I cannot find anywhere that the Armored Prow upgrade for a Cruiser cannot be stacked. So, consider the following:

A Lunar Class cruiser has ~30-40 Power and Space after buying Essential Components, generally.

Armored Prow takes 4 Space.

Augemented Cruiser Retro-Thrusters take 5 Power.

A Lunar Class Cruiser is therefore fully capable of equipping itself with 5 Armored Prows and 4 Augmented Retro-thrusters while retaining some other utility. It will have a Prow Armor of 40, and a Manueverability of +30.

Then, imagine if it uses that hefty Manueverability to engage in Ramming. Let us imagine it hitting, say, Dauntless Class that did not anticipate the speedy reactions of its larger cousin. Assume that the Dauntless has standard armor on all arcs. Heck, give it an Armor Plating. The Dauntless is rammed in the side, where it possesses 20 Armor. It takes 7d10+40 damage, ignoring Shields, but not armor. On average, this means loss of approximately 50 structure, crew, and morale, and potentially enough to inflict a critical value of 30. The Lunar class, in return, suffers 20+d5 damage, which it ignores, due to the reinforced nature of the Prow.

So, in conclusion....

WHAT. THE. FRAK?

Go to page 204. Note the small cross in the table beside armoured prow.

Look at the bottom of the table. Following the cross are the words "This component may not be selected more than once per vessel". So you can't slap a second one on there.

Besides, without that rule what else could this ramming ship do in combat ?

Out of curiosity, I just worked up a ship based around the idea- only a front armour of 25, and a maneuver of +23 (well, +33, if you take the ship master's bridge bonus to Pilot tests), with quite an impressive suite of macrobatteries (no lances, I couldn't cram them in with the augments and the Mars broadsides in all four broadside weapons slots, plus a prow battery). She'd be expensive as hell (clocking out at 81 SP), and probably able to smash any ship she came across, with guns or by ramming, but has virtually no potential as a trading ship (no barracks, no dedicated cargo bays, no passenger suites; hell, nothing but gun decks, armour, maneuvering thrusters and a munitorium. Oh and a couple of obs domes to fill up the last space without degrading the Maneuver even more).

Interesting as an exercise (when ramming, she'd do 3d10+25 damage, ignoring voids, with a net skill modifier of +13 before skill mastery), but impractical for a rogue trader dynasty to operate. Of course, I don't expect that to stop some, but still... it's the sort of ship best left to the Navy, they've got the budget for it.

Actually, come to think of it, I ran it up using voidsmen and vitae, if i swapped to pressed crew and M1r, I think it could squeeze in some extra bits, maybe make it slightly more profitable for private ownership...

Anyone who's particularly interested in the design let me know, and i'll copy it from the scratch paper i worked it up on.

I've recently started a RT game and I decided to introduce my players to space combat, i wanted an easy fight for them so i put their (battered and poorly equipped) cruiser against 2 lightly equipped raiders.

First the PC captain manages a good maneouvering roll and rams the first raider (armoured prow means that the PC ship takes no damage, the enemy is almost destroyed), the Arch-militant leads his troops on a boarding action, setting charges and destroying the enemy vessel.

The second ship decides it doesn't like the odds and makes a break for it.

The Arch-militant fires the mars pattern macrobattery broadside and gets the full 6 success, scoring a crit in the process. The enemy ship is immediately crippled and the engines damaged. With no way to escape, and its main guns slagged, it surrenders.

So out of an intro, my players managed to capture a new ship. Doh!

Moral of the story, fear the Armoured Prow, especially on cruisers and especially when the Captain has a good piloting skill.

I've got a light cruiser statted up with prow, added armour and added retro thrusters but the power/space demands of thrusters and armour are quite intense. You can get a LOT of fun stuff for just one upgrade to each.

Unfortunately, you can't get put an armoured prow on a CL, it's CA only. But yeah, you can do some fun stuff with just one upgrade apiece.

It's a real pity, because an up-armoured CL with an armoured prow would be awesome as a ramming ship.

I'm actually kind of relieved that I was wrong. Stacking Armored Prows could get completely ridiculous....as I demonstrated

I am considering making the ramming action be an opposed pilot test instead of hard (-20) pilot (space craft)+maneuverability test. It seems to me that space is large and the ships are tiny - so ramming should be somewhat tough - and the other ship would generally oppose being rammed.

My group has only had two space battles - each a one ship vs. one ship sort of encounter. Considerably less maneuver in those situations. It will be interesting to play a 2 on 2 or even a bigger battle.

I have played a bunch of Battle Fleet Gothic. While I am a fan of the Imperial armored prow, there are some advantages to the Chaos hulls (which are supposedly ancient Imperial ships). I have seen Imperial CAs destroyed (badly damaged, at any rate) by guns while approaching to ram.

I am not sure the balance built in to BFG is present in the RT rules. It will take some playtesting to sort that out for me.

But regardless - a GM can always "overcome" an uber ship in some fashion.

Godwinne Van Meer, Captain of the "Seed of Doubt"

How is this worse than stacking Augmented retro thrusters? You can get a ridiculous Manoeuvre rating out of this.