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Well even light cruisers are defined as capitol ships. There is no set in stone size for them, but the low end crew for a Lunar Class Light Cruiser is 12,000 which is fairly small in an Imperium of trillions.

Hunterindarkness wrote:I think I recall reading of 200+ ships in a sectors but can't recall where or which one, On the same note some sectors could have as few as 30-40 warships.

@ Kaldor, I though a sector was an area of space, not a number of planets. I know for example the Calixs Sector exceeds that number by a bit with 177 known worlds. I am unsure of its fleet size but by fluff it seems to be on the larger side of the scale.

A sector is apparently about 200 light years cubed. Some will obviously have greater fleet presence than others, but if the 'norm' is stated to be around 70, then having a sector fleet with 'tens of thousands' of ships as Inquisitor Ehrenstein suggested is a completely unfounded belief. And no, that figure of 70 does not just cover cruisers and above, it covers frigates, destroyers and everything except attack craft and support ships. The relevant quote has already been posted in this thread.

Kaldor wrote:

Hunterindarkness wrote:I think I recall reading of 200+ ships in a sectors but can't recall where or which one, On the same note some sectors could have as few as 30-40 warships.

@ Kaldor, I though a sector was an area of space, not a number of planets. I know for example the Calixs Sector exceeds that number by a bit with 177 known worlds. I am unsure of its fleet size but by fluff it seems to be on the larger side of the scale.

A sector is apparently about 200 light years cubed. Some will obviously have greater fleet presence than others, but if the 'norm' is stated to be around 70, then having a sector fleet with 'tens of thousands' of ships as Inquisitor Ehrenstein suggested is a completely unfounded belief. And no, that figure of 70 does not just cover cruisers and above, it covers frigates, destroyers and everything except attack craft and support ships. The relevant quote has already been posted in this thread.

That makes the average sector fleet so small as to be ineffective.

its GW it may or may not be reconed and yeah that size makes it a joke.


The wiki states that its 50-75 ships of cruiser and BS class vessel, but it references a book i do not own and seems to contradict BFG numbers a wee bit. It does give the Battlefleet Armagedden, a fleets belonging solely to the Armageddon Sub-sector, as made up of 4 Battleships, 27 Cruisers and 36 squadrons of Escorts. In a single sub sector. Sol also has its own sub sector fleet

Kaldor wrote:

Hunterindarkness wrote:I think I recall reading of 200+ ships in a sectors but can't recall where or which one, On the same note some sectors could have as few as 30-40 warships.

@ Kaldor, I though a sector was an area of space, not a number of planets. I know for example the Calixs Sector exceeds that number by a bit with 177 known worlds. I am unsure of its fleet size but by fluff it seems to be on the larger side of the scale.

A sector is apparently about 200 light years cubed. Some will obviously have greater fleet presence than others, but if the 'norm' is stated to be around 70, then having a sector fleet with 'tens of thousands' of ships as Inquisitor Ehrenstein suggested is a completely unfounded belief. And no, that figure of 70 does not just cover cruisers and above, it covers frigates, destroyers and everything except attack craft and support ships. The relevant quote has already been posted in this thread.

A sector is not a specific size. It is simply a large cluster of worlds, with the number of worlds in a location dictating the size of the sector. Sectors can include thousands of worlds or have as few as 200.


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Amaya wrote:

That makes the average sector fleet so small as to be ineffective.

Hunterindarkness wrote:its GW it may or may not be reconed and yeah that size makes it a joke.


The wiki states that its 50-75 ships of cruiser and BS class vessel, but it references a book i do not own and seems to contradict BFG numbers a wee bit. It does give the Battlefleet Armagedden, a fleets belonging solely to the Armageddon Sub-sector, as made up of 4 Battleships, 27 Cruisers and 36 squadrons of Escorts. In a single sub sector. Sol also has its own sub sector fleet

Yeah, I definitely agree with that.

The Wiki agrees with Kaldor here. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Sector

"The size of a sector varies according to local demands and stellar density. A typical sector might encompass 7 million cubic light years, equivalent to a cube with sides almost 200 light years long. Sectors are divided into sub-sectors, usually comprising between 2 and 8 star systems within a 10 light year radius (some may encompass more systems - others only 1)"

One issue is that ship sizes are inconsistent across various sources. If you have 3000+ meter long cruisers as opposed to 1000 meter cruisers than you will need a lot less of them, I'd estimate in terms of mass, there is a 2700% difference across sources.

