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Just food alone would require massive storage areas

The recommended daily intake of protein for an average male = 56g
theoretical recommended intake of protein for an athletic male = 80g (taken from menshealth.com)

due to size and muscle differences between human and space marine this would be a guess at the daily protein need = 200g

for all combat troops on a battle barge (300 men) they need of protein = 60kg/day

This does not include serfs, armoury staff and other marines outside of the company structure. This also does not include all other nutreints and chemicals space marines need to be at peak performance. So even at its most basic form the amount of storage required to keep a battle barge fed would be massive.

Crew Sizes in Battlefleet Gothic
by Andy Chambers

My two pennyworth on crew sizes was around 1500-2000 per damage point for Imperial and Chaos capital ships (adjust down a bit for Eldar and up a bit for Orks), but only around 2-500 total for escorts. Space Marine ships, as had been mooted, I would imagine to benefit from a lot of automated systems and wired in servitors to reduce their crew requirements to a minimum and increase their state of readiness in comparison with Navy ships. I would imagine that most Imperial and Chaos capital ships could find transport capacity for troops equal to about 1/3 to 1/2 their crew compliment

A Strike Cruiser has 6 damage points, if the automates and servitors reduced the crew to a quarter that of a similar sized naval vessel you'd still be looking at 2250 crew and a transport capacity of 700-1100 troops with a Battle Barge being double that. This may sound like a lot but there is canon precedent (Flesh Tearers IA article) for mere escorts being modified to carry an entire company which is a similar increase in magnitude. To my mind the issue isn't accommodation, its deployment: marine vessels are geared primarily towards defense, armoured to the teeth rather than armed - that would likely include minimizing the number of weakspots in the hull such as launch bays, as well as compartmentalizing them for if and when something does get through. IE: A standard Strike Cruiser would have 10 drop pod launchers, it might have 50 drop pods on board - but the extras would be stored in armoured hangers halfway across the ship rather than right next to the launch bay, by the time the crew can get them loaded up and prepped the ground battle would be over.

 purplefood wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
The Strike Cruiser can likely carry a few Astartes. The logistical nightmare about the Astartes is akin to having an eating-contest. I mean a single Astartes likely eats as much as Obelix, so an entire Grox might be on the menu during dinner per Space Marine, and the more deranged chapters eats their servants to keep their men fighting fit in times of need. So in my view its the pens for the Grox and other things that they eat that takes place, and that is the true limit to how many Astartes you can house on one Strike Cruiser especially on longer missions. Plus the ammo is hell, nevermind the things necessary just to maintain the weapons and armour.

Marines can go for long periods without eating much. Even when they do eat there is a large range of things they can consume. They aren't limited to what we would be able to eat.

You have to remember, there is a difference between what they can do,and what is best. While they might not die from malnutrition as rapidly as a regular human, they will still need to consume a number of calories greater than or equal to those they expend if they don't want long term debilitating effects. So if a Marine is eating less for a short period of time, and his enhanced physiology is compensating for it, at some point he is going to need to counter that effect, probably with some kind of specialized nutritional program. You have to balance what minimal fluff there is with some reasoning from time to time. They're still going to be constrained by some basic biological rules.

The fluff has long supported the idea that Space Marines are kinda high maintenance, needing a specialized diet, and various medical therapies his entire life to maintain the biologically altered body. It's like having a race horse. You can feed it crap like grass and basic oats if you want to, lol. It will probably survive. But it's not gonna be a race horse for very long.

Like it's been mentioned, the biggest reason for distributing Marines across vessels is an "eggs in one basket" philosophy, but also because the fewer Marines you carry, the less space taken up that would be used for storage of all the expendables the ship and the Marines need. Ammunition, fuel, food, water, etc.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 purplefood wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
The Strike Cruiser can likely carry a few Astartes. The logistical nightmare about the Astartes is akin to having an eating-contest. I mean a single Astartes likely eats as much as Obelix, so an entire Grox might be on the menu during dinner per Space Marine, and the more deranged chapters eats their servants to keep their men fighting fit in times of need. So in my view its the pens for the Grox and other things that they eat that takes place, and that is the true limit to how many Astartes you can house on one Strike Cruiser especially on longer missions. Plus the ammo is hell, nevermind the things necessary just to maintain the weapons and armour.

