I have two questions after today's game.

Question 1) When using a teleportarium to perform hit and run manuevers, you get a +20% to the Command test. But what happens if you don't teleport back right away and you just keep the boarding party on the other ship? Do you get the +20% every round on the opposed Command check?

Also, if the ship with the teleportarium is the bigger ship, should they still get the +10% bonus for having the larger crew even if the only way they are attacking is with the teleportarium? It would seem that there are much fewer people going on the other ship that way. And by the same token, would the remaining Hull Integrity differences between the ships be taken into acccount if it is solely a teleportarium attack?

And I understand what happens if there are two close ships trying to board each other, but what happens if the defending ships commander wins the opposed Command roll when being boarded exclusively by teleportarium using boarders? He can't logically damage the crew rating of the attacking ship. Is it assumed that the boarding party gets killed to the last man?

Also, roughly how many people can a teleportarium send in a one round (30 minute) boarding action? 50 people? 200 people?

Question 2) How long should it take to prepare to enter the Warp?

In space combat rounds are 30 minutes long. Form the time the captain decides to jump to the time the navigator has stuff plotted out and ready to go how many 30 minute rounds pass?

Don't have my books handy to give particulars but I felt something was worth a comment. Not everything sent by the teleportarium is going to be people. You can also send over 'care packages' if you wanted to and didn't care about where it ended up.

Also, I beleive the teleportarium only works with the boarding actions caused by the Hit and Run Extended action. THere it removes the need for a piloting roll, negates the bonuses from a ship's turrets, and adds a +20 to the attacker's command test.

I don't recall if there's a difference between hit and run, and other boarding actions. but might want to check.

That question about 'staying behind' comes up every time a group gets a ship with a teleportarium. Simplest answer, your teleportarium can't send that many people through. I usually limit it to about a dozen in a single turn. 12 people appearing somewhere in the enemy ship and causing havoc before teleporting back out are going to be almost impossible to beat. 12 people sticking around and trying to do more damage at the same location, they're going to get swarmed.

So you rule that if they stay longer then they automatically die, or do you roll another round of Command vs. Command?

Well NPCs obviously might be left behind, often with timed detonators strapped to them. In fact, this is why you likely use servitors or penal troopers for such attacks. Or, just teleport a live warhead into their ship and enjoy the fireworks. AS for the PCs, obviously they get teleported away somehow, if they even have to be bothered with going through the teleporter in the first place.

Of course this is purely for the purposes of space combat. Were they to board an enemy's vessel outside combat time I'd be more inclined to run it as a series of skill checks, if not an outright adventure.

George Labour said:

In my game, the PCs have hired a group of 50 Kroot Mercs and one of the PCs leads this group personally on Hit and Runs with the Teleportarium.

This is that character's SOP in space combat. What he wants to be able to do is teleport over and just stay there chewing through the crew with his Kroot.

How would you handle it mechanically? What bonuses should apply? The larger crew bonus? The higher Hull Integrity bonus? Neither?

What happens if he should fail an opposed Command vs. Command roll? All the Kroot die but he makes it out?

Also, what are your opinions on question number two: Warp entry prep times?

Enlightened said:

Personally I think you're sending over the same number of forces that you would on a normal hit and run attack, hence why you aren't immune to having your crew rating decreased. Basically you get the +20% because you get to hit them unprepared from behind. Teleporting in doesn't allow you to suddenly fight with 50 people instead of 5000 (or however normally engage in a hit-and-run). If you sent in only 50 people they'd get quickly slaughtered regardless of how advantagous their starting position is.

So, by that token I'd imagine that you can teleport as many people as are part of the normal raid twice in that 30 minute period, once to get them there, and again to get them back. Staying any longer would be suicidal because your troops would be surrounded. You would at the very least not get the +20 bonus any longer, though there is nothing preventing you using the teleporter again to launch a similar attack at a different point in the ship.

Karoline said:

When you lose the opposed Command roll you lose Crew 1D5 times the Degree of Success. How many crew would you think that you need to commit to the attack? At least 5?

Karoline said:

That's reasonable.

Karoline said:

So here's the situation.

We have a Frigate (with a Teleportarium) and Crew 100 and Hull 35 versus A Raider with Crew 85 and Hull 32.

The Frigate gets +10% for having more Crew, +20% from the Teleportarium, and +10% from having more Hull Integrity.

The Frigate Captain rolls at Skill 40% +40% (the above) =80% vs. the Raider's 40%.

If the Frigate wins the Raider loses 1D5 Crew per Degree of Success.

If the Raider wins the Frigate loses 1D5 Crew per Degree of Success up to a max of 5.

The second round, if the teleporters stay, the Frigate Captain rolls skill 40% +10% for more Crew? Or not? +10% for more Hull? Or not? But definitly not the +20% from the Teleportaruim. So 40~60% vs. 40%.

