I suppose most of you will recognise this: Space combat is well and truly initiated. The ship is in range and the command bridge hums with activity. Cogitator units wirr going through all the transmutations of targetting a hostile ship more than 15 void units away. Skilled crewmen make their calculations, aided by servitors that crunch out the final firing directions. Overseeing this all is the captain of the ship, making sure his team of specialists works as one to fire the massive macrobatteries and awesome lances.....and then up steps the gunslinging bodyguard of the captain. This guy is a great shot. Born in the dangers of an underhive he learned to shoot before he could walk. He can shoot a lho stick out of a mouth at a thousand meters range. He can draw his pistols faster than his shadow. He is bolter and plasma fury personified. And now he uses these instinctive skills and his 81 ballistic skill to hip-shoot with the ships weapons.
This doesn't fit. Of course, RP rules are just fantasy rules, but they should try to emulate (the admittedly fantastic) reality as well as possible and in is clear that in the above example this is not the case. Nothing has prepared this individualistic gunslinger with little or no education and technical skills in directing the complex targetting of shipborne weapons, but this is what is done according to the rules. Furthermore, the quality of the crew hardly plays a role in this. Wether this gunslinger stands on the bridge of the flagship of Battlefleet Calixis and directs the guns of the awesomely experienced crew (60) of the pride of the Imperial Navy or wether he has just joined the rag tag mob manning a miserable trader and its neophyte crew (20) doesn't matter a jot. The ship uses this 81 BS, with all the other modifiers added.
Now, before I continue, let me make it clear that it is obvious that characters have to play a real role in ship combat. This is not a battlefleet simulation, but a roleplaying game and character actions matter. But using the BS of a character to direct a ships gun - with no training required, making it easier to use than a lasgun - is in my eyes an oversimplification that is unrealistic (see above) and destabilising, as it makes player character vessels insanely more dangerous than NPC crewed ships.
To resolve this, I am pondering about the following:
- We might average out the ballistic skill of the player directing the weapons with the crew skill. This is easily and quickly done and gives the players a direct influence on the capabilities of their ship while making crew quality of vital importance. In the above example the Navy battleship would see its allready awesome skill of 60 boosted to a near mythical 71 (rounding up), a terrifying number. While the rag tag tader would see a very hefty boost from 20 to 51. An enormous difference, but at least the green boys and old men have not reached a near perfect level of firing due to the presence of one man.
- We might add a number of skills to be taken. Shipboard weapon training (macrobattery), Shipboard weapon training (lances), Shipboard weapon training (torpedoes) and Shipboard weapon training (Nova Cannon) seem logical, with a 300/300/300/500 XP cost (or something in those lines). Logical careers for those skills would be those of the Rogue Trader, Void Master, Explorator and Arch Militant (all the careers with the void tactician talent).
- A more far going step would be to use the crew skill, and allow the character directing the guns to modify this according to a specific skill. This would uncouple a ships firepower from the BS of a character, but still allow a player to have vast influence on the firepower of a ship. Master Gunner, Master Gunner +10, Master Gunner +20 and Master Gunner (talented) could work quite well and still place a premium on the quality of the crew. In the above example, this might even allow the battleship to reach a skill of 90 (which seems a good reward for any rogue trader party that has worked so hard to get an exceptional crew) while the green trader is steadied by the experienced hand on the bridge to a very respectable skill of 50.
This would mean that the bodyguard of the captain would no longer be a mere gunslinger. Dedication to the complex weaponry of his ship has made him a highly skilled and vital crewmember. He seamlessly slides in the often rehearsed positions, directs the bridge crew while trusting that the endless training in the gundecks will now pay off.