What?

So, Confrontation is supposedly the realistic version of Rogue Trader...
And in Confrontation, an autogun round fired from from 9m metres away has 25% chance of penetrating TERMINATOR ARMOUR.

So, apparently heaviest armour provides only partial protection from fire from assault rifle. The advantage of firepower over armour is crushing. It seems most of that armour is just barely reinforced environmental suits, not something actually designed to protect from enemy fire.
Like, space marine power armour is just a glorified space suit. The Jadeberry Hill article even describes it as something more similar to 3rd edition Eldar armour than what is commonly associated with space marines. It's elastic and hardens under hits.

What's bizarre is that some art and fluff depict Rogue Trader armour as very tough. On the other hand, Space Marine fluff literally has Space Marines dying in droves.
 
It's part of the reason I liked Confrontation as a system, it was 'realistic', as least as far as combat was concerned. Getting into a close up firefight was lethal. Even now, there's very little out there that will reliably stop an assault rifle at point blank range, there's no reason to think that the 'arms race' of arms vs armour wouldn't continue into the future.

I also always preferred when Marines were portrayed as well-equipped soldiers, rather than some kind of superhuman demigod in impenetrable armour.
 

Arkansan

Member
AranaszarSzuur":26uab7e3 said:
So, Confrontation is supposedly the realistic version of Rogue Trader...
And in Confrontation, an autogun round fired from from 9m metres away has 25% chance of penetrating TERMINATOR ARMOUR.

So, apparently heaviest armour provides only partial protection from fire from assault rifle. The advantage of firepower over armour is crushing. It seems most of that armour is just barely reinforced environmental suits, not something actually designed to protect from enemy fire.
Like, space marine power armour is just a glorified space suit. The Jadeberry Hill article even describes it as something more similar to 3rd edition Eldar armour than what is commonly associated with space marines. It's elastic and hardens under hits.

What's bizarre is that some art and fluff depict Rogue Trader armour as very tough. On the other hand, Space Marine fluff literally has Space Marines dying in droves.

If you want to go a bit further back Confrontation is a cleaned up version of Laserburn (written by Bryan Ansell), which preceded Rogue Trader and in it's brief setting description included an imperium of man, high lords of Terra, and inquisitors. The weapons list was also borrowed straight in to Rogue Trader as well IIRC.
 

symphonicpoet

Moderator
^
Arkansan":sxgm9pgs said:
If you want to go a bit further back Confrontation is a cleaned up version of Laserburn (written by Bryan Ansell), which preceded Rogue Trader and in it's brief setting description included an imperium of man, high lords of Terra, and inquisitors. The weapons list was also borrowed straight in to Rogue Trader as well IIRC.

You know, I've heard of Laserburn and even have a few of the miniatures somewhere I picked up on the bay, but I had never heard it was particularly related to Rogue Trader. Interesting stuff indeed.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
dieselmonkey":2n9kd8jo said:
I also always preferred when Marines were portrayed as well-equipped soldiers, rather than some kind of superhuman demigod in impenetrable armour.

Not even that well equipped (compared to the far superior Eldar), but yes, it's a much more interesting universe to have vulnerable Space Marines.
 
dieselmonkey":2x6qr0rn said:
It's part of the reason I liked Confrontation as a system, it was 'realistic', as least as far as combat was concerned. Getting into a close up firefight was lethal. Even now, there's very little out there that will reliably stop an assault rifle at point blank range, there's no reason to think that the 'arms race' of arms vs armour wouldn't continue into the future.

I also always preferred when Marines were portrayed as well-equipped soldiers, rather than some kind of superhuman demigod in impenetrable armour.
Thing is that auto-gun is an ordinary assault rifle. That penetration probability is even before taking into account any armour-piercing ammunition. So, originally, Terminator armour was nowhere near being an effective armour even against most basic firearms.

symphonicpoet":2x6qr0rn said:
^
Arkansan":2x6qr0rn said:
If you want to go a bit further back Confrontation is a cleaned up version of Laserburn (written by Bryan Ansell), which preceded Rogue Trader and in it's brief setting description included an imperium of man, high lords of Terra, and inquisitors. The weapons list was also borrowed straight in to Rogue Trader as well IIRC.

You know, I've heard of Laserburn and even have a few of the miniatures somewhere I picked up on the bay, but I had never heard it was particularly related to Rogue Trader. Interesting stuff indeed.
Laserburn had enormous influence on Rogue Trader. For example the most probable reason why Rhinos, Land Raiders, etc. have the same armour saves as power armour and terminator armour is that originally vehicles in Laserburn were very light and had thin armour and were quite rare and generally replaced by powered armour and jump packs. Only when they introduced huge massed armies in Horus Heresy and normalized Juggernauts in form of Titans, they started making armies heavier and lower tech about a year into Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine. Leman Russ tank was introduced in WD123 while the Wh40k Imperial Guard army list which was light and high-tech was in WD109. So of course in WD128, new vehicle rules suddenly were needed, just before appearance of Baneblade. All these changes were taking place when Space Fleet/Battlefleet Gothic was being developed.

One interesting thing in early Rogue Trader is that artwork doesn't show any massive cathedral ships. In book of Astronomician White Scars are described as mobile and having over a hundred of space craft. That's about a single spaceship per squad. This implies that units would usually travel in small space ships and that planetary invasion would usually involve large space fleets of small space ships. So initially there were these weird small, vehicle-light armies where you can have 27 infantry squads and 1 Land Raider.

What's interesting is that armour is actually weaker in RT than in Laserburn. For example Dreadnought Armour which was a LB equivalent of Terminator armour had basic penetration chance of -10% while Terminator Armour has 15% and power armour in LB has 10% penetration chance and in RT 20%.

Zhu Bajie":2x6qr0rn said:
dieselmonkey":2x6qr0rn said:
I also always preferred when Marines were portrayed as well-equipped soldiers, rather than some kind of superhuman demigod in impenetrable armour.

Not even that well equipped (compared to the far superior Eldar), but yes, it's a much more interesting universe to have vulnerable Space Marines.
Better than Imperial Army and Orks, though.
 
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