and Boarding Specialist with a "natural" 75 in Boarding, rolls towards a target value of 95. He will fail one in 20 tests.

Character B, the charming generalist, has a target of 110, guaranteeing success with at least 1 Degree.

Makes no sense, and doing the same for Drive and Pilot tests means I would never get in a car with anyone, even for the most Trivial trips, as your average professional will still fail his tests 10% of the times. Consider how many vehicles are driven around every day...

end of rant.

tl;dr: all permanent modifiers (Skill Mastery and Talented, primarily) do not count towards the cap, while any modifiers which are in any way temporary or circumstantial (including modifiers from equipment) are subject to the cap. (quote N0-1_H3r3)

I dont have any solutions for you, but want to thank you for putting this out there. I am sure that my players (one in particular) will attempt something like this (skill test of 150, etc.) The max +60/-60 test is a God send (or is that Emperor...geekism) and will help regulate the game a bit for me.

If I understand it correctly the character in question 2 would not be able to perform the action in question 3. My understanding if that character is off performing a Hit and Run boarding action on the enemy ship on "turn 1" how is he going to defend against the enemy Hit and Run boarding action on the player ship on "turn 1 or 2"? I would think it would take the next turn to return to the player ship, and on the subsequent turn defend against it. Unless I misunderstood the question.

1. & 2. You haven't broke the system. RT system is unbreakable.

Wow. Really? That is a profoundly... weird... statement, because there are tons of parts all over the system where it breaks, and saying it is unbreakable after patching it with houserules is, uh, evidence that it is breakable without houserules?

Being sarcastic.

Something to remember: 40k ship combat is heavily...inspired by 18th century sailing ships. And in those ships, there are lots of examples of smaller ships rushing up, and a brave crew overpowering a far larger crew with shock and awe tactics. Didn't a famous admiral capture something close to a 100 ships despite being in a dinky tiny ship - all because he was willing to sail up and jump onto the enemy ship with dash and elan and so on and so forth?

What happens after a ship is boarded and a crew surrenders? I see nowhere what the rules are for towing enemy ships, prize crews, or salvaging wrecks - just that wrecks can be salvaged and ships can surrender to players. I have all the books, and my search has brought up nothing.

What happens after a ship is boarded and a crew surrenders? ..... I have all the books, and my search has brought up nothing.

You are correct. There are no concrete rules for this, as there can be no base to set this upon. What do Orks do when they mutiny/riot/surrender? Chaos? Tau? It would take a whole chapter or two to describe this and more. However, I also wish they would of put a little more detail into it. Anyhoot, it's completely up to GM and PC interpretation of the setting, rules, and adversary in question as to what they would do when a ship hits the low Morale point of mutiny to surrender.

..... I see nowhere what the rules are for towing enemy ships, prize crews, or salvaging wrecks - just that wrecks can be salvaged and ships can surrender to players......

Once again, they did not go into detail about towing captured / refurbished ships / hulks / space stations. Searching the forums, you can find various examples of people asking the same question, along with more detailed responses. A general consensus is that you must acquire a chain / device strong and long enough to tow the object in question. Have a Gellar Field on it or have you Gellar Field cover the object (if small enough) when towing it through the warp. Possibly have thrusters / somewhat working engine to slow it's decent. And possibly a small enough crew to ensure it doesn't crash into your tail end when attempting to decrease your speed, and/or to ensure the Gellar Field stays operational when traveling in the warp.

As for crew newly acquired, well, that is up to the PC's on what they want to do with them, and the GM on whether or not they go along with it (or how long they stay compliant). Asking some humans who were part of a NPC RT crew to join your mob would probably be easy. Asking Orks when their Warboss is on the adjacent ship might only last for the 5 minute dialogue until a nearby Nob says he's "da boss" and a fight ensures.

Bear in mind that getting a damaged ship operation though takes considerable time and resources. Not so much as making one from scratch, but lengthy none the less. GM discretion is advised.

Thanks for the quick response. It strikes me as odd that the best way for a Rogue Trader to acquire new ships is the only one not covered in any of the books - even Hostile Acquisitions! The point you make about different races reacting differently is a good one. However, for simplicity's sake, I intend the question to be about pirates or trade ships of a human variety.

