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Good morning!

From what I've seen it isn't uncommon for Rogue Traders to fly around in the same kind of warships that the Imperial Navy uses, at least up to cruiser sized vessels. I'm curious about how a Rogue Trader would actually go about getting his hands on a vessel like this, given that I'd expect the imperial navy to retire ships when and only when they were so thoroughly wrecked in battle that they could never fly or fight again. What do the fine people of this board think? Is there such a thing as Navy Surplus? Do rogues have to make a deal with the admiralty in exchange for rare archaeotech, or are they rewarded with ships as a gift from the navy or the authorities of whatever they are for doing some great service to humanity-fimding new warp routes for instance? Do they need to salvage these ships or retrieve them from pirates or something, and get to keep them by the primordial law of Finders Keepers? Have I missed some obvious options?

I'm curious to hear what you might think, thank you for your time.

The Navy gets it's ships from the Mechanicus, it lacks the production capability to make it's own ships. I'd assume the Rogue Traders also get theirs from the Mechanicus, probably as you say by trading Archeotech or just paying huge sums of money or resources for them.

Rogue Traders have been around since the earliest days of the Imperium as well and some of them will have been passing down ships since then along with the charter, so their ships may be incredibly ancient and sometimes technologically quite advanced because of that.

Kittycatcastle wrote:
Good morning!

From what I've seen it isn't uncommon for Rogue Traders to fly around in the same kind of warships that the Imperial Navy uses, at least up to cruiser sized vessels. I'm curious about how a Rogue Trader would actually go about getting his hands on a vessel like this, given that I'd expect the imperial navy to retire ships when and only when they were so thoroughly wrecked in battle that they could never fly or fight again. What do the fine people of this board think? Is there such a thing as Navy Surplus? Do rogues have to make a deal with the admiralty in exchange for rare archaeotech, or are they rewarded with ships as a gift from the navy or the authorities of whatever they are for doing some great service to humanity-fimding new warp routes for instance? Do they need to salvage these ships or retrieve them from pirates or something, and get to keep them by the primordial law of Finders Keepers? Have I missed some obvious options?

I'm curious to hear what you might think, thank you for your time.

1st edition Rogue Trader i believe had a few sentences about them being given one. It was in the paragraph where it talks about how most newly warranted traders get 1xcoy of Marines + 2xcoy of IG.

Battlefleet Koronus mentioned privately constructed and purchased ships.

Tldr, private purchase or state issues.

Kittycatcastle wrote:
I'm curious about how a Rogue Trader would actually go about getting his hands on a vessel like this, given that I'd expect the imperial navy to retire ships when and only when they were so thoroughly wrecked in battle that they could never fly or fight again.

The resources controlled by a rogue trader can be significant.

A single ship might be attained by some round-about contract wherein over the next thousand years pieces of tithe from various assets pay for the mechanicus to deliver a dozen new ships to the navy in its place. Or might be the difference between having twenty battleships repaired and operation in a year rather than twenty one battleships several decades from now.

But yes finders keepers, gifts/rewards/tributes of various types, salvage, trade-in, new builds, and so on. A powerful rogue trader who brings their fleet into battle against a secessionist or pirate force might seek to claim some of the prize either outright or in return for some longer term payment to the navy.

Purchased from Mothballs, commissioned anew, inherited from previous holder of the Charter, found in the depths of space, requisitioned from others, claimed as a prize, even recovered from the mass of a space hulk.

Quite a few possible ways, and likely others I’ve not listed here.

A "gift" from the Imperial Navy.

Piracy is legal if you don't get caught.

High ranking Navy officers sometimes get the Warrant of Trade so that's an avenue as well.

Keep the same crew and ship, just in a different military role.

Adding to above points: There exist of course warships not built by the voidshipyards of the Adeptus Mechanicus. An evocative passage in Battlefleet Gothic describes how a world might invest enormous resources in building a new starship for the greater glory of its Planetary Governor, for whom the ship is often bombastically named. As humility demands.

