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How often do Chaos and Imperial fleets fight each other while warp travelling? Does this happen only when they have contact by pure chance or can they actively hunt for enemy ships?

I'm not sure it's possbile to meet other ships in the warp. If it is then few would take the risk of fighting inside it.

Definitely an interesting thought. Though chaos would have the upper hand by far.

No they don't.

The risk of the Geller Fields collapsing is too high. They can't even open the portholes to look outside lest they risk madness among the crew(even Chaos vessels arn't immune to this, nor are they immune to the violent tides swirling within)

Astropaths will be the only people on board who see anything. All of the portholes are sealed while in the warp.

Sometimes they catch glimpses of ghost ships, but I can't recall any fluff of two fleets meeting in the warp.

As described in Execution Hour, naval combat within the warp is possible but highly dangerous. The Chaos Captain in that example actualy managed to track down his Imperial counterpart within the warp.
The engagement range was described as merely several hundred kilometres compared to the tens of thousands of kilometres in voidspace.

Imperials wouldn't do it due to the risk to Gellar Fields (can they even fire munitions with the Gellar Fields on?), can see Chaos doing it though.

Imperial Ships could fire, but they would be firing blind because their sensors would be near useless in the Immaterium.

I suppose the Navigator could talk the shots onto target, and maybe this is why the one instance of Warp Navel Combat was done at such close range.

The geller fields are described in rogue trader as creating a pocket of realspace inside of the warp. I am not entirely sure how one would even travel munitions beyond a geller field and into someone elses.

Lets say it can work though, because apparently in some books it has been done, it souds like one's best bet is to have a team of navigators track down your enemy and just do a boarding action. I can only imagine very powerful people or orks doing this willingly though.

Wasn't there some warp fighting in Battle for the Abyss?

IDK, my sanity was strained by the end of chapter 4

Yes its possible as already stated by other but we also have this:

The Occlusiad of 555.M37 started when the northwestern fringe of the galaxy was ravaged by the heretics known as the Apostles of the Blind King, rogue Tech-priests who viewed humanity as an utter affront to the Machine God. The Apostles had uncovered wondrous artefacts from the Dark Age of Technology that made possible the transformation of ordinary stars into supernovae. The constellations of the galaxy were changed forever when the Apostles purged the outer Segmentum Obscurus of human life using these weapons. War raged for a decade until the Navigator Joyre Macran discovered the palace-warship of the Blind King hidden in a fold of the Warp. Escaping with this crucial intelligence, Macran guided the Imperial Navy's Emperor-class battleship Dominus Astra to the palace's location. The Blind King was killed and the genocide ended when the Dominus Astra's lance batteries pierced the palace-warship's hull and without his leadership the Apostles were swiftly overcome and their weapons hidden away in the vaults of Mars.

It gives an obvious implication that the palace-warship of the Blind King was destroyed in the Warp by Lance batteries fired in the Warp and thus destroyed in the Warp.

I'm confused how this would work. The laws of physics, causality, time and distance don't apply in the warp. How do you target someone who may or may not be seconds/minutes/days out of synch with you, and who has no set physical position?

How do you hit them with weapons that disintegrate into a chaotic mass the moment they leave your gellar field?

riplikash wrote:I'm confused how this would work. The laws of physics, causality, time and distance don't apply in the warp. How do you target someone who may or may not be seconds/minutes/days out of synch with you, and who has no set physical position?

How do you hit them with weapons that disintegrate into a chaotic mass the moment they leave your gellar field?

Simple, you spot them, you fire in their general direction.....then you pray a shot hits

riplikash wrote:I'm confused how this would work. The laws of physics, causality, time and distance don't apply in the warp. How do you target someone who may or may not be seconds/minutes/days out of synch with you, and who has no set physical position?

How do you hit them with weapons that disintegrate into a chaotic mass the moment they leave your gellar field?

The warp has its own laws, such as they are.


if the warp is calm it isn't too hard to navigate. I imagine that it took a few tries to take the Warship out.

He's right. You'd have to be almost point blank for any munitions to hit. Otherwise your shells would turn into tulip petals and travel back in time or something weird like that.

Grey Templar wrote:IDK, my sanity was strained by the end of chapter 4

Definitely a book I just put my head down and powered through because I'd already started it. I'd rather shoot myself in the foot with a boltgun than read another "battered ship traveling through the warp" type book after this and Flight of the Eisenstein

riplikash wrote:I'm confused how this would work. The laws of physics, causality, time and distance don't apply in the warp. How do you target someone who may or may not be seconds/minutes/days out of synch with you, and who has no set physical position?

How do you hit them with weapons that disintegrate into a chaotic mass the moment they leave your gellar field?

The only answer I can give you is to ask GW.

Don't know if anyone here has read the halo novels, but I imagine it's kind of like when they fight in slipstream. Someone fired a plasma weapon, said projectile starts appearing and dissapearing in random locations untill it finaly hit something (an ally in this case).

Also, the warp isn't controlled by chaos so they would be suffering just as badly, the only difference is that they more sorcerors hopping around in most cases

Warp entities and daemons aren't the same AFAIK, since lots of those things are beasts of pureinstinct and not all that smart. Pretty much just natural predators.

Soladrin wrote: the warp isn't controlled by chaos so they would be suffering just as badly, the only difference is that they more sorcerors hopping around in most cases

During the heresy it's implied in Collected Visions that the Chaos Gods calmed the warp or made it more turbulent when needed. I'm pretty sure that the Chaos Gods have a direct control over it in some regards as it's the stuff that they are made from after all.

Warp warfare is possible, risky and difficult beyond belief but possible. You would have to be so careful that you didn't accidentally go off course or you could get sucked into the future by a million years or obliterated by a warp storm.

Not everything get's destroyed whilst your in the warp although having an active gellar field is recommended, otherwise the risk of death or madness is pretty much guaranteed.

What I meant was that they aren't in full control. My bad. Yes, they can effect it most certainly. But they aren't in full control.

Actually my point is pretty much: Chaos=/=warp.

hidden in a fold of the warp

Perhaps a pocket of realspace hidden by/within the warp?

Medium of Death wrote:

hidden in a fold of the warp

Perhaps a pocket of realspace hidden by/within the warp?

I'd read that more as warpspace that had been modified to be perfectly calm and/or difficult for warp entities to attack. Technically, anything inside a Geller Field is in a pocket of realspace.

Chaos hardly has any advantage here either. Their cronies aren't any better or more protected at warp travel than anyone else.

"Chaos" is not a unified faction.