Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Seas n Oceans seem to take a backseat in a game where tanks are still in use.... wtf?

I know they have space cruisers that can orbit, but does that mean they need no Navy?

Because GW doesn't have a ange of boat miniatures (yet)

If the IG rolls up to a planet, aboard ships owned by the Imperial Navy, they don't need to worry about any terrestrial navy that the enemy owns, for the most part. Mainly because the Imperial Navy, having established space-superiority, can use orbital strikes to destroy those boats, their ports, and the manufacturing areas, rendering a terrestrial navy moot.

Some naval elements have appeared in various sources but, overall, an oceanic navy is outgunned and outclassed by a space navy.

 fables429 wrote:
Seas n Oceans seem to take a backseat in a game where tanks are still in use.... wtf?

I know they have space cruisers that can orbit, but does that mean they need no Navy?

Tanks likely will always have some form of battlefield role.

An armored platform for a large weapon will probably always be useful as long as it can resist small arms fire.

And there are some references to subaquatic combat, I remember something about the Space Wolves and Tau fighting under water, and the Thyrrus and Sarhuadin are both oceanic species (though both are amphibious) but overall plying the seas is left to civilians. The military can deploy from space, so other than trying an unorthodox method for surprise or when the target is on an island too well defended to be attacked from on high, it's usually just better to touch down near to the target and unload troops.

That being said both the Chimera and it's bigger brother the Gorgon are amphibious.

If there is a terrestrial naval force than it would most likely be under the control of the local PDF. While I'm sure there are thousands of regiments with various different forms of watercraft available to them, I would say they see less of a battlefield role mainly because there is little need for naval transport when you have orbital control. In addition, I imagine targets located on islands or near large bodies of water wouldn't be exceptionally common, though I wouldn't expect them to be rare.

That said, on planets entirely covered by water, I'd expect there to be whole naval regiments and undersea forces...who more than likely would actually be controlled by the Imperial Guard.

There are water-borne vehicles in 40k, like in Flesh and Iron and in the last Blood Angels novel. But there's not really any point to having a standing navy, if one ship in orbit could just annihilate said navy with a few lance strikes without the usual fear of collateral damage to civilian structures, because hives are, AFAIK, always on land. As a form of surprise or alternate attack, it's feasible, but it's a very situation-specific role for all water units.

It's a ground combat tactical simulation. Okay, so "simulation" may need a few sets of quotation marks. But there's just no room in 40K for water forces. We're talking about games played on 6x4 tables most of the time. There isn't going to be a lot of room for oceans in the terrain closet.

No need to talk about units you're not selling models for. Hence why the universe had no Storm Talons or Hellturkeys, or Valkyries until a few years ago.

Hives aren't always on land. Eisenhorn had a house looking intoan ocean that that particular hive grew out of. Liquid navies (as opposed to vacuum navies) have several references in a number of books. 40k grew out of an infantry skirmish game, sothere is little utility for boats. There was a whole rules set created to represent Normandy beach style amphibious assault with landing craft etc.

Flesh and iron by Henry zou is the only book I've read that uses an actual navy force. Good read I thought.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But with space navy, you don't really care for an armada of ships haha

Armageddon's Hive Tempestora sits next to an ocean. This free PDF hosted on GW's website briefly mentions' the Orks using crude submarines built from the hulls of captured Imperial tankers to stage a surprise attack on the city (somewhat more detailed on the old Armageddon 3 campaign website), and even includes a profile for using such subs in your games if you like.

As for the reason why surface ships rarely play a role in 40k? I'm with Psienesis. Orbital and aerial superiority (which need to be established for proper troop landings) will nigh-nullify any strategical value a surface navy may have. Likewise, for the Imperial Guard to deploy their own ships when they invade a planet is simply impractical, as it depends so heavily on the campaign target being close to the shore (or the planet actually having notable bodies of water at all) whilst the troops may just as well be transported using the trusty Valkyrie dropships and other landers. Better use that metal to make more tanks.

Obviously, that doesn't mean that it would be impossible for a PDF to have surface ships - especially on worlds that have large oceans and occasionally see fighting between local factions, such as various noble houses duking it out with their navies. As long as the planet pays its tithe, the Imperium won't interfere. Stuff like PDF planetbound patrol boats, frigates or battleships is just nothing that would have any relevance to either the Imperial Guard or the Imperial Navy.

Also, why go to all the effort of landing a specialised, niche, maritime-based army when you can just use an orbital lance strike to flash-boil the ocean, then send the footsloggers roaring across the exposed seabed?
That's what I would do - Nuke the Whales!

