We ran in to this problem at the start of the game and after tinkering with the set up for a couple dozen sessions, we've reached some house rules that redress the balance.
CREW: To my mind the crew rating is not just the sheer number of crew but also relative to their efficiency. Cruiser need much larger crews to operate at the same level of efficiency as much smaller ships. there are plenty of opportunities to increase crew rating above 100, so why not take them? in addition smaller ships will lose crew faster once you open their hull to the void. this takes a lot less time to do for a transport then a cruiser, so we felt that the crew issue wasn't as pressing.
Armour: Capital ships should be harder to hurt. the problem with armour s that to many things ignore it (any macro salvo worth firing or any lance). we definitely wanted to up the endurance of large ships with big armour so as a first step, we've removed the ability of small ships to combine salvos.
Shields: the flip side to armour, we felt that a cruisers shields being downed should take some work but also that there should be some distinction between "military ships" and "civilian ships". to this end, we upped a frigates shields to 2, light cruisers to 3 and cruisers to 4. this means that lances are not massively overpowered either, because they will struggle to down the enemies shields on their own. We also came up with some rules for auxiliary shield generates that consumed 12 power/ 3space (raider/frigate/transport), 16 power/ 4space (light cruiser/cruiser) but granted one additional shield.
Hull: Nobody felt that the amount of space on a cruiser was quite adequate so Hull and space got +10 for light cruisers and +20 for cruisers. This allows them to really excel at one role or to be a jack or all trades which has also made them tougher and more desirable.
Hope this helps!!

You are all drawing too much correlation to the age of sails. This is more akin to submarine warfare, but with broadside cannons as well as forward mounted weapons. It was almost impossible to sneak up on a enemy ship in the age of sails, but you can literally have a cruiser ‘sail’ within 3 VU right past your raider without even knowing she was there. Then ‘run out your guns’ and hit her aft with a lance cannon and macro-battery, raking across her bow and tearing her to shreds.

Besides it isn’t really like an 80 gun ship against a 25 gun ship, or even a nuclear sub against a u-boat. It’s more like Rock, Paper, Scissors; they should be relatively equal and the skill of the crew should win out. What you guys are talking about doing is making it so a light cruiser always beats a frigate, which always beats a raider, which will always beat a transport; but that’s not the way it works or should work. You are trying to compensate mathematical for things like luck of the dice and the fact that your ship has your players on it (which ought to give them an edge), not a good idea. Even a transport could in theory take out a light cruiser, all it’d have to do is play dead or act like a friendly, have wolf in sheep’s clothing, wait till the cruiser closed the distance and then power up and get a sneak attack, then have some good piloting rolls and hit home with a lucky roll in ballistics to the enemy rear (scoring a critical) and it’s possible (not likely maybe but possible) for them to win out. As far as crew goes it’s not number of bodies but effectiveness, 100% effective. So a lose of 1% to crew doesn’t equal 650 people dying on that light cruiser, just that due to hull damage and sealed passages and such your crew is 1% less effective. And as for moral, the crew knows when there is a hull breach (aka hull integrity damage), but they may not know where it is or what has happened as a result and they respond accordingly but growing weary. The one to one ratio works.

It also helps to think of your ships like your PCs and NPCs; does the Ork always kill your players just because he’s an Ork and they are human? Can that scum with just a knife hurt, maybe even kill, your level 4 Arch-militant if he gets lucky enough, or is smart enough, or has planed an ambush? If you crew has built their ship well enough to go toe-to-toe with a larger ship then more power to them I say! I’ll never forget when I was GMing a DH game and our groups psyker (with a 31 WS) killed an Ork ‘Nob in melee that had gotten past our guardsman with nothing but his mono-sword. He couldn’t use his psychic powers because there was a blank nearby.

