Needless to say a starship needs at a minimum a few halo barges for transporting goods and maybe some kind of landing craft for the explorers, but the rules are silent on how many and what kinds of craft these are. What would be reasonable to give a starting group?

Also, how many armsmen would a typical ship have? How well trained are they? Where can I find example statistics for them, and what should I do if my players insists of bringing a 100 armsmen with them wherever they go (as the have a tendency to do)?

All you ask is adressed in Battlefleet Koronus. I don't have the book right now, so I can't give you page numbers. I'll try to answer by memory:

1) Troops: 5 to 10% of the Crew are armsmen.

2) If a ship doesn't have Lauching Bays, it has one spacecraft per every 5 points of Space. Each spacecraft could be a shuttler ( for example, Arvus Lighter), a heavy shuttler (for example, Halo Barge) or a lander (for example, Aquila Lander).

As a houserule of mine, I allow players to start with the same number of terrestrial vehicles from the following list: Rhino APC, Sentinel Walker, Land Speeder and/or Scout Bike.

Ok, thanks. I haven't gotten my copy of BFK yet, but I was hoping some of this would be answered there.

Regarding armsmen though, are there any sample statistics for them in BFK, and how would you handle the players bringing a squadron with them wherever they go?

mortagon said:

Stats can be found in the back of the book, here on the forum or by looking at darkreign40k.com.

Remember the basic rules about redshirt NPC's, no fate points and if they suffer one corruption point/insanity point they are considered 'dead/insane/corrupted'. Also, who wants a 100 armsmen to trail him while walking around on a station. Its **** difficult and you'd get quite bored having to make them keep up with you all the time(stealth missions/undercover).

Some stuff is meant to be dealt with by PC's, let them learn that.

I use the stats for the Hired Gun in the Core for my player's armsmen. Under very special circunstances a nameless NPC from the Crew can get a name and a better profile. For example, once my players went to a death world with a couple of land speeders and several armsmen. After a very epic battle with some mutants and their boss (who had Fear 1), only two soldiers were alive. We gave them names and since then they have became the personal bodyguards of the Rogue Trader (using the stats of an Oathsworn Bodyguard... also in the Core).

It's important that NPCs never outshine the explorers, because the players' characters are the heroes of the story, not the crew.

As a related question - is it possible to start with Household Guard on-board? Or would you have to get those with an Aquisition roll?

ShadowFighter88 said:

As long as the purchase modifier is +0(for your free start of char aquisition) yes. Or you can ask your GM nicely, a ship with 30.000 crew can surely produce a ten or so capable bodyguards.

I'd say it'd depend on whether you have a Barracks or the Storm Trooper Upgrade, but without those, basing the skills of the crew on the quality (poor, common, crack, or veteran) seems like a good way to handle thing. While it does mean that a high-quality crew will be better shots than some of the PCs, said PCs should have other ability to make up for it in those cases (or simply better guns -- Las isn't all it's cracked up to be compared to Plasma or Bolters, after all).