Hiya. Our group is combing rogue trader/planeraty empires/40k games as the rogue trader and his retinue are into the whole conquering worlds for the emperor thing. So far is going swimingly well. However they now want to 'buy' a sub orbital grav -effect generator. Ill explain, its one of the planetstrike missions from 40k and this piece of equipment is described on page 44 under the Mass Drop Strategem as such:

" Huge sub orbital transports take station in the upper atmosphere and project cones of anti-grav from ancient and freqently ill maintained grav effect generators. Imperial guard troopers literally step into the anti grav field and float down towards the ground. This approach is extreemly dangerous, as even a glancing hit from ground to air fire may cause the anti-grav cone to veer wildly, leaving the drop troops to the tender mercies of the worlds gravity "

The guys want to purchase one for the dynasty so they can shove troops menials and colonists (and random men who would have rather stayed at home) so as to colonise a planet without the dreary tedium of hundreds of runs of landers and lighters, and from a role play point of view its easier to say - "the men and materials will float down to the planets surface in X days"

However I have a number of questions buzzing which I want to put to the forum

1) Do you think the transport is a seperate smaller non 'hull' class of craft that can be purchased, or is it a Transport with a "grav effect generator" component?

2) If its a component what do you think is power/space/ship points outlay should be

3) Weather a component or a nifty piece of seperate kit, what do you guys think would be a appropriate aquisition modifier for such a thing

4) What roleplay restrictions should there be on it, can you see situations in which it can be horribly misused and how would you counteract this?

Any comment will do as I think that that this could be usefull for you own rogue trader games, especially when it comes to colonisation/exploration/mercantile endevours.

4) miserably fails the 'can it do worse things to a city than a sustained macrocannon orbital bombardment' test. Don't know why you're worried.

Reason said:

LOL perharps its not quite the sharp end of the stick.. but never underestimate the deviousness of NPC's, some of the sneakier ones make seemingly innocuous suggestions that have massive headache causing repercussions..

My first thought on reading this is.... why don't they just buy some really large transport ships for the purpose - it would have to be cheaper and not as likely to break down... which begs the question, what do they really want it for? I can't see how its easier from a role play point of view to say "men and materials will float down to the planets surface in X days" to "men and materials are shipped down to the surface in X days".

however, to answer your questions...

1) If you make it a ship component that is housed within a transport ship, then its relatively easily to move anywhere - providing you have a spare navigator. If its a non-hull type of platform, then it needs to be loaded up into another ship and transported to the location of use - more problematic and time consuming to deploy. It also has to be stored and powered from their ship. It really depends on how easy you want it to be for the group to use.

2) If it's a ship component - would suggest Power 6 / Space 2 / Ship Points 2

A suborbital anti grav generator has to pull a lot of power - so I imagine that the power use would be quite high.
In terms of space, I would think that its not going to take up more space than a cargo hold and lighter bay? It depends on how many people it can transport at once.

3) This is ancient tech so I would classify it as "unique" with a -70 modifier. However, any planet or major house that owns one of these isn't likely to sell it. If we wanted something like this, my GM would probably make this an Endeavour, and we would have to roleplay finding it, and then work out how to acquire it - either through theft or trade in kind. It certainly would not be something we paid cash for.

4) How would I horribly misuse a giant antigrav space elevator?

As Reason mentions, can't see how it can be weapon-ised in any way that is worse than what they probably already have. Unless they want to small asteroids on a city with more accuracy than they can by shooting them from orbit? Why bother if you have macro cannons?

Do they have anything that is too large to fit in a Lighter or Lander that they need to get on or off a planet's surface? (For example, my group had to leave a massive piece of tech on a planet because we couldn't move it as it was too large... if we had an antigrav elevator we would now have an occular array. (ok so it might not fit in the ship, but we would have towed it...)

Regardless, I wouldn't be that worried either, because given that its so ancient and not well maintained, it's probably not going to work very well if they try to do anything too nifty with it.

I think in any kind of sense you're better off just getting a couple of large troop landers in your small ships inventory.

Mostly because it avoids the terrible problem of moving your main ship into close orbit of the planet and risk it being pulled down into the atmosphere and really will be in a world of fecal matter. Second reason I wouldnt use this is that if someone pops up down there with some kind of AA-defence that you didn't see earlier, I'd give them a couple of free shots in your guts before someone raises the void shields. Its also a really bad place to be jumped by someone attacking you in space combat.

Aside from that, I just wouldnt want the hassle having to equip every idiot jumping down the thing with a vac-suit, because they will need it, there is virtually no oxygen or air pressure in the upper atmosphere and they'll freeze to death on the way down. If you're keen on doing sneak-attacks, there's easier ways with the old school grav-chutes the IG use and just punt them out the side and let them HALO it down... I have done that to PC's in DH, they didn't like it much, many insanity points awarded

This kind of technology doesn't really sound very Warhammer40k-like. Especially not like the kind of technology the Imperium would have accessable. Large Trooptransports would be the way the Imperium would handle it, because they are reliable and tried and tested for literally thousands of years.

nadomir said:

Its definetly used in 40K planet strike supplement as a imperial guard strategem, though I agree with one of the previous commentators saying that it might be up to -70 as It is probably 1) Rare technology 2) Difficult to persuade the harchet faced Munitorium or Mechanicum employees to allow a dodgy rogue trader dynasty to purchase it or 'borrow it'.

On the other hand after re-reading planet strike it seems that it is a usefull bit of kit if you wish to personnel 'en mass' hence why the palnet strike strategem comes under the title of mass drop . In 40k it allows all the reserves( Including vehicles!) to enter combat on one roll of the dice. In Rogue Trader such a bit of kit might be usefull if you rather a lot of people and equipment reach the surface in one go rather than than going loading them into lander and lighters or grav chuting and finding a decent landing areas/point and disembarking, which is great for long campaigns, but not if like a trader you want to get the on the situation with a lot of men and kit.

Either that or my guys are just plain lazy and like Ogryns dislike the insides of lighters...

It sounds great to me. This is imperial guard we are talking about so that material is likely to be tank squadrons etc whihc would be pretty much impossible to get to the surface quickly via normal means (pods or ships).

It also sounds to me that this wouldn't be on the Interstellar ships but on the very large transports (remember that landing ships large enough to carry titans and super heavy tanks must be part of the course normally) which would be really ponderous to actual land.

Face Eater said:

Well thats the thing. On reading the passage is SOUNDS like as if it is a separate ship of some kind that its shoved out of starship and into orbit, but it would easier if it was a compoment on a ship...but as some people have pointed out warp capable starships rarely drop into orbit. It could be part of be the hull that detaches itself from the ship, but this starts to be complicated. Acht this is why the Imperial guard gets all the fun kit. i guess I may have to tell them that they are not getting the kit until their dynasty grows into a flotilla at least.