Frigates are more than able to take out a cruiser if they are built for, have a good enough crew, and are lucky in their rolls. Let’s not forget that raiders are meant to hunt capital ships. So why couldn’t a frigate do the same? In a stand up fight coming at each other head on, or in a broadside duel, a cruiser ought to beat a frigate the majority of the time, but how often does that happen in game? To the folks whose ships have beat up on larger ships a few times, I’d challenge any of you to run the same battles again, and see if they don’t play out a little different; see if maybe your gunner doesn’t make that critical and disable one of their weapons. See if maybe the enemy doesn't get to go first this next time and score the opening salvo and set your munitions on fire or something.

Also just as aside, during the age of sails in ship-to-ship combat a victory was resolved in one of three ways: sink her, burn her, or take her apprize. This correlates: Plasma/Warp Drive explodes, she becomes an empty fiery hulk worth little more than scrap metal, or you take her as your own.

Just my bit on the topic, take it or leave it.

Not quite so, 40K ship combat is more WWI-WWII era warships than submarines. There is a firm distinction between the kind of guns carried by destroyers and other escourt craft, and heavier cruisers and battleships. In BFG, as well as the 40K fluff, a cruiser can expect to destroy one or two escort ships in a single broadside. Smaller craft can only hope to take on larger ships with numbers firmly on their side, and even then only with terrible casualties. In BFG normally 3 escort class craft are required to focus their firepower in order to equal the broadside of one cruiser. This is not so in RT, where two escorts combining their firepower can outstrip a grand cruiser's broadside.

I believe FFG's reasoning for this is simple, they wished to include capitol class ships in their game; but they also wanted the players, who were most likely beginning with an escort class ship, to be able to survive. For most groups this works just fine, and I don't fault them for their call on this matter, but i do like a lot of the suggestions I have read in this thread, and was planning on implementing something similar.

Age of Sail ideas kinda force themselves on you, when you look at the way movement works.

Submarine style certainly fits, because in a roughly matched battle the first ship to shoot gets a huge advantage over the enemy. Ive had a Trial run of a Lunar cruisers with PCs against two NPC Imperial Navy Tyrants, guess who won with a minimal scratch from a single torp salvo? BTW the PCs Mars broadsides were not fired in salvoes to maximise crits. The whole combat also only took 2 turns of crippling enemy ships and a few mop up turns (aka making rolls to slink away and not let the PCs get two extra cruisers).

But in truth, BFG is the best comparison, and that game gives cruisers 6times the health of a frigate, although the void shields only get doubled.

Nobody wants cruisers to win 90% of all battles, but the ease with which a good salvo can cripple even Lunars (or Battlecruisers) is astonishing.

The more adventures and little rule applications i read/find out about, the more i believe this game was written for a PC group sitting in a frigate with the corresponding PF. If you buy into a cruiser or more, youll have a hard time fitting the ship well, but youll also have a hard time buying components (22 -30 PF ONLY). If you buy maximum PF (65+), youll be able to buy nearly everything, good rolls can even buy a frigate of your choice first session. If your GM lets you get away with it.

Cruisers simply have a single advantage: Space to fit nearly all the little support components you want, while being better at combat than a transport (The other ship type which can fit aan abundance of barracks/Cargo holds).

If the PCs do their job right, some stuff becomes laughingly easy. Explorators can push Tech Use WAY past 100 really early into the game Rank1+), Flank Speed cannot fail (plus the fact that it is uncapped), and can hand out 11 extra speed on a roll of 50- (close to maximum Tech Use with Servitor assist). Who cares how slow your ship is, if your Explorator is busy pushing your ship to speeds twice as fast as a Cobra. Shooting by Void Masters is also a case of: "When did i miss the last time..."

Ok rant off .

I like some of the examples. The main problem of the game is not the balance between NPCs and PCs (simply add a few good captains for the NPcs etc.) but rather that it is really hard to describe the type of combat in the fluff. We can read of battles that take hours if not days. RT type space combat is normally over within hours of maneuver and 30 minutes of shooting. (And the fact that no one uses lances, unless he likes their fluff). Its too much:Mmaneuver for the kill shot, and then its over. AKA the Save vs. death situtation in other games/situations.

