Ok...I'm jumping into this game. I LOVE battlefleet gothic, and am an ever increasing fan of the 40K setting. I'm corssing over from having run EVERY edition of the Star Wars Roleplaying game, from West End to Saga Edition, and I've pretty much not been a huge fan of their starship combat systems. I am aware that Starships in this setting are a whole different animal. The smallest ship is pretty much a small Star Destroyer right? So my question is thus; Is the starship combat in this game fast, furious and satisfying? Or, is the ultimate flaw in the game overall. I've heard that it completely stinks, which would crush me. Or, lastly, is it just good enough, but not too bad...am I better off just using BFG rules for space??? I welcome opinions. also note, that I have a lot of BFG minis.

It depends a lot on the group I suppose. I'm storytelling two Rogue Trader games, so I've had plenty of space combat. Personally, I love the space combat rules as they are. I get a lot of fun as a GM every time we play a Space Combat.

What I've seen, is that Space Combat is more enjoyable for players when the group is small (2-4 players) than when it's large (5+). This is because not everyone gets to shoot the Starship weapons or make Maneouvers, so the coolest roles aren't much.

As a GM, I highly recomend you to use the NPC Starship Rules on Battlefleet Koronus to speed up combats, specially if you have to control several NPC ships.

I suppose the starship combat could feel fast if the GM knew what he was doing (and was using the NPC Starship Rules that Maese Mateo mentioned), but one thing to remember is, as well as the size of the ships going up from what you're used to with Star Wars, the scale's gone up for time as well. A single turn of Starship Combat in Rogue Trader is meant to represent half an hour of orders flying back and forth between ships or between different sections of a ship. Here's an example of what I believe would be going on in-universe when the players are rolling the Ballistic Skill test to fire the ship's macrocannon batteries.

First, firing solutions for macrobatteries will be worked out by the character giving the order (so if the Arch-Militant's player is the one making the BS check and using his character's Ballistic Skill for it). He will then send them down to the officers in-charge of the ship's gunnery decks where they'll check and refine the solution before sending it back up to the bridge. The one who developed the firing solutions originally will go over the changes made by the gunnery officers, make some final tweaks to account for any changes that occurred while he was waiting for the gunnery crews to send the solution back, before feeding the finalised targetting info down to the gun crews.

The ship's rail system starts bringing corner store-sized macrocannon shells up from the ship's magazine, where they're loaded into the cannon breeches by teams of hundreds of press-ganged loaders, hauling on giant chains to open the breech, push the shell into the firing chamber and then close the breech, all the while being whipped by overseers. This is finished by the time the gunnery officers receive the final firing solution, which is then fed into the gun-deck's cogitators and the massive cannons are cranked into position and ready to fire as soon as the target is in position.

With a shout from the officers, the cannon's fire. But they won't know if they scored a hit or not for another ten or fifteen minutes while the shells travel the several hundred thousand kilometres to their target.

Ok....yeah....wow. I knew it was kind of like that, but that;'s a pretty good description. More importantly, how long does it (USUALLY) take in real time for say a single, 1 on 1 starship combat between cruier sized ships? What if I add Ordinance fighters/bombers?

Is Rogue Trader geared more toward surface exploration than ships, or is it a good balance?

To better ilustrate what ShadowFighter88 said: fc07.deviantart.net/fs28/f/2008/098/b/9/Weapons_Battery_by_The_First_Magelord.png

Here you see how many people you have to coordinate to make a single shot with a single macrobattery canon (and every Macrobattery Weapon Component has within 3-4 such Canons).

GalaxyUC said:

It depends on a lot of factors really, but you can asume 30 minutes to 1 hour if none is extremely lucky or unluky and without any clear advantage over the other. If your gunner is really lucky and you have powerful Weapon Components, he could end the battle on a single Turn with a powerful Salvo shot and a Lance (again, REALLY lucky).

GalaxyUC said:

That's up to you and your players and how do you want to focus the game. There isn't a single way to do it.

Incidentally; how I described the firing solutions being handled was more-or-less cribbed from this campaign journal - the captain's player described the firing procedures aboard the ship as a way of fleshing things out a bit more. Can't remember what page it was on, though.

I had that image Maese posted in-mind, too. Would've linked it but couldn't be bothered searching Deviant Art for it.

Maese Mateo said:

Actually, assuming a direct, constant ratio between a macrobattery's Strength value and the number of guns, you're out by a factor of at least 5 or so, at least in the case of Mars-pattern macrobatteries: we know from the short story Cross the Stars that a Lunar class cruiser's broadside consists of 40 guns per deck in one battery (in a slot normally filled by a Mars Pattern Broadside component), although we don't know how many gundecks are included in the battery. Assuming only one such deck (as opposed to the 2 or 3 of my own belief), a S6 battery is 40 guns, so a S3 battery should be 20, which is between 5 and 7 times your estimate.

