I'm the GM of my group and so far we've had two ship combats, and both of them ended fairly quickly with my NPC ship getting destroyed. I want to provide my players with a challenging battle, so I was wondering if any of you had some strategies that you have found helpful and effective in Space Combat.

1) Avoid letting the party have a teleportarium and murder servitors. This ends ship battles quick.

2) try to engage the party with several ships that are smaller then theirs is rather then go toe to toe with an equal. Typical npc ships do not roll as well as a PC ship will, but this can be made up for with a larger number of npc ships

3) if you do want a mano y mano fight, don't be aftaid to give the opposing ship a high crew rating. this wil help offset the PC advantage.

4) Use terrain. Pirates don't just charge up to victems out of the middle of nowhere, they use tricks and misdirection to ambush prey.

In addition to raising the NPC vessels crew rating you could also give their captain actual stats and allow him to make an action of his or her own. This way the NPC vessels get another action per round AND a capable individual to perform them.

Try and think 2-3 turns ahead, and consider where a ship's weakpoints will be.

Also, think where it's arcs of fire are. A useful trick, especially on a ship with plenty of dorsal mounts is to tack across a base course that keeps her in the rear arc of her target.
Another is to make a dashing course that will cross the target's fire arc in the space of a turn, and preferably end beyond practicable firing range (such as a diagonal in from a couple of points fore of starboard, and wind up behind aft of the target vessel- preferably in a position that the minimum move before a turn puts her out of range).

Consider also the cohesion of the pirate group. Is it a loose grouping, attacking every ship for itself, but ganging up to take on larger prey, or is it a tight-knit squadron, who'll maneuvre as a whole? Will they shirk at sacrificing one ship to gain better firing solutions for the others? For that matter, will they abandon a crippled comrade and/or the fight when things get tough?

Pick out complementary weapons systems for the pirates. A good trick, where possible, is a prow lance and dorsal sunsear, although pretty much any lance/macrobattery combo works well. The Sunsear is merely a favourite thanks to the range, allowing the pirate vessels to stay out at long/extreme range and pick away at the Party's ship with little chance of being flattened. Maintain the proper separation, and unless they choose to chase one ship specifically, they're going to get nibbled to death slowly.
Once they give chase to a specific ship, however, the others can zoom in from/to aft, and do serious damage- the macrobattery'll knock down the target's shield(s), so the lance can cut away at hull integrity.
While the attacking ship is now in range of the Party's vessel, they can't turn to engage without the other(s) doing the same thing...

I give my NPCs a number of Extended Actions equal to their general skill rating, so a 30 Skill crew will be capable of making a hard turn, performing a Lock On and then firing the guns. Don't feel limited to just moving your ship and firing!

In our most thrilling ship battle so far, a part of the players was NOT aboard their own ship.

Instead, they had to take control of another ship's weapons to use them against their enemies – this was the only way to win that battle against a majority of enemy ships.

So a race against time began: Those players had to conquer important sections of the other ship while the ship-to-ship-battle was going on. (A turn in a ship battle is much longer than a turn of player-characters, so this is perfectly possible.) The simultaneity of the incidences increased the suspense of the battle.

My group have had several battles so far and these are the things i have learnt

1) Increase enemy ship rating. This is reflective not of the general crew but the elite officers. This goes double if there is a rival RT on board. I recommend 40 for a normal ship at least and 50 for any kind of experienced warship.

2) If you put your players up against many small human ships, they will rapidly acquire a fleet. Not necessarily a bad thing but something to be aware of. My PCs have a habit of hulking or near hulking enemy ships then refitting them and crewing them. They have so far acquired in this fashion 2 raiders and 2 frigates in addition to their initial flagship cruiser.

3) For actual combat, module choice matters. The worse my PCs have been battered was against Orks who declined to swap braodsides with the PCs as most humans have and simply attempted ram and boarding actions. Ramming is nasty, being boarded by orks even more so. Made worse by our arch militant wanting to be the guy leading the defending troops despite his appalling fellowship. Command tests are not his strong point. At all. A ship with barracks and an armoured prow (or in this case the orky equivalent) can be really nasty, especially so if there are multiple vessels. Try a trio of wolfpack raiders equipped like this.

