So I'm a fairly new GM, though I've done a bit here and there over the years. I've been running a Rogue Trader game once a week for about a month or two now, and one of the things I've noticed is that ship combat seems very boring for most of my players.

Now, this is largely because most of the characters on the team are focused more on face-to-face engagements, but even if they all had skills that were useful in space combat, it seems like there's just not enough for them to do. The only people usually making rolls in the turn are the pilot and the captain (who happens to have the best Ballistic Skill, and therefor makes the shooting actions) and everyone else sort of drifts off. The only player who actually ends up engaged is the Rogue Trader captain, who decides all the movement and whatnot.

Once in a while, a tech-use roll or a lock-on-target roll is required, but for the most part, all the other players zone out during a ship-to-ship engagement. I'm kind of stuck as to what to do with them. Any ideas on how to improve the situation?

Hi,

if the group agrees abstract the whole space combat part into a modified skill test to see if they won easily, fair, damaged, lost, etc (by degrees of succes or such). Perhaps followed by some other dice rolls.

Or just play a game of Battlefleet Gothic.

Or try to come up with a special enemy ship which engages all characters to do something (eg braking a code to down shields, boarding, getting a better lock on, land inside the enemy ship, etc).

Are you running into the classic problem of "1 on 1 fight in an open field"? Is there no time limit? Are they always evenly matched?

Often times players not used to systems with space combat will try to run thing "realistically" and have space be large and empty, or in orbit around planets with few satellites.

The thing is, this kind of combat is, as you mentioned, boring. It is why space combat in TV and movies rarely takes place in "open space". The writers find excuses to put them in interesting situations because, well, its interesting. You would never have 2 fighters battle alone in an empty field, so why do it with ships?

Look to the great sci-fi epics for good ideas.

Put them in an asteroid field where they have to weave in between rocks, an ice field that causes sensor ghosts where they can vaporise chunks of ice to create cover.

Have them be outgunned and outnumbered, but the fight takes place in a nebula that makes detection difficult.

Fore them to make difficult choices. Let them push their ship and damage it, allow sabetours to get onboard and bring down shields at a difficult time.

And occasionally, re-enforce the scale by letting them utterly curb-stomp an opponent. Describe how their lances boil away deck plating and strike directly into the heart of enemy ships, how they crack continents and reduce cities to molten craters.

Space combat can be fun, but you need to treat it with the same respect and care you do ground combat.

High Alabaster_Lizard,

I would like to request some more informations about your "bored players". I think it is best to directly tailor something for them, so the info would be helpful.

Horizon, you are not alone!

After running my game for several months I had a go with a little massed space combat the PCs controling 1 fleet and me on the other.

I found the experiance very demotivating and tedious (it almost killed the game)! The players were in a similar position and after 2.5 game seshions we had only managed to get through a few turns and a vast amount of ineffectual dice rolling.

As an old wargamer I (and my players) have a lot of problems with the space combat system and we probably would have used the BFG rules if we had more modles etc but in the end we agreed to storyboard the space combat and treat it as dramatic action to talk through until we find a better alternative.

Sadly for a game that can do dynamic action very well and a setting perfect for dark space operah the space combat system is very clunky and ponderous.

I think the RT space combat is fitting & cool if you keep it 1 vs 1 or max 3 ships. More ships and it is to detailed to manage I think.

More ships works fine if the players have a larger vessel or more ships themselves, but it can get slightly messy from just lots of rolling. However, since every ship has, at most, three weapons it can fire at a single given target it's actually not that bad compared to, say, ground combat with potentially up to a few dozen individuals at any given moment.

I actually have to praise Rogue Trader on the stuff you can do in space combat aside from shooting and maneuvering. Other games that have a mix of space and ground often falter here, but there are a wealth of actions one can do to assist in space combat. I mean you've got "Put Your Backs Into It!" and "Aid the Machine Spirit" for general buffs, and several players can attempt these at once, each one applying to a different check. You've got hit and run attacks, which are amazing and really add to the thrill if you ask me. The extra actions for Navigators and Telepaths in Into the Storm help spice things up as well. Augury checks are also handy since a Focused Scan can let you know what components the enemy ship has, which lets you target them when you score critical hits (like from a Hit and Run action). Lock on Target is also a major boon (especially when combined with Master of Ordinance and Put Your Backs Into It! Flank Speed can be handy for moving into or out of effective weapons ranges, and of course Hold Fast! and Triage are useful any time the ship takes damage to avoid losing precious Crew and Morale (and if your players don't care about that, well, I think it's time for a Mutiny).

Throw in some interesting objectives, terrain, and opponents, and space combat should pick up. Oh, and if the players don't want to start doing any of this stuff, start doing it to THEM. Hit them with Hit and Run attempts, taking out key components of their ship and lighting fires that the NPCs know about because they succeeded in a Focused Augury check. Either the players will start trying to turn the tables on the NPCs or they'll have plenty to do trying to put out fires and fix the giant holes in their ship that are bleeding their precious crew.

