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So, we all know the imperium is slowly losing tech, etc, etc,
But, we also know that they do produce some titans and ships still but only at certain forge worlds, thanks to the feudalism of the AdMech. My question is how long does it take to construct a naval vessel(lets assume a destroyer, a cruiser, and finally a battleship), 100 years? 200 years?
and also along those lines, what would be average construction time for a Warlord titan.

From absolute scratch? Probably in the realms of centuries. But most of the time, they kit bash them together from old parts, partly through pragmatism, and partly through the heritage those parts have. You have a vulkan mega bolter here, a pair of legs there, bish bash bosh, a couple of decades later you have a titan. Very situational, and we don't have too much in the way of hard facts here anyway.

The Lunar-Class cruiser Lord Daros was built in 11 years in orbit of a feral world, I would think faster in orbit of an industrial world.

From Titan Legions WD 178

The construction of a Titan takes many years. Centuries of endeavour lie behind a single machine. The largest and oldest Titans of all are held to contain a spark of the Machine God's divinity.

I would definitely not put the time taken that far really. On the order of years or decades maybe, for the bigger ones but centuries? No, I think they could go a little faster than that... Remember that the Ad Mech uses ALOT of servitors, slave labour, factories that cover entire planets etc.

Hell, they could probably put a basic Warhound Titan together in a month working at full speed. I think the most time consuming parts would be the ritualisation that goes with it. Lighting incense and praying to the Omnisssiah etc. Larger battleships I think would take a few years apiece.

Hmm, during WWII, the United States took about 2-3 years to build a battleship.

Germany, when building the over-the-top Bismarck, took about 4 years.

If we use large naval craft as analogues for very large things in 40k, we can logic it out.

The Imperium has many forge worlds of various purposing, and raw materials aren't a problem. The challenges they face are dealing with tech that they no longer have full mastery of (the extent to which this is a problem varies in the fluff, so people will wind up with differing opinions there), and ritualistic behavior. (Again, the extent to which the latter is an issue is going to depend on what you read/who you talk to. Sometimes, the rituals seem like useless crap done for the sake of doing it. Sometimes, they actually seem to be appeasing/communicating with whatever "spirit" is involved with the machine in question. Sometimes, it seems like the "ritual" is actually just a very practical, routine activity- like pilots going through their checks before they take off, or tightening your tire back on your car with a star pattern to avoid a bad fit.)

Given all that, I would say, operating at full capacity without any unexpected problems, 5 years per foundry, per ship/titan would be a good baseline to go with. The smaller titans and ships probably take less. The very largest might take more. I wouldn't put it past a decade, for practical reasons.


Edit- the problem with the longer times is that they don't really allow for attrition, if the fluff is going to be remotely reasonable.

Tibbsy wrote:I would definitely not put the time taken that far really. On the order of years or decades maybe, for the bigger ones but centuries? No, I think they could go a little faster than that... Remember that the Ad Mech uses ALOT of servitors, slave labour, factories that cover entire planets etc.

Hell, they could probably put a basic Warhound Titan together in a month working at full speed. I think the most time consuming parts would be the ritualisation that goes with it. Lighting incense and praying to the Omnisssiah etc. Larger battleships I think would take a few years apiece.

You're forgetting the.

"Anoint the sacred screw thrice with the blessed WD40 before inserting into the hole.
Twist the Screw once, being the way forward in battle, then once again for the victory to be had after, then thrice for the further battles to come.
Chime the bell of assembly to signify the completion of this task, rousing the connection between the conjoined components.

Repeat this task for each million million screw to ensure that unity is had by all.
Only then shall the leg plate be blessed with the unguents of protection and praise to the Omnissiah be uttered"

Pilau Rice wrote:

Tibbsy wrote:I would definitely not put the time taken that far really. On the order of years or decades maybe, for the bigger ones but centuries? No, I think they could go a little faster than that... Remember that the Ad Mech uses ALOT of servitors, slave labour, factories that cover entire planets etc.

Hell, they could probably put a basic Warhound Titan together in a month working at full speed. I think the most time consuming parts would be the ritualisation that goes with it. Lighting incense and praying to the Omnisssiah etc. Larger battleships I think would take a few years apiece.

You're forgetting the.

"Anoint the sacred screw thrice with the blessed WD40 before inserting into the hole.
Twist the Screw once, being the way forward in battle, then once again for the victory to be had after, then thrice for the further battles to come.
Chime the bell of assembly to signify the completion of this task, rousing the connection between the conjoined components.