Marines can go for long periods without eating much. Even when they do eat there is a large range of things they can consume. They aren't limited to what we would be able to eat.

You have to remember, there is a difference between what they can do,and what is best. While they might not die from malnutrition as rapidly as a regular human, they will still need to consume a number of calories greater than or equal to those they expend if they don't want long term debilitating effects. So if a Marine is eating less for a short period of time, and his enhanced physiology is compensating for it, at some point he is going to need to counter that effect, probably with some kind of specialized nutritional program. You have to balance what minimal fluff there is with some reasoning from time to time. They're still going to be constrained by some basic biological rules.

The fluff has long supported the idea that Space Marines are kinda high maintenance, needing a specialized diet, and various medical therapies his entire life to maintain the biologically altered body. It's like having a race horse. You can feed it crap like grass and basic oats if you want to, lol. It will probably survive. But it's not gonna be a race horse for very long.

Like it's been mentioned, the biggest reason for distributing Marines across vessels is an "eggs in one basket" philosophy, but also because the fewer Marines you carry, the less space taken up that would be used for storage of all the expendables the ship and the Marines need. Ammunition, fuel, food, water, etc.

Which is what they have the nutrient paste for. So the entire damn ship isn't taken up with the grox Beaviz seems to think they eat constantly...

Of course purplefood, I'm clinically insane and thinks an average Battlebarge have 200m2 for all the Space Marines. 50m2 for the guidance-systems and steering, 1000m2 for the engines. The rest is places where the Groz roam.

Look at many vessels at least in the past there were actually a tendency to take in live animals like fowl and cattle serving in a food-way. And also the Grox is well-known to be the most eaten thing in the IOM, it's stated in fluff for the Emperor's sake.

I might have gone a little overboard in how much the Space Marines eat, but supermetabolism and such things explains that. They need much food to function at peak ability which is basically why I interpret it in so grande numbers. Plus the Obelix-thingy was a thing I think partly because it is amusing, partly because it makes perfect sense. Of course other than being super-strong and super-tough the Space Marines resemblance to Obelix stops there, unless you have a chapter of inbred Space Marines.

Yeah but even short voyages can take a few weeks.
They are said to eat the nutrient paste while on campaign, I'm sure grox is the most eaten thing in the Imperium but it's not particularly good for extended operations with an irregular supply chain.
They do need a lot in terms of nutrition but that's why they have concentrated nutrient paste. It's just what they need and nothing more.

*Facepalms*

Why do you think I mentioned Grox-pens aboard ships purplefood? For fun? Just for the heck of it? It was actually to solve that problem and supplementing the freezers with meat and such. Look at an aircraft-carrier at Discovery Channel. 90% of it seems to be storage and food related stuff. I take the same approach to ships in space. Plus the paste comes from powered armour and is probably even harder and more ludicrous to produce, meaning the maintainance-areas would be even huger. Also i'm under the impression that the paste is not wasted onboard ships. And what is the paste made of? Recycled materials? That will only go so for so long. They do the same at air-plane toilets. They sure as hell ain't never refueled. Also my interpretation of the word campaign means they have landed and are in a combat-zone.

To have livestock on board was a solution to provide fresh meat on board before the invention of refrigeration. But it was also a kind of occupational therapy for the crew, because boredom was always a problem in times of big crews and no entertainment media of any kind. You still have to provide food storage - for the cattle or poultry, that is. And meat was / is always only a part of nutrition. The main part always has been cereals. For the meat, it was salted in. fresh meat was absolute luxury, even with poultry or a pigsty on board.
I am in possession of some lists about the provisions german freight ships had to take in per crew member per week in the 1950ies as ordered by the employees rights board. Even then, meat was more a minor part. Most important was wheat flour and rye flour for baking bread, and then dried peas, dried beans etc for hotpots. Meat was mostly in form of chunks for stewing, smoked, salted or deep frozen. Sausage or cold cuts were not part of the plan, but cheese, lots of fat and quite an amount of fruit jam. The jam was to provide vitamine... hard to imagine nowadays, isn't it?

