So in the course of my crews adventures they might be going up against a space marine strike cruiser. I'm trying to think what sort of effects space marine ships would have. I'm thinking for starters they have a veteran class crew and are treeted as a best quality storm trooper detachment, don't suffer from depressurized components and receive a +10 on top of the above to all sorts of boarding attacks. Any thoughts?

I'd say they'll be *at least* as good as Murder Servitors. And they're trained to board other ships and hulks, etc. I'd give them a +30 myself.

A space marine vessel is likely to have several good or best quality components. You should have a look on Dark Reign, I recently saw write-ups for Astartes vessel hulls.

Space Marine serfs tend to be trained and equipped to a higher degree than most. Generally better than Imperial Guard or Navy, when it comes to a fight, but you can assume they're at least on par without playing around too much. Didn't I also read in BFK that Naval vessels tend to be of Best quality? If so, then a Space Marine vessel absolutely deserves the same.

Dark Reign does have writeups for Astartes ships, though frankly I think your best bet would just be to all out run and hope that they don't catch you, because Srike Cruisers are pretty fast. More importantly in a fight, they're also almost as strong as a battlecruiser (the BFG stats could effectively class it as an up-armoured cruiser). With Bombardment Cannon, solid broadside batteries, and a flight bay capable of launching squads of Thunderhawks, it's going to be a daunting prospect in a fight.

The most dangerous detail though, is the simple fact that a Strike Cruiser is designed to carry a full company of Space Marines. Because 100 Space Marines IS enough to board and take anything short of a naval cruiser, and even one of those might not be safe. Through teleportation Or Thunderhawk, you could end up with a lot of angry super-humans running around inside your ship. That said, it does offer the the chance of suitable RT epicness of sword fighting a Space Marine Captain on your own bridge.

I would treat them like best craftsmanship Storm Trooper Detachment plus Murder Servitors.

Also remember that while Space Marines are badass, most of the Crew will be just regular people, although Elite/Veteran sounds good.

I would also make a couple of important Marines to perform several Extended Actions during the combat.

Expect Space Marines to target vital areas of the ship, when boarding (either full action or hit and run). The Bridge, Enginarium, and weapons decks will all be your prime targets for an assault. But Life Support is also another possible target since their Power Armour, or even Terminator Armour if you're especially unlucky, will mean they can shut it down and kill your crew without firing a shot.

I don't think it's unreasonable for each Space Marine to kill about a hundred people each, at least.

That plot may have been sidelined for a bit but I appreciate all the feedback.

One of the key things I'm going to go with is space marines are good enough at what they do that you can't just defeat their boarding actions or hit and run attacks via "Just" command tests from the bridge. Since most loyal imperial crews won't even fight them without some strong leadership or disinformation the Rogue Trader or other members of the command company will have to personally lead the ship's security details trying to face down the marines, that includes facing down against marines in combat. On the whole i'm looking forward to it but may give my PC's a chance to level up a bit more so they can have a chance fight the challenging fight i have planned without having anything giving to them. I want them to be able to win the fight but have a proper respect and maybe a little fear for the space marines afterwords.

I wish your players luck, they'll need it.

And if you want to go a 'little' easy on them, the Strike Cruiser doesn't have to have a full Company of Astartes on board. 2-4 squads worth, including the ship's own compliment, would still be plenty of threat, without risk of depopulating your whole ship in a whirlwind of Bolter and Chainsword wielding rage.

So i'm going to ressurect this thread as it may well come up again. My players are going to get a distress call from one of their dynasty's ships (they are not the dynasty head so this will be a peer to them) that ship is currently playing cat and mouse running from a a set of relicators strike cruisers. If the players choose to intervene (there is a non-zero chance they'll just leave their kinsman to his fate, he is after-all an eventual rival for the warrant). They'll fortunately only have to contend with one of the cruisers at a time and they'll have a raw ship advantage (they've got two light cruisers, a troop transport and a wolfpack raider under their flag).

