I've been meditating lately on exactly what economic niches RTs exploit. It seems clear that typical milk-running of foodstuffs back and forth to hive-worlds, etc., is beneath them.

So, if your crew has a few hot tips, and you've got the probable location of an uncontacted feral world, a world similar to our own, and another world which is several centuries more advanced than our own, what kind of stuff exactly do you stuff your holds with and carry out there? What goods do you attempt to extract from them in return? What kind of materials are in-demand in more mainstream imperial worlds?

Essentially, I have little idea what should be in all those shipping containers. Or does the game simply abstract this issue?

Some rogue traders will do "milk-runs", it fills the coffers in between the exciting stuff.

Otherwise, they may transport people (for a new colony), supplies, equipment, etc.

Imagine, you contact the Ministorum for 10 new exohaulers to begin your mining operation in the name of the Emperor. They reply with a very well, they will arrive in 15 years, please send us 1,500,000,000 thrones as payment now. Well, I'm sure an intrepid Rogue Trader would deliver those very same exohaulers immediately, for perhaps... $2,000,000,000 thrones...

Some have better morals than others, so they may or may not transport narcotics, xenotech, supplies for a rebellion, etc. But simply, if it makes them money, Rogue Traders will do it.

On the topic of "milk runs," it lists a sample milk run Endeavor, but one of the example objectives for such a thing is to prevent it from ruining your reputation. Rogue Traders, if given a choice between a milk run and a colony drop in uncharted territory, will usually do the latter, even if pay is exactly the same . In fact, they might do it for less, in order to reap other intangibles that come with the renown and prestige of being such a go-getter....

...Or because they're crazed thrillseekers. One of the two.

Please note: I do not currently own or have read a copy of RT so I have no idea what the trading rules are. This is simply my rambling. For reference I'd recommend The Guns Of The South by Harry Turtledove when considering this question. Basic plot: White Supremisists from 2013 travel back in time and sell the southern confederacy AK-47s during the American Civil War. I think of this as a basic "Autoguns to the Feral Worlders" plot.

I'll cover the idea of previously uncontacted worlds, worlds which are outside the imperium and have little or no contact with it. Others can do the rest.

Feral Worlds: I'd sell weapons and maybe a bit of armour. I'm guessing basic weapons (especially the slightly faulty ones) are cheap in the imperium given it's constantly on a war footing and all. I see no reason a mixture of lots of low-grade (unreliable) las guns, mixed with some higher quality/higher firepower weaponry and armour shouldn't get me whatever I want from the world.The golden rule for this is of course: Never sell your best weapons. Always make sure that I have forces sufficient to maintain an upper hand in any tactical or strategic encounter. I have a company of troops armed with better weapons than the natives and I maintain orbital bombardment as a valid option. Given reverse engineering is not really an option for my customers then I'd probably be good to show up on a regular basis for years given that there will always never be enough guns.

This brings up the problem of: "What do I want from this world?" The typical examples I'd expect would be Raw Materials and Labour. The definition of "Feral World" is quite broad but I seriously can't see anything which qualifies putting out manufactured goods that anyone in the imperium wants. Unless this world has anything useful (drugs, special ore/jewels, an unusually large concentration of psykers, ect) Then you can probably fill your holds with a few tons of semi-valuble ore for a few las-guns. Alternatively labour (or more likely some varient on Slavery) might work. Those who put the time in could probably put together training camps for high-toughness mercenaries. Some idealists may want something more abstract like the establishment of religion or proper hygine, but chances are the high reward strategy involves a lot of people or raw materials.

Industrial Worlds: I'm going to take "Industrial World" as any world capable of Mutually Assured Destruction all on its own but not powerful enough to meaningfully threaten a RT. My reasoning for this is that it means you can't sell the world weapons (more than once) and might need to worry about reverse engineering but don't need to worry about being shot down if you piss off one faction too much.

I'd sell cheaply manufactured goods from the Imperium (preferably something they have trouble making) and buy whatever they're good at (if necessary set up a manufactorum as necessary). The trick here is to turn opposing power blocs into emperor-worshiping hives without blowing each other up in the process. So to be honest I'd probably sell them factories at a massive mark-up on whatever the factories produced.

High - Tech Worlds: I'm thinking here of something which can actively threaten a RT in the system/in orbit. Here the answer boils down to "Whatever they need" for "Whatever they produce" Which is a bit dull. The "Whatever they produce" is probably somewhat interesting and probably involves selling for a large profit very quickly goods which are not Mechanicum-Approved but comes down to whatever the GM can dream up (Fluke worms which double your lifespan at the cost of making you contronically ill? Yeah, that's profitable). The other possibility here is blockade running imperial worlds which your charter allows you to visit anyway.