My conclusion: I can imagine lifestock on board of imperial spacecraft, yes. But only for entertainment value. Although I agree that space marines would probably need a large amount of calories as well as special diet (somewhere in the older fluff I remember something about live-long chemotherapy and ingesting special minerals to maintain the enhancement of bones and the like), but probably it would be a very controlled diet with a lot of carbohydrates, lots of certain proteines while next to nothing on others, plus mineralic and medical additives. Cries out "algae farms" and "yeast tanks" for me. Plus the combination of algae farming for food and oxygene production is a classic theme in SF.

Only for entertainment-value? That was a very original line of thought, I will give you that. I never thought the British Navy who had baiscally one rule "Whip them" brought animals onboard ships for entertainment-value. Hrotland, this you must really give good reasons for, and from sources that ain't clinically insane. And Grox for entertainment? Sure if you likes to see a Comodo-dragon like animal devour your mate. Then it's entertainment. And please don't tell me they have them onboard ships for stand-up comedy. This is possibly something of the most farfetched things I have ever read. It's a fun read though, and if that's your opinion, then I think we shouldn't discuss this further.

A Strike Cruiser is typically used to carry one company plus its support, although given what I have seen it would appear that isn't anywhere close to the maximum capacity.

Space Marine ships are full of lots of empty space(leftover from when the Marines were Legions and space was needed)


A Battlebarge is huge. 6-7 kilometers long. Cruisers are around 3.5-5 kilometers.

The Marines themselves won't take up much space, but the equipment they need does. Mostly ammo storage and manufacturing equipment. A Strike Cruiser needs to carry enough supplies to keep the Company operating, sometimes for months at a time.


So if you move all supply needs onto dedicated supply ships, you could probably fit 4-5 companies onto a Strike Cruiser. Of course you would need to have support ships for the supplies needed by those 4-5 companies.

The Legions had a drop ship called the Stormbird that could deploy a full Company at a time. They were used during the Unification Wars on Terra.

However the STC was lost and after the Legions were broken up there was no need for a company sized drop ship. The few left are relics prized by the chapters that have them.

If the Marines had a drop ship capable of dropping a company, you could have fit more then one company aboard a cruiser.

The Crusade would have had dedicated supply ships so the space wouldn't be needed for supplies.

You see the engines on the outside, but never how much room they take on the inside, and I don't imagine a warp drive is a small thing either. I imagine a third of every ship is taken up by just the engines and warp drive. Another third of the ship for life support systems, defense and offensive systems, multiple flight decks, it being the imperium and space marines vessels I bet the Armour is also THICK!!! so that leaves another third for living quarters, equipment storage, training areas, recreational areas, mess hall, flight control....

I can easily imagine a strike cruiser being only able to hold 100 marines comfortably.

 Anfauglir wrote:

 Coolyo294 wrote:
IIRC, a Strike Cruiser can carry one company and a Battle Barge can carry three.

This is correct, as far as I'm aware.

 Eetion wrote:
There is a difference between how many it can carry and how many it can be accomodate.

Iv heard the same thing with regards to Strike Cruisers carrying a company and Battlebarges carryign 3 companies. I think it might be Gothic quote.

Sure a chapter could pile into a Battle Barge or even a strike cruise... but that doesnt mean it can accomodate them, weapons rooms, dormitories, training facilities, kitchens, serfs, armamaments, facility to deploy them via drop pod or Thunderhawk.. All facilities would be stretched or unable to accomodate the numbers. But im sure they could all fit... its just the might be bedding down in a cargo bay.