Does that look right?

Enlightened said:

Honestly, I'd just keep doing the same action over and over so you don't have to redo stats every turn. Just assume the teleporter does other things like sending bombs around the ship while he continues to fight on until he sends the withdraw signal. Sure it's a bit lazy, but combat can be hectic enough without adding more baggage.

You could also use the rules for the Storm trooper detachment from Into The Storm if he went out and bought the best kroot available.

As for losing the command roll, I'd say he'd take 1d5 wounds, suffers a -10 penalty everytime he fails, and lose either a percentage of the kroot, or has to make upkeep tests to see if they remain a combat unit. Though if he fills in the ranks with some normal ship troops, you might just wait until the end of the battle, and have him make an upkeep test.

If he fails the upkeep test after the battle is over then he has to wait until he can hire more kroot and get more ammo for their rifles.

Of course I'm no authority on any of this.

I wondering if, when dealing with Teleportarium-only Hit and Run actions, it wouldn't be better to just ignore the bonus for having more Hull Intergrity points.

Also, it would also kind of make sense to give the higher Crew bonus to the defending ship regardless of the actual difference in Crew between the two ships. But how much?

Enlightened said:

Both are slightly odd in the first place though. I mean with the crew, it isn't like you're sending all of your crew to attack the enemy ship. It isn't as though every last 'bilge rat' (or whatever the WH40k term is... ratter?) onto the enemy ship. And I'm not even sure how hull integrity is supposed to factor into the battle.

I suppose for the crew strength it could represent how much of a chunk is likely to have been taken out of your armed forces, but seems to ignore the fact that one ship could start with a significantly larger combatant population.

For the sake of sanity, it might be easier to simply use the rules exactly as they are, and ignore oddities like the enemies managing to kill off your own ship population (Assume that the number represents only those trained to fight, as opposed to every person on board maybe), and disallow things that are going to mess with this such as the PC with the special task force. Use the rules for the storm trooper and give a +10% bonus if the kroot are really that awesome.

So, give the 10% for population, 10% for hull integrity, 20% for Teleportarium, 10% for storm troopers. Enemy ship can still get normal damage if they win, assume it means a large blow to your fighting forces and perhaps keep this in mind when resupplying that you only need to replace 2k soldiers as opposed to 20k workman and soldiers.

I figure that if you stay over there without further teleports, you're looking at the population bonus automatically going to the enemy (Unless they've been seriously hammered), and losing the 20% for the teleportarium. Of course, I don't really see much reason to not continue using it. It'll ferry in more troops, move your little death squad to another level to avoid being cornered, etc.

Edit: Point of interest, I've just recently been playing a strategy game where one of the groups can teleport their troops, and it is an amazing ability. Being able to get into the heart of an enemy base, past their normal defenses, is invaluable. However, once you've used up that initial ability to teleport in and wreak some havock, you either need to have already won, or teleport back out again because you're going to be surrounded, and the teleport doesn't make your troops fight any better when they aren't using it.

Enlightened said:

Another round of Command vs Command, but the defender gets a much higher bonus to his roll as he's able to direct more people into the conflict, whereas the attacker only has a small number of forces at hand. Oh, and a fail by more than 4 degrees on the initial Command roll leads to a teleport mishap.

I just realized where I was going wrong in all of this.

I had been using the Boarding action rules for trying to do Hit and Run actions because I didn't notice that Hit and Run had its own explanation section.

This realization clears up so many things for me. What a relief.

In addition, hit and run attacks are exactly that hit and RUN! They use few people, maybe a handful of guncutters to gain entry to the other ship, you are looking at maybe 50 people. The idea of them is to get onto the enemy ship, plant a bunch of bombs and kill as many people as you can find and generally cause mayhem, then scarper before the enemy gather. This last point is essential. The enemy know the ship, likely have control of some environmental controls such as gravity, air, pressure and have far more armsmen than you have troops. Remember that a ship on fire can vent a component into space if it wants, i see no reason why a captain couldn't do the same to a component full of kroot boarding parties.

You PC and his kroot mercenaries would be slaughtered if they stay. In, mess things up and out again is the way.

With a teleportarium, the in and out bits are that much easier. I've always imagined it as follows.

50 troops stand on the teleportarium. They teleport onto the enemy ship. After a brief period of shock, vomitting and generally feeling crap (they are travelling through the warp remember), they move out in small groups, 10 men or so leaving 10 guys with a large, armchair sized teleport homing beacon at the site. The fire teams move out, set a few bombs, kill as many officers, techpriests and pretty much anyone else as they can, keeping a sharp eye on the time as they do so. 15 minutes later, or maybe sooner if they encounter unexpectedly fierce resistance, they head back to the site, stand around the teleport homer, place a particularly large bomb and then teleport out.