4) Combat tactics. My PCs maximise enemy time in their broadside arcs, they try to move to short range as soon as possible (although this turned out to be a "bad idea" against the Orks, see point 3) for that +10 BS bonus. With the RTs +10 bonus (known in our group as "You can dooo eeet!") and with various lock on targets and put your backs into it, you can ramp up the BS skill of your gunner (in our case a BS skill 60 arch militant). With a decent roll you can strip shields and hull off the enemy to be followed up with a lance strike (our cruiser has a lance battery). This is sufficient to really hammer most baddies.

5) If you want to hurt your players, give the enemy lances. I found that a wolfpack raider with dual macro batteries doesn't do much to a cruiser (with dual voids) but the same ship with a mars pattern macrobattery and a lance weapon can start doing hull damage. Not enough to equalise the fight, but enough to make the PCs not feel invincible. A pack of wolf pack raiders so armed can be very nasty indeed.

6) Unless you have a really good pilot and someone with a good command skill, hit and run attacks are quite hard to pull off. Teleportariums are thus VERY powerful. Even without murder servitors.

7) Critical hits that take out components should always be targeted at the PCs void shields first. This wil terrify them, especially if they have dual voids (which soak up huge amounts of damage).

8) Ramming in big ships is truly brutal. Ramming with multiple small ships is also pretty **** nasty if they have armoured prows.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

With them it's a 'give the players a free ship' combo. Typically they'll disable the other ship's drives, move into it's blind arc, and pound the dogsnot out of it until it surrenders. This can be done against multiple ships, with disturbing ease.

And I reccomend that crits be against the PCs engines. The sheilds soak up damage, but the engine crits can really scare em.

Another suggestion is "terrain".

Most combat should not be in "open space", just like most ground combat isn't in "open fields". It is boring. Yes, space is big and empty, but this is a space opera, not hard sci-fi.

Asteroid fields, ice clouds, nebulas, and the sites of ancient battles can provide lots of interesting "enviromental variables". Asteroids can block line of site or be destroyed to provide cover, radiation can make sensor ghosts, and pulsar radiation may knock out the shields of any ships not behind the shadow of debris one every 3 rounds.

It also allows for ambushes and reverse ambushes. If they see the players first your players get challenging combat, if they see the enemy first the players get to have fun curbstomping an opponent.

Do you guys ALWAYS use terrain in space combat? I'll admit, that seems incredibly contrived to me...however I get your point about this being space opera, not a simulation.

Our next session is going to open with space combat vs. an eldar frigate (Shard of Dawn from LotE). Looks like they have some special abilities that I'll have to get familiar with in the next few days.

Watch some Star Trek and see how many episodes you will find space combat in without "terrain".

The thing is, there is rarely a good reason to fight in "open space". By definition there is nothing there to fight over.

Whats more, battles are unlikely to take place in "open Space" for the same reasons they don't happen in "open fields". Combat tends to focus around either "hard points" or "ambush points". Attackers get to choose the location, so why expose yourself needlessly? Defenders get to prepare the battlefield in advance, so why expose yourself needlessly? In an open field scenario there usually isn't much of a reason to fight, you can just look to see who is stronger since tactics usually wont enter into it much.

in a combat test between my Rt's sword class frigate with 2 dorsal sunsear battery against a light crusier outfitted by another RT in the group. the major issue that the cruiser had was that it only had a prow titanforge lance. I simply hit him on his flank and rear while cruising at a slow speed at close range. It was funny as hell, kind of hard to hit something you can reach. Guess my point is that if you want to drive your players bonkers, use something smaller and have it constantly move out side of their ships firing arcs.

I just had a look at the rules, and a cruiser (light or no) can fire it's prow weapon in the side arcs as well as the frontal one. Which means hanging on the cruiser's side would have exposed your frigate to lance fire - though with only one lance weapon, they would need some good rolls to get an extra hit to get through the shileds...

Which proves why having only one weapon is a bad idea.

how could it possibly do that if the prow only covers the frontal arc, what you are describing are the dorsal mounts, of which the cruiser has none. the book doesn't state that the prow arc has that much swivle. the mount is also under the vessle so if my ship is level with his hull how can it be able to hit me. that is why the larger ships have the flank slots to prevent ships from taking advantage of that weak spot. sadly the crusier was also built up as a mining vessel not a true combat ship.

I'm afraid Manunancy has it right Void Onion. Prow slots on light cruisers upwards can fire in the fore, port and starboard arcs. As for how it could do it, simply Prow weapons do not just cover the frontal arc, on light cruisers upwards can fire in the fore, port and starboard arcs.

