Waldi said:

I'd guess they are there as hired guns. It's what they do after all, and some of the Rogue Traders plying the Koronus Expanse are bound to have been at the Damocles Gulf (or other fringe areas bordering between Imperial and Tau space) before and picked up a few of them.

Can't say for sure of course, since im still waiting for my Collectors Edition (grmblgrmbl *muttering curses under my breath). But that would be my bet for why the Kroot are in the game...

Waldi said:

I am going to say this one in response to all Xenos questions.. Keep in mind it has been STRONGLY HINTED that there will be an entire book devoted to xenos sometime next year. The xenos info in the RT core rulebook is very minimal.

The Kroot in particular just had a few paragraphs describing what they are and saying that they are sometimes mercenaries, and a stat line for a mercenary. I would imagine in depth information on the presence/culture/agenda etc of any xenos species in the Expanse will be covered in said speculatively upcoming book. It is certainly not in the RT core book.

Addendum on xenos- Should also mention that the Kroot/Ork/Eldar trinity mentioned above were the only races with stats. There were cursory (again see disclaimer in my last post) paragraphs on the Stryxis (very ugly trader species who hate the Eldar), the Rak'gol (mantis-like stony-skinned augmetized boogeymen), and the Yu'vath (see calixis sector timeline).

As a continuation of my thread I'd take the time to ask:

Is there any mentioning of piracy, how it works, how it is avoided and enforced by the Imperium in general? etc. etc.

Basically, will the core rules have some support for my wish for Pirates of the Caribbean In Space, or will I have to invent the entire thing from scratch?

aethel said:

That sound´s quite interresting (and it also sounds, like the possible, hinted Xenos-Book will be quite interresting too.) And anyway, Xenos are just the "half rent" (as we would say in Germany) - the other part are non-imperial humans. The PDF-map indicates, there could be a whole bunch of them out there in the Expanse.....

Basically, will the core rules have some support for my wish for Pirates of the Caribbean In Space, or will I have to invent the entire thing from scratch?

I would suppose: It definitly WILL support a certain "piratelike" flair - the pictures, we got to see until now, are heavily inspired by "classical" pirates, privateers and seafarers of the 17th and 18th century. So, in one way or the other, we will get "Pirates of the Caribbean in Space".

Now i have a question, what is the weapon training universal all about? im just curious is all

Have all the classes been revealed?

There is some text on piracy, and most of the ship combat results disable not destroy. Piracy is definitely an option. (In fact I think Ross said his group sort of saw themselves as pirates.)

Universal weapon training is just a way of simplifying the talents needed to learn to use weapons, by grouping more of them together into one talent.

And yes, all the classes have been revealed. You actually could glean them prior to the book release by looking at a combo of the demo adventures and the designer diaries. But for the record: Rogue Trader, Arch Militant, Astropath, Explorator, Missionary, Navigator, Seneschal, and Void Master.

So for those with the books.

What class would you want to play as then? Now you've had a decent read of it.

What origins are available? How are Navigator´s origins treated (I don´t thinkt they are/should be same as other characters)? Are there any other nice/nasty/remarkable/ravening equipment which deserves little sneak peak (Storm Bolter and Harlequin Kiss were nice so far) ?

aethel said:

Argh! 'tis a sweet thing to hear!

aethel said:

I figured as much, but I wanted to be sure.

Lanowar- My primary choices remained unchanged after reading the book: Rogue Trader followed by Explorator. But that's influenced as much by what the rest of my group wanted to play as anything. i don't think there was a bad choice in there. Seneschal was an excellent improvement over Adept as far as th e "brainy class:. The Voidmaster seems like an incredibly useful class who is good at both on ship and off ship activities. Any group could use like.. 3 of em.

Torog- Origins were far more detailed, sorry but it's really too much to begin to go into here. It's not just one homeworld choice, it is a 5 by 6 grid of options, some of which have multiple suboptions. (I love it!) We're expecting to see the origins path page posted soon, which should give you ideas. But nothing was constrained to any one class, so Navigators were no different from anyone else.

And I'm afraid I don't really care too much about gear so I'll have to let others speak to that.

So just curious, on the ship recording sheet only macro weapons and lances are listed under weapons. So does that mean we don't have torpedoes in the main rulebook?

Veroldindir said:

There is in fact a sidebar in the weapons section labeled.... "What about torpedos?"

(Basically saying yes, you will not have torpedos or any other weapons in the core rulebook because they couldn't fit everything in, but suggesting it will be in future books.)

aethel said:

Thanks for the info, so when you say 'any other weapons,' there aren't even lances or macro cannons? Or just the more uncommon weapons like bombardment cannon or nova cannon?

There are two or three types of macro-cannon (a little one, a bigger one, etc. etc), and a macro-battery (even bigger), two types of laser batteries and several types of lances. That's all the ship weapons in the basic book, but it is sufficient variety to make lots of different styles and types of armed ships.

Watch out for lance strikes and macro battery broadsides, they're especially nasty.

DocIII said:

Great! Thanks for the info. Some of my players would be disappointed that there aren't any torpedoes, but I'll just houserule it until the starship manual.

Could someone tell us a bit more about the Ships...

For example, how many and what more types.

Turret Rating, are those the broadside/flak cannon, used appart from the fixed weapons?

How does warp travel work?

Santiago, without getting too tedious (for me, I'm sure no one in this thread would object if I just transcribed the whole system!) turrets mainly affect your defensive actions against smaller craft used for hit and run actions which are a part of starship combat. (Each "turn" is like half an hour in a starship battle.)

There are 5 classes of ship, with one or two template hulls offered to start building your ship per class. Each ship hull has weapon slots in certain locations, which each ship class/weapon slot combo determining what directions that weapon can fire. You can with a few limitations pick what weapon to put in each slot. Only the weapons in weapon slots are what are used to shoot at the enemy.

I'll let someone else speak to warp travel.