Increasing the amount of HP/Hull integrity across the board might a fun option. Change nothing but let every ship have 3-10 times the Hull points+crew+morale, and change everything else accordingly (Im also thinking of repair at this point). Might give the combat a longer feel, and let cruisers bring their weaponry to bear, by not being out of combat within a single turn, because a frigate sneaked up to them. The Nova cannon might feel too weak at that point, but then again how often should such a weapon hit the battlemat/table in RT games.

I think part of the problem also stems from RT's desire to allow some groups or game masters to abstract the starship combat. It isn't every RT group that's composed of ex-BFG fanatics who are really just looking for a persistent environment to build their favorite fleet from the table top game...

As my group has just converted from DH to RT, threads like this are very interesting. They give me an idea of what to expect and how I want to run my games. The many comparisons being made from the Age of Sail and various World Wars are interesting, but really some people are taking it too far. The game might draw inspiration from those eras, but the actual game design should not by any means be bound by them.

I agree that game balance seems to be done from a Frigate baseline, where even Raiders/Escorts can present a threat. Its similar to the way even the humble lasgun can be dangerous to anything short of a high ranking Secutor Tech-Priest, especially when fired en-masse. The game design at all levels of play is very centred on offensive power. I find that acceptable, since playing games where tank/defensive gameplay is viable can quickly become very boring, in my experience.

But it does present some balance problems when dealing with powerscales, especially when comparing to a tactical wargame like BFG or our own historical reality. There are some fights that are just unwinnable in reality, no matter what the "dice rolls" say. But again, for the purposes of the RPG, where character actions should have almost as much impact as the ship hull they're piloting it doesn't seem as critical. In the fluff, cruisers are still better then frigates in terms of raw combat. They aren't BFG better...but there is still noticeable progression from ship-class to ship-class. Players will have reason to want a bigger, more powerful ship or know that they need to be cautious, lucky and clever when their frigate faces a light cruiser.

From an RPG standpoint that seems functional. If I were building a large scale BFG tactical wargame it would be entirely different of course...

Also, just to point out that the descriptions of days long battles are for major fleet engagements. Such engagements are so large and involve a massive amount of maneuvering that even BFG wouldn't easily encompass them. Such fleet actions also tend to be once in a lifetime...if not millenium...events. By contrast, most of the RPG level engagements will generally involve 3-5 ships. If you remove or abstract much of the maneuvering prior to ships entering engagement range, the actual gun-battles really shouldn't take all that long, and unless luck gets really screwy, one side or the other should seek to disengage within a few rounds of combat... By naval standards, that's hardly even a skirmish...

Right now the only real change I'm considering is to houserule that initiave determines order of actions, but that the effects of damage and criticals won't go into effect until the start of the following turn. That way the first shot doesn't become quite such a make-or-break it moment.

The problem of crew and morale running out before Hull Integrity is a serious one. One way to get around it would be to remove the rule of losing crew and morale with each Hull Integrity point and instead increasing the losses elsewhere (say double). This decouples crew and morale from hull integrity which makes the crew and morale aboard capital ships last longer and simplifies bookkeeping. Simultaneously it makes critical hits more devastating.

A cruiser will still run out of crew and morale more often than a raider by stint of it taking more hits and therefore taking more criticals, but the effect should be less pronounced and no longer a surety.

Since the instances of crew and morale loss would be less common, the GM might also consider making them harder to recover from. A little shore leave and very easy acquisitions checks make replenishing these pools trivial.

Actually, BFG combat mechanics is inspired by the age of sail. RT combat mechanics is certainly not. RT rules are closer to 20th century naval combat which saw the end of dominance of large capitals such as battleships. Consider this: frigates and raiders (escorts in BFG) are much closer in Armor and HI to light cruisers than in BFG, where in BFG a light cruiser had 6 hits compared to an escort's 1. Critical hits also means that a large high HI ship is quite likely to get crippled even before it is totally destroyed.

