Sammail said:

the thing about 40k Space Combat is it's not "fast paced".  The gameplay might be, but one turn could represent 10-30 minutes of real time...or more.

One thing you would have to figure in, which would be really big in this game as opposed to others, is morale.  For instance, the Captain orders the Gunnery Commander to fire the left broadsides.  They will fire, but will they be accurate?  Fire quickly?  Will they be reloaded in time for the next order?  Morale is a big deal in 40k and it should be a big deal in RT, as well as crew experience.

What I'm getting at, is a Cleric character need not necessarily sit in his stateroom waiting for the battle to be over.  He could be on the Gunnery deck or Engineering cheering the crew on in the name of the Emperor and factoring into the outcome (however slight) of the battle.

Cynical Cat said:

I quite agree and this is what I'm hoping for.  More even.  BFG dumbed down a lot of the original spaceship-oriented fluff and I'd like to see it make a comeback.

If my Rogue Trader lost his flagship after 3 dice rolls (d6, no less) in a BFG game, I would quickly sour.

I'm imagining a game where 2-3 ships per side, Cruiser or smaller, can bust it out in about an hour.  Or one huge ship per side.  Or one huge ship vs. 2-3 'medium' ships.  I think there should be the huge ships, sure.  But the emphasis should be on the smaller ships so you can have some depth and have as many chances for player interaction as possible.

BFG was never intended to be ship to ship combat though. If you take 2-3 cruisers out with some fighters and missles the game will be over too quickly. At the RPG level you have more opportunity for combat with smaller groups of ships like patrols and exploratory groups. This is where they have the opportunity to shine with rules to represent that. This is where you can come up with detailed rules over what's happening with fighters and how to deal with system failures, or weapons batteries being knocked out.

BFG was always intended to be at a MACRO level and not to get into the minutae of what's going on with each individual ship.

Now, I'm hoping with Rogue Trader we get some of the detail. This could be really good stuff. Each fighter counts, each missle fired can make a difference. Tactics could make a big differnce.

People in this game would think twice about ramming another ship when they could end up busting up their ride permanently.

There is what I'd like and then there is reality. I agree in large part with the initial post but what he describes is a holy grail that I've yet to see anywhere (and believe me, I've looked). The game I've seen come closest is Lightning Strike (LS) by Dream Pod 9 based on their Jovian Chronicles setting. However, LS is a wargame when you get right down to it and although it's designed for fleet combat of 3 or 4 capital ships per side with supporting fighters and mecha, it is on a slightly different scale and would take some time to convert.

Anyhoo, getting back on topic, I feel like RPG companies have a phobia against space combat rules. I get the sense they don't want to bother with them which is too bad really. They probably think space combat rules have no place in a role playing game. I think they are wrong but that's just me.

Well the only other game I have played that involved ship-to-ship broadsides style combat was the Seven Seas system.  I will say that system was pretty fun and easy and could be abstracted or played with minis (although it was definitely more on the abstract side).  

What I really liked and what would fit easily into the DH/RT style game system would be a "starship character sheet" that resembled a regular character sheet with alot of easy parallels to the stats already in the system.  For example perhaps BS is the ships targeting ability, and WS is its abiility to fight in a boarding action, Strength might be its cannon power, Toughness its hull strength, Agility is perhaps its shields.  I mean perhaps all the parallels aren't there but it would be nice if the two systems integrated.

What I am really wondering is what the careers are going to be like - I mean are the players going to be Navigators and other shipboard personnel?  Will there be a meta-management aspect with entire departments at the players command (Bridge crew, Gun crew, Engineering crew....etc) or perhaps each player will command his own small ship in the Rogue Trader fleet.  The answers to those questions will definitely define how the space combat will interface with the PCs.

i really really pity my players when it comes to space battles.  I have a degree in physics so they are going to be dealing with a lot of relatavistic phenomena,  yay length contraction and time dilation effects.  so they will either have to try and do all space battles at a crawl or go at fractions of light speed and just hope for the best.

its maybe kind of cruel of me punishing my players because i have a good understanding of these effects and they don't, but hopefully it will add a realistic feel to the game.

darkstar952 said:

I know the feeling, I'm coming towards the end of my masters just now. If you have the opportunity, read Gav Thorpe's Horus Heresy era short story The Call of the Lion in Tales of Heresy, it deals with a rather plausible entry of a fleet into a system. Which is to say: he explicitly makes it take days, requires a massive array of probes and scanners to be dispersed across the system, has tedious ways to make contact with other vessels and makes the whole 'exiting the warp' thing the exceedingly ponderous and long-winded thing it really should be. Not tedious/ponderous/long-winded to read, of course.

I've had a slight change of heart, myself. I think I'm warming to a more abstract game in which it's roleplayed as being quite fast paced, but that it's implicit that a quick 10min roleplay 'skirmish' probably could represent something well over a few hours in game time.

Getting the character 'levels' correct strikes me as a worrying one. That the characters themselves play the Rogue Trader makes it difficult to imagine how it'd work thematically, but I'd be happy enough to believe it's possible to do it very well. Time for some experiments!