So today my group finally got together and ran a test space battle so that we could get a feel for the space rules. First, it seems like moving around was a lot simpler than I expected. I had been afraid that ships would end up circling each without being able to close a lot more than was the case. I was surprised by the fact that it seems like the ships weapons are largely unimportant. It seemed to be much easier to board the enemy ship and defeat them that way, especially since it's easier to get bonuses to that particular command roll than the BS role for firing on the enemy. Am I missing something? Is there some trick to making shooting very effective? Perhaps we just weren't shooting at the enemy for long enough before we boarded?

Stuff you can do to up the BS roll to hit:

1) Aid the Machine Spirit. +5 to hit with one weapon. Note that this is a good use for your up to 3 NPC rolls... Each 2 SL's adds another component boosted. A really hot roll can pop 3 guns.
2) Close to under half listed range ... +10 to hit.
3) Lock on Target +(5+ ( 5 x RoundDown(SL/2) ) )
4) Command Bridge +5 or Ship Master's Bridge +10
5) If you have archaeotech, Auto-stabilized Logis Targeter as Auger Array +5

Having played BFG, I can see a small change in how ship combat works that has a huge change in how battles are resolved.

In BFG, two ships of equal strength can pound each other for an entire battle and do little to no damage to each other. This is because their void shields will absorb most or even all of the ships (cruisers would average 2 hits on each other, absorbed by their 2 void shields). Victory went to the side that could outmaeuver the enemy fleet to bring the firepower of 2 ships to bare against one enemy vessel, overloading the voidshields and hitting the vessel directly.

This, of course, doesn't work in RT, because the void shields pop up again against every attacker. Each ship has to knock down the void shields seperately. As most ships in RT to date are quite small, they lack the firepower to get in enough hits to both overload the shields and damage the ship.

My guess is that this is a deliberate design decision, due to the nature of the game. The players will probably only have one ship at their disposal. Making the ship tougher - especially against multiple attackers - grants it greater survivability, which is more important in an RPG than in a wargame. They can face multiple enemy raider vessels and have a chance of getting away before being blown to smithereens. Alternatively they can defeat them in boarding actions, where the PCs higher stats may give them an advantage over the enemy. And if they in turn are boarded and captured, there can be a lot of fun in trying to lead an action to retake the ship, or to trick their enemies etc. A lot more fun than having your ship smashed and airless, left adrift in the void...

aramis said:

Look at "Aid The Machine Spirit". It only mentions adding +5 to Manoeuvrability or Detection. Nothing to do with the ship's weapons.

I have also found this problem. Unless you roll multiple DoS for your shots, you don't do any damage, which I don't think should be the case.

MILLANDSON said:

Doesn't mean it can't boost your chances to hit indirectly. That bonus to Detection works wonders on Lock-on Target orders...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Indeed. I was just pointing out that it doesn't add +5 to BS for one weapon, which was what he was saying it does. Which is true, is it not?

MILLANDSON said:

Fair enough - I was just making it clear (for everyone; it wasn't specifically directed at you) that it still had value from a gunnery perspective.

Just like in BFG, weapons batteries are primarily effective in dropping shields, and any damaged caused after are just gravy. Just like in BFG, lances are great at cutting the enemy open like a can, but only if the shields are already down.

The following assumes the most likely result of starting with an escort (transport, raider, or frigate) class ship:

Macrobatteries will need multiple hits to tally up enough damage to penetrate a ship's armor, but they shields (even multiple shields) like crazy.

If you have a macrobattery and a lance, focus maneuvers on getting the enemy in the prow arc (within close range for as many weapons as possible, if you can). Fire the first salvo with the batteries to the shield(s) - and if you get enough degrees of success, you might tally enough damage to scratch at the enemy's hull integrity. Then, open up with the lance second, and let it ignore that armor (and the already downed shields) and dig around directly in the hull integrity. This is classic BFG tactics.

If you have two macrobatteries, then you face an interesting choice. You can open fire with one, the shields, then hope that you get enough degrees of scuccess that the full tally of hits will produce a high enough damage total to hurt the enemy. (What you really want is to hit the Crit rating of one or both batteries, though. With an extra hit per degree, batteries crit a lot easier than lances.) Or, you can mass all your batteries into a volley. You still roll them seperately, but you can subtract the shields from the hits of whichever battery does less damage (if different models of battery) and tally together the hits of both batteries into one salvo. This makes it much more likely to reach a Crit threshold, but at the cost of only being able to do one Crit with two weapons...trading possible gain for more certain gain. Also, the combined damage of two batteries is much more likely to total up higher than the enemy's armor.

To make hitting easier, remember that in addition to PC actions, you also get NPC crew actions for the ship. You can use these to boost the number of weapons you Lock On, get a Put Your Backs Into It in if all PCs are busy, or Aid the Machine Spirit to make it easier to maneuver into position, close range, lock on, or scan the target. Also, the Rogue Trader's Exceptional Leader ability is a gift straight from the Emperor in starship combat.

And you want to scan the target. A Focused Augury with two degrees of success reveals the location of the enemy's shield generators, making them a target for critical hits. Knock out the shield generators (or set them on fire) and watch how much easier the rest of the fight gets.

Which brings us to crits: Hull damage is how you bring down a ship for good, but crits go a long, long way to getting you there. Even if you can't pull off a Focused Augury, once the enemy starts shooting at you his guns become fair game. Knock out his guns (and/or anything else you can scan) and you'll take less damage while continuing to pound him while he struggles to get them back online.

