What I'm about to ask may be an incredibly noob-ish question in regards to weapon damage and a ship's armour value.

It is my understanding that a ship's armour value reduces the damage of any given hit by the value given. Most ships I'm looking at have an armour value in excess of 15 or more. How then are ships weapons, most of which seem to do up to 1d10+4 maximum, supposed to penetrate that armour value to do damage to the actual ship?

I'm clearly missing something, but looking over the rules isn't making it any clearer. Can somebody please explain?

Hi,

Lances ignore Armour.

Macrobateries can score several hits in one shot, the maximum of hits is the srenght column. Extra hits are from success in balistic skill roll. Each hit deal 1k10+x, and they sum up before substract armour.

Furhermore, you can combine several weapon components in one salvo, and add the damage, but substract armour once.

mhrocznykiciak said:

Right, so if a Macrobattery scores two hits, and each hit is 1d10+2, then it becomes 2d10+4? If so, that makes much more sense.

Elurindel said:

Yep, that's how it works. I know, it's different from how things work on the character scale of things. I had to read through ship combat a couple of times before I was sure I was grasping the way of things.

-=Brother Praetus=-

I might add a little clarification here:

When firing with two or more weapons from the same ship (yours, called "A") against the same ship (enemy's, called "B") the following things happen:

1.- The void shields reduce in 1 the number of hits you make in that salvo (or 2 if they are multi-layered, like the ones in cruisers). This reduction only applies once for ship A, so if there are 2+ ships firing against the same target, the Void Shields affect each ship's incoming salvoes (because the shields are down for only seconds, and the turns lasts half an our each). You choose which salvo will lose the hits due the Void Shields (usually, the lowest in hits, or the one with not enough to get a critical hit).

2.- The grade of sucess you made with each salvo is then compared to two values for each weapon used: Strength is the maximun hits the weapon can get (Note: if you get more hits than the strenght of the weapon, ignore the hits in excess BEFORE taking the Void Shields into account), and if you reach the number of degrees of sucess required by the Critical rating of the weapon, then you get a free roll of 1d5 in pg 222's table fo critical hits. Remember unless the defending ship has the tenebro-maze, the attaquer (A) choses which Component has been damaged (Life support and Sensors are my favourites, if not, engines are VERY obvious).

3.- Roll as much 1D10+x as hits you get (if using different weapons, remember which weapon got how much hits).

Now two three things can happen with the numbers you rolled:

1.- Macrobatteries damage will be reduced by the target's armor. If reduced to zero or less, then the defending ship (B) will take no damage (unless it was a critical hit, because you will roll in the table anyway. If there are still damage remaining after applying the armor's protection, apply that excess to Hull directly (and remeber each point of hull lost means a loss of 1 morale and 1 population also).

2.- Lances damage are easier to manage: they ignore armor completely, so apply them directly against the hull points. Be advised, however, that a ship armed with lances will have a great advantage against other ships not only beacuse of this, but because of the range they can get.

3.- When a ship is reduced to 0 hull integrity, then (aside for the mutiny the ship will suffer after the end of the battle) the ship will get a -10 to maneuvrability and detection, velocity lowers to half the maximun (assuming there are not worst because they have been destroyed before due to critical hits), and the strength of each weapon drops to half its normal value. This state remains until the ship regains 1 hull at least.

If a crippled ship gets new hits passing the armour, those are automatically critical hits. The damage goes directly to the critical hits table in page 222 instead to Hull.

When your PC's design their ship, be VERY wary about lances, and check the ship against the example ones in the book to get an idea of its power. My group's frigate obliterated another frigate in a single salvo of two lances (two nearly-critical rolls from the gunner helped a lot) doing 3 hits each which meant 25 + 5D10 of damage... luckily the destroyed frigate was at 15 VU's away, so the warp reaction didn't destroy "our" frigate.

Just curious about how your groups frigate managed a single lance salvo of a)two lances b)from a frigate, and c) causing three hits each?

That was a test before using the ship. And Now that I look into it... It was Sunsear Laser Battery, not Sunsear Lance (big whoops XD). I'll have to watch again the "frigate menu", but I'll probably switch 'em for a Titanforge lance and a Mars-Pattern macrocannons (the SP total was 70, so we opted for a well-fitted frigate. However, it's just "irrelevant" in the sense that we are playing Dark Heresy Acolytes in the Calixis Sector, and the ship and the crew are NPC's assigned to us, theoretically for a time).

