How should a GM deal with a group of players with multiple ships. If they have an extras ship or two follow them on an Endeavor, do the bonuses for ship's components all count?

Can their NPC run ship's components give them objective bonuses?

What if they have two trophy rooms, do the bonuses stack?

Is there no downside to having two or more ships?

Nojo509 said:

A. This isn't really covered in the book, but I would treat all ships not crewed by at least a couple of Explorers as participating in a "background endeavor" [P.211 Into the Storm]

B. The NPC-run ships would give objective bonuses to background endeavors, but not active, Explorer-participant endeavors

C. Since you can have more than one trophy room according to the rules, I don't see why not. The bonuses for double cargo holds stack.

D. Yes. A ship can only take as many actions during a ship combat turn as it has NPC crew rating. I. E. - A ship with a crew rating of 30 could take one movement action, one firing action, and one supplemental extended action. Your average ship has a crew rating of 30 without additional acquisitions to acquire "Crack" crews, and all their skill ratings roll at 30. 30 is an abysmal shooting target number, and any enemy ship worth its salt would easily trash the NPC ship in a straight up fight.

This is about to become an issue in my game as the PCs have acquired a bigger ship which lacks a cargo bay component. I'm split on whether to permit them to use the frigate's bonuses or not and will likely simply cut any bonuses to 1/3 on ships crewed soley by NPCs, but still in the area as part of the adventure.

And as already pointed out, the NPC ratings are going to have a hard time of accomplishing much by themselves during a fight. Especially as they've had to split their crew between the two ships until they can get the resources to hire more. But...that's the consequence on spending most of your profit to refit a cruiser.

I'd, for the most part, agree with Fortinbras.

Well, first off the book itself suggest that Rogue Traders never be allowed to own more than a single warp capable vessel. They are simply too rare and valuable for the Imperium to allow several of them to fall under the ownership of a single person like that.

That said, I don't see any reason the extra ship's components wouldn't add the achievement points.

Oh, and you can't have multiple Trophy Rooms on a single ship. Check the errata

Karoline said:

This is contradicted by the entirety of Edge of the Abyss then. Winterscale and Chorda both have enough firepower combined to match a small battlefleet, up to and including several cruisers.

Yes, well, NPCs rarely follow the same rules as PCs. There are also psykers in existence with higher psy ratings than is possible to obtain in a game of RT. I'm just telling you what the book says, and it is basically "Don't let your players have multiple ships." The Imperium being guarded about entities outside their control having several unimaginably valuable (and destructive), rare, and highly sought after ships is simply a good possible reason that the book suggests. While it is certainly possible to have more, it is suggested that players not be allowed to have more. Similar I am sure to the reason that the book suggests letting the Teleportium only be used once per gaming session, and why the book gives rules for diminishing returns on multiple acquisition tests in a single session and so on.

Plus the books keep alluding to many rogue traders having a vast commercial empire serviced by many minor ships. Also lure of the expanse has several traders with escorts for their larger vessels.

Also one of the campaign options is each character is a RT with a ship...I think that's in Into The Storm.

Karoline said:

That seems ridiculous then. How in the hell would you ever run an adventure to destroy the Wurldbreaka with a single cruiser? I'm with you, only one PC-controlled ship at a time (both for logistical and game balance purposes), but a Rogue Trader should eventually possess a fleet of NPC ships.

Same way you blow up every super ship to large to be taken out by 'normal' naval ships. You fly a small fighter craft up to it, and then fire a nuke into some barely noticeable weak point.

Or, steal The planet killer....either way works.

Or you grab a teleportium and a nuke and just teleport it right into the middle of the ship.

Karoline said:

That only works if the aliens take on pseudo mythic names and human forms in order to gain worshippers.

Which is why it works so well against the Necrons I guess.

Karoline said:

Wouldn't destroy it. The Wurldbreaka has like, 80 Hull Integrity. A nuke does 1d5+1 hits and doesn't ignore armor.

But the rulebook says it's a great macguffin for when you positively absolutely have to piss off the GM and derail entire sessions.

Also, I think you missed the stargate reference. XD

Fortinbras said:

"If an atomic was detonated within a starship or station, however, its destruction would be guaranteed."

You have to love a weapon that has a damage of infinite. Or, at least high enough that actual numbers don't mater.

Honestly I find the description of Atomics as being outdated a bit at odds with the fact that they are the most powerful weapon currently available in the game. That could well change with the new sourcebook being released, but until then their power seems to be very purposefully counteracted by their 'near unique' rarity, which is once again at odds with the fluff that no one would really want them. Well, I suppose that means most people wouldn't deal in them, but if you ever found someone who had a supply, it seems like you'd be able to buy up their stock fairly easily. It's all a bit odd really.