The enemy mean while find out about the intruders when the first explosions and deaths happen. The arch-militant steams off the bridge, bellowing orders to his subordinates who radio through the ship to the various armsmen groups. Th armsmen close into the invaded area, sealing bulkheads behind them, setting automatic defenses and arming the voidsmen they meet enroute. If they encounter the enemy they kill them with their superior numbers. If the boarding parties are too tough (stormtroopers for instance), they fall back, seal off the bulheads and get the techpriests to either vent the area to space, or raise the temperature to deadly levels, flush the area with coolant, radiation or increase the pressure until the enemy are dead. Time is on their side. Every minute that ticks by adds to the armsmens numbers and when the arch-militant and his well equipped bodyguards arrive, they can rush the area enmass.

Boarding is different, here environmental controls are less use as there is no area of the ship that is secure, the enemy are invading across the length of the ship (which is why relative crew numbers matter). Speed is not so important here for the attacker as it provides few of the advantages to the defender that it does in a hit and run.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

Looking at it like this, would it be reasonable to then say that if they stay for a second round then they automatically all die, no roll?

Enlightened said:

At best, I'd say that they could have another Command test, but at -20 (as by this time their opponents can bring their extra numbers to bear), and if they fail by more than (whatever number of DoF you want) then they all die.

MILLANDSON said:

So in the first round they get +10% for being the attackers and +20% from the Teleportarium. Total equals Skill plus 30%. The defending ship gets no bonus. If the attackers fail they get pushed back to their ship without doing damage.

In the second round they would lose both the +10% and the +20% and in addition have a -20%. Total equals Skill minus 20%. The defending ship gets no bonus. If the attackers fail they die to the last man.

Does that look right?

That certainly would be incentive to get out in one round.

Enlightened said:

At the very least I think they'd get jettisoned into space, which is generally fairly quickly deadly. I don't know that they wouldn't get a roll for it though... well, they wouldn't, but the enemy would to properly vent the area or do whatever other nastiness they want. Likely a tech-use by one of the tech-priests (With assistance of course) unless that is the sort of thing that can be done automatically.

As I've said in the past though, I don't really see why the PC would want to stick around. I don't see any real benefit from staying on the enemy ship, and the risks are huge.

In my game, they always go over to the other ship wearing Void suits so getting jettisoned or having that section of the ship voided wouldn't hurt them.

And if there are no negative mechanical reasons to get out quickly, then the PLAYERs don't see why they shouldn't stay round after round.

Karoline said:

I just want to solidify what the actual game mechanics of those risks are.

Karoline said:

The benefits of staying on are that if the ship moves out of range on its turn you can still attack it and you can still attack it even if the shields aren't brought down in a particular round. It's a continuous attack that isn't dependant on range or overcoming shields.

Well, that also means that they're trapped in that case. While perhaps not an instant kill, they're unlikely to last long. I'd suggest perhaps another command roll, but you lose the teleport benefit, and the enemy automatically gets the crew and hull benefit (You have none), along with another +10 for being able to lock off parts of the ship and vent them and do other nasty things.

As for the void suits, those won't help much if they've been shot at all. Void suits tend to be somewhat fragile, and even a small hole is going to make it basically useless. I'd also imagine wearing one of those in the ship during combat while still wearing normal armor would be quite cumbersome. Likely give a -10 to the opposed command roll for the added awkwardness of the suit.

And in this case, if the attackers lose the opposed roll (by any amount), all the NPCs should die, and the PC should be incapacitated and taken prisoner or killed depending on who they are fighting.

As for the Void suits, in true Rogue Trader fashion, they went out of there way to equip the boarding crew with selenite-pattern armored Void suits with patching kits.

You really should get across the terrible danger of staying onboard the ship. Have bulkheads seal around them after the first round (in ship combat terms, i.e. 30 mins), if they have void sealed armour, great. However, its gonna take them a good while to get through the bulkheads, even with melta weapons. When they do the bad guys have scanned their location down and have heavy weapons crews waiting for them. Even the most badass of PCs goes down hard to a heavy flamer, autocannon or heavy bolter. Have it operated by the other ships arch-militant for some gross BS rolls. Have him supported by literal hordes of armsmen and voids men. You'll find that the ammo begins to run out pretty quickly on all but heavy weapons. Then its hand to hand and grappling time.

Also, if the PCs are on the enemy ship, their own vessel lacks their high skills. Have the enemy ship start to take apart their own vessel. Have reinforcements in the form of other ships arrive. Then its a battle to get back onboard their own ship.

Remember that voiding an area isn't the only thing you can do. Kill the gravity, or the lights. Flood the area with radioactive coolant (if they have gone anywhere near the plasma drives).

Be utterly ruthless. Remember boarding a ship with only 50 guys IS suicide. Its like trying to captured a heavily armed town the size of Watford filled with defenses with only the guys from one pub. Hit and runs rely on surprise and escape before retaliation.