And then there's this to consider. Yes, going on ship volume, probably a single Strike Cruiser and easily a Battle Barge could hold several chapters - in just Marines. However, the whole point of the single/three Company number is that they are shipped around with all their armoury, logistical and support elements that help them deploy and function properly. Whatever amount of space a Company of Marines take up, it's many times that space in keeping them supplied and sufficiently battle-ready, etc.

I think this is about right. Ships in 40K are huge, like ridiculously huge compared to other sci-fi where a mere frigate is the size of a freakin star destroyer from star wars. Thus, space is hardly an issue. I imagine a battlebarge could hold many thousands of marines in terms of raw space. However, two things.

First, 40k ships are almost intentionally space/volume wasters. Between enormous chapels, training rooms, gothic arched halls, etc., the sheer amount of space wasted is just mind boggling. Hell, in Galaxy in Flames Sinderman is moving around parts of the Vengful Spirit giving sermons that havn't been visited in years and indeed may have been forgotten.

Second, astartes move as full mobile fighting units with all their aircraft, vehicles, ammo, etc. all prepared and ready to go. This is unlike any other fighting unit in the imperium which were broken up after the Horus Heresy. This, combine with the point above, means full accommodation are fairly space consuming.

Did nobody read my post? Nevermind.

The Battle Barges can probably hold upwards of 1000 comfortably, pre-heresy. Do you know why?

Buddha is right. The Imperium is a space waster. Having memorial worlds is an example. The chapels, the halls, the gothic arches, the training rooms... The chapels probably take up half of that space. Maybe more.

Pre-Heresy, the Emperor wasn't worshipped. He was just a ruler. Period. He wasn't the 'god emperor'. Nup. So imagine how much space battle barges had without all that shizzle.

Beviz, my grandfather was "smutje", as we call it in Germany, he was the cook of a sailing ship that went on scandinavia and mediterranean cruises before ww2. Yes, they had livestock on board of sailing vessels. But that was for having some luxury on the table, not to provide basic meat support. In former times, they had salted pork for that, later they had canned meat. It was fine to have some milk and eggs on board, and now and then one of them animals would be butchered. In this sense I mean entertainment: to have some diversion on table on special occasions. Another point of entertainment was the farming. Sailing can be quite boring, you know? fuzzing around with their little farm and petting them cute widdle wabbits or lil piggies gave them something to do on long warm days with a steady breeze. There was no telly, you know, maybe ONE radio, and when they were lucky there was a worn-out record player inthe officers' mess.
But those animals had no long life on board, because they used to die in the first bigger gales, be it of sickness, be it of fear, be it the farm being washed over board.

In the english navy it must have been even more terrible: they crammed up to 1500 men into those swimming sabots! There was not a lot of space for big time farming. Heck they slept three or four guys atop in hammocks above their ordnance pieces! What do you think how much livestock they took on board? And be sure, THAT was only for the officers. If Jan Mate wanted fresh meat, he had to chase rats - or eat the worms breeding in the hard tacks. - and the first encounter was for sure the end of every farm animal on board, splintered to death by cannon fire, but more likely just thrown over board, because on deck they were in the way of the sailing crew and boarding parties, below they were in the way of the gunners and the ammo runners. Read the "Hornblower" books if you want some entertaining insight on napoleonic war ships, read Alexander von Humbold's or Charles Darwins Books if you want something nonfictional about live on explorer vessels. (The "Beagle" was an old coal trader refitted for exploration, but not the less crowded without end. That goes for every expedition fleet).

Well, about entertainment on imperial space vessel, I don't think about pit fights. Although, why not? let in them groxes on the practicing ground and do some barefisting? I misspelled what I wanted to say. I meant diversion, like above. Entertainment in the sense it is nice to have some decent ribeye now and then instead of tofu and protein shakes, when you are on a long boring trip to the next subsector. But for sure the basic nutrition is NOT provided with livestock, not in the imperial navy, not on Nelson's fleet, and not on german merchant vessels. The last, at least, I know definitely.

