Hello Rogue Traders!

This week we're pleased to bring you a designer diary concerning our next big Rogue Trade r release, Battlefleet Koronus !

Now this sounds exciting. Finally the things we would have loved to see in the basic book but somehow would not have fitted in. Very excited about htis one.

Let me just quote Fry from Futurama on this: "Hurry up and take my money!"

I believe the appropriate phrases are "ALL AHEAD FULL! AND **** THE TORPEDOES!" and "'Starbuck. Whaddaya hear?' 'Nothing but the rain' 'Then grab your gun and bring in the cat'"

Although those could simply be abbreviated to "WOO!"

Three things I'm hoping this will have in addition to what's already been mentioned (Woot for nova cannons)

1) Kroot ships along with an explanation and or rules of how they and some other xenos manage warp travel.

2) Rules, or at least a clarification, of how to acquire an already built ship.

3) More personal scale ship board gear and cybernetics.

I'd also like to see some rules on how to map out and or run the larger commercial empires of a Dynasty, but I beleive that's beyond the scope of this book. The fleet rules will be nice though.

And of course if they release the PDF a couple of weeks earlier than the hardcopy I'd pick up both if it meant getting the information sooner. XD

George Labour said:

1d100-the SP cost < PF? Essential components are factored into the ship cost already and supplemental components are added SP?

I hope we see some Dark Eldar love in this supplement. We had Dark Eldar in the Calixis sector, so I'm assuming they are in the Expanse as well.

Fortinbras said:

That's how I've assumed it works, except the bit on acquiring ships makes it sound like you buy the hull, then the components with no mention of purchasing entire ships. One way makes it hard to buy anything but the worst equipped ships until your profit factor is in the seventies, while the rules as written mean you just have to be lucky a few times and have a few weeks of in game time to kill.

Obviously this is one of those times where a definite rule is not needed, as it's easy to house rule, but it would still be nice to see something that spares the GM the task of house ruling and perhaps gives the players more control over the 'unimportant' ships of their dynasty.

But that could also wait until a more appropriate book for commerce comes along. I was really just wishlisting.

Nojo509 said:

There's some in the Edge of the Abyss.

Razorboy said:

Those are (non-Dark) Eldar pirates, + a craftworld.

Fortinbras said:

Children of Thorns <- Dark Eldar. Check the RT Core Book for a little bit more about them as well.

Razorboy said:

It doesn't say explicitly. Just says they're meaner than your average Eldar. And they look kind of gothy. (P.60, Edge of the Abyss, P.358 Main Rulebook)

Obviously if you've read a lot of WH40K backstory you can put two and two together and figure out they are in fact Dark Eldar, but if you're like me and aren't really interested in running Eldar encounters anyways you could easily miss it.

Fortinbras said:

Plus, as a rule, most humans don't really care about the intricacies of inter-Eldar politics and factions, just that they're xenos, treacherous, pretentious, condescending and generally dislike humanity. They don't really distinguish all that much between Craftworld, Dark, Exodite, Harlequin, Corsair, etc.

Fortinbras said:

You realise that your equation makes success pretty easy?

i.e.

SP 30

PF 50

d100 roll = 40

40 - 30 = 10 < PF = success

A more challenging formula would be PF - SP < d100

50 - 30 = 20

so only rolls of 20 or less on a d100 would succeed. A much more suitable chance for something as hard to come by as an entire functional ship...

Yes, it would be 1d100<PF-SP cost, you're correct. I wrote that after typing out a bunch of modified rolls into InvisibleCastle that evening.

It also had the interesting side effect of making more expensive ships easier to acquire. A simple typo

I look forward to seeing what kind of new components and stuff they come up with. Weapons are nice and all, but I personally think the other components are more interesting.

Well as the book is title battlefleet I expect most of it will be oriented to military ship stuffs. But, that still leaves a lot of potential. After all, if our modern navies have laundry ships, just imagine what kind of fun logistical enablers the imperium uses.

Hopefully they'll include salvage equipment to make patching up a wreck easier or at least plausible. Maybe different types of probe servitors for scanning systems, planets, and so on though that'd be more of a supplement to auspex and bridge components I imagine.

Could also use some rules on salvaging xenostech from other ships and slapping them into an imperial hull.

Finally some personal shipboard equipment that gives us some fun fluff (think hydro spanners), new void suits or exo armors, and perhaps a new boarding weapon or twenty.

Hopefully the warfare rules will also cover the use of super heavy elements such as baneblades and titans. Not that I imagine they'd be common in the expanse, but people do seem to want to use them. Plus this way we don't have to wait another year until Only War comes out for DH.

I was re reading Into the Storm the other day and wondered if we could have specific rules for mixing broadsides? Like old mariners used to incporporate cannon of differing sized into their arsenal as they were acquired since they were so valuable.

Component 1: Mars-pattern Macrocannon

Component 2: Ryza Plasma Battery ?

Fortinbras said:

I think he means something like having a component that is 25% Mars-Pattern Macrocannons, 25% Ryza Plasma Battery, and 50% Thunderstrike Macrocannons.

I don't see a huge need for this level of separation, but I'd be inclined to simply average the stats, round down for values that a player would want high (Strength, damage, range) and round up for things they would want low (Space, critical, power) but round down SP to represent the fact that each was likely bought at the cheapest price possible, and thus why you would bother mixing them.

As would be expected of mixing all kinds of different cannons, this is less effective than a full component of a single kind.

Sounds more like a headache than a useful addition to the rules.

Fortinbras said:

Indeed. I think it would be a very niche thing more for RP purposes than actual effectiveness. If for example you're playing as pirates or Orks instead of Rogue Traders, it could be useful to bring the scale of weapons down and buy (or steal or salvage) a single (or handful) of macrocannon and add it to your battery instead of having to buy the full set all in one go.

I always assumed the batteries were already a mixture of differeing sizes and ammo types already, with the rules on range, strength and so on representing the use of bigger short range guns and shells alongside smaller but faster and or longer ranged ordnance. Just like how lances can be a series of turrets even though the weapon only appears to be one weapon instead of a battery.

But if you need further inspiration, there's the lathe pattern battery in Into the Storm.

MILLANDSON said:

I agree that most humans can't tell the difference. This is something I need, but maybe your campaign does not.

For my campaign, I need more than a name and fashion statement. I need separate mechanics, like in the 40k tabletop game. Two of my six characters have a run in with Dark Eldar in their backstory. One of them has a xenos MIU in his brain, put in my the Dark Eldar as a sick joke. While my players have plenty of enemies, the main breakdown is Chaos and not. Dark Eldar are Chaos Eldar, and that makes a difference in my campaign arc.

Nojo509 said:

Dark Eldar really aren't Chaos Eldar.

Chaos Eldar are something else entirely...