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Hey guys, this came up in Thursday's game and I was wondering how some other GM's here would handle it.

My group of Explorers have managed to get to the stage where they have a small fleet of three ships. One, a Hazeroth Class Raider, is tricked out for all sorts of sneaky shennanigans. Another, a Dauntless Class Light Cruiser, is equipped for battle and deep void runs. The last, a Falchion Class Frigate, is kitted with as much sensor equipment as possible.

The players came to a bit of a decision point in last night's game that I didn't expect. They were trying to figure out what to do next, and they started divvying up the explorers between ships. This started to make my head explode, which the players noticed. Two suggestions were fielded - multiple characters, with each player having a "back up" character on each ship so that they had a voice and a pair of eyes and could participate in whatever happened, and their "main" character.
The second suggestion was that we just metagame a bit and keep all the PCs on the dauntless class flagship, and only move to the other ships en mass.

After some discussion, the latter was what we went with. Mostly because I'm more experienced running a single party. I have to say the idea of multiple characters is intriguing too. Would be a bit like a Fantasy novel by GRRM or Robert Jordan with the viewpoint characters being introduced where needed to observe important plot.

TBH, the "split the party" issue is already pretty ingrained in the way RT is designed. When combat is going down, the Arch Militant is in the thick of it, kicking ass. When a mysterious artefact or xenos structure is discovered, the Explorator is there, getting himself in too deep. When a rival trader or dignitary is met, the Trader is the one who does the talking. And in void combat the void master calls the shots and does a lot of the piloting/gunning (I've been a bit negligent to my Void Master, I need to get him a Fury so he can really kick ass). It's a different kind of game to anything I've run before, I have to say.

But I'm rambling. How do other Rogue Trader GM's face these problems? Any solution that I'm missing? Am I doin it rong?

Firstly, why are you letting your characters get their hands on that many starships in the first place? To my knowledge, that's a rather nice way to go about it.

The way I see it, you have two options. One, split the party up, let characters stay on whatever ship they feel like, and just keep playing; two, let them stay on one ship and only communicate with the others via transmissions from NPCs, which leads to a lot of random fun in itself.

Well, to answer your first question, I am playing the game as a sandbox. The players get to decide what they want in game. They decided they wanted another ship and spent a few months working towards the goal intelligently, so they got another ship. A few more canny and successful endevours (plus a healthy starting profit factor) and they managed to outright purchase the frigate. I guess I am rather nice, but on the other hand the players do face some pretty nasty odds soon enough so I think they will need the resources they have acquired.

I think letting them stay on the other ships would lead to a pretty fragmented game, given that they could be weeks or months away from each other. Option 2 seems the most doable to me.

This is in Dark Heresy, but I fell for the "Why don't we try a two pronged infiltration of the xeno-tech smugglers" argument, where the party was split down into the combat classes (who were going to try and get themselves hired as shifty mercenaries) and the less fighty individuals (who'd try and pose as potential buyers).

It was a good strategy, but unfortunately, it's been a bit of a pig since, and it's not so much running one adventure as it is running two, people sitting around while I have to run the other half of things. And that's just been one group all within the vicinity of a single planet (I say "vicinity" because one of the groups is currently in orbit), not three separate ships running over entire subsectors.

As a result, I wouldn't really recommend splitting the party in more than the short term.

Interesting, I'm planning on rewarding my players with a small fleet of small class vessels of their own over the course of the campaigns. Unwittingly, they've already earned one, which is now in a dry dock being retrofitted by the Imperial Navy until the time is right. My plans are for each player (group of three PC's) to have a vessel of their own, though I am planning on keeping them together as a group, going for the whole "big sharks in the ocean" angle, though so far, the group has no intention of splitting up, thanks to their cute synergy and BFF behaviour.