From what I have gathered, a vessel drops into realspace well-outside of the boundry of a star system, powers up its plasma drive and spends a couple of months in transit to its destination. On departure, the same procedure is followed.

In either case, it's interesting, but very slow. It also doesn't seem to jive with some of the Abnet books, I've read either. Have i misread a section?

Or, if it is accurate has anyone houseruled anything to speed up the process?

I'm tempted to leave it as is, the slower travel times is pretty cool, and reminds me, like much of the material as an Age-of-Sail sensibility to it. At the same time, hiring a 'local pilot' someone who was intimately familiar with a port would typically guide a vessel in unknown waters.

I was wondering then, if it wouldn't be too much of a stretch that all navigators from a particular sub-sector are made thoroughly familiar with the major ports of call during their apprenticeships, and are thus capable of shaving time off of the in-system transit, by dropping from warp later, rather than sooner.

It's actually a few hours/few days to get to the planet once you've exited the warp, not a month+. At least according to the RT rulebook, that is.

You could, of course, have the ship appear closer to the planet, but I'd likely add a negative modifier to the exit roll for that.

Hmm really. Where on earth did I read that then, I wonder? I went looking for it yesterday but couldn't find it. Do you have the page reference?

Thanks!

Generally months would be for chartist ships without navigators. They can only make short hops of 4-5 light years.

Of course the traveltime is a part of the Navigators skill and the last of the dice rolls. The better the result, the less time is wasted on normal drive. However, botch real bad and you could be months away from your next port. Or if the GM feels mean, way way to close and on a ramming course.....

Citizen Philip said:

The RT rulebook alternates between days and weeks, depending which bits you read. Other fluff sources, like the rulebooks of the TT wargame, etc, also state varying times. It's pretty much down to GM fiat as to how far away you out of warp/enter warp.

Until now, things like this have never really been thought through. Authors have pretty much guessed on how the retranslation in-system might work, so you WILL find inconsistencies with all the book now and to come

According to consistent calculation of described times in all the Fluff Sources (On other forums) The acceleration figures in RT are three Zeros shy of accurate (minimum) Calculations typically put Warship Acceleration figures at the multiple thousands of gees and fighters/bombers between 10-20 thousand gees acceleration.

While I see no reason this would affect the Strategic Turns for the game you should change the travel times to suit your own game, if your players are getting bored with the 'months in transit' etc change it to half that. Remember the Warp isn't exactly reliable and its not unheard of for a ship to have emerged before it left.

Citizen Philip said:

Actually the RT Rulebook does mention how long it takes on page 312

i knew i had seen it before but it took a while to actually find the right passage.

Rogue Trader Core Rulebook Page 312

After several weeks of travel, the ship arrives at its first destination. This is the 'jump-point' lying around the star system like the circumfence of a circle. This deleneates the point at which inter-planetary debris falls below maximum warp density. Once this invisible line has been crossed, it is safe to activate warp engines. A crew careless or foolhardy enough to prematurely activate its warp-drives would be lucky to find their ship hurdled thousands of light years off course. More likely, the ship would be torn apart and destroyed, never to be heard of again.

My house ruling has been that the weeks/months of travel before entering the Warp only applies to ships without Navigators. With a Navigator aboard the ship can arrive at the very edge of the safe zone, and exit from same. Ships lacking this must either travel a lot further out to be safe, or take a chance they've misjudged things and risk damaging or destroying the ship by engaging the Warp Drive earlier.

Whenever my PCs make a journey in-system, from the Warp Point or from one location to another, I just roll 2D5 and say that's how many days it will take. Given the ratings given for sustained acceleration in the rulebook this seem reasonable enough without resorting to a spreadsheet.