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Hey I was was wondering what's it like to live on those massive starships. Drifting in the endless space to fight on different planets or secure a trading route. I wonder what kind of facilities they have maybe a rifle range, gym, Labs, engineering and organic crops grown there. you have to wonder if those starships have capble storage for transporting IG divisions, gear, tanks, supplies etc. anything helps cause I'm gonna write some fiction for sh** and giggles

Think of it like the real life navy, only in space .

Captains get huge quarters, great facilities, and sometimes large harems. Indentured sailors? A bunk.

Other than that...They are absolutely massive. They aren't luxury liners by any means though they have facilities to maintain life and sanity. I imagine they make use of the same technology to recycle waste into nutrition that hives use as well as vat grown foods...I just know that in large battle ships there are sometimes areas that people don't even enter anymore. And the bowels of the ship tend to be pretty crappy and confusing. Hellish even.

I think it would be relatively boring...

But i did read that while the ship is in the warp, you would have nightmares about daemons and chaos things.


(iirc warp travel can last for weeks at a time)

ZOMBIE CAT wrote:
I think it would be relatively boring...

But i did read that while the ship is in the warp, you would have nightmares about daemons and chaos things.


(iirc warp travel can last for weeks at a time)

A weeklong trip of nightmares huh? that kinda sucks. I would imagine some kind of warp entity would be a root cause for mutiny on a ship. I guess

Extremely cramped, dark, dank quarters for your average Sailor. Each ship is like a floating city but there's so much weapons/crew/cargo/machinery that it's still very compact. I imagine training rooms for Imperial Guardsmen are useful for "fresh" air and exercises when not in use by the Guard.

I don't believe they can even look out the window while in the Warp though, as it would drive one insane.

Rum, sodomy and the lash.
That's how you run a navy.

Joey wrote:Rum, sodomy and the lash.
That's how you run a navy.

nasty...

Probably somewhat around what it was like in a submarine in ww2. Cramped, smelly and painstakingly boring.
Aside from that, there are probably more hazards as well.

You should buy a copy of 'Relentless' by Richard Williams - Black Library from 2008 (about £2.50 secondhand)

What it's like depends on which crew rank you are.

The Ratings- worktime =the filthest chores or most dangerous, sifting through human waste, cleaning our steam pipes, pulling giant mechanical appaeratus
bedtime = cramped into one room with 50+ others.. locked in, I think this is when they get their food too - dunno about toilets, probably in a corner of room
They have an extremely high mortality rate and are practically slaves, generally chained together, always with a violent overseer. They work, sleep, die.

Trusted Crew - work time = skilled works on repairs, maintenance normal kind, basic cleaning. Mortality rate is low from this rank up, they are generally happy to be onboard, some have been promoted to this level from ratings but most are navy trained or taken from other ship's crews. They have messhalls and spare time, 'Gothic War' describes gambling, drugs and prostitutes (smuggled aboard or Officer's turned a blind eye at the last port) . Interestingly enough it also describes gang warfare aboard the ship (as does Relentless) where different work outfits look after themselves for promotions and also literal drug dealing gangs.

Armsmen are presumably in a similar living situation as trusted crew except lazier, they have order to keep, fortress levels to guard (dividing different parts of the ships, mainly from the threat of a rating muntiny). I'd guess they have gyms and training halls.

Non-commissioned officers seem to work with the trusted crew and armsmen but dine and sleep in seperate areas. I wouldn't call them wealthy but they'd have certain privileges to fall back on and enough money to gamble with.

Commissioned officers are the very upper echelons of a naval ship, they'd be wealthy and probably come from aristocratic background (certainly helps in promotions from midshipmen). They have separate dining halls and when lucky can dine at the captains table. They each have luxury suites- the higher the rank the bigger - but all large enough to have a few concubines if desired. They spend their time on the bridge or following orders through the non-commissioned officers- apparently lots of paper work involved too. They have fancy gyms/sparring rooms.

Other things I can remember reading about -

Commissar and his cadets have separate living quarters - simple small rooms/ communal locker room.
Astropaths have a scary hideout room where they are rarely interrupted
Cogs boys have their own living area/main work room
Ecclesiarchy have a chapel on board where with the Capatain's permission priests can hold sermons to various portions of the crew

Can't think of much else, you really should buy Relentless for the best fluff - there's also Gothic War and RT Battlefleet Kronos to consider too

There is a short story in "Let the Galaxy Burn" that is all on a navy ship. Fairly grim too down on the lower decks. Darn press gangs...

Dirty, claustrophobic, monotonous, short.

