Hi,

First of all this is no topic about how to handle fighters and torpedoes but about how many smaller craft a rogue trader should have onboard his main ship.
Craft such as Aquila Landers, Guncutters and Cargo Landers.

For a frigate sized ship I would guess:

1 Aquila Lander
6 Cargo Landers
2 Guncutters

Anybody, hints, ideas?

GrtZ,

Santiago...

Santiago said:

I'm personally reluctant to view 'guncutter' as being quite so commonplace; IMO, they're more specialist craft, more akin to a heavily armed non-warp-capable yacht than a generic class of ship. It's the kind of thing that individuals would obtain on special commission rather than be a generic part of a ship's complement.

...

Aquila Landers (a specific variety of what is essentially an 'executive passenger shuttle' - not every example of such would be an Aquila) should be inherently rare, reserved for senior officers and important guests. 1 or 2 in most cases, maybe a couple more for the really prestigious and wealthy.

Cargo Landers - including but not limited to, designs like the Arvus Lighter used by the Imperial Navy - would be proportional to the available cargo space: it's no good having only a single fifteen-tonne lighter if your hold contains ten or a hundred times that much. The bigger and more numerous your cargo holds, the more cargo shuttles of varying sizes you would have. Dozens of the things - remember that warp-capable starships are several hundred metres long at the least, and are often 1 or more kilometres long, and several hundred metres abeam... even for a relatively small ship, equivalent displacement to a Sword-class frigate, you'd likely need 20 or 30 shuttles of various sizes for moving around masses of cargo.

Beyond that, there'd be other passenger shuttles - less ornate than the rarer 'executive passenger shuttle' mentioned above, but likely larger - useful for ferrying passengers between ships or to a planet's surface in large numbers, and if so inclined, for deploying soldiers or engaging in hit-and-run attacks. A few of these, with a lot more if you've got a barracks or an otherwise large compliment of soldiers distinct from the crew.

Then you'd have secondary utility craft like work capsules (small craft fitted with heavy tools for performing repairs on the outside of the ship, either alone or in support of voidsuit-wearing repair crews), escape pods/lifeboats (I prefer the latter - escape pods is very much a sci-fi cliche when it comes to escaping from starships, and having fully-functional lifeboats seems much more appropriate), remote/servitor operated exploration probes (for poking your nose in where it isn't welcome, without risking the loss of your actual nose), etc, etc. In total, you'd be looking at hundreds of these tiny craft, particularly lifeboats (while it's less than crucial that all your ship's crew survive a catastrophe, it is important that at least some of them do, particularly the ones with useful skills).

At least, in my opinion.

I think a lot of it would depend on if the ship has a cargo bay or lighter bay.

Dalnor Surloc said:

You'll have to have at least some storage space inherently, for the ship's normal supplies. And that in turn will require lighters to load and unload those supplies...

I set down and wrote down what the players had as far as ships before we played the first game. I gave them 1 larger guncutter for their main personal shuttle (none warp), 3 smaller shuttle simular to the aquilia, but of a diffrent design, and 30 arvis shuttles. In addition, I gave them 3 other warp capable ships as part of their fleet. 1 is a small cargo, 1 a small passenger, and 1 is used to hold the exploreres attached imperial guard regiment (in which I had stated out their resources too). The three smaller ships have no weapons and all have a slower movement than the explorers raider.

One bit of fluff for BFG (I think) talked of each Imperial cruiser having hundreds of ancillery craft and even being capable of manufacturing them on board.

Check out the House Rules forum for Fighter/Bomber/Assault Craft rules as well as Torpedos.

I haven't come up with Guncutter or Lander rules yet, but the basics are there and it would be easy to extrapolate.

Erretnorb said:

I don't think I would take this as the norm for Imperial Cruisers. I also read fluff that stated Torpedos were "the size of skyscrapers!" and different fluff that a single Torpedo was "the cost of a Light Cruiser".

You gotta take it with a grain of salt when translating that into game mechanics. Personally, there's no way in the Warp I'm giving my players access to virtually unlimited fighter and ancillery craft just because their ship has a Lighter Bay!

I seem to recall in the fluff that even the standard cargo shuttle (not the Arvus, which I believe is smaller) can hold the better part of a company of Imperial Guardsmen and thier assorted kit, including Chimeras. In Caves of Ice I seem to recall the narritive mentioning that the heavy cargo lifters carried by the fuel tankers were several hundred meters in length, possibly making them as large as an aircraft carrier, or at least an LST.

I'm hoping the GM kit has the small craft information that was promised in Dark Frontier. I also hope to see it ship soon. It's been "at the printers" for a while.

And then maybe another RT title might show up on the Upcoming page.