Dorsal mounts do the same for smaller ships too.

This is all on page 219 of the core rulebook.

As for vertical alignment, this isn't covered in RT at all, but if you want an in game answer, a barrel roll by the cruiser would be easy enough to achieve.

Fluuf wise, I'd consider that a cruiser's prow is big enough compared to that of a frigate or raider that you can fit both some sort of traverse/swivel mechanism and enough guns to make off-bore shots worthwile even if they can't all be brought to bear.

It also makes the side fire arcs of a cruiser a rather unhealthy place to stay.

i see what you mean, still can't really understand how is able to do that especially if the weapon it's self is mounted on the underside of the ship . also even if the ship could barrel roll, question is one of a matter of size and mass. it would be slow and cumbersom in which a frigate would easily have time to move. even if the figate was on either flank. the prow battery would not be able to traverse to the required angle depending on the distance between the two hulls and how high above the hull line the target is. the rulse say one thing, but given how imperial ships are designed is it even mechanically possible.

Well, lets take the Dauntless Light Cruiser : In Battlefleet Gothic it has a lance which is fixed forward.

So that is where the confusion starts for some/many/most(?).

the question is how fast can a crusier barrel roll, or should the GM hum classical music to simulate the process.

Well, given how much delta-v it has anyway (look into how much energy it takes for something that big to come to such a radically different heading as the rules allow), and bearing in mind each turn is 30minutes, I suspect they can perform a full roll in one turn, although I honestly can't see what advantage that'd present. Maybe a half-roll to present the opposite broadside as a special manoeuvre action?

I'll add that the cruisers or larger can fire prows to the side is probably a recognition that not everyone is going to be using cypra-mundi and voss-pattern hulls (ie, the most common IN hulls from Battlefleet Gothic). There's nothing to stop someone shoving a lance barbette on the top/bottom of the prow and getting the same degree of swivel as they would elsewhere. And, purely from an engineering point of view, it'd bee easier to fit them for a left/right traverse than to try and build in a similar degree of elevation. Thankfully, it's actually easier to roll ship slightly to get a clean solution.
And the older hulls (the Slaughter-class, the Murder-class, etc.) have long had a "prow" battery in the fo'c'sle with the capacity to fire forward and to fire as part of the broadside.

Smaller ships (frigates, destroyers (raiders)) don't get the capacity, as I believe the idea is the only way to fit such large weapons systems in place is to mount it spinally and wrap the rest of the hull around it (so, not mounted on the prow, but built into the prow, if that makes sense). That said, the description of the Sword class frigate, and it's BfG rules, give it a prow weapons battery (sunsear, going by the description) with the capacity to bear pretty much anywhere but aft (although it's model and all artwork regarding it has show dorsal batteries)...

yea, the book really isn't to clear on how a prow weapon is positioned on the crusiers to allow it to fire to either side, most of the BFG ships of crusier and up have their prow weapons in a fix forward arc, example would be the nova cannon. the only ships that can have lance weapons in the dorsal mount are the new monitor class from the "into the storm" book.

In Battlefleet Gothic a great many capital ships have dorsal lance turrets.

The thing with fixed forward lances it that you fire them prow and the port/starboard batteries to the side. A Barrel roll like described above would eliminate the port/starboard sides from having a shot.

In BFG lances, nova cannons and torpedoes on the prow are fixed forward. Weapon batteries left front right.

For Imperial-Chaos ships that is.

so even though the rules say the prow weapon on cruisers can fire on either side. the reality is that prow weapons on imperial ships have always been fixed arcs. eldar and tau i can understand as an exeption to that, ork may follow the fixed arc ruling but they have enough gunz to the point where it won't make to much of a diffrence. now tell me this, if torpedos on imperial ship are built into the prow how can you hit something on you flank. given that torpedos are still dumb fire weapons

Void_onion213 said:

Because you can shoot torpedoes at most degrees other than the rear 90 degrees from a WW2 German submarine, the torpedoes are just programmed to turn to that course after they leave the torpedo tubes, even when they were dumb-fire.

If a WW2 submarine can do it, it's not too hard to think that you can do it in 40k.

that sounds about right, exept just about everything in 40k runs by man power and targrting and guidence programs are a rarity. or are the weapon systems more advanced.