Hi all,

We're about to kick off our first RT game, and the players have pretty much completed the build on their first ship.

For interest, they've been given the brief that they're part of a larger fleet and will be taking a scout-ship role, so they chose (so far):

Iconoclast Frigate

Plasma drive Jovian class 8.1

Warp engine Strelov 1

Life sustainer Clemency

Crew quarters Pressed

Bridge Combat

Auger array W-240 Passive

Gellar field Warpsbane hull

Void shields Single

2x Jovian missiles

(Still a few points to spend)

So my questions relate to ships. In your view:

1. Unless you add the component, do starships have cargo space (if so how much)?

2. What about landing craft (Aquila or Arvus for example)? Yes? How many?

3. Can a starship enter a planet's atmosphere or even land on a planet's surface?

Cheers

Ludd

Opinions:

1. I'd be inclined to say no. They have space for the people, and the materiel, that they need to function, and only "gain some space", if you will, as these are used up, and then you'll go to port, and restock. Dedicated cargo space is dedicated, and you need to set it aside for that use. If you aren't actively carrying cargo, right then, then yes, it is somewhat wasted space, as you sort of can't put troops, or other stuff, in there, and sometimes space aboard a ship is at premium.In some ways, I'd say that's one of the appeals of transports, as while they aren't as tough, or as fast, they can carry the most money-makers, for many captains. Otherwise, more people would fly frigates, and (light) cruisers, just for the added advantage of safety, or raiders, and just run like the wind, with piracy being so rife. Every ship will have some space, and so you can store your personal-scale loot, as you raid Eldar ruins, or find other trinkets, and doodads, but only a dedicated cargo compartment will carry masses of foodstuffs, or the artillery for a tank company.
2. I think all of them have a few , just because they need ways for people and stuff to get to and from them. You get to Zayth by ship, so you MUST have a craft to get onto Zayth, from there, if you don't have a teleportarium, or something. If you need more, say to land a military force, you happen to be carrying, planet-side, then no, you'll need more, and probably at least a lighter bay.
3. It's been talked about, numerous times, and the opinion is a bit varied, but I'm going to repeat myself with NO! Many ships are just too large to enter the atmosphere, and not be torn apart by gravity/mass, or EVER take off, again. They don't have hover-capability, or ventral rockets, so unless you landed your 3-mile ship (even many Raiders are around 2km long, at least), on its back end, you'll never get off the planet, and you'd annihilate anything near that blast-off point. As a comparison, ships like the U.S.S Enterprise-D, from Star Trek franchise, must be built in orbit, at Utopia Planetia Shipyards, as even they are too big, and Star Trek is MUCH more conservative with ship bulk, than say Games Workshop/Warhammer 40,000 ever has been. If you've ever seen Galaxy Quest, they say the same thing regarding their own ship, and I think even Andromeda's vessels stay in orbit. If you have cargo to load. or deposit, you will need to hook up to an orbital station, and unload, or go through the tedious process of having your own, or the host's cargo lighters dock with you, load up, and go, in numerous trips, over possibly days, or weeks. Fortunately, this can be a good time for you to go planet-side, or board the station, and do fun stuff, to assist the RPG-element, while your crew play with cargo lumps.

Again, these are mostly my opinions, and others might refute me, if they know better. I like to think EVERY ship will have at least the bare minimum of what it needs to function, whether it's a Navigator, and Astropath, space for your supply stores, and a few lighters/craft, unless their lack is a part of a story element, but if you don't actively get more, making an Acquisition test, or at least getting your GM to say you can note it on the sheet, you might lose what you have (a story element, also), and they'll only be so good, if you don't find a dedicated, or better quality, component, or hire on a superior asset, like a Navigator from the House that actually mapped the area you are going to now traverse, or a Priest who has lived the same hardships as the ratings you just shanghaied enlisted aboard.

Pretty much agree with the above with a small exception, I would say the ship could enter the at least the upper atmosphere ( not land mind you, or even get particularly low ) There is quite a-lot of work showing ships in atmo, including the BFG rule-book. The planetary bombardment mission required you to enter an atmosphere to fire on the planet I believe.