Usually cattle and fowl onboard any ship was for producing milk and eggs, not meat. And they could transport horses. Some might have died, but most made it ashore.

In the IOM the ships are large enough to have a number of live Grox onboard, not as many as during my clinically insane-suggestion to purplefood, but certainly enough to have some breeding onboard along with a small meat-plant due to the fact that even if you have stores for 60 years, eventually you will have managed to starve out your population, so it's better to bulk up for just twenty and have some Grox onboard and gain a further ten years despite the placement of the facilities I mentioned

As for the food, well I maintain my suggestion that the ships basically are Nimitz-carriers tossed into space, as they are the only ships of a manner of size and a manner of operation that can do that here on earth. As for wasting space, I don't see it. Lots changes in ten thousand years of improvisation. If anything the improvisations makes things more cramped onboard ships because they take up more place to achieve the same effect.

Also pit-fighting is frowned upon by the Imperial Guard, so I don't think they would call that fun even if it only were Grox. A Grox even if lobotomized ain't very funny.

You do have great ideas for comedy, now I'm envisioning Victory during Trafalgar having a lot of cows on deck going moo while the boat is being raked by the French navy. Hopefully you do know what a pen is? And don't answer it is a female swan even thought that answer can get me some cheap thrill as sailors comes and get chased around by a rather irate bird.

Yep I know what a pen is: a tool for making lines of colour onto paper.

Supposedly you aimed at my remark about the farm being washed overboard in storms? well, what do you think where the pen was in the first place? They definitely had no room for it under deck. My Grandpa had to work in a pantry that was only 1.50 meters high, the only place where he could stand upright was directly before his coal oven, under the skylight. Now and then they would buy a living pig when there was room in the cargo bay, but usually they would aim for full freight. Stables for chicken and rabbits could be placed under the bow, but there was not much space too, the workshop of the sailmaker located there, and also the gangspill for the anchor. When the weather was okay, they set up their pens (no not the biros and not the swan ladies) between the deck housings. But when the weather changed there was often enough no time for securing the cages elsewhere, and the bow room was open to the main deck, too. Well, sometimes the storm took away the complete hut or the map house, although those were part of the ship. I am told the cages were missing quite often after heavy weather. And more often the cages were still there, but the animals were drowned.

So you installed a grox farm in your imperial vessel. Granted, there will be space for it, we are talking about miles long monstrosities, there will be space somewhere between bulkheads or strakes, between the water tanks and the thruster foundations or else. But you need food for them groxes too. you have to groom that. In the end you have a complete small ecosystem with plants, fungi, bacteriae and animals, a cycle of oxygene as well as a cycle of water, a cycle of biomass (composter)... NOW we are talking. THAT I will believe in a spaceship of that size. In principle the same thing I suggested with tanks of yeast and algae, although more complex. The benefit is you have lots of products for nutrition, your life support system is regenerating air and drinking water without storing large amounts, and you only have to comlement your basic resources now and then: water, air, nitrogenium, phosphates... in theory at least.

one last remark:

Of course farms for growing vegetables will be there, and one monstrous thing I will also add, is that any dead crewmen and other garbage will be fed to the Grox, and I'm talking pens not large open space for Grox to roam around, and of course the pens for livestock was under deck. You should actually look at the charts on how a ship in the age of sail was drawn, they had pens under deck for the animals as they were quite wide to accommodate ammo and food-stores, which is why the sailors slept in very cramped confines (plus hygiene was not invented until 1919).

And again Nimitz comes to mind when it comes to how a ship in space will work. Having a vessel in space who can basically grow it's own food and such would be a major asset for the Imperial Navy as that will slash that red-tape off the charts. I for my part go for logic and what's there rather than guess-work when I shall explain something. Nimitz is the only thing approaching the scale to the ships in BFG, so that's were I take my point of view from. The Grox eating dead crewmembers, well it's better than having a bunch of corpses floating around in the warp. And the dung from the Grox will fertilize the vegetables and other things grown on ship helping to solve that problem.

