We know FFG will eventually come out with a Starship supplement, but why hold our collective breaths? I'm sure it will be great and wonderful and all that but even with a Rebreather Mask, you'll suffocate long before you see the thing. So let's make our own to get us through the Warp Storms...

I'm interested in combining the following posts by myself, Sammael, N0-1_H3r3, and Hellebore's and other's ideas into a .pdf and submitting it to Dark Reign or otherwise posting it somewhere everyone can download it in a nice, easy-to-read, easy-to-use format with all the inconsistencies ironed out.

Warships

The Nova Cannon

Fighters and Bombers

Torpedos

If there are other popular House Rules that pop up we can certainly include them and I'd really like all the contributors to have a say in editing and content. If you don't want your content included, let me know and we'll put a link to your post instead. We'll be sure to give credit where credit is due and if there's anyone out there with the talents to make the final version "prettier" it would be great.

Like I said, it's a group project and I encourage everyone to give comments/suggestions/etc. I'll sift through the material, put it all together and post it on an FTP site, then we need help with:

New Ideas: Everyone can help here. If you have a new idea or like someone else's post, why not suggest it before the Project is over?

Editing. Let's not by hypocrites by chastizing FFG and then doing the same thing, eh?

Artwork: It's got to be cool, and it's got to be legal so GW/FFG doesn't spank us with their legal paddle, but FanArt submissions and any previously published art we can freely use provided in an appropriate format would be appreciated.

Publishing: If you're good at taking the Final Draft, adding the cool borders, etc and turning it into a .pdf and want to lend a hand, sounds good to me.

Let me know if you are interested in helping! Thanks!

Blowing my own horn, the stuff on the New Ship Component Idea thread (which I apparently can't link to?) might also be of use. No guns yet, but some other handy toys, and anyone's welcome to contribute.

I was reading that and I liked it. Yes, if you have new ship component ideas, post them on Argoden's thread and we'll see about including as many as we can.

When I sit down and do it I am not to bad at the formatting part of open office. I could do some of that stuff.

This sounds like it would be a fun project.

Uh, I don't know if this will be relevant to the project, but I've been thinking of doing a little more exchaustive character sheets for Rogue Trader (something along the 4-6 page area rather than the 2 pages we have now). The problem is, while I can certainly come up with a neat design, im not competent at all when i comes to hunting down the correct fonts for the letters (I'd like to see character sheets using the same fonts as the curren ones do), and im no that good wih Photoshop either, so I wouldn't be able to frame the character sheet pages in those cool Rogue Trader borders that most of us would probably want to see.

If this Group Project are gonna include people with these skills, then perhaps we could create a new character sheet as well, as a nice and useful bonus rather than having to make it into it's own project?

maybe something like liber fanatica?

perhaps Navis Prima: Uncharted Territories?

i am currently dabbling with making random charts for warp hazards based on a stuff from the rulebook. maybe we can pull everything together and make some sort of no-too-focused fan supplement?

Varnias Tybalt said:

The font used in the titles is a GW proprietary one apparently called REQUIEM-Inquisitor. Try the Dark 11 font instead.

Errant said:

I already have already managed to track down the Dark 11 Font actually

Still, it wasn't merely the fonts I was thinking of here, but the overall visual aspects of the sheet. Like I said, I can come up with the layout of it, but im gonna need help with the visual imagery (like the graphics in the framing and such).

I figured that if this is going to be a group project I'll have a good chance of getting in touch with someone adept at these things.

If you'd like to mock something up, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

Is this project still in the works? If so do you have a link where I might send more ship hulls once I've finished them? I recently suffered a massive hard drive failure, so I'm trying to recover my work and start moving on to some Xenos ships. (Starting on Eldar)

This looks cool.

