Update 0.2.1ao is live for Rogue Trader Beta!


Doctrines and abilities:

• Vanguard’s Formidable Distraction talent now correctly reduces dodge;
  
• Toughness resistance check for Psyker’s Assail didn’t have any base difficulty - fixed;
  
• Adept’s Sharpshooter talent didn’t work - fixed;
  
• Adept’s Clue debuff icon wasn’t appearing on the targets - fixed;
  
• Adept’s Dismantling Attack Heroic Act would always prioritize melee weapon if the character had both melee and ranged weapons equipped - fixed, there are now separate buttons for using melee and ranged versions of this Heroic act;
  
• Adept’s Desperate Measure had the same name and icon as Adept’s Heroic act - fixed;
  
• Assassin’s Aim for the Opening could provide an incorrectly cumulative damage bonus if applied multiple times from different directions and then used from any of those directions - fixed;
  
• Assassin’s Killing Edge damage bonus from lethality didn’t work - fixed;
  
• Hunter’s Piercing Shot was indefinitely stacking “Pierce and Ruin” debuff on the target after each attack - fixed;
  
• Marksman’s Fortress talent didn’t work - fixed;
  
• Fighter’s Combat Master was being calculated incorrectly - fixed;
  
• Commissar’s Let’s Give them Hell ability didn’t provide an extra turn to the ally after killing the marked target - fixed;
  
• Psy-rating 4 had incorrect requirement for Psy-rating 2 instead of 3 - fixed;

Items

• Requimator item ability was incorrectly dealing damage to all enemies in combat, not just those close to the target - fixed;
  
• The Armour of Refraction was listed in the wrong category in the inventory - fixed;

Story and dialogue

• A book event in Commorragh was ending abruptly after picking one of the options - fixed;
  
• Multiple text fixes in tooltips, dialogues and book events across the game;
  
• In dialogue with Clementia, you would gain 7 experience every time you’d ask her about any other issues you should be aware of - fixed;

UI

• Sometimes when hovering over a skillcheck in dialogue, you’d see the two different success chances - fixed;
  
• Crippled Arm trauma icon was missing - fixed;
  
• Points of interest and important NPCs kept being hidden by fog of war on the location map even after being discovered - fixed;
  
• Fighter’s Sworn Enemy debuff no longer appears twice on the target;

Space

• Planets and points of interest could lose their textures on the system map under certain circumstances - fixed;
  
• Torpedo launch ability tooltip now better reflects that the highlighted tiles are for the placement of torpedoes, not for attacking the enemy. The visual effect for these tiles has also been updated for better readability;

Misc:

• Encounter with the wildlife on Janus wasn’t treated as ambush and allowed a preparation phase - fixed;

Greetings, Lord Captains!

Months ago, during alpha testing, we posted an article about changes brought to the game based on your feedback in the big alpha survey.

Time flies by quickly, and today we are back with the second article of the series, this time to show you how your feedback shaped the game after the beta!

Disclaimer: Same as in the last article, we will not be going over every question in the survey, but will highlight only the most interesting facts. Enjoy the read and watch out for spoilers below!


What could be better than to begin the article with the overall rating you guys gave us?

A total of 5000+ players have taken the survey, and they rated Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader 4.3 out of 5!

This is almost the same result as the last time (alpha was rated 4.35). But considering this time the amount of people taking the survey has increased tenfold, a large number of them way less familiar with the universe, it looks like we’re still going in the right direction. Thank you for the recognition! Of course, this result is not a reason to sit idle, and we’ll discuss why below.


One of the most frequent complaints in the survey was the insufficient reactivity of NPCs and companions to the Rogue Trader’s biography, doctrines, and convictions. There were also concerns about the conviction tags often feeling off or missing altogether. Well, that makes sense - a significant chunk of these reactions were not in the game yet! We’re already busy adding these reactions as this article is being written. Same goes for convictions - the tag placement was a draft done shortly before the beta launch, and we’re carefully working on all dialogues to tag them correctly.