Of course the sailors never had animals above deck in long periods. A horse getting scared on deck would be a bad idea to tell the least, and would make cleaning up after them hell. They stood in pens below deck, and a pen is not very large, it's about twice the size of the animal at best. Nevermind having fowl above deck. There you basically have a Benny Hill-show with sailors chasing hens around during battle. For a cattle-pen just visit a farm, and that's the size I'm talking about.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
Plus the paste comes from powered armour and is probably even harder and more ludicrous to produce, meaning the maintainance-areas would be even huger.

That is very unlikely, seeing as we can currently make 'food-blocks' now I think in the IoM making them would be fine. All it requires would be for each component/chemical to be pressed into as small a size as possible and prepped for storage. Protein can be lab grown, fibre can be taken from plant material, vitimins and other chemicals can be synthetically produced by apothacaries/serfs. It makes far more tactical sence to just keep prepared food in storage, this is due to the fact that growing animals for meat is terribly inefficient and wastes alot of food potential (not only would you have to store the animal (which takes up more room than the meat it contains would) you also have to store the food they eat.

I believe that the IoM is technilogically advanced enough to understand canning, vac-sealing and dehydration methods of food storage. As to the entertainment side of things, when Space Marines are on board a ship it is to go fight somewhere, they would be more interested in preparing for a campaign than what is on the menu.

Sooner or later food onboard ships will become depleted, of course a smaller vessel is unlikely to have that, but if no food is grown, then the vessel eventually will starve to death, especially with the shaky supply-line of WH40k. And even if you have lab-grown food, recycling onboard ships is likely hugely important. Nothing can ever be wasted. Help can be many years away and the supply-ship can be sabotaged or blown up or anything else. And the IOM is advanced enough to grow much food on little space. it seems a bit odd going into interstellar travel without any way to produce food onboard.

As for the entertainment. Hrotgart thought livestock-pens was above deck in the Age of Sail. Meaning that you basically had cows on Victory going moo on the deck getting hit by cannonballs and bullets (they were under deck if at all). Which for me is a funny but very much an unrealistic thought with cows and horses thrashing around on the deck while the ships are exchanging broadsides. And the idea of pens on ships is far from the most ludicrous idea I know about from the Age of Sail. A vessel of the Maltese Knights was a combined warship and bakery so mad ideas have existed before.

Beaviz, I give up. Keep the happy image of the stupid villageboy that does not know anything about cattle pens. If you say that animal farming was essential part in nutrition in napoleonic sea wars, then it be so. Who was my grandfather who actually prepared meals on sailing vessels of a later age for a living that his tales might compete with your enormous knowledge about ships of the line? I am taking this discussion much too seriously. Hruotland out.

We don't have anything to say that Imperial ships use animals on board for food we do know:
A) The Impeirum doesn't care about its soldiers/sailors.
B) The Imperium likes easy solutions.
Nutrient paste or equivilent MRE's are more than likely what they eat. We know the warships of the Imperium have resupply stations along their patrols routes which helps support this idea.
While the IoM might be advanced enough to create a self-sustaining ship in space why would they? They don't need to.

purplefood you argue for easy solutions. Seriously? What's more easy than having the ship self-sustained in the food-way? Please explain that, cause that is self-contradictory.

Also going into space without any means of food-production. Watch the Universe. The IOM doesn't care about their soldiers, but they doesn't flush them down the drain either. The point I'm arguing is basically that food-production must happen on any ship on long-term patrols, or fluctuations of the warp means that a ship will just disappear because there is nothing to eat. Maybe I'm wrong about Grox-pens, I'm not wrong about food-production on the other hand onboard a space ship where they can at some point travel for 300 years with food-stores for 120. Then you have lost an Emperor Battleship, and that is a fact the IOM should care very much about no matter the indifference they have to the men onboard. You have to use some degree of logic for this to work as it's basically idiotic setting off into something as unstable as space (even in our reality) for a long while while not producing food. Same goes for oxygen and water, and even gravity.