In the current rules in RT, even a well armed transport (equivilent to a RL aux. cruiser) can even be a threat to poorly armed capital. A well armed raider (equiv to a RL destroyer) can be devastating to fight even for a cruiser, while a frigate can slug it out with capitals - this is reflected by the SP cost of the ships in RT, where these vessels can cost up to 50+ points. This is certainly not true in BFG, where transports are a nuisance or an objective, and escorts were only dangerous in squadrons (in fact a full squadron of three escorts is usually costs less point wise than a capital).

If you want more BFG (Age of Sail) like combat, you will need to increase HI and Armor of capitals massively as well as lowering vulnerability to Crits. Additionally, in terms of logic (not a good argument for a game I know), a larger ship carrying more air and crew is less vulnerable to hazards like decompession and crew loss (more air & more crew to lose) as compared to a smaller one.

You are spot on with the mechanics.

My problem is that a cruiser massing 20times as much as a frigate, should not end up as bait for that frigate, unless it screws up. Battleships weigh in at 400times the mass of a single frigate.

While FFG has done well to create a combat system centered on frigates, it certainly does not portray the reality (game reality) of 40k, with a cruiser potentially ignoring an escort vessel, simply due to its size.

The boarding rules are a perfect example. Since the way they work, it is not even factored in that a cruiser has more than 4times the crew (if calculated correctly it has 20times the crew ofc) and is simply boarding bait for a frigate.

In current day naval warfare, where ships are nothing more than floating platforms, a battleship is pretty much a sitting target for a destroyer. This is mainly due to the fact that weapon technology exceeds armor technology currently - therefore speed becomes a much more important than toughness for defense. Of course, a battleship only needs to score a single hit on a destroyer to destroy it while a destroyer will need many hits to even cripple it, but considering the number of weapon systems modern destroyers carry, a single salvo might be enough.

The problem with the current system in RT I find is that the 2 classes between capital and non capital are very vague - a light cruiser and a frigate are very close in combat capabilities and due to the design a light cruiser needs more weapon systems.

Going back to modern design, the only reason for fielding a cruiser (which is the largest surface combat vessel still in service these days - and almost as rare as battleships pre WWII) is to carry a larger weapon system. Therefore another way to balance capitals to non capitals, without changing the age theme of RT, is to introduce large batteries and lances that a frigate simply cannot carry due to space requirements - and increase the space aboard and/or weapon slots on capitals. This way a destroyer/frigate is still dangerous to a cruiser or larger, but is very much more likely to be destroyed by a capital as a capital has many more salvos to throw at a destroyer than vice versa.

Oh and boarding rules are simply too abstract. Boarding still exists today in especially in piracy, but even the best armed pirates will never board a warship regardless of size - its suicidal.

Moribund has a really nice idea for such a fix.

Half strength for all broadsides and add the storm trait instead. Lance batteries should only need 2 DoS to get the extra hit in. Firepower increases quite a bit.

And it makes no sense why adding twice as many guns is only useful if you are good enough to fire them? (Limitationsof a single roll system)

Ofc fudging stuff like that is only necessary, when you want to use modern age themes for your combat, and wish to play like that.

A friend of mine prefers the BFG style approach, if something is that much bigger, it should hurt that much more. But both approaches are rather viable.

Now we only need FFG to do an official fix for lances, since armour of any level can be ignored by macros nearly just as easily. (Fanmade fixes are out there by the bucketload)

One more thing I am annoyed by RT is the Transport class. Please split this up into at least into tonnage classes, how can the plasma drive on a 2km long vagabond be the same as a 12 km long universe is beyond me. Its like saying you can fit a river boat engine on a super tanker and expect it to move.

In current naval warfare there are three capital ships: SSBN's, SSN's and CVN's. All the rest is there just to protect these assets or to protect other ships from these assets. This gives a war that differes enormously from BFG and RT, so any comparison between current practice and the game is quite useless. Cruisers these days have nothing in common with the cruisers in WH40k, where they are in essence capital ships, albeit smaller. Our cruisers are just big escorts, focused on anti-air and anti-submarine warfare. Even the enormous Soviet cruisers of the Kiev and Kirov classes were build with bastion strategy in mind and for the support of their true weapons, the long ranged naval aviation and submarine arm.