I'm thinking the strike cruiser will emphasize speed and toughness over actual firepower. I intend to highlight that it's biggest threat isn't it's guns but the fact that it's designed to force a boarding action at which point the crew will be in for the fight of their lives just to survive.The other aspect i'll play up is that once the space marine's start a boarding action they stay put until their killed to a man or otherwise forced off the ship by sheer numbers. I'll have to look at the numbers and play with things a bit before i go into things.

What someone suggested in a thread about the Rok'Gol is that maybe you should only have your players fight a couple Space marines, while the rest reek havoc upon your vessel. How good your crew is, along with command roles and what equipment they have could be used to determine how many die to the marines, and vis versa, and ultimately, if the marines succeed on their rampage

Unless they are in a Cruiser or better with more than just a few Mars Macrocannons, its going to be a very, very bad day at the office.

Strike Cruisers will have the most powerful macrobattery weapons, a nice bombardment cannon and launchbays/torpedo tubes. They will have superior armour and speed, the only thing they lack in BFG are shields, having only one, so that is a possible weakness.

Immediatly they will try to close and board with torpedoes and thunderhawks whilst their weapons aim for engines and vital systems.

When they do board its a very, very bad day for armsmen. Your shotgun/stub gun/other low pen shipboard weapons will be up against TB10/Armour 8 which means they basically stand no chance. Return fire is bolter/flamer and the ripping of chainswords with that SB of 10. The Marines will go for critical systems and then your core cogitator, life support, plasma reactor, gellar field generator and with your crew brutally slain, they will slap melta bombs on everything and cripple your ship.

Forgive my ignorance (and me derailing that thread), but what does better quality do on ship components? I couldn't find anything in the rulebook.

Temporary bonus to ship morale when they're installed, reduce space or power requirements. Rules are in Battlefleet Koronus.

lurkeroutthere said:

Per BFG a Strike cruiser is a Light cruiser. It is very similar in layout to a Lathe or Secutor pattern light cruiser from ITS. It's broadside arcs If taken from BFG would be single Macrobattery components (not broadsides). A single Bombardment Cannon component graces it's Dorsal arc and a single forward facing Jovian class escort bay replaces Prow armament. It would have excess void armor and of course the Storm drop pod bay. It's Plasma drive would need to be something that get's it's speed up to Dauntless like maneuverability. The Uber vessel others have described would be a Battlebarge! (Which is a battleship class vessel!) Strike cruisers are usually accompanied by a pair of Nova class frigates (Very similar to a Firestorm hull). As to Space marines and boarding actions: GIVE UP NOW!!! A single Squad of assault Marines is going to turn most high-level Rogue trader's into an excersize of fate point burning dog food! A full battle company can reasonably be expected to board and incapacitate a Battleship! In BFG the only thing that would keep the Battleship safe would be the fact that at boarding range the Strike cruiser would simply cease to exist under the Battleships guns! Remember; Space marine vessels are designed for Planetary raids and assaults. While they make passable naval combatants (Particularly in close!) they are not nearly as dangerous in space as they are to ground targets!

Radwraith said:

This. Sums up the Strike cruisers potential systems quite well. I'd also point out that it'd have a teleportarium, thunderhawk (fighter/bomber/boarding craft), multiple shields, advanced targeting systems combined with well trained servitor crews and astartes officers mean that their macrocannon batteries and bombardment canon WILL hit you in critical systems for heavy damage, likely taking out your engines so you can't run, then you shields before either decapitating your ship by smashing its bridge or just boarding and slaughtering your crew.

