Gun cutter seems to be a lot larger than a Valk, 30 transport capacity compared to the Valk's 10 (12?), which is why I mentioned the Aquila.

As far as armament goes, Aquila is roughly equivalent to an unmodified Valk, the 'cutter a modified one.

That said, the gun-cutter does seem to be the best fit, not least because I don't want a bunch of pissed of marines asking for their gunship back

Well one of the books I read mentioned the IG especially the storm troopers do use Thunderhawks. From a abstract rules perspective Im planning on using the gun cutter template for the TH and add some things as I see gun cutter as more of a class.

The biggest question is how tough and well armed to make the TH from a game balance perspective.

The reason I pose this question to myself is the aquilla and the cutter both seem to lack ship to ship capabilities. Any thing can land on a flight deck when not being shot at when you are being fired on it's a bit tougher. Cobras get around this by having built in meltaborers. I presume full fledged cobras can also fly back to the carrier but maybe not.

The way I see boarding actions going in most hit and run actions is ships fly over attach melta through. Get out and raise hell if at all possible once they've done as much as they can they fall back to the shuttle seal the hatch blow the disengage charges and the hang out and play cards while praying their side wins and can therefore pick them up.

For more elite/expensive/pcs based forces they need a way to get them there and get them back safely the bomber and close air support capabilities of the thunderhawks are just a nice bonus.

I hadn't considered it from a ship to ship perspective. A Thunderhawk is certainly more heavily armed than a gun-cutter, although I've no idea on actual stats for a thunderhawk cannon or a turbolaser.

Nah, no worries. I kinda figured he was included because of his abilities and track record. I almost picked duty to house (which meant maybe some ancestors were loyal retainers of the house of somesuch, but didn't). As it stands, it can easily be that he came recommended by one of the ecclesiarch familiar with the House as a representative on the endeavor... or he's a distant cousin and they wanted a missionary. I could go with either directions, you can pick.

Maybe add a front loading/debarking point on the gun cutter, with included metla cutters to breach hulls? None of the ships include any sort of hull breaching methods, even though core and ITS mention it being possible with different ships. So I guess it is up to you. Perhaps tons of front armour, metla charges and shaped 'disengage' charges that blow the 'cutter away from the ship without backlash damage to it?

When I ran my last game I just gave all the ships 5 front armour higher, and said they had attached meltas and other charges to allow them to penetrate a hull, create a seal, and later on break away as needed. It's really up to you. Your gm and can change fluff if you even want to in my books.

Or suits of TDA for say a dozen selected crew members? Wouldn't need cutters then

He'll why not get a fleet of furies while we are at it . Actually that's not a bad idea down the road

Because you've only got 1 psychic fighter pilot on staff?

Uh, Zyerne? No offense, but I think you need to revise your estimate of the Divine Inspiration's crew size. The smallest starship in the core book, the Vagabond-class merchant trader on page 194, has a crew of 18,000. Lurker has described the Inspiration as a light cruiser; the Dauntless-class light cruiser described on page 196 takes a crew of 65,000. Your "six thousand" figure is... a tad low. By a little over an order of magnitude.

Bah, you just have to work 'em harder. Triple shifts and methamphetamine for everyone! They'll be fine down there in the underdecks.

* post removed due to waking up and realizing it made no sense*

I did manage to rather misread that didn't I. I'll edit.

At this point do anything your character needs to do at the party or on scintilia. I'm fluid on how long this takes. Around tuesday or wed at the latest I'll post the transition to the ship unless a lot of characters are tied up with other business (we can flex the timeline if it's just one or two with stragling business) by next weekend you'll be at port wander and the divine inspiration.

I kind of like the idea of distant relation as it stands to reason that many times the noble houses would link themselves through marriage at the least. Given the long lifespans available to the upper classes it's quite possible their family trees branch out quite far. Plus given the genelocks and the other things the game does it could be a useful plot point.

sounds fine by me. Always good to have a backup in the genes department I guess for the house. Also good that the backup in question knows his place in the House, a humble lowly missionary... who'll bring fire and brimstone to all those that oppose the Emp- I digress.

I will get th next big post that moves the story along tonight or tommorow during the day. Next stop, port wander!

Just to confirm out of character to speed up things you plan is to warp in on the chartist disengage while still out of system and fly to the DI in the thunderhawk. This is the recommended option if you want to get a feel of how things sit aboard ship before risking intrigue aboard station.

We have a Thunderhawk? I thought that was a Space Marine transport/landing/assault craft. Do we also get our own Astartes Chapter?