Universal Answers: There are a few universal answers to this question which are rather unpleasant but most definately in-theme with the setting:

Drugs: Get the population hooked on something they don't have, run a lucrative trade for a few decades. Ideally make the forces of idealism pay you to stop the trade when it is about to become unprofitable. Risky but insanely profitable and works either way: Imperium <-> Fringe Worlds

"Radical" Texts: Yeah, get the non-Imperial worlds hooked on Demons. Just make sure you get payment up front and that you don't get caught. To be honest you're probably better off trading in weapons.

Slaves: See drugs but operate on a planetary scale with labour shortages. May provoke issues OOC.

Faith: If your RT can sell the Imperial Cult to the natives at a profit they will probably be Canonized. Seriously.

Maps: Works both ways. If your RT (or GM) gets tired of playing Elite in 40 k then sell the maps to/from the planet and move onto conquoring another world.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

In the intro to the Last Chancers Omnibus it's mentioned that mono-edged blades are often provided to feral worlders to impress them. They're weapons they can understand, they're clearly superior, and they're no match for troops with guns in the open.

The things to keep in mind:

1)Rogue Traders can go where others can. Most ships operate under limited charters. (Thus these lesser traders are often called chartists.) They might only be able to run a limited trade route. Or trade only in a given sector. The Rogue Trader operates any where.

2)Rogue Traders have heavily armed warships. Sure they are aren't as impressive as a battleship or most cruisers they are far to tough a nut for most pirate, or raider. Also a RT can act as a private military. Need a pirate base rooted out that the Navy doesn't have time to find. Hire a RT. Need that rebel station brought back into line... Need a troublesome merchant vessel that has flouted local laws once bought to justice. The Navy doesn't care about your local laws. A RT might be willing to commit a little rightous piracy for the right price. Depending on the ships, and what is in them. A RT might effectively have a troop transport with army, a carrier with fighters and bombers, orbital bombardment platform, a merchant raider, a Q-ship, or any/all of the above.

3)Rogue Traders can trade with non-Imperial humans, and Xenos. A Chartist does this and it's Heresy. A RT only needs to be careful what he is bringing back. Sure in theory he should be scoping out the Xenos for extermination, and the humans for conversion, but that is harder to quantify.

4)Rogue Traders are better trained and gear to loot artifacts from fallen human, and Xenos worlds. In fact short of a tech priest ship they are the only ones to be able to do so. Yes they really should be turning over questionable stuff to the tech priests, and the inquisition, but again who is to stop them.

5)Rogue Traders are at times hired to assist the Imperial Navy with their experince as much as the ships. The same with Tech Priest's looking for lost technology. Lastly it's not unknown for a Rogue Trader to join or lead a crusade.

I don't know how the Imperiums laws are in the regards to such charters, but I'd imagine that once a Rogue Trader has found a profitable trade location and claimed it in his name, he would sell the trading rights/location to a trade house for a share of the profits.

Let someone else pay you to do your milk runs for you, while you push on for new and greater glories.

I'd have thought the basic rule for the setting is that Rogue Traders carry whatever the rules of Supply and Demand decide will generate them the most profit.

I guess it's for the GM to find ways to reflect this in an interesting way using the endeavour mechanics built into the game.

Lightbringer said:

This seems to me, though, to somewhat beg the question. I suppose that one might propose some abstract system of supply and demand variations and plug it into Endeavors, and leave the question of what physical objects are in the holds as either an irrelevancy or a matter of fiat. But that seems rather unsatisfying. I'd prefer to actually know what goods command a substantial variation in value from world to world, so that players could engage in some in-character thought, creativity, and perhaps risk-taking when planning a journey.

In general... exotic goods, scarce goods, or goods that are in high demand and not readily available on a planet.

A RT wouldn't take raw ore to a processing planet, for example, because it is low profit. He might, however, take a load of raw ore to a Feudal planet that doesn't have that ore.

Taking a load of exotic birds to a pleasure planet, however, could be.

If there is a sudden fad amongst nobility of a Hive World for tube socks, transporting tube socks could be lucrative.

Other goods are pretty much always in demand and provide high prices, such as ship parts, tech, medicines, and artifacts. Sometimes weapons and armor, too.

Consider RTs as traders that don't have set routes of trade, they don't transport the daily necessities for worlds. Instead, they exploit fads, trends, and immediate, yet normally temporary, demands. (except for goods that are always always in high demand, as noted above)

This thread has given me an idea. Somewhere along the way I'm going to have to make my RT crew make a literal "milk run".

Have them contracted to transport a huge quantity of the milk of some rare critter w/ some kind of special qualities to a planet that is desperate for it. Include all sorts of crazy technical and enviromental measures that have to be taken to properly store and transport the "milk" so that it isn't worthless on arrival. Maybe further make it so they have to install careful inertial damping systems for the milk storage tanks because if its sloshed around too much it will curdle. Of course inertial dampers can only do so much so you have to be careful not to maneuver the ship too abruptly.