Have you perused any of the documents I put up over at dark reign? I intended to create a fanzine esque document to put my articles in, but I ended up writing single pieces at a time and posting them up instead.

www.darkreign40k.com/downloads/dark-reign-supplements/age-and-experience-color-/details.html

www.darkreign40k.com/downloads/dark-reign-supplements/null-hound/details-2.html

www.darkreign40k.com/downloads/dark-reign-supplements/kraeling-dissection/details-2.html

The graphics weren't very hard to do, although they are inspired by the DH graphic system rather than the RT. I created two fonts for them, one that looks like the Requiem Inquisitor font (based off the dark 11) and another that follows the theme of the Inquisitorial I symbol with the 3 bars through it.

All this is done in Indesign CS3.

Hellebore

I'm back.

Yes, I'm still working on this. Give me about 2 weeks and I'll put something up on an FTP site. I'm expanding to include a cheet-sheet based on Drydock, but with our stuff added in. I also need to look at whatever's in the new GM kit.

There isn't much just power (3) and space (9) stats for the tubes The cruiser in question is out of torps. For a second I thought the gm guide had torps rules sigh.... There are a few xenos ships, and systems. I think the adventure is the best adventure FFG has put out for RT. It really has the scale and openess I want in my adventures.

PS- I've been collecting various house rules off the web here and there. Then attempting to fill in the detail, and fit things to my memory of BFG, and the fluff. If any thing is useful steal away.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dwxgv5h_41gcr5q3gw

So there's no real "new" spacecraft rules?

I actually read the Drydock supplement and ...

...well I'm not trying to be an ungrateful jackass or anything, this is meant constructively...

...the Starship Combat Summary is absolutely worthless. Hear me out, I don't want a lexicon description of what "Lock On Target" means, I want my cheat sheet to tell me what to roll for this action and what effects it has on combat, and it's not just Lock-On, it's all the actions that are that way.

I know what "Lock On Target" means, I want to know what it DOES without having to dig through the rulebook.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the great material. I'm going to play again Friday after next and I'd like to use it for our game, so that's my deadline for a Final Draft. Right now I'm going through every post on the House Rules forum and I'm going to try to use as much stuff as possible and I'm only going to change it as much as is necessary to get it to all jive together as one coherant system. Of course, you'll all have the chance to check it out and suggest revisions/fine tuning.

Back to work!

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Oh, there are... but none for PC vessels. There are descriptions and rules for Void Wasps and another Yu'vath ship-construct called The Wanderer, and rules for a number of the unique systems that Yu'vath 'ships' use (gravity sails, and warp-based forms of Lance and Macrobattery, called the Immaterium Energy Arc and the Void-Skein Rupture Cannon, respectively).

Well, I should have a First Draft (not Final) by Friday.

I went through the entire House Rules grabbing any good idea that looked reasonable, cut and pasted it into a .docx and it's 64 pages long....

Needless to say, I'm going to have to whittle out all the adjectives and pare down the descriptions to the bare basics, concentrating on the game mechanics of the items in question. I'm also going to leave out most the Xenos stuff and probably the Archeotech Ships. It's good stuff, but I just can't fit it all. Hopefully right now I'm looking at 10-12 pages.

Well, I'm going to fall short of my deadline, but I am pleased to announce that I'm making splendid progress and should be finished this weekend.

I think I'll make it in under 10 pages. It'll cover new Components, Ships, the Nova Cannon, Torpedoes, Small Craft, PC Fighter Pilot Talents, Tactical Turns, Revised Crew/Morale Damage allocation and I've done a Ship-to-Ship combat cheat-sheet which is actually useful. There are a few other things in there too and I'm hoping you'll all be as pleased as I am with the results and I'm sure just about everyone will find most of the sections useful in their games.

As you guys know, there are several rules sets out there with differing opinions, so I had to take some creative liberties and go with a consensus. I also had to pare down some of the rules for playability reasons after playtesting the entire rules set as a whole. For instance, Hellebore's most excellent Torpedo rules contained some unnecessary dice rolls and bookkeeping. As-is, they were great, but when you start throwing in additional stuff like Fighters and Nova Cannons it became apparent during play that all three systems needed a little simplification to make them more compatible with the core rules and not bog the game down.

