Smallest warp capable imperial/chaos spacecraft

[Theocracity]

But if that's the only boat going that way that has space on it, or that you can afford to travel on, that's the one you take.

Or you just straight up can't get there, because if big ships aren't visiting it then it's likely a lost world or one no one wants to go to. Like I said, just because people want to get there doesn't mean they have the technical capability to do so.

As for murder-servitors, spacing people and so on, the military, Ecclesiarchy and other powerful organisations might have those options available to them, but the average commercial freighter? No, sorry. Every single crewman aboard is cost to the owner, so the crew's going to be as light as possible - the only difference between them and a smaller vessel is the larger one might have a couple of security people on board to protect the owners interests, and one or two people who can use the guns.

And if someone in a small crew tries to mutiny, which would be less of a problem anyway with a small, family based crew? Well, back to Firefly, the episode Ariel, where Mal knocks Jayne out for trying to sell out the Tam's, then shoves him in the airlock with the outer door open as Serenity's lifting for orbit. A lot easier for him to do that than a crew to round up and space a group of mutineers - which may cause a riot to break out amongst the rest of the hands.

What you're saying makes sense... for an interplanetary freighter, not one that travels through the Warp. The Warp is an entirely different and much more dangerous form of travel, and a captain who doesn't take precautions against its predations is going to be in a lot of trouble. If he needs every crew member, what happens when one gets possessed and murders people in their sleep? Is he just going to slug him in the jaw and lock him in the airlock for a stern talking-to? I still think you're in the mindset of space opera adventures instead of grim darkness.

More like, round up the boys, we're getting shot by space dock security, assuming we even get in past the system defence boats, turrets, minefields and whatever else is available.

Why would you shoot at the honorable Rogue Trader who's doing business in your port? You know he has all the proper documentation and writs. He's just settling a small business dispute - repossessing his property after a bad loan, I'm sure you don't want to hear the boring details. Besides, opening fire on my crew might make me reconsider my decision to patronize your port - and I'm sure you'd prefer to have my huge wealth rather than the cargo of some glorified handbasket....

[Sai-Lauren]

Or you just straight up can't get there, because if big ships aren't visiting it then it's likely a lost world or one no one wants to go to. Like I said, just because people want to get there doesn't mean they have the technical capability to do so.

Or it's not profitable for them, because there's not enough demand for stuff they can carry in and/or locally produced goods to fill their huge cargo bays on the way in and out, and easier routes to other systems exist, meaning they can bypass it.

What you're saying makes sense... for an interplanetary freighter, not one that travels through the Warp. The Warp is an entirely different and much more dangerous form of travel, and a captain who doesn't take precautions against its predations is going to be in a lot of trouble. If he needs every crew member, what happens when one gets possessed and murders people in their sleep? Is he just going to slug him in the jaw and lock him in the airlock for a stern talking-to? I still think you're in the mindset of space opera adventures instead of grim darkness.

Chuck him out the airlock, then rearrange the duty shifts, even if it means you're all suffering sleep deprivation when you arrive. Pretty much the same as what would happen on a bigger vessel, but with less space for them to hide in, and a lower potential bodycount.

Alternatively, what happens on a big vessel, where someone gets possessed, and by the time they're brought down, the vessels crippled through their actions - it's as possible a situation as yours is, maybe even more possible, as a small vessel might be able to be covered by a single field emitter, whilst a larger one might need multiple emitters to cover it, leading possible problems due to differences in maintenance ("emitter 9's acting up again..."), possible interference between field boundaries creating weaker spots and so on.

I could also say that you're fixated on the grimdark (aka Gothic Space Opera ).

Not every vessel is a geller field mishap waiting to happen, and even if it does, not all failures will result in someone's head spinning around as they cheerfully murder everyone aboard (the field weakens briefly, something claws at it, the field pops back up, and on arrival, the captain stands on the landing pad looking at the three, one hundred meter long parallel scrapes along the hull that weren't there when they left, or even a positive entity breaks through and does something beneficial).

It might happen often in BL novels, but that's just narrative causality and the curse of heroism kicking in.

Plus, once again, a small vessel, with a small crew, may well be below the sense level of most warp creatures, not having enough of a combined presence to be seen. Even if they are noticed, they might be dismissed as not worth the effort to take them, especially if there's a bigger vessel around.

You certainly wouldn't want to make a warp transition without checking everything works before hand, but if something fails whilst inside, you might just have enough time to fire up the backup, fix the problem or initiate an emergency shift to get out.

Why would you shoot at the honorable Rogue Trader who's doing business in your port? You know he has all the proper documentation and writs. He's just settling a small business dispute - repossessing his property after a bad loan, I'm sure you don't want to hear the boring details. Besides, opening fire on my crew might make me reconsider my decision to patronize your port - and I'm sure you'd prefer to have my huge wealth rather than the cargo of some glorified handbasket....

Aside from us talking about pirates trying to take the vessel, how about because he and his group are heavily armed and they're trying to get into a restricted area that they shouldn't have access to?

If it is his property and he doesn't take it up with the local arbites to impound it whilst they sort it out (at first anyway), or if it isn't and they try to steal it, they deserve every bullet hole they get. Plus, if the Rogue Trader appears roughly once every decade, only sometimes with valuable cargo, often with not much or even just demanding repairs and supplies whilst waving their charter around and claiming they're not responsible for docking fees, whilst the other vessels are much more regular visitors, pay their fees, and slip the dockmaster something under the table and before import duties, they're worth a lot more to the port via the merchant corporations and similar organisations, than one dilettante who's probably got the governors daughter pregnant, and press ganged a load of people into his service just because he felt like it.

Being a Rogue Trader isn't actually carte blanche to do whatever you want - it's merely carte blanche to do whatever you want in certain areas of space.