Affecting repairs in space or orbiting a planet isn't a total loss, but to me, the hairiest part of the question is what do you do with the captured crew? Most would go their whole lives not seeing their captain, so would it really matter who took over the ship? In the case of a human pirate, are the crew all pirates as well? Or are they just voidsmen doing what their grandparents did, unbeknownst to the crimes they are committing?

Stars of Inequity gives rules for finding voidship graveyards, with rules for generating the type, number, and state of the ships floating around. When it says, "May be possible to salvage" does that mean you could haul it into port and have it refurbished? Or simply board, loot, and leave? When creating a starship graveyard, the potential for "xenotech resources" and "archeotech resources" to be found in very very high amounts seems to be the most common. I imagine that these resources are concentrated on the ships in the graveyard. Since some are board-able or salvageable, does that mean they count as the major concentrations required for generating treasure? I just rolled up a graveyard with both categories in the 80's. Given that the major concentrations reduce this abundance by a set amount, does this mean I can find 160 worth of relics in one graveyard? That seems like a lot of potentially very powerful stuff.

Sorry for all the questions, these are just the score of questions a newbie to RT has compiled.

Affecting repairs in space or orbiting a planet isn't a total loss, but to me, the hairiest part of the question is what do you do with the captured crew? Most would go their whole lives not seeing their captain, so would it really matter who took over the ship? In the case of a human pirate, are the crew all pirates as well? Or are they just voidsmen doing what their grandparents did, unbeknownst to the crimes they are committing? ......

Most crew can be press ganged for manual labor that does not require allot of expertise or technical skills. Other positions, like piloting the shuttles, manning the guns, etc etc, require the actual trained crew members. As for a crew member never seeing the captain, well, as with anything, this depends on various factors (who owns the ship [a group, not a person], the ships function, the character of the captain, the role of the crew in question, etc etc). Before we go into these factors though, ask yourself this question? Is it really relevant? If you are the GM, then you can make it relevant. This adds a story to your game. If you are not the GM, then by implementing these factors you give the GM something to work with, to make the story actually evolve and progress at a rate this more interesting than dice rolling and "hand-waving."

With that all said, it really is mostly hand-waved. You capture an enemy ship and press-gang their crew. Some die, some don't *shrugs*. You then move some of your crew to leader positions on the enemy ship, and continue on with the mission. All by moving your crew population and morale numbers around, which is hand-waved to what is specifically means.

......

Stars of Inequity gives rules for finding voidship graveyards, with rules for generating the type, number, and state of the ships floating around. When it says, "May be possible to salvage" does that mean you could haul it into port and have it refurbished? Or simply board, loot, and leave? When creating a starship graveyard, the potential for "xenotech resources" and "archeotech resources" to be found in very very high amounts seems to be the most common. I imagine that these resources are concentrated on the ships in the graveyard. Since some are board-able or salvageable, does that mean they count as the major concentrations required for generating treasure? I just rolled up a graveyard with both categories in the 80's. Given that the major concentrations reduce this abundance by a set amount, does this mean I can find 160 worth of relics in one graveyard? That seems like a lot of potentially very powerful stuff.....

Don't have me books on me matey. IIRC, 'salvage' means that you could board the ships and certain aspects of the ship could be salvaged, like a Macrobattery or an Engine. Treasure; however, is a separate reward, and does not normally correspond to the amount of resources you can obtain during salvage operations. The archeotech and xenotech are simply "resources" that you can use to conduct Trader / Criminal / other endeavors with. What they specifically are is left vague, and is mostly hand-waved once-again, though they are of minor importance, and simply convert over to PF when used in an endeavor specific to their classification.

How PC's obtain Treasure is by the GM rewarding it to them during the course of an (or several) endeavor(s). A high number or archeotech and xenotech resources could mean their is a possibility of finding treasure, but by no means is it a guarantee that it is so.

....

Sorry for all the questions, these are just the score of questions a newbie to RT has compiled.

And nothing wrong with questions. Makes some of us feel loved.

