Hello all,

One thing I like about RT is that you can get just about anything which is the point of the whole system I suppose. What kills me though is how vague the book is on what characters have from the start. I don't mean personal weapons I am talking about the bigger resources. LIke how many shuttles do they start with and what type? Do they have troops, if they do how many can they bring and what are they equipted with things like that Or is this stuff all kept very vague so that groups can decided on a group per group bases.. So I was h oping some one could clarify or just enlighten me about this.

From Battlefleet Koronus: A useful guideline is that a ship has room for one lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter for every 5 points of Space its hull has. In general, these vehicles shouldn’t be larger than 50 metres. However, if a ship has a cargo hold component (such as the Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay), they should be able to hold an additional four vehicles.

Personal troop count is up to the GM, but I have it at about 50 troops using the Hired Gun profile from the back of the book, upping it to the Oathsworn Bodyguard profile if they increase their ship's Crew Rating, possess a Barracks, et cetera. So no, there are no hard-and-fast rules for exactly what you have aboard your vessel.

Much like Profit Factor, its kept very abstract. I think a lot of groups don't want to track things like amount of shuttles, troop numbers, etc. Those that do will need to come up with those numbers. As mentioned, items like Barracks can affect those numbers.

Unless your PCs go out of their way to make acquisition tests for particular mercenary units etc, it's your call... My group started out with no 'household troops' other than the armsman contingent on their ship (as a basic rule, I assumed that 10% of a ships' population was armsmen - so for their starting raider, this meant they had something around 2,000 armsmen available, with stun-batons, shotguns and flak-vests. They 'acquired' a gun-clan of Gun-Metal City in the course of their business... 120 professional gunslingers, who became their ship-board Hit-and-Run team for a while and were equipped with hand-cannons with man-stopper rounds and hardened bodygloves. I would say that having a Barracks component on their ship does not automatically include troops to occupy it, merely the capacity to carry them.

At this point it is obvious that the exact nature of profit factor and other things like how many troops can I put in a barracks is meant to be up to the GMs and players. Me and my group love the details so we went out and filled in all the details, but that would not work for everyone so go with what works for you.