Not quite on topic, but in one of the Gaunts Ghost novels they deploy from giant airships...I always loved the idea of that as a sky navy of sorts...

Water navies don't make much sense because the oceans in 40k don't seem to have much of value to fight over, while easy space travel makes their role in hauling cargo and deploying armies much less relevant than in the real world. A water navy just wouldn't have very much of a purpose besides getting killed by air/space forces. Tanks and other ground forces avoid this problem because they participate in fighting over valuable ground targets.

Generally, boats are too easy to put down from a spacecraft's perspective. Most boats, ships etc would likely be civilian.

Also, given the way Dreadfleet dirtploughed (at least in my area), it would seem your average gamer isn't all that keen on boats in the first place .

The Imperium, at least, don't need boats for warfare when both the Chimera and Land Raider are amphibious.

 Lynata wrote:
Armageddon's Hive Tempestora sits next to an ocean. This free PDF hosted on GW's website briefly mentions' the Orks using crude submarines built from the hulls of captured Imperial tankers to stage a surprise attack on the city (somewhat more detailed on the old Armageddon 3 campaign website), and even includes a profile for using such subs in your games if you like.

This reminds me of the novel Helsreach

Is there a dedicated amphibious assault IG regiment does anyone know? A few comments above got me wondering.

 Themanwiththeplan wrote:
Is there a dedicated amphibious assault IG regiment does anyone know? A few comments above got me wondering.

The Gorgon is pretty much those old landing boats from D-day flicks that can drive over land.

And is covered in mortars and heavy stubbers.

There are a couple ocean planets where an IG regiment that specializes in amphibious warfare might come in handy. However, they're so few and far between that the Rough Riders probably see way more action than those hypothetical guys.

The Imperium possibly doens't bother with an amphibious IG regiment at all. I recall one ocean planet vs the Tau where they just sent in the Space Wolves who fought the Tau in underwater city domes on the ocean floor (in their powered armour. Don't need submarines when your armour can withstand the ocean pressure, I guess).

Another Tau planet, they just nuked the ice caps from orbit so the oceans flooded everything and didn't even bother making planet fall.

An ocean planet that is part of the Calixis (FFG Dark Heresy roleplaying) sector doesn't pay any guard tithes, I believe. Instead, it just tithes in resources (sea food, obviously). It's mentioned that it's very lightly defended and could be a tempting target for any raiders (Chaos or Xenos or otherwise) but hasn't been invaded yet. Presumably that's just a story hook for GMs to get players involved (It is a world in the Dark Heresy RPG series, after all).

 Dark Apostle 666 wrote:
Also, why go to all the effort of landing a specialised, niche, maritime-based army when you can just use an orbital lance strike to flash-boil the ocean, then send the footsloggers roaring across the exposed seabed?
That's what I would do - Nuke the Whales!

1. Scale. It would be like trying to boil a bathtub empty using electric cigarette lighters. You could do it, but it'd likely require a Segmentum Battlefleet to do it.

2. Scale. You couldn't flash-boil an entire ocean to that extent without pretty much boiling the entire planet. There are far far more effective means of exterminatus.

Conventional naval forces could be transported in civilian freighters.

SerQuintus wrote:

 Dark Apostle 666 wrote:
Also, why go to all the effort of landing a specialised, niche, maritime-based army when you can just use an orbital lance strike to flash-boil the ocean, then send the footsloggers roaring across the exposed seabed?
That's what I would do - Nuke the Whales!

1. Scale. It would be like trying to boil a bathtub empty using electric cigarette lighters. You could do it, but it'd likely require a Segmentum Battlefleet to do it.

2. Scale. You couldn't flash-boil an entire ocean to that extent without pretty much boiling the entire planet. There are far far more effective means of exterminatus.

Conventional naval forces could be transported in civilian freighters.

A single shot from a lance battery can be comfortably calced out to the Teraton range, or equivalent to the K-T impactor asteroid. A full broadside should boil enough of the oceans to cause irreparable ecological damage. A handful of ships firing for a day or so should be able to melt the surface of the planet.

 Kain wrote:

A single shot from a lance battery can be comfortably calced out to the Teraton range, or equivalent to the K-T impactor asteroid. A full broadside should boil enough of the oceans to cause irreparable ecological damage. A handful of ships firing for a day or so should be able to melt the surface of the planet.

