Hi Rogue Trader fans!

This week I have another short-but-sweet designer diary featuring the second preview for the Rogue Trader core rulebook. This time, the preview focuses on three pages from Chapter VIII: Starships—enjoy!

Sounds intresting looking forward to seeing what my group can produce. Some people in my group have been looking forward to creating unique looking ships.

Looking good. Can't wait to get my hands on it.

Well, I can't wait till I can give my acolytes a small frigate or so.

But first I need ascension.....and Rogue Trader...Gni

Thoug I do have one quick quistion, I always imagened these ships, including the frigates to have a few rowes of broadside guns besides one or two "hardpoints".
Though these might cost extra SP and cost you precious cargo-space...

Cool.  But what about Destroyers (or are these covered by the Frigates as they're both Escorts)? Or heavier ships such as Heavy Cruisers and Battle Cruisers (ignoring the Battleships for a moment), will they be covered in future releases? Actually, Destroyers would be more useful, but still it looks good (so far; we're watching you)...

Until now I've been happy with everything I've seen about Rogue Trader.  I was pretty pumped when I read this update and then I got to the accelerations.

Now admittedly Warhammer fiction isn't full of a lot of easily calculatable speeds and acceleration for ships so the number of examples is limited, but there are some and the majority indicate double and triple digit gravities of acceleration (Flight of the Eisenstien has one of the best examples).

So seeing ship acceleration being measured in single digit gravities didn't make me a happy camper.

Now I realize that I'm seeing only part of the picture on this and I also realize that even if this does turn out to be as bad as it looks its a error that is fairly easy to deal with, but it bothers me. 

MDMann said:

My knowledge of naval catagories is hazy but a frigate is smaller then a cruiser class vessel if I remember correctly.  After that you're up to capital ships.  Of course, Battlefleet Gothic may be using a different system I'm not familiar with in which case everything I just said is completely moot.

Awesome! I'm more and more interested in the Rogue Trader. At first it seemed less interesting than Dark Heresy, but now with these ships the 'sandbox' feeling of this game has caught me. I have great hopes in you, FFG!

Still, there is one odd thing. Jericho class pilgrim vessel is described as huge and hulking at 2,25 km and 9 megatonnes, while Vagabond class merchant vessel is said to be small and agile with 2 km and 8 megatonnes. I hope that the Jericho gets upgraded for the final release to some more formidable size. Also the acceleration rates seem a bit puny. I understand that it's always hard to come up with numbers for 40k, but at least go over the top rather than too small, so that we don't end with things like 2 million Guardsmen defending Armageddon from Waaagh! or population of Scintilla being 25 billion for a world with a continent-spanning hive.

Battle Cruisers? Battleships? I hope not. This is Rogue Trader, not Battlefleet Gothic. Just being able to travel the stars as you please is massively valuable in the Imperium, let alone to do so in ships that take decades to build from Emperor-knows how many mines, factorum and processing plants. I'm quite happy with what I've seen thus far, though I am curious about the rest of the components

Santiago said:

THey probably do, it's just that the broadside guns of Imperial vessels are usually considered to be small ordinance (firing dumb-fire torpedoes, artillery pieces and lascannons etc. etc.), meant primarily to use at really close range. While the hardpoints are meant for the big guns (Lance batteries etc.)

     I'm wondering if my current game is going to turn into two seperate games, or if we play RT with Dark Heresy characters. No reason why I cant base the campaign around an Inquisitors ship- perhaps shadowing a Rogue Trader. I do know I can hardly wait for the release! Guess I'll play it by ear as to what my players are interested in.

Psion said:

Battlefleet Gothic has only a few classes of Imperial ships: Destroyers, Frigates (all considered Escorts), Light Cruisers, Cruisers, Battlecruisers and Battleships (all Capital Ships).

The Chaos forces are similar but they have Raiders instead of Frigates, no Light Cruisers and have Heavy Cruisers in place of Battlecruisers; they also have a new class Grand Cruiser between Heavy Cruisers and Battleships. 

DW

Traveller61 said:

Thank you, although that being said I second Tullio's counterpoint.  This is (more often then note) just a captain and his ship trying to improve his wealth and reputation, not some admiral leading legions of ships into battle.

So, I did some further studying:

Detection:
Ships senses, add to some percentile rolls, equals Skill Test

Manouverablity:
Added or subtracted from Pilot (Space Craft) skill test

Armour: 
Armour Point against Large Weapons (I doubt a Las Pistol would penetrate a hull)

Turret Rating:
Would these be the Broadside weapons and weapons used against small craft, fighters/bombers?

Any thoughts?

Cynical Cat said:

Well the larger ones the acceleration value is the maximum sustainable acceleration so I would guess that things like all ahead full maneuvers would be able to produce much higher accelerations. What was the Flight of the Eisenstien value again because I cant remember. Most of the hulls so far are actually cargo vessels and so not designed for rapid acceleration and deceleration.

@ MDMann - I would guess that maybe destroyers like the cobra are too given over to weapons to be an effective cargo ship and so may not have been included. Of course they may appear in a future supliment, I can easily imagine the Rogue Trader version of the Inquisitors Handbook containing loads of different hull types. Maybe the main rulebook only contains a few of each type on the basis that more will be supplied in subsequent books.

I really like the look of this and am glad for some more solid crew numbers, a whole bunch of people in my area have just gotten in to Gothic and it is great fun to play. I might need to buy some Imperial ships to use for this.

Kaihlik

I don not think they have shown us all ships, so the Cobra might still be in there...