I should have been a litle more surprised about a lance scoring more than a hit, if I weren't so used to computer games like "sword of the stars" (by the Emperor, so hard to manage more than a couple of fleets >.<).

About the two lances, nothing in the manual forbids a frigate (or a transport!) to have any (at least, that I saw), but the requirements in power and space (and the only difference between sunsear macrobatteries and the two smaller lances in that regard is only in power). We also "fitted" a light cruiser-class engine in the frigate (modified Jovian Pattern Class 3 Drive, space required: 2 less than the normal one for frigates) because we could use the extra energy, we had SP to burn and it was more than easy to fit into the starship's history. Of course, two lances in the dorsal part of the ship was a little too strange (in a frigate), so we decided they would be able to fire only like prow-mounted weapons for frigates, but I didn't really care much for a "rational explanation" here since, rules in your hand, you can mount a Titanforge Lance in the port and starboard of a cruiser and they would have to fire to only those sides (uh... that's a little...ilogical). Also the game makes the space battles in 2-D, so we aren't much "pushy" here (if you are wondering what kind of game allows to play space battles in 3-D using a 2-D surface, look for "Ad Astra Games" and their products "Sanagami Island Tactical Simulator" and "Assault Tactical Vector" -I might have messed a little the order of the last one, I only own the first-).

Yep big Whoops. :-) Nevertheless 2x Sunsear is good set for frigate, and that explains 15VU.

You can try 2x titanforge Lances batteries. Its little hard to find space/power supply, but its very good for close combat.

I was too happy having a range of 9/18... snif snif XD. The space is the problem, the power actually is 40, 51 with all powered up, and the generator allows 60.

I miss rules for powering up and down components (I can't find anywere the entries about "you only need to power the Geller fields inside the Warp, the weapons in combat, etc...).

Argus Van Het said:

I understand the Designer's not wanting to add Power management to the mix. I mean, it worked in Star Fleet Battles, but that's a whole 'nuther game which took more than two decades to refine into the classic game it is.

I see your point though. Why do I need to power the Teleportarium ALL the time?

Nah, the real point is "if you have your Geller Fields up all the time, then you are always ready to jump into the Warp and avoid a combat anytime you want". So at least knowing how much time it gets for the Geller Fields to come online could help... But also that "collides" a little for the explanation given of the critical hit in the Warp Reactor (or maybe you take several turns to be swallow by the Warp). I can work around all that things with a little imagination and all that ton of knowledge from another space games, but I really hope a supplement with some more detailed SpaceShips interaction could be published (if possible, with the base rules of Spaceships included so the basic manual doesn't have to be abused all the time... ^^).

Ah, I see now. Two sunsear is pretty nasty. Don't forget, however, that frigates and smaller can only mount lances in prow weapon slots.

Argus Van Het said:

That's hardly true as you can't go to warp within a system. Well you can, but it's unlikely you'll survive the experince.

Dalnor Surloc said:

Critical hits table: see what happens when a ship's warp drive explodes. All surroundign ships in a random radious in VU are taken into the Warp... And they can survive if they manage to bring up the Geller fields.

Now, a frigate can pull 4.5g (44.1 meters per second squared) of accel. I won't bother to make any calculations, but I'll point at David Weber's Honor Harrington books, when the distance between a solar system's star's gravity field and some random inner planet tends to need 5 to 8 hours accelerating at a steady rate of 500 gravities (4900 meters per second squared). I seriously doubt the imperium's ships usually spend months going in and out of a system... (but I put a "safe distance" from any measurable physical object). Of course, that's my house rule ^^.

It is strange, by the way, that lances can be mounted in frigates as prow weapons, when the weapon "slots" a frigate has are Dorsal x2. Quite the contradiction in the manual (one that I ignore completely: the lances don't have mobility no matter where they are mounted, and they can only fire forward).

Argus Van Het said:

Rogue Trader rulebook, page 226:

"An Imperial starship can generally travel the distance between a planet such as Holy Terra and its moon in a little more than an hour, while that same starship could take two weeks to travel between the same planet and its star".

Now, the distance between Holy Terra and its star is exactly one AU (Astronomical Unit, so for this typical starship to get from Terra to a jump point beyond Neptune (about 30AU), it'd take about 60 weeks, or 1 year and two months, approximately. A jump point may not be there precisely - any sufficiently large gap between the Outer planets would do, really, and I imagine that this 'typical ship' is probably a transport or similarly slow vessel, so military vessels would cross the distance more quickly, but it does demonstrate that ships spend a lot of time travelling through systems to reach their destinations.