I suspect they got hazy because, where so much of it can come down to stats, rolls, and rules, if you take a ship prisoner, you just got a whole new ship, and depending n how you built your ship, and how the GM runs NPC ships, it was very easy. Acquiring a ship should rarely be easy, between having to wrest it from a tomb (a space hulk, a planetary surface, wherever you might've found it) or paying a ship foundry ridiculous sums for their decades-long work. Also, so many ships in 40k seem to be "Humans cannot pilot these" sorts of affairs. Eldar craft are far to advanced for "stupid, primitive mon'keigh" to pilot, and if they use more the ship's Infinity Circuit and psychic linking, as it's made of wraithbone, and plugged full of spirit stones even with a living crew, then they couldn't keep it, anyway. Ork ships don't work, simply. Take them out, and the ship turns into a lump of whatever they made it out of; only Orky sillyness seems to make their ships fly, so seizing it seems unlikely. Chaos often fly Human ships, but these are often so tainted, and might make use of weird geometries, or other such "Chaos did this" shenanigans that making it safe for you to use is iffy. Mostly, they didn't want to give the crew too easy a time becoming fleet-based dynasties, before their PF reflected that the COULD, especially since the game also does a hazy job enforcing mandatory upkeep checks on multiple ships, or the number of Acquisition rolls you could make in how long, so you might acquire a fleet well before you are ready. Sure, you can look up fanmade remedies to such, just like you can find how death-carriers work, even though everything in other books says how the Navy frowns upon carriers, over pure warships, and so doesn't favor them (maybe as a fluff excuse to keep them out of the first book, I don't know, because they CAN be pretty ridiculous).

I like to think that the system expects you to possibly replenish your crew with theirs (I'm a firm believer that many of the nobodies on a ship don't care who their Captain they've never met is this week, and the ones who do can make for fun plot-hooks or Misadventures later), grab any cool components, and go. if the ship belongs to another RT, you have to figure out if you can "just take it" (we've bantered about this at length on the threads before), while the Navy will be pissed if it's theirs, and pirates often have crap (with me often wondering where some lowly pirates get a void ship, but that's neither here nor there). Alien ships, and those touched deeply by Chaos, bring their own problems, and it would've been way to rules-heavy to cover all of these. If you were playing a Privateer-style character, this might matter more, and maybe ItS could've stepped up on this fact, but I believe the game just doesn't want your "fleet assets" to grow too fast, where you either have five other ships, and they are off doing background things, or you keep three with you, and every encounter now has to be tooled up to your fleet strength, when numerous other RTs are described as having a ship, maybe some escorts IF they are flying a Light Cruiser, or larger. My opinions, anyway.

All xenos and heretics aside, your run-of-the-mill pirates should be open targets right? Yes their ships are small and probably pretty crappy, but boarding and taking those would be magnitudes cheaper than trying to buy a brand new sword frigate. I am just confused as there is a whole insert about ramming and boarding, where the rules insinuate that winning a boarding action means you effectively win the ship. The paucity of information on what happens next is really a glaring omission, since they've pretty much wrote off RTs building ships, and buying them can be difficult.

The latter part of my question came down to the way descriptions in Stars of Inequity are written. Does a "salvageable" ship in a ship graveyard mean you could haul it back to port and fix it up? Or that simply it can be boarded and "looted" from the available archeotech pool?

This is why I charge PF for "operating" a ship, rather than "buying" a ship. This results in the players giving the captured ship a skeleton crew and escorting it back to Port Wander, where they can turn it into the Imperial Navy for the Prize money. (or in one case, ransomed back to the original RT) It keeps their number of ships down, but still lets them profit from counter-piracy.

All xenos and heretics aside, your run-of-the-mill pirates should be open targets right? Yes their ships are small and probably pretty crappy, but boarding and taking those would be magnitudes cheaper than trying to buy a brand new sword frigate. I am just confused as there is a whole insert about ramming and boarding, where the rules insinuate that winning a boarding action means you effectively win the ship. The paucity of information on what happens next is really a glaring omission, since they've pretty much wrote off RTs building ships, and buying them can be difficult.

Yep, they totally dropped the ball on that one about acquiring more ships, what do to with them, and general upkeep for fleet management (which is almost inevitable). Venkelos and Quicksilver provided good examples of what could happen next, and as you noticed, FFG did not establish any RAW for it. Below are a couple of topics on acquiring ships and various users interpretations of the setting on it

How much for that ship, sir?

Capturing ships

And some interesting old topics I forgot about.

Starship Build Times

How big to RT fleets get

Someone else is going to have to give you a more solid answer to your last question about SoI, as my books are not with me.