I've seen several of these custom hulls posted and I've also checked out darkreign40k: question is, are there any hard and fast rules for designing your own custom hulls or is it a matter of eyeballing it?

It's a matter of using the Mk. 1 eyeball, mate… If FFG does have formal rules for statting out a hull, they've kept them unpublished. There are enough published hulls that it shouldn't be too hard to figure out what you want. I also note that some of the published hulls are a significantly better buy for the points than others, so there is precedent for a design being a little off. Dark Reign has a ton of stuff, so there is a lot of reference material.

If you have the Battlefleet Gothic rules, (they're a free download) that's also a good source of info. It has the original versions of many of the RT ships, though escorts got massively upgraded in the conversion to Rogue Trader.

Cheers,

- V.

Thanks for the reply. I guess my course of action is clear, collate the high and low ends of official ship hulls and take it from there.

I liked the star galleon and clipper concepts so I wanted to design transport ships along those lines.

Now that I think of it, there is another source of information that might help you. Google "Warp Rift magazine". Warp Rift is (was?) a fan-made netzine for Battlefleet Gothic. It's a free download. Issues 17 and 19, in particular, might have something useful. Issue 17 has an article on Rogue Traders, and issue 19 has one on the merchant fleets. Each has at least a half-dozen new ship types, most of them transports.

Cheers,

- V.

I managed to find copies of Warp Rift 17 & 19, but I will have to familiarize myself with how to convert them to RT stats first.

I've done a couple of ship hulls on these forums, like here, here and here. (the last being not perhaps the best example, as it was submitted before RT was even released.)

I wouldn't say there are rules about ship hull design as much as there are parameters . A Frigate is not going to have the same capacity for carrying broadsides as a grand cruiser. A cruiser won't be as fast as a raider. An obvious point, but still true.

All of the heavy lifting on ship hull design has already been done by the creators of the Core System. All that's left really is inventive is interpretation of the work thay've already done.

Really the trick of it lies in making the hull work overall as a package. I dislike munchkin hulls that are perfect in every way - I prefer ships that have strengths and weaknesses that characters can play to. Players don't mind if their ship has no weapons and falls apart as long as they can boast it's the fastest ship in space. If the ship is so vast it's effectively its own country, they won't mind if it handles like a slug. The system is good in that the basic hull types already have strengths and weaknesses inherent in their design; raiders are faster than frigates, frigates are tougher than raiders. Just with the core rules alone you already have a fascinating paper/scissors/stone thing going on.

When designing a hull, operate within the parameters of the ship type. Use pre-existing hulls within the ship type as precedents.

Given that the Imperial Navy is effectively a mishmash of every Royal Naval (and other naval) archetypes ever, have a historical naval archetype in mind when designing your hull. For example, the Chalice Class is clearly a riff on the Jutland-era fast but fragile Battlecruisers…and so on. I could write a lot more, but my internet access is time limited (I'm not in prison though, don't worry) so I'll have to sign off there!

I'd like to hear more on how you tweak the ship stats. My greatest interest lies in designing Transport hulls due to the sheer variety.

Is there a rule of thumb that you follow? For example; for every point of armor removed you can get this much Space, Speed, etc.?

Ive designed about a dozen different hulls for the RT game i run…i displayed one in particular awhile back based off a archeotech battleship hull ( one of a kind refit and repair deal ) But the standard i use is ill take the basic stats from the closest type of existing hull to what im wanting to create and modify it as follows:

1) Determine the closest hull size/type to what you want and use it as a template

2) Total up the approximate hull space and add or subtract up to 10 space to fit what you have in mind

3) Check the Spd / Man / Detect / and Integrity points and if you want to add a point or two to one of those…then take away a point or two from another/the others..so the total stays the same ( or at least within 5 points of original if you want to go over a bit etc )

4) Check the total number of hardpoints for weapon mounts ( disreguard the locations on the ship for now )…Then reallocate that number to whatever location(s) you want for that ship to have to fit your image in mind for it ( yes that means you can make use of the almost never used Keel mount location for Imperial ships if you want to give the would be enemy a nasty surprise )…I used this method for a modified Firestorm and put the mount locations all on either dorsal or keel mounts to give all the ships weapon systems full range of aquisition instead of having to come to bear so often …making a very unique but not overly powerful variant frame not as recognizeable as its brethren..but simply better able to make use of the weapons it does have…( as the almost universal prow shape for the ship was replaced with a more tapered design to accomodate the extra dorsal and keel mountings so all batteries could be brought to bear in frontal arc without blowing off the lead turrets ( yes this also reduced my hullspace by like 5 pts to further serve to make the design unique )

Using that simple method you can create some truly unique ships with minimal effort as opposed to worrying about balance because it is actually kept in basic check…

Hope this helped some..