Well, there is all sorts of fluff on navy ships where there are literally thousands of crew toiling in the engine rooms, gangs of generational workers who pretty much have their own languages, songs and customs shifting the plasma through the engines. Different weapons crews a hundred strong hauling the solid, building sized torpedoes into launch tubes, competing and fighting with their rival crews.

The larger, older ships are like the hives - some people will be born, have children and die within the same bulkheads as their parents and grandparents, only being vaguely aware that they are on a ship. Rogue crewmen, servitors and so on may stalk the darkest decks.

The newer ships in the newer fluff may be more like modern navy ships with good crews, mobility through the ranks, reasonably well educated workers and reasonable conditions etc.

Atrocity Exhibition wrote:
What it's like depends on which crew rank you are.

Exactly. However, your description is slightly inexact (at least regarding the fluff I've read, and we all know how reliable and consistent GW fluff is ). Here's a brief description of the hierarchy in the Imperial Navy. The people living on an imperial navy starship can be divided into four broad categories:

1°/ Shipmen: Generally 80% of a ship's population. They usually have a very high turnover rate due the horrendous living conditions they suffer, which means that a ship will usually replenish their ranks with each planet she visits.. Most of them will be "indentured workers". Those are the lowest ranking men on-board a starship. They perform all the tasks on a starship that necessitate brute strength a virtually no qualification or skill (from loading macro-shells into the ship's guns to carrying supplies and equipment around the ship or even simply scrubbing the decks). They're basically viewed on a starship as being expendables, like fuel or water.
The rest of the shipmen are the ratings. On the contrary to the indentured workers, they have some form of qualification or skill that makes them slightly more valuable. They will usually work as maintenance crew, or gunners.

2°/ Armsmen: Usually 10% of a ship's crew (non-navy vessels will have far less armsmen on board). Those men are basically soldiers, very akin to the troopers of the IG. They are the only men on a ship (apart from officers) that are trusted with a weapon permanently. Their main duty is to maintain order on a ship, enforce the officer's decisions and fight any crew mutiny. There are entrusted with the keys for the ship's weapons locker. During a boarding action, they will distribute those weapons to the shipmen of the vessel.

3°/ Warrant officers: Usually 9% of a ship's crew. Those men are the equivalent of the sergeants and captains of the IG. They oversee the day to day running of the ship. They watch over the workers, or command a gun battery, etc. This position is usually the highest achievable for an average naval crew, since the upper echelons of the ladders (the commissioned officers) are usually reserved to men with some social status or nobility(but not always).

4°/ Commissioned Officers The true masters of the ship. An officer can be anything from a lieutenant to a Lord High Admiral. Most of them are high-born. Usually descending from another august naval officer. They have the huge responsibility of watching over a mighty warship of the Navy and its tens of thousands of crewmen.

I don't see much difference in our posts, other than trusted crew = ratings and indentured crew = slave gangs, something I pretty sure you're right about...
Not sure where you've gotten your percentages from but I'd generally agree with them. However the warrant officers category, imo, ought to be non-commisioned officers because you've got petty officers and armsmen ranks in there too (senior and master). In terms of any inaccurate info its all just based on those books - mainly Relentless/Execution Hour/Shadow Point/BFG rule books - so not sure which parts you disagree with because there isn't really anymore fluff out there - except I've seen the precise break down of ranks on the 40k lexicanum - I suspect someone has just inferred quite abit. However I bet Battlefleet Kronos book would give a thorough break down whether we except RT as canon is abit tricky




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There are entrusted with the keys for the ship's weapons locker. During a boarding action, they will distribute those weapons to the shipmen of the vessel.

This makes much more sense to me, but the fluff that I read said there was a single major armory from which trusted crew are armed and this is only opened once the master of arms gives the order (Relentless chapter 15)- any idea where your info is from because I prefer it

Atrocity Exhibition wrote:
Not sure where you've gotten your percentages from but I'd generally agree with them.

Those figures did actually come from Rogue Trader: Battlefleet Koronus, a true treasure for any navy fluff nutter like me. It's also from this rulebook that I got the description of the navy's ranks, the distribution of weapons among the crew, etc. IMO, the BFG rulebook is fine for battle-tactics and a broad history of the different space-faring races, but if you want more details about the navy and its ships, get your hands on this book. You'll get any kind of info you could dream of, from armament specifications to ship dimensions.
Should we consider this fluff canon however? Well it's pretty much up to you. Battlefleet Koronus deals with a rather shadowy part of the 40K fluff: space combat and the navy. So the fluff writen there won't be in contradiction with many other GW publications anyway. In addition, it presents a level of detail (and realism) that you don't find in the BFG rulebook. But I'll let you make up your own opinion.

However the warrant officers category, imo, ought to be non-commisioned officers because you've got petty officers and armsmen ranks in there too (senior and master).

