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I've been trying to dig up some information on civilian vessels in 40K, but I'm failing badly. If any of you can point me towards some info on civilian inter-planetary and inter-stellar craft, I'd be very grateful. I'm looking for stuff like classifications, common design features, crew sizes, support organisations & everything else remotely related.

Failing that, how would you guys envision a small-but-not-tiny cargo craft with limited inter-stellar capability?

I'm thinking something like this:
The captain of such a vessel would typically have inherited bot the vessel and the right to operate a trade route on behalf of the Administratum.
Officers would be a mix of people with a stake in the craft and cargo, and youths from merchant houses.
Roughly half the crew would be servitors & the remainder families who probably live aboard the vessel on a permanent basis.
The total crew would be somewhere in the 2-300s.

But I'm having a very hard time imagining how civilian stuff happens in the 40K universe. How large will a craft need to be to make a profit on inter-planetary trade, for example? Who controls the rights to trade routes? How do ships communicate in transit? How is maintenance handled when the necessary level of technical know-how is considered heresy? Who maintains ports and what services do they typically offer?
- Not implying I can't simply make stuff up as I need, but I'd very much like to avoid accidentally contradicting the existing fluff.

Maybe some rogue trader or battlefleet gothic stuff? I'm not too sure, I've come across some small bits of what your asking in various books, like the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies, or the second Dark Heresy novel, but not many specifics. Perhaps lexicanum might have more information?

To answer your questions as best I can off the top of my head:

It almost certainly varies based on what they're trading in, and where they're trading.

Bureaucrats, particularly wealthy Rogue Traders, or no one, depending on location.

Astropaths.

Hiring lower level tech priests, or technically-heretical-but-no-one-really-cares non-mechanicus engineers.

Local merchants or governments, or wealthy Rogue Traders (again), and any services that a port should conceivably provide: refueling, bars, warehouses, boardrooms, red-light districts, etc.

You can probably make it up so long as you use some common sense (read: look at real life counterparts and apply some critical thinking to how this translates into space on the scales you're working with), and think about how much Imperial control is likely to be present given the location relative to Imperial power centers (more remote areas being more tolerant of heretical things and all).

Thank you Sir.

My Lexicanum-Fu leaves something... Well... Everything to be desired, it appears. But I've heard lots of nice things about the Eisenhorn & Ravenor omnibuses, so I guess this is my excuse to buy them.

The Dark Heresy RPG is the reason I'm asking about this stuff. It occurred to me yesterday that having a few fairly well-defined civilian crews operating on the fringe of the awareness of the players, might be fun.

I could use each one to represent different mindsets and tendencies, and occasionally give the players minor opportunities to indirectly help or screw with the crews and vice versa. I'm thinking my players would end up influenced somewhat by the circumstances of the crews, which means I'd be able to use them to reinforce whatever moods I try to create.

Obviously the more I know of the civilian Empire, the more fully and seamlessly I can integrate stuff like the above into the campaign we're playing, so I remain absolutely interested in any & all things that might somehow relate to small'ish inter-stellar traders.

If you're doing a Dark Heresy campaign, then definitely read the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies, just to get more into the mindset if nothing else. They both touch on what you're asking, sort of, frequently involving rogue traders and whatnot. The second Dark Heresy has a large segment on board a civilian freighter/passenger ship, and a shorter bit on a space station/port orbiting Scintilla.

Hmm... Lexicanum doesn't seem to have many details, but these pages might be of some use:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Merchant_Fleet
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Civil_fleets
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rogue_Trader

They're all quite short and detail-sparse, however. I assume this means there's not a whole lot of specific canon on the topic. Which goes back to the "you're probably pretty safe just using common sense, drawing on common conventions for space trade with some adaptation to the 40K universe" thing.

Basically, in the IoM, there is the Imperial Fleet. The Imperial Fleet gathers the Imperial Navy (military navy) and the tens of thousands of merchant or civil fleets spread all over the IoM.

There is no specific design for merchant or civil vessels. In fact, the IoM does not directly control the creation of new designs of civilian vessels. As such, there is no standard pattern for civilian vessels (unlike the navy and its well organised, uniform fleets).

In general, a civilian vessel will be the size of an imperial escort vessel (800-1200m). It will always have very limited armament (usually small dorsal weapons batteries and a few defensive turrets). In addition, its weaponry will not be equipped with advanced auspex and targeting systems and its crew will rarely be trained in naval warfare. As a result, their combat capabilities are often extremely poor.

Its resistance will also be very limited. In fact, the owner of a civilian vessel will often only be able to equip its ship with a single set of void shields (imperial battleships have four different layers of much more powerful void shields). Its hull will also generally have very thin armour plating.

Finally, only the Navy will be able to equip its ship with powerful, advanced plasma engines. A civilian vessel will generally be very slow and boast a poor manoeuvrability. For instance, any Imperial battleship, though incredibly heavier and bigger than a civilian vessel, will be able to catch up with the vast majority of merchant ships.


In summary, Imperial civilian vessels suck. They suck really hard. No surprise they are such primary targets for xenos and traitor pirates.

I'm pretty sure the FFG Rogue Trader rulebook has a chapter or two devoted entirely to the ships, and most of the rest of the book devoted to the crews of civilian ships and their exploits. And it should all mesh pretty well with your Dark Heresy RPG stuff.

true Civilian vessels don't have Warp capabilities.

all Civilian vessals will be in system transport only.


Rogue Traders are individuals given premission to operate Warp Drives(which remain the property of the Ad Mech) on their vessals.

Rogue Traders have licenses to trade and operate outside imperial space and are the only Imperial citizens allowed to have friendly contact with Xeno species.

these licenses are hereditary once issued, many have been passed down for thousands of years. the oldest trader's licenses were signed by the Emperor.



Rogue Trader's operations can vary in size from a single vessal that simply shuttles products from one system to the next to massive operations that are comperable to private Empires with dozens of vessals on par if not above the armament standards of the Imperial Navy.

I imagine that commoners would use cargo ships, while the rich can get personal skimmers.

Grey Templar wrote:true Civilian vessels don't have Warp capabilities.

all Civilian vessals will be in system transport only.


Rogue Traders are individuals given premission to operate Warp Drives(which remain the property of the Ad Mech) on their vessals.

Rogue Traders have licenses to trade and operate outside imperial space and are the only Imperial citizens allowed to have friendly contact with Xeno species.

these licenses are hereditary once issued, many have been passed down for thousands of years. the oldest trader's licenses were signed by the Emperor.



Rogue Trader's operations can vary in size from a single vessal that simply shuttles products from one system to the next to massive operations that are comperable to private Empires with dozens of vessals on par if not above the armament standards of the Imperial Navy.

There are also merchant vessels, which are neither owned by civilian individuals nor by Rogue Traders. These vessels are incepted by Merchant houses. As far as I understand it, merchant houses function a bit like rogue trader houses, except that their warrants of trade (the name of the old piece of paper saying you can trade with other people in the galaxy) only allow them to use official imperial trade routes and not to roam unknown star systems and trade with xenos.
These "commercial" warrants of trade are also old, rare and passed down the generations in the Merchant Houses.

Merchant vessels are also equipped with warp drives (I don't know the agreements between the AdMech and the Merchant Houses for the use of warp drives) since they will often use interstellar trade routes. However, they will only have access to low-quality warp drives, unlike the Rogue Traders and the Navy, which have access to the best gear the Ad-Mech can produce.