To the best of my memory the actual wording in the book is:

1. Yes. All RT vessels are capable of completing "trade" endeavors unless the ship specifically says it cannot. Dedicated holds provide bonuses to these endeavors (and often make more sense), but theoretically all ships "can" do it.

2. A "modest" number of landing craft for every vessel. It issumed all vessels have an indeterminate number. The actual number, quality, and type will vary based off GM mercy/whimsy.

3. Officially: sort of. Raiders, transports, and frigates may make landings. Getting back into space is some hideous roll (-50?) to piloting. Anything larger than a frigate breaks it's spine in the attempt and crashes, likely killing everyone aboard. Caveat would say larger transports, Universal Mass Conveyor, etc. are included in this category.

Pretty much agree with the above with a small exception, I would say the ship could enter the at least the upper atmosphere ( not land mind you, or even get particularly low ) There is quite a-lot of work showing ships in atmo, including the BFG rule-book. The planetary bombardment mission required you to enter an atmosphere to fire on the planet I believe.

Quite true. I more meant like the ships in Independence Day, for instance, hovering over buildings, by about 1,000 feet. You couldn't fly so low as to get around needing craft that can traverse the atmosphere to get your troops from one place to another. One of the trailers for Star Craft: Brood War, had a Terran Battlecriuser up in the sky, above the battlefield, but certainly close enough that land-based infantry could fire upon them. They were close enough that, while DuGalle and Stukov were watching on screens, they could've seen the battle out the window, and watched individual Zerg kill individual rednecks. 40k ships won't be doing that, though their ridiculous scale means they'd certainly be visible, in detail, from the ground. While they flout physics plenty, in this case, gravity would still win.

1. No. It takes a minimum of Stowage Bays to be able to even engage in a Trade endeavor. What are Stowage Bays? Check the Core book NPC Vessels, Wolfpack Raider. You can extrapolate the Power/Space requirements. IIRC they are 1/2. Now if you are just talking about cargo space for luggage, favorite sports car, etc., then of course. These ships are huge.

2. RAW suggests 1 small craft per 5 Hull Integrity + 8 per Hull Landing Bay or similar component. This is a silly number, however, when you consider that even those Stowage Bays could hold 100 modern aircraft carriers. There's an entire thread on this forum concerning Halo barges. It's worth reading.

3. Theoretically the smaller voidships can make a surface landing but failures tend to be spectacular so only a desperate person would attempt it. This is why voidships need a large complement of small craft, to carry all the loot into orbit.

I think we've sparred over this before Errant!

My take: According to BFG, escorts and transports can make planetary landings. So that's pretty much a given that they can! That does not necessarily make it an easy process though! There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence throughout the fluff that ships as large as cruisers can and do enter the atmosphere and therefore could theoretically land. Again not necessarily easily.

For my game, I tend to handle it as follows; Raider,frigate and smaller transports may land on an unprepared field. Light cruisers, cruisers and larger transports can enter an atmosphere but require a dedicated port facility to actually land. In all cases it is a time consuming unwieldy and difficult process so shuttles are almost always preferrable!

I really don't want to start a fight, but how do they get airborne, again? They'd need struts strong enough to hold up megatonnes, and banks of thrusters all along their 2km bellies, precisely placed as to not snap the ship in two, wasting fuel like humor to lift that bulk into space. Ones that are found are often damaged, granted, but need to be towed into space by squaadrons of tugs, with any additional damage just getting brushed off, compared to what grounded it, in the first place. I won't say it can't, and you certainly run things how you want to, but how does it work, and how often do your players make use of it?

Heh. Probably.

And yes, fluff I've read did have transports landing to disgorge troops. I have issues with that. Venkelos brings up the physics problems. The logistics also bothers me. Given the time to shuttle everything into orbit with puny Halo barges (a subject of other threads), and the expense of buying, maintaining, and operating all those shuttles in the first place, I'd think that "unwieldy and difficult" would be preferable. Hence, it seems unlikely. But that's me.

now I thought what for the most part lands on planet in mostly useable again form were Dropships like

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Devourer_Dropship

I really don't want to start a fight, but how do they get airborne, again? They'd need struts strong enough to hold up megatonnes, and banks of thrusters all along their 2km bellies, precisely placed as to not snap the ship in two, wasting fuel like humor to lift that bulk into space. Ones that are found are often damaged, granted, but need to be towed into space by squaadrons of tugs, with any additional damage just getting brushed off, compared to what grounded it, in the first place. I won't say it can't, and you certainly run things how you want to, but how does it work, and how often do your players make use of it?