If that were truly the case there would be no need for specialised exterminatus munitions of any kind (cyclonic torpedoes and the like). It also doesn't fit with the way Battlefleet Gothic works at all, if weapons were that powerful it would be all about shields, even an escort could take out a battleship in a single turn if its shields were down, instead BFG is based around the concept of physical armour being more important than shielding.

I think the confusion about the power of Lance strikes stems from the usual disagreement between the sources. If one were to look at the Space Marine videogame or Dawn of War II, I can certainly see where the "nuke" comparison comes from. It's just another example of technology being shown with varying degrees of power all depending on what you're examining.

Still, I'd not be surprised for a Lance strike to be at least powerful enough to superheat the immediate area of its impact site to a degree where a surface fleet suddenly finds itself swimming through a steaming hell of flash-boiled water that turns the ships into little ovens cooking their crew alive. Water is a great way to dissipate heat, but would it be fast enough in this case? Hmm.

Anyways ...

Naval forces serve only two purposes: force projection and transportation. WW2 and the subsequent decades have shown how aircraft have slowly rendered battleships redundant. Nowadays, a fleet's only purpose is to ferry missiles and aircraft close to the campaign theater, essentially providing a mobile base. Anything aside from the carrier, the heart of a modern naval battlegroup, is just there to protect or assist it.

The thing is that the technology of 40k allows aircraft and missiles to no longer need a carrier to reach their destination, essentially rendering the entire fleet useless. I'd imagine the average Imperial invasion having the attacking starships take position in orbit, pounding away at various ground targets whilst scores of fighters, bombers and landers are launched to converge on their assigned target location, be that a land installation or surface-bound PDF ships. I'd imagine the latter would fare no better than battleships in WW2 falling prey to coordinated torpedo and bombing runs.

The only thing I could think of as actually being useful for invading forces would be submergibles likes the ones the Orks have built, be it to launch a surprise attack (assuming that detection is only possible above sea-level, which would include surface ships as well as aircraft) or to engage hostile subs that are trying to hide from airstrikes whilst simultaneously managing to interfere with Imperial landing operations on land, possibly because the landing site is close to a coastline and the subs have AA guns/missiles.

That being said, I guess I'm just too used to the idea of the Imperial Guard throwing people at a problem until it goes away, so I'm not too fond of something so very limited as a "regiment" with submarines on the off-chance that the IG invades a planet that has oceans, which are close to the target, and the enemy having enough subs to actually be a nuisance.

That obviously doesn't mean anyone else has to follow this interpretation, though. In the end, 40k is what we want it to be, so anyone who wants IG navies shouldn't have too much of a hard time coming up with appropriate fluff. I can certainly understand the appeal, even though it doesn't exactly synch with my vision of the setting.

SerQuintus wrote:

 Kain wrote:

A single shot from a lance battery can be comfortably calced out to the Teraton range, or equivalent to the K-T impactor asteroid. A full broadside should boil enough of the oceans to cause irreparable ecological damage. A handful of ships firing for a day or so should be able to melt the surface of the planet.

If that were truly the case there would be no need for specialised exterminatus munitions of any kind (cyclonic torpedoes and the like). It also doesn't fit with the way Battlefleet Gothic works at all, if weapons were that powerful it would be all about shields, even an escort could take out a battleship in a single turn if its shields were down, instead BFG is based around the concept of physical armour being more important than shielding.

Simple, 40k Material science is just that advanced.

As for power




Focused energy beams creating explosions visible from space clearly has a great deal of power behind it.

Cyclonic torpedoes are also needed because they kill everything in one shot and make sure it stays dead.

Far too many things can survive lesser forms of cleansing through sheer toughness or canniness.

And if the first kind of Cyclonic Torpedoes don't work, you use the two stage kind which if I remember right, completely destroys the planet.

Besides, Star Wars also has similar numbers floating around for their weapons and Necrons toss around large chunks of dead stars at near light speed, I don't see what's so over the top about teraton energy rays.

Also, I'm not sure you understand how small a teraton blast is on a planetary scale. Yes it'd do great ecological damage, but if you want to sterilize the entire planet you're going to need days from a single ship firing near constantly to get total coverage. And even then the heat won't penetrate deep down enough to snuff out extremely deep bunkers or the like.

A cyclonic torpedo is easily in the Exa or Zettaton range, literally millions or billions of times more powerful. So effectively you save yourself the effort of having to sit around and fire millions of shots to completely sterilize the planet.

As I suspected, DoW II.

