Assuming an average starting profit factor, is it realistic that your average rogue trader is only going to have one ship?
Yes.
Ships are priceless and ancient artifacts you can't actually put a price on.
'Average' traders are lucky to have the one they have with an 'average' profit factor, though they may have non-warp capable ships to travel to the surface of a planet.
If they do have more than one warp capable ship, they would be kings amongst kings. They might even draw the attention of one or more Imperial organizations that keep a lid on that sort of thing...i.e. one person having a personal fleet of ships.
Also don't forget these ships are mammoth. Holding 10's of 1000's of people on them.
Most chapters of space marines have one ship.
Although those warp ships also are more like carriers than galleons, because they launch other non-warp ships out of them when they arrive somewhere.
-Frank
I get that ships are prized technology, but the simple practicalities of running a merchant dynasty seem to require the setting affords them that luxury.
In the "Enforcer" series, a Rogue Trader has an entire fleet of his own.
Quote from: FrankTrollman;479215Most chapters of space marines have one ship.
Although those warp ships also are more like carriers than galleons, because they launch other non-warp ships out of them when they arrive somewhere.
-Frank
Most chapters are not even a fraction the size of a trader's crew.
Quote from: danbuter;479220In the "Enforcer" series, a Rogue Trader has an entire fleet of his own.
That's what I imagine. It just doesn't seem 'realistic' (and yes I use that term advisedly) for a trader to run his empire with one ship.
A starting rogue trader will probably have only one ship, even with good profit factor. Thanks to salvage and prizes of war, a rogue trader can quickly start getting more, though necessarily they'd be inferior to his starting ship at combat.
Chances are, most RTs leave behind thousands of people whenever they jump who maintain a commercial presence in his absence, and which he then absorbs back when he returns.
I'd find it highly unlikely that a Rogue Trader with multiple ships could be considered a threat to the might of the Terran Emperor. A Rogue Trader better know his place in the end. Or else.
Quote from: danbuter;479220In the "Enforcer" series, a Rogue Trader has an entire fleet of his own.
In the OP, Ghost used the qualifier "average". The example you present is not average.
I have never read BFG but I think this focus on starships as something totally unique and ancient, as if they cannot be built anymore, is a bit lopsided. I really don't think the material supports this. Certainly in fiction I've seen, where ships were necessary, they were available. That's not to say it should go to the other extreme.
I cannot see how a rogue trader can manage trade routes, protect from pirates, venture into new spaces, with just a single albeit enormous starship. It's like the hanseatic league with a death star.
In Andy Hoare's novel Rogue Star, the opening scene depicts a Rogue Trader dynasty which, between father, son, and daughter, owns three ships.
On my understanding only the father owns an empirial charter, so technically he'd possess or be otherwise 'entitled' to all three of them.
Whether or not that's an "average" case may depend entirely on your understanding of whether or not dynasties regularly come in such happy, affluent families. The 40k game certainly doesn't focus on such cases.
What indeed constitutes the average isn't really the issue. It's understanding the practicalities. If a trader establishes a trade route to a previously known planet/race, how does that route manifest? Shipping must be involved and presumably to a point controlled by the trader.
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;479453I have never read BFG but I think this focus on starships as something totally unique and ancient, as if they cannot be built anymore, is a bit lopsided.
BFG has different eras of ships, so new ones are definitely being built. Gothic ships are really old, yet still in service, for example. In the novels, there are Navy planets dedicated to this.
As a general rule it would appear that a newly minted rogue trader would only have one ship of variable ability, though presumptively, a Rogue Trader could start with two smaller ships (strictly by game rules, if you have enough SP and buy cheap enough ships...).
I can't point to too many specific instances off the top of my head, but certainly the RT books seems to suggest that well established dynasties and individual traders do, in fact, have fleets. I recall several times reading about the 'fleet of Rogue trader so and so did such and such', both in the RT books and in more canonical 40k works. I may be imagining it, but in fact I thought I read something that suggested that down on their luck RT's may swear fealty to more powerful dynasts, adding their ships to the fleet of more powerful traders (in keeping with the feudal nature of 40k, this makes some sense).
THis is isn't a threat to the Imperium in the least, as RTs generally do not have battleships at all (I've yet to see an official RT battleship hull, for example), and if they do its just the one. Warships are not as profitable to run, and so RT's tend to have fewer dedicated combat ships... but they do have enough to operate as sort of a ready reserve for the local Battlefleet, to keep piracy to a minimum and so forth.
There is nothing in the works of 40k that I am aware of that says they don't build new ships. Far from it. The Battlefleet Koronos book has several new hull designs, and indicates that they are less popular because they are new. It also suggests that 'destroyed' ships can, and are, salvageable, though the process is not much faster than building a new ship (decades to centuries apparently, though this seems abnormally slow, even for such a massive project. Yes, I am aware that they could very well be using big fucking rocks for hammers in some cases... but then again, you've potentially got 100k people available to work on assembly! That's a lot of big fucken rocks!)
Point of fact, most of the ships in Battlefleet Calixis are apparently only a few centuries older than the sector itself, excluding mostly the Grand Cruisers (which are, by default, as old as the Imperium)
Rogue Traders seem to be able to amass Fleets, through profit or adventure.
Though, trade routes may not be a "we pick up every 6 weeks" kind of venture; trade routes may mean a Rogue Trader leaves a sizeable admin unit behind, and comes back in 10 years for physical cargo.
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;479467What indeed constitutes the average isn't really the issue. It's understanding the practicalities. If a trader establishes a trade route to a previously known planet/race, how does that route manifest? Shipping must be involved and presumably to a point controlled by the trader.
It's a lot easier to pay someone else to haul your shit from planet to planet while you're dueling with Dark Eldar raiders on a volcano planet or whatever it is that Rogue Traders do on a normal thursday.
Quote from: FrankTrollman;479215Most chapters of space marines have one ship.
Although those warp ships also are more like carriers than galleons, because they launch other non-warp ships out of them when they arrive somewhere.
-Frank
It used to be the case that "modern" chapters (i.e. post-Horus Heresy) have only 1000 marines, right? So just having one ship makes sense.
Space Marine Chapters have fleets. They might have one Battle Barge, which is a type of ship that outstrips even the huge Imperial Battleships. Some chapters have more than one of these giant ships.
However, they have lots of Strike Cruisers and smaller ships. They are not exclusively crewed by Space Marines - they don't do that. Instead, they have command structures and crew that are similar to Navy and Mechanicus ships - their crew are their "bondsmen".
Rogue Traders aren't as powerful as Astartes Chapters.
Quote from: noisms;481075It used to be the case that "modern" chapters (i.e. post-Horus Heresy) have only 1000 marines, right? So just having one ship makes sense.
They have perhaps one core ship, a base of kinds (which is my understanding of a battle barge), but they will have many ships, even if they are smaller, because different marines will be on different missions or attending different duties.
Never mind that Space Marines are not infrequently shown to have 'small' warp capable ships with as few as ONE Space Marines on board (and presumably a comparatively puny bondsman crew).
A number of chapters are 'Fleet Based', including the Black Templars (on permanent Crusade since day one), and many more are based out of space stations (the Dark Angels and my personal fav (if much less well known) the Mortifactors, for examples).
Arguably the baseline for how powerful you are in space could be chalked up to wether or not you can have a major space station at your beck and call, not if you manage to order three or four ships around instead of just one.