My players want a really huge ship, minimum cruiser, preferably Grand Cruiser or heavier! More firepower, more void shields, more space, more everything.

So I sat down and looked at smaller ships, and being a sucker for frigates in general, I decided to make a Sword-class frigate for a npc captain that could be a menace in the future. I like the design and it has turret rating 2, which is pretty awesome.

Strip out everything of commodity for the crew. We need space and power for other things. Stale air and pressed-crew quarters. Other components are pretty much normal stock.

Reliquary of Mars: Added an archeotech Logis Augur thingie that makes ballistics and detection easier.

A machine spirit that loves war and makes targeting better, but never backs down from a fight.

Add in Barracks. This ship needs soldiers.

Murder-Servitors. Splatter horror.

Command Bridge. +45 to hit and run and +25 to boarding :3

Drop Pods. Because we have barracks and it is cool to invade.

Add in 2 macro cannon batteries.

Retro-Thrusters for better manoeuverability.

In the end this ship is relatively fast, it is fairly easy to pilot, its also easy to shoot, board and hit & run with it. I can see it gliding under another ship on silent running, blasting with the dorsal cannons and sabotaging the opponent ship before they understand what is going on.

The problem with this ship is range. It can shoot outside of its range with the cannons, but ships with better range could be a potential problem. It also need to come close to another ship before utilizing its full potential: unleashing the soldiers and murder-servitors. Thankfully it is faster than most other ships, and could focus on dodgy flight until it get close enough to let slip the splatter robots.

I think this ship could cripple larger ships pretty fast. And think about it:

The explorers have found a fantastic treasure on some surface of a planet, shipping goods up to their ship. This frigate shows up, starting to sabotage the explorer's ship while launching drop pods down at the surface. Suddenly they have a war in space and on the ground.

The frigate lacks cargo hold, but as one of my players suggested when they were discussing their new huge ship: "why don't we spend all the space on guns and war, and have some little piggy bank transport floating around behind us?" So this frigate got a piggy bank transport full of slaves, thrones and other candy.

How long's your dinky little frigate going to last against three broadsides, a landing bay and a nova cannon? (Horrifyingly well actually, the rules are skewed towards favouring a smaller ship with high PC skills to back it up)

Svarte Hanske said:

Because it's sadly do much slower. First there is the warp travel issue it might arrive before the frigate and be fairly hard to keep safe and secondly it might require the frigate to wait around for ages.

By and large transports are very slow and unless your frigate decides to get anchored down by slowing down to protect it it'll be way way slower. This can be a bit awkward, now there are a few solutions, armour up the transport and give it some nice guns, therefore requiring a lot of investment or get the orion class star clipper transport, it's really fast so can keep up with most ships. Hopefully able to run away from most threats except raiders.

Yes, if hit by such weaponry it would have a problem!

Thus the good man. to hopefully dodge a few salvos, and trying to cling to blindspots. Frigates do it from behind?

You're right with the transport, it wouldn't work good enough. Maybe drop the drop pods and add a small cargo compartment?

You want an "invincible" ship? Make a frigate, give it the best speed mods you can, and give it the weapons with longest reach.

Now kite your targets 'till death XD

You can add a surprising amount of armour to a frigate. This is particularly nasty if you have decoupled salvos and multiple batteries.

One of my players Dynasty's frigates has armour of 22. They were quite shocked how tough that little ship turned out to be in a recent massive fleet battle. It took a hell of a pounding and just kept going.

Yeah in this game, it doesnt really matter if you truly pimp out a frigate, or go for a cruiser. Frigates have a SP advantage ov about 20 after all.

If you bring size more in line with BFG or common sense, frigates do not stand such a good chance any more. My fav ship is a cruiser. Anything below is just pain to fit, and anything above is really, really big (well RTs dont have BCs as standard in the fluff).

Try fighting one with a Castellan shielding, plus the additional turrets. 4 Void shields and turret rating 3.

BFK also gives strange boni if you take best quality weaponry. Strength 5 Ryza patterns with base range 7 no penalty for long range (+1 strength,+1range, Good quality turbo upgrade).

Apply this macrobattery to a Orion class clipper that also has a munitorium fitted. Do you even need the dorsal weapon slot anymore?

Short burn torpedoes coupled with the archeotech torbedo bay. Hit any target out to range 19 the turn you pull the trigger.

Yeah theres alot of fun to be had even when you dont take a cruiser. But coming from BFG and other games like that, cruisers are where the fun begins (in those games).

That frigate is impressive in combat but if it's not contributing to endeavours, it's going to be a drain on the dynasty's coffers. From what I can see, it has the roles of military ship and defending ships that actually make money.

Argus Van Het said:

And pray to god that the dice favor you.

Decessor said:

All ships in the RT books can participate in any objective. If they don't have any +Achievement Points bonus, then they just need to work harder, at least according to the rules.

And Lord Steel, dices are something one always need luck with XD

Argus Van Het said:

Unless one is an Explorator. At Rank 4 you can get Hellish Tech-Use tests done at 100% +2 Bonus DoS.Unless the GM takes the 2 Servoskulls away ^^.

RT as a rules system really has established the technological supremacy of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

I'd argue that the best hull out there (whether for a starting Dynasty or one looking to expand their fleet) is the Orion: yes, it doesn't have much in the way of space, and you can't up-armour it, but aside from that it can be fitted to do pretty much anything, and do it rather well.

It starts off at speed 10, so it's going to be flying circles around most ships it comes across, and it has a keel mount so you can fire back during a stern chase. You have the option of turning it into a carrier, a luxury liner, a pocket lance-boat, a torpedo boat, a troop transport... virtually the only things you can't get it to do are take hits and carry bombardment or nova cannon.
Of course, because it's small, you can't equip it to do everything at once, so you do need to have a pretty definite aim in mind when fitting one out, but once you do, it'll do it rather well...

And best of all, it's cheap! At a mere -40 to the Acquisition check, it shouldn't be too difficult for an enterprising Dynasty to pick up new Orion hulls (fitting-out, refitting and maintaining them may be a different story, of course).

Why minus 40?

Isnt it around 25 SP?

Ok but all glibness aside Stuff like cruisers and up generally are supported by Escourts for the same reason in game as in the Real world. A firgate will be able to out manuver a cruiser most times but it will never be able to pack as much fire power as a bigger Hull and some times ya just need to drop the big hammer to get things done.

Voronesh said:

It is, in fact, bang on 25 SP. I misread the rules on Acquiring Starships, and thought the modifier was equal to HI rather than the hull's SP cost...

Even cheaper then...