I ran my first Rogue Trader game about a week ago. We all had a blast.

I tend to read the rules and run with the big points and let the little stuff slide. Usually I'm for story over game mechanics. As a result I may have missed this in the book. The helmsman rolls his Pilot (spacecraft) skill + any bonuses from the ship for maneuver actions whereas the gunner only gets a basic BS test for shooting. Did I miss modifiers for type of guns, any kind of cogitator assistance (targeting), speed and current maneuver actions, or any kind of specialized skills (ie - starship gunnery, macroweapons, etc...)?

thanks

You did.

p.207 holds an ArcheoTech Targeting System

p.200 Command Bridge brings a Bonus to BS

p.218 has the Starshipbattle Action "Lock on Target" which covers the support the guns will get from precise firing informations from the augurs

In my opinion, the most interesting "in game" is the "Lock on Target", but I am a little buffled while "Scrutiny" is used in this test. Fore sure, it has something to do with predicting the turn the other ship is about to do, but I would have supposed either a tech skill or a Scholastic Lore test for "Tactic".

Players with Good-quality MIU implants can plug into the ship and get +10% to BS tests (also +10% to piloting tests)

Also, don't forget that the GM can impose any bonuses/penalties he or she thinks apply to the situation, but the above-mentioned pages and such are dead-on.

About Starship Gunnery in general:

Keep in mind that it is far from sitting down at a targeting console and having all guns hardwired into automated systems. Gunnery in Rogue Trader seems to include not only triangulating and feeding info into a targeting cogitator but also manage the crew loading huge shells into the macro cannons and power up the laser batteries, and also making sure that the crew members do it all in cohesion and in orderly and effective fashion.

It's a far cry from just pushing a button.

I agree Varnias.

The Starship Gunnery action is really a combination of a player standing back and directing the gunnery crew on the bridge while they process firing solutions, much like submarine warfare, and motivational directives over the ships voxhailer to the gunnery crews on the gun decks.

I don't disagree with any of that except that the same applies to piloting a starship. To be honest, the Agility of the guy directing maneuvers on a Lunar-class cruiser shouldn't matter a bit - an Intelligent quadriplegic directing the crews on which thrusters to burn at what strength, when to activate them and for how long to burn should be a better pilot for a starship than a limber moron.

It’s 40K why would someone stay a quadriplegic?

How would he use the flight controls? MIU? In other words house rule it.

Otherwise I would take it that if you are a Void Master and you are piloting the ship then you are at the helm.

If everything revolved around Intelligence why would anyone want anything other than a group of Tech Priests running the ship? If the limber moron has pilot + 20 and Talented and a re-roll (VM) I would rather have him at the helm while I put a bolt round through the brain pan of stumpy the wonder kid for telling people, who know their duty better than he does, how to do their jobs.

In the example of starship combat is says a Crit deals 1d5 Crit damage, is it also stated somewhere else?

HappyDaze said:

The helm seems to be connected to the thrusters directly (not only in Rogue Trader but also in several books released by Black Library). That being said, the manouvre constantly needs supervision and tweaking. That's why you'd want a Techpriest or two who use the "Aid the Machine Spirit" action each round.

Santiago said:

I don't have my rulebook to point you exactly where, but yes it does. I believe it is right after where it discusses lances getting 1 hit every 3 successes then multiple macrobatteries grouped in a single shot can only get a maximum of 1 critical.

It's worded a little funky, but says something like "If the damage done is less than 1, then 1 point of damage is caused and 1d5 is rolled on the critical table". What they meant was, you always do a 1d5 on the critical table, should you do hull integrity damage. If you don't do a single point of hull damage on a critical roll, you'll always do at least 1 (therefore, getting 1d5 on the table).

Once a ship is crippled (hull integrity = 0), then criticals look up the damage (on what would be the hull) on the table instead of rolling 1d5.

Found it, thank you....ship combat is very cool but those Lances are killer, hence their power requirement.

The disadvantage of lances, really, is their lack of hits. This is especially needed against larger ships that have multiple shields. Macrobatteries are good for taking down shields, and against lightly armored targets since they get quite a few more hits.

Lances are good against high-armor targets, but only once the shields are down.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Various reasons. If you're a Titan Princeps (from some Forge Worlds) whose entire existence is spent in a fluid-filled tank connected to an MIU interface for your Titan, you don't need limbs. Your 'legs' are metres-long constructs of adamantium and plasteel, while your 'arms' are weapons capable of annihilating city blocks and tank companies in moments.

Some starship crew may well end up operating in such a fashion, particularly on Adeptus Mechanicus vessels.

dvang said:

That's why we opted to take a Dauntless Light Cruiser as our starting ship, and equipping it with macro batteries and a lance. We take out their void shields with the macro batteries, then deal the killing blow with the lance.

Also our ship got the Reliquary of Mars in it's past history, and we fitted it with a teleportarium. And, yes we also have murder servitors on board.

Of course, this led to a pretty pathetic starting Profit Factor, but our PC gang seems to be a little piratical anyway, so our Profit Factor will not linger on such meagre levels for long.

The helm seems to be connected to the thrusters directly (not only in Rogue Trader but also in several books released by Black Library). That being said, the manouvre constantly needs supervision and tweaking. That's why you'd want a Techpriest or two who use the "Aid the Machine Spirit" action each round.

