any ideas on how to run torpedoes, fighters, and bommers... at least until they give us that stuff too.

Maybe for torpedos you can just create a weapon with a low critical hit requirement, and 1d10+2 damage. Maybe reroll its first 2 misses to simulate a homing ability. This might make them too dangerous though.

Small craft, make them a machine that can take 3 points of damage, and can avoid damage through skilful piloting and luck.

Torpedoes can only really be used on a grid because they keep on going.

Their position is important to know incase they hit additional ships. Their advantage is also their ability to plow into a ship through multiple decks.

I would probably do this:

Strength 4 - this is the literal number of torpedoes fired at the enemy

Each DoS means an additional torpedo strikes.

The shots have Tearing to represent their higher damage output.

They ignore Void Shields (this is from the background, they travel too slowly for the void shields to pick them up).

Hellebore

I think Hellebores stats are sound.

Now please come up with a cost chart for them!

Also a ship would get a roll to hit each torp if they had an unused turret.

Component Appropriate Hull Type Power Space SP Strength Damage Crit Rating Range
Torpedo Tube------ All Ships -----------2-------- 1-----1------1------ 1D10+4-------3--------- 6

Torpedoes
Imperial torpedoes are as large as shuttlecraft but hit with the power of a dozen plasma bombs, the torpedo’s plasma propulsion acting as its warhead.
Torpedo Tube: Standard imperial ships may take two racks of torpedo tubes in their prow. Each rack counts as a separate weapon. You may take any number of torpedo tubes in each rack increasing the Strength by 1 per tube. The Space and SP of each and every subsequent tube in a rack is doubled from the previous. Ie a ship with 3 tubes in a rack gives up 7 space and 7 SP (1 for the first rack, 2 for the second and 4 for the third). If it took a fourth tube it would cost an additional 8 space and SP! Note that this means you are better off spreading your tubes across the two racks.
Ammunition: Torpedoes are so large that the strength of the shot represents the literal number of torpedoes fired. The space required for the torpedo tube includes 5 torpedoes. Additional torpedoes cost 1 space per 5 torpedoes.

Availability: Use the basic torpedo tube SP value rather than the compounded values for additional tubes.

Firing Torpedoes
These are fired as a Salvo. Choose the number of Torpedoes you wish to fire in the Salvo to a maximum of 1 per tube. Roll to hit as normal. Each Degree of Success indicates an additional Torpedo strike from the Salvo. When rolling for Damage roll 2D10 and pick the highest for each torpedo. If you did not roll enough DoS to hit with all the torpedoes it means the others have failed to detect the target and keep going in the same direction to their full range value.

Torpedoes continue along their ballistic trajectory until they hit something. Be sure to make a note of where the torpedoes are in relation to other objects in the area. After their initial firing, each torpedo salvo takes a single move action in a Strategic Round after everyone else has taken their turn. This must be their full Range value. If the torpedo salvo comes within 1 VU of any ship (friend or foe) the original firer must make a Ballistic Skill test to see if they home in on the ship, treating it in all ways as if they had shot at the ship. Fate Points can be used to automatically fail the BS test if the target ship is a friendly (representing excellent friend or foe programming skills). Keep track of the torpedoes until they leave the combat zone (usually but no always represented by the edges of whatever map is being used).

If the torpedo salvo moves through any celestial phenomena like gas clouds or debris there is a chance they will detonate. Make a BS test. Every DoS removes 1 torpedo from the salvo. As with friendly ships you may expend a Fate Point to automatically fail the test.

Torpedoes travel slow enough that they are not affected by Void Shields. Against Ghost Fields treat them as Lances.

Torpedoes and Turrets
Turrets come into their own against ordnance like torpedoes. Turrets are never commanded by a PC, there are too many of them spread too far across the ship. When a torpedo salvo strikes a ship the turret crew make a BS test (based on the crew skill of the ship). This is only against the torpedoes that actually strike the ship. The test receives +10 per point of turret rating. If the ship has 0 turret strength it does not have enough close range firepower to defeat any but the smallest ordnance barrage. If the ship has a turret rating of 0 no matter how well it rolls it can only ever destroy a single torpedo.

For every DoS the test makes it destroys a single torpedo in the salvo. It is not good enough to simply hit with the turrets, you must score 1+ DoS.

Detailed Method
Each turret does 1D5 damage. Each Torpedo has Armour 2 and Hull Integrity 0. For every DoS roll to damage the torpedoes, if the damage exceeds the armour the torpedo is destroyed before it hits the ship.