We’ve also paid additional attention to scenes where a lot of you wished to see specific reactions. For example, quite a few people really wanted to be able to interrupt some of Idira’s heretical speeches in front of outsiders, and we’ll let you do this now!


Over 50% of you found our newly introduced tutorials useful, and the only negative criticism about them was, well, that there’s not enough of them! We are happy that they seem to be working well and will add more tutorials for various aspects of the game as we continue development. Some of them will even receive short explanatory videos.

The lore glossary appears to be quite helpful as well: almost 90% respondents told us they were actively using it! A curious note: these numbers appear the same even for the respondents who claimed to be deeply familiar with the universe. Checking our knowledge of the Lore, are you? :D


There’s a lot of curious data here depending on the choice of difficulty. Overall, it seems that we’re on the right track, although some players on normal difficulty reported that there could be a bit more challenge. We will be carefully tuning the encounters with that in mind, especially in the later acts of the game, where player power may currently grow a bit too quickly.


Among the doctrines available, Marksman was an undisputed leader in all aspects. So much that we are considering lowering its potential a bit. Don’t panic though, we’re not removing the already iconic Shoot on the Run!

Adept, on the other hand, appears to be the least popular, with the most common complaints being lack of visible impact and difficulty in understanding its mechanics. In the beta this doctrine also suffered from a whole spectrum of bugs, which made the abilities even more confusing. We will be fixing these, tweaking some abilities, and reviewing the confusing and unclear descriptions.


The UI seems to overall be well-received both visually and mechanically, with three exceptions:

1. Levelling UI. We’ve received a lot of feedback that the window was too small, there were way too many options in a single list, no way to compare the skills, and it lacked any sort of recommendation system, which led to massive timesinks every time you needed to level. Lack of respec options was often mentioned too. We will be addressing all of these issues! Here’s a glimpse on one of the menus we are currently working on:
   
   
2. Cargo/Loot UI. In the feedback, we’ve seen an overwhelming demand for proper drag&drop, scrolling, sorting, searching, and categorization. We haven’t been sitting idle and this UI is receiving a significant update. You can have a sneak peek of the changes yourself:
   
   
3. Targeting UI and ability formulas. Crit chance, cover benefits, visibility of the target, and buffs/debuffs were not always obvious. Formulas in ability descriptions and combat logs were confusing, and damage numbers were often way off the expected values. We have fixed these incorrect values, made the formulas shown as values by default, and increased visibility of icons and lines of sight.
   
   When selecting targets for a ranged attack or ability, you can now also press TAB and hover your mouse over the hit chance or buff/debuff icons to get detailed information about them:
   
   

We’ve seen a fair share of confusion on profit factor, vendor trade, and reputation systems. A lot of people didn’t figure it out at all throughout their playthrough, and others were confused about how the profit factor value was calculated.

Not only will we be implementing a number of tutorials to help you figure out these systems, but we’ve also put a lot of work into making the UI more clear and self-explanatory. Profit factor will also now be visible in the colony screen:


Looks like you guys generally enjoy our approach to cutscenes! There were only two significant points of feedback that attracted our attention:

1. Desynchronized or incomplete/weird-looking animations. All of these problems are being worked on and should be solved by release.
   
2. Impossibility to skip cutscenes, which was especially painful when a cutscene would happen just before a difficult fight. We don’t want to make you suffer yet, so we’re adding an option to skip cutscenes!

Ground combat has received a solid 4.2 out of 5 in the beta, which is up from 3.94 in the alpha. This demonstrates steady progress, and there are only a few things we still would like to look at, such as the frequency of encounters in some zones and certain battles that tend to drag on too much or don’t feel original enough.


For space combat, we are at 3.7 out of 5, up from 3.4 in the alpha. Progress is visible, but there is still a lot to do. A lot of people were frustrated by the lack of tutorials, so of course we’ll be putting that in! We will also fully implement officer post management, which was turned off for the beta, squash some bugs, and put in some additional effort to improve the variety of encounters.

