Some friends of mine and myself are planning a Rogue Trader game. I will be taking the roll of Rogue Trader, besides myself we have an Explorator with sights set on becoming a Genetor and a power fist wielding Arch Militant who has taken a fondness to Gland Warrior. Sadly we lost our gunslinging Voidmaster due to him finding greener pastures many states away.

Mainly I am looking for general pointers from players more experienced than myself. Any tips or tricks. Things to watch out for. Words of wisdom. Inspirational stories. Hopefully other new players can look at the feedback and use it themselves as well.

--You don't have to read this part if you don't want to--

A little backstory on what else we have to work with; our profit factor path/ship point path/ship history ect.. has landed us with a few unique problems and opportunities. Our GM allowed us one random lateral movement on the chart to pick what we wanted. This allowed us to get enough ship points for an Avenger class grand cruiser. It's stupid I know, but it's just so big and classy. The **** thing is half past empty.. except for a few interesting things. We have a Teleportarium from the ship being a Reliquary of Mars. That and oh.. the Warrant of Trade was signed by the Man himself during the Horus Heresy for an act of badassery by an ancestor. So.. it has an Energy Conversion Matrix. So.. rather than a speed of 5.. it's a speed of 10 if we dump ship power into it. Our grand cruiser moves at raider speeds. It makes us all smile. Oh.. we have a Teleportarium so you know we have Murder Servitors. Yes yes I know the cheese there but it's just so sexy and our GM said why not. We've got the green light to be doofs in space. Uhm what else.. Clan-Kin Quarters. So.. the crew thinks the ship is their ancestral homeworld. Which it kind of is. Ah.. only one Macrobattery and Lance.. on the right side; so we kind of have to fight pirate ship style. The GM ok'd me taking Sanctioned Psyker with my Wierdling mutation from Tainted(one lateral movement here too). We explained it as being hereditary.

--Back to things that matter-

So yeah. Any advice would be appreciated. Or even funny stories.

Well. What an awesome and yet strangely gimped ship.

Enemies who don't squint at you too closely will probably just run away at the first sight of your vessel. However your FIRST order of business must be to get some weapons installed. As the Rogue Trader you need to make it clear (both to the GM and the other players) that everything else is a distant second. Because once word gets at that a virtually unarmed Grand Cruiser is flying around then your life will get a little too interesting. You might want to try and arrange a trade with a high-ranking forge world magos: access to the ship's ancient systems in exchange for outfitting.

With an entire broadside completely unarmed I would not, under any circumstances, take this vessel anywhere but into secure Imperial space.

What is your group's current Profit Factor?

I would assume his PF is fairly low, in the 20pt range.

I second the requisition of weapons, at least something that can shoot from the otherside. There are many different methods to go about getting ahold of new weapons and getting them installed. Flying to the nearest forge world and working out a deal, or navy base and working out a deal, or both, then disappearing into the Expanse for all time.

Play your character however you want to. I recently had to smack down my RT for trying to overawe all of Footfall and show him that while he's big and bad and all that, there is always someone who is bigger and can kill you without a sporting chance. It was mightily amusing on my end, and the other players were laughing at it.

One good piece of advice is Be Inventive. Be Clever. Come up with unorthodox solutions, they'll make the story so much more memorable and enjoyable for everyone, GM likely included. Unless he's a super planner with minimal plans, but those folks don't generally enjoy GMing.

If a mutation roll has got you down, ask if you can spend a fate point to modify the roll but 1d10. There are somewhat similar rules for that in Black Crusade and the GM may allow it.

There's a pitfall in playing the Rogue Trader of the group in that other players may think of you as the de facto leader both in and out of character. This has the potential to make non-RT players feel like they have to defer to you. Just keep in mind that the Writ is in the Rogue Traders name, but he is only the first among equals. There's a reason you keep these people around, after all.

Our profit factor is something like 24-27. I don't have the sheet right in front of me right now but that sounds about right. Might be a point or two higher after we sort the group's origin paths out.

Getting guns is certainly a top priority. Besides attempting to requisition enough guns to fill up our two sides, we also are looking at acquiring them from anyone luckless to be taken down by our annoying Murder Servitors. That should leave most of the ship unharmed except from some minor damage from us hull breaching the command bridge, their engines, and their vox's. After that they should be fairly easy pickings. That'll let us grab some guns for until we can get better ones. I forget which two we have.. but they're range 11. I remember that much. That combined with our upped speed and maneuverability from our ship being "Old and Wise" should help us a little yes? Probably not. We'll crash and burn. But it'll be bright and fiery! xD

Is anyone familiar with the Murder Servitor/Teleportarium combo? I think the group is at this point just hiding behind that and hoping we don't get spanked too badly before we can manage up some guns/profit. I know our Militant is going to be useless in space combat. Man's got a Fellowship of around 10. No ship skills. His forte' is hit this. Punch that. Luckily our Explorator will be down with the engines making them go faster. Biggest slowest ship in the galaxy.. faster than hell.