If this is the case then there really should be no reason that gunnery is any different. In my eyes, Imperial tech doesn't seem up to having a direct input control system for a vessel as large as a frigate of cruiser. I see almost all bridge control as being 'shouting orders' and 'pushing buttons' that direct others to take actions that would initiate/terminate thruster usage, but YMMV.

dvang said:

Wait, so that means that any critical hit can only roll 1d5 and get only the first 5 results? O.o

FarseerWraith07 said:

The remaining results kick in when you cripple (reduce to 0 hull integrity) a ship - any hits beyond that becomes a critical hit with a value equal to the damage inflicted (after deductions for armour). Until you've put big holes in the hull, there's only so much damage you can do to the internal systems...

HappyDaze said:

Well, if you want a reason I could provide you with one.

Basically the line of thought in Imperial Tech seems to be: "Never let a holy machine do something that you can beat a human into doing". You wouldn't let a bunch of filthy ship ratings fiddle around with the holy functions of plasma reactors and the engines they power. But the guns is a different story, because guns must be loaded by something. Surely such a lowly task as loading an instrument of destruction isn't something you would insult the machine god by using one of it's holy constructs with. So rather than having machines reload the huge macro battery shells, you shout at a few thousand ship ratings armed with huge chains, hoists and tallies, lifting the munitions into place by sheer human power.

Then there's also the issue of letting automata govern too much of the controls of guns. Even combat servitors have to have biological components to them, because otherwise the combat servitor would be "soulless" and considered a blasphemous abomination. This seems to be reflected to pretty much all weaponry employed by the Imperium in general. Quite simply, if a gun is to be used, it should be prepared, aimed and fired by a human (or at the very least, a machine possessing a human soul). Letting automated systems do that would entail giving too much control to an impure machine, and we all know what happened when the mythical "iron men" rampaged around during the dark age of technology.

Apart from that it could simply be a matter of lack of knowledge. A plasma drive for a starship and it's controls is simply an ancient STC constructed in such a way that it must be controlled from the helm and no servant or lord of the Imperium has any right in tampering with it's holy functions.

Remember that pretty much all technology the Imperium of man employs are pretty contradictorial. Just look at some of the images in the Battlefleet Gothic books. There are pictures of hundreds ship ratings powering "something" in the ship by treading a treadmill. Think about it, they are traveling through space in a FRIGGIN STARSHIP, and they still use such primitive devices as treadmills?

If we consider these aspects, then there is nothing strange about being perfectly capable to control the entire starship from the helm, but you still have to go through a painstaking process of firing a single volley with the ships guns.

Various reasons. If you're a Titan Princeps (from some Forge Worlds) whose entire existence is spent in a fluid-filled tank connected to an MIU interface for your Titan, you don't need limbs. Your 'legs' are metres-long constructs of adamantium and plasteel, while your 'arms' are weapons capable of annihilating city blocks and tank companies in moments.

Some starship crew may well end up operating in such a fashion, particularly on Adeptus Mechanicus vessels.

Nah, can't be done. It's basic naval etiquette: Every member of the bridge crew must be able to throw themselves to the ground in a suitably spontaneous-looking fashion when the ship is hit by ordnance (yes, even and especially when it doesn't breach the shields or hits at a completely different location of the ship) or travels through some hazardous space condition.

I believe it works something like the master of the guns has direct responsibility for aiming one gun (not battery) which is set as the master gun. The firing solutions are then sent to the rest of the gun crews to apply to thier own guns with slight alterations using a fumula to correct for the different possision of the gun on the ship. And as for completly automated guns... there are way too many stories of something automated scewing up and killing everyone. I for one hear of such things from an enemy and my first thought is how can i hack into it and use it against them. I believe the imperium is a 'little' paranoid about 'something' along those lines too

HappyDaze said:

HELM! 108!

From descriptions it appears to be that each gun is an autonimous system with its own crew, allowing them to continue firing even if they bridge is shattered and the command lines utterly severed. The master gunner does indeed appear to be responsible for the creation of firing solutions rather than controling the launch from the bridge himself. Likewise with torpedoes (the launch would be conducted by the crew chief, whilst the master of ordinance determines time, burn etc) the engines (where some poor bastard in the engine room will be sweating at the auxiliary lines whilst the bridge orders all ahead full and so-on).

Though I continue to be of the opinion that the worst of the treadmill-pulling and so-forth is a result of Heath Robinson repairs rather than being in standard use. I can accept most of the overwrought gothicness, but remain in favour of at least basic automation. (Though the comments on why the Abrams tank doesn't have an autoloader do ring particularly true in the 41st millennium. A potentially unreliable bolted-in machine that requires specialist repair can be avoided by having a person [or, in the case of the starships, several hundred persons] there to do the blasted thing by hand instead.)

Another question: If a ship weapon's shooting action is based on the main gunner's BS, can it benifit from any PC actions to increase the accuracy (aka aim)? What about gear or talents that normally effect a player's aim with a hand held gun? What would and would not work?

Cheddah said:

I'd say a general no to all that. In very particular cases I might consider letting gear, skills, talents or psychic powers that are ment for person-to-person-combat be applicable for ship-to-ship, but I can't think of any such situations from the top of my head...

Another question: If a ship weapon's shooting action is based on the main gunner's BS, can it benifit from any PC actions to increase the accuracy (aka aim)? What about gear or talents that normally effect a player's aim with a hand held gun? What would and would not work?

Good Quality MIU would likely work, the rest not so much.

Other than that, there's Lock On Target and Put Your Backs Into It! which can aid the BS tests.