I've noticed a lot of threads on space combat here end with one ship being destroyed or captured. I'm curious about that, because unless the captain of the enemy/NPC ship is a Chaos loony or an Ork, I can't see a human or eldar captain ever fighting to the destruction of his ship. We've all discussed how expensive an undertaking building a ship is, how expensive just refitting a ship is, why would any captain, even a pirate captain, fight to the destruction of his vessel? The Disengage rule (pages 214 and 215 of the core book) gives every combatant a way out, and in BFK, several of the ship descriptions even say at what level of hull integrity that they will use the Disengage rule.

I know it's galling to the explorers to see their foe disappear, and there will be times that an enemy cannot disengage, due to range or criticals for example. But for the rest, what's going on? Are all combats decided at knife-fight ranges (less than the 8 VUs needed to Disengage)? I don't have any experience with space combat yet (my group should start actual gaming later this month), so I am curious about this. Thanks!

For my group at least, i helped design an immense knife fighter in the Eternal Quaestor, our Adeptus Mechanicus heavy exploration frigate. With a pair of Turbo-Melta Macrobatteries we are regularly 2-shotting ships smaller than us (raiders, transports etc) and unless outnumbered or being fired at with Lances (our armour is cruiser comparable so we just weather incoming battery fire) we rarely try and disengage.

One thing that can aid in getting one or both sides to consider disengaging is having celestial phenomena in play. If a quarter of your table (cause usin models is the only real way to do starship combat accurately) contains an asteroid belt to aid ships in hiding, then your opposing sides are going to jockey for position by it, securing an escape route and keeping their "backs to the wall" for safety.

In summary, it entirely depends upon the group and ship in questions as to whether the players ever consider withdrawing, but the GM should get NPCs to flee regularly to get the players used to the option.

In my experience, a disengage action by NPCs will just be followed up by a stern Chase, which the PCs will successfully complete within 1-2 dicerolls.

Lone smaller ships (Frigates and smaller) are destroyed so quickly by my group's Cruiser that they normally don't even have time to think about escaping. Once they get that thought their Plasma Drive is already scrap for the selling.

If more than one ship disengages, they use Stern Chase on one, then follow it up by using their Navigator's tracking abilities to find and destroy the other ones.

Unless destroying enemy ships is not part of their endeavour and getting hull integrity damage would cost profit. Then they just blitz away. The Void Master and Explorator can normally get enough speed out of the Lux Aeterna to leave even most Raiders in the dust.

Gokerz said:

To quote the rules on Disengage, "the Disengage Manoeuver cannot be used to initiate a Stern Chase."

Once a ship successfully Disengages, the rules seem quite clear that it has escaped combat for "several hours or even days".

As said, thanks to the players' tracking abilities that has never proved a problem.

Edit: But you are right, referring to the Disengage Maneuver was a mistake on my part. I meantto the ability to flee from combat described in the Stern Chase sidebar and confused the two.

My experience has been that my PCs cruiser can generally wipe the floor with most smaller ships in a couple of turns. Raiders might get hammered in one turn and be able to escape and the Eldar they have come up against frequently did just that very successfully). Larger ships last a little longer but my PCs are fearsomely skilled. Their cruiser has a single mars pattern broadside on each side and a prow mounted archeotech lance which does for most villains.

You have to give your NPC ships skilled command crews in order not to have a player-crewed cruiser just chewing through several enemies. I routinely give my NPC ships one or two player-equivalent commanders, for example the the one doing the pilot checks, and perhaps one weapon component or so.

Once you dont roll against a 40, but instead have 60-70 in any given skill, the ships dont just crumble to a player ship.

Rogue Trader allows for player characters min-maxing to a very high degree.... and together with ship customization and the profit factor system that rarely reduces PF, its actually one of the most power-gamey systems I have played. So, if you find your players routinely just smash your opponents, have them min-max too!

The official publications so far dont hold up well at all against a min-maxed character or two.

Have the opposition do a blind warp jump.

Can't do that insystem, ship gets ripped apart.

But yeah, agreeing with everyone else. Crew Ratings per RAW, when compared to even Rank 1 player skill, simply leave the NPCs outclassed in every way.

Errant said:

Fixed.