Argus Van Het said:

It'd be a mistake to assume that all Frigates have two dorsal weapon slots. While all the frigates shown so far have two dorsal slots, there are only two of them, and that doesn't inherently mean that every single frigate published will follow the same trend.

Argus Van Het said:

As Little Dave mentioned above; frigates, raiders and transports must mount lances in their prow. Below I've provided the rules reference.

Rogue Trader , page 202 - Supplemental Components , third paragraph:

• "If a lance weapon is mounted on a vessel of frigate size or smaller (transports and raiders, for example), it must be installed in a prow weapon slot. Lances are large and cumbersome weapons and in respects to smaller vessels, can only be installed on ships specifically designed to carry them. If a ship of frigate size or smaller does not have a prow weapon slot, it cannot carry a lance.

Honestly, for frigates whose primary role is escort duty or patrol missions, the Sunsear batteries are probably the best weapons. They allow for support of larger craft and their own assaults while maintaining a distance which may preclude themselves from coming under fire.

Just my two bits, though.

-=Brother Praetus=-

N0, the easiest way to get enough distance from the planets to make a jump would be to go perpendicular to the plane the space system makes (instead of following the plane until it ends. In the Honorverse the limitation for FTL is the gravity well generated by the star, so they cannot use that trick). About the frigates issue, I would say it would have been better to give echelons instead of concrete examples (so frigates go for X to Y space, each point of space costs Z ship points and translates to A tons and B crew, etc...).

Praetus, the only ships in the rules without prow space for weapons are frigates... And really, I don't see why you can't mount the lance in the dorsal, port of prow, but allowing it to fire only to the front of the ship (like mounted in the prow) (note: my frigate doesn't have an armoured prow, not enough space and what for? I prefer to use the teleportarium for hit & run).

Argus Van Het said:

We don't know for certain the specifics of where a 40k starship is safest entering or leaving the Warp; it may similarly be a matter of gravity.

Argus Van Het said:

Specifically, the two frigates currently given rules; that isn't a definitive list of frigates by any stretch of the imagination. Common sense would dictate that a Firestorm-class Frigate (a variant of the Sword that carries a lance), and the Astartes Nova-class Frigate would both have 1 prow and 1 dorsal slot, instead of 2 prow slots, while Eldar frigates (the Aconite and the Hellebore) have only prow and keel slots.

Weapon capacity is determined by specific hull class, not by the broad type of hull.

"Honestly, for frigates whose primary role is escort duty or patrol missions, the Sunsear batteries are probably the best weapons. They allow for support of larger craft and their own assaults while maintaining a distance which may preclude themselves from coming under fire."

Pound for pound, given their range, damage, critical and strength ratings, SP cost and space/power requirements, Sunsear Batteries are easily the best weapons overall. These macrobatteries are stupidly versatile, allow for kiting, deny opponents the ability to do the same, and are effective at CQC combat due to the accuracy bonuses they get at much longer ranges than most other weapons.

Lasers said:

I'd say this depends a little of the gunner. If it's a NPC, then go for lances. If it's a PC (or a "PC pool" character), then the Sunsear are the best option (not to mention if the player rolling the dices has the hand of a devil with them XDD).

One question I have... Why only "dorsal"? I mean, the same can be done with "ventral" slot (as long as there is nothing in the way, like a prow-mounted XD).

There technically is a third frigate - the Sabre (based on a modified Naval Firestorm), if the PCs want a lance let them use/modify that.

"I'd say this depends a little of the gunner. If it's a NPC, then go for lances. If it's a PC (or a "PC pool" character), then the Sunsear are the best option (not to mention if the player rolling the dices has the hand of a devil with them XDD).. "

It's still better hands down, even with an NPC gunner if you can indefinitely kite your enemy; this is easily possible with a raider or frigate.

Which page in the rulebook does it say lances ignore armor?

Cheddah said:

220 downside left

Keep in mind Lances are intened to take down big ships with heavy armor, not little raiders and transports. We're also likely looking at what could be considered the bottom of the barrel lances. When your looking at puncturing the armor of an Imperial cruiser, or worse, the reinforced front armored prow of an imperial cruiser, those armor-ignoring lances start looking a lot nicer.