Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader

[The_Mask]

hated the main story btw

I agree!

[Orvas Dren]

none of this contradicts what I said, and your own source specifically mentions the point I made. A rogue trader's power is directly tied to his fleet, not his warrant.

In the game as well as one of the books (dont remember its name) one of the recurring themes of being a rogue trader is politicking with the navigator houses and explorators, because you can't actually force them to do anything, and they only have to provide you with the bare necessities. In the TTRPG it states that most RTs seldom own anything bigger than a light cruiser, and that frigates and freighters are the norm. This is nothing in comparison to Space marine chapters, Imperial and Navy Commanders, etc. RTs only pay tithes if they control worlds to tithe from afaik, which many do not. And no, I am not thinking of the Charterists whatsoever, the key difference between the Charterists is that RTs can go wherever they want so much as they have the means, Charterists cannot and are bound to defined contracts and routes.

A "lesser rogue trader" has as much power as a "weak imperial governor". The weakest, bottom-rung rogue trader is as powerful as an impoverished noble.


What is a "lesser rogue trader"? The book gives an example of a rogue trader with 40 profit factor: "The Rogue Trader dynasty is a fresh, new player on the galactic stage"

TTRPG it states that most RTs seldom own anything bigger than a light cruiser, and that frigates and freighters are the norm

You have a 9/10 chance of having at least a frigate, and a 1/10 chance of starting with a grand cruiser. The hypothetical "lesser rogue trader" would be a couple ship points short of a light cruiser. Table 1-5 core rulebook, and Battlefleet Koronus book.


And in the CRPG, you're politicking with house Winterscale, one of the most powerful rogue trader dynasties that exists — they're featured prominently in the TTRPG. Von Valancius is also immensely powerful and wealthy, but this is not conveyed well at all thru gameplay mechanics, imo. There's a reason that the only person who gets close to barking an order at you is the lord inquisitor, and he still doesn't even directly give you an order but a hint he might make things worse for you if you don't comply. Because you're his peer.

---

The argument can be reduced to: "Are rogue traders peers of chapter masters and inquisitors?" The answer is obviously, yes, the books flat out say this:

This is a feudal society. Trying to rank peers against one another is foolish, as that depends on the individual. And that's when in imperial space, the rogue trader can tell them to go jump out an airlock when outside of it.
But hey, if people want to go around sticking their thumb in the eye of random rogue traders until they find a Lord Captain with a fleet rivaling a spess murine chapter capable of ordering an orbital strike on their planet just for fun, go ahead. **** around and find out, I suppose.

a wall of cope to avoid saying that I was right. Mentally unhinged behavior

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

hated the main story btw

I agree!

It was ok. Overall very disappointing but serviceable. I do think it worse then WOTR and Kingmaker since It felt a lot more cohesive. Then again the AP was doing the heavy lifting unlike Rogue Trader which is original story by owlcat and it ******* shows.

[rusty_shackleford]

none of this contradicts what I said, and your own source specifically mentions the point I made. A rogue trader's power is directly tied to his fleet, not his warrant.

In the game as well as one of the books (dont remember its name) one of the recurring themes of being a rogue trader is politicking with the navigator houses and explorators, because you can't actually force them to do anything, and they only have to provide you with the bare necessities. In the TTRPG it states that most RTs seldom own anything bigger than a light cruiser, and that frigates and freighters are the norm. This is nothing in comparison to Space marine chapters, Imperial and Navy Commanders, etc. RTs only pay tithes if they control worlds to tithe from afaik, which many do not. And no, I am not thinking of the Charterists whatsoever, the key difference between the Charterists is that RTs can go wherever they want so much as they have the means, Charterists cannot and are bound to defined contracts and routes.

A "lesser rogue trader" has as much power as a "weak imperial governor". The weakest, bottom-rung rogue trader is as powerful as an impoverished noble.


What is a "lesser rogue trader"? The book gives an example of a rogue trader with 40 profit factor: "The Rogue Trader dynasty is a fresh, new player on the galactic stage"

TTRPG it states that most RTs seldom own anything bigger than a light cruiser, and that frigates and freighters are the norm

You have a 9/10 chance of having at least a frigate, and a 1/10 chance of starting with a grand cruiser. The hypothetical "lesser rogue trader" would be a couple ship points short of a light cruiser. Table 1-5 core rulebook, and Battlefleet Koronus book.