I thought he meant a SM thunderhawk at first too (the ones that carry whole companies), but it is more of an IG/human slimmed version. And straight to the ship I would say is the best option. Get the crew, squatter and merc loyalty first, start repairs then go to the port.

Forgive me for being cranky right at this moment but please if your not going to read a post and a fairly long drawn out explanation for my logic(typed out on my phone no less) a few pages up please don't make snarky jokes.

You guys win you can ride into battle in an aquila lander huzzah!

Oh and I don't know if some of you have noticed but frankly, the WH40k universe was written by people with barely passing knowledge of military logistics who give a lot of credence to the rule of cool. Further more with a few editions variance's you have things where initially drop pods carry a squad of 5, now they carry a squad of 10. Then to compound matters even with the Into the Storm vehicle expansion we see only a fraction of the actual kit detailed in the game line.. So when you look at things like the thunderhawk which carries three squads of 15 space marines and kit it seemed like the reasonable approach for giving the PC's something a little tougher then the (unstatted) whatever shuttle is used in hit and run attacks. I've said my piece (twice now).

Addendum: Insomnia is a marvelous thing, I'm composing the next post right now. Can't promise it will get up tonight but it's at least being worked on.

Yes, the confusion about the Thunderhawk was discussed around a week ago,

Oh well. I hope no one gets space sick, there's no room to barf in an Aquila and Ysabell is a combat pilot not a VIP deliverer

I guess there's no need for me to take a personal Chiropteran scout now, more guns it is.

I wanted to apologize if i was needlessly snippy last night. Long hours, over managed etc etc.

No worries, I barely managed to hold my drink in and keep it from coming out my nose to tell the truth.

And I don't got the books on me, but last I remembered, the fury had better handling, armour, guns (as in has some, let alone enough to make a small waaaagh! cringe) and possibly speed, so why would you even want the scout?

Now I am fantasizing about a guncutter being escorted by a few wings of furies and landers galore to raid and pilla... errr bring the emperor's light to savages and take their treasures for safe keeping...

ps so whats everyones take on entering the ship? Don't want to make any orders icly that effect all of us until we all have talked oocly/icly, cause that is kinda a dick move.

pss How the hell do you do a symbol of the cog with your hand? Been trying for a good while now and can't figure out a set hand shape or hand motions to do it. This is really going to keep get to me I think...

The simplest answer is that a Fury is unavailable at char gen, a Chiropteran isn't.

However, I was considering the Chiropteran when we had a Thunderhawk. As it stands, I could take a Guncutter and have it parked at Port Wander.

I'm taking everything I have, since the ship will basically be our new home.


I don't know either, but it's something techpriests are described as doing, at least in the Ciaphas Cain novels (reading the second omnibus right now).

I'm still hoping more people will post before we continue it's mostly a formality but i thought i'd give folks a day or two in case schedules are different.

I'm guessing that the difference between the Cog and the Aquilla is mostly finger placement. Aquilla is thumbs crossed fingers together at 90 degrees from vertifcle. Cog is likely thumbs uncrossed and fingers spread if i'm reading things right.

Sounds good to me, anyone know what happened to Karoline?

And I was thinking about it and have spent a few hours trying it, and realized it could also be two hands with all the fingers splayed put one ontop of the other, the fingers pointing different ways.

Edit* Or that, trying to do that as I type (well not actually, but about to)

If memory serves Karoline is currently deployed and aircrew with AF she's prone to going incomunicAdo a few days at a stretch. I also need to get a declaration of continued interest from Riegen and a few others but I'm giving folks a little leeway as I never set down a hard and fast post rate. For me at least I'm always rager to dive forward but I understand many can't post revert day. As long as I can keep people interested and they let me know if they do loose inteerest that's all I ask.

I'll post in the Ic thread with your arrival when I get home.

Sorry for disappearing. Just started a new term in school last week and its a bit more demanding than I thought it would be. Will strive to keep up now that I know how my schedule will be working.

Felt a little sick when i got home last night so didn't update. it's up now. Thanks for posting Riegen.

Also just a personal note, I was in the Air Force not the navy, so most of my knowledge of naval traditions comes from books, so if i screw up some item of protocol or tradition...chock it up to it being the 41st millennium because the GM is always right. (Unless it's actually covered in some Wh40k book, in which case i'm curious to know their take on some things even though I might still disregard it if it's too silly. As i've said the developers followed rule of cool more then anything.

So who's still with us?

I am still here. I just consider it very unwise for the very freaky mutant navigator to come out before the Lord-Captain. I am hiding in the shadows, hoping to avoid all notice. Good idea for the raptor legged odd wristed person to not shove himself out in front of the crew in a riot of activity.