In WH40K, the ultimate capital ship is still the battleship, supported by the battleship carrier. There are no subs, even if silent running gives some of its aspects. But, it feels more like blackening the sails of your ship and sailing in through the night, attacking a foe by surprise. Active scanning reveals nearly all ships, and once revealed there is no way to dive back and regain stealth. At most (and that is quite a bit), it is a great opening gambit. Carriers are very powerful, but not as powerful as in real life. I have allready stated the reason in another post, but in short, the range advantage of an aircraft carrier over a gun (or missile) ship in the real world is hardly present. With weapons that can instantly range 24 VU's and torpedoes that can travel a whopping 60 VU's (even if hitting something at the end makes for some pretty bad manoeuvring on the targets side), the 36 VU range of an Imperial bomber isn't that impressive. Hardly the 400 kilometres to 40 kilometres you might find in WW II. To make it even worse for carriers, the ships hunted by the bombers are often as fast or faster then the bombers are themselves. So, big guns still reign, even if they have the heavies have to take aircraft and torpedoes into consideration. Carriers in WH40k are hybrids, supporting the line of battle, and as heavily armoured as any battleship or cruiser, as they have to survive quite a bit of pounding

In each case, small guns have never been a threat to big ships. It was only when technology introduced torpedoes in the 19th century that small craft started to pose a real threat to big craft, a trend continued with modern missiles. The only logic to enable a frigate to damage a vast ship with its guns is good old OOC game design logic, and this is not that bad. The main problem is that the balance has turned too far in favour of the PC manned small ship (of course this is just my point of view), too such a degree that it becomes important to revaluate the big ones, in the sake of suspension of disbelief (A big ship should be a **** tough and dangerous foe, if it get's blown up in a few shots it stops being credible. Next step is that we will have open holes to the plasma cores to drop bombs in!) and to ensure GM's have a viable threat that players will have to deal with differently then by killing stuff.

Friedrich van Riebeeck, Navigator Primus, Heart of the Void

Few things to say:

1) The only battleship with stats printed is Da Wurldbreaka - Lets do a comparison of ork to imperial battleships. Compared to say a Retribution class battleship in BFG, a typical ork battleship has +2 shields and +1 turrets. Same armor, same speed both cannot come to new heading. So that means a Retribution converted to RT stats has something like: Speed 4; Man: -10 (guessing - maybe more); Detection: ??; Void Shields 4; Armor: 24 prow, 20 others; HI: 120; TR: 4 (Da Wuldbreaka has less turrets than a normal ork battleship so I added 2 here). The only thing that is significantly greater than a Lunar is HI - by 50 points, Turrets by 2, and Shields by 2. It is no less vulnerable to crit hits, crew and morale loss, etc. Sure it has lots of guns and is a bit tougher than a cruiser, but it certainly is not indestructable. Even in BFG lore the Planet Killer was taken down by Lunars of the Omega battlegroup - In BFG the Planet Killer costs 505 points while a Lunar costs 180 - I do not know how many Lunars were involved.

2) I just noticed this a while ago while replying to another thread. The weapons that a small ship can carry are heavier in RT compared to BFG. take the Sword which has a dorsal weapon batteries of str: 4, 30 cm. In BFK, Swords in the Triumph squadron carry 2 Dorsal Sunsears. A Dauntless has port and starboard batteries also of str: 4, 30 cm. In TFR, The Aegis has P/S Mars pattern Broadsides. The reason for using these 2 ships is that they are both Navy ships, not RT ships retrofitted for trade/exploration. Thus a Sword in RT not only has more defenses than in BFG as I pointed out before, it also has more firepower.