Well by the time i run this encounter the party will be 8 strong potentially boasting a space marine on their own numbers. They also have a space marine dreadnaught (long story) on their ship that can be roused to battle if their boarded so i can hand wave some of the autowin that would normally happen away. Also having faced off against powered armored enemies in their last game their discussing upgrading both their own armaments and that of their armsmen to better deal with such challenges. However mostly the tactical side of the game will consist on keeping the space marines from boarding their ship. I am trying to prepare for the eventuality of them wanting to seize the strike cruiser (my crew really likes their prize ships) in which case most of the gloves come off. I'm not going to let them keep it but they will be able to trade it for some fairly massive favors with the inquisition or another space marine chapter if they can manage to take it intact.

Radwraith said:

Well, it probably won't be Nova class vessels accompanying it (although that will become more and more likely the closer to you get to M42), as the pure Astartes RSVs (Rapid Strike Vessels) are a relatively recent innovation coming out of the Dark Angels (only several centuries ago now, maybe a millennium or so), and the Navy is still pitching a fit over the Astartes getting a lance boat in particular (their argument is a fleet whose purpose is planetary assault and blockade running doesn't need a vessel designed purely or primarily to attack capital ships, and that it would defeat the purpose of splitting the astartes and the old Imperial Army* into separate chains of command).

The Gladius class frigate (roughly analogous to an up-armoured Sword class hull) is far more common, as is the slightly less ubiquitous Hunter class (umm, roughly equivalent to a slightly heavier Cobra destroyer, but canonically a Gladius hull fitted with torpedo tubes rather than gun bays), and both are far less politically less contentious, although Astartes being Astartes, that isn't much of a consideration anyway. Indeed the Gladius is noted to be the most common vessel in most Chapter fleets, although a number of chapters still get either ex-Naval vessels or order near-identical designs from shipyards.

I'll also note that a space marine vessel is generally sufficiently robust and heavily armoured to get up close enough for its formidable (but short ranged) firepower to tell, especially given its speed. It's generally the greater range and ability to absorb casualties that make IN cruisers (and their equivalents) superior naval combatants.

* The Imperial Army was, under the same re-organisation, split into the Guard and the Navy. Yeah, this is factional politics going back to the Horus Heresy, baby!

lurkeroutthere said:

Sounds pretty good… But I just feel that letter space marines board your ship = certain death without having hteir own space marines and dreadnaughts to counter them.

Just to make a point, in Deathwatch, a Space Marine is mechanically able to survive having a tank roll over them. This was brought up at www.rpg.net, and another poster said, "That is not a flaw, they are supposed to survive that."

Kasatka said:

Thank you! For additional detail: The Strike cruiser per canon mounts a single void shield component. I don't know if a "mere" Strike cruiser would rate a Teleportarium as these are supposed to be extremely rare! Certainly a Battlebarge would but that's a different story. I agree with the servitor crew upgrade and the benefits of having a SM command crew (Which a Strike cruiser may or may not have). As was stated earlier, even the chapter serfs on a Strike cruiser would probably amount to a crack or even veteran crew. (Serving on a SM vessel is an honor and therefore would probably attract many of the better type of Chapter Serf that didn't quite make it through selection but were still found to be worthy of a "combatant" role.) The Thunderhawks you mention are the sole reason for the Launch bay! Probably one squadron of gunships and one of transports (Three ships each). For the other poster who commented on my choice of escorts that was simply an opinion. Even so, before the Nova came into broader service Firestorm class strike frigates were a "standard" choice for Strike cruiser escorts. The other types of more "Pure escort" role (Such as Cobras, Swords and their SM clone versions) are more often found with Battlebarges and their associated battlegroups. In one of the Blood ravens books the Battlebarge "Litany of fury" is accompained by a flotilla of six gunboats in a mix of cobra and sword configurations! A lot would depend on what the Strike cruiser's mission profile was. If it was a standard patrol then probably a couple of frigates (I would still use firestorms due to the relative vulnerability of this small a task force) would suffice. If the SC was on a dedicated raid mission into enemy territory then I would add a couple of Cobra's for "slash and burn" type missions. Of course I emphasize again: Even if you have a SM or two of your own you are Dogfood if you are boarded by a Strike cruiser! The SM's on that ship will likely have at least one or two dreadnoughts of their own and a Veteran SM command crew led by a High level (Equivalent to RT lvl 8 minimum!) Space marine Captain! If you can cripple the Strike cruiser and get away fine! But I wouldn't risk trying to board it or allow myself to be boarded by it! As a side note: It is official canon that a single strike cruiser held off the entire efforts of the Dark eldar world of Commouragh until relief (In the form of a battlebarge and it's fleet) arrived to recover it!

