It was in one of the BFG senario things... or maybe the advanced campain rules.... I'll see if I can dig it up. This was only for ships without an active Warp Drive. Something with a warp drive but no motive power (like a Ramillies) is easier by comparison. In realspace almost anything can tow anything if it's got the chains etc. to physicaly do so.

Wow i didn't think for a moment that my simple question would start a massive debate. Milandson, all credit to you and the other playtesters, but a roleplaying game and ANY Adventures are not set in stone, the whole point of roleplaying a set adventure is that a GM has to adapt to the unpredictable musings of his players. So according to you and FFG no ship is restorable from a derelict state, even though in the adventure the players repair the main power core, restore all appropriate power connections and lastly restore Core Cogitator function. And then the mad captain himself Initiates a Jump.

So if we all go with your view, NOBODY would have any ship at all, because every ship the imperium uses would be cut up for raw materials, and nothing would be available, and there will certainly never be the Past History element of "Wrested from a Space Hulk" .

FFG and yourselves (playtesters) should have realised the WHOLE POINT of the game ROGUE TRADER. It is a game where you Trade, Aquire new things, make Bargains, Deals and Short or Long-Term profit and (here's the Biggy!) EXPAND AND GROW YOUR DYNASTY'S FLEET, so how would you expand your dynasty's fleet when you can't resurrect a derelict. Certainly seems a bit counter-productive to the spirit of Rogue Trader doesn't it.

By the way i can't download any downloadable files from dark reign, including the Ships of the Imperial Navy, it always says "File Not Found", i'll keep trying though.

Because resurrecting a Battleship is way beyond what a single Rogue Trader can do? And since you're essentially against the clock to get to the Dread Pearl, you don't really have the time to run back to Footfall (2-3 months) get people to join you (probably another month) and then fly back out there (another 2-3 months).

Plus, there's nothing stopping you going back and salvaging (or trying) the ship after the written adventure has finished, depending on how the whole "interaction with the captain" goes.

So yea, that's why the playtesters all decided that was fine, because the players had better things to be doing at the time.

Plus, you know, there are no rules for Battleships from FFG yet, and all the playtests must be run RAW, plus the fact that most of the player-written rules for Battleships are horribly balanced and powerful enough to make absolutely any space combat (other than against other battleships, and there pretty much aren't any in the Expanse) into a faceroll, which isn't my idea of fun at all.

So really, there are lots of reasons why it was left as it is. We don't write the **** things, we just test them. It's up to FFG to write it all, so you can hardly complain about playtesters when it comes to what's written, because FFG do have the option of not following our suggestions, so I hardly feel why I have to justify myself to you.

Ravion Lupus said:

IKU REX how did you get this to work, nothing seemed to work for me, your link to it worked perfectly though.

Millandson, i didn't mean to upset you, i was just surprised that a group of playtesters who don't just play for testing, they play for the enjoyment as well didn't put in their report (i presume), that why is there no avenue to capture and over a long time span rescue and restore the "GOLDEN CARROT" that you have dangled in front of the players, and then cruelly take it away from them. Yes i realise they have a small amount of time, due to their quest for the Dread Pearl, but i still expect my players to think up various ways to take it for themselves.

So i meant no insult Millandson.

Although I'm not usualy one to play the 'grim-dark' card, I think this is a valid case. Not everything succeeds, not everything is possable and for sure not everything is easy. Indeed, the whole Dread Pearl thing centers around that very fact. The Adventure-as-writen assumes that the vessel departs, and therefore does not write anything additional about salvage, restoration etc. If a GM wants to depart from the adventure-as-writen and allow for the salvage, recoverty etc. of the Battleship, there is obviously nothing preventing them from doing so, but you shouldn't be supprised there's nothing in the book itself about that.

You also don't know the players themselves. It may never have even occured to them to try to save or restore the ship themselves. There have been plenty of things in my games (RT & others) where I was sure the players would try to take or otherwise do something that never even occured to them during game play. Lastly I wonder how you know that none of the play testers didn't mention the fact that the battleship was unobtainable?

For my own part, I posted a couple of sugestions above for GMs to ensure the Battleship departs. I posted it because I wanted to help GMs that don't want their players running around in a Battleship. Particularly because it's always easier to keep players from getting things then it is to take items away from them after they've obtained it. If you are a GM that would like your players to move into the "restore the battleship' endevear, then my ideas & sugestion arn't for you.

To answer your stats question:

There are two main Imperial battleships, Retrabution and Emperor. Because we don't have launch Bay rules, the Retrabution is the easiest to work from. Compared to a cruiser, the Retrabution has 2 additional void shields and half again as many 'hits'. The shields are obvious but the hits are likely best repersented by a small increase in armor value and a more sugnificant increase in integraty, perhaps the full +50% over the lunar.

Weapons wise, the Retrabution mounts a Str 3 dorsal Lance (double ranged), a bigger spread of prow torpedos (+50% which we don't have rules for) and longer range batteries. It has three 'slots' on each broadside, but typicaly mounts (equilivlently) 3 str 4 macrobatteries that go twice as far as the typical cruiser ones.