One thing about Rogue Trader is the system is not that complicated and after playing a few times, most of the rules can be remembered without having to look it up all the time. This is important especially after the third beer. My goal is to take all these Homebrew Rules and turn them into one coherent system which at the same time can be broken down into pieces should the GM not like certain parts. No rules set is perfect or satisfies everyone.

Question: Boarding Torpedoes. How many troops do they carry? I'm rather in favor of an abstract number of 'boarding parties'. Anyone have any suggestions for the rules of these things? Remember, it's not an Assault Boat, so once it 'Hits', your team is committed and ain't coming back until or unless the target ship is captured....

With boarding torps I figured that they hit their target then use the torp as an escape pod. Honestly either way the boarders have to be fanatical. I've played with rules for staying for multiple turns.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dwxgv5h_38hc9fbgg8

I've often wondered how they got guys to board one of those things. Stimm addiction? Shock Mauls? I mean, it's a better than even chance you'll be shot out of the Void halfway through the one-way trip...

But in the interest of completeness, I should include them so I wanted to know what everyone's ideas were.

Well in BFG they were pretty much a Ork weapon, and some times Space Marine. I've been toying with a 'Nid version of boarding torps, as well as a burrowing torp. (The problem with BFG 'Nid weapons was they needed to be balanced with everyone else....)

I'm 2 weeks past my deadline, but I'm almost finished.

I decided to waffle on the Boarding Torpedoes and Interplanetary Bombardment Torpedoes.

I don't have access to my RT book at the moment. Someone help me out and tell me how many Weapon Components a Lunar Class Cruiser has.

Thanks!

Maxim C. Gatling said:

A Lunar-class hull has five weapon slots - 2 port, 2 starboard, and 1 prow. The Lunar-class cruiser configuration in BFG is port and starboard batteries (for which the Mars Pattern Macrocannon Broadsides in the RT book are a perfect match), port and starboard lance batteries (Titanforge Lance Batteries fit perfectly here), and torpedoes in an armoured prow.

First may I just say thank you for the work on these conversions, they have been a great help to me. I was wondering however if you would be doing the various xeno ships as well? And if not I was curious how you did the armor and the hull integrity conversions?

LOL. Funny you should mention that. After a lot of typing, I started editing and came to the epiphany that all Cruisers and Battlecruisers were virtually identical if you strip off their weapon components. I.E. they're all essentially Lunar Class Hulls. The only real exception was the Dictator, which has 3 Turrets rather than 2.

A Battlecruiser is a Lunar with an additional Dorsal Weapon Mount. The good news is that it makes it really easy for us, the players. For Space Marine, Archeotech, Grand Cruisers and Battlecruisers I'm just cross referencing official sources with what other people have posted here and presenting them pretty much as-is.

It is a Compiliation, after all, and I'm crediting anyone on this board who's ideas, if not actual rules are being used in the Group Project. It's a lot of typing as I'm condensing 70+ pages of our House Rules into 26 (and counting) pages.

I'm 95% done, by the way. I'm going to change the font, add some pictures of my crappily painted fleet and then submit it to Dark Reign. I will also be posting it elsewhere in case DR can't/won't put it on their site for some reason. Here's a taster of what's in it:

Table of Contents
1. Forward P. 1
2. Starship Combat Cheat Sheet P.2-3
3. Optional Rules, Tactical Turns/Crew Damage
4. Nova Cannon/Inferno Cannon
5. Torpedoes
6. Starship Components
7. Fighters, Bombers, Assault Boats and Cutters
8. New Ships
9. Archeotech Ships

I wish I could put in Xenos Ships and Chaos ships, but in retrospect this is a good thing as they deserve their own supplements. If people like this, I'll be more than happy to start work on the next version.