Space exploration was rated 4.1, up from 3.9 in the alpha. It is a good result, and after a bit more polishing, it looks like we’ll be in the right spot. An interesting observation is that an overwhelming amount of players explore everything in the game, no exceptions.

Colony management is at only 3.4 at this point, which is far less than we would like to see. We will be putting in tutorials, improving the UI, tweaking numbers, offering more interesting rewards and adding reactivity to colony events and decisions. We will also remove the necessity to personally visit the colony to claim a reward - it was a quite popular demand.

The global map is at 3.93, which is decent, but it could be a bit better. We will be adding tutorials, upgrading a few visuals, adding more text-based warp encounters (many of you found them repetitive), and tuning the number and frequency of combat warp encounters.


Overall, it looks like we completely got rid of the ‘not enough grim darkness’ problem reported back in the alpha. It appears that the amount of weariness and despair added to the locations turned out to be just right, and such feedback is almost fully absent in the new survey. In fact, “just the right amount of grim darkness” is a very popular answer in the open feedback section!

The most popular locations (remarkable 4.42 and 4.41 out of 5, accordingly) were the Prologue:

and the Electrodynamic Cenobium:

Other popular locations included Eurac-V:

Inquisition Shipwreck (is this because you guys love papa Nurgle?):

and the Adeptus Administratum Palace:

Locations from the dark city of Commorragh were less popular, hovering around the score of 4. To an extent, it’s to be expected - they were still largely a WIP in the beta. In addition, in the first few days of the beta, there was a bug that allowed you to skip most of Act III by taking the wrong portal, which left many players confused. We will continue polishing and improving those locations as we prepare for release.


Just like the last time, Argenta raked in all the praise, nominations, and awards! Who would have doubted that it would happen?

Unfortunately, same as the last time, the least popular companions are Jae and Idira, although the gap isn’t as big this time. We are already implementing a number of further tweaks and improvements which will make them more interesting and unique both mechanically and narratively.

We’ve also received a lot of feedback about a certain betrayal taking place in Act III, players pointing out that it was unjustified or unexplained.

Partially, it was caused by the fact that some content and reactivity that would make it clearer wasn’t yet in the beta. However, we see a clear urge for a better explanation, so besides adding the missing content, our narrative team is giving that event some additional attention.


And this marks the end of the article! We hope you enjoyed this little insight into the development of the game.

Once again, we thank you kindly for participating in the survey and helping us to shape this game so it can become even more fun, entertaining, and lore-accurate. It is an honor to have such an engaged and passionate community!

And as a final parting gift, here are some interesting stats from the survey:

Lord Captain!

Today we have great news for you!

In our new game, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, we've introduced a lot of unique and unusual mechanics that were not present in our previous projects. We decided to not stop there and took it a step further.

Since the very first day we started working on Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, we've concluded that travelling across the Koronus Expanse with a friend would be a lot more fun, and now we're excited to finally announce it! Cooperative mode will be available on PC at launch and introduced to consoles at a later date!

We'll be back with the details soon enough, but for now - stay tuned!

Lord Captain, critical report incoming! Tomorrow, expect the announcement of something long awaited. Stand fast and at the ready!

During the IGN 2023 Gamescom livestream, we’ll unveil some exciting features in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and share with you some especially intriguing news... Be sure to join us on August, 24, 7:45 am PDT / 10:45 am EDT / 4:45 pm CEST: https://www.youtube.com/@IGN/streams

Surviving on the battlefields of the 41st millennium is a challenging task, even for an experienced Lord Captain and their trusted retinue. In this article we’ve gathered some hints that will help you master ground combat in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.



How many times have you made a move in tactical combat only to find out that the enemy is no longer visible from a new position? In Rogue Trader, we’ve solved this problem - simply click on one of the tiles available for movement, and a ghostly figure of your character will appear in that tile, from where you will be able to check line of sight and ability ranges. You can then confirm the movement by clicking on the same spot again.