The launching of this new starship will essentially be a gigantic monument and wonder of its generation for the planet that produced it, not unlike the giant part of the economy that building pyramids played in Old Kingdom Egypt.

My interpretation is that such warships produced outside of Mechanicus shipyards should be expected to be of lower quality in a great many technological aspects. And Tech-Priests will invariably have been involved in their construction nevertheless, just to a lesser and more scattershot degree than in Mechanicus yards.

It is highly feasible to imagine some such planetarily produced ships to be commissioned for Rogue Traders from the ships' very inception. Others might of course get pledged as part of treaties, hired out or hijacked for the greater glory of the God-Emperor's best explorers and justified pirates.

Also keep in mind renegade ships can be resanctified if captured.

It’s not necessarily a good idea, and it may depend on its provenance. For instance, if it’s an older Class, known to be prone to turning its coat? Probably best to just obliterate it.

But, for something more innocuous like a Lunas or Gothic Class? If it’s recovered in a fairly short period of time, it’s probably worth the effort, especially if it had been captured in battle by its now for former owners.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Also keep in mind renegade ships can be resanctified if captured.

It’s not necessarily a good idea, and it may depend on its provenance. For instance, if it’s an older Class, known to be prone to turning its coat? Probably best to just obliterate it.

But, for something more innocuous like a Lunas or Gothic Class? If it’s recovered in a fairly short period of time, it’s probably worth the effort, especially if it had been captured in battle by its now for former owners.

I'd wondered about this as well, in terms of the dangers involved I expect the navy would be more thorough in following the health and safety procedures required for doing it: scrub off any suspicious graffiti from the hallways AND quarantine or ruthanise the deckhands doing the scrubbing. Vs rogue traders who'd settle for 'we'be probably got most of it off now, we'll review once we finish our next run'

Gert wrote:High ranking Navy officers sometimes get the Warrant of Trade so that's an avenue as well.

Keep the same crew and ship, just in a different military role.

Oddly enough I'd been thinking about that as a story / character hook, since I've seen a few people float the idea that warrants can be given to people who are too competent but uncooperative in some way for the powers that be. So a heroic and very lucky navy captain-remembering that luck is believed to be and sometimes is the will of the Emperor-gets a warrant so she stops annoying the admiralty. Now I assume this only works because once you get a warrant you're not just allowed but obliged to go roguishly trading out beyobd the reach of the Imperium . I was wondering whether such a captain would be allowed to keep her original ship-it belongs to the navy after all-but would it be assumed that the whole premise of giving someone a warrant is for them to go out on a starship so if you give someone a warrant you have to ensure they have a starship to go and carry out the terms of the warrant.

You’d also probably want to be sure everyone and everything alive aboard the ship when it’s recaptured is killed off.

Imperial Ships are of such staggering scale, their crews can be generational. And whilst there are assigned living quarters, there are plenty of hidey holes to take advantage of.

Even a single heretic left aboard if left to their own devices could be the doom of a ship. Shonky sigil here, corruption of a crew member there.

I’ve no idea if The Imperium has anything like it, but I’d imagine that gauss belt thing Picard survives by the very narrowest of squeaks in a vastly underrated episode might help. Just get everyone off you know was meant to be there (so your own skeleton crew, or even less than that if you towed it in) and just irradiate the heck out of it.

Sure, it’ll take a while for the background radiation to die down, but probably not as long as we think, this being The Imperium. And it’s still cheaper and more efficient than building a whole new one, especially for less common classes.

Kittycatcastle wrote:

Oddly enough I'd been thinking about that as a story / character hook, since I've seen a few people float the idea that warrants can be given to people who are too competent but uncooperative in some way for the powers that be. So a heroic and very lucky navy captain-remembering that luck is believed to be and sometimes is the will of the Emperor-gets a warrant so she stops annoying the admiralty. Now I assume this only works because once you get a warrant you're not just allowed but obliged to go roguishly trading out beyobd the reach of the Imperium . I was wondering whether such a captain would be allowed to keep her original ship-it belongs to the navy after all-but would it be assumed that the whole premise of giving someone a warrant is for them to go out on a starship so if you give someone a warrant you have to ensure they have a starship to go and carry out the terms of the warrant.