Yeah that bugs the living Gods out of me. But GW and 40k are always inconsistent across various sources. Poor setting management will do that every time.

Amaya wrote:One issue is that ship sizes are inconsistent across various sources. If you have 3000+ meter long cruisers as opposed to 1000 meter cruisers than you will need a lot less of them, I'd estimate in terms of mass, there is a 2700% difference across sources.

Damn... so, which is it?

Which ever book you are reading using. GW are terrible at setting control. They have little consistency and basically give you a half finished product.


The correct one is the one you use. I myself use the FFG ship sizes as at lest they are consist.

Another issue is this, realistically, the maximum feasible size for a military would be around 20% of the population. The largest active military (percentage wise) is North Korea at 4.8%, but they allegedly have total military strength of 41.8% of the population when including reserves and paramilitary forces. I really do not think an army that large is maintainable for any sustained duration in a technologically advanced society though.

That said, let's say as many as 70% of such a military is in ground forces (this includes both Combat Arms and support personnel). That means 14% of a population could potentially be in ground forces or that Earth could field a force of 980 million. Earth is nowhere near the population density of a Hive World and there should be hundreds if not thousands of Hive Worlds in the Imperium with populations exceeding 100 US Billion/.1 UK Billion or 14-15x that of Earth.

Now you're trying to tell me the standard formation is a regiment of 20,000 troops? There would be an excess of 50,000 regiments per world! To say that it would be an organisational nightmare is an understatement.

Just to highlight how idiot the structure of the IG is:

Squad - 10 Guardsmen
Platoon - 3-6 Squads 30-60 Guardsmen
Company - 3-6 Platoons, 90 - 360 Guardsmen
Regiment - Minimum of 55 Companies if 20,000 strong. That's an awfully big leap going from 3-6 units per organisational level to 55...there is a reason why modern militaries typically have 3-5 units per organisational level with a given element (infantry, armor, artillery, etc).

I would say it entirely depends on the mission. From what I understand every book I have read it makes it out to sound like the Lords of Terra decide the Regiment size and how many the Commanders get. I usually read that its about 10,000 men in on Regiment pulled from a certain world, than any Commander could have 10-20 of these Regiments in their force depending on how important their mission was to Terra.

Well it's a given that military structure past the the company level is fairly organic based on the operation, but that doesn't explain all the strange things in IG structure. Really, the only thing is that it is 'background' fluff written by people with only a slight knowledge of the most basic of military operations and it's unimportant.

A better name for regiment is "army" as that is what they are.

A more appropriate analogue would be "Division" seeing as a modern one is 6000 to 14000 strong.

Edit: GW makes use of the term 'regiment' because the UK uses a regimental system opposed to the continental system where the division is the primary military unit.

True, but that would mean GW would have to know what that was. As you pointed out they seemed not to have a grasp of how a military is organized or work's.

Hunterindarkness wrote:True, but that would mean GW would have to know what that was. As you pointed out they seemed not to have a grasp of how a military is organized or work's.

Actually, I'll partially retract that statement. GW bases a lot of their fluff on British or European history and the UK makes use of the regimental system which is fine for an island nation of 60 million, but wouldn't really work when you're dealing with worlds of billions. However, Imperial worlds are typically caricatures of European, African, and Middle Eastern countries...so I can understand why they did it to an extent even if I don't care for it.

Another issue is 40k has evolved with little care to how it all fit together. Which leads to some of the issues at the edges( and the middle, to the left as well)

Hunterindarkness wrote:
The correct one is the one you use. I myself use the FFG ship sizes as at lest they are consist.

Actually if you look in the past, you should see that it is actually FFG that has produced inconsistent ship sizes by suddenly giving numbers wildly larger and out of line with existing ones.

The BFG color images in that size chart were made by a member of the BFG list per the BFG list consensus. However since then people have modified the original scale to match their own personal demands of "bigger numbers".