Also note they can't use 'come to new heading'

Quicksilver said:

Aye, that's how my playtest players ran it. They stopped, thought about it, and then went "sure, we could try to take the battleship, but 1) we can't do it by ourselves, and 2) we don't have the time to do it between it a) leaving and b) getting to the Dread Pearl. Also, if it was salvageable, the local Battlefleet would have taken it by now, which means it's probably a lost cause".

Plus, with the other RTs coming for the Nexus' too, you don't have time to hang around anyway, as at any moment they might turn up and decide to start shooting your ship whilst your on the hulk.

So... yea, like Quicksilver said, sometimes things just don't go your way, or your crew can't pull it off. Best not to let the "you can do ANYTHING" nature of Rogue Trader go to your head, because despite that, there are some things a RT just can't do. Randomly salvage an almost completely hulked battleship with a smaller ship essentially with a stopwatch running before it either leaves with them on it, a rival turns up and hulks your ship, or your rivals get to the Dread Pearl and all that stuff in the last bit of the adventure happens without you is probably one of those things.

But yea, the simplest answer is pretty much "it's not the focus of the campaign, so if you want to do it, you'll have to do it alone". When the campaign is about the Dread Pearl, the campaign isn't going to have several pages all about how to salvage a ship that, in salvaging, would likely ruin any chance of you getting to your final destination.

MILLANDSON said:

I think this is the nub of the matter. You can try and salvage the ship which is a majour endeavour in itself but in doing so you are pretty much abandoning the Lure of the Expanse adventure. That the published content does not deal with this is not an indication that it can't be done, merely that in doing so you are pretty much moving beyond the remit of the adventure.

Thanks everyone, i think i've got the gist of everyones comments, i think it'll be best for me to hold it on the back burner (Just In Case). But i will re-iterate to the players that they are on an extremely tight schedule. I imagine my players will go so far as to restore the engine and power cabling, but stop at restoring cogitator function, leave, then finish the adventure and come back to "The Golden Carrot" (Assuming it's still there) and one of their rivals hasn't got there first and either let it leave or taken it for themselves.

Oh and does any of you remember the Alignment test in a D&D 3.5 book (I forget which though), you answer a load of questions and when you calculate the scores to your answers, it tells you your D&D alignment, all my players ended up with alignments ranging from LAWFUL EVIL to CHAOTIC EVIL apart from me who ended up with CHAOTIC NEUTRAL. So i pretty much know my players very well, one of them i've been best friends with since we were both 4 years old (1982).

So i'll just have to wait and see what happens when they get to it.

I've followed this discussion a while, but had little to add as I was just starting up my own campaign. Now that we are seven sessions in and I've experienced some of the peculiarities of the system of my own I feel I have something to add.

My own campaign is the prequel to a Koronus Expanse campaign that I want to run - instead of taking place in the 'now' of the Warhammer 40k universe, I have chosen the Battlefleet Gothic era for my campaign, eight centuries earlier. It starts in the latter years (155.M41), after the defeat of the 12th Black Crusade and the reported destruction of the Planet Killer. Instead of the titanic ship to ship battles that we know and love from Battlefleet Gothic as well as Gordon Rennie's books Execution Hour and Shadow Point the Imperial Fleet is in the long and ardues process of retaking worlds, clearing out opportunistic Xenos and fighting skirmishes against Orks, Eldar, Fraal, the odd Necron and the last remnants of the Chaos fleets. Also, the early campaign of Abaddon used wolf packs to hunt transports and traders, so the field is open to a whole new sort of Rogue Trader: the opportunist. Enter the players.

Instead of giving them a vessel to start with, the strained Battlefleet was only able to grant them passage to a system that has a boatload of derelicts and an old system defence boat (you should have seen their faces when they got that briefing). So they had to get their own. Of course, the entire system is a hotbed of privateers, pirates, an uncooperative Planetary Governor and an overworked Adeptus Mechanicus... at least, that is what they know. At time of writing they've had a single session to enjoy their newly salvaged-but-not-yet-quite-repaired-and-recrewed Dauntless-class Light Cruiser and had to go toe to toe with a Chaos vessel.

Setting my campaign in this setting, I've had to deal a lot of salvage, the Imperial Bureacracy and lost technology which cannot be replaced. My players have smartly decided that to repair their last few systems and get those components they want, they are going to have to take them, and have actively begun tracking down with they need. The entire first adventure will litterally be them getting their ship up to spec and honoring the bargains they've had to make to get them, including helping a few Battlefleet Gothic captains get the parts which they need to fix their ships. In the most recent battle they crippled and boarded a Retaliator-class grand cruiser using a few very smart tactics, and are currently salvaging the warpdrive and two out of six plasma reactors to re-activate a Dominator-class cruiser of a buddy of theirs.