Also, would they actually want such a vessel? A Rogue Trader normally runs a light cruiser at minimum, and may have additional vessels (escorts, freighters operating as tenders etc). Such a vessel might be useful for scouting etc, and if so, and they don't already have one, then approaching the captain to work for them is a lot easier than just grabbing it. And grabbing it and giving it to someone in their entourage may wind up with the vessel flying off with a valuable cargo when your attention's elsewhere.

Plus the points other people have made about it being poorly defended and armed come back, but whilst traders tend to try and keep out of trouble if they can, Rogue Traders go looking for it.

[Theocracity]

I could also say that you're fixated on the grimdark (aka Gothic Space Opera ).

But that's what 40K is!

Most of your very specific arguments are at odds with the dominant themes and established style of the 40K setting. Grimdarkness doesn't make much sense, objectively. The only way it does make sense is by removing a lot of the options we would otherwise take for granted. You wouldn't fly around in multi-kilometer cathedrals manned by thousands of serfs if small mom-and-pop freighters were everywhere, just like you wouldn't worship machine spirits if science and technogy were a concept people understood.

Like I said before, I'm fine with the idea of a small Warp-capable vessel. But in the setting of 40K, such a ship should be an exception - and thus treated in an exceptional manner.

[Iron_Lord]

Fuel? Ooh, hang on, I know this one - how about a single burn to get you up to speed, then you shut the engines off and coast in. In space, you only need to use fuel when you have to alter course or speed. The rest of the time, that power plant's basically idling, just running life support, navigational sensors, transponder and comms.

It may take a long time to get up to a "useful" speed.

In Rogue Trader, the ship gently accelerates, continuously, all the way up to 1% of the speed of light- and it still takes a week or so to get the the jump point.

[Sai-Lauren]

Theocracity, yes, I prefer my 40k background with patches of light, rather than the darker than dark during an eclipse, at midnight, down the bottom of a coal mine with no torch or matches some people seem to favour, but to be honest, the whole background is a mess of superstition mixed with technical knowhow, there is no real consistency anywhere.

For instance, not even going into BL stuff, the AM are said to have an absolute stranglehold on technology, but the Calidus assassin has to know everything technical (amongst other things), in case they have to take on a role requiring that information in order to get to their target.

And do you think every single freighter travels with an AM adept in the engine room? If they did, aside from it diverting all those adepts from the serious business of contemplating an M8 bolt or whatever it is the AM do, the AM would rival the Administratum for size. It's more likely that the crews do the maintenance themselves (a junior apprenticing to another engineer, then either taking the role or moving to another vessel once they've finished), and the AM run the shipyards for major maintenance (which is normally based around the higher tech items), and give the vessels the equivalent of an MOT every few years, all for a fee.

And all that does is change the fluff from "the AM have a stranglehold on technology" to "the AM have a stranglehold on high technology".

The big vessels exist because they give the economies of scale, plus there's a certain arrogance that humanity can make bigger and tougher things than anyone else, marking them out as the ultimate rulers of the galaxy. I've never said anything otherwise.

The small vessels exist because they fill niches the bigger vessels cannot, or will not, take themselves.

It may take a long time to get up to a "useful" speed.

In Rogue Trader, the ship gently accelerates, continuously, all the way up to 1% of the speed of light- and it still takes a week or so to get the the jump point.

Actually, it's about a month, most jump points being in the outer system.

However, a smaller, less massive ship will accelerate more quickly for a given level of thrust than a larger vessel - it may even be able to use relatively higher levels of thrust than the bigger vessel and accelerate much more quickly, because it doesn't have to account for stressing the vessel as much. (There's a piece in the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual which covers the structural integrity fields, which basically keep the ship's shape whilst under acceleration, and the author opines that it could be an entirely possible method of operation for a vessel to deform like a balloon, but that the demands of tv prevent it).

And, if a smaller vessels can come in on a closer jump point - Mars was mentioned earlier, which is a maximum of about 250,000,000 km from earth - to travel that in one month means an average speed of 347,000 km/h.

0.01c is 10,800,000 km/h.

[Iron_Lord]

Actually, it's about a month, most jump points being in the outer system.

However, a smaller, less massive ship will accelerate more quickly for a given level of thrust than a larger vessel - it may even be able to use relatively higher levels of thrust than the bigger vessel and accelerate much more quickly, because it doesn't have to account for stressing the vessel as much. (There's a piece in the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual which covers the structural integrity fields, which basically keep the ship's shape whilst under acceleration, and the author opines that it could be an entirely possible method of operation for a vessel to deform like a balloon, but that the demands of tv prevent it).

I was figuring between a week and a month.

"maximum continuously sustainable thrust" in the Rogue Trader rules- tends to be between 2G (grand cruisers, heavy transports) and 7G (Cobra, Viper). Not the thousands of Gs routine in Star Trek.

At an acceleration of 20 metres per second per second, for 30 days, the ship's speed at the end of the trip would be 51.84 million metres per second. Which corresponds to 0.17 c. This may however be pushing the engines a bit much, and 0.2G might be more reasonable- that would put it at 0.017c in 1 month of acceleration.

[Theocracity]

Theocracity, yes, I prefer my 40k background with patches of light, rather than the darker than dark during an eclipse, at midnight, down the bottom of a coal mine with no torch or matches some people seem to favour, but to be honest, the whole background is a mess of superstition mixed with technical knowhow, there is no real consistency anywhere.

For instance, not even going into BL stuff, the AM are said to have an absolute stranglehold on technology, but the Calidus assassin has to know everything technical (amongst other things), in case they have to take on a role requiring that information in order to get to their target.