This leaves extra detail for specialised turrets with higher ratings and consequently more heavily armoured torpedoes to add more variety to ship construction and purchase choices.

Special Torpedoes
(with thanks to Andy Chambers for his Battlefleet Gothic special torpedoes)
The torpedoes above are the standard imperial plasma torpedo. They are easy to find and stock. There are rarer torpedoes out there however that have specialised uses. They do cost more however. The following is a list of rare types of torpedoes. These can only be bought singly one at a time. Unless otherwise stated these torpedoes use the same rules as those listed above.

Vortex Torpedoes
Availability: Extremely Rare

Vortex torpedoes carry warheads which implode to create a highly unstable and dangerous rift in warp space. The damage inflicted by even a single vortex torpedo is horrendous, whole sections of the ship and its crew are ripped asunder and sucked into the warp.

Hits inflicted by Vortex torpedoes automatically cause critical damage. If a ship which is carrying unused vortex torpedoes suffers a critical hit to its Prow (or wherever the torpedoes are launched from) it suffers an extra D10 points of damage and an automatic critical hit as the torpedoes detonate!

Melta Torpedoes
Availability: Very Rare

Melta torpedoes are fitted with multiple melta bomb warheads which detonate into mighty conflagrations of nuclear fire when they impact. The fires will burn through even the outer hull of a warship, threatening to consume the entire vessel in a hellish inferno.
Special rules

Hits from melta torpedoes inflict 1D10 damage and automatically cause a single Fire critical. If a ship which is carrying unused melta torpedoes suffers a critical hit to its Prow (or wherever the torpedoes are launched from) it adds 1 to the critical roll.

Seeking Torpedoes
Availability: Near Unique

The art of building self-guided torpedoes is almost lost to the Imperium but they are still manufactured at the great Adeptus Mechanicus temples on Mars. Logic engines and metriculators aboard the torpedoes themselves enable them to identify the attack vector most likely to result in the salvo reaching a target. The disadvantage of seeking torpedoes (other than their rarity) is that the surveyors seeking torpedoes use to detect enemy ships can be easily blinded by blasts and debris, leading to premature detonation.
Special rules

A Seeking Torpedo salvo will make a turn of up to 45 degrees before they move so that they are pointing towards the nearest enemy ship. If several enemy ships are an equal distance away the seeking torpedoes will turn to attack the largest enemy ship. Seeking torpedoes which move through debris cannot be prevented from detonating by using FPs. Unlike ordinary torpedoes, the superior logic engines onboard seeking torpedoes mean that they will not attack friendly ships that they move into contact with.

Guided Torpedoes
Availability: Very Rare

Guided torpedoes are directed via telemetry from the ship which launched them, allowing them to be guided onto targets or even directed against a specific enemy ship amidst the confusion of battle. Although tight beam communication links are used for control from the parent ship guided torpedoes are still vulnerable to enemy interference and jamming.

Guided torpedoes can make a turn of up to 45 degrees before they move if the player that fired them passes a Ballistic Skill test. If the test is failed one enemy ship can attempt to give the torpedo salvo false instructions by passing a Ballistic Skill test at -20. If the enemy ship is successful they are allowed to turn the torpedoes instead!

Short burn Torpedoes

Short burn torpedoes have more powerful engines but a limited amount of fuel. They are considerably faster than ordinary torpedoes but will ‘burn-out’ and lose engine power very quickly in comparison to ordinary torpedoes which are designed to cruise at speed for longer periods.

Short burn torpedoes increase their range to 8. However, they will only stay on the map for 1 strategic round before burning out and exploding.

Hellebore

Hellebore's rules all seem very sound to me. here are a couple of further complications.

Torpedoes are also large, difficult to store munitions. In BFG, this was represented by the posibility of literally running out of ordinance on any given volley. Perhaps taking topedo tubes should have a disproportionately large space requirement in order to represent munitions storage. If the RT wants to carry more than, say, 20 of the things, He would have to purchase further Munitions Sotrage components.

Furthermore, a critical hit on a torpedo-tube or storage component should probably result in an explosion and proportional loss of life and morale.

Finally, there is the question of how fast do the things move once launched. Do they acceleerate after leaving the tube, or do they have a flat movement rate i.e. 3 VU's, 5 VU's or whatever?

Sounds good. The exponential increase in space is partially to reflect that though. Perhaps there should be a finite limit on torpedoes per ship, based on its hull type?

I was thinking about criticals blowing up torpedoes etc, but the current critical list doesn't have any munitions detonation etc for macrobatteries as a possibility. It doesn't have ammunition levels for them either for that matter, so technically you could fire them forever.