No fight. I have always believed that voidships would use repulsor plates similar to a landspeeder but on a much larger scale. Maneuvering/ docking thrusters are used to push the massive ship back to high altitude where the plasma thrusters light off and bring the ship to orbit.

In my game this is very power intensive usually requiring the complete shutdown of the warp drive in order to power the repulsors. Further, all external antenna need to be stowed away prior to re-entry. This renders long range auspex and vox comms inoperable though I allow for short range comms from backups. The base airspeed of a voidship is 50kph/move point. Voidships still maneuver in a 30 minute turn so even a marauder bomber would seem spritely and agile by comparison!

As to the physics of the support struts I can only say yes they are massive! So what? This is a culture that builds continent sized cities in layers on top of themselves! I don't think holding up a starship of even cruiser size would be a problem!

I really don't want to start a fight, but how do they get airborne, again? They'd need struts strong enough to hold up megatonnes, and banks of thrusters all along their 2km bellies, precisely placed as to not snap the ship in two, wasting fuel like humor to lift that bulk into space. Ones that are found are often damaged, granted, but need to be towed into space by squaadrons of tugs, with any additional damage just getting brushed off, compared to what grounded it, in the first place. I won't say it can't, and you certainly run things how you want to, but how does it work, and how often do your players make use of it?

No fight. I have always believed that voidships would use repulsor plates similar to a landspeeder but on a much larger scale. Maneuvering/ docking thrusters are used to push the massive ship back to high altitude where the plasma thrusters light off and bring the ship to orbit.

In my game this is very power intensive usually requiring the complete shutdown of the warp drive in order to power the repulsors. Further, all external antenna need to be stowed away prior to re-entry. This renders long range auspex and vox comms inoperable though I allow for short range comms from backups. The base airspeed of a voidship is 50kph/move point. Voidships still maneuver in a 30 minute turn so even a marauder bomber would seem spritely and agile by comparison!

As to the physics of the support struts I can only say yes they are massive! So what? This is a culture that builds continent sized cities in layers on top of themselves! I don't think holding up a starship of even cruiser size would be a problem!

That's a viable explanation for some ships ... but when the Imperium can't properly maintain landspeeders and some sources go so far as to say basic grav plating can be an issue, it's a lot harder to believe.

As far as entering the atmosphere, sure, you can do that with a cruiser, but you're not going to think about landing, you're entering a very low, very power intensive orbit, and you aren't planning to stick around for very long. Or rather, you're not going to think about landing a cruiser if you want to use it again.

After all, any ship can land once. Most don't take off again.

I'd say that if a world is properly equipped dirtside, you can very carefully land small transports and escorts. If a world is not so equipped and prepared ... you need specialized components on your small transport or escort ship in order to safely perform a rough-field landing and launch back to space.

At least, as regard ships that are in common use and manufacture throughout the Imperium. There might be very very old ships with fancier technologies that would allow them to do more in atmosphere, but that's it.

If worse came to worst, I think this is one of those things where the players need to sit down, at the game's start, and decide what degree of physics apply to their game, and what grasp of them they plan to use. In that way, plans can be made wherein they seem educated. On the one hand, metagaming, and player vs. character knowledge can be a sticky point, but, on the other, it can be good to know what you are having those characters know, so that they don't look, in game, like they are pants-on-head confused. If your game lets cruisers land, however such a feat seems possible, in your galaxy, just be sure they know, and if not, bring some personnel transports, so you can go places. I could certainly sit here and argue physics, and not being an expert in such a field, probably do a pretty good job of doing a pretty bad job of it, but the fact that even GW's own grasp on such things can appear tenuous, it only stands to reason that some people would allow certain stunts that others wouldn't. Were I running it, a transport, a 2km long object, designed to live in space, isn't likely to approach land on its own intentions, and bigger ships even less so, but that's just me, and my own incomplete picture of physics on a ship. Just make sure everyone knows what is, and isn't, feasible in their galaxy, and it really won't matter.