And do you think every single freighter travels with an AM adept in the engine room? If they did, aside from it diverting all those adepts from the serious business of contemplating an M8 bolt or whatever it is the AM do, the AM would rival the Administratum for size. It's more likely that the crews do the maintenance themselves (a junior apprenticing to another engineer, then either taking the role or moving to another vessel once they've finished), and the AM run the shipyards for major maintenance (which is normally based around the higher tech items), and give the vessels the equivalent of an MOT every few years, all for a fee.

And all that does is change the fluff from "the AM have a stranglehold on technology" to "the AM have a stranglehold on high technology".

The big vessels exist because they give the economies of scale, plus there's a certain arrogance that humanity can make bigger and tougher things than anyone else, marking them out as the ultimate rulers of the galaxy. I've never said anything otherwise.

The small vessels exist because they fill niches the bigger vessels cannot, or will not, take themselves.

I'm not saying that the fluff has to be super dark either. I just think some of its baroque creative flourishes don't make sense if you make easier or more efficient methods commonplace. Those easier or more efficient methods can certainly exist, but should be treated as rare elements of a forgotten time instead of an everyday occurrence. Still, if that's your style you're welcome to it - I just don't think it fits easily.

Regarding the AM, yes I do think every ship travels with an Adept, and yes I do think that makes the AM pretty large. They're a powerful organization in a galaxy full of powerful organizations; they need a way of exercising that power. You don't need a Magos to fix your lasgun, and I'm sure a powerful organization like the Assassinorium has the resources to get training - but the AM makes sure that it controls the technology that keeps the Imperium running as a way of keeping its power. I'm sure some crew members have learned basic maintenance, but appeasing the machine spirits of a Warp drive or a Gellar field is probably out of their realm. And if I were trusting the operations of an ancient device that literally sends me through Hell, I'm pretty sure I'd want someone on board - not an engine check every 50,000 light years.

[Firaxin]

But if that's the only boat going that way that has space on it, or that you can afford to travel on, that's the one you take. A bulk freighter's capacity is probably booked up years in advance, no captain's going to take the risk that he arrives somewhere, and has to scurry around looking for additional cargos to fill his hold - even if they're independant, they're almost certainly going to be aligned with a merchant group who'll do that for them.

Unlikely... unless the ship was pre-scheduled to dock there years in advance anyways. Pre-orders would just be too much extraneous/useless data for the planet's astropathic choir. Astropaths mostly only communicate in metaphor and images anyways. The captain would only know all available tickets had been bought in advance if he had a courier with a warp-capable vessel... which would be just the same waste of resources. Besides, the vast majority of income for a Rogue Trader wouldn't be booking passage, since almost no one on any given planet can afford transportation to anywhere.

And the Navigator Houses have a lot of power because they can do the long warp jumps, otherwise everyone's reduced to short hops (the difference between sailing the oceans and coast hopping from port to port), Rogue Traders only have power if they're consistently successful and thus wealthy - they're privateers, mostly operating outside the Imperium.

Not quite. Navigators are the only people capable of seeing the Astronomicon/looking into the Warp without going instantly mad. Try sailing up to a Caribbean island surrounded by miles of jutting rocks and coral reefs just underneath the surface. This is complicated by winds that constantly change speed and direction, and powerful riptides in the water that change direction at random--sometimes cancelling out the wind and other times working with the wind. Now do this with your eyes welded shut. You can't feel the wind or the spray on your skin. You can't tell whether the sails are slack or billowing. You can't feel what direction the boat is tilting or even which direction is up. You can't see the Sun, let alone where the island is. All you have control over is the rudder. Now you can unwittingly steer yourself out in the ocean, away from the island... or you can unwittingly steer towards the island and having a 99.9% chance of running aground on the reefs and rocks.

Oh, and if there's a single breach in your hull, or if you fall out of the boat, you're instantly attacked by Mako Sharks and eaten. Mako Sharks you can't hurt because they're made of un-reality. Who can detect you by yourself the same way I can smell a good cheese burger across the room even if there aren't hundreds of thousands of cheese burgers next to it...

Without a Navigator even 'short hops' are essentially an impossibility.

And if someone in a small crew tries to mutiny, which would be less of a problem anyway with a small, family based crew? Well, back to Firefly, the episode Ariel, where Mal knocks Jayne out for trying to sell out the Tam's, then shoves him in the airlock with the outer door open as Serenity's lifting for orbit. A lot easier for him to do that than a crew to round up and space a group of mutineers - which may cause a riot to break out amongst the rest of the hands.

Possession =/= mutiny. You can't pick up a daemonhost with your bare hands and throw it out the airlock. You can't headshot it (come to think of it, since the ship is so much smaller, that means weapons fire has an even greater chance of exposing the crew to the void/warp or damaging some critical component). On the bigger ships it takes a full platoon or company to take one out.

IIRC, there's plenty of fluff that suggests normal physics still works in the warp, with any exceptions usually being down to some beings conscious choice.

Really? Like what? Are you sure you're not mis-remembering physics occurring within a Gellar Field?

But just to reiterate your quote, the Viper is the smallest warp-capable vessel used by Battlefleet Calixis. That may mean there's smaller warp-capable vessels out there, but whoever's in charge of the Battlefleet deemed them too limited by their size to be useful for military purposes.

Battlefleet Calixis shouldn't be underestimated. Yes, most people've probably never heard of a sector that exists mainly within the FFG's roleplaying series... but it is one of the few sectors bordering the Eye, if I understand correctly. It's near the size of Battlefleet Cadia during the 13th Black Crusade. Also, in addition to maintaining a fleet sufficient to guard the sector against the normal range of threats and stand vigilant against the Eye, it provides all the ships for the Jericho Reach crusades, bordering the Tau Empire.