Oh, definitely, Hotfoot. One thing I've done is give players a chance to figure out that they've been scanned (basically assuming that Focussed Augury represents active sensors being trained on a particular vessel) by setting a perception check.

Penalties get assigned depending on how busy/distracted they are by other things, but I'll also throw out bonuses for someone having the Master of Etherics role, or if they declared they'll stand by the Auspex and Opticon officers (and maybe for how many DoS/DoF the enemy vessel had).

After a Murder-class cruiser they were fleeing from painted them with a radar pulse so strong it spot-welded several airlocks shut and made the hull ring, they figured out they were being scanned...

Gregorius21778 said:

Well, the breakdown of my crew goes something like this right now:

A Rogue Trader with exceptional Ballistic Skill, also the only crew member with half-way decent fellowship. He seems to be the only one who actually enjoys ship combat, probably because he does almost everything. i.e, decided how the ship will move, and directing the gunnery, etc.

A Pilot who's so good, he has above an 80% chance to make most manuevres, factoring in the ship's rather high Manuevrability.

An Astropath who occasionally will run sensor checks or something, but mostly does nothing during ship combat.

A Seneschal who has his stats and skills spread too thin to be really good at much of anything. (This character is being replaced, both because of his general ineffectiveness, and for in-game, story related reasons. His replacement will add a much needed Tech Use skill ability to the team)

An Arch Militant who's ballistic skill is overshadowed by the Rogue Trader's, and has such low fellowship, Grots wouldn't listen to him. This character also belongs to my biggest problem player, who has threatened to quit the group several times because he seems to believe that the actions people take while Role Playing reflect their attitudes in real life, and is resentful that his character is not the 'main character' of the story.

A Missionary who is really kind of good for nothing. She often critically fails her First Aid attempts, but insists on attempting to play a 'healer' sort of character, and is generally not very interested in much of anything else.

Now, some of these issues that I've presented here, I'm working on handling. Also, based on the feedback I've got so far, I have a few new ideas to try, so thanks a lot, guys!

The pilot's something you get used to. Try encouraging him to undertake Evasive Maneuvers, they make it harder for him to fly, and harder to shoot from the ship, but also make it far harder to be hit. Try a 'Kessel Run' sometime. Their ship has to make it through a defence battery's killzone/tyranid formation to escape back into the warp. Other routes are blocked off or inaccessible. Pilot has to jink his way around, the rogue trader's aim is being thrown off, and if you apply some situational modifiers for the other players (Missionary leads the crew in prayer, inspiring them with zealous rage, Seneschal's assisting the pilot with a half-remembered description of a flaw in the weapons network, et cetera) it all becomes a lot more engaging. I'd really suggest getting Into The Storm, at least for the extra actions the Astropath can undertake in ship combat.

Hi,

since the RT seems fine with his existence, lets get to the rest

A Pilot who's so good, he has above an 80% chance to make most manuevres, factoring in the ship's rather high Manuevrability.
So his the one manouvering the ship? Or is he a "combat pilot" for hit & run? I gonna try to come up with some "battle field complications" which involve manouvering. I have to re-read the subject, so it might take a little time.

An Astropath who occasionally will run sensor checks or something, but mostly does nothing during ship combat.
Tricky one. How about giving him control about some faceless npc. In general, you could give some face and life to some npc (for example, a damage control team, fighter pilots, etc) and pre-plan some little "vignette adventurs" for those. Players with pc´s like this one could then "switch character" for the combat. At the end of each combat, awarad such "secound line semi-npc 100xp and allow the players to improve their "ship combat minion".

A Seneschal who has his stats and skills spread too thin to be really good at much of anything.
Since you mentioned he is goint to be replaced soon, I will ignore him

An Arch Militant with a need for glory
How about offering him a job as "fighter pilot" in charge of small squad of fighter or fighter-bombs (guncutters). Perhaps six (3 "wings") . Every ship combat, he could give little sequenzes where he and his "wing" either duke it out with some enemy fighters or try to dive through turret fire of the enemy to try for some critical strikes at enemy components. The Astropath could be needed to scan for for vital targets on the enemy ship..and would have to hurry for this so the arch-m really has a target as he approaches.

A Missionary who is really kind of good for nothing.
Not even for moral raising? Oh dear... well, as soon as damage to ship and crew incurs, send him on little field healing vignettes. With damage corridors and leaking vents so he might have problem to get to the injured and a need for command test to get the crew in order.
Do not be worried that he might be failling. This will not worsen the situation. The main point is: he/she has something to do and some "screen time".

I´ll try to give some more details and rules for what I suggest this evening

Alabaster_Lizard said:

This made me laugh out loud so freaking hard.

I can just imagine it...she's attending to some injured NPCs and critically fails, killing the patients. In an attempt to not terrify the crap out of the rest of the crew, she tries to turn it into a half-assed Prayer for the Dead. If I were in your shoes, and she did a half-assed or downright deadly botch of it I would start inflicting morale damage due to her actions. Maybe have her start earning a nasty nickname like the Priestess of Death, the Abbess of Agony or the Hierophant of Pain by the crew. "Don't piss off the Cap'n or he'll send you to a counciling session with the Abbess!!!"

