Editing Rogue Trader (Video Game) (section)

==<span title="All information based on the Dec 2022 alpha and subject to change"><u>Gameplay</u></span>==
[[Bioware|Like]] [[Baldur's Gate (Games)|most]] [[Icewind Dale|isometric]] [[Neverwinter Nights|RPGs]] [[Planescape: Torment|you]] [[Pillars of Eternity|may]] [[Kingmaker|be]] [[Wrath of the Righteous|familiar]] [[Solasta: Crown of the Magister|with]] (of the Bioware school), you and a party of quirky characters walk around massive, highly-detailed 3D environments holding down the Tab key looking for highlighted boxes to steal shit from and opening dialogue trees with named NPCs until you get interrupted by a random enemy encounter and/or walk over a trap that kills 3 of your party members. There's nothing too innovative here aside from a horrible, HORRIBLE inventory UI and a really clunky implementation of the Profit Factor mechanic from the original RPG this is based on. You '''will''' pick up hundreds of generic autopistols, flak vests, and axes that you must manually pack into cargo crates for later resale to various merchants, or else carry them in your character inventory if you hope to use them at some point. The game will refer to all items, including plot-important key items, pointless lore notes, literal garbage you looted from the homeless encampment in the sewers, etc. as "Trophies" and remind you to pick up anything you might have thrown away whenever you leave an area.

===Classes===

===Skills===
Skill tests are resolved exactly like in the original RPG: Roll a d100 under a number based on your character's skill level in their relevant attribute and with the appropriate DC modifiers applied. You can equip gear to increase your character's skill points and raise your chance of success, but right now there don't seem to be skill mastery levels, which makes it a lot harder to reliably succeed even basic tasks; for example, there are many opportunities for small Lore (subject) tests in various areas, but you will probably fail more than half of them at any given time since the player character's ability scores start around 35-40 and additional equipment is typically a +5 bonus to a single skill. In the original Rogue Trader RPG, you could spend XP at each rank up to gain Skill Mastery in specific skills, giving up to a +20 bonus to that skill and demonstrating your character's focused development, but so far in the alpha it seems that all ranking up does is give you additional abilities to use in combat.

Skills are used in various ways: disabling traps, persuading/coercing NPCs, opening hidden pathways through the use of small explosives, etc. Failure usually means the character using the skill takes damage or some aspect of the dialogue path is locked away. Occasionally, missing out on that dialogue will put the player at a severe disadvantage in a future combat encounter. Thankfully, the game will automatically pick the character with the highest relevant skill among your selected party members if you click on something that requires a skill check: so if you've got Pasqal in your party and a you click on an object require a Tech-Use test, the game will send Pasqal over to deal with it. Unfortunately, the game isn't really good at predicting the odds for you and will display very generic "chances" when you hover over a test indicating who will take the taste and some percentage number that absolutely does not indicate chance of success. Unlike older games, failure also prevents other members of your party from retrying the skill test; if you roll 100 on a tech-use test, you won't ever be able to unlock the hidden path leading to the +5 Persuasion monocle. 

===Combat===
The combat is turn-based, based on the d100 system used in the FFG tabletop RPG, but it takes place on an explicit grid like [[X-Com]], complete with cover, elevation, and line-of-sight modifiers to how likely you are to hit your target. 

The combat UI is pretty standard, but can be counter-intuitive. Characters can switch between two sets of weapons at a time, and each weapon has a selection of between 1 and 3 "abilities" that determine where and how it hits. On the right-hand side of the UI is a massive list of ability icons arranged in order you get them, from left to right. Nearly all of them should be used BEFORE attacking with a character's  weapon to gain various bonuses to hit/dodge/etc. Unfortunately, there are also abilities that only have benefits after your character has moved, or your character has used another ability, which wouldn't be a problem if the game made them inactive if you'd get no benefits (and sometimes it does, go figure). The UI ''does'' show you the range and LoS of most abilities when previewing your character's movement to a new position on the battle grid (you need to choose the tile you'd like to move on and choose the skill you're about to use there before actually confirming the order to move), but no one explains that to a new player in the alpha, which results in a lot of misplacement of your party outside of support range. 