Normally you are unable to move after making an attack, and only one attack is allowed per turn. Pay attention to the flashing red icons when you hover the cursor over an ability - it shows which of them will be blocked after this ability is used. Also note that abilities provided by a character’s Doctrine may allow for additional attacks or movement, so read their description carefully.


When you damage and kill enemies, your party accumulates Momentum - a special resource that represents the flow of battle and opportunities arising in combat. When it’s above a certain threshold, you can spend it to launch devastating abilities called Heroic Acts. Similarly, if things aren't going well and your party has suffered a lot of damage, Momentum will also be very low, at which point you will gain access to Desperate Measures - another type of powerful abilities that come at the cost of significant negative effects. Both of these can turn the tide of battle, so use them wisely.


Cover is useful to shield yourself against incoming fire. It comes in partial (half-shield) and full (full shield) forms for different levels of protection. Make sure that your flanks are protected when using cover, and note that smaller cover elements are destructible, or else you may end up finding out what a bolter shell tastes like.


Shots from some heavier weapons such as the legendary bolter may push the target back, forcing it to collide with an obstacle or even another enemy for more damage. Use this to your advantage against tightly packed groups of enemies and in crowded spaces.


Firing in volleys in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader doesn't require selecting targets - you choose a direction of fire instead, three tiles wide. All units in these tiles have a chance to be hit, but hitting targets in the center of the arc is more likely. Aim your bolter and enjoy the firestorm!


Never leave the safety of your ship without flamers and shotguns. They use a cone-shaped area of effect that can't miss, so cover will not save the enemy. And even if someone's lucky enough to dodge by jumping out of cover, they become a perfect target for your other guns. Burn them for the Emperor!


Charge is a reliable way to get into combat and make an additional attack on the enemy. Just make sure there's a straight line to your target and none of your friends are on the way. The Emperor protects!


Encounters with many enemies can get tedious in turn-based combat. This is why we've implemented a squad-based system - weaker enemies will fight you in groups, taking their turn at the same time. They will move and shoot simultaneously, making turns faster.


Fancy purging multiple xenos or heretics in one shot? Then bring in the big guns! Some weapons, such as bolters or sniper rifles, are powerful enough to penetrate the target, hitting other enemies behind it! A well-placed shot may give you a serious tactical advantage.


The warp is dangerous, and its power comes at a price. The more disturbance that is caused to the veil between reality and the warp by reckless, frequent usage of psychic powers, the higher the chance that the psyker will suffer Perils of the Warp - a devastating backlash that causes various nefarious otherworldly effects.

Now, Lord Captain, you should be ready to step onto the battlefields of the 41st millennium.

Let them know your name!

Lord Captain!

Your personal servo-skull reminds you that there is only one day left until the end of the survey for the Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader BETA version! We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CWH7DLW

Thank you for your contribution to our game’s progress!

Update 0.2.1al is live for Rogue Trader Beta!

• Adept's "Reactive Study" was stacking buffs permanently and infinitely - fixed, the game should no longer take long pauses after each action in ground combat. If you saved during combat, you need to finish it for the fix to become active.
  
• An event with Abelard and Avrilla Vent could get stuck, blocking further progress - fixed. If you still experience this problem on an older save, go to the captain's quarters and return to the bridge.

Update 0.2.1aj is live!

• In some cases the additional portal in Commorragh Arena which allowed players to skip most of the Chapter 3 content, continued to appear - fixed;
  
• A new settings slider has been added, allowing to adjust the difficulty of space combat;
  
• Fixed an issue, where after entering the zone from the system map, all covers would be shown as destroyed;
  
• Fixed an issue, where buttons “Continue game” and “Load game” would sometimes disappear in the main menu;
  
• Added a link to the community survey in the main menu.

Lord Captain!

Another transmission was intercepted by your Vox Master! It says that those Rogue Traders who own the BETA version can already share their impressions of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and take part in a survey! Your feedback is very important to us and it can significantly help enhance the game.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CWH7DLW


Please note that the survey will be open until June 15th! Thank you for helping us make the game better!