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I've been looking over models and background for Forgeworld and Battlefleet Gothic minis, and I can't seem to figure out how an Imperial Guard force gets from the fleet in orbit to the ground of the contested planet. They have troop transport ships (clearly), and they have small squad transports (Valkyries), and thy even have utility tugs (Arvis Lighters), but there's got to be something that carries large formations of troops and equipment between fleet and planet. Do the troop transports just land straight on the planet's surface? After arriving from Warp travel? The Space Marines seem to have some small combat transports, but I can't find any intermediate craft for the Imperial Guard.

Any help would be appreciated.

I know that in Planetstrike they have a bit about how some regiments have an anti-grav cone that is deployed in orbit. the Guardsman just steps inside and literally floats to the surface, although they are subject to interceptor fire, and the tech isn't completely safe.

Edit:
"Huge sub-orbital transports take station in the upper atmosphere and project cones of anti-grav from ancient and frequently ill-maintained grav-effect generators. Imperial Guard troopers literally step into the anti-grav field and float down towards the ground. This approach is extremely dangerous, as even a glancing hit from ground to air fire may cause the anti-grav cone to veer wildly, leaving the drop troops to the tender mercies of the world's gravity" Planetstike pg. 44

Dropships, shuttles, and the like. The Arvus Lighter is a vehicle that can be improvised into troop transport, but that's not its primary role.

The IG has landers and shuttles that can carry anything from platoons/companies to whole regiments in one go. Some of them are armed (heavily.) Depends on situation and availability usually.

Sometimes they may have enough landing craft for everyone, and sometimes they may need to use more than one.

Two examples of such mentioned in sources are the Tetrarch LAnder here and the Devourer from Inferno! here. There are bound to be others (I think there even was a model of one somewhere, or something.)

Those massive drop ships can land directly on the surface of the planet

ninja'd

The ships in the background appear to be large enough to carry whole regiments.

The BL novels featuring IG troop movements all feature Landers, usually in Company strength, occasionally higher. I don't think anything's bothered to set them up for in game stats or anything though.

I seem to remember stories of ships large enough to house entire regiments, some even with platoons of tanks in the belly. Imagine an armed and armored sports stadium landing on a planet and disgorging troops and vehicles from giant ramps. Much like the smaller star destroyers in the end of Star Wars Episode Two.

I mean my god, there's stories with dropships big enough to house Titans inside, who simply walk out upon landing.

I would guess the Imperial forces, Guard and marine alike, use everything from small landers housing 10-20 troops up to monolithic scales.

AegisGrimm wrote:I seem to remember stories of ships large enough to house entire regiments, some even with platoons of tanks in the belly. Imagine an armed and armored sports stadium landing on a planet and disgorging troops and vehicles from giant ramps. Much like the smaller star destroyers in the end of Star Wars Episode Two.

I mean my god, there's stories with dropships big enough to house Titans inside, who simply walk out upon landing.

I would guess the Imperial forces, Guard and marine alike, use everything from small landers housing 10-20 troops up to monolithic scales.

I thought Titans were deployed via drop pod.

Are Leviathens capable of flight?

DeffDred wrote:

AegisGrimm wrote:I seem to remember stories of ships large enough to house entire regiments, some even with platoons of tanks in the belly. Imagine an armed and armored sports stadium landing on a planet and disgorging troops and vehicles from giant ramps. Much like the smaller star destroyers in the end of Star Wars Episode Two.

I mean my god, there's stories with dropships big enough to house Titans inside, who simply walk out upon landing.

I would guess the Imperial forces, Guard and marine alike, use everything from small landers housing 10-20 troops up to monolithic scales.

I thought Titans were deployed via drop pod.

Are Leviathens capable of flight?

No. Titans require massive ships to enter the atmosphere to drop them via a gantry and mega crane system (its detailed in Titanicus, good book). The ships are so huge they disturb weather patterns for weeks. i would imagine a Levthiathan would be dropped in a similar way as a Titan. with a HUGE ship coming down form orbit to put it down gently with a gigantic crane system.

The actual inter-stellar ships that transport the Guard are the purview of the Imperial Navy. The IG actually lacks any means of moving between star-systems.

Those landers on the front of the IG codex.

An invasion usually involves hundreds of those things dropping down at once. Which, like Engine of War said, will disturb weather for weeks at a time. The enemy positions are buffeted by hurricane force winds just before being directly engaged by the Imperium(this is after the orbital bombardment to soften the place up)

The Gaunt's Ghost book "The Armor of Contempt" illustrates an imperial invasion quite well.

They operate large landing craft. These aren't represented on the table because. A.) They're too big and can hold entire Regiments and B.) In games with big craft like BFG, they're worthless.