The original scale is on the artist's DeviantArt page:

http://the-first-magelord.deviantart.com/gallery/8686311#/d1cy8r5

This scale is actually remarkably consistent in GW and BL publications by multiple authors over multiple years. In Shadow Point, an average Dictator class cruiser is given a crew size, though it is unclear if attack craft crew are included:

Now, six years later, he was one of the most senior non-commissioned officers amongst a crew of almost thirteen thousand...
p. 62, Shadow Point , by Gordon Rennie

The size of a Retribution battleship is explicitly mentioned is in Dark Disciple:

Admiral Rutger Augustine look out over the vast length of his flagship vessel, the mighty Retribution-class battleship, Hammer of Righteousness...Six kilometres from stern to prow...
p. 31, Dark Disciple

The relatively recent Soul Hunter describes a crew for a grand cruiser, which is larger than a cruiser, more in keeping with Andy Chambers' scale:

Over 25,000 crew called the warship home, even though a sizable chunk of those were slave labourers and servitor wretches...
p. 95-96, Soul Hunter

As shown by these quotes, the scale has been remarkably consistent over many years of BL publications. It wasn't until FFG came along that then people started trying to inflate the size for no apparent reason. It smacks of "It's 40K so things have to be stupidly big...just because". No different really from those that insist Warlord Titans are as tall as mountain ranges based on exaggerated artwork.

A common issue is supposing that just because there is volume that therefore it must have stupendous amounts of crew. However 40K, BL, and FFG themselves have given examples of decks abandoned or that hardly see any crew pass through them. The "black box" machinery produced by the Adeptus Mechanicus appears able to function for hundreds or thousands of years, or be mothballed for centuries (as given by the Imperial Armour Siege of Vraks books), so it isn't a given that the machinery of a starship must have huge numbers of crew for maintenance. Some parts might but some pieces of machinery might chug along quietly in a corner on a deck without need for anyone to supervise anything for years. Also a warship will have large amounts of space given over to redundancy, armor, fuel tanks, storage spaces, and the like. All of these do not need active crew to baby sit.

I don't know, I have read BL books that give cruisers as 8 km long and such. I don't mind smaller or larger scale, the issue I have is the lack of a consistent scale. Bl does not enforce one, hell one book has a 30km long escort. As far as I can tell BFG does not list ship size. Some fans made guess work based off some BL books but, as I sad BL goes from 6km Cruisers to 30km escorts to cutter sized warp ships. I use the FFG scale because I run the RPG's and as I said its consistent and listed.

The only ships in FFG that approach 5km+ are the battle-cruisers and Grand Cruisers, with one particularly massive bulk transport, the Universe-class, being something like 12km long. The rest of the FFG ships, such as the frigates and transports, are the normal 1-3km in length.

Yep they have more or less codified size range per ship class. As I said above there is no Official BFG ship sizes, they were never published. The first magelord took a single set of BL book by a single author and used those.. His chart is not official.. It is an example of pick your source and go with it.

Hunterindarkness wrote:A better name for regiment is "army" as that is what they are.

This is exactly right. I always read the references to "regiments" as "armies" for the most part, because that's an accurate description of their size and function. They can carry out sustained operations that often involve capturing large chunks of continents and so forth, which would take hundreds of thousands if not millions of troops at a minimum. Organizationally it wouldn't make sense to keep track of anything less than an army group on a galaxy-wide scale either.

The exception I make is for regiments like the 1st Tanith. If the planet had an extremely low population (like, in the hundreds of thousands or low millions) and no industrial base, the Administratum might call on them to raise regiments numbering in the thousands who are expertly trained as scouts or some other appropriate specialty based on their background. Similarly as someone said, a regiment of super-heavies might comprise 5 or 10 super-heavy vehicles plus whatever other support vehicles they need. This would be appropriate though, given their rarity and the way they are deployed.

If I recall Tamith did not even get a whole regiment off world before the end.The Muster was three but I do not recall if any size was ever given.

The numbers of the Tanith First-And-Only are listed between 2500 and ~10,000 soldiers, at various points, though this also includes their mix-in replacements from Verghast and Belladon.

Well I know he got 2500 off world, but if I recall that was not the whole of the first regiment. That is what they lifted off in 3 or 4 hours. They had three full regiments to start with, but numbers have never said just how big each was.

I thought that regiments where small and had to be grouped into larger divisions, battlegroups, or army groups to conquer or defend a planet. On further reading of the IG codes and some bl books, mainly Cain and Gaunt, it does appear to be this way.

Umm the IG codex stats outright some can be more then 120'000 men.They are grouped into larger units for attacks and all, but each is not always small.

It also states they are part of a larger organization, the battle group or army group. Also it states that its typically several thousand as the size of the regiment. So I'd say 2.000-5.000 sounds about right.

Good point. It is odd to me, that they use that term for 2'000 men, 300 men or 200'000 men.