Actually, it' exactly what my own fluff said too. Sorry if I explained my point in a confused way. Here's what Battlefleet Koronus says about Warrant Officers: Warrant officers (also called petty officers) act as the equivalent of corporals and sergeants in a planet-bound army. They disseminate orders from higher authority, ensure that those orders are carried out and maintain discipline with regular floggings.
So yeah, quite close to your own point.

Got to get my hands on Kronos, hopefully Santa's paying attention. From what's I've seen of RT and from the Heresy Series (got one of those) I think they've done a good job fluff wise and filled in the many painful gaps GW left out. Got the shotgun for my IN Officer mini based on a krono pic, hopefully I'm not going to open it up and find that it wasn't a navy shotty they had drawn after all. Something that concerned me was the number of crew on board vessels though- black library has crazy variations for a standard Imperial Cruiser from a mere 1000 crew (wtf) to 100,000 (I'd go with that for a battleship). I thought i'd seen some pretty high end numbers from RT floating around the net so I'll have to see. Even so sometimes you just have to take what you like and rationalise the rest to 'variations' across the galaxy...and I'm sure they'll be plenty to like in Kronos

I quess it would depend on the priority, role and command of the ship.
Like I would assume that the living conditions of the crew of an unimportant Imperial freighter would differ much from the crew of an Space Marine Battle Barge.

Atrocity Exhibition wrote:Something that concerned me was the number of crew on board vessels though- black library has crazy variations for a standard Imperial Cruiser from a mere 1000 crew (wtf) to 100,000 (I'd go with that for a battleship).

Yeah, actually, this RT book states that an average imperial cruiser will have 100 000 crew (being 5 km long according to RT), while a grand-cruiser will roughly have 130 000 crew (being approximately 7 km long). Unfortunately, the book doesn't give specifications for battleships, apart from the fact that they are huge, immensely powerful, insanely rare, etc.

There's a story in Let the Galaxy Burn that gives you a good idea of Navy life. I don't recall the title though.

I going to get RT's book battlefleet soon. I wonder if these ships just drift in space or do they land and dock on planets. I seen the largest spacecraft they have the battleship bloodhawk and it's 5km which equates to 3.1 miles! which for something made of metal it's huge!

From what I've read (so not Kronos) any decently populated Imperial planet has docking stations in orbit where ships are locked into (can refuel etc) then to actually get to planetside the you take smaller shuttle vessels. There's alot of description of this process in the Enforcer (Shira Calpurnia) trilogy because she's based on an IN dockyard planet (navy capital of the Hydraphur system possibly). Otherwise on less populated planets, afaik, the ships just stay in orbit and again send down shuttles (their own smaller supply this time) like the Arvus Lander. I'd have thought anything escort size upwards could never land on a planet, surely too heavy and not the right trajectory to get back up into space...but then again I have a feeling that one does in an Eisenhorn novel...

Each ship is basically a small city with all the accoutrements.

Ratings basically spend their entire lives on the ship, with the possability of limited shore leave depending on the captain.



Ships will vary according to the captain too. If the captain is harsh, you might be chained to your station and only be let out to go get 4.5 hours of sleep and some paultry meal. Others will allow some freedoms.

The majority of Imperial vessels... that is to say, these giant city-ships the fluff seems to focus on... never land on a planet. They're not equipped for it and, in fact, entering the planet's atmosphere and associated gravitic field, can do terrible damage to it. Of course, not every planet is the same, so I could see some of these gargantuan ships doing some "skimming" on low-mass, low-gravity worlds.

Smaller ships, like Lightnings and Arvus landers and Aquila Landers and so forth, can come and go from the atmosphere to space with no real worries.

Psienesis wrote:The majority of Imperial vessels... that is to say, these giant city-ships the fluff seems to focus on... never land on a planet. They're not equipped for it and, in fact, entering the planet's atmosphere and associated gravitic field, can do terrible damage to it. Of course, not every planet is the same, so I could see some of these gargantuan ships doing some "skimming" on low-mass, low-gravity worlds.

Smaller ships, like Lightnings and Arvus landers and Aquila Landers and so forth, can come and go from the atmosphere to space with no real worries.

I would really suggest if you want to see what life on a battle ship is like read execution hour. Great book and Gord Rennie does a great job of telling the story of the Mach' =o].

the stort story you where thinking about is called 'Ancient history' and it's by Andy Chambers. It was published in into the malestory I believe and it was re-published in 'Let the Galaxy burn' Anthology ( and one of BL best 40k books ever IMHO) which has 38 various short stories in it. It also has the mythical "only good C.S. Goto story ever written" called 'The Tower' in it about a menial working in the 'halls of heros' and a vindicare assassin.....it's actually a damn good story.