There are '''way''' too many abilities, since Owlcat decided that levelling means adding more combat abilities and only combat abilities, leading to UI bloat and leaving most characters feeling very generic since they are locked into pre-determined, linear class skill routes. The only real skill differentiation is whether or not a character has psyker abilities. Otherwise, it's all class-based, and the only customization available is when the game permits you to select from a limited choice of combat abilities based on which rank you've received, but they will all be variations on a theme rather than resembling anything like the freeform XP spending in the original RPG. Presumably, this is intended to give players a sense of "progress" by giving them more things to do in battle, but it neglects the social and economic aspects of the RPG. 

Combat is based around gaining and spending three types of currency: Movement Points (MP), Action Points (AP), and Momentum (M). MP and AP are individually gained by each character at the start of every turn, while M is gained for the party overall. This holds true for enemy encounters as well. Characters can only spend MP before they attack; they can still use certain support abilities, but if they damage an enemy all their MP is cancelled and they are stuck where they began the turn. AP points are spent on all abilities, which weapon attacks are considered. Rather than using the Action system it's more like the system proposed during the Dark Heresy 2e beta and is theoretically more freeform than the RPG system. However, you can't attack more than once per turn, despite having enough AP, without utilizing special abilities, and rate of fire is nerfed badly compared to the RPG where arguably it was overpowered. Friendly fire, however, means that rapid-firing your bolter or autopistol has more negatives than positives since the game is willing to have allies target allies when they miss their intended target, and everything could get pumped into the back of your party vanguard. Finally, M manages certain special abilities accessible to the party at either very low or very high levels. You gain M by succeeding in actions and lose M by failing or dying.

The use of abilities is almost universally determined by Line-of-Sight. If your psyker cannot "see" a target, they cannot buff/debuff/kill them. Unfortunately, it's not always clear what is and isn't in line of sight, particularly when the enemy can attack you but you can't attack them, especially where full-body cover and height differences are involved. Don't get us started on staircases, it's almost impossible to pull up a charge there.

Finally, round order is determined by initiative rolls at the start of the battle, but it's clear how that is determined. It does mean that in the encounters where the game throws more than two or three times your party size at you, despite most enemies being much, much weaker than the Rogue Trader's retinue, the enemy AI will get far more moves than you do. This may or may not be a problem later in the game, depending on how wearying this becomes, but the alternative model where sides always take equal turns has its own problems.

===Exploring Koronus===
Because all warp navigation maps of the Koronus Expanse that your dynasty has access to have been rendered useless, a key part of reclaiming your territories is by mapping the warp. That means going to your navigation interface and "scanning" the warp to uncover what warp routes are currently open, the level of risk in traversing them, and gaining and spending Navigator Insight to secure certain routes. With each use of the warp scan, you will uncover more routes from certain star systems, enabling you to travel there or plan for future travel once it becomes safer. Once you've decided where to go, make the warp jump and hope your Gellar Field doesn't get popped because that random event is absolute fucking bullshit. You can reduce the probability of bad events happening by spending said Navigator Insight; again, no one in the alpha tells you that. 

When you enter a star system, similar to '''Mass Effect: Andromeda''', you are able to click around a flat, 3D-image system map showing you all the planets and sites of interest in the system. Click on each location, or even in open space, and your ship will travel there. You can scan planets, which may reveal random events, resources to be exploited, or even give you the opportunity to resolve a mini CYOA quest and found a new, productive colony for your dynasty. You will also see fleets of potential enemies on the system map, which can trigger battles if you go to a site of interest that's too close to them.

Space combat is like a grid-based version of the [[Battlefleet Gothic]] wargame: All ships can only move forward a certain number of grids before they're able to turn a limited number of degrees. Like, in the RPG, your party members have individual abilities they can use in battle to supplement the basic "fire the broadside" commands. Unlike in the ground battles, ships are able to shoot and move afterwards. It's functional, if ugly, but there was never a chance you'd get [[Battlefleet Gothic: Armada]]-tier gameplay. Additionally, while you can acquire a squadron of ships to support the flagship, you can only control the flagship and the rest of the squadron will be [[Fail|AI-controlled.]]

===Ship Customization===
It will exist but no details are yet available. However, given that the current ship is hardcoded into the game, don't expect it to be as customizable as you'd like it to be.