Basically give them a job that seems simple, with just a touch of extra effort needed, for enough profit to make it seem worth it. Then pile on the complications as they go to make the transport of milk from one planet to another one of the most harrowing and difficult to succeed jobs of their carreers.

See if they ever call an easy job a "milk run" again after that.

Try Styger Milk (p 105 of the Inquisitor's Handbook) that could be interesting

Definitely weapons and precious metals. Gold is useful to high-tech and low-tech civilizations, and its relatively a pretty rare element. Platinum, too. You can take a look at the kinds of stuff the age-of-exploration captains traded and work from there. (a list that, unfortunately, included slaves).

Rare agricultural products like sugar, molasses, Chocolate, tobacco, etc actually drove a lot of trade with the primitive world. Weapons and horses were often given in exchange. It wouldn't be hard to think of some equivilent commodities.

DocIII said:

Isn't there a Psychic phenomena that involves curdling milk? Or was that just WFRP?

First and foremost: Do not own the book / only my two cents

I imagine that a warp cabable ship has HUGE storage holds. Really big. So big that I deem it quiet impossible to fill them up with "rare goods" like Styger Milk, xenos pelts etc. Hack, I think you could INSTINCT a species on a planet and not even fill a quarter of your cargo holds with pelts!

So, I guess that a RT will try to gather as many "choice picks" of goods who are "mininum volume / maximum profit".

• Plasma weapons, for example, or any other "arcane tech of the imperium".
• Drugs (legal/illegal)
• Rare Pelts
• Precious stones/metals
• Exotic life animals
• Precision instruments

But he will not be able to fill his complete cargo holds with it. So, he will have an eye on "medium volume / medium profit" goods, which might include

• Vehicles (civilian, military, utility)
• machines (easier to ship industrial facilities to a new colony then to make them build there own from scratch!)
• Servitores / Slaves
• Weapons
• complex tools
• ore or other raw material
• expensive food stuff

But eventually even this will hot fill ALL his cargo space. So, the RT might look for something that he can take along. Everything that he deems able to help to sell on the destination just to further decrease the cost of the actual travell

• bulk passengers
• food stuff
• cheap raw materials
• cheap food stuff

So, what makes a RougeTrader special?
His ability to go where no-one else is permitted to go and to obtain what others are forbidden to obtain. While all the points above are true for a chartist captain travelling "hiveworld-shrineworld-agriworld and back", a RT will have a much much better choice of the first categorie of goods:
"Minimum Volumen/Maximum Profit".

In his cargo holds will be

• the ruins of a complete settlement "pre imperial; of unknown origin"
• strange xeno pelts bartered in a month of guncutting around a feral world, trading monoblades for furs
• a complete sample of xeno plants of a new world any magos biologies would oil over with glee
• this new exotic human beauties, given as gift and ready to be handed to the harem of some desolute noble

In short, I imagine that 9-out-of-10 of his cargo holds will look the same as the holds of any other trade ship. But it is "hold 10" that makes all the difference. That allows him to be all showy and flashy. the thing he bosts so much about that no-one gives a second thought to the fact that he is also shipping grains and pilgrims and shovels and multitools. Just like anyone else.

The holds are large, but not as large as you may think unless it's a transport/cargo ship. A lot of the ships that you'll want for your RT are ships of war, and there's not a lot of room for extra cargo after you've accounted for all your necessary components and a few weapons.

However, I'd say your ideas of what types of items they'd carry is fairly accurate.

Cervantes3773 said:

That maybe true but remember, 40k ships are often many times bigger then what most players are used to. When I ran through Forsaken Bounty, one of the first questions was how big was the Sovereign Venture (The Flying Circus in my game.) Trask's player thought they were jetting around in a Firefly-type tramp trader. Fortunately the "your crew is pathetic at anything not related to running the ship" argument held when I told him the SV was really about the size of a small city. And many of those commodities could be easily squeezed into a modified warship. Granted in smaller quantities but still more then you could concievably fit into the Serenity or the Millenium Falcon.

Cervantes3773 said:

If you read the fluff in the Starship chapter alongside the chapter on the Imperium itself, you'll realize that no Rogue Trader own's a true warship. They've all been retro-fitted to carry extra cargo, including Cruisers and other ships of the line.

I was trying to figure out how Gothic-class Cruisers worked in the rules at all, when I encountered a passage describing that Naval warships carry multiple reactors, some of which are purely dedicated to powering weapons. An RT ship has one reactor. Furthermore, the Wolf Pack Raider is described as having a cargo hold big enough to participate in an Endeavor, which implies this is not the default. Putting the two pieces of info together, I came to the conclusion that a RT's former naval vessel strips out certain warship component to fit in more cargo space. In other words, every single ship a Rogue Trader can buy is a cargo ship, just not necessarily a pure example of that role.