As an aside, I do allow blind warp jumps to unknown systems as my way of burning fate pool to avoid the players' ship being totally annihilated. (I don't like the default rules "A Wizard Did It" explanation for surviving such a total disaster). So extending the same courtesy to opponents I don't necessarily want to throw away isn't a stretch.

My group's experience is that any ship intending to attack the players (who, for reference, have a bling-coated light cruiser) is going to want to do so from the best position, and so try and get in as close as possible before revealing themselves/their intentions. It's not that uncommon for the opening shots of a combat to be at 5-6 VU, from two or three ships astern of the players'.

Unfortunately for the NPCs, for that sort of attack to succeed, they need to get a lucky critical straight off, or the attacking ship can simply adjust speed and bearing, make a Focussed Augury on one ship, Lock On to it and slam it into vapour with Ryza-pattern macrocannons and a Mars-pattern broadside. That generally guarantees at least one critical hit, quite often one that leaves them effectively dead in space or haemorrhaging atmosphere and flame/debris into the void, meaning that they're pretty easy to find even if they do try and disengage. The remaining ship(s) tend to shoot past onto an easy vector for the players to repeat their trick with normally barely any need to come about.

I suppose piratical, opportunistic assailiants would probably try to leave combat before being destroyed, but any military type, as well as tyranids or the chaos loonies the OP mentioned, would probbly go down fighting. and yes, orks too.

I second (third, Fourth?) the houserule of upping NPC ship stats.

I generally rule thusly,

An average merchant vessel has a crew rating of 30-40

An average escort has a crew rating of 35-50 (with frigates generally having beter crews than raiders)

An average light cruiser has a rating between 40 and 55

Cruisers and larger start at 50 and go up from there. Naval vessels or flagships of major rogue traders can expect stats in the 60 to 70 range. Elite naval flagships might be anywhere between 70 and 80.

It seems to me that since the PCs will very rapidly have modified skills in the 70-80 range, an elite naval warship, crewed by men and women from naval families and subject to constant drills and training and led by the finest minds in naval warfare shold be able to match or exceed them.

Plus it makes that naval cruiser squadron much more of a threat. Obviously within the navy you have a range of crews from good to bad but on average they should be higher than a merchant vessels.

Xenos run the gamut on stats. Eldar and their dark kin should have insanely high stats, 60+ to reflect their sheer mastery of space. Orks, give them low stats except for boarding, maybe 40+.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

Are you factoring in bonuses from the ship though? I think a flat skill rating across the board is a bad idea. For example, a raider may well have amazing sensors and manouverability and so will be getting +10 to +20 on those related tests from a ship bonus, thus even a crew rating of 40 or 50 will have a chance of being competitive with the players vessel. However, the same crew rating of 40 or 50 won't be able to compete when it comes to say, boarding actions. I think it's important not to homogenize the system too much.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

That has my support as well. Not just for combat though.

What is supposed to be a nailbiting race through the warp against another Rogue Trader becomes a lot less interesting when said opposing RT canonically rolls his Navigation (Warp) against a skill of 30 (accounting for all modifiers).

Just choosing a number of skills and doubling their Crew Rating for those seems a bit much though. I am not yet sure about what system to use.

The main problem I can see is you all let your players equip the best of the best...

let them work ahrd for those Plasma batteries, they are rare and expensive.

crisaron said:

The weapon components are just a small part of what makes the PCs' ships so dangerous. If the players had only been armed with mars pattern macrocannons that still wouldn't have made all that much of a difference.

Besides, the players are Rogue Traders, they are meant to be able to start with some really powerful stuff. You can find the components they aren't meant to have free access to under the archaeotech and xenotech headers.

I would expect pirates, some military captains and particular xenos species to flee but all our fights have either involved orcs or been at knifefight range to take advantage of our rogue traders amazing command modifier in hit and run attacks.

weasel said:

It should be remembered that Orks see no shame in fleeing battle - it's just another way for the Orks to not lose (if they win, they win, if they die, they're dead so it doesn't matter, and if they run away, they can try again later, so it doesn't count as defeat, at least according to the Ork mindset). Consequently, having Ork ships disengage when the battle turns against them is entirely in character for them...