Rak'Gol

[Dan_Lee]

Free AAF with only +2d6 means either move normal speed and turn, or go faster than most ships for your size but don't turn. I.e. faster than average with poor maneuverability.

Increasing their base speed and giving them even better AAF is putting their speed at the same level as Eldar and Necrons. Rak'Gol technology is not supposed to be anywhere near as advanced.

Placing a blast marker for every 10 cm of AAF could work, as long as they also were allowed to ignore the speed reduction for those blast markers.

[AndrewChristlieb]

Well if you place it at the beginning the end or any where along its movement the ship is going to suffer -5cm regardless. Which given the craptastic average that 2D6 AAF has anyway means the special order is pretty much useless, less than useless actually because your almost as likely to go slower than faster with it. A slow base speed would be fine but to represent the fluff (as presented I'm not familiar with these guys) they should have at least average (4D6) AAF and preferably imo the better +5D6 given the adverse effect of the radiation they have to overcome and their "tremendous bursts of speed". 

[Dan_Lee]

Their rules at the moment don't place any blast markers, so the +2d6 always makes them faster. But if they were to start placing blast markers, then yes the AAF needs to increase to at least 4d6 or they need a rule to ignore the speed reduction from the blast markers placed.

Placing blast markers makes sense to a certain degree, but what I really wanted to represent was the fact that the radiation given off by their engines often gives their enemies advance warning of their approach. That is why I gave the +1 bonus to detect them in scenarios involving stealth.

[Talos]

Sorry about that, family stuff you know .

As for the pricing of the launch bays, smotherman puts them at 13.5 or something like that, right? How about a couple of points less since they can't stick around, averaged higher for playtesting...so maybe lets try their pricing at 10pts a bay? It will probably be more balanced at 8.5 or 9, but lets try a bit higher first.

[afterimagedan]

Well done Dan_Lee! I have always really liked your stuff.

[Dan_Lee]

Thanks afterimagedan!

[gribbly_horde]

I have to say I like.
The Rak'Gol are one of my favourite bits of Rogue Trader - a genuinely new, fairly unique race of generic evil dudes, with - as noted - a very Firefly 'reavers' feel to them.

Thoughts and suggestions:

Whilst the orks are an easy starting point, Rak'Gol aren't disorganised; there's no reason for the reduced leadership, for example, or the auto-AAF - which is in part there because of the reduced leadership.

The overpowered drives thing is a key part of what makes them Rak'Gol.
I like the idea of placing blast markers to represent the trail of radiation, but my main concern is the idea that it becomes easy to 'blast marker bomb' a ship, like people sometimes do with tyranid drone spore cysts. Besides which, it's a continuous output rather than a 'splot' every so often.

If it was me, I'd suggest the following:

1) Firing at a Rak'Gol ship from behind counts as firing through a blast marker
2) If a Rak'Gol ship suffers an Engine Room Damaged critical hit, it suffers two points of extra damage rather than one
3) If a Rak'Gol ship is destroyed by a Plasma Drive Overload catastrophic damage, roll 4d6 rather than 3d6 for the blast radius.

Howler batteries are, as noted, high Rate Of Fire. This makes them especially effective vs escort craft and ordnance - where filling space with shells is more important than the power of an individual weapon.

One way to represent this preference for lighter ships, without giving them ridiculous firepower, would be to treat escorts as capital ships when calculating how many hits to roll for on the gunnery table.

The effectiveness against ordnance can just be incorporated into the turrets stat (which should be high)

[Dan_Lee]

Thanks for the feedback gribbly,

I wanted the reduced Ld to represent their lower level of tech more than the fact they are disorganized.

I like your drive ideas, particularly the column shift if firing on their rear ark.

Your howler batteries suggestion is also quite good. A column shift vs escorts and a turret boost (already incorporated into my rules if I recall) are a cleaner mechanic than altering how they shoot at ordnance markers.