Is it just me, or does someone else think cruisers and light cruisers have too few weapon points? Even after filling the 3 points of a light cruiser or the 5 points of a cruiser, there's plenty of space left. For a rogue trader's flagship this wouldn't be much of an issue since you'd usually want to cram in other stuff like cargo holds, but a dedicated warship simply has little effective use for that space. After already having chosen that many reinforced interior bulkheads, you'd rather have a few more guns.

In terms of firepower, a cruiser should be packing lots and lots of it, whereas as the rules are now, it can aim a maximum of three weapons at a single target at a time, compared to two for a frigate or raider. In terms of actual scale of the ships, the cruiser has a volume and a crew of about 3-4 times as much as a frigate, it isn't too much of a stretch to suggest that it should be able to pack proportionally more firepower too.

My thought is to simply add both types of cruiser an additional weapon slot on both port and starboard side. What do you think?

The vessels are very close to Battle Fleet Gothic stats...you can get that info for free from GW's website there is a load of PDFs for download so you can compare.

Adding additional weapon solts makes cruisers extremely deadly. As the addition weapon's are going to go straight to damage. It will make conflicts with cruisers really nasty. Using up the space and power isn't very hard. The higher end weapons are very space and power hungry. A lance based cruiser is a terror, but you'll burn space and power to mount a lot of lances. I expect that torps are going to burn lots of space. Finally you shouldn't assume that a Navy ship is a pure warship. In the 40k setting the Navy does all the troop transport for the Guard, and it's not uncommon to do the transport in a cruiser for really dangerous missions.

All of that said in BFG there are battle cruisers. Which are often refits of lunar class hulls. I'd guess that a battle cruiser refit of a lunar cruiser would be as follows:

-Add a dosal weapon mount. (Generally mounts a lance)

-Add armor plating

-Add Reinforced Bulkheads

-Make sure you have the armored prow!!!

Adding more slots is too much, makes it battle cruiser and grand cruiser class really.

Or you can use Keel mounted weapons instead of prow (roughly 360 degree firing arc for that fifth slot)....then make it a lance cruiser and you get this monster:

At least so far as BFG goes, There are no imperial navy ships with keel weapons. Nor chaos ships with keel weapons. Indeed, the only species that uses keel weapons are Eldar who use it for torpedos and launch craft.

As I've argued in other threads, Cruisers actualy fit fairly well along their BFG counterparts the way they're currently constructed. They really don't need more weapons, just bigger ones. If you make a true Lunar class with 2 broadsides and 2 Lance Batteries, maybe a barracks, and armored prow and leave enough room for the likely quite space-hungry torpedos, there's really not that much room left.

The change that produced this apparent effect of undergunned cruisers was the upgunning of the escort class ships. They can mount two sets of guns that are nearly as powerful as the ones found on a cruiser, whereas in BFG, a gunboat total combined firepower is less then a single weapons emplacement on a cruiser. Transports, Raiders and Frigates should only really be mounting Str 1 and Str 2 Weapons Batteries. But I can understand why FFG did what they did, most Rogue Trader battles are going to be Escort on Escort level, so making escorts more powerful works to make that kind of combat more fun.

Its an imperial standard not to have keel weapons in the Navy...we chose to have one mounted on the Keel. It works. It even says you can have keel weapons in the Core Book, though no rules are given.

page 219

"Keel weapons components are often on long masts or on fins below the starship's belly, and are rare on Imperial vessels. Keel weapons may fire in any direction."

Three lances on a broadside, anyone?

The rule book doesn't say you can have keel weapon, it says there are keel weapons in the galexy among the miriad of species and ships a Rogue Trader might run across, and therefore, that a GM might need rules to use. There are no rules for adding additional weapon locations onto any ship, so your adding of a keel weapon is no more supported by the rules then a cruiser with an additional pair of broadside, or an additional prow weapons mount. And less supported by fluff then Dalnor's note on battlecruisers.

"At least so far as BFG goes, There are no imperial navy ships with keel weapons. Nor chaos ships with keel weapons. Indeed, the only species that uses keel weapons are Eldar who use it for torpedos and launch craft."

Reading page 219 you are apparently in the wrong (saying we can't have them because BFG is this or that way) as at least in the FFG version of 40k they exist. That said, we have keel weapons (you can too if you want to). If you want to say our GM is wrong knock yourself out but the core rules support my contention that they exist on ships outside the Eldar. Thank you, drive through.

Rule we use: to have a keel mount you need to have a prow mount to give up to mount the weapon on the keel. Simple as grox pie.

bobh said:

yes, 219 says they exist and are rare. This original topic was about the power of cruisers in respect to making Imperial Navy ships, for which Battle Fleet Gothic (BFG) is the best referance we have. I originaly brought up the point for anyone who's relitivly new to 40k fluff, and might get the wrong idea from the fact that seemingly every topic that discusses cruisers, someone jumps in and says "Just add a Keel weapon!"

So, congradulations on your house rule, I wouldn't allow it but it's your GMs perogitive. I myself have done things I know other GMs on this board disagree with. But perhaps we should return the topic to the original poster, who I'm sure is still conserned with the subject of Cruisers needing additional firepower to be proper Navy Ships.