Oh, and a nuke does 1d5+4 hits with each hit doing 1d10+6 damage and can be used in conjunction with the normal operation of the macrocannons it is fired from. So even without the 'auto destruction' clause, it could easily hit for 77 + battery - armor and get fairly close to taking it out in one salvo. Throw in a murder servitor hit and run with the teleportium and a one turn kill isn't that hard, even with a not particularly powerful ship. Of course getting within 5 VU for the teleport could be problimatic.

Karoline said:

I must have missed that. Too late now.

It's really not hard for players to board a ship and have it surrender . And there are rules for buying new starships that make it very easy to buy a fleet of small, low ship-point ships. It would feel very artificial if I said "well, you can't keep them, because you're not an NPC." Particularly since the NPC Rogue Traders are some of my players most serious rivals.

My mental model is that most Rogue Traders have cargo ships doing milk runs on the planets where the players were successful in a Trade Objective. Those same ships get attacked when you get a Misfortune such as an Ork raid.

Karoline said:

They're outdated because they aren't actually all that useful. If you are part of the actual Imperial armed forces and are going to use WMDs, you either want to take a city to occupy it, destroy it and build on top of it again, or destroy the planet. For taking a city, biological or chemical weapons are much better for that purpose. For destroying a city and building on top of it again, a nuke isn't a good idea due to residual radiation and the like, so using macrocannons and lances are a more useful option. Finally, if you want to destroy the planet, you use proper exterminatus weapons.

Basically, for any of the options where a nuke can be used, there are much better items for the job, and since it's incredibly unlikely that the Imperium would condone Rogue Traders carrying around chemical, biological or exterminatus-level weapons, an atomic is the best they can lay their hands on... when they can find someone owning one and willing to sell it.

Karoline said:

See, that's absolute crap, since the yield of most tactical warheads only devastate an area smaller than the size of an Imperial Cruiser.

How is it total crap if most of the internal systems of the ship are vaporised? Then it is essentially destroyed, and that's not including if it's placed in a place to split the ship in half.

So a particle beam that penetrates armor and is capable of devastating worlds and can travel over 100,000km will only do 1d10+5 damage but a nuclear weapon that makes even a glancing blow will do incalculable damage? Why are we using Nova Cannons again? Surely a Teller-Ullerman design nuclear bomb isn't something that needs an STC printout.

Nojo509 said:

I think that's entirely fair. Perhaps adjust it from 'they can't have more than one ship' to 'they can't have more than one active ship' Kind of like in RPG video games where you can never have more than 3 active members.

MILLANDSON said:

I agree, they are seriously outdated in regards to planets, but in regards to starships and such, they are vastly superior to any other armament currently available. I've a strong belief that we'll see new options with the new source books, but they've made nukes quite powerful, and it might be hard to make something that beats them and yet isn't even rarer without messing with game balance.

@Fortinbras

You have to remember (or know) that a fundemental principle of explosions is that the more it is confined, the more powerful it is. In other words a nuke confined inside a starship is going to do far more damage than a nuke that is simply detonanted on the surface of a planet.

And as I said, that is why I'm disappointed with the fluff around nukes. They are said to be rare because they are ineffective and thus no one has any reason to use them, yet if you even glance at the damage they do in ship combat (Not counting the instant destruction of a confined nuke), you can quickly spot that they beat out any kind of standard armament by an absurd degree. Their absolute minimum damage is 35, which beats out the max of anything else by about double. Their max is 144, which is enough to destroy any ship that I know of in a single hit (Granted the odds of a max hit are negelegable).

Karoline said:

I obviously can't talk about what is or isn't in Battlefleet Koronus, since I've seen it's contents, but nukes are meant to be powerful, hence why they are so incredibly rare. They don't get to have the modifiers for quantity, since you can only ever acquire 1 at a time, so you are always at a -50 modifier to get hold of a single atomic, and once that atomic is used, it's gone.

I find that fairly balanced, all in all.

Into the Storm makes it pretty clear that atomics aren't ship to ship weapons (though they can be used as such) and are really outdated weapons of exterminatus. Atomics are not tactical nuclear weapons - they are strategic. A single atomic will obliterate a hive spire between five and ten kilometers across acording to the rules. If you detonate something designed to do that much damage aboard a starship it is going to die. Not only because the atomic is designed to destroy things that large (hive spires are nominally much bigger than spaceships) but you have the additional complications of being in space and requiring things like hull integrity to ensure you stay alive.

MILLANDSON said:

But that's my point. I don't like the fluff because it doesn't say "They are powerful, therefore they are rare." it says "They are weak, therefore they are rare."

The fact that it's original purpose was for planatary assault has nothing at all to do with the fact that they are exceedingly good in ship to ship combat. Thus their assertion that they are rare because noone makes/wants/uses them is entirely illogical. It'd be like saying guns should be rare in modern times because no one makes/wants/uses them because there are nukes. Yes, nukes are better than guns for destroying a large area, but they are far more effective than a sword in personal combat. And because of that, guns are quite common. Therefore you would think that nukes would be quite common (relatively speaking of course), because everyone would want to use them in ship to ship combat.