Repeat this task for each million million screw to ensure that unity is had by all.
Only then shall the leg plate be blessed with the unguents of protection and praise to the Omnissiah be uttered"

I suppose I wasn't being clear on what I meant by "full speed" I meant that if they didn't bother with all that ritual and just built it, it would be done in a month. As it is; it takes longer due to all that being done. But they still have the resources to push production fairly quick. In your example; repeating that procedure for a million million screws would take one hell of a long time if a single guy was doing it; but it would be sped up alot by having a million million servitors doing one screw each

Tibbsy wrote:
I suppose I wasn't being clear on what I meant by "full speed" I meant that if they didn't bother with all that ritual and just built it, it would be done in a month. As it is; it takes longer due to all that being done. But they still have the resources to push production fairly quick. In your example; repeating that procedure for a million million screws would take one hell of a long time if a single guy was doing it; but it would be sped up alot by having a million million servitors doing one screw each

Where the Mechanicus is involved that is full speed, they don't do things any different. The Dark Mechanicus might be able to build Titans faster but the Adeptus Mechanicus don't take short cuts. Regardless of the number of Servitors what we have says centuries to build. Unless you have an alternative source?

From Titan Legions WD 178

The construction of a Titan takes many years. Centuries of endeavour lie behind a single machine. The largest and oldest Titans of all are held to contain a spark of the Machine God's divinity.

Pilau Rice wrote:
Where the Mechanicus is involved that is full speed, they don't do things any different. The Dark Mechanicus might be able to build Titans faster but the Adeptus Mechanicus don't take short cuts. Regardless of the number of Servitors what we have says centuries to build. Unless you have an alternative source?

From Titan Legions WD 178

The construction of a Titan takes many years. Centuries of endeavour lie behind a single machine. The largest and oldest Titans of all are held to contain a spark of the Machine God's divinity.

I hadn't previously seen that source (you posted it whilst I was typing my first reply) I was trying to logic it as DrimGark said above.

I was also using a Warhound (The smallest) with my example. The quote you've stated doesn't seem to support different classes and sizes of titan however. A Warlord I agree will take many years/decades, but I just don't see how a smaller class like the Warhound would take a similar amount of time when you consider the sizes relative to each other.

EDIT: Looking at the wording of that WD quote; construction is not actually stated to take centuries, only that there is centuries worth of work behind them; possibly this is related to man-hours? Like when have a job that may take a week for 1 guy, but have 7 guys doing the job in a day. It's still a weeks worth of work, but done on a shorter time-frame. So physical construction may be done in a few years, but the accumulated time of all the workers has passed centuries?

I don't know; maybe I've started rambling a bit now

Tibbsy wrote:
I hadn't previously seen that source (you posted it whilst I was typing my first reply) I was trying to logic it as DrimGark said above.

I was also using a Warhound (The smallest) with my example. The quote you've stated doesn't seem to support different classes and sizes of titan however. A Warlord I agree will take many years/decades, but I just don't see how a smaller class like the Warhound would take a similar amount of time when you consider the sizes relative to each other.

You're not thinking Grimdark enough

If they could churn out Titans in a matter of a few decades then the Imperium would generally be able to steam roll everything else. Why even bother with the Guard when you could have masses and masses of City destroying weapons at your disposal.

Pilau Rice wrote:

You're not thinking Grimdark enough

If they could churn out Titans in a matter of a few decades then the Imperium would generally be able to steam roll everything else. Why even bother with the Guard when you could have masses and masses of City destroying weapons at your disposal.

See my edit above dude, you ninja'd me

But they only have a finite number of Forge Worlds, and many of the weapons (Plasma Blastguns for example) are only made on one or two of them (Ryza is the plasma specialist world IIRC). so it's more a material supply issue rather than labour. Plus they have quotas for tanks, guns, ammo etc. that need to be met. I think that is more why Titans are rare, rather than them taking a long time to build, it takes a long time to get the right components, and those same components serve better fitted to other vehicles.

For larger ships/titans it takes centuries, in large part because of how inefficient and archaic the Mechanicus is. Entire families of serfs grow up and die not ever seeing the creation they worked on their entire life completed.

Tibbsy wrote:So physical construction may be done in a few years, but the accumulated time of all the workers has passed centuries?

It's still all part of the construction process therefore a titan takes centuries to build.

You might only have fitting the toilet left, but it's still a piece required to finish the product.

Tibbsy wrote:
See my edit above dude, you ninja'd me .

Adressed

Tibbsy wrote:But they only have a finite number of Forge Worlds, and many of the weapons (Plasma Blastguns for example) are only made on one or two of them (Ryza is the plasma specialist world IIRC). so it's more a material supply issue rather than labour. Plus they have quotas for tanks, guns, ammo etc. that need to be met. I think that is more why Titans are rare, rather than them taking a long time to build, it takes a long time to get the right components, and those same components serve better fitted to other vehicles.