Engine of War wrote:

DeffDred wrote:

AegisGrimm wrote:I seem to remember stories of ships large enough to house entire regiments, some even with platoons of tanks in the belly. Imagine an armed and armored sports stadium landing on a planet and disgorging troops and vehicles from giant ramps. Much like the smaller star destroyers in the end of Star Wars Episode Two.

I mean my god, there's stories with dropships big enough to house Titans inside, who simply walk out upon landing.

I would guess the Imperial forces, Guard and marine alike, use everything from small landers housing 10-20 troops up to monolithic scales.

I thought Titans were deployed via drop pod.

Are Leviathens capable of flight?

No. Titans require massive ships to enter the atmosphere to drop them via a gantry and mega crane system (its detailed in Titanicus, good book). The ships are so huge they disturb weather patterns for weeks. i would imagine a Levthiathan would be dropped in a similar way as a Titan. with a HUGE ship coming down form orbit to put it down gently with a gigantic crane system.

I think there is a book that describes Titans being drop-podded in and then it details the enoumous effort of building a pod around it after the war to be lifted via crane back onto a star ship.

AegisGrimm wrote:I seem to remember stories of ships large enough to house entire regiments, some even with platoons of tanks in the belly.

The only one I recall immediately off hand was Fifteen Hours. I think Death World might have had similar. The Ghosts novels typically feature much smaller ships.

DeffDred wrote:I think there is a book that describes Titans being drop-podded in and then it details the enoumous effort of building a pod around it after the war to be lifted via crane back onto a star ship.

That might be Savage Scars. I think they were really huge multi-megaton (millions of ton) drop pods using weird antigrav to land them. I suspect each Titan Legion/Forge World have their own way of doing things.

Well, for a scale reference, it is mentioned in BattleFleet Gothic that a good portion of the Imperial frigate- and destroyer-class can be landed on a planet's surface, and they are bigger than modern-day Navy ships. With the crazy scales the Imperium works with I think I heard once that a Cobra/Firestorm class escort is nearly the size of an aircraft carrier.

DeffDred wrote:

Engine of War wrote:No. Titans require massive ships to enter the atmosphere to drop them via a gantry and mega crane system (its detailed in Titanicus, good book).

I think there is a book that describes Titans being drop-podded in and then it details the enoumous effort of building a pod around it after the war to be lifted via crane back onto a star ship.

I suppose this is where I should point out that there is little to no consistency between such books, and that there is no single "official" answer to this question.
Pick what you think is cooler.

(personally, I'd pick the crane - it just sounds more awesome and slightly more realistic than a drop pod scaled up by factor 100)

Thanks for all the replies, I guess like with everything in the 40k universe, the answer varies. At least I know what the options are now.

In regards to small warships like the Cobra landing, are they capable of carrying troops, and could they be used to land a small force to secure a landing zone for the bigger ships? Even if they don't hold any significant troops, would they go in low to provide suppression fire in support of the landers?

Cobras could carry troops but not many(relativly speaking)

They are a warship and more useful up in space engaging the enemy then carrying troops. Not to mention relative to other ships they would have very little free space.

well, Battlefleet Koronus lists a Cobra as carrying potentially up to 15,000 people. We know a Lunar class can carry a crew of 95,000 IIRC.
In the old Rennie BFG novels the number was 10,000 crew and the ability to carry a regiment on top of its complement, and we know from the Ghosts novels that a 2 km long frigate (Navarre) could carry the Ghosts (~2000-3000 troops at that time IIRC). So it's not imposisble to carry at least men, if not infantry.

(IIRC the Rennie novel also mentioned that Navy warships carrying troops could carry those troops to planets faster than troop transports would.)

Yes, because the Troop Transports of the IG aren't (by most sources anyway) Warp-capable vessels. They might be able to make in-system trips between different planets, but I think they're boned for inter-system flights (unless you've got a few thousand years to wait). That's what the Navy does, they schlepp the IG from system to system to enable boots to be put on ground.

Psienesis wrote:Yes, because the Troop Transports of the IG aren't (by most sources anyway) Warp-capable vessels.

What sources do even say that the IG has its own starships? That just sounds ... ugh.

The term "Troop Transports" always makes me think of the vessels I read about in the BFG books: http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Battlefleet-Gothic/TROOP-TRANSPORTS.html

Lynata wrote:

Psienesis wrote:Yes, because the Troop Transports of the IG aren't (by most sources anyway) Warp-capable vessels.

What sources do even say that the IG has its own starships? That just sounds ... ugh.

The Imperial Guard were specifically forbidden to operate spacecraft after the Horus Heresy, just like the Navy are forbidden to operate dedicated ground troops, some regiments make use of strike craft capable of space and atmospheric flight but thats as far as it goes. All military Spacecraft in the Imperium (less exceptions such as Astartes ships etc) are owned and crewed by the Imperial Navy.