In all honesty, if I were an Astartes commander choosing an escort for my Strike cruiser, I'd probably go for 1-2 Novas and a Hunter too, if at all possible. I was merely (and apparently not very coherently*) pointing out that the Nova is relatively rare. If I didn't have access to any of the pure Astartes RSVs, then probably 2 Cobras and a Firestorm.

That said, I'd be curious to know where you read that escorting Strike Cruisers with primarily lance boats and Battle Barges with primarily gunboats was the general modus operandi? I mean, the former makes some sense on the basis of a CS' greater fragility (well, compared to a BB, anyway), but surely the rarity (and threat/prestige value) of a Battle Barge means it's more likely to come under serious attack from enemy vessels, especially given that it is far slower than a Strike Cruiser, and thus in more need of escorts capable of hitting above their weight (i.e. lance and torpedo armed vessels)?

*I should definitely have made clearer, not merely obliquely referenced the point about Chapter fleets using Cobra/Sword/Firestorm class vessels as RSVs in the absence of the Hunter/Gladius/Nova, as well as other small craft of various classes

The real problem for RT to meet with SM for space battle against a strike cruiser will be the SM on board.

It is true that crew of SM spaceship are really well trained and are in my opinion a veteran crew at least, but how many SM are in the ship… 10,20,50… a compagny?

If their is more than 10 SM the crew of the RT had no chance…

Will it be an assault group teleport on the bridge, boarding torpedos well aimed near bridge and engine, or massive assault with small ships doesn't matter at all, RT crew will be disbanded, kill and will hardly be a threat against SM.

To board a SM ship is just ridiculous if not SM yourself. If one hundred SM are a military force viable for planet assault what about a simple ship…

Thebigjul said:

A Strike cruiser intended to carry a complete company of Space marines plus their support elements. Figure 100 marines plus command HQ squad, plus a scout squad, 1-2 dreadnoughts, Maybe a squad of 1st company terminators and all of the companies associated combat vehicles. (Landspeeders, Rhino's, Razorbacks, Whirlwinds, predators and maybe the occasional Land raider!). There will also be Techmarines, Apothacaries, The Chaplain and possibly a Librarian! This is not including any SM's that serve as permanent crew on the Strike cruiser itself!

One thing to remember is that an Astartes vessel is unlikely to be equiped with components of only Average quality. I'd honestly guess they'd have everything at Best, which further tips the scales in their favour. And as others have said, the crew of a Space Marine ship are very well trained, Chapter Serfs tend to be some of the best humanity has to offer.

Even if the Strike Cruiser, which is more of a standard weight cruiser, with heavier armour, than a Light Cruiser (it is as fast as one though), isn't carrying a full Company, you're still facing a very tough fight on your hands. I'd focus on keeping the Space Marines out of the Bridge and the Enginarium, and it won't be easy because they are primary targets. The greater numbers you have will largely count for nothing, because they can't be properly brought to bear against a Space Marine, it'll be a complete slaughter. I agree with the suggestion, that you have your player only encounter a few (several?), while the rest of the battle is determined by crew size, quality, equipment, etc..

Let the ship's Arch Militant lead a Squad (Or larger group) tasked with stopping a SM incursion. While the assault marines use your armsmen to grease their chainswords the the Squad Sergeant (A lvl 2 or 3 DW marine) rolls in on the PC. Unless the AM is VERY powerful 2-3 rounds later the Marines are headed for their objective!