Greetings all.

I've been GMing a Rogue Trader game with my group for a decent amount of time, but I've run into a problem, and that is that whenever the group enteres space combat the game grinds to a screeching halt. The problems I face are that first off my group is a very action oriented group, and with their ship only having a dorsal and prow mounted weapon (Havoc-class Raider) only one or two of their members actually get to 'feel' the action (out of a group of 5-7).

Add in one or two members rolling to 'put your back into it' and the navigator or Rogue Trader calling the maneuvers and I'm usually left with two or three people left sitting around trying to figure out what to do. Also calculating what their enemies are doing takes time for me and ends up leaving a gap of four or five minutes where I'm calculating, rolling and re-adjusting the enemy ships.

I've tried things like telling them to plan out their next actions or invest in scrutiny if their characters can take it, however I can feel that they are slowly losing interest in the game. It may be my fault for this, but I was hoping you guys could give me some tips on how you make space combat exciting and fun for your groups.

Another thing that might be hindering them is that the group was playing Dark Heresy before this and has transferred this mindset into Rogue Trader, this is mostly a problem when acquisitioning items but I'm wondering if this is also hindering their Rogue Trader experience.

Thanks for taking the time to read through and hopefully help me through my screw-ups

Battlefleet Koronus and Into the Storm both add a lot of new actions your players can undertake that would fill in the gaps. I highly recommend you get BFK for yourself, if only for the NPC Starship Orders system. It speeds combat on your end up dramatically (Issue an order, get results based on Crew Rating).

How important is space combat to your campaign ?

Rewriting your plans to minimise, or even completely remove, space combat is an option.

They should fuel their ambition with that frustration and get hold of a bigger ship!

Space combat has always taken a long time in my experience, from Star Wars d6 to this. Now I made every player find a ship role like in Into the Storm-book, so they have a post to run to when combat starts.

Well...allow them to purchase a second ship

Otherwise, prepare your space combat a little more.

Some questions:

How many ships are they fighting in this 4-5-minute-gap-battles?
And what are the careers of the people tweedlign their thumbs?

I have a seven player group, and haven't had any issues keeping people involved (although, the two space combats we've had only had five or six players present).

The players are using the following actions regularly:

• fire weapons
• active augury (until they have a decent scan)
• aid the machine spirit
• put your backs into it
• lock on target

And the following actions semi-regularly:

• fight fire
• damage control
• various helm actions
• small craft bombing run
• triage
• hit and run

I have the players roll for crew actions -- don't see any reason for the GM to be doing that.

On NPC turns, my ships generally perform a helm action and a shooting action. They also perform active augury until they have a decent scan. I don't worry too much about the other actions, except fire-fighting and damage control. However, I also generally allow NPC ships one or two actions per turn at crew rating +20, to simulate their PC-equivalents and the benefits of supporting actions that I'm not actually rolling for.

As a result, NPC turns are generally very quick. Player turns take a lot longer, as the group works out what each person is doing, which supporting actions to undertake, where they plan to apply the bonuses, where they plan to move and what to shoot at, and how they intend to allocate the crew actions. This planning stage takes up the bulk of their turn, and allows everyone to get involved -- the actual die rolling is just the conclusion of the planning, and doesn't take up much time at all, so any player who doesn't end up rolling dice isn't really missing out on much.

Bilateralrope said:

It is a fairly integral role, as many of the diplomatic and sabotage oriented missions they play involve fighting through or surviving enemy ambushes in space.

Gregorius21778 said:

Actually, I forgot to mention that the Seneschal has a sword class frigate (and managed to blue book his way into never losing crew moral or running the risk of a mutiny). The last time it was their two ships against 4 Wolf pack raiders, and the first encounter was against six Ork frigates (though they were aided by two Kroot Warsphere's).

It seems like the arch militant, explorator, and navigator are the one's without anything to do. However the Navigator is more of a player problem. As I've yet to get him to realize that he can't put all his navigator powers into simple attack options, and that he needs to take some powers that can bolster the ship...

I do like Svarte's idea of making them choose positions from Into the Storm, and Sable's advice about how to perform turns. I'll also try and pick up Battlefleet Koronus ASAP, thanks for all the help! =D

The Navigator can also help in Starship combat, with the new options open to him, Page 200-201 of Into the Storm : he can help the Ship to hit or avoid being hit, to pursue or to flee an oponent.

I don't know what to suggest for the Arch-militant.

For the Magos, well, he can help the Machine spirit, or Flank Speed, or make some Emergency Repairs...

I'm in a group where most of them enjoys roleplaying and most of them dislikes 'rollplaying'. The problem with our Space combat was, most of them dislikes the prospect of rollplaying. We've had some Starwars session and it was fine. So maybe my mistake was, I took out the roleplaying aspects. I'm planning on running a lengthy space combat next time (not because of the number of turns) since I want to try to put more details on each actions. Maybe to 'triage' action, there will be a series of event (checking the wounded, rescuing people, organizing the doctors, etc) or the Flank Speed (contact the spirit, synchronizing cogitators, optimizing codes, checking minor errors here and there, finding substitution for an absent tech priest on a date, etc.). As well as other actions. So after the group decided what to do, it run 'simultaneously' (just like another short adventures inside the ship) before finally the rollplaying.

Hope this will work, otherwise I will have players sleeping during space combat (and I also do not want to remove it, most of us still loves it just do not know how to make it more fun for us - yet).

I don't know what careers your other PCs have, but I would have thought that the Arch-Militant would have plenty to do (either coordinating the ships' guns or leading armsmen in Hit-and-Run actions or defending same) and the Explorator could be aiding the machine spirit, coaxing the engines to flank speed or supervising repairs every turn. Is this already the case and you just don't think it's enough, or are there multiples of some careers in your group?