There are all sorts of ways to represent speed for the torpedo. Technically they should be moving at the speed the ship launched them PLUS the speed of their own launch (if the ship has moved 6 and the torpedos fire at 6 then they should be moving 12). However the weaponry given in the game list range rather than speed per se.

The rules I wrote above simply use the basic range as a 'speed' as a flat rate. When firing them you can only fire up to their basic range but they move their basic range every round so will often travel much further than munitions.

Hellebore

Or torpedoes could require the "Munitorium" component to function (a component that also explodes). Perhaps the ship could carry 15-20 torpedoes per 'munitorium' added to its stat-line.

I also tend to imagine that torpedoes are quite a bit larger than Macro-rounds (which are also, no doubt, huge. They describe them as kilo-ton, but I presume that refers to the explosive payload and not the mass of the shell. Still, though, probably bigger than any projectile round in existence today).

As far as a torpedo's speed, I would say that they move at a certain speed, plus the speed of the ship that fired them. As per your other post, there would be different statlines for different types of torpedoes. Some fast, some slow, some self-guided, all relatively difficult to purchase in deep space. Adding the speed to your ship's movement that turn makes a certain amount of Newtonian sense, anyway (although perhaps its best to leave Newton and 40k in separate compartments of our minds).

I will point out that neither of the two Imperial Frigate hulls have prow weapon mounts, so (like lances) torpedoes can therefore only be used on cruisers or raider hulls.

The rules look pretty good, but seem a bit complicated. Why not just have 3 or 4 'torpedo' entries, like the macrobatteries and lances have?

so, for example:

Component Appropriate Hull Type Power/Space/SP/Strength/Damage/Crit Rating/Range
Small Torpedo Tube All Ships -2/1/1/2/1D10+4/3/4

Medium Torpedo Tube- All Ships -4/2/2/4/1D10+4/3/ 4

Large Torpedo Tube All Ships -8/4/4/6/1D10+4/3/ 4

(or somesuch, and maybe with fancy names instead of small/medium/large) Abstract the torpedoes a bit more, and make it simpler to buy.

I'd also suggest making them only able to fire every other turn, representing reloading. Maybe allow firing every turn by halving the Strength.

I'd also suggest a shorter range, as (going from BFG) torpedoes don't normally reach as far as Lances and macrobatteries in a single turn. Maybe a Range of 4, which also means they move 4 spaces in a straight line every turn. Or, if you want to follow BFG closer, reduce range/speed slightly more (to like 3), but have all torpedoes move at the start of every ship's (or side's) turn.

As far as damage ... ignore the idea of Criticals on the chart. Individual components can be damaged by various things, like some critical chart entries damage components (Fire, Internal Damage, etc). Like the munitions, just have something happen when the component is damaged. I'd probably keep it similar to the Munitorium, although maybe give it a roll to see if it explodes or not. (7-10 explodes?)

I'd also incorporate something relating to torpedo 'spreads.' What made them a feasable weapon in BFG is that they were hard to get out of the way of. They spread out into a wide open formation, effectively covering a huge swath of space(proportional to the number of torpedoes fired). You had to make a call about whether you were going to break completely away from your current course or whether to ride straight through the torpedo impacts (this was where armoured prows came in especially handy). If the topedoes in RT are slow, And they don't spread out to cover a few "squares," then they will be pretty easy to avoid(unless they're self-guided and can make turns and so-forth.)

I presume FFG is going to make torpedoes a bit more complex than batteries or lances. That's probably why they left them out of the core rulebook...

No need for complicatios. Hellebore did a good basic already.

Torpedoes are used in 2 ways in Battlefleet Gothic:

1) area denial. Clearly, in a small setting like this an unneeded option. With massive fleets it is another story.

2) hit the enemy (doh), In BFG the best way to use torps and inflict damage is to release them at shotgun range. When standard batteries range in BFG is 30cm and Torps in BFG move 30cm I would say that Torps have a movement similar to the range distance of battery.

Also: escorts can have torpedoes. I would add the option were a hardpoint can be traded for a prow hardpoint.

horizon said:

Thanks everyone especially hellbore... i just printed out your post and will try those rules to see how well they work for my group. thanks again

Good work. I'm going to read it over and see if I can work it into my Fighters/Bombers rules.

Some thoughts after ruminating on the rules for a few days.

