Ok, so I'm going to be starting my bunch out this weekend. I've tried to get as much of the book into my head as possible.

I intend to actually start them without a ship, and their very first endeavor will be to salvage or retrieve their ship. This might change, still throwing the idea around.

I get the idea more successful Rogue Traders will actually (eventually) be cruising around the Galaxy with entire fleets at their disposal. How would I go about progressing things to this point eventually? Do they simply build up a fleet with requisition, one ship at a time? How do I stop their first ship from becoming trivial if they have multiple different ships at their disposal eventually? Or will the fleet mainly consist of smaller, less equipped vessels which will remain inferior to their 'flagship'?

Would the 'fleet' be represented as off following various trade routes which generates profit for them over time?

Anyone with some experience or ideas here?

Ideas, sans experience:

-The easiest way to get new ships will be to take them as prizes during combat. Still requires a lot of work (repairs, finding or converting enough crew, getting trustworthy officers) and if you do it to too many loyal Imperials you'll get a rep for outright piracy, but still easier and faster than paying for new construction or a refurbished hull. This ought to encourage you to hunt pirates and renegades, which is fine by the Imperium. Zapping other loyalists and RT ships might be something you can get away with once or twice if you're good enough at Deceit, but eventually the Navy or Inquisition will start asking questions.

-There's no particular reason the PCs need to stick with the same ship through their whole career. A bunch that starts in a raider is probably going to want to shift to a cruiser if they actually get there hands on one. There's only so much you can do with a given hull even with archeo- and xeno-tech. Staying with your first ship should eventually become a nostalgia choice, or perhaps one based on the vessel's reputation.

-Picking up "new" ships via the acquisition method is pretty feasible, especially for cheap merchant hulls with minimal equipment. Very handy for maintaining the trade routes the more fighty ships have set up, but vulnerable to misfortunes in the form of pirates and raiders and spacewhales and whatever. Good combat ships are more expensive, and definitely a late-game thing.

Don't forget that the ships in a RT fleet are often someone else's ships. The PC need to get a good rep for getting things done. Impress various factions like the navy, tech priests, and maybe the sector government. Then they need to find a endeavor that various factions in the Imperium would want to be a part of. Simple ideas:

1)Finding and Exploring a lost dark age of tech colony. The admech could certainly be interested in providing ships, troops, and equipment.

2)Hunt down a chaos/eldar/etc pirate. The navy would certainly be interested, possibly merchants. If the pirates target the church, admech, or certain systems they'd be interested.

3)Reclaim a colony world from Xenos.

Sure, an Endeavor might easily include working with a fleet of other ships as part of one or more objectives. Plenty of potential for squadron-scale ops even before the point where the dynasty owns multiple ships itself.

I generally assume that most RTs control multiple ships from the start, with most of them being transports needed to actually do something with the trade routes that constitute the majority of PF points.

Cifer said:

It's equally valid for PF to be the result of "off stage" investments in back in Imperial space, paid for with the loot carried home in the holds of a single ship. All depends on the kind of endeavors the dynasty is built upon. Lots of different types of RTs out there, and not all of them are interested in playing merchant or colonizer.

I've been toying with the idea of having ships in a RT fleet under the command of different members of my roleplay group, because in this instance i ended up with two players rolling up virtually identical characters, and both wanted the "glory of space captaincy", so i started playing with the idea of giving each player-character a ship of their own in part of a Dynasty's fleet.

The idea is the fleet can take on bigger and more dangerous missions in space as they work together with their ships to pull off more daring raids and can do more high-risk ventures.

Don't have a clue how it will work out, since now i have players who have gone from arguing over who is in charge of the ship, to players who are arguing over who is in charge of the FLEET!

Cornelius Vermuyden said:

Oh, that's an easy solution! Just give each player their own fleet. After all, once you do that, then they can tackle even bigger and even more dangerous missions in space as they work together with their fleets in a single armada to pull off even more daring raids and can do even more high-risk ventures..

That should fix your problem nice and tidy like with no unforeseen repercussions what-so-ever.

If for some weird reason that doesn't work, I'm sorry, it's all I could think of aside from threatening to cut their beloved fleet in half, knowing that the true Admiral would step forward and allow the other to take command rather then see the fleet cut in half in such a brutal manner. This would totally work as well, guaranteed... I mean if it works for something as small and mostly useless like a baby, it would work wonders on a fleet with is way bigger then a baby and can do a hell of a lot more then any baby could.

Failing either of those two options, have you considered working this rivalry into a story and using each players desire, which I reckon translate to their characters as well, to fuel a vicious little story of greed where some nasty gribbly starts playing them off against one another to ultimately defeat both of them...