SerQuintus has a point when he's referring to BFG - that book (a direct GW product rather than licensed material) specifically points out how the atmosphere interferes with the energy of laser beams and thus rendering orbital bombardment not as efficient as it would otherwise be. Something that affects even lasguns (40k 3E rulebook) by rendering them less accurate/deadly over distance.
I believe this is actually somewhat grounded in science, as without Earth's atmosphere our sun would boil us all alive. I'm not sure how much it would do against a concentrated beam of light of such high intensity, but this is where the usual suspension of disbelief should kick in, all depending on whether you want to adhere to the world the writers have established, or rather create your own setting.

And as for Star Wars, turbolasers are actually plasma weapons firing superheated globs of gas (often Tibanna), where the laser merely served to ignite it. This is a detail not touched upon in the movies at all, but described in detail in the Expanded Universe (which, unlike 40k, actually has consistency laws in place) and explains nicely why the laser shots are not beams but rather look almost like "projectiles".

 Lynata wrote:
As I suspected, DoW II.

SerQuintus has a point when he's referring to BFG - that book (a direct GW product rather than licensed material) specifically points out how the atmosphere interferes with the energy of laser beams and thus rendering orbital bombardment not as efficient as it would otherwise be. Something that affects even lasguns (40k 3E rulebook) by rendering them less accurate/deadly over distance.
I believe this is actually somewhat grounded in science, as without Earth's atmosphere our sun would boil us all alive. I'm not sure how much it would do against a concentrated beam of light of such high intensity, but this is where the usual suspension of disbelief should kick in, all depending on whether you want to adhere to the world the writers have established, or rather create your own setting.

And as for Star Wars, turbolasers are actually plasma weapons firing superheated globs of gas (often Tibanna), where the laser merely served to ignite it. This is a detail not touched upon in the movies at all, but described in detail in the Expanded Universe (which, unlike 40k, actually has consistency laws in place) and explains nicely why the laser shots are not beams but rather look almost like "projectiles".

What?

I'm talking about the Incredible Cross sections which says that an X-wing's laser cannons are as powerful as the Hiroshima nuke.

Which is one upped by Strike Legion having Teraton pistols and death star level grenades.

For what its worth, the Renegades IA article had two mentions of water: The Sons of Malice were excommunicated as a result of their victory celebrations after they crushed a death cult that was threatening a number of underwater hives whilst the Steel Cobras following their excommunication retreated to a bunker network at the bottom of an ammonia sea where notably they are untouchable by anything save a full Astartes assault.

I don't really like the idea of Space Marines being the best underwater force the Imperium has, but I guess I'll have to roll with it. That might have been a good place for the subs I considered above ...

Kain wrote:What?
I'm talking about the Incredible Cross sections which says that an X-wing's laser cannons are as powerful as the Hiroshima nuke.

And I'm talking about why that isn't applicable as a comparison to 40k - it's an entirely different weapons system based on different principles (light <-> plasma). Also, one should never apply the internal logics and pseudoscience of one setting to another. Fiction doesn't work like that.

Aside from this, as a SW fan I'm calling BS on that firepower. There's nothing on Wookieepedia about this, and we've seen laser cannons larger than an X-Wings shoot stuff - the AT-ATs certainly did not do that much damage, not even to unprotected ground.
Do you have a scan, by any chance? Or at least a direct quote with page number.
Or were you just referring to heat?

Chimeras are amphibious transports, iirc, and apocalypse has an Ork submarine.

 Lynata wrote:
I don't really like the idea of Space Marines being the best underwater force the Imperium has, but I guess I'll have to roll with it. That might have been a good place for the subs I considered above ...

Kain wrote:What?
I'm talking about the Incredible Cross sections which says that an X-wing's laser cannons are as powerful as the Hiroshima nuke.

And I'm talking about why that isn't applicable as a comparison to 40k - it's an entirely different weapons system based on different principles (light <-> plasma). Also, one should never apply the internal logics and pseudoscience of one setting to another. Fiction doesn't work like that.

Aside from this, as a SW fan I'm calling BS on that firepower. There's nothing on Wookieepedia about this, and we've seen laser cannons larger than an X-Wings shoot stuff - the AT-ATs certainly did not do that much damage, not even to unprotected ground.
Do you have a scan, by any chance? Or at least a direct quote with page number.
Or were you just referring to heat?

Well, there's not many other forces you'd be able to deploy deep underwater.

Certainly not the Guard unless there's some sharkmen abhuman regiment I've never heard about.

As for the quote, I was exaggerating a bit, but ridiculous numbers are thrown around all over the ICS.

http://img.phombo.com/img1/photocombo/72/Ep2-007.jpg

Kiloton shots for the tiniest little space fighter you've ever seen.