Hi Guys!

I came up with a few questions while reading Battlefleet koronus and Into the Storm:

1.) Star Galleon: Can it use the Spacedock Piers component?

2.) Orion-Class Star Clipper: Too good for its SP?

3.) Orion-Class: Are Armored Prow or reinforced Prow Components possible? If not, whats a sensible explanation?

4.) Orion-Class: Its described as beeing 3 km long, but that doesnt feel right compared to other ship hulls and their length values. Am I missing something?

5.) Is there any explanation why the Invasion Bridge component is only available for cuiser hulls, but not for light cruiser hulls?

6.) Is there any errata yet for the messed-up math of the Miloslav Warp-Engine?

7.) How many troops can a Barracks component hold?

8.) If i would build small ships without warp engines and attach them to a, say Universe with Spacedock Piers, could I travel the Empyran safly? (The only ingame example i found was hidden in a shortstory of "Tales of Heresy" where Sisters of Silence enlarge their Geller Fields to another cruiser-sized craft)

9.) Spacedock Piers states, that "smaller craft" can attach to the designated capital ship. How large would that reasonably be considering Grand-cruisers, Star Gallon and Univers Mass Conveyor?

10.) If im correct, Bombardment Cannons would be harder to buy via PF than a light cruiser hull, as would be best craftmanship Thunderstrike Macrocannons. So the good craftmanship Lance Batteries on a Gothic type cruiser would be harder to achieve then 4 times its hull, including all essential components. How can I explain that to my players?

11.) Has anyone experienced Nova Cannons and massed torpedo salvoes ingame so far and would like to share?

12.) Dito, fights vs. Eldar vessels.

13.) Salvaging Component: If i salvaged some components, how much space or cargo holds would I need per original space value to store it?

14.) Minelayer Bay: How hard would it be to detect the detachement of mines during space-combat?

15.) How easy would it be to clear out mines using the nova cannon or small space-craft aka Guncutters?

16.) Is there any reason, why mines are so rarely used as static defence for spacestations, pirate lairs and planets?

17.) Why are all ships which are pre-equiped with Torbedo Tubes carrying the crappy Voss-Pattern type instead of Gryphons or Mars-Pattern?

18.) How many SP worth of vessels and how many archeotech-components do your SCs posses?

19.) RT Adventure "Lure of the Void", p. 73 and further: Wouldnt it be quite easy and worth a risk for canny Explorers to seize controll over the Light of Terra one way or another and use it as their new capitol ship?

I'd like to thank you guys in advance for answering all those questions! :-)

1) It's not a Grand Cruiser or a Transport with more than 50 Space, so no?

2) Not really; it's good, but it's a bit fragile. Makes for a good backup ship though.

3) Engines cannae take the strain, cap'n! Think of the Orion as a sportscar designed with a carbon-fibre chassis. It's light, it's stronger than you'd think, every single part of it was designed with swiftness in mind. but it needs that lightness to achieve the speeds it's capable of. Then bolt on a massive bullbar. Now that sportscar weighs a lot more, can't turn worth a **** and lags behind the musclecars it's racing.

4) Longer enginarium reactor coils.

5) I'd assume it's a tradition thing; nobody's designed one for a Light Cruiser since what battleforce would have a smaller ship as its flagship?

6) Nope. It's not that much better than the standard ones in most cases anyway, it only really comes into its own if you build a ship around faster warp travel.

7) I'd put it at approximately 20,000 for a self-contained Brigade that brings with it all the logistical necessities to deploy on the surface and maintain itself.

8) I would only allow that with hefty penalties for the Navigator, as they have to find paths that fit the extended profile of the ship and compensate for the fluctuations of the Gellar Field.

9) As a general rule I say anything with 10 less Space than the vessel with the Piers can dock to it.

10) Trade embargoes for military technology, Imperial Navy keeps them all to itself, any number of reasons.

11, 12) Can't really help you there. On paper they seem powerful, up until you're in the Hecaton Rifts and have fired your last salvo.

13) Rules say your vessel has to have Space for it or it'll be lashed to the side of your ship. Given the scale of most components, I wouldn't think you could fit an intact one inside a hold component.

