Is a Lighter Bay a hidden cargo area? aka the hidden spaces in the floor of the Millenium Falcon??

IS there anything published yet for fighters or small craft? I have ships with fighter bays, but nothing so far on specific rules for them that I have found.

Thanks

Lighter bay is a term for a hangar for smaller craft that a ship carries with it like orbital transports, I think . Craft up to the size of massive Aquila Landers (Which are usually much larger than the forge world model would suggest, so maybe there's several sizes of Aquila Lander?) and Gun Cutters could dock in a lighter bay and disembark passangers, but it dosen't count as a facility for launching strike craft, though I'm looking forward to seeing the rules for Fighters and Bomers in the future.

Don't worry, it's just fluff in terms of what that component does, a ship does not need any kind of launch bay component to carry shuttles and landers, but the fact that a Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay adds 50 Trade and 50 Criminal objective points suggests there's bulk smuggling space in there If your group needs to smuggle something besides bulk amounts of illicit cargo, again, you don't need a component for that. Imperial ships are massive , plenty of forgotten places and dark corners to hide things in. Plus most people lack the authority to interfere with a Rogue Trader i nany way, and many things that are illegal to Imperial Citizens are above board for Rogue Traders.

Don't forget that there's an awful lot of stuff Starships have that arn't covered by the ship creation rules and are therefore things you are assumed to have, like a decent amount of cargo space even if you don't have any cargo hold components, just not enough to haul massive amounts of surplus to make an extra profit (ergo the extra achievment points you get for having dedicated cargo space on a trade objective).

Yeah, I get ya, just that the only description of it in the book is this..

Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay
Warships can be converted to haul cargo, but this can often
have an adverse effect on their combat performance.
Hidden Spaces: When working toward a Trade or Criminal
objective, the players earn an additional 50 Achievement
Points toward completing that objective.
Unbalanced: Starships are precisely balanced, something
this modification effects, meaning they suffer –3 to
Manoeuvrability.

So I got the idea that Hidden Spaces refered to the Lighter Bay.. Otherwise I assumed it would have been called a Hanger Deck.. or Flight Deck, or Fighter Bay..

No where else in the core rules is a Lighter Bay ever refered to again.

Hmmmm..

"Lighter" is 40k talk for the shuttles that are usually used to move goods between a starship and another starship or a planet.

Which may explain the 'criminal' bonus. You don't need to rely on a station or planet's shuttles to unload your goods - those shuttles are much more likely to be searched for contraband.

Bikerbob said:

While I don't think its been mentioned in the rogue trader books it seems to me that the vehicle you're looking for might be a small ship known as the Arvus from forge world since it definitely seems to match the description.

In the olden days of sail vessels, many ports did not have the facilities that we typically associate wit ports such as jetties, wharfs, etc. Instead they unloaded cargo by small boats that did shuttle runs between the coast and shore. These boats were called lighters. The traditional pirate longboat is a lighter.

When applied to spaceships and 40k, a lighter is an orbital craft designed to unload cargo from a space faring ship and take it planetside. They can run a variety of shapes and sizes from passenger shuttles like the Aquila lander, small cargo shuttles like the Argus lighter and then up to the big stuff capable of moving tanks, large amounts of bulk cargo and even in extreme cases, titans.

A lighter bay would therefore have variety of ships, my groups cruiser we ruled had about 40 such ships. The rogue trader generally makes planetfall in his aquila lander while bulk lighters move his cargo down from orbit.

Even a ship with a lighter bay would carry significant numbers of these vessels since the ship really can't operate much without them. Its just that a ship with any kind of dedicated cargo space has lots more.

i'm not sure on the lighter bay my self, Gm just said that my frigate has a small wing of guncutters and a few cargo tugs. never really thought about it.

I think that all starships have a complement of lighters. However The Lighter bays give you a larger amount of shuttle or 'lighters' that what is normally needed for the day to day purposes of the vessel, hence the advantages of shifting greater cargo and the ability to 'own' the means of supply and thus A rogue Trader's shuttle is less likely to be inspected by the authorities (cue lots of waving of warrant of trades-how dare you stop a ship belonging to a PEER of the Imperium) I think a Frigate would have between 8 -15 lighters. One with a lighter bay would probably have between 40-75, including some smaller hauliers to ship multiple tons at once.

Hell, a Lighter Bay need not come with more small craft (although it could almost certainly handle them); the Bay itself is just larger and better laid out for cargo handling compared to a regular ship's shuttle bays. One of the delightful side-effects of that optimisation is an increase of the little nooks and crannies you normally find aboard starships. Said cubbyholes are perfect for smuggling (just look at Firefly ).

And of course, the bigger bay, arranged for optimum cargo-handling, means that they can deal with cargo a lot faster, with obvious benefits (whether the cargo is legal or not) to profit margins.

I will note that a Rogue Trader's Warrant does not make him exempt from customs inspections, but it will give him sufficient clout to ward off local Customs Officers and Excisemen. Certain key systems will have their port security administered by Imperial forces however: the privileges of a Warrant might let you over-rule an INSec customs detail, but the Arbites wouldn't be so forgiving, Imperial Peer or no.
Even messing with a Naval Security pinnace and crew probably wouldn't be healthy if they've a cruiser or decent orbital fort to back them up...

As for any specifics on the lighter bays and rules for the use of fighters/bombers...I found them...They are in the Ships of the Imperial Navy almost at bottom of the file.. You can find it on the Dark Reign website...it also includes most of the common types of imperial ships details for you and your GM's and groups to use for future refferences as well as certain extra info on items etc...including the rules and stats on bombardment and nova cannons as well as all the heavier ship weaponry stats and rules. Enjoy

Alasseo said:

In my opinion, it will mostly affect the ship itself - whatver small craft is sent to teh planet/space station/watever will probably be checked - or at least what's taken out of it. The ship itself is proabably somewhat off-limits.