Also, there's no size figures for a warp drive - the power plant needed for a vessel could be massive (especially for warships that have to power guns and shields), but the warp-drive could be relatively small.

A good guideline is that a ship's engines & main thrusters run the latter ~1/3 of the ship. So yeah pretty massive. As for warp drives, I forget if it was in Rogue Star or Star of Damocles, but there's a scene where the main characters preside over their Mechanicus crew performing the rites necessary to install new fuel cells into the warp drive. The installation takes place within a huge, 'cavernous' room. So I can't imagine warp drives being tiny. With the exception of digi-weapons, everything in 40k is bigger than it needs to be (another good guideline).

Also, as said in the quote, power capacity for the Viper is prioritised on sensors and engines

Already taken into account--this explains why it can only fit 1 weapon mount instead of the 2 or 3 other frigates/corvettes have, why it has reduced space, why it has reduced hull integrity & armor, etc.

Take the speed and sensor power requirement off, and the power plant can be a lot smaller, saving space. The sensor package goes too, saving space again, and the Viper presumably carries a military crew, including a commissar, so you're looking at a minimum of 30-40 people. Drop that down to, say, a maximum of 10, and you've saved quite a bit of space again.

The crew is listed as 'approximately 7,500'--that's another thing I should have mentioned. These ships don't carry huge crew for fun. This isn't Star Wars where all you need is a pilot and an astromech and suddenly you can control every function of the ship. These components require huge numbers of maintenance technicians and operators,each with a small, specific task to perform, much like assembly lines before the process became automated. This is why the Starhawk has a crew of ~30 + a Mechanicus detachment. And older, more advanced tech requires even more overseers.

That's where your cargo space is coming from (admittedly it's small, but some things don't need much).[/quote]

Ok, it could be very difficult to get because it's rare. Or, it could be very difficult to get because, you know, it's front line military technology.

Probably but Inquisitors can theoretically requisition basically anything they want, so I was struck by the way an Inquisitor of any level was explicitly denoted as having a poor chance of acquiring it.

Could you buy, say, an F-18? No, but you could potentially buy a light aircraft, and fly it from one continent to another (with fuel stops as necessary of course), or if you've got the money, you could have a Learjet, kitted out as you want.

The key point of that metaphor is neither can reach the moon
You say the Starhawk is only so hard to get because its frontline military technology. I was merely pointing out how a Starhawk-sized Warp-capable vessel with even a mild ability to defend itself would be even more advanced, state-of-the-art, and rare.

Fuel? Ooh, hang on, I know this one - how about a single burn to get you up to speed, then you shut the engines off and coast in. In space, you only need to use fuel when you have to alter course or speed.

That's not how 40k-physics work. It wouldn't be Rule of Cool if the Viper's 300m long plasma thrusters weren't firing at maximum thrust the whole way.

So, say 3000 cubic feet of supplies, for a crew of 10 for a couple of months, all stacked under people's bunks, in cubby holes under airvents and cable runs, stacked in accessways, making them even more cramped and difficult to walk through, and so on?

I didn't mean to imply they couldn't carry the necessary supplies to sustain themselves, I was adding it to the list of cumulatively compounding space and components required.

Actually, you do need to lock on, it's called targetting solution, and it means when the vessel arrives at a point, there's a shot arriving at the same time.

In BFG, "Lock On" is an optional advanced rule/maneuver. This backs up the description of weapons batteries, which describe macrocannons as working in concert with each other to blanket a whole sector of space with explosive munitions that propel deleterious effects across tens if not hundreds of thousands of kilometers in every direction. The only bearing on accuracy is range to target and the direction the enemy ship is travelling, both of which represent the time the target has to slip outside of the target zone before the shells explode. So targeting solutions don't really happen normally.

And there's always the chance that if they're using the heavy guns (assuming they have the ammo for them), they could accidentally completely destroy the vessel with one shot, meaning they have to close (and PD turrets would have the same targetting issues), making it a race for safety between the pirates and their prey

Turrets don't have targeting issues according to BFG (in which they work automatically) and Rogue Trader they're a lot more accurate than the main guns.

Well, in that case, you'd stick it on a train (equivalent being maybe Terra-Ultramar) - assuming there's space on something going that way, and you can afford the cost. If it's NY-Baltimore (Cadia-Fenris), you'll stick it in a van, or give it to someone you know who's driving that way, and if it's San Fransisco-Oakland (or Terra-Alpha-Centuri), a bike courier might be all you need.

False metaphor. On any given day the warp fluctuations can cause the distance/duration for a New York--California to vary from SanFran-Oakland some days and SanFran-Vegas (going the long way around the Earth) other days. A warp-capable ship has to be ready for either. There is no reliable SanFran-Oakland journey. You want reliability, give the PCs access to the webway.

That's only Eversors, due to them being, well, barking mad psychotics dosed to their hair follicles on combat drugs.

True enough. The Stealthcraft aren't only used for Eversors though; an Inquisitor used one to deploy a Space Marine to the surface of a Tau Sept World undetected in the second Last Chancers novel.

[Iron_Lord]

Without a Navigator even 'short hops' are essentially an impossibility.

I doubt it. Rogue Trader makes quite a bit out of illegal shipping:

p314
"All illegal ships are at a considerable disadvantage compared to registered vessels. Navigators are, on the whole, loyal citizens. They are also quite rare. Interstellar travel without a Navigator is relatively slow because the maximum distance a ship can jump is only four light years- compared to 5,000 for a piloted jump. There are some Navigators who will work onboard illegal ships, but they are few and far between. The vast majority of illegal interstellar shipping is therefore locally based, usually operating within a group of close sub-sector or from peripheral inter-sectors."
This would make no sense if short hops were "essentially an impossibility".