3) If you noticed, when I made a comparison to modern naval warfare, I specifically mentioned surface combat vessels - simply because subs have no equivilent in BFG or RT. Aircraft also use much more primitive tactics than modern day ones. Also while, battleships are technically no longer in service today doesn't mean battleship sized ships are not in service. The largest ever battlecruiser is larger than all but 6 battleships, while the Kirov class battlecruiser is in the same size as many battleships - and is still in service. Also modern navies are now building ships larger but calling them a class smaller eg the upcoming Zumwalt class destroyer is larger than the Ticonderoga-class cruiser.

So, the main problem with capitals currently is: insufficient armor (hey, a Turbulant class Frigate can have the same as a battleship) and insufficient firepower. If capitals are to be true capitals, these 2 issues need to be addressed. Of course then, the SP cost of these ships need to be increased dramatically.

You have a few really good points.

Escort vessels have most of their weaponry doubled from BFG to RT.

Armour is actually kidna ok. A Sword has the same armour in BFG, but less in RT.

Hull integrity is 1 vs 8 in BFG. In RT its 30/40 compared against the 70 of a Lunar. Thats practically 3-4times as much durability in RT.

Add in the fact that macros are the best weapon in the original rules, which arent even really a type of weapon a smaller ship should use against a bigger foe. Heck if torpedoes would be the weapon to take against the big ones, sure im with that. But Ryzas or sunsears?

After reading up on Moribund's excellent posts about lances and ship armor, I don't think it would be unrealistic to increase the armor of capital ships, from Cruisers and up by a point for for Cruisers, 2 for Grand/Battlecruisers and possibly 3-4 for Battleships.

Combined with disallowing macro batteries to combine their hits and Moribund's armor suggestion, I think it goes a long way to addressing what seems to be the biggest problem with capitals as is...namely their relative fragility. By making macro batteries into more of an anti-frigate/escort/void shield weapon, it also increases the value of lances and torps as anti-capital weaponry, making it clear what tactics are needed against different kinds of enemy ships. I think that's probably the easiest fix I can think of without requiring a massive overhaul of the system, or an incredible boost to Hull Integrity values of capitals. I'd rather that its clear to my players that they are doing almost no damage to an enemy capital ship rather than having them slog through 500-600 HI. In the end, I think that's also a more realistic solution since HI is an abstract description of a warship's current condition. If anything, I think HI could (and possibly should) almost be made into a standard % value rather then the hit point system it is now. That would also make it far more in-tune with Morale and Crew Population.

To address the boarding disparity, I'd probably say that any boarding attempts by a ship more then 1 size class smaller are automatically considered a Hit and Run attack. An escort could still attempt to move to a crippled battleship and assault one section, but it couldn't realistically commit a full-scale boarding attack, no matter how elite its own crew are.

Just a few things about Moribunds armour system.

Going from armour 8 to 9, halves damage from Mars patterns. Your Lunar practically has armour 6+ from BFG. Upping armour to 12 means invulnerability to Mars and Sunsear patterns.

What might be ok for a prow shield, definitely doesnt work for all around armour.

I really like your boarding idea. Not quite perfect (since real boarding will be even less people), but a quick workaround for the simply unbelievable siutation of the 20.000 crew of a firestorm going up against the 200.000 crew of a lunar. (If you start with half a million for the lunar; since we are tlaking more realism/believabilty already.)

First, let me just say that I know nothing about the mechanics of BFG. But from what I gather its considerably more abstract in some ways then the RT RPG, but perhaps more balanced and internally consistent. With that said, none of my ideas are intended to make RT more like BFG, purely being focused around the discrepancies present in RT itself. This is purely taken from my own points of view as well, and as with all things opinion related, they are subject to change and discussion.

I realize that even 1 point of Armor goes a long way to reducing macrobattery damage in Moribund's system, especially from the baseline weapons like the Mars and Sunsears. Moribund's change also dramatically improves Armored Prows, to the point where you can understand why the Imperium bothers putting them on their warships. It forces enemies into their port and starboard fire arcs in order to do damage with many of their weapons, which may not be a desirable state of affairs since it would make Imperium ships considerably stronger then they already are.