Hence the centuries to build a Titan

Pilau Rice wrote:

Tibbsy wrote:So physical construction may be done in a few years, but the accumulated time of all the workers has passed centuries?

It's still all part of the construction process therefore a titan takes centuries to build.

You might only have fitting the toilet left, but it's still a piece required to finish the product.


Hence the centuries to build a Titan

I just got logic'd Curse you slow work day!

Tibbsy wrote:

I just got logic'd Curse you slow work day!

As already mentioned in this thread, the Lunar class cruiser Lord Daros was constructed in 11 years by the Imperial Governor of a feral world that mobilized his subjects to mine and "sacrifice" their metals at "sky temples". This is from the BFG rulebook, under the Lunar class cruiser entry, so it is official and canon.

Centuries? Come on.

Decades for ships (the luna was renowned for how easy it was to build, so most ships would take longer) and probably months to years for titans

I would say that the source saying that titans take centuries is out of date and useless. BFG is old, true but it still available and endorsed by GW

A Battleship can take a few years to build, but I believe an Escort can be built in a day at a well equipped shipyard.

Cruisers can take between a few weeks and months to build.


The Imperium is big on recycling their old ships and only Escorts a built with regularity. Its cheaper and faster to repair a damaged hulk then it is to lay down a new ship.

Huffy wrote:So, we all know the imperium is slowly losing tech, etc, etc,
But, we also know that they do produce some titans and ships still but only at certain forge worlds, thanks to the feudalism of the AdMech. My question is how long does it take to construct a naval vessel(lets assume a destroyer, a cruiser, and finally a battleship), 100 years? 200 years?
and also along those lines, what would be average construction time for a Warlord titan.

Well with out a template to use or to build off of they would take possibly even 1,000 years to build same as a titan. However if they have a template its just a matter of how fast then can make it them selfs

Blackhoof wrote:
Centuries? Come on.

Decades for ships (the luna was renowned for how easy it was to build, so most ships would take longer) and probably months to years for titans

I would say that the source saying that titans take centuries is out of date and useless. BFG is old, true but it still available and endorsed by GW

It's old, but I've been through every resource I have at hand and there is nothing to contradict that, it's not even mentioned in the Epic Armageddon resource on the GW site.

Gimme a source to say otherwise and I'll gladly accept it Blackhoof.

Edit: speeling and grammar are not good

Here's a quote from The First Heretic, briefly talking about the making of a ship's warp engines:

"Blue-white engine wash streamed in disintegrating smoke trails from immense boosters that had taken decades to construct, by thousands of laborers working millions hours."

- page 23

So, for context, this takes place pre-heresy.

So, in the peak of the Imperium's technology level, it takes "decades" to make just the warp engines for a ship, and nothing else.

And that's with "thousands" of individuals working on it simultaneously. It stands to reason then that building an entire ship takes quite a long while.

Sources I can find say that Titans can take several centuries to produce, but I imagine they average a slightly faster build time.

Depending on the size of the Titan of course, Emperor class would probably be pretty firmly in the "several" centuries category while a Warhound might only take a decade or two.

The hold up I think is that the AdMech does not build Titans at an assembly line, each time they want a new Titan they have to build each piece from scratch, with all the attendant delays and rituals that implies, rather than just putting one together from parts they have sitting around.

Imperium shipbuilding seems to be less highly ritualized, perhaps because the Navy has more control over the process, or perhaps the AdMech just don't love ships as much as Titans, but I suspect that Naval ships are much more standardized, and that the Imperium has stockpile of parts that they are perfectly willing to convert into a ship.

Which would make sense, Titans don't have much in the way of surviving STC information, so there is a bit more ritual and guesswork involved.

The Rogue Trader rpg states that ships take decades or even centuries to build ( p.189 ). How the Mechanicus managed to build Lord Daros in just 11 years is unknown but enslaving the entire planet's population ( and most likely giving them advanced equipment to actualy mine the required materials within an acceptable timeframe ) will have at least made sure that the raw materials for the ship were supplied.
Perhaps they used some kind of mobile shipyard to actualy build the cruiser.

Yeah, it was built in orbit over the planet, because the reward the planet's population received for their years of labor was a new star being born in their skies as it fired up its engines and flew away.

Of course, their world was utterly devastated and bereft of its mineral wealth, not to mention the toxic chemicals from the smelting of ores and all the attendant horrors of industrial hyper-production.... but, hey, they got to see a starship fly away!