In the novel Eye of Terror, the protagonist's merchant ship is implied to be managable by just himself and the Navigator he manages to hire- all his crew basically left after his fortunes took a turn for the worse. Its possible that it still has a lot of servitors on board, but no human crew make an appearance.

[Theocracity]

I doubt it. Rogue Trader makes quite a bit out of illegal shipping:

p314
"All illegal ships are at a considerable disadvantage compared to registered vessels. Navigators are, on the whole, loyal citizens. They are also quite rare. Interstellar travel without a Navigator is relatively slow because the maximum distance a ship can jump is only four light years- compared to 5,000 for a piloted jump. There are some Navigators who will work onboard illegal ships, but they are few and far between. The vast majority of illegal interstellar shipping is therefore locally based, usually operating within a group of close sub-sector or from peripheral inter-sectors."
This would make no sense if short hops were "essentially an impossibility".

In the novel Eye of Terror, the protagonist's merchant ship is implied to be managable by just himself and the Navigator he manages to hire- all his crew basically left after his fortunes took a turn for the worse. Its possible that it still has a lot of servitors on board, but no human crew make an appearance.

For reference, 4 light years is about the distance from Sol to Alpha Centauri - the closest star to us. So Navigator-less Warp jumps go a maximum distance of one closely situated star system.

Edit: And that's assuming favorable Warp conditions. If you're dealing with rougher conditions or poorly scouted pathways, that distance is presumably shorter.

[Idaan]

I doubt it. Rogue Trader makes quite a bit out of illegal shipping:

p314
"All illegal ships are at a considerable disadvantage compared to registered vessels. Navigators are, on the whole, loyal citizens. They are also quite rare. Interstellar travel without a Navigator is relatively slow because the maximum distance a ship can jump is only four light years- compared to 5,000 for a piloted jump. There are some Navigators who will work onboard illegal ships, but they are few and far between. The vast majority of illegal interstellar shipping is therefore locally based, usually operating within a group of close sub-sector or from peripheral inter-sectors."
This would make no sense if short hops were "essentially an impossibility".

In the novel Eye of Terror, the protagonist's merchant ship is implied to be managable by just himself and the Navigator he manages to hire- all his crew basically left after his fortunes took a turn for the worse. Its possible that it still has a lot of servitors on board, but no human crew make an appearance.

The same applies to Chartist ships (as mentioned in the Warp travel section of RT main rulebook), as most cannot afford a Navigator. And Chartist captains make up the majority of interstellar traffic in the Imperium. It's the Navigated ships that are exceptional, not the other way around.

[Iron_Lord]

The Chartist captains are part of the Merchant Fleets- which come under the Adminsitratum:

p310:
"The vast majority (of interstellar ships) belong to the Administratum, the administrative branch of the Adeptus Terra"

p315:
"The combined merchant fleets comprise almost 90% of all stellar spacecraft in the Imperium"

so I'm pretty sure the captain doesn't have to hire a Navigator- the captain tends to be appointed to command a vessel by fleet officials- except in the case of hereditary captains.

Cival fleets exist (trading cartels, families, etc) but these make up a very small proportion compared to the merchant fleets and the Navy,

[Hunterindarkness]

Well as the OP is asking a question based upon the RPG's, I shall use those to answer. Rogue Trader shows us the smallest so far is .95 Kilometers with s crew of 7'500. Now it also has 29 ship spaces. You need a few things for a ship.Plasma drives,Wrap engines, Geller field, voidshiled, Life support, crew quarters and a bridge. Now using Non-Acrotech items this gives you a minimum of
Plasma drives: Jovian class 1 (8)
Wrap engines: Strelov 1 (10)
Geller field: Standard (0)
voidshield: Single (1)
Life support: M-1.r Life sustainers (1)
crew quarters: Slave-crew Quarters (1)
bridge: Combat/commerce (1)


So a total of 22 Meaning with no room for weapons or anything else you need 22 spaces. With bare minimum weapons say a single set of thunderstrike Macrocannons you need 24 spaces. That is simply 5 less then the Viper at 950 meters. So maybe 750 meters at best for one of 24 spaces. Now if you go Archotech you can do smaller by 4 points. So 20 spaces for one single weapon or 18 for no weapons. Maybe that is getting at the 400-500 meter range, but past that it would be damned rare. It is the size of the wrap engines that gets you. I have found nothing that makes them smaller, they may be out there but everyone seen so for makes wrap travel faster normally but also makes it larger.



You can also choose to have a Servitor crew upgrade. Which means most if not all the crew are Servitors. So you can eily do a "crew" or two to three with Sevitors or some kind or achotech/hertek filling the rest of the ship. I am gonna say you at lest need 400 meters with an achrotech ship, with a "modern" ship 650-750 is the bare minimum you are gonna get.

[Theocracity]

Well as the OP is asking a question based upon the RPG's, I shall use those to answer. Rogue Trader shows us the smallest so far is .95 Kilometers with s crew of 7'500. Now it also has 29 ship spaces. You need a few things for a ship.Plasma drives,Wrap engines, Geller field, voidshiled, Life support, crew quarters and a bridge. Now using Non-Acrotech items this gives you a minimum of
Plasma drives: Jovian class 1 (8)
Wrap engines: Strelov 1 (10)
Geller field: Standard (0)
voidshield: Single (1)
Life support: M-1.r Life sustainers (1)
crew quarters: Slave-crew Quarters (1)
bridge: Combat/commerce (1)


So a total of 22 Meaning with no room for weapons or anything else you need 22 spaces. With bare minimum weapons say a single set of thunderstrike Macrocannons you need 24 spaces. That is simply 5 less then the Viper at 950 meters. So maybe 750 meters at best for one of 24 spaces. Now if you go Archotech you can do smaller by 4 points. So 20 spaces for one single weapon or 18 for no weapons. Maybe that is getting at the 400-500 meter range, but past that it would be damned rare. It is the size of the wrap engines that gets you. I have found nothing that makes them smaller, they may be out there but everyone seen so for makes wrap travel faster normally but also makes it larger.