Hmm. I suppose a REALLY dangerous tactic for "launching" would be emergency warp jumps. You would likely still cause massive damage to your ship, but not perhaps crack the spine, rip the engines looose, etc. The world would probably die. Ripping a hole to hell ON a world has poor president for survival in this setting... unless you are Space Marines.

Hmm. I suppose a REALLY dangerous tactic for "launching" would be emergency warp jumps. You would likely still cause massive damage to your ship, but not perhaps crack the spine, rip the engines looose, etc. The world would probably die. Ripping a hole to hell ON a world has poor president for survival in this setting... unless you are Space Marines.

That discussion is else where. However, some of us pointed out that this would be a viable tactic the Imperium or Chaos would utilize on a daily basis and since we have not heard about it from any official GW source, it was decided that it's not feasible due to some unforeseen error. What that error is is up the players a GM. Ei: Ship explodes/implodes doing no/little harm to planet, ship gets devoured by warp, or the warp drive says "Does no compute" and your GM gives you the evil eye.

Yeah, if the only thing the Imperium, or Chaos, had to do to Exterminatus a world was crash one, or maybe a few, ships into the ground, and overload their warp drives, the AdMech could stop building their superweapons (the ones they still know ho to make). Even in a thread where one argues that there are so many ships in just one area of 40k, when certain sources babble about how hard they are to make, there are plenty of spare ships, in this equation, and I could imagine them "confiscating" pirate vessels, and doing this. "Surviving" a space battle can be tough; just crashing headlong into a planet, heedless of the damage you take, along the way, is easy.

As for in-orbit, I know the thread is elsewhere, and we've discussed various possible points on it, but in Frozen Reaches, three Ork ships manage, with one going BOOM!!! (hope the Orks liked THAT noise ), and Damaris is fine, so far as I can tell. Perhaps the atmosphere, which protects the planet from various stellar phenomena, also shields Damaris from the energies of this, and the scale was small enough to work. Ork ships' warp travel might also have something to do with it, I don't know.

I really don't want to start a fight, but how do they get airborne, again? They'd need struts strong enough to hold up megatonnes, and banks of thrusters all along their 2km bellies, precisely placed as to not snap the ship in two, wasting fuel like humor to lift that bulk into space. Ones that are found are often damaged, granted, but need to be towed into space by squaadrons of tugs, with any additional damage just getting brushed off, compared to what grounded it, in the first place. I won't say it can't, and you certainly run things how you want to, but how does it work, and how often do your players make use of it?

No fight. I have always believed that voidships would use repulsor plates similar to a landspeeder but on a much larger scale. Maneuvering/ docking thrusters are used to push the massive ship back to high altitude where the plasma thrusters light off and bring the ship to orbit.

In my game this is very power intensive usually requiring the complete shutdown of the warp drive in order to power the repulsors. Further, all external antenna need to be stowed away prior to re-entry. This renders long range auspex and vox comms inoperable though I allow for short range comms from backups. The base airspeed of a voidship is 50kph/move point. Voidships still maneuver in a 30 minute turn so even a marauder bomber would seem spritely and agile by comparison!

As to the physics of the support struts I can only say yes they are massive! So what? This is a culture that builds continent sized cities in layers on top of themselves! I don't think holding up a starship of even cruiser size would be a problem!

That's a viable explanation for some ships ... but when the Imperium can't properly maintain landspeeders and some sources go so far as to say basic grav plating can be an issue, it's a lot harder to believe.

As far as entering the atmosphere, sure, you can do that with a cruiser, but you're not going to think about landing, you're entering a very low, very power intensive orbit, and you aren't planning to stick around for very long. Or rather, you're not going to think about landing a cruiser if you want to use it again.

After all, any ship can land once. Most don't take off again.

I'd say that if a world is properly equipped dirtside, you can very carefully land small transports and escorts. If a world is not so equipped and prepared ... you need specialized components on your small transport or escort ship in order to safely perform a rough-field landing and launch back to space.