And in the CRPG, you're politicking with house Winterscale, one of the most powerful rogue trader dynasties that exists — they're featured prominently in the TTRPG. Von Valancius is also immensely powerful and wealthy, but this is not conveyed well at all thru gameplay mechanics, imo. There's a reason that the only person who gets close to barking an order at you is the lord inquisitor, and he still doesn't even directly give you an order but a hint he might make things worse for you if you don't comply. Because you're his peer.

---

The argument can be reduced to: "Are rogue traders peers of chapter masters and inquisitors?" The answer is obviously, yes, the books flat out say this:

This is a feudal society. Trying to rank peers against one another is foolish, as that depends on the individual. And that's when in imperial space, the rogue trader can tell them to go jump out an airlock when outside of it.
But hey, if people want to go around sticking their thumb in the eye of random rogue traders until they find a Lord Captain with a fleet rivaling a spess murine chapter capable of ordering an orbital strike on their planet just for fun, go ahead. **** around and find out, I suppose.

a wall of cope to avoid saying that I was right. Mentally unhinged behavior

is this the famed hapa rage?

[Orvas Dren]

A "lesser rogue trader" has as much power as a "weak imperial governor". The weakest, bottom-rung rogue trader is as powerful as an impoverished noble.


What is a "lesser rogue trader"? The book gives an example of a rogue trader with 40 profit factor: "The Rogue Trader dynasty is a fresh, new player on the galactic stage"


You have a 9/10 chance of having at least a frigate, and a 1/10 chance of starting with a grand cruiser. The hypothetical "lesser rogue trader" would be a couple ship points short of a light cruiser. Table 1-5 core rulebook, and Battlefleet Koronus book.


And in the CRPG, you're politicking with house Winterscale, one of the most powerful rogue trader dynasties that exists — they're featured prominently in the TTRPG. Von Valancius is also immensely powerful and wealthy, but this is not conveyed well at all thru gameplay mechanics, imo. There's a reason that the only person who gets close to barking an order at you is the lord inquisitor, and he still doesn't even directly give you an order but a hint he might make things worse for you if you don't comply. Because you're his peer.

---

The argument can be reduced to: "Are rogue traders peers of chapter masters and inquisitors?" The answer is obviously, yes, the books flat out say this:

This is a feudal society. Trying to rank peers against one another is foolish, as that depends on the individual. And that's when in imperial space, the rogue trader can tell them to go jump out an airlock when outside of it.
But hey, if people want to go around sticking their thumb in the eye of random rogue traders until they find a Lord Captain with a fleet rivaling a spess murine chapter capable of ordering an orbital strike on their planet just for fun, go ahead. **** around and find out, I suppose.

a wall of cope to avoid saying that I was right. Mentally unhinged behavior

is this the famed hapa rage?

1. Saxon* 2. Nobody is angry here 3. 60 second response time at 6 am sorta proves my point

[rusty_shackleford]

a wall of cope to avoid saying that I was right. Mentally unhinged behavior

is this the famed hapa rage?

1. Saxon* 2. Nobody is angry here 3. 60 second response time at 6 am sorta proves my point

ok
*checks notes*
sergio

[Reichspepe]

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

I dislike how Owlcat social media accounts has devolved to cringy memes and fluff post pieces .

It’s was funny the first time and stopped being humorous after the 400 post of >inset new popular meme this week<

[rusty_shackleford]

that's what happens when you hire r*dditors

can we please have some social media accounts ran by normal human beings who just function like professionals?

[Reichspepe]

I dislike how Owlcat social media accounts has devolved to cringy memes and fluff post pieces .

It’s was funny the first time and stopped being humorous after the 400 post of >inset new popular meme this week<

Don't know where this is originally from, got this from a friend and found it funny

[Reichspepe]

can we please have some social media accounts ran by normal human beings who just function like professionals?

I assume that's a rhethorical question

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

I dislike how Owlcat social media accounts has devolved to cringy memes and fluff post pieces .

It’s was funny the first time and stopped being humorous after the 400 post of >inset new popular meme this week<

Don't know where this is originally from, got this from a friend and found it funny

It was originally from Owlcat social media account.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

[UltraFan123]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

I think that when a gamedev company willingly tries to become AAA even if it doesn't has to, said company may start to lose irs original focus in order to "appeal to a broader audience" or some **** like that.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

I think that when a gamedev company willingly tries to become AAA even if it doesn't has to, said company may start to lose irs original focus in order to "appeal to a broader audience" or some **** like that.

It’s becoming a noticeable pattern with owlcat and it kinda weird how people are not catching on to this. Especially with the comments on there aspersions in future projects ( cinematic focus with fully VA games and there push to be publishers.)