You can also choose to have a Servitor crew upgrade. Which means most if not all the crew are Servitors. So you can eily do a "crew" or two to three with Sevitors or some kind or achotech/hertek filling the rest of the ship. I am gonna say you at lest need 400 meters with an achrotech ship, with a "modern" ship 650-750 is the bare minimum you are gonna get.

Well researched! So based on that, we can assume that it is possible to have a smaller-scale ship with a small crew. It's just going to be weak, vulnerable, short-ranged, full of creepy servitors, and with barely any accommodations for passengers or cargo. And even then, it's only small by Imperial standards. You can get even smaller if it's archaeotech, but then it adds 'valuable' to its list of problematic qualities.

I think that fulfills the requirements of 40K for me.

Edit: I also think these ships would not be that common because of their intrinsic qualities. Sure there might be a need for small-scale transport or trade between systems. But due to the expense of the ship (servitors dont come cheap) and the minuscule cargo size the captain would need to charge outrageous prices to make a profit. Even then, it's probably less of a 'mom and pop with plucky crew' type - seeing as how you're jammed into the tiny amount of free space in front of a giant engine with the bare minimum of life support and surrounded by servitors. I would think the people who run these things - which, it should be noted, are making blind jumps through the Warp - would be more than a little unhinged.

[Iron_Lord]

I'm not sure how big the Wandering Star in Eye of Terror was supposed to be- but this does seem like a good starting point- with servitor crew, 500-odd m long, and so forth.

[Hunterindarkness]

Well researched! So based on that, we can assume that it is possible to have a smaller-scale ship with a small crew. It's just going to be weak, vulnerable, short-ranged, full of creepy servitors, and with barely any accommodations for passengers or cargo. And even then, it's only small by Imperial standards. You can get even smaller if it's archaeotech, but then it adds 'valuable' to its list of problematic qualities.

I think that fulfills the requirements of 40K for me.

Thank ya. And yes that is the gist of it. You can go smaller with a Modified Jovian class 1 drive (the archotech) and it would be enough to have people after your ship. The only other way to cut size would be a smaller Warp engine. There is not one in print, and such a thing would be near unique as everything I have seen makes them larger if "faster" or safer. But you are right the ship would be small, little real cargo capacity, unarmed or way under armed,Light Armor and fragile. It is also unlikely to be able to carry much in the way off support craft, nothing the size of a guncutter for sure. And if it does have inside docking space for even a tiny transport you most likely cut your ships stores down to a few weeks. At best you could possible get 2-3 months out of it in range if you had a servitor crew.

[Charax]

So a total of 22 Meaning with no room for weapons or anything else you need 22 spaces. With bare minimum weapons say a single set of thunderstrike Macrocannons you need 24 spaces. That is simply 5 less then the Viper at 950 meters. So maybe 750 meters at best for one of 24 spaces. Now if you go Archotech you can do smaller by 4 points. So 20 spaces for one single weapon or 18 for no weapons. Maybe that is getting at the 400-500 meter range, but past that it would be damned rare. It is the size of the wrap engines that gets you. I have found nothing that makes them smaller, they may be out there but everyone seen so for makes wrap travel faster normally but also makes it larger.

You can also choose to have a Servitor crew upgrade. Which means most if not all the crew are Servitors. So you can eily do a "crew" or two to three with Sevitors or some kind or achotech/hertek filling the rest of the ship. I am gonna say you at lest need 400 meters with an achrotech ship, with a "modern" ship 650-750 is the bare minimum you are gonna get.

Wow, that's a...LOT of speculation and unsupported assumptions wrapped in actual calculations to make them seem more reasonable. You're actually piling assumption upon assumption so that while the end conclusion seems reasonable, it falls apart if any of your assumptions are incorrect, including:

- The minimum size for a ship is equal to the minimum size for the components within it
(A four-seater car can hold 4 people. That doesn't mean it's the same size as 4 people + the car's components)

- That the ship's size can be extrapolated accurately from the Ship Size of the components
(Two four-seater cars can vary wildly in size, saying "It's a 4-seater car" doesn't accurately reflect its size)

- That a hull containing only 24 SS in components is 200m shorter than one containing 29 SS in components.
There's really no support for this anywhere, you've basically just gone "It's 750m at best because I say so"

In fact, any actual sizes you mention other than 950m (750m, 400-500m, 400m, 650-750m) have no basis anywhere, they're no more supported by the RPG or the background than someone wanting a warp-capable Starfury. They just look more reasonable because you've added some logical-looking calculations from the RPG.

Comparing the Viper to similar ships of its type, it already looks like the Viper's about as trimmed-down it can get - other hulls have a comparatively small Ship Space increase in relation to a huge jump in hull size (the Iconoclast, for example, is 350m longer, twice as wide, 1.2 megatonnes more mass and over twice the crew requirements and yet has only 3 SS more component space - and it's already described as being compact)

As for the Servitor Crew...*shudder* I hate the idea, but it's at least in the background. Personally I think it's one of the worst things in all of 40K. Thank you, Mr "Navigator-servitor" Abnett.

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake, there's no shame in running around in a standard class of ship, especially when you get to customise the interior of it, adding ancient or alien tech and replacing thousands of crew with 75 servitors (1% of the 7500 crew a Viper needs). There is simply no need for anyone to have smaller warp-capable ships, especially when smaller ships can just ride inside larger ones for the duration of warp travel (Like Eisenhorn did, and he's the poster boy for Special Snowflake Syndrome).