A torpedo salvo occupies a single 'square' on the table, just like a ship. There is no way that you can spread torpedoes over multiple squares as technically they are all coming from the same tubes on the front of the ship which will be at most the width of the ship apart. So when firing torpedoes they will be spread across a 400 metre space from most ships.

If you aren't using squares, they would occupy a single 1" square (under the assumption that 1 VU = 1"). Torpedoes always travel in the same direction they were fired. When they reach 1 square/inch away from another ship (so 1VU) they test to see if they veer off and strike. Those that don't continue in the same direction, they don't change direction toward the enemy ship and keep going past it.

I'm not sure that individual torpedoes do enough damage. It's perfectly feasible for a ship to have a single torpedo tube, or just two. But 1D10+4 damage won't go through many ships' armour. A single torpedo should do damage to a Sword frigate, but with armour 18 it has more armour than the torpedo can do damage.

I was thinking of making torpedoes a bit like a combination of lance and battery. You roll a BS test to see how many detect the ship and hit it, and then roll a test for each torpedo that strikes. Each 2 degree of success adding an additional D10 to the basic torpedo damage. This would mean that although the number of hits is determined like a battery, the damage is determined more like a lance.

Or, to make it simpler, torpedoes ignore armour like lances or halve armour. However, if this were true their normal damage would have to change. a Spread of 4 torpedoes doing 1D10+4 each ignoring armour would do tonnes of damage to a ship in one go.

At the moment I like the idea of rolling to hit like a battery, but rolling damage levels like a lance.

Hellebore

instead of ignoring armour torpedoes should ignore shields...cause well thats what they do in the fluff

It's lucky that that's what they do then isn't it.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

But the reason why they can ignore void shields is because they move a lot slower than directed energy weapon shots. I think torpedoes should have a speed value measured in void units, like torpedoes have in BFG, because they don't strike their target as fast as lance shots or laser batteries do.

EDIT: My suggestion would be to set the speed of torpedoes to 9 or 10 VU's per turn. I based this on the speed of torpedoes in BFG (most of them have a speed of 30 cm per turn) and correlated that number to the speed of a Sword class frigate in BFG (which is 25 cm per turn). Meaning that gamewise, torpedoes normally move slightly faster than a Sword class frigate.

In Rogue Trader the Sword class have a speed of 8 VU's per turn, so giving the torpedoes a speed of 9 or 10 would be reasonable, right?

I would say the speed would 20 or so, perhaps even 30.

Little mass, big engine, otherwise you could easily evade a torpedo which is only a fraction of the ship size

Santiago said:

Uhm, but that's sort of the point. If some ships (mostly frigates and raiders) can evade torpedo salvoes (remember, it's not just ONE torpedo it's several) in Battlefleet Gothic, why shouldn't they be able to in Rogue Trader?

A 20 or 30 in Speed would be flat out impossible to evade for any vessel. Also I'd think it would sort of grind with the laws of physics for something to move that fast. Remember that one Void Unit is several thousands of square kilometres, so a speed of 8 VU's per turn is pretty darn fast. A speed of 20 tp 30 VU's per turn, is just flat out insane.

For a sense of scale, giving torpedoes a speed of 20 or 30 would be way off. In BFG, Sword Class frigates are only slightly slower than torpedoes, and I can't see any viable reason why torpedoes should have such gross increase in speed in Rogue Trader. Remember, the reason why they are so dangerous is because they move more slowly than directed energy weapons (because it allows them to bypass voidshields).

Also, in BFG torpedoes can have guiding systems. So even if a small and fast ship were to veer of, the torpedoes could follow. Avoiding torpedoes is more a matter of being able to shoot them down with defensive turrets than actually outrunning them.

Very often torps in BFG are used in 2 ways

1)To force a course change.

2)As a short range weapon.

Giving them 2 high a speed makes them just like every other weapon.

PS- Note that most imperial torps aren't seeking until they get close to the enemy.

Remember though that while in BFG torpedoes had an speed about the same as a frigate, they could move twice in a whole turn

Luctius said:

Could you give me a page number from the BFG rulebook confirming that? I just checked the rules for torpedoes in BFG and it didn't say anything about moving twice. Only that they move their full speed in a straight line in every ordnance phase.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Correct, but during a turn there are two ordnance phases. One for you and one for the opposition. During each of those all ordnance moves, while a normal ship only moves during the movement phase of your own turn.

Edit:
At page 27 of the Basic rules pdf (I'm at work so don't have the original copy with me).
I agree that it doesn't state it very clear(on this page atleast I will check later If I can find a more clear reference).
It does however hint at it when it says that both players can move their ordnance during the same ordnance phase.