And before the tempting argument from the BfG models, I should note that those models have always been gleefully acknowledged as ridicincredibly out of scale, even with other parts of the same model, so that people can easily see what a particular ship is armed with, and hence identify different classes at a glance.

Amongst the RPG systems with Space/flight combat it is the most satisfying I know. And the outcomes can be very different an Ork fleet can be destroyed by critical hit causing Warp Engine to explode .

I find that the Space combat fairly well approximates what happtoened in BG. The closest RPG I would liken it to would be the old "Star Trek" RPG (If any of you are old enough to remember it! ) Overall I think it's pretty good.

Real time, say with a one-on-one engagement and four PCs, expect to spend maybe an hour playing it out unless the dice or abilities of one ship tip the scales. That can be faster if your group are familiar with their roles and most importantly the actions they can take to influence the battle, but if they can't organise themselves to work together smoothly it can go longer. Clearly, more ships will slow things down more. If it's any help, I would very roughly estimate that each enemy vessel counts as the same number of "regular" opponents as the party, so four explorers on their ship against three enemy vessels would take about the same time as the four on the ground against a dozen hostiles.

I can't speak for ordnance or launched craft, not having used them, but if one player is in charge of directing fighters it shouldn't add too long. Torpedoes and the like are pretty simple as far as I know.

Using the BFG models is an excellent idea, but I would stick with the RT ruleset. It was specifically developed to allow the broadest range of interactions between any party of explorers and the outcome of a space battle.

One of the easiest ways to simplify and speed up the combat is to make some "flash cards". Basically, put all the Actions on an individual card. Then the party can hand out who is doing what each round. The card can have the rules on them so it reduces players flipping through the book.

Another thing you could do is have some duplicate cards, giving each player only the cards they would be good at. This cuts down on the amount of choices they have and helps focus.

We have moved to this in our game and it works well. We actually have our Rogue Trader hand them out which kind of feels like the Lord-Captain giving out orders. Of course we discuss stuff, but it does have a nice feel to it.

kenshin138 said:

This sounds like an excelet idea. I'll make some cards for my players. =D

kenshin138 said:

That's a bloody good idea! *grabs the box if index cards*

Some kind of set or reference cards or specialized reference sheets would certainly be very helpful for my players and even me. If anyone is putting some together or plans to do so, please count me in. Maybe post the files on rpg geek.com or something

There's a quick reference sheet at the end of this document javascript:void(0);/*1325724971408*/ . FFG, Rogue Trader, Support, Drydock. I would prefer a line of rules, at least what to roll and the difficulty.

GalaxyUC said:

I just typed up a quick .doc, included relevant addenda regarding bonuses for their ship, etc, illustrated the cards with a suitable picture to save time searching them (a BFG miniature for the Manoeuvering cards, Tech-Priest Casu Marzu for the Tech-use based extended action , etc ) and glued them onto index cards. Would you like me to email you it?

Drhoz said:

Could you upload the file to Mediafire or Megaupload (or any other host you like) and share the link with us, please? That would be very helpful and saves you time of having to send individual emails to anyone interested. =D

Maese Mateo said:

Ok, give me some time to re-do them more neatly, and use pictures I can distribute freely. Would colour be helpful? Say, if I colour-coded the various action cards?

Drhoz said:

Also, since I included only those Component bonuses I have access to, should I include the rest, or just leave space for players to add notes? Or do a reverse side for each card with those bonuses?

Well, here's the second draft - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JDVAXHMZ

Of course, now I've thought of more stuff I could have included - a box on the card where you could pencil in total bonuses from the Ship Components listed, etc, so you didn't have to keep checking. More room for further notes, etc. I'm quite pleased with the shooting cards though.

Wow, great job. I will definitely be using these.

Don't be too fast to print them out, I've already done version 1.03, with better layout, bonus total boxes, etc... plus I want more feedback from people on that version uploaded above, before I add more

are there any other component bonuses I missed, for example? That wouldn't go under special rules for weapons, I mean?

How about adding the special Astropath and Navigator actions from into the storm? I also didn't like the font you used for the headings, it seemed to take up to much space and was hard to read. The placement and choice of some of the artwork could also do with some work. But overall these will make a great aid for me and my players. Thank you for creating these, much better than the spreadsheets I made for my own games.

Drhoz said:

wow. Sir, you have won the internet. +5 Profit Factor for you. =D

Like mortagon said:

1- Having Navigator and Astropath Actions could be very helpful. =D

2- The font for headings is sometimes confusing to read.

I think you have also missed Torpedos and Attack Craft Actions (not that I use them, but I imagine many prople do).

Maese Mateo said:

mortagon said:

Rightio, I'll go back through it, and change the heading font too - it troubled me as well. Which artworks were problematical?