[Hunterindarkness]

Wow, that's a...LOT of speculation and unsupported assumptions wrapped in actual calculations to make them seem more reasonable. You're actually piling assumption upon assumption so that while the end conclusion seems reasonable, it falls apart if any of your assumptions are incorrect, including:

- The minimum size for a ship is equal to the minimum size for the components within it
(A four-seater car can hold 4 people. That doesn't mean it's the same size as 4 people + the car's components)

- That the ship's size can be extrapolated accurately from the Ship Size of the components
(Two four-seater cars can vary wildly in size, saying "It's a 4-seater car" doesn't accurately reflect its size)

- That a hull containing only 24 SS in components is 200m shorter than one containing 29 SS in components.
There's really no support for this anywhere, you've basically just gone "It's 750m at best because I say so"

In fact, any actual sizes you mention other than 950m (750m, 400-500m, 400m, 650-750m) have no basis anywhere, they're no more supported by the RPG or the background than someone wanting a warp-capable Starfury. They just look more reasonable because you've added some logical-looking calculations from the RPG.

Comparing the Viper to similar ships of its type, it already looks like the Viper's about as trimmed-down it can get - other hulls have a comparatively small Ship Space increase in relation to a huge jump in hull size (the Iconoclast, for example, is 350m longer, twice as wide, 1.2 megatonnes more mass and over twice the crew requirements and yet has only 3 SS more component space - and it's already described as being compact)

As for the Servitor Crew...*shudder* I hate the idea, but it's at least in the background. Personally I think it's one of the worst things in all of 40K. Thank you, Mr "Navigator-servitor" Abnett.

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake, there's no shame in running around in a standard class of ship, especially when you get to customise the interior of it, adding ancient or alien tech and replacing thousands of crew with 75 servitors (1% of the 7500 crew a Viper needs). There is simply no need for anyone to have smaller warp-capable ships, especially when smaller ships can just ride inside larger ones for the duration of warp travel (Like Eisenhorn did, and he's the poster boy for Special Snowflake Syndrome).

well first Off the OP asked a question for one of the RPG's. So I looked to the RPG that covers ships in great detail. Yes it is guesswork, but guess work based upon books I have. It is a raider class(which are the smallest).

Hazeroth: 1.5 Km=35 spaces
Havoc: 1.6km= 40 spaces
Cobra: 1.5km=35 spaces
Shrike: 2 Km=35 spaces
Iconoclast: 1.3 Km=32 spaces:
Viper:.95=29 spaces

If you notice the smaller the spaces, then normally the smaller the size. The odd man out is the shrike. It did give me a good base to do my guesswork. Another thing is the wrap engines which are always 10 spaces. Which gives you a good idea of how far you can cut it down. The viper is as you say cut down hard, but it leaves room still, we see that 1.5-2km raiders have between 35 and 40 spaces. They got smaller and lost spaces. So yes I pulled the numbers out of thin air based upon the information I had to work from. You can cut more spaces out of a viper, that is not a question. The math shows it has extra for a bare minium systems. If you cut out right at 25% of the room in a ship, it will get smaller. How much smaller really does depend. But We had a 35space ship and if we reduced it by say 84% in ship spaces that would give us just about 29. And by the ships we have cut it from 1.5 KM to.95 (about 35% smaller.)

So what is roughly 20-30% off .95? Well that would be 665-760meters. With an Archtech drive you can get smaller if we use the ships we do have as examples.


This is the best guess I could give the OP based upon the real data I did have. I never said it was written in a book as a fact, but it is based upon the hard facts and rough system we do have access to.

[Sai-Lauren]

I'm not saying that the fluff has to be super dark either. I just think some of its baroque creative flourishes don't make sense if you make easier or more efficient methods commonplace. Those easier or more efficient methods can certainly exist, but should be treated as rare elements of a forgotten time instead of an everyday occurrence. Still, if that's your style you're welcome to it - I just don't think it fits easily.

Basically, I'm thinking of something like 10-15% of all vessels, but carrying less than 3% of all cargos by volume, with by far the majority based out of the safer systems that havn't seen any conflict in centuries. That "rare" enough for you?

Regarding the AM, yes I do think every ship travels with an Adept, and yes I do think that makes the AM pretty large. They're a powerful organization in a galaxy full of powerful organizations; they need a way of exercising that power. You don't need a Magos to fix your lasgun, and I'm sure a powerful organization like the Assassinorium has the resources to get training - but the AM makes sure that it controls the technology that keeps the Imperium running as a way of keeping its power. I'm sure some crew members have learned basic maintenance, but appeasing the machine spirits of a Warp drive or a Gellar field is probably out of their realm. And if I were trusting the operations of an ancient device that literally sends me through Hell, I'm pretty sure I'd want someone on board - not an engine check every 50,000 light years.

IMO, the AM do get their power by being the ones who can produce warp drives, power plants, and all the other advanced tech, and choosing who they sell it to.

However, they can also sell, well, for want of a better phrase, training courses - that engineer might have a little certificate saying "Mechanicus approved", or something similar, which means he's been taught how to do fairly complicated maintenance, but has also sworn an oath that prevents him from telling anyone who's not also certificated how it's done (and the AM may even enforce it with a small implant).

One of the Cain novels (the first Perlia one) references a couple of people who eventually become lay-members of the Mechanicus, so it's possible that such people do a lot of the actual mundane work, and the real AM only show up if they need to justify the huge fees they charge, or if someone official's watching.