The Navy has a lot of ships that can be passed around.

Front line service warships wouldn't be given but an older more obsolete ship would likely be gifted to the Rogue Trader.
Nothing that would be missed by a sector battlegroup.

And those with older Warrants of Trade may well command enough ships to make a Sector Admiral jealous.

The important thing as a Rogue Trade is to be happening to Other People.

Other potential routes: salvage of a drifting hulk from a previous conflict. There must be millions of dead ships floating around in various degrees of salvageable. Liberated from a space hulk. There is a reason everyone name their maiden auntie go for them when they pop up.

Purchasing/salvaging/theft from Xenos. Warrants of trade provide a great deal of flexibility, as long as the thing doesn’t try to deep back into Imperial space unlikely anyone would make much of a fuss.

I mean given the weirdness of the Warp, they could probably quite plausibly get them from time travelling versions of themself.

 Gert wrote:

Kittycatcastle wrote:

Oddly enough I'd been thinking about that as a story / character hook, since I've seen a few people float the idea that warrants can be given to people who are too competent but uncooperative in some way for the powers that be. So a heroic and very lucky navy captain-remembering that luck is believed to be and sometimes is the will of the Emperor-gets a warrant so she stops annoying the admiralty. Now I assume this only works because once you get a warrant you're not just allowed but obliged to go roguishly trading out beyobd the reach of the Imperium . I was wondering whether such a captain would be allowed to keep her original ship-it belongs to the navy after all-but would it be assumed that the whole premise of giving someone a warrant is for them to go out on a starship so if you give someone a warrant you have to ensure they have a starship to go and carry out the terms of the warrant.

The Navy has a lot of ships that can be passed around.

Front line service warships wouldn't be given but an older more obsolete ship would likely be gifted to the Rogue Trader.
Nothing that would be missed by a sector battlegroup.

This touches on what I was wondering about; I have a hard time imagining the Imperial navy giving up a starship if it could possibly avoid it-they are fighting all the time and the ships are essentially meant to stay in service forever.

They still have considerable mothballed reserves. It simply doesn’t make tactical or strategic sense to commit all your assets, all of the time.

And yeah, the Imperial Navy, like the Guard, will be scuttling about putting out fires all the time. But it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Really Big Conflicts aren’t the norm across The Imperium. Too few of its foes have the numbers and/or organisation required to be much more than a persistent pest. And so whilst to our mind an Imperial squadron might seem puny, it’s most often more than enough to drive off if not obliterate any low level threats or opportunistic attacks.

Yet, thanks to Orks and Eldar in particular being unpredictable buggers, each sector is still going to need a reserve fleet or two, just in case a larger reaction is needed.

Also, attrition is a thing. Any class of ship may suffer battle damage which the immediate area lacks the skills to repair. And so having some kind of reserve allows you to just ship the surviving crew to that one as a compliment of veterans, topping up with new members as needed, then back out on patrol/front line, whilst the main ship is repaired.

It’s also possible for a Planetary Governor to have their own fleet. They’re typically not Warp Capable, as there’s little to no good reason why they should be. But a system defence fleet could still very well feature mainline battleships of varying vintage with the Warp Drive removed. A Rogue Trader could, in the right circumstances, make an appealing offer to take one or more off their hands, then get the Warp Drive supplied from elsewhere.

Not really no. A design may be used forever but ships degrade and components change.

For example, the ship that carried the Tanith 1st on their raid at Salvation's Reach was a Tempest Class Frigate, Highness Ser Aramaduke.
It was constructed for a prior Imperial conflict and by the time of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, was considered old and past it's time.
Indeed this was why it was selected for what was considered a suicide mission as it wouldn't be missed by the fleet.