At least that was the case about 10 years ago (all official fluff though).

I don't think that planetfall has ever really been explained properly, Infantry are obviously deployed via drop ships, and there are certainly atmospheric craft big enough to land superheavy tanks while the Navy has teleporter technology that could easily transport large numbers of troops over relatively large distances so this is also likely to occur given that it would be much safer (even if it is less cinematic). I have a vague memory of Ordinatus being deployed via teleportation.

Lynata wrote:

Psienesis wrote:Yes, because the Troop Transports of the IG aren't (by most sources anyway) Warp-capable vessels.

What sources do even say that the IG has its own starships? That just sounds ... ugh.

The term "Troop Transports" always makes me think of the vessels I read about in the BFG books: http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Battlefleet-Gothic/TROOP-TRANSPORTS.html

There's a regiment from the 1999 IG Codex called the 23rd BRuttiam that had interplanetary vessel on 'permanant secondment' to the regiment. Its just a modified (armed) civilian system ship though (possibly tied to the fact that one of their platoons I think is tied to some orbital platform or monitoring station.) The Bruttiam's officers even had access to grav vehicles requisitioned from the local government I think.

Edit: Fun fact: The same codex also mentions the IG having 'aeronautica', mobile infantry, mobile artillery, Cybernetika, and motorised formations.

There was also the 3rd Armageddon site on the Elysians, which suggests the Elysiasn have their own drop ships (presumably to facilitate their orbital assault and ship-to-ship boarding action role as per that site.)

The troop-transports pictured above have limited space capability... they have to, as they deploy from Naval vessels. Since it would take you a few weeks to months to fly from Planet A to Planet B in the same solar system, that fits in well with the typical Guard time-table. Not really seeing a need for the Navy to devote a ship for an in-system hop. It's also not at all threatening to the Imperium at large because, let's face it, in a given solar system, only a relative few of its planets are going to be population centers.

Biophysical wrote:I've been looking over models and background for Forgeworld and Battlefleet Gothic minis, and I can't seem to figure out how an Imperial Guard force gets from the fleet in orbit to the ground of the contested planet. They have troop transport ships (clearly), and they have small squad transports (Valkyries), and thy even have utility tugs (Arvis Lighters), but there's got to be something that carries large formations of troops and equipment between fleet and planet. Do the troop transports just land straight on the planet's surface? After arriving from Warp travel? The Space Marines seem to have some small combat transports, but I can't find any intermediate craft for the Imperial Guard.

Any help would be appreciated.

the IMperial Guard have Landing Craft Very SImilar to thosei n Star Ship Troopers , Allowing them to deploy Companies with one Ship , Each Troop Transport would carry about 9-10 Dropships which in turn would ferry troops down regiment by regiment, Curtisy of Caphis Cain

Connor MacLeod wrote:There's a regiment from the 1999 IG Codex called the 23rd BRuttiam that had interplanetary vessel on 'permanant secondment' to the regiment.

Ah - that's still different, though. There are a number of instances where Navy assets are permanently seconded to Guard regiments - the Elysians as well as the Storm Trooper regiment are other examples, both sporting their "own" Valkyrie drop ships - but the ships and crews involved remain Navy, and can be de-tached by Naval Command at any time. For as long as they are attached, however, they are subordinated to the regiment's commanding officer.
It should be mentioned in the 5E Guard Codex (iirc), but here's another document detailing how it works as per GW: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m530559a_LA_Valkyrie.pdf

Permanent attachments are rare occurences, though - mostly, this happens only for the duration of a single campaign. The aforementioned exceptions exist simply as the regiments could not operate in any other way, and I assume that your example with the 23rd Bruttiam has a good reason as well.

There should not be such a thing as a starship with Guardsmen crews and officers, flying the Munitorum banner, though.

Of course it should be stated that a "Temporary" attachment can mean a hundred years. Some campaigns/crusades can take a century or longer and the same regiments will likely serve alongside each other for the duration of their involvement.

I think IG sometimes use drop pods, and they also use massive dropships that can carry thousands of men. I'm sure there's other stuff, but nothing comes to mind.

I imagine Starship Troopers-type dropships belonging permanently to individual regiments, and like in many of the books, they and the regiments they will ferry into battle are carried through the warp from system to system (and in-system) by Imperial navy or Adeptus Mechanicus ships. I'm sure they also lease space aboard Rogue Trader ships as well.

DOOMBREAD wrote:I think IG sometimes use drop pods, and they also use massive dropships that can carry thousands of men. I'm sure there's other stuff, but nothing comes to mind.

No, they don't use Drop Pods.

The entry of a Drop Pod is stated to be enough to kill a man. Only the body of a Marine can survive the descent.