14) It's hard to say, the fluff on how battles are resolved is a bit iffy. I'm not a fan of the idea of vessels being able to see each other closely, and just passively chucking mines out doesn't seem like something that an augur would pick up.

15) Using a nova cannon for it seems like a waste of a shell, but rationally should be quite effective. The sheer number and scale of the mines should make it difficult for smaller craft to destroy without being targeted for destruction themselves.

16) Pirates use them a lot. Most planets don't use them in peacetime, because who wants to be responsible for a trade-vessel accidentally straying into the minefield (That you can't make public because then everyone knows how to get AROUND the minefield, negating its worth). Frozen Reaches makes a point of allowing the players to spend Profit Factor to ramp up orbital mine production to fend off the Orks for example. So yeah, in most cases the only times people use mines are when they don't want someone to go near an area.

17) Because they're all manufactured by the Voss forge-worlds.

18) SCs?

19) Yes, it is quite easy for the players to come up with some solution that provides them control of the Light of Terra if the GM doesn't smack them over the nose for trying. The cleverest one I've read about was a combination of the Rite of Setesh and a Mimic Engine to make the Captain think he was still piloting his vessel while they disconnected him from its systems. However, if you don't want the players to have control of the ship, have the captain overload the engine core with his last breath. If you are okay with them having one, don't make it easy. The ship is an ancient ruin, barely functional and void-sealed. Should take them a LOT of work to get it back to functional condition, after which a lot of people are going to be very interested in them...

Thank your for your fast answers :-)

1.) It has the Hybrid Vessel rule, allowing it to get transport components, if those components are not also available as cruiser components, meaning u cant get hold landing bays, but must choose Jovian pattern landing bays. Since the Spacedock piers is no cruiser component, but a grand cruiser component and the star galleon has more than 50 Space available, is quite bulky and could use transport components...

5.) refitting one into a light cruiser sized hull shouldnt be that hard then, should it?

7.) Does any RT book give detailed numbers or do you estimate that number?

17.) too bad, renders those poor ships useless comparing to others.

18.) Im sorry, i should have written PCs as in player characters. I

19.) Thats really some nice plan.

Largely handwaving numbers for the Barracks, basing the Space of the various Crew Quarters components on it and extrapolating from there then removing a bit for the vehicle hangars and voidlifters.

i really doubt that a barracks can carry as many soldiers than a ship can crew

a tempest only has 30500 crew. a barracks probably carries 1000 on frigates maybe 5000 on cruisers

Well, but a barracks component uses up 4 space, as does the voidsmen crew quarter component on a frigate. Besides, what would be the point of having 5k guardsmen using 4 space on a cruiser, if i can arm 10% of my crew to get 10k armsmen in the process and no negativ stats for my ship due to crew loss.

If you take a look at the galaxy class mass conveyor and add up the free space, utilize that much barracks and then compare it to the statet 500k possible passenger capacity you are swift to see, that 1 Barracks equals up to 20k Soldiers.

ForTheEmperor said:

1) Just because a barracks component uses up the same space as a voidsmen crew quarters part doesn't mean all the crew are using their quarters at the same time - it's common knowledge that ships often require multiple people to share the same bunk, and they'd sleep in it on a rotation basis based on the different watch times (usually 3 a day, each for an 8 hour period).

2) Just arming crewmen doesn't make them armsmen, it makes them people who have likely never held a weapon before who are now holding guns.

3) You are assuming that those armed crewmen have anywhere close to the same stats as a veteran guardsman who have been trained to work in military formations, which your crew won't have.

Barracks containing around 5000 people plus equipment makes a hell of a lot more sense than saying it holds as much as the entire ship already holds.

RiggsPCG said:

Eeeexcept that the Barracks takes up the same amount of Space and Power regardless of what it's put into, so it would be a static population. Funny though, consider the Avenger-class Grand Cruiser. Crew: 141,000. Takes up the same amount of Space as a cruiser with only 60,000 crew.

