I love the Rogue Trader game and have an occasional game which I am running. After the first session which was quite rules-light, I want to finalise any house rules before we play again.

The only game rule I dislike is that Void shields refresh for every new ship that attacks you; this completely contradicts the way they work in the 40K universe as set out by the BattleFleet Gothic game (and others such as Adeptus Titanicus). Some of my players are concerned that 'they must have put that rule in for a reason' so I was hoping to get the opinion of more frequent players as to whether this might cause problems in a game. That's why I posted here rather than in House Rules - I'm more interested in how you think the rulebook's rules work rather than what you think of my alternative.

I'm fairly certain that for a one-on-one ship battle there will be no difference - I don't see how there could be. However, if you pitted, say, three raiders or frigates against a cruiser, how vital do you judge the ever-refreshing void shields to be, or would there be little difference? I'd be really interested in anyone's opinions on why the third full paragraph on P.221 (which deals with this rule) is in the book, and whether you believe it is vital to space combat working or not.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and advice.

The fact that Void Shields refresh against each individual attacker does indeed make a difference compared to Battlefleet Gothic. It means that outnumbering an enemy gives less of an advantage in RT over BFG, and that adding an extra void shield makes a bigger difference to a ship's durability.

This is intentional. Because in Rogue Trader there will typically be a single starship with the entire party aboard, it needs to be harder to destroy this ship. The RT rules are meant to allow the PCs ship to heroically engage a whole pack of Raiders in a battle if need be. In BFG, an upgraded Light Cruiser with an elite captain and crew that attacks three times it's points value worth of Ork Raiders to try and defend a planet single-handed, that Light Cruiser is likely dead. In RT, the PCs doing that have a reasonable (but not guarateed) chance of pulling the same thing off, even if they'll probably end up burning a Fate Point or two and putting the ship into Drydock for six month afterward.

Battlefleet Gothic is a Wargame. Its rules are therefore designed to encourage the players to adopt sensible tactics based on the assumptions the rules make. Rogue Trader is a Role Playing Game. It's rules are meant to encourage the players to act in a dramatic and adventurous fashion.

I would think this could be something that will be expanded upon in the starships book due out at some point next year.

I too find the rule a bit wonky, but not earth-shatteringly so, and as Tantavalist says it does allow a bit more heroic freedom for the PCs vessel to be outnumbered and still have a chance. Personally I would be tempted to keep the rule but allow vessels to co-ordinate their attacks (following a suitable set-up time and relevant tests) such that they could the void shields and circumvent the regeneration rule.