Personally, I would allow my players to try and salvage the Light of Terra up to a point. There is no way in hell, however, that they'd be able to actually keep it. As far as my research go the Light of Terra is an Emperor-class battleship, which means it packs a huge amount of flight decks, decent sized long range macro cannon batteries and a huge torpedo-spread to boot. While this class of battleship is still being produced, slowly, it would litterally take a decade and a dedicated forgeworld to fully repair it (as Battlefleet Gothic teaches us), with several of the components needing to be produced as far away as Sacred Mars itself. What I would allow is for them to carefully tow and navigate it back to port after making a huge amount of repairs and cash in a massive price / favor with the Imperial Navy or the Ecclesiarcy (or both if they are really good), perhaps to the point of allowing them to pick a rare or archeotech component to add to their own ship. This course of action would never require the ship to be statted and keeped the balance in, plus a great reward for the players if they pull it off. You could also roll with the suggestion in Lure of the Expanse to add the Light of Terra survivors to your own crew as elite repair, techwiz or boarding forces, with especially the Wargar adding a certain amount of flair to the ship.

MILLANDSON said:

I am playing the Devil's advocate here Millandson nothing more,

Because technically this is the Koronus Expanse; that place beyond the iron grip of the Imperium, where we few and proud Rogue Trader Lord Captains, speak with HIS authority. Our power to reclaim, conquer, take and control in the name of our God Emperor is limited only by our wit and ability to control what we try and grasp. Battlefleet Calixis is just that, A Battlefleet in the Calixis Sector, where they have their own political agendas to tend to. We are in the Koronus Expanse where our writ makes us the undisputed masters of what we can claim.

That being said, I think it could make the great focal point of an entire campaign, a literal spread of endeavors, and the enterprising Rogue Trader who took it to a safe port; read: one he owns; and takes the 25-50 years to track down the parts could literally start an entire campaign in the Expanse that could change things in the Galaxy as we know it. Sounds like great Rogue Trader fodder.

Alexis

*smiles*

Another point that no one seems to have mentioned.

Battleships are designed to act as the flagships of battlegroups. They suck as rogue trader vessels.

The support and logistics required to run such a vast and deadly ship would put a massive strain on the resources of a rogue trader. Militarily, a battleship is weak without its typical battlegroup, i.e. a handful of cruisers and 6 to 9 escorts. Battleships are huge and slow, making them easy targets for orbital defences, rubbish at fighting smaller vessels (who will just run away) and when their awesome firepower is required, i.e. against other large capital ships, without their battle group they are weak.

So, argueably a rogue trader would not find it a useful ship for his endeavours.

Now, a really, really wealthy rogue trader that can afford to run a whole battlegroup might find it useful, but thats not most players.

Diplomatically speaking, its tricky. A battleship is an enormously valuable asset. The Navy WILL want it back. If they hear about it, they will send investigators. Once the truth is determined, they'll ask for it back. Handing it back might actually be a really good idea as the Navy wil love the rogue trader, are likely to pay very handsomely and will make excellent future allies, not to mention it'll make the rogue trader look great to every right thinking imperial citizen. Refusing might lead to assassins, inquisitors, battlegroups sent to retrieve by force or naval harassment of the Rogue Traders calixis properties.

Perhaps the best bet, if the players really want to capitalise on the vessel is to let them salvage it as scrap. This will require going back to footfall and likely they will want to do the dread pearl stuff first. So, in their absence, enemy rogue traders, also hunting the beacon, get onboard and salvage as much as they can.

All those racks of lasguns, battle tanks, support aircraft, 7 or 8 rival rogue traders each having a good loot could really whittle some of that down.

Now i'd still let the PCs make a LOT of PF off the total salvage but it would take time (remember its in a hard to navigate to area) and who is to say that none of their rivals have the same idea.

It could make for good plot to have the PCs be on site with their salvage operation and be attacked by rival ships with their own salvage crews.

or they could rig the ship for catastrophic warpengine explosion and then blackmail the empire for the disarm codes!! doesn't anyone else out there run a chaos or criminal rogue trader party!?

! : ? said:

Doing that sort of antics is in my opinion far more likely to bring the revocation of the PC's writ rather than anything beneficial. First the Imperium has a rather poor record of giving in to threats. And blackmailing the Imperium that way means the Adminstratum will know you've been very naughty. Guess how long your warrrant of trade will hold ?

What I'd do as an unscrupulous lout would be to do tha tsort of things, then sell off the wreck's location to any interested buyer - making as sure as I possibly can than no nosy Admistratum flunky would be informed an might rat me.

The reason your players cannot or should not take the ship is not because it is irreperable or impossible to repair it clearly is not since it warps off on its own, and a blind jump at that the problem is it is an Imperial Naval Vessel with its Captain still in command, or sorts.

Still, what happens if the old Captain gets accidentally killed in a fire-fight on the bridge AND the players survive the natives enraged onslaught? They could then salvage what they need or want, place a skeleton crew on board (after all, if they were successful earlier, they should have at least a "5" worth of extra crew to use), and take it away.

Yes it is worth a huge profit factor. It is only natural for a Rogue Trader to want to aquire it.