Your hardly deluged with people saying add a keel weapon. I think I'm the only one. So tone down the snark and have fun with the game.

And why do you need it on the keel? Prow weapons on Light Cruisers + Cruisers can shoot to port and starboard as well as forward.

bobh said:

I took a look at the BFG rules, here's firepower from the Ships of the Gothic Sector PDF (number given after weapon is firepower):

LUNAR CLASS CRUISER

Port Lance Battery: 2
Starboard Lance Battery: 2
Port Weapons Battery: 6
Starboard Weapons Battery: 6
Prow Torpedoes: 6

DAUNTLESS CLASS LIGHT CRUISER

Port Weapons Battery: 4
Starboard Weapons Battery: 4
Prow Lances: 3

SWORD CLASS FRIGATE

Weapons Battery: 4

FIRESTORM CLASS FRIGATE

Prow Lance: 1
Weapons Battery: 2

So relatively speaking, the relative numbers of weapons per ship don't match even roughly. The cruiser has 5 and the light cruiser has 3. The sword frigate only has one though. The firestorm has two, but with puny volume of fire each (something which in RT is pretty effectively the same for each weapon).

I'd say BFG supports my notion that cruisers should have more firepower, or alternatively, frigates should have less. Since BFG is on a different scale and models ships in less detail than RT, we should remember that BFG weapons != RT weapon points. I could easily imagine that a single, large "weapon", like the str 6 weapon batteries of the cruiser, would correspond to several RT weapon slots.

bobh said:

Nobody is disputing that weapons mounted on the Keel of a starship exist... but none of the vessels, etc listed in the rulebook possess them, save for the Wayfarer Station on page 210 (because it's a space station; it needs guns that can fire in all directions because it doesn't necessarily have a defined 'front').

You're free to houserule it, as a group is free to houserule anything, but there are factors worth considering.

First and foremost, if I understand your point correctly, the reason you want a Keel weapon slot on a cruiser is to allow a weapon component to add to the broadside firepower. In this regard, the houserule is entirely superfluous - on Light Cruisers and Cruisers, a Prow weapon slot can fire port and starboard as well as forwards, allowing weapons mounted in such slots to add their firepower to the vessel's broadsides. You don't need a keel slot in order to add that third set of lances to a broadside... a prow or dorsal slot will suffice.

Secondly, a Keel slot is far, far more powerful than a prow slot. Keel slots are the only ones that allow a ship to fire backwards, which in and of itself is a significant boon. Beyond that, replacing a prow slot with a keel slot removes the drawback of an armoured prow (the inability to mount lances or macrobatteries in the prow), allowing a benefit to be gained without its intended commensurate disadvantage. Giving up a prow slot for a keel slot is not an even trade by any stretch of the imagination - you're gaining more than you've given up. And that's aside from the fact that the trade doesn't even make sense - removing something from the prow wouldn't free up any room along the keel (the large structural element that runs along the bottom of the ship, opposite the dorsal spine).

In short, there's a reason that Keel slots don't turn up on any of the ships in the rulebook (or, at least, the one that's pertinent to this discussion).

Dalnor Surloc said:

But should every cruiser that's built dedicatedly for ship to ship combat be decked out with only high-end, high-space-req weapons? Those weapons are the state-of-the-art of Imperial weaponcraft. If every dedicated warship is supposed to have them, who actually makes use of the ubiquitous Mars Pattern macrocannons?

If filling a cruiser solely with high-end weapons makes it run out of space after 5 weapons, giving it an additional 2 weapon slots won't make a cruiser with high-end weaponry more powerful since it doesn't have the space or power to put something into those slots. However, it makes it possible (and feasible) to build cruisers with rows upon rows of Mars Pattern macrocannons.

The rules should support the game setting, they shouldn't have consequences that make the game world internally inconsistent.

And finally, well, shouldn't cruisers be deadly relative to frigates? A cruiser has a size and scale advantage of a factor 3 to 4, it shouldn't be something a frigate can take on and win unless the frigate is led and crewed by truly awesome folks.

Dalnor Surloc said:

Presumably, but not every mission is going to have use for barracks, and thus it stands to reason that there would exist dedicated all-firepower cruisers, especially considering that they're the closest thing there is to "basic" ships of the line.

I'd argue that we're not looking at the 'best tech' avaliable to the Imperium for cruser scale weapons. There's exactly 1 type of broadside (Mars Macrocannon) and 1 type of lance battery (Titanforge). These are really the most 'stock' weapons a cruiser can have. We don't have rules for Plasma Broadsides or Sunsear laser broadsides. Just because you 'can' mount escort style weapons on a crusier doesn't mean that's typical for them. The 'ubiquidus' Mars Macrobattery is common because it's mounted on an extreamly large number of escorts, system ships and freighters, All of which far, far outnumber Imperial Cruisers.

While it's true that a Barracks might not be useful for every mission, it stands to reason that Cruisers might have 'configureable space' for mission specific refits, such as a barracks, or a cargo hold, or extended supply vaults, etc. I don't think you should feel abligated to fill up every ounce of the ship. But to make them more powerful, as I noted above, I think the better responce is to give them stronger gun batteries, not more of them. And I wouldn't be suprised if these batteries come out with the starship book, along with torpedos and other cruiser-specific equipment.