But, if HI were converted to a percentage value similar to Crew Pop and Morale, it might work since it would help reflect the increased survivability of cruisers and up, emphasizing that specific weapons should be the logical choice to deal actual damage to massively armored capital ships. There are also a couple of macro weapons that reduce armor that could go a long way to evening the odds. Perhaps too much so.

Although, perhaps a different approach might also work: After damage is dealt, a size modifier would be applied to the actual HI damage. So, for an example a Cobra deals 3 damage to a Lunar and the damage is halved to reflect the size/armor/survivability difference. The damage would need to be rounded up to the nearest whole number so the final number would be 2% HI damage to the Lunar. The cruiser's return salvo has 4 damage penetrate on the Cobra which is then doubled to 8% total HI damage done to the destroyer's hull. At the end of the first turn, the cruiser is at 98% HI and the Cobra is at 92%. Lance weapons, and other armor ignoring weaponry would not follow this rule. It might make Frigates a great deal more vulnerable though...

One thing I just thought about (might allready be in this thread in fact) is redundancy. Increasing the armour, hull and all of those parameters on a capital ship will not work magic if it is quickly reduced to an unseeing unshielded burning mass of steel and knocked out guns caused by crit after crit. RT allready works this into the system by introducing drives, weapons and such that do have a good chance of not being damaged by a crit (say, undamaged on 4-10 on a D10). This would be vital for a battleship (in fact for any ship of the line), planning to slog it out.

FvR

The players in my campaign started with a capital ship, so this is an issue we’ve been juggling for a while. Initially we loved the capital ships until someone, quite rightly, pointed out their considerable disadvantages which included the relative lack of space, power and the way a double weapon battery armed frigate will chew up a capital ship in no time. To that end, we’ve been experimenting with various mods that make the capital ships desirable from a player perspective and also don’t need masses of math.

• Shields: We run frigates with 2 shields, light cruisers with 3, cruisers (and battle cruisers) with 4 and grand cruisers with 5. This makes raiders more fragile but also means that capital ships can soak a lot more firepower before suffering hull damage.
• Hull integrity. We doubled it for light cruisers and up. Makes them a lot tougher, especially when combined with the shields.
• Added 10 to the SP cost for light cruisers, 20 for cruisers, 25 for battle cruisers and grand cruisers. We came to the consensus that the Navy is more likely to rid itself of a grand cruiser that’s been cluttering up the yard then a new battle cruiser...
• We’ve doubled lance strength and stopped macro batteries combining volleys. The lances need the extra strength to deal with the extra shields.

We gave light cruisers the rule "may reduce crew damage by 1 from all sources except plague". for cruisers and battlecruisers this was upped to 2, and for grand cruisers 3. this has gone a long way towards preventing them being emptied of crew before their hull integrity drops.

We also had a look at the amount of space a light capital ship and above have but in the end left that alone. To our minds the amount of space is a relative not a unit of X cubic metres, for instance, a cruiser needs a temple 5x larger then a transport for achieve the same coverage (based on crew numbers), but pays the same space for it because this is already factored in.

However, we found that we then needed to narratively adjust the amount of stuff carried by each ship. In the above example, the temple on a transport is a series of chapels spread throughout the ship with an extra dozen or so priests above the normal complement. On a capital ship, it consists out a vast cathedral like space in the core of the ship where the crew assemble in their thousands to hear the ships confessor give sermons through the use of holo screens, with 500 hundred extra priests + menials. A transport sized barracks carries 5000 men, a capital ship barracks 25,000. This has made the capital ships very desirable as they expand the scale of all associated endeavours.

trentmorten,

I'd be cautious about upping void shields like that. You really handicap NPC crews when you do that. Lets look at some average damage values with dual sunsears against a Raider (16), Frigate (18), Cruiser (20), and Grand Cruiser (20).