Not really. The Imperium would view the expense of altering the interior of all their ships to include food production as not worth it.

Its space that is not being used for ammunition storage or troop transport capacity.

Far better to just resupply every 6 months to a year.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean its the best. Being self-sufficient is not always the best idea.


It also reduces the likelyhood of a rebellion. If the ship needs to resupply every so often, it keep them tied to the Imperium for their needs.

If a ship was self-sufficient the crew could just stage a mutiny and go and live out the rest of their days in peace in some forgotten corner of the Galaxy. The Imperium needs its fleet to remain loyal to keep them safe.

Self-sufficient in the way of food, not munitions and such, and even so crew-fatalities means a vessel must recruit new crew ever so often, and growing all the food you need in the warp? Sooner or later you need to replenish that as well, unless you want to have three-headed crewmembers and worse. So yeah keeping them locked up from start to finish isn't a really good idea unless you like to gamble if on a long trek. The Warp is indeed a subtle mistress.

And the warp is very subtle, six months, a Nimitz-class has at least two years of supplies Grey Templar. And a Nimitz won't run into warp-storms or things that can delay it horribly starving out the crew. Of course that can be written off as an example, I don't mean to be rude of course.

It was just an example. They probably have more supplies then that.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
Self-sufficient in the way of food, not munitions and such, and even so crew-fatalities means a vessel must recruit new crew ever so often, and growing all the food you need in the warp? Sooner or later you need to replenish that as well, unless you want to have three-headed crewmembers and worse. So yeah keeping them locked up from start to finish isn't a really good idea unless you like to gamble if on a long trek. The Warp is indeed a subtle mistress.

And the warp is very subtle, six months, a Nimitz-class has at least two years of supplies Grey Templar. And a Nimitz won't run into warp-storms or things that can delay it horribly starving out the crew. Of course that can be written off as an example, I don't mean to be rude of course.

There's lots of mention of them needing to resupply and having resupply points along their patrol route.
There's 0 mention of them having on-board farms or animals.
I'm not saying it's impossible or even a bad idea. I'm saying they don't do it.

Am I saying they never does that purplefood? They are basically growing things in the warp (I'm sort of assuming if a thing can reach around planet or moon-size the warp has less effect). Even IRL-theories about space mentions mutation. Same with Warp-born denizens. The same applies to plants and animals in space, they would sooner or later develop unhealthy mutations. Of course food is grown at the space-ships, and the few mentions of ship in WH40k going out of food of air have been in heavy combat (usually lone survivor). Their state is not mentioned, but I assume they are heavily damaged as that can really frak up things humans need to survive. Of course sealing the vessel shut and sailing to the end welcomes mutation.

Realism purplefood should enter the equation if you ask me. I have mentioned why food should be produced onboard ships. I mentioned a very good reason why even. It's basically suicide according to any scientist to board a space-ship and not have food-production. Heck from our nicks, people should think the situation is inverted. You should have my arguments and I your I'm the one obsessing over food not you

I seriously doubt they serve the grunts prime steak. Officers certainly.
Ratings, corpse starch, nutient paste, and 20 lashes if they complain.

Also not all battle barges are heresy era relics. A great many would have been produced on the creation of a chapter. Designs for a Battle barge HH era may not be the same as current era.

I'd also add engine space is likely much greater for Space marines current role in rapid response than your typical Navy cruiser, also the thicker armour and various equipment needed for orbital assault on top of the basics for a navy cruiser.

What the different people eat Eetion is another subject entirely.

Again the size-differences can be differences in eras, just like today. The Spruance-destroyers are larger than even heavy cruisers of WWII. Buddha had a great point there.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
What the different people eat Eetion is another subject entirely.

Again the size-differences can be differences in eras, just like today. The Spruance-destroyers are larger than even heavy cruisers of WWII. Buddha had a great point there.

Not so. Its quite an apt point. No point having a pen for Grox when the only people who will eat them can manage prefectly well with a well stocked freezer. They don't have to feed everyone steaks, just a select few.