Giving them an extra broadside slot each isn't exactly game braking, but I don't think it's nessisary, nor the best way to go about it.

Actually, if cruisers are underpowered, the answer is not to give them more slots, but to give them more Power. Consider: a Gothic-class cruiser is a Lunar class hull with a Str4 lance battery down the side, plus prow torpedoes (which we'll ignore for now). Converting that to RT, with reference to the models, and it runs to a pair of Titanforge Batteries down each side.

The maximum power available to a cruiser-class hull is 75.

The absolute minimum power requirements for an unarmed cruiser is 29 (using a mere single-layer void, a combat bridge, M-1.r life sustainers, pressed crew quarters and an M-100 auger).
The four Titanforge components needed to build a Gothic have a combined power requirement of 52.

As you can see, you actually cannot build some of the BfG cruisers, but the problem is not the number of available weapons slots (or even, necessarily, the available weapon types), but the amount of power a ship's generatorium can provide.

@Konrad: the "rows upon rows of Mars Pattern macrocannons" are exactly what the Mars Pattern Broadside is meant to represent (and a Tyrant-class cruiser has exactly that: two macrocannon-filled weapons slots per broadside arc, plus whatever you decide to fit in the prow as a stopgap for torpedoes. It be quite awesome when you declare you're firing a strength 12 salvo at a target)

@Quicksilver: aye, a Ryza Pattern Broadside would be awesome. If memory serves, there is even one in BfG fluff, although that was mounted on the battleship HDMS Divine Right . Of course, while that was the only example in the Gothic fleet, there's nothing to say the Calixis fleet doesn't have more, or that certain unscrupu... I mean, upstanding Rogue Trader dynasties won't get their greasy little mitts on some...

Alasseo said:

That doesn't mean that the hull or power source in RT is incorrect, however. It just means that the Imperial Navy uses different internal components. I can easily imagine a specially designed lance cruiser having upgraded power systems and the like, and they also don't need to deal with cargo space, which a Rogue Trader vessel does.

Indeed, we haven't seen what a Class 3 Lithe Pattern Plamsa Drive does...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Actually its for the aft. We got murdered by a quicker vessel in combat and coudnt come to grips with it before it scored several crits on us and we had to flee. So no its not just for the broadside.

actualy i dont thing FFG have any interest on making RT ship representatiive of the power they have in BFG

1st - the plasma drive available in RT are not powerfull enought to allow lot of gun

2nd - on ship of the imperial navy , grand cruiser and battleship are too small in space term to be realy a good representation of power like they are in BFG

i believe FFG want to limit the combat complexity of too many weapons on a ship and the fight duration of all the roll represente by all those guns and

for that they underpower all ship

the biggest problem i see is not the number of guns mount but the total absence of cargo space for transport

(not the space for compoment) no one can imagine a frigate that can hold as much as a transport ship even with cargo compoment

I'm not sure you get your last question. As cargo isn't mesure by volume or weight, but rather by bonuses to Acheavment points, A Frighter will almost always have an edge over even a heavily modified frigate. Even more so if they get a small engine and fill every inch of space they can spare with Main Cargo Holds. A Jerrico can end up with +675 Trade this way, something no simmilar sized warship could ever do.

(This, btw, is also the reason why RTs leave shipping to the charter captains - who wants a ship built like that!)

And the vessels are all at least a kilometer long and .2 or .3 km abeam. With the abstract system setup in RT its all about Achievement bonuses. Just killing your opponent isn't enough if you have to make forty trips to get enough Trade Achievement points to finish up. Yuck.

Alasseo said:

More like, a strength 12 salvo sounds like a lot of win, but isn't. The Mars broadside is really the suckiest weapon there is in RT, considering space and power use. The supposed extra volume of fire of having a huge broadside isn't adequately modeled in the game, all it does is to boost the Strength value to a ludicrous value of 6, which you won't get any use for ever, since all Strength does is raise the cap on maximum number of hits. How often do you hit with 5 degrees of success and get the maximum number of hits? How often does your typical Imperial Navy nothing-special-about-it cruiser of the line do that, with its crew skill of 30?

I've ruled that the broadside, in addition to having the stats it has, gives a +10 to hit due to the volume of fire. It still isn't that great, as having a sunsear laser battery would (relative to the broadside) put you most of the time in one closer range bracket for a corresponding +10 to hit, as well as having a higher maximum range. Still, it makes the broadside actually plausible.

Wouldn't it be better to allow macrocannons a bonus for 'total number of weapons' firing at one ship in one salvo? Say a Prow and Port Macro firing gives +10 per, total +20 to hit?

Or, a new attack action!

[Fire a Full Spread]: The targeting parameters of a macrocannon battery may be modified to cover a wider area, at the expence of raw power. Before any attacks are rolled, the gunner(s) may chose to reduce the effective strength of their weapons battery to give them a bonus to hit, at a 1 str to +10% ratio. This may not reduce the batteries strength below 1.