RAW R F C GC
30% 0.89 0.67 0.18 0.04
40% 3.32 2.78 1.07 0.49
50% 6.22 5.37 2.46 1.29
60% 9.58 8.46 4.34 2.44
70% 13.40 12.03 6.71 3.94

trent R F C GC
30% 0.89 0.24 0.00 0.00
40% 3.32 1.30 0.18 0.04
50% 6.22 2.89 0.55 0.15
60% 9.58 4.99 1.13 0.33
70% 13.40 7.61 1.91 0.58

A Competent Crew is incapable of damaging a Cruiser or Grandcruiser without bonuses on its Ballistic tests. You do reduce damage, but the amount you reduce it by decreases as Ballistic Skill increases. This strongly favors the PCs. Also it makes Strength 3 macros really, really bad. Two Strength 3 macros cannot damage a Cruiser at all.

A lance coupled with a Strength 4 macro will generally deal more damage than a pair of macros against a Cruiser. That's good, but a lance battery is only better than a single lance if your BS is over 60 in your system.

My inclination is to adjust a few things (alongside replacing the ability to combine batteries with the squadron fire rules from BFK), though I'm unsure as to whether I'll actually use these changes.

Additional modifiers for shooting:

• Target vessel moving towards attacker: +20
• Target vessel moving away: +0
• Target vessel moving abeam: -20
• Target vessel is a Raider, Frigate or Transport: -20
• Target vessel is a Light Cruiser, Cruiser or Battlecruiser: +0
• Target vessel is a Grand Cruiser, Battleship or larger: +20

To go with that, all vessels smaller than a light cruiser have only half the normal amount of hull integrity (compensated for by their smaller size making them harder to hit). The facing/relative movement modifiers are straight from BFG, to encourage a little more strategy in movement.

yeah, should have also mentioned that NPC ships skills have been upped by ten because they are frankly very low. In our game we are comfortable with cruisers being more or less invulnerable to a single small ship, a squadron of frigates with lances and macrobatteries as capital ship hunters, however, is somehwat different. I suppose it depends on whether you are trying to make capital ships better then smaller ships or simply as good. we prefer better, you might think otherwise...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I'm actually leery of removing ability to combine batteries as that would actually reduce capital ship firepower. An alternative could be to have only all batteries located on the port, starboard or prow be able to be combined. So if a battery is fired from a dorsal and a starboard battery for example, they will be resolved seperately. Also dorsal and keel batteries do no combine. This reduces the firepower of batteries from transports, raiders, frigates and light cruisers, while cruisers and heavier classes have a lesser (or no in the case of some grand cruisers) reduction of battery fire power.

Of course this leads to other problems with xenos ships (specifically the kroot warsphere) and space stations having simply too little firepower. For these 2 cases, you want to keep the existing combine batteries as a special rule.

Well, if you do not use the combining batteries rule, the broadside batteries of capital ship get very valuable again, as they offer the possibility of doing over 50 damage with one salvo. If you have two of those, that is some mean firepower indeed. A dorsal/port/starboard combination rule will favour the small ships, as most frigate class ships will have two dorsal slots. Take a Sword with two sunsears vrs a Dauntless with a prow sunsear and port and starboard sunsear broadsides. If you allow that dorsal combination fire, the Sword can stack a whopping battery STR 8 in one salvo, versus a seperate 4 and 6 of the light cruiser. If you disallow the battery combination and use the squadron rule, the sword would have to choose between a STR 5 attack or two STR 4 attacks. The value of the broadside weaponry is then at least esthablished.

For Xenos ships I would simply combine the total battery strength, and then change it into comparable broadsides. Take a shadow class cruiser, with three STR 4 batteries, easy to change it to two STR 6 batteries. Or the Kroot Warsphere, just give it four STR 6 batteries instead of eight STR 3 batteries, and allow half to fire on one vessel.

Friedrich van Riebeeck, Navigator Primus, Heart of the Void

Moribund has done a very good conversion of spaceship weaponry to act more like normal Full auto.

Basically this removes the need or salvoes completely as every shot has to bypass armour by itself. And the other advantage is that lances fit right in without any further changes at all .