I'm really new to GM'ing Rogue Trader, so I'm seeing combats that take a couple of hours to resolve. Everyone's still having fun but I'm worried about upping the intensity if it's taking so long for me to resolve a 1v1 ship battle, or a 4-on-6 shootout.

Using 'narrative' style combat, I have found that an hour or so is not unusual for a pitched combat.

I am attempting to remedy this using miniatures or tokens at the moment, as play-testing with a closed group of friends has shown that this can easily cut the time of smaller battles drastically. Larger battles have yet to be tested, but a conversion of 1m to 1cm using 18mm models is a very good visual representation of an otherwise very difficult to envisage system.

It is my belief that the majority of combat is spent wrangling over position and the dreaded 'how many baddies does my blast weapon hit' when a group is lacking a visual cue. With models and even a basic 'drawn on a sheet of a3' combat map, there can be no debate over position once the initiative stage set up has concluded.

Best of luck fellow GM.

Yeah, in a sense I'm glad it took that long since it meant both sides were decently matched. It probably would have dragged on longer had the Missionary not used his Flamer which doesn't require a BS roll, followed by a bunch of failed willpower rolls/critical hits preventing them from extinguishing the flames or doing anything but shrieking in terror.

That's funny you should mention miniatures because after trying to do a one frigate on one frigate space fight I found myself desperately wanting grid paper and a couple of BFG miniatures so I could accurately calculate the ships movement turn and reconcile their positions. It's almost impossible to keep track of where the ships are in a "grid"-like manner without some form of map and miniatures, but at the same time I don't want to switch over to the "simple" narrative version the game offers because it seems like it makes a lot of the helmsman's actions useless.

Well regarding ship combat I find that a VU == One Inch scale works fantastically and negates the need for clunky grid paper. I can see why the development team have gone for a grid square philosophy with their combat mechanic, but I find it a little suspension of disbelief straining, and prefer to use the analogue '90 degree arcs by protractor') method of the tabletop war-games I have played.

That is not to say you shouldn't use the grid method if you prefer, I just find that there is little mechanical difference (aside from 'that guy' wrangling over visual arcs, but the protractor solves that problem nicely).

Let us know how your combats go from here on out, and I will feedback with some result from live tests in my upcoming game with the Maritime Games group.

I agree with using minis and grid for space battle. it's very tactical and facing and distance is much more essential than in ground combat I feel. I've ran ground combat without any battle-mats or grids for years now in DH and RT games and most of the time it works just fine, the added advantage being that I encourage my players to come up with their own environment elements to help them out ("We're in a dock right? Are there crates/crane/etc. that I can use to my advantage?"). In ground combat the big decisions usually revolve around:

a) is the target within normal range, short range, or point-blank range of ranged weapon

b) is the target within walking distance, charge distance, or run distance

c) If the target is attacked, is anyone else potentially caught in the attack

d) is there some sort of environmental effect going on (difficult terrain or cover usually)

Without complicated rules for AOOs, tumbling, etc (i.e. D&D), ground combat rarely needs the grid. Space combat on the other hand definitely requires it. We use star wars ship minis, BFG minis, and Firestorm Armada minis, or just about anything that clearly shows where the port and aft of the ship is, and helps figure out what the firing arcs are. Grid helps figure out positioning, firing arcs, easily show how far the ships can move and how much they can turn. Personally I could run it with measuring tape and templates since I used to be into BFG a lot, but my players are used to working with a square or hexagon grid.

As to the original question, it's difficult to gauge for ground combat, as it can last anywhere between 1 round (if the PCs gain surprise usually) to 15 rounds (longest combat I ever ran I think). The average round duration, looking at my notes, is about 5-7 rounds (I tend to keep a separate initiative sheet for each combat, in the interests of record keeping and gathering data for future games), and average round duration is about 6-8 minutes with a 4-player group facing even odds (longer if some rules need to be looked up). Space combat on the other hand lasts about 11-13 rounds on average, with each round duration being about 8-10 minutes. So I try not to run more than one space combat per session, as it can gobble up 25-50% of the session's time.

I use a grid mat with 1 inch squares, that each represent two meters in personal combat. In space combat each square represents one VU. The hardest part was getting used to the fact you can move along the corners of the squares which is very much unlike the D20 based games we're more used to.

So far the longest fight we had was with a mob of orks using the Deathwatch horde rules and not using the mat. That fight lasted 45 minutes as the players were in the midst of doing numerous critical actions while the fight grew more and more intense.

When we use the grid mat fights tend to last no longer than five rounds, mostly owing the lethality of the weapons involved. The fights also tend to number less than a dozen or so participants, with masses of bodyguards or other redshirts forming up into a horde type unit as described in the RT main book.

Honestly, the most time consuming thing in combat was looking up critical hits for NPCs. Once I Just started saying 'they die' it cut the fights nearly in half.

I got myself a square piece of wood Just over 2 foot to a side, spray painted it black then used a toothbrush to flick tiny bits of white paint on it. Voila, a space board. After that some silver paint pens and a large metal ruler gave it grids. We use it for space battles and its pretty good.

That said, if i had to redo it, i'd make it bigger. Maybe 3 foot on a side. The only problem then would be completely clearing my dining room table to do space battles when its usually covered with RP detritus, snacks (epic amounts of), character sheets, rulebooks, dice, etc.

As for how long it takes, it whizzes by now that my PCs have got the hang of the basics. My Players chose to have the Pcs all travel on their flagship, leaving control of the other ships in their fleet to trusted NPCs. Our seneschal works the augurs, Our rogue trader handles the piloting, our arch-militant does the guns and the psyker/missionary (its complex, all my PCs have a dark heresy class as well as a rogue trader class) is on triage and morale duty.

Combat only really slows down when my PCs try something unexpected, such as boarding enemy vessels.