In the few encounters with the navy I've had in my game I used another BFG concept to make up for that: squadrons. With an appropriate command check the ships in the squadron co-ordinate their fire so ones macrocannons bring down the sheilds for the others lances. Both ships act on the slowest of their initiatives, but on the same turn, so that the shots arrive at roughly appropriate timings.
Concerning Alternate Ship Hulls
They conquer in His Name. Outside the boundaries of the Imperium, they speak His Word.
If you wish to think that your average Rogue Trader wouldn't conquer planets for the Emperor and Profit or wouldn't feed his or her planet-sized ego by buying the biggest, baddest warship he or she could afford then you haven't read anything related to Warhammer 40k printed before 1999. Of course they're military! What player doesn't want a dedicated warship to protect his merchant vessels?!? Han Solo was a good Rebel, but a lousy Rogue Trader!
Ok, that's completely irrelevant. No matter which way you like to play your campaign, check out this thread:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=160&efcid=3&efidt=228852
By the end of this week or the beginning of the next the Group Project will be completed with rules for Torpedoes, Fighters, Bombers, Nova Cannons, Ship Components and stats for every official Imperial ship hull and much, much more.
Written by the trolls on the House Rules Forum and edited by me, Max Gatling, there should be something for everyone of every playstyle (assuming they include Starships in their games...) to tide you over until FFG comes out with an official Starship supplement.
If you have some great ideas you want included, there isn't much time so post them there or point a link. I'm almost done with the editing.
Dalnor Surloc said:
PS- Has anyone else considered that about 1/5 of all the ships in BFG are in big trouble in a straight conversion to RT rules. I'm speaking of the lance ships. In BFG they worked because a hit from any ship took down shields. So you could put in a bunch of frigates to handle shields and then hit them with your lance ships. But in RT you need to combine lance with another weapon to be effective.
This is a really good point.
I'll have to think about it some. But in RT your PC's usually won't have a fleet of 20 ships, so any intelligent Players should figure out that creating a Gothic Class Cruiser or Titan Class Battlecruiser wouldn't be a very good idea for the very reason you brought up....
I can see the point though. The group I play in (not the one I GM) created a Tyrant Class, but all-plasma works pretty good. I can see a player with a fetish for Lances doing that though, not thinking of the consequences until his ship was being smashed to bits.