At least, as regard ships that are in common use and manufacture throughout the Imperium. There might be very very old ships with fancier technologies that would allow them to do more in atmosphere, but that's it.

I have to respectfully disagree. Imperial Starships have exactly ZERO aerodynamic properties! This suggests that they must use some sort of artificial lifting mechanism however you care to define it.

That said, if a ship can "fly" in atmosphere it can at least theoretically land. Whether that involves planetside facilities or not becomes a matter of Gm interpretation.

I do agree with venkelos though; this is something the Gm should clearly define at game start in the beginning. The explorers need to know the capabilities of their ship if they are expected to act intelligently!

I really don't want to start a fight, but how do they get airborne, again? They'd need struts strong enough to hold up megatonnes, and banks of thrusters all along their 2km bellies, precisely placed as to not snap the ship in two, wasting fuel like humor to lift that bulk into space. Ones that are found are often damaged, granted, but need to be towed into space by squaadrons of tugs, with any additional damage just getting brushed off, compared to what grounded it, in the first place. I won't say it can't, and you certainly run things how you want to, but how does it work, and how often do your players make use of it?

No fight. I have always believed that voidships would use repulsor plates similar to a landspeeder but on a much larger scale. Maneuvering/ docking thrusters are used to push the massive ship back to high altitude where the plasma thrusters light off and bring the ship to orbit.

In my game this is very power intensive usually requiring the complete shutdown of the warp drive in order to power the repulsors. Further, all external antenna need to be stowed away prior to re-entry. This renders long range auspex and vox comms inoperable though I allow for short range comms from backups. The base airspeed of a voidship is 50kph/move point. Voidships still maneuver in a 30 minute turn so even a marauder bomber would seem spritely and agile by comparison!

As to the physics of the support struts I can only say yes they are massive! So what? This is a culture that builds continent sized cities in layers on top of themselves! I don't think holding up a starship of even cruiser size would be a problem!

That's a viable explanation for some ships ... but when the Imperium can't properly maintain landspeeders and some sources go so far as to say basic grav plating can be an issue, it's a lot harder to believe.

As far as entering the atmosphere, sure, you can do that with a cruiser, but you're not going to think about landing, you're entering a very low, very power intensive orbit, and you aren't planning to stick around for very long. Or rather, you're not going to think about landing a cruiser if you want to use it again.

After all, any ship can land once. Most don't take off again.

I'd say that if a world is properly equipped dirtside, you can very carefully land small transports and escorts. If a world is not so equipped and prepared ... you need specialized components on your small transport or escort ship in order to safely perform a rough-field landing and launch back to space.

At least, as regard ships that are in common use and manufacture throughout the Imperium. There might be very very old ships with fancier technologies that would allow them to do more in atmosphere, but that's it.

I have to respectfully disagree. Imperial Starships have exactly ZERO aerodynamic properties! This suggests that they must use some sort of artificial lifting mechanism however you care to define it.

That said, if a ship can "fly" in atmosphere it can at least theoretically land. Whether that involves planetside facilities or not becomes a matter of Gm interpretation.

I do agree with venkelos though; this is something the Gm should clearly define at game start in the beginning. The explorers need to know the capabilities of their ship if they are expected to act intelligently!

The majority of the atmospheric maneuvering any Imperial ship will make is not so much flying as it is throwing oneself at/through the planet's atmosphere and (hopefully) missing the ground.

And, of course, any ship can "land" once - it's just that then they usually can't take back off again afterwards.

This, of course, is related to why only light ships can land - and, I suppose it would probably do to say that unless deliberately fitted out for planetary landings, it takes a more maneuverable ship, because their maneuvering/stationkeeping/docking/etc thrusters have enough output to overcome gravity and attain escape velocity from rest without employing the main drive.

They're usually and mostly using vertical thrust (including thrusters that provide both lateral and vertical thrust), rather than anti-grav, and definitely not any aerodynamic properties.

I absolutely agree it's something the GM and players should discuss and work out it in advance.