My group is loving RT starship combat, because it works so much like BFG (we're almost all BFG players) except at a scale where escorts-on-escorts combat matters. There's so many options available, every character has something they can do. (The Void-master flew circles around a Chaos raider last night, the Arch-militant made a fine gunner, and the captain flew a Hit and Run with his guncutter everytime they were close enough and exhorted the gunners whenever they weren't.)

Lets not forget the bonuses from some of the bridges.

A void master (with the right special) can reroll failed BS tests for a strship.

The rogue trader can add a 10% to another roll (one of the gunners perhaps).

Also RT in general the assist action is VERY important. Assisting the gunner is a good way to lay waste to the enemy ship in a hurry.

Psychopomp said:

What? The weapons batteries require 4-6 degrees of success on an attack roll to score a critical, depending on pattern. All three listed varieties of Lance need only 3 degrees of success. Consequently, Lances critical more frequently than macrobatteries (and if you have a Lance Battery, the degrees of success needed to get you that critical will also give you a second hit on the target as well).

mrobfire said:

Really? I haven't gotten that far into the book yet but this seems strange. We're talking about starships with crews in the thousands, and the most effective tactic is boarding?

Wouldn't ships like these be engaging each other from thousands of kms apart? How is boarding even a logical option?

I definitely have to finish reading this book!

When they are talking boarding they are generally talkig hit and run attacks. You take your best strike team, shoot your way into some place vital, and blow it up with charges. It works only because the boarding party is heavily armed/armored, and generally in and out before the defensive teams can react.

Wouldn't ships like these be engaging each other from thousands of kms apart? How is boarding even a logical option?

They've also got an appropriate amount of speed, and both Imperial and Ork ships have a tendency to heavily armoured prows ideal for a head-on charge.

There's Hit&Run and there's Boarding. Hit&Run works the way Dalnor described while boarding seems to be more all-out assault, though the actual attack teams still have the advantage - most ratings have no armour and barely any training with the guns they're handed.

From my limited play experiance, (only ran the pre-made adventure in the back of the RT book, and was the only one at all familiar with the space combat rules), space combat worked fine.

Now admittedly, the Explorers overall tactic was always "close and deploy the murder servitors", but we had a teleportarium and murder servitors.

Still, the frigates guns did pretty decent damage (1 mars battery, 1 plasma battery +munitorium), and with put your backs into it we got some nasty hits off.

The wolf pack raiders didn't do much, but that was more on account of the GM (me) rolling horribly (80+ for 6 straight rolls). The Fell Hand was taken out pretty quick, but a battery and lance combo did some significant damage in just 2 turns.

If the ship gets a normal (no DoS) hit with both a macrobattery and a lance, the enemy will take hull integrity damage (and thus moral and population loss).

For the players, this should be a significant concern even if they are winning, as damage to hull, moral, and population are long lasting. You have to get to a suitable world (no easy feat within the expanse) and spend a significant amount of time and resources to repair these.

You could easily go several adventures before having a chance to repair and restock.

I must say I'm a big fan of this, as lasting damage and long term considerations are not often addressed in action based RPGs.

Kinda daft, hit&run is the most destructive attack against an escort in Battlefleet Gothic. Assault Boats eat them by breakfast.

Pity it is again so strong. But I'll have to test.

horizon said:

That's more because of the way the BFG rules work (escorts can't take critical hits, they just die instead) than because of the relative effectiveness of hit-and-run attacks. It's just easier to count an escort out than to mess around with criticals and catastrophic damage (to assume that any critical damage they suffer is sufficient to render them incapable of continuing to fight) when you're on a scale where you might well have a dozen cruisers and a battleship alongside your squadrons of escorts.

horizon said:

I think it's mainly down to the changes in the rules from BFG. They seem small, but they make a big difference. Ships are far less vulnerable to massed enemy fire than they were, which means that ship-to-ship ranged combat is less deadly. As the PCs are the ones who are going to be outnumbered most of the time this design decision makes sense.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Aye I did notice that they up powered escort craft ALOT from the BFG days. Or I guess you could say they de-powered capital ships. As an example if we went by BFG rules a cruiser has 8x the wounds/health that a frigate does so if a sword class frigate has 35 hull integrity we could assume a hull integrity of somewhere around 280 for a lunar class cruiser. Instead we have it at around 2x (it has 70) instead of the 8x.

In BFG it went like this

Escorts (destroyers,frigates,raiders,most transports) had 1 wound

Light Cruisers had 6

Cruisers had 8

Grand Cruisers had 10

Battleships had 12

Weapons on the other hand are very much like they were in BFG (though the small ships are up-gunned.)

The lunar cruiser had

Strength 6 Prow Torpedoes

Strength 2 lance batteries port and starboard

Strength 6 weapons batteries port and starboard

Except for the torpedoes it is a perfect match. (or can be if you want to pay the power requirements for 2 lance batteries).

The sword class frigate had

Strength 4 weapons battery dorsal.

In effect they gave the ship 2x the firepower it used to have. (double sunsears provide strength 8)

So reduced capship health and more light ship firepower.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Oops, you're right. I was misreading the crit rules and thought it said "hits" not "successes" My bad, there.

I was thinking that there should be an option, when working together with another vessel, to coordinate your fire into one barrage. Ideally this would involve some sort of check to communicate properly and time the attacks so they hit at the same time and it may be more lethal than I anticipate. Perhaps such a thing will be introduced in later books which deal with the players possessing more than one ship?

MILLANDSON said:

It is true, but this is Rogue Trader we're talking about where cooperation is prefered, which means that any action that could indirectly provide bonuses to any given action would be perfectly feasible as an argument. After all, it can only provide boosts to either Manouevreability or Detection. We all know what to use boosts in Manouverability for (flying the ship), but bonuses to detection can only feasibly be used for so many actions. "Lock-On Target" would be one of them.