With the recent Holiday sale I guess I'm going to try and make my way back into Rogue trader, so I was thinking of trying to make a kind of ship but I don't know if I can (the books haven't shipped yet) and wanted to ask the community.

Basically I wanted to make a mechanicus vessel, is that possible, or should I just make a general ship and say the mechanicus own it. Basically are there mini faction ships as of yet.

Keep in mind the last time I looked at Rogue trader there was only the core book out.

Into the Storm has a background package called Thulian Explorator vessel, which makes any vessel a ship that was once customized or purpose built for the Ad-Mech. Background packages replace the Machine Spirit oddity and Past History rolls you normally make.

The only Mechanicus specific hull I'm aware of is the Lathe class Monitor Cruiser, which is a light cruiser.

Well that's a little sad, Into the Storm is the only book I didn't manage to pick up from the sale.

There are a few options.

Battlefleet Koronus has the Goliath-Class Factory Ship, a Mechanicus-styled transport, unique in that it can harvest plasma for its engines directly from stars.

There are some other components that have a Mechanicus-flavor to them such as the:

• Manufactorum (Battlefleet Koronus)
• Servitor Crew upgrade (Into the Storm)
• Crew Reclamation Facility (Core Rulebook)
• Murder-Servitors (Core Rulebook)
• Laboratorium (Hostile Acquisitions)
• Pharmacia (Hostile Acquisitions)

And none of this counts the sheer amount of archaeotech components that the Mechanicus drool over...

It all depends on what you actually want to do with the ship. The Adeptus Mechanicus maintains its own fleet and armies, so they could have anything from transports to raiders to grand crusiers. Nearly anything can be an Adeptus Mechanicus ship.

If you picked up Hostile Acquisitions there is a Mechanicus Explorator cruiser in there, which you can reverse-engineer into a ship for your players, which is in fact what I did. I used some guess work for it, but it's served them pretty well

If you picked up Hostile Acquisitions there is a Mechanicus Explorator cruiser in there, which you can reverse-engineer into a ship for your players, which is in fact what I did. I used some guess work for it, but it's served them pretty well

I did pick that up, mind telling me what you ended up doing?

Thanks jabber for the list.

I added up all of the known components to attempt to factor out the known power and space, then guessed on the remaining weapons. This is what I got for the "base" stats of the Vigil

Speed: 4

Manoeuvrability: +7

Detection: +15

Hull Integrity: 74

Armour: 20 (22 Prow)

Turret Rating: 1

Maximum Space: 75

Weapons: 2 Port, 2 Starboard, 1 Dorsal

Power: The reactor supplies 75, of which 34 is accounted for by the non-weapon components. This leaves a maximum of 41 power to spread around the 5 lance weapons on board, so that was a little nuts.

Space: 37 space is accounted for, and in general Cruisers without integrated components hover around 75 Space, so I had 38 Space to use for the weapons.

The weapons are where things sort of broke down, because with 41 Power and 38 Space to be divvied up among 5 weapons, 4 of which were the same. The four identical lances were all Strength 2, which apart from the Las-Burner all require 13 power and 6 space in the book (seriously, they're all the same). That made us go WAY OVER our power limit, so I decided that the VX22 SunWrath Lance Batteries were actually the VX22 Lance Broadsides, which had the ability to fire twice in one turn. They gained the following proflie.

VX22 Sunwrath Lance Broadside

Power: 18

Space: 14

Strength: 2

Damage: 1d10 + 3

Crit Rating: 3

Range: 6

Special: Archeotech. Takes up two weapon component slots where they are installed. When firing, may attack with them twice in one turn. Gain a +10 to all Ballistic Skill Tests with this weapon

That took up 36 power and 28 space, leaving us with 5 power and 10 space for the remaining lance. A Strength 1 Lance is not that powerful however, and since it was Archoetech then fine, it uses a lot of space for streamlined power flow

VX23 Sunwrath Extended Lance

Power: 5

Space: 10

Strength: 1

Damage: 1d10 + 3

Crit Rating: 3

Range: 10

Special: Archeotech. Gain a +10 to all Ballistic Skill Tests with this weapon

In Stars of Iniquity explorator ships are descripted as being armed with plasma broadsides, lances and "more esoteric weapons" all backed up by murder servitors carried in assault boats (p. 126) so landing bays also may come in handy. Hard to tell if all those goodies come on single ship. If so you'll need imho at least battle cruiser hull to begin work with and by putting in some components suggested by Jabberwoky we're yet again looking at repulsive grand cruiser (which by "ancient cruiser" rule sounds just fine).