There are quite a few sides to this discussion. First and foremost, the physics make it a very hard proposition if not impossible without at least a serious amount of anti grav technology. On the other side, the fluff does mention the landing of 'smaller' ships, but then again, the fluff disagrees about the size of the ships. And anti-grav technology should be around in the ships, as up is mostly up in Imperial ships. Perhaps that the building of ship sized anti-grav plates is far easier than the smaller speeder size?

For the moment, I am considering the following:

- Only 'small' ships can land on the surface of a planet, with small defined as nothing more than 10 megatonnes. This will include the smaller transport and most escorts, although this might depend on their physical shape. Imperial frigates for example have often large wings mounting augur arrays (at least I think they do) sticking out, making landing them impossible.

- Landing a ship on a planet demands either a prepared space port or a surface hard enough to hold the (gravity assisted, but still) mass of the ship.

- Landing a ship on a planet is a very hazardous operation, demanding a hard (-20) manoeuvrability test on normal gravity planets (higher or lower gravity changes the test to -30 or -10). If the test is failed, the landing has to be aborted. If the test is failed by more than three degrees, the crew loses control over the landing and the ship crashes. Any roll of 91-00 is an automatic crash.

- Landing a ship on a planet causes high stresses on a ship. Whatever happens, a ship landing on a planet takes 1D10 points of structural damage.* For every degree of succes while landing, this damage is decreased by one. For every degree of failure, the damage is increased by 1D10 points of structural damage.

- Crashing a ship on a planet is - obviously - a very bad thing. The players better have some fate points to walk away from it.

- Landing a ship on a planet (and taking off again) is not good for the environment. Without going further in the danger posed by a crashing ship, any ship coming down or taking off will first irradiate a large strip of ground under its approach or departure path and then blast its the direct approach and its immediate landing zone with its plasma thrusters.

- Taking off is a difficult exercise, involving carefully manipulating the anti-grav systems and thrusters, with the same modifiers as landing the ship. But as getting away from gravity is slightly easier, four degrees of succes or 96-00 are needed to crash the ship. However, where a landing ship might try and abort the landing to come back a second time (if they did not succeed but did not fail catastrophically either), this is no option while taking off.

- When taking off, a ship takes an automatic 1D10 of structural damage*. For every degree of succes while taking off, this damage is decreased by one. Each degree of failure increases the damage by 1D10.

- A ship landing or getting off is hidiously vulnerable to defence systems. These shoot at the ship with a +20 to hit. Any damage is also added to the difficulty of the manoeuvrability test.

-Structural damage* is substracted directly from a ship hull points (armour plays no role), but has no effect on crew unless it results in a critical. For every point of structural damage roll 1D10. On a 9 or more, the stresses to the hull have been so great that the damage is permanent and the hull points of the ship are permanently decreased by one.

This would make landing a ship on a planet possible, but very hazardous. Even on a succesful landing, there is a good chance that your ship will suffer temporary and even permanent damge, and the results of a failure are terrible. Furthermore, the risks to the planet being landed on are such that no sane governor of a settled system will allow this as a 'normal' way of doing business. Just the radiation damage along a loooooong strip of its surface is bad enough and the chance of a ship crashing into your main hive makes is just to big. So for the normal transport of goods between settled systems, you can probably forget about it. Too dangerous and too much wear and tear on the ships.

On the other hand, this does allow you to set down a 'small' ship on a planet when you need too, whether it is to unload a massive cargo or because you just don't have enough shuttles to get all that huge archeotech you found up. And Orks won't mind taking sum risks as they are no puny humies. Waaaaaaaagh!

Another note:

I see your party's ship has Jovian missile batteries. These might be a problem in the early stages. They only fire every other round, but they are twice as strong as a Mars macrocannon battery, so its even, right? And you get the added bonus of a serious first-strike. The missiles sound good. But, the STR 6 is something only a really good gunner can take advantage of, one that is aided by Put Your Backs Into It, and Lock On Target.

With some good min-maxing, your gunner will have 50-60 BS. Your various aids can probably give that +10 per round of shooting. Without getting into the Mathhammer of it, on the average, the ship will have a greater sustained firepower with Mars macrocannon than with Jovian missiles. It's an important consideration when your party is low-ranked and riding a glass cannon.