Grand Cruisers tend to fall into the hands of Rogue Traders as they largely don't fit with Imperial naval doctrine anymore. Too slow to fit with Cruiser battlegroups but without the power and toughness of a Battleship.
A canny sector commander might get rid of a Grand Cruiser to allow for a petition for newer ships to be granted to their fleet as well.

Rouge Traders also have a lot of cash and influence, and can sidestep a lot of bureaucracy. There are things and arrangements, cargo and supplies, that an admiral might have trouble getting but a RT could make happen. At the volume and scale where an aging escort would not be out of line as a payment.

The common warships of the Imperium like Sword class frigates or Lunar or Gothic class cruisers might be relatively easily acquired as they are widely produced and ubiquitous.

One thing to remember is that as tempting as it might be for a Rogue Trader to buy or otherwise acquire cruisers and battleships, they are ultimately in the business of making money and warships are a major drain to maintain, and probably overkill for most of the kind of threats a Rogue Trader faces as they are not going to be often flying their fleets into fleet battles (battle damage repair would also be expensive).

Depends on the Rogue Trader. Those who specialise in exploring unknown regions and expanding the border of the Imperium will absolutely need a full blown battlefleet.

Even those who toddle about internally will be major targets and will need protection.

I’m wondering about the overall structure of Roguishly Tradering.

See, they’re tasked with explore outside the immediate bounds of The Imperium. New warp routes, new planets, new systems, whether or not said planets and systems are remnant of whatever came before the fall of man. And once found, pacify/bring into compliance if they can. If they can’t, report back and lead more formal Imperial Forces. Also a surprisingly free hand in trading with non-human species.

So, they’re of great value to The Imperium. And I can’t imagine that any reward for bringing a world or system into the fold is a one off payment.

A big old cash reward? Sure. But also trading rights, repair and rearm contracts and so on and so forth. And maybe second dibs on any Warp Capable craft seized.

They get the first dibs on any trade goods and routes to come out of new territories.

The Rogue Trader attached to the Damocles Gulf Crusade pushed for peace with the T'au when it became obvious they were far more advanced than first expected.
If the Imperium made peace, the Trader could do what he did best: promote trade.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m wondering about the overall structure of Roguishly Tradering.

See, they’re tasked with explore outside the immediate bounds of The Imperium. New warp routes, new planets, new systems, whether or not said planets and systems are remnant of whatever came before the fall of man. And once found, pacify/bring into compliance if they can. If they can’t, report back and lead more formal Imperial Forces. Also a surprisingly free hand in trading with non-human species.

So, they’re of great value to The Imperium. And I can’t imagine that any reward for bringing a world or system into the fold is a one off payment.

A big old cash reward? Sure. But also trading rights, repair and rearm contracts and so on and so forth. And maybe second dibs on any Warp Capable craft seized.

The Rogue Traders can best be thought of as conquistadors. They go off to explore, conquer (*ahem* pacify), and secure favorable (i.e. exploitive) trade routes. For frontier regions they may become practical de facto rulers of entire worlds, and maybe once the area becomes more settled by the Imperium, they become formal Imperial governors.

In the FFG RPG Rogue Trader, there was one that was looked down upon by his fellow Rogue Traders because he had built his fortune through "boring" means like trading existing trade routes within the Calixis sector and transporting pilgrims. In other words, he had acted like a normal shipping line or Chartist captain instead of a flamboyant conquistador.

a lot of the oldest families got their charters during the great crusade, when someone with enough wealth and the authority the charter gives could just order a custom ship from a shipyard. often these would also get escorting warships from the crusade fleets, which no doubt after the heresy ended up rolled into the family's operations. (during the crusade it was not uncommon for a 'rogue trader' to have a detachment of Astartes assigned to his ships even, no doubt in part to ensure loyalty.)

IIRC a Rogue Trader dynasties first ship is given with the Warrant of Trade.