I’m not saying there going to end up like the walking skin suit of modern BioWare or best case scenario the early stages of decay with CDPR ,but I’m seeing warning signs.

[rusty_shackleford]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

If I still had it installed I'd make a mod to provide these for free. Hopefully someone does it tho

[W1llus]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

If I still had it installed I'd make a mod to provide these for free. Hopefully someone does it tho

Depends on how they've added it to the game but they should be accessible via the "toybox" mod. Hell the limited time out dlc is still accessible via that mod despite being unavailable on steam.

[7Trickster]

Is that a good game ? I was thinking of buying it after clapping Shadowheart's cheeks. It looks good on the surface !

[W1llus]

Is that a good game ? I was thinking of buying it after clapping Shadowheart's cheeks. It looks good on the surface !

I would personally say its worth it. I haven't played the new dlc yet but I've heard it's quite good. If you want to wait a bit the second dlc is coming out in December of this year and I'm sure around then there will be a Steam sale.

[rusty_shackleford]

Is that a good game ? I was thinking of buying it after clapping Shadowheart's cheeks. It looks good on the surface !

See my post here:

I'm near the end so I guess I'll give a recap. Entire game is about 120 hours long if you do all the content. There's no spoilers here. For reference:

• Unfair difficulty(hardest difficulty) for all of the game except one fight where team NPC AI kept suiciding itself and I wanted to keep it alive.
• I try to avoid reloading in CRPGs as much as possible unless forced to or I consider it 'justified'(bad game design).
• I picked the Officer archetype because it felt fitting. Navy origin, came up maybe 2-3 times thruout the entire game. I can't see any reason to not pick a psyker origin, at least if you're going officer.

Liked:

• The DLC content is very good. Honestly, the DLC itself probably gives the game a couple extra watermelons just because it has a lot more life in it, good encounters, etc., I actually ended up liking the companion who I thought I'd hate, all the stories in the DLC are much better than the base game. Adding anything else would be spoilers, but I enjoyed it so much I don't want to do that.
• After the horror story that was WotR, it was a surprising comeback.
• A bunch of good companions. Abelard, Heinrix, and Pasqal are all my type of companion in an RPG.
• The various planet exploration content was decent enough. Some cool areas with their own self-contained stories. They should have done more of this and expanded it.
• The ship combat is good. It's mostly copied from the tabletop RPG. Eat your heart out, Sawyer.
• Teetering on the edge here, but the injury system until I got a trivial way to remove traumas halfway thru. Should have been a lot more types of trauma, traumas that require recuperation, etc., Like a lot of systems in the game it feels very surface level. BUT… playing on Unfair, I did frequently find myself thinking(in the early game): "Do I want to keep on pushing ahead, or should I go back to my ship to recover?" The main issue is, the punishment for recovering is just the player's real life time, nothing else. If you're fine with wasting your time, then the injury system effectively does not exist.
• Most things in the game are not affected by a choice right before it happens, but a culmination of choices you make over dozens of hours of playing that you can't just undo. That is, less true/false story flags and instead using story counters that move up/down.
• Surprisingly, not that many bugs. Got a bit buggier towards the end, some issues with DLC content but that just released.
• Carried hard by the setting. Which actively hurts the game anytime it veers into the stupid areas of WH40k. Space elves are dumb, space drow are really dumb.
• Most of the art looks pretty good. The characters feel less cartoony than I remember in the original promo material, but the environments are obviously what you're meant to keep your eye on.
• Combat was serviceable. Nothing standout.

Disliked:

