Rogue Trader Ground Wars 3 Transportation and Acquisition: In Details

By rt1234456, in Rogue Trader House Rules

Hi guys. This is last part of Ground Wars.

First two parts were about unit classification and general rules and now we left with remaining questions:

  • Acquire units for your dynasty
  • Transport army to the target
  • Deploy army on battlefield

Barrack plays important role in troops transportation. There are great discussions have been on this forum before - how-many-troops-should-the-barracks-component-contain and how-many-troops-does-a-barracks-hold - we have combined these options to form our view.

Concept
Barracks - specialized spaceship component for troops transportation and deployment. Barrack includes training areas, shooting ranges, latrines, mess halls, food storage areas, supply rooms, fuel, ammo, and repair areas, and crafts to deploy it on the planet.

Our vision follows next statements:

  • component is much more then just a cargo hold
  • similar to living quarters allows comparable amount of troops
  • capacity should scale based on ship size


Deployment is happenning from spaceship located on planet's Low Orbit. Where Low Orbit - position around the planet which needs one hour - space combat turn - to get ship into or out of it with Piloting(Spaceship)-20 Test. Spaceship needs to be in Low Orbit in order to deploy troops or assist with orbital bombardment.

Details

1. Transportation

The rule of thumb to figure out barrack capacity is to find barrack size closest to crew numbers.

Capacity of barrack is measured in places , where place is the space required to support one ordinary soldier. Use Table 1 to find out pre-defined barrack sizes based on ship and it's crew size: 10000, 30000, 100000, 300000, 1000000.

Table 1. Spaceships barracks capacity

  • Ship Capacity in places
  • raider 10000
  • frigate 10000
  • light cruiser 30000
  • cruiser 30000
  • battlecruiser 100000
  • grand cruiser 100000
  • Battleships 300000
  • Transport *

* In order to make transports shine as ships built for transporting rather than war ships, barrack capacity should be calculated based on crew population and size using one step bigger capacity as for war ships to have a purpose for transports in RT fleet. For example, Vagabond-class merchant trader Core Rulebook p,194 with 18000 crew based on raider hull will have barracks for 30000 places rather than 10000 as would raider with similar hull would have. Size of the ship and possibly hull should also be taken into account, because transport ships always have smaller crew. So, barrack for biggest 1000000 capacity will have Universe-class Mass Conveyor even if it's have 60000 crew, but it is already built to transport 200000-500000 usual passengers and has size of battleship.

Barrack places can be used to support troops, mechs or both. Use Table 2 and Table 3 to determine how many troops can fit into barracks.

Table 2. Barrack places for troops

  • Size Places
  • Average 1
  • Hulking 2
  • Enormous 6
  • Massive 18
  • Immense 54
  • Monumental 162
  • Titanical 486

Table 3. Barrack places for mech

  • Size Places
  • Average 4
  • Hulking 10
  • Enormous 40
  • Massive 100
  • Immense 200
  • Monumental 400
  • Titanical 1000

2. Deployment

There are different deployment options explored before: with just support and small crafts like arvus lighters and guncutters; with halo barges; with IG transports - 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . Our take on this is Barrack as specialized component has hangar with void-capable landers for troops deployment: 3-4 landers carrying 10% of barrack's capacity each, so full deployment will take 3-4 strategic turns(hours).

Next, is a table with landers for different barrack sizes ( information on landers is scarce, please do excuse not-very-fluff reuse of this information :) )

Table 4. Landing troops crafts

Deployment is a phase when dropships feiry troops to planet, and depending on GM it can be separated on 2 or more stages at which first stages on altitude would be low orbit space and can be engaged by enemy interceptors by rules of space combat and other stages closer to earth which could be engaged with air units by mass combat rules.

Table 5. Landers Ground Wars size

  • Ship Rank Size
  • Angantyr 5 Macro 1
  • Minotaur 5 Macro 2
  • Devourer 5 Macro 3
  • Tetrarch 5 Macro 6
  • Cetaceus 5 Macro 9

Rank can be modified with Barrack craftsmanship from -1 for Poor craftsmanship, to +1 for Good and +2 for Best. All of them have trait Transport.

2. Acquisition

Last but not least is how to acquire all the troops. There are different ways but if you would like to acquire troops in true Rogue Trader fashion through Acquisition then use next tables. Decrease 1 Profit Factor to support each 10000 Strength.

Quantity modifiers taken from Acquisition Core Rulebook. Table 9-35. Upper bound used in examples for scale modifier is quantity of troops to acquire.

Table 6. Acquisition Rank Modifiers (corresponding to BFK Table. 4-5)

  • Rank Modifier
  • 9 -60
  • 8 -50
  • 7 -40
  • 6 -30
  • 5 -20
  • 4 -10
  • 3 0
  • 2 +10
  • 1 +20

Table 7. Acquisition Type Modifiers (corresponding to BFK Table. 4-4)

  • Type Modifier
  • Infantry 0
  • Fast Attack -10
  • Armour -20
  • Air -30

Table 8. Acquisition Class Modifiers (corresponding to BFK Table. 4-2)

  • Class Modifier
  • Light 0
  • Medium -10
  • Heavy -20

Table 9. Acquisition Tech Modifiers (corresponding to BFK Table. 4-2)

  • Tech Modifier
  • Primal +50
  • Ferral +40
  • Primitive +30
  • Feudal +20
  • Industrial +10
  • Techological 0
  • Modern -10
  • Ascended -20


There is always an idea - like discussion by @dava100 - to take your crew to fight on the ground, and a question is how to treat mostly disciplined and used to fighting in space crew to fighting on the ground, because from one side there is a crew of ship which always fighting or ready to fight, on different side it's space experience and only part of crew prepared to fight. Table 10 is our take on crew conversion to ground army.

Idea is to think that higher the crew rank than higher the percentage of imperial guard veterans and highly trained mercenaries in it, number of useless underdeckers is more or less the same with chance to GM discretion to find Rank 4 and Rank 5 among crew. While it is a possibility the penalties for losses should be severe, from some components disabled until resupply in port to not having men to run a ship.

Table 10. Ship crew conversion into rank

  • Crew Rating Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3 Rank 4 Rank 5
  • 20 20% 60% 20%
  • 30 20% 50% 30%
  • 40 20% 40% 40%
  • 50 20% 30% 50% 0.1%
  • 60 20% 20% 60% 0.2% 0.01%

This is all about troops transportation and acquisition which also can be mostly used separately from other 2 parts. Next one will be our take on crafting rules for mechanicus characters.

Kind Regards.

Here about who, what and why.