Im here, just had a few things come up yesterday and wasn't able to check the forums. Writing up my post as I write this one

put it up, hope it came out as good as I thought it was, been running on fumes for the last week or so.

I feel like I should explain my thought process in having Zacharias go first out of the Thunderhawk. As the seniormost techpriest, he will not only be the ship's chief enginseer but I suspect will take the position of science officer by default. Anytime you enter a closed environment like a spaceship, one of the first things you want to do is check the atmosphere. Is there enough of it, i.e., is the pressure sufficient to sustain life? Does it contain enough oxygen? Does it contain any toxins or contaminants, including harmful biologicals? IMO, everybody should have been buttoned up in their void suits until the atmosphere was determined to be safe. I wish I'd thought to mention it beforehand, but oh well.

Second, remember that Hakkonen has a military background. He comes from the ranks of the Skitarii, the military arm of the Adeptus Mechanicus, so he's not shy about putting himself out there. He felt reasonably secure coming out of the Thunderhawk because one of Sgt. Granx' troopers (Athena, I think?) is manning the heavy bolter door gun.

still here. Valentine's day stuff with the significant other had me busy.

Also still here although job/apartment hunting taking up a fair bit of my time.

Still here, just had Valentines day stuff to do and gov't stuff to keep my EI flowing.

Oh and Tanager we were commenting cause there is a whole procession of people outside so we would know it is safe. But I can easily see a magos of the mechanicus ignoring protocol simply out of a lack of care/understanding, not even knowing they did something wrong.

*edit* So I have t quit calling valentines day VD, comes out very bad....

There are airborne toxins that one can become acclimatized to over a long period of exposure, but that would still cause problems for someone coming in from outside. There's also the possibility of mutation causing someone's lungs to metabolize something other than oxygen, or to become immune to something that is otherwise instantly lethal. Just because somebody's standing in front of you without breathing gear doesn't necessarily mean the air's safe for you. Not saying Lurker would screw with us that way, but it's the kind of thing Explorators (and experienced space travellers in general) really should think of.

Yes, I am a hard-SF geek, and I try to think in realistic terms about these kinds of things.

edit: TL;DR: Seasoned voidfarers (which I assume all of the PCs are) take nothing for granted.

Well, those who do not take necessary steps tend not to make it into the experienced Voidfairer category. Hence my hanging back for multiple reasons.

Touche on that point. Like I said though, doesn't matter to me, thought it was kinda funny.

And now all I can think of is incorporating the mercenaries not into our ship but maybe funding, banking, equiping and controlling them as a house asset.... Could be good profit in there on the side as well as the whole getting the ship up and running. And if the squatters don't want to join the crew, well we can stuff them in the hold and use them to 'settle' a planet one day. Or sell 'em as cheap labour/servitors to be.

Depending on the number of squatters, even locking them in the hold may not be necessary. The Divine Inspiration is roughly (again, taking the dimensions of the Dauntless-class light cruiser in the core book) 4.5 kilometers in length, and 500 meters abeam. The book doesn't give the ship's height (or draw, or whatever the nautical term is), so for the sake of argument I'll assume it's equal to the beam (the width across the ship's widest part). That gives us 4500x500x500, or 1,125,000,000m³, or 1.125km³. That's a lot of volume. To put it in perspective, the island of Manhattan is only 21.6km long. If you could land the ship in the middle of Manhattan, its highest point would be clearly visible (barring obstructions like buildings, of course) from any other point on the island, and probably for a number of miles beyond it.

Point is: Even a thousand or more squatters could run loose on the ship, and we literally might never see them, because there are just so many bloody kilometers of corridor and thousands upon thousands of compartments. We are basically aboard a flying city, here.

And this being 40K, the squatters we will never see are all mutants. Slowly changing into things that we need to worry about. But then, as the super mutant of the party, I don't care about other mutants.

Ooh, maybe we'll get to reenact Aliens! I wonder who'll end up being Vasquez? Not it!

I have a splitting headache, I will post tommorow in response to what you all have posted.

As Tanegar mentioned, it'll be hard to get all the squatters, there'll be some many places for them to hide, lurk. It'll be a headache.

So i'm presuming Riegen will no longer be posting. Augustian will likely be relegated to NPC status. Presume he's with your but mostly trying to gauge the crowd until you hear otherwise.

Did we loose Zyrene and Sleep? I presume Zyrene's just moving between apartments or something.

Im here, but for some reason Invisible Castle wont let me do rolls. Its doing the same thing that it did with the login screen where it starts to load and then freezes on me. If someone could do the roll for me I could post

PM me the number of rolls you need and I'll PM you back the URL(s).

Just need one 1d100 roll for a willpower - 41 test