• Act 3. It's not that bad I guess, but it's going to be the first thing that pops in my mind when I consider doing a replay.
• Story feels too 'epic' for me. I wanted to be a hood trader doing hood trader ****. Too much stuff that should be part of a Rogue Trader game is cast aside to make way for the EPIC plot. You don't manage a flotilla, the colony management is extremely barebones, there's no actual trading that happens, no construction of supply lines, etc., Very disappointing! I know this isn't all a rogue trader does, but it's what I wanted to do **** it.
• Not enough time spent on the ship itself. First DLC alleviates this somewhat.
• Way too wordy. It's OK to have some characters that are overly verbose, but nearly every character is. And there's tons of pillarsisms where the text is used to describe minute details about the person.
• The difficulty is just too low. I breezed through the game on Unfair, using archetypes supposedly deemed as 'bad'. The only time I looked up advice was when I was checking how mechanics worked and just made my own decisions otherwise. Some of the DLC fights were actually tough tho.
• The system of the game itself sucks. They took a mangled version of the tabletop system used by the Fantasy Flight Games 40k tabletop RPGs — Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy 1E/2E, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, Only War. But it's inspired. I saw someone compare it to the Sword Coast Legends game, and it's not the same. SCL is their own system with the trappings of D&D mechanics. This is heavily inspired by a blend of the actual tabletop games such that it could easily be translated to tabletop and labeled Rogue Trader 2E(I'm referring to the RPG line only for the pedantic.) But it's not as in-depth as any of the systems, which is strange because they previously did the pathfinder games, albeit not a full implementation but the pathfinder rules are ridiculous to begin with. If you're going to make a CRPG, then use a system that plays to the strength of having a computer rather than a bastardized, simplified version of something designed for play at a tabletop.
• Leveling sucks. Especially at the start, you'll be getting a new level every fight and you have to level up your entire team, if you're new to the game that means pausing for 10-30 minutes after every fight. Holy **** this was a pants-on-head ******** decision.
• Leveling sucks. Towards the end of the game, you'll have everything. Despite feeling overwhelmed with choice at the beginning, you'll have no choice towards the end and just pick whatever's available because it doesn't matter.
• All the skill check ******** is stupid and designed for idiots. I never once felt like I couldn't pass a skill-check despite, again, playing on Unfair which gives a huge malus to your roll modifier. What's the point? All it does is make it difficult to swap team members because you need everyone to fill a specific skill niche or two or three. There's nothing that ever requires player skill or thought, you just click the awesome button and get reward. If Fallout 1 & 2 were designed by Obsidian/Owlcat, it would look like this:
  
  It's the same exact design used by their prior games:
  
  No, this isn't fun or interesting! In BG3, you'd be expected to notice you can climb the ledge yourself then use the jump ability, or teleport, or … to get up there. Jump is affected by your athletics & strength, so the skill check is still part of it! In Gothic games, you'd be expected to explore and climb your way up there on your own, perhaps requiring the longer jump from acrobatics(albeit Gothic games have very weak RPG mechanics.) This is a general critique of Owlcat's(and Obsidian's) design philosophy, it sucks. I suspect this is to cater to buildfags who just want the game to play itself.
• The loading times are dreadful. It's your third game, Owlcat, **** off. Even worse is you're constantly loading new areas, going from star system view to bridge is a loading screen, going from star system view to sector view is a loading screen, going to a planet is a loading screen, getting interrupted while traveling on either star system or sector view to do stuff on bridge — which forces you to the bridge without any way to say no — is a mandatory loading screen, etc.,
• Way too much gear that frankly just isn't interesting or good. It exists solely to be stored as cargo and traded for reputation. They should have added more gear slots if they wanted to put this much gear in, but first, design better gear.
• The lack of any real currency. You don't 'spend' anything. I know how profit factor works and what it represents, fine, but you should have spent reputation rather than it merely being profit factor 2. It could have represented diverse forms of what is effectively separate currencies, and used for a lot more than just items. Maybe use reputation to call in backup for a difficult ship fight?
• Goes hand in hand with my bit about injuries in the 'Liked', but you heal to full after combat and there's no real form of attrition at all, especially when you get medkits that can heal trauma.
• The base game companion quests in chapter 4 were all near identical in how they work and felt extremely rushed/rote. What a sour note to something that was actually going well.
• I frequently had to reload(I know, yuck) because I picked a dialogue option that advanced a conversation when I still wanted to ask more questions. This was often presented as no different than the dialogue choices that didn't advance the conversation. I consider these justified reloads because nearly all the time there's no good reason I can't just ask that question beyond the game saying 'no'.
• The psyker & navigator origins are entire archetypes unto themselves but are origins?? Your player character can't even BE a navigator, it's reserved for your navigator companion. And that's despite it being even more detailed than Psyker and probably any of the actual archetypes! Obviously a designer's pet companion, very ridiculous.
• Has only a handful of xeno races from the setting, mostly the worst ones: Aeldari/Drukhari are prominent, but they suck.
• Inventory sucks. Could be worse. But it's not great. Pro-tip: the search function also searches item descriptions. An easy way to improve it would be character-specific inventories along with a shared inventory like Pillars of Eternity. Or as a more general way to fix it, having access to separate 'bags'(for lack of a better term) that I can name & categorize and are easily accessible.
• Was never impressed by any of the level design. Started out very weak and linear, improved a bit but never rose above acceptable. There is zero exploration, just mostly linear hallways.