Cervantes3773 said:

... if this is true, I wonder why they are Rogue Traders. I always imagined them to do unorthodox things (raiding ships and pillaging uncilivized planets included!)... but I always expected them to do it for fame and profit.

To a privateer (not a member of the state military), what good is it to run a ship (which must drain immense amounts of money for the crew alone!) if you do not have huge holds to carry away what you claimed?

Why the firepower "to devasted a city" if you can´t sack this city afterward?

How do they cover there expenses, then? Or is a trip "to the fringe of human space" that "cost neutral"?

Gregorius21778 said:

It isn't.

According to the Ravenor Omnibus, Rogue Trader vessels have a pretty puny armament in comparison to the military vessels of the imperial Navy. Of course, "puny" in space nautical terms could imply pretty destructive devices, but as a rule of thumb, Rogue trader vessels would not be able to outgun a military vessel, and in a pitched battle they would probably be obliterated by military vessels.

Destroying cities however would probably be something that both classes of ships could do. The difference is that a Rogue Trader vessel might need several days or weeks of constant bombardment to level a city from orbit, while a military vesel might only need a few hours (or sometimes not even that).

It all bottles down to what type of ordnance the ships are packing and how much ammo for said ordnance the holds are likely to have stocked.

When I roll up my first Vessel in this game im thinking of low-prioritize weaponry and concentrating on making the ship as fast and manouverable as possible... (then again im a damaged Interceptor Pilot from my Eve Online days. oh how fun it is when your ship can actually outrun the missiles chasing it )

We all know that each hull has a certain amount of available space (space points) and that cargo holds are a given portion of that. Remember, as large as these ships are, space use isn't at 100% efficiency (corridors, intersections, random closets/lockers, etc). I think we need to determine, one way or another, the approximate volume of one SP.

Clearly Rogue Traders have enough room to transport a lot of goods, otherwise they wouldn't be in business. Yes, they tend to use retrofitted warships, so that there is more cargospace that originally planned. But, even if you retrofitted a US Navy destroyer by removing its guns and turning its ammo holds into additional cargo space, it's still a US Navy destroyer and can't hold as much as a freighter.

Varnias Tybalt said:

But if you have read Rogue Star and Star of Damocles, the RT flag ship (a cruiser) could take down a captial ship and damage a space station (both Imperial and Tau.) As far as the cargo holds go in the books, your guess is as good as mine. But from reading both books all three ships in the fleet could carry large amouts of cargo. In Star of Damocles they carried a full company of IG, I think?

ECLIPSE1970 said:

I find that highly unlikely, so that flagship cruiser must be one of the exceptions that confirms the rule (sort of like Ibram Gaunt being pretty much the only person to hold the rank of both Commissar and Colonel).

If you've played Battlefleet Gothic then you'll agree that lone cruiser class vessels taking out capital ships would be highly unlikely. The only way it could happen would be if the captain of the capital ship simply ignored a torpedo attack from the lone cruiser (torpedoes bypass voidshields without a hitch), by not sending out fighters to intercept them at all, and rolling extremely bad rolls for the capital ship turrents trying to shoot down the torpedoes before impact. Also the captain would have to ignore ordering the crew to brace for impact. And by then, the vessel might be crippled or adrift if the torpedo strike does maximum amounts of damage.

Taking out capital ships usually require support by either two or three other cruisers or several squadrons of escort class ships. Lone cruisers would have to face the most incompetent captains ever if they hope to take out capital ships.

You might wonder why I refer to rules of a game here ather than bringing up fluff sources, and the reason for this is to point out some sort of standard, the rules for BFG being based on how diferent ship-classes would interact with eachother in those regards. And the rule of thumb says that lone cruisers just doesn't have much of a chance of taking out capital ships. Even battlecruisers have a hard time doing it.

As for space stations, I really couldn't say (since I haven't seen them in action), but if they're even more resilient than most capital ships, I'd say that the cruiser you're refering to seem to suffer from way too much plot protection...

I believe Eclipse is using capital ship to refer to Tau cruisers; in this case cruisers that had been thoroughly outmaneuvered. However, the naval officers depicted within the book didn't appear to treat the rogue trader vessels as anything other than standard cruisers. They seemed to think the ships were perfectly acceptable members of the line of battle. On the other hand, the novels didn't seem that well written so I would hardly take their word over that of the main rulebook.

mrobfire said:

Exactly, I would take 40k fluff with a grain of salt when translating it into another scale (RPG, skirmish game, etc).