...or at least that's the impression I get from this extract from his latest Gaunt's Ghosts book:-

http://theprimaryclone.blogspot.com/

Note the Tempest Class Frigate, the references to its scale from fin to fin, the appropriate size Grand Cruisers etc. And its nice to see him turning his keen eye to shipboard life. All good background material for Rogue Trader GMs!

Funny. And fine by me. Now if we can get someone to school C.S. Goto.

Some interesting food for thought here too: one can clearly transport an entire regiment in a Frigate. Certainly always seemed feasible, given the size of 40k ships, but it's nice to see it dealt with/confirmed by Abnett.

That's what the Barracks component is for!

We had the capacity of barracks discussion more than a year ago. The component is easily the size of a crew quarters or more for a cruiser - which has 50k Plus crew. You can (read: Should be able to) transport DIVISIONS inside a barracks component, perhaps less with armour.

Thanks for pointing this out, a good little read to be sure.

Barracks are as big as crew quarters.

For a cruiser im allowing 20% of the ships crew number to be transported as troops of varying types. (No, i only take tanks and mechanized stuff)

Considering i upped cruiser crew to frigate standards, it gives my RT a full army to play with (once he scrounged the money together). Yay 9 divisions plus corps and army support units.

Lightbringer said:

Strictly speaking, he confirmed that way back in First and Only / Ghostmaker ; with the Tanith 1st being transported on the Firestorm class frigate Navarre . Admittedly, the Ghosts were on the smallish size for an infantry regiment then, and didn't have any organic artillery or armour elements, but it's still a couple thousand troopers...

My group took Barracks and we are playing a mix of troops contained within. Total is around 3000 "soldiers". 1000 of which are Guardsmen that the Rogue Trader brought with him when he left the Imperial Navy. He was a noble "sponsor" for them and was able to pull some strings. So the First Gensuo Void-Rifles make up what they normally use. The other 2-3000 are a mixture of house troops, mercenaries, etc.

First acquisition roll of the campaign...1000 hellguns for the Void-Rifles.

Great! It's good to see Abnett looking towards the stars in his 40k fluff to an extent. I'll have to pick this up.

Erm, without Abnett we wouldn't have Eisenhorn/Ravenor and thus the early and best Inquisitor material. I'd reason it's more likely that FFG used Abnett's notes for the basis of their ship stats

Likely, given that he was involved with the RPG from the very start, including the design of the Calixis Sector.

Kasatka said:

That's one part I don't like about Abnett. His ship descriptions have been a bit cringe worthy in the past. I seem to recall him describing not one but two large vessels as having crews of less than 100.

Still, his Inquisitor stuff is great. It is probably the source of the "Cowboy Inquisitor" mentality that caused Ascension to have no additional rules for developing specific contacts and made the Stormtrooper a career, instead of something like a Stormtrooper Commander or general officer, but its still a great read.

numb3rc said:

this might have also had something to do with the ships being unduely servitor heavy. I cannot remember offhand who it was, but in the Eisenhorn Novels, Eisenhorn's go to man for intergalactic transportation captained a ship that was almost exclusively servitors (as a matter of fact, i think it was exclusively servitors unless Gregor and his crew came on board).

In regards to crew sizes, I did some calclations a while back, didnt post them though, and I cant seem to find them now.

Anyway, a 40k Warship, in comparison to a modern day battleship, in terms of size and crew numbers. What I found out was that, on the 40k warship, the crew have about 8-15 times more space per person then on a modern day battleship. Even looking at the crew numbers in RT as they are now, and not Abnetts 100 man crew, you can easily take the numbers as they stand, multiply by 10, and not be far off fram a "realistic" crew size in comparison to the ship.

Now, admittedly, since I couldnt find all the dimensions on a 40k Warship (no "height"), I had to take avrages and sometimes make an educate guess (meaning, I compared how wide vs. high the ship looked, and used the width numbers) on some scales, but I dont belive I am that far off.

That was however totally besides the point. I am hoping on a new series of novels following a Rogue Trader, since I found the one currently out (rogue star I belive it was called) being somewhat lackluster.

Alasseo said:

Aye, the First and Only could fit in a cargo bay or two, given they're only a few thousand troopers with no armour or artillery attached to them.

Not sure why fitting an extra couple of thousand people on-board is such a surprise

To be honest the numbers listed in the RT books are optimal numbers - it's not like there are a fixed number of ship roles and tasks onboard a 40k ship. Due to the unique approach to starships the Imperium takes (lots of heavy lifting and little to no automation) crew sizes are fairly variable, as represented by the penalties in the book as you start losing Crew rating.