My group is old-hat at other RPG's. We're big on everyone gets a say in it. I'm really just a tiebreaker most of the time. Nah; my character is big on 'his people'. Everyone's gotta be happy. Treats the whole crew like an extended family (which it kind of is). We're a friendly bunch, no leadership issues here.

Thanks for the input. Loving it.

PF of less than 30? Man, you guys are going to find it hard to get new weapons the normal ways. And good luck getting another Hecutor-pattern Plasma Battery/Broadside (only macrobattery out there with a listed range of 11. Actually, the only starship weapon with that as a listed range full stop, barring upgrades/quality modifiers) to match it on your other side.
Your best bet is to capture a few ships and strip their weapons systems to mount on yours. You still have the problem of getting them fitted, and it does depend on actually taking a ship with their weapons systems relatively intact. Logically, that shouldn't prove to much of a problem, with a teleportarium your "cuspit verpendures" arch-militant can lead a decapitation strike on the enemy ship's bridge, or environmental controls. Unfortunately, you can't teleport through another ship's shields, so canny maneuvering and shooting will be required, and could potentially strand whatever or whoever you teleport on the other ship for a while.

I would note, however, that it is perfectly feasible to play a ship that is essentially unarmed along one side (I ran several test combats using an Exorcist whose starboard side was fitted with nothing but launch bays, with Lathe grav-culverins filling out the free weapons slots on the larboard side): it's very easy to build similar ships with masses of power to spare, and fitting them with loads of augmented retro-thrusters makes maneuvering to keep the enemy in your arc of fire is easier than one might think.

As for recommendations for stuff to fit: get yourself a decent launch bay and a couple squadrons of assault boats (plus fighter cover). You'll find it much easier to take prizes and discourage people from coming in on your "blind" side if there's a load of attack craft boiling out from there at them (I know, I'm biased towards carrier warfare. Blame the Galactica and the HDMS Lord Solar Macharius ). Failing that (and failing the ability to buy, beg, borrow or steal guns to match your starboard batteries), get something to fire from there, even it's a popgun system like a Thunderstrike. A couple batteries of Jovian missile pods would be a decent move: each component can put out a lot of fire, and alternating batteries means you can do that each turn (or you can mass it for a good hammer blow), plus the manpower-intensive nature means less people are likely to want them, so you can probably pick them up relatively cheap.

Don't hide behind the Teleportarium/Murder-servitor combo: you need to get within 5VUs to use it, and you're better off trying to keep the range open with a ship like that. It's also worth noting that unless your GM is prepared to run a detailed hit-and-run/teleport boarding action, and will let your arch-militant/whoever's on the boarding party essentially interrupt a ship-to-ship combat for a personal-scale encounter, you're limited to the standard hit-and-run effects, which aren't massively useful at defeating a hostile vessel.
Don't get me wrong, they can help, but unless you can decompress enough weapons components and/or disable their maneuvrering thrusters and/or set several fires, it's likely to be less useful than a good round of shooting.
Speaking of which, it's probably worth trading those Hecutors in for something a little lower maintenance and shorter-ranged, especially given the rest of the ship's load-out. Especially since there are a fair few useful pieces which pack far more punch, either in terms of per-shot damage, or in rate-of-fire, although I grant you Vapourisation is a nice rule. The Avenger-class was conceived as a line-breaker: load it up with the biggest, nastiest macrocannons you could find, plunge right into the middle of an enemy fleet and carry on firing double broadsides until all that's left is glowing shrapnel. The ideal war-load for it is pretty close to that concept: short-ranged and dangerous (which fits with the teleportarium).

General tips now:

Power armour and bolt weapons are the go-to picks for personal acquisitions I've found, particularly if your GM allows you to port over some items from Dark Heresy (I've had 3 players ask to get an Angelus bolt-carbine from the Inquisitor's Handbook, for example), as they're refreshingly simple to get hold of, if you can find the right people to supply them (the Fane of Fykos, in Gunmetal Hive on Scintilla are a particularly good bet for high quality and fancy weapons), and as a Rogue Trader and his household, you've essentially got immunity from prosecution when it comes to many Imperial and Ecclesiastical (and virtually all local) laws.

The Inquisition and Arbites cannot always be relied upon to care about jurisdiction and your Writ's diplomatic immunity.

Active scans are more trouble than they're worth, unless someone is currently running silent nearby, and is almost in firing position. Most of the time, all they do is announce your position, hull size and auspex configuration to the entire solar system. And any GM worth his salt is going to have something nasty take advantage of that fact (or ambush you when you relax fairly shortly after).

Sell your ship, buy one you can outfit properly. All you can do is waste a perfectly good GC with that setup. Light Cruisers are nice.