And other things:

• There should have been a lot more stuff that happens when warp traveling. Stuff that actually mattered or changed things, story events, etc.,

I give @Roguey Trader 13 watermelons out of 20(3.25/5)

Pirate it, devs are pozzed.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Is that a good game ? I was thinking of buying it after clapping Shadowheart's cheeks. It looks good on the surface !

I would personally say its worth it. I haven't played the new dlc yet but I've heard it's quite good. If you want to wait a bit the second dlc is coming out in December of this year and I'm sure around then there will be a Steam sale.

The second DLC is certainly not coming out in less in two months, most likely it’s coming out some point in 2025 Q1 knowing Owlcat release schedule pattern for DLC’s.

[W1llus]

Is that a good game ? I was thinking of buying it after clapping Shadowheart's cheeks. It looks good on the surface !

I would personally say its worth it. I haven't played the new dlc yet but I've heard it's quite good. If you want to wait a bit the second dlc is coming out in December of this year and I'm sure around then there will be a Steam sale.

The second DLC is certainly not coming out in less in two months, most likely it’s coming out some point in 2025 Q1 knowing Owlcat release schedule pattern for DLC’s.

That's true lol I forgot about the delay with dlc 1

[Yankee Zulu]

This games not even worth pirating. Its a giant waste of time. Skip it all together. There are so many better games to play.

[rusty_shackleford]

This games not even worth pirating. Its a giant waste of time. Skip it all together. There are so many better games to play.

If you're a fan of wh40k it's worth playing.

[UltraFan123]

This game is also a decent introduction to the setting if you're new to 40k and are trying to get a good starting point that doesn't revolve entirely on the roided armored blueberries.

[Luckmann]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

I ******* hate Twitch Drops so much. Why the **** would I want to watch streams when I could be playing the game?
Why the **** do I HAVE TO watch streams to get content, instead of playing the ******* game?

This FOMO ********* is so ******* stupid, and only makes me feel completely alienated from the game, as I refuse to play a game if I can't access all content.

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

If I still had it installed I'd make a mod to provide these for free. Hopefully someone does it tho

Depends on how they've added it to the game but they should be accessible via the "toybox" mod. Hell the limited time out dlc is still accessible via that mod despite being unavailable on steam.

Wait, was there some other time-limited **** that I missed? It's so ******* tiresome.
I just want to play a ******* game and know I'm getting the full monty. I don't want to turn a single-player CRPG into a ******* lifestyle with daily real-life quests.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

I ******* hate Twitch Drops so much. Why the **** would I want to watch streams when I could be playing the game?
Why the **** do I HAVE TO watch streams to get content, instead of playing the ******* game?

This FOMO ********* is so ******* stupid, and only makes me feel completely alienated from the game, as I refuse to play a game if I can't access all content.

Quite a lot of people were complaining about this in other forums. For all the surveys they taken I really don’t understand how this promotional event was remotely a good idea.

Even stranger when they decided to do the event almost year after its release and not during its launch week since that’s when it had the biggest social media presence at the time.

[rusty_shackleford]

Sometimes I wonder if Owlcat knows who there target audience is.

I ******* hate Twitch Drops so much. Why the **** would I want to watch streams when I could be playing the game?
Why the **** do I HAVE TO watch streams to get content, instead of playing the ******* game?

This FOMO ********* is so ******* stupid, and only makes me feel completely alienated from the game, as I refuse to play a game if I can't access all content.

If I still had it installed I'd make a mod to provide these for free. Hopefully someone does it tho

Depends on how they've added it to the game but they should be accessible via the "toybox" mod. Hell the limited time out dlc is still accessible via that mod despite being unavailable on steam.

Wait, was there some other time-limited **** that I missed? It's so ******* tiresome.
I just want to play a ******* game and know I'm getting the full monty. I don't want to turn a single-player CRPG into a ******* lifestyle with daily real-life quests.

Piratechads stay winning

[Yankee Zulu]

Even if you are wh40k fanatic, there are better wh40k games to play. Wh40k Inquisitor, Wh40k Darktide, Wh40k Mechanicus, etc etc.

Avoid this pile of crap.

Even pcgaymer ranked it 19 out of 50 on the best wh40k games list.
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-warhammer-40k-games/

[A Chinese opium den]

Even pcgaymer ranked it 19 out of 50 on the best wh40k games list.
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-warhammer-40k-games/

Appeal to authority.