Errant said:

perhaps because the ship itself is larger, thus the component, if taking the same proportion on the ship, is indeed bigger ? remember, the Space taken by a component is an abstract value, not a real one.

I'd say that a Barracks component can carry only a single Regiment of Troops, up to about 5,000 soldiers. That is to say, the troops themselves are actually packed tightly into a small corner of the area, the rest is filled with the vast mountain of weapons, ammo, food, water, ordnance, medicines, hazardous environment gear, spare socks and every other piece of gear that could conceivably be needed to re-fight, say, the invasion of Iwo Jima in its entirety. With the nearest resupply depot 20+ light years away, about a years round trip from the POV of the troops waiting on the ground, they really need everything to be carried aboard ship with them.

If I recall correctly, standard imperial regiment size is around 5000-10000 men - so I figure that'd be the minimum standard-capacity for one barracks components, along with whatever equipment and supplies they happen to have. Heavily mechanized troops just have less men, more vehicles.

It's all guesswork, of course, though much less seems ridiculous and nonsensical for such massive vessels.

For my PC's Sword-class I have them set with 3000 "armsmen" in the Barracks. 1000 of that are actual Guardsmen (brought with the RT when he left the military) and the remaining 2000 are mercenaries, house troops, etc.

I've found breaking it up keeps more of a "Rogue Trader" feel as opposed to making it feel just like a Battlefleet ship outside the Imperium.

ForTheEmperor said:

5. Personally, I'm not sure why. Space Marine Strike Cruisers are the size of a CL (Cruiser Light) and are designed expressly for invasion.

6. The Miloslav is obscenely good, IMHO. Not only do you DOUBLE your WARP SPEED, you actually DECREASE your total amount of Warp Encounters, and its SMALLER and more POWER EFFICIENT than the Strelovs. Although for a 6 day trip, you would have 2 encounters rather than one.

7. I'm estimating about 5000 (a standard regiment). The space could probably hold more people, but I'm trying to take things like Firing Ranges and Arms Lockers into consideration.

8. As Errant said, large Navigation Penalties. Probably Very Difficult (-30)

11, 12. I've playtested Nova Cannon. It absolutely annihilates smaller vessels (and punishes any ship with low shield counts) if you have at least average or above average luck and very good BS (~70, less with modifiers). Otherwise, its hard to hit anything with it. Given that Eldar aren't void shielded, this lets you obliterate fragile Eldar craft... IF they are in your firing arc. Eldar ships are disgustingly handy and obscenely fast. A few good Eldar captains can demolish almost ANY lone ship. Even escorted, you are always in danger.

17. The Voss Pattern Torpedo Tubes are an very small, specialist component. The Voss ships pre-equipped with these tubes have an extra, special purpose small weapons bay unable to fit standard weaponry, but can take the torpedoes.

This grants a frigate (like the Falchion) with 2 standard weapons bays, to mount torpedo capability in addition to normal weapons loadout, OR grants a ship Extra Torpedo ability, such as the Endeavour Class, which can mount a Mars Pattern Torpedo Tube stacked with its Voss Pattern Tubes. This grants a Light Cruiser the ability to fire a salvo of 8 (!!) Torpedoes. According to Battle Fleet Gothic (which many RT stats and balances are derived from), the Retribution-Class BATTLESHIP fires 9 Torpedoes in its salvo.

18. Hundreds of SP for major NPCs such as Lord Admiral Bastille and Lady Kitsune (Sun-lee revamped), Archeotech? Very rare, seeing the larcenous habits of my players.

19. The ship is barely functional. I would say most of its weapons are so damaged they count as Destroyed. Additionally, the Players would have to fix it outside of Imperial Space, as there is no way the Imperial Navy would grant a Writ of Salvage for a full up Battleship (unless it was of a class they no longer liked, such as the Oberon. But even still, it would be hard), especially if they learn the Commanding Officer was still alive (or was killed by the RT and his retinue).

Then, it would take DECADES (10-15 Game Sessions), minimum, above a FORGE WORLD to fix this battleship. Above Civilized or Hive Worlds? Not in the next 20 game sessions.

Good luck, and have fun!