Unlikely... unless the ship was pre-scheduled to dock there years in advance anyways. Pre-orders would just be too much extraneous/useless data for the planet's astropathic choir. Astropaths mostly only communicate in metaphor and images anyways. The captain would only know all available tickets had been bought in advance if he had a courier with a warp-capable vessel... which would be just the same waste of resources. Besides, the vast majority of income for a Rogue Trader wouldn't be booking passage, since almost no one on any given planet can afford transportation to anywhere.

It almost certainly is, the owner's got the insane cost of the vessel to try and pay off after all.

This isn't Elite, you don't show up in system, sell what you've got in the cargo bay, then buy what's cheap and look where you can sell it as you wander across the galaxy - most freighters will probably be independant contractors for local mercantile or shipping companies, who basically act as go-betweens, talking with clients who need to get goods shipped from one world to another, then organising freighters to do it. The freighters themselves will pretty much just run between two, maybe three worlds, although some might tour the local sector, and a few will have a long-haul route across the segmentum.

Possession =/= mutiny. You can't pick up a daemonhost with your bare hands and throw it out the airlock.

But you can override the internal pressure doors and space it that way, or seal them and pump the air out, eventually the host will die, and the daemon will be unable to sustain it.

You can't headshot it (come to think of it, since the ship is so much smaller, that means weapons fire has an even greater chance of exposing the crew to the void/warp or damaging some critical component). On the bigger ships it takes a full platoon or company to take one out.

Read the new Cain novel yet? Spoiler time:

Near the start, there's a servitor possessed by a daemon as their transport leaves the warp (it's old, battered, decrepid, poorly maintained - and big enough to carry the entire Valhallan regiment).

If Jurgen hadn't been on the bridge with Cain watching the transition (which is described as the most dangerous part of warp travel, not the actual journey), forget a platoon, the entire vessel would have been possessed and lost, even with the regiments preacher to help exorcise it.

End of the day, it doesn't matter what size of vessel you've got, if something gets on board, you're probably toast.

As for the cheeseburger analogy, finding a small vessel could be more like trying to find the slider-sized burger by smell, when you're blindfolded, stood in a sports stadium, with the PA on full blast, fans blowing the air around randomly, people running past with massive trays full of other burgers at random, and someone kicking you in the shins. Oh, and you've been told that if you can grab one of the big trays, you can have whatever you like off that.

Want another analogy? Ok, take 10 LEDs of one colour, tape them together and connect them to a power source - that's your small freighter. Do the same for 200 LEDS of a different colour (your large freighter), and 20,000 of an third colour (a mass conveyance/cruiser).

Now stand a mile away and look at them - which colour is the most visible?

Really? Like what? Are you sure you're not mis-remembering physics occurring within a Gellar Field?

As I said, IIRC. I'll have a search around, but there's bells ringing about the first BFG novel (Execution Hour?) where the Imperial vessel drops it's Gellar Fields down to dangerous levels to tempt in a chaos vessel that's shadowing it, then maneuvers and fires exactly like in normal space to destroy it.

Battlefleet Calixis shouldn't be underestimated. Yes, most people've probably never heard of a sector that exists mainly within the FFG's roleplaying series... but it is one of the few sectors bordering the Eye, if I understand correctly. It's near the size of Battlefleet Cadia during the 13th Black Crusade. Also, in addition to maintaining a fleet sufficient to guard the sector against the normal range of threats and stand vigilant against the Eye, it provides all the ships for the Jericho Reach crusades, bordering the Tau Empire.

Definately shouldn't be underestimated, if they're near the Eye in the far North of the galaxy, yet sending vessels all the way over to Tau space in the far south-east.

As for the build, well, I've not looked at the FFG stuff, but I'd hazard a guess that it's designed best for vessels running at somewhere between 40 and 50 component points.

And that's the smallest that can be built using those rules at the moment, not necessarily the smallest possible in universe - if FFG decide tomorrow that they want something smaller, they'll produce a list for smaller parts.

[Theocracity]

Basically, I'm thinking of something like 10-15% of all vessels, but carrying less than 3% of all cargos by volume, with by far the majority based out of the safer systems that havn't seen any conflict in centuries. That "rare" enough for you?

3% is an awful big number when dealing with the Imperium's size - especially if you're including the Military and Administratum under 'all ships.' Its too big of a number for me, but since we have no real data to work from we'd both be guessing based on feel.

IMO, the AM do get their power by being the ones who can produce warp drives, power plants, and all the other advanced tech, and choosing who they sell it to.

However, they can also sell, well, for want of a better phrase, training courses - that engineer might have a little certificate saying "Mechanicus approved", or something similar, which means he's been taught how to do fairly complicated maintenance, but has also sworn an oath that prevents him from telling anyone who's not also certificated how it's done (and the AM may even enforce it with a small implant).

One of the Cain novels (the first Perlia one) references a couple of people who eventually become lay-members of the Mechanicus, so it's possible that such people do a lot of the actual mundane work, and the real AM only show up if they need to justify the huge fees they charge, or if someone official's watching.

The AM is a cult, not a technical institute. If they've taught you something without initiating you into their holy mysteries, then it's probably something so small that it's useless on its own. You certainly couldn't manage a Warp drive without being inducted.

Definately shouldn't be underestimated, if they're near the Eye in the far North of the galaxy, yet sending vessels all the way over to Tau space in the far south-east.

The Calixis sector has a giant Warp gate of mysterious provenance that leads to the Jerhico Reach in the East. The Deathwatch book has a lot of information on this.

And that's the smallest that can be built using those rules at the moment, not necessarily the smallest possible in universe - if FFG decide tomorrow that they want something smaller, they'll produce a list for smaller parts.

Right, but you could argue that about anything. Let's argue based on the information we have, not the information that would fit our arguments better if it existed.