Instead point out that she could do a lot more good if she actually did her job and worked on both the psychological and the physical levels. And that by doing so she is actually contributing to the overall success of the group. As someone focused on being a healer, she's already in the support category, and it would seem natural for her to want to excel at that role as much as possible. Perhaps she's not aware just how much she can help out?

Your list really makes me feel like the group didn't co-ordinate their characters at all, and that at least a couple of them are either very new to the setting or just don't care about it. It sounds like your problems aren't wholly restricted to ship combat, in my opinion.

Bladehate said:

This is deffinitely the case. Most of my players are only passingly familiar with the 40K setting, through the Dawn of War games, though they are learning very fast. They are also all fairly new to pen and paper RPGs in general. Our first few sessions were downright agonizing, as I had to spoon feed them each roll and each result. I am proud to say that they have hugely improved since then.

Interestingly enough, my players are slowly realizing the many areas that they lack in, and are requesting to make changes to overcome these problems. I've had so many character swaps in the game already, it's ridiculous. I am somewhat grateful though, as it gives me a supply of interesting NPCs to re-appear at the least convenient time in the future.

By the way, I really like your ideas for what to do with the Missionary. She'll hate it (in character) but all my players will love it. Thanks!

It sounds like I really need to get a copy of Into the Storm. Seems like they cover a lot of stuff that got left out of the original book. A shame. I really like this system, but it seems to be so poorly organized!

My personal advice would definitely be to get Into the Storm.

Then, when you've read it and you're comfortable with it, and you've gotten to a natural break point, I would do a soft reset on the campaign. Spend a few hours at the end of a game session all together and talk things out. Mention some of the advanced options and let them lean on their experience so far to create a more compelling and balanced group. Some probably won't want to make any big changes, but make it clear that the goal is to really cut down on all the "re-rolling" of characters.

Then allow those that wish it to remake their characters...either with a completely new character or by re-building their old one more or less from the ground up, making whatever changes they deem appropriate. And make it clear that after this point, the amount of time wasted on remakes will be significantly reduced. If they're learning fast and enthusiastic, they should take it pretty seriously and hopefully spend some time 1 on 1 with you and talking over their ideas, and maybe reading some source material.

I've been in a similar situation as you are...training a whole group, and introducing the whole setting pretty much from the bottom up. It means I have to do a lot of talking sometimes, but it really helped to cover the base careers and how they interact and how they contribute to the group.

Oh, and if I were you, I would make the break point right where you kill that Arch-Militant in a horribly spectacular way and don't invite him back for the reset. Sorry to say but he just sounds really obnoxious =P.

Hi Alabaster_Lizard,

perhaps you can make use of events like this to spice things up a little & keep some more pc busy

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=159&efcid=3&efidt=406338

Another suggestion:

Houserule: Dedicated Weapon Coordination
If one pc coordinates the firing of more then one weapons system in one strategic turn, a number of success rates equal to number of coordinated weapons systems is negated. Doing some other action besides firing weapon systems counts as firing a weapon system.
If one pc does nothing put coordinating one (and only one) weapon system, grant the pc an extra level of success (if the BS test is passed at all).

This encourages making way for other players to role the dices as well, but reduces the overall effectiveness of weapon systems. It is suggested to use the rules for “NPC Actions” on p.214 to determine who many “pc” the crew are actually worth.

Gregorius21778 said:

Great ideas! I'm no fan of switching characters, though, because the connection between player and character should solidify over time, which wouldn't be the case if the player already knows that their character is of now use in a certain situation (i.e, in space combat). Therefore, give them mini-adventures during ship engagemants ON BOARD the ship, all of those adventures tailored for a particular character.

Make the arch-M leave the bridge in order to lead the ship's crew against attacking sabotage teams (I know that "ground" combat would slow down the game, so there'd be the necessity to streamline things a bit, with some representative BS/WS rolls for the arch-M, the crew and the attackers. The interior of a void-ship is awesome for creating some environment effects and additional atmosphere.

Same goes for the Missionary, rallying the loading crew of the batteries or assisting the arch-M by means of prayer and invocations in order to raise their fighting spirit.

And the same goes for the seneschal (should the career stay the same, even if the character changes), he could assist the machinery slaves in soothing the ship's machine spirit or the like. Keep in mind that those things should keep things interesting, not slowing down the overall combat.

Perhaps a Navigator character would also be a good choice for making the group more interesting and versatile (in fact, I think, that a RT-group without a navigator is pretty uncool... especially because a Nav is one of the coolest careers in the whole game, but that's jhust my own humble opinion).

You could also make your own team attack the enemy ship personally via boarding action, although this would have to be a part of the adventure itself.. Anyhow, you are the GM, the situations the characters are gonna find themselves in are up to you...