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Hey, I am attempting to write a story involving a campaign into an area of space infested by orks and chaotic dissidents. I'm not some new guy to the fluff or anything but i have always had a problem with the data aspects. what i need to know is:

Sector or System - how big is the size difference?
is 40,000,000 soldiers to many, to few, or average for an invasion of a sector/ system?
If 40,000,000 is to outrageously huge or way to small of a force, what is a more understandable number?

thanks in advance for any help.

Any kind of large numbers you put in it will be better than anything GW gave us.

According to them Armageddon 3'rd war was fought between 2.5 to 3.5 million Imperials and 3.5 to 6 million Orks. And that was by far the biggest WARGHH Imeprium face in it's newer history.

Now, sector is 300 light years and star system is just a single star system.
Around 40.000.000 solders is quite realistic for a Hive City or some really major engagement. You can also spread them across several planets and even few space battles.

Seeing that your factions in this fan fictions are Orks and Daemons around 40.000.000 is quite good number.

Thanks a lot man! I wanted to get my data down before i began any serious writing.

You are welcome

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:According to them Armageddon 3'rd war was fought between 2.5 to 3.5 million Imperials and 3.5 to 6 million Orks. And that was by far the biggest WARGHH Imeprium face in it's newer history.

Going by GW's sources, this would only be half-correct.

The number of Imperial Guard regiments on Armageddon is raising steadily - as is the number of Orks. Armageddon isn't "over" and "currently" (as in: by the end of M41) sees an escalation in numbers. What you reference is merely the main Ork invasion wave fighting the defenders the Imperium had managed to rally before the First Season of Fire, leaving out IG reinforcements re-routed from other warzones as well as the ongoing influx of Orks as well as on-site flash breeding of Orkoid spore infestation. It's not that difficult to beat Orks in a fight - it is extremely difficult to eradicate them once and for all, as proven by the IoM not managing to kill off the Orks that remained on Armageddon after the Second War, and they had about 50 years to try before Ghazzy came back.

Observe the changes between these two GW charts:


A lot of people are quick to criticise Games Workshop when it comes to such details, but few seem to consider that all those millions of troops have to be transported by spaceships which aren't exactly commonplace in M41, not to mention any logistical demands such as nourishment, import and distribution of wargear, etc.

On a sidenote: as per their own Codex, it is also rather common for Orks to attack with insufficient numbers or little planning. Their resilience and improvisation tends to make up for that, at least to a degree that allows them to inflict incredible amounts of destruction to their enemy's infrastructure. All in all, Orks are more like a force of nature rather than a conquering army.

For_The_Swarm wrote:Sector or System - how big is the size difference?
is 40,000,000 soldiers to many, to few, or average for an invasion of a sector/ system?
If 40,000,000 is to outrageously huge or way to small of a force, what is a more understandable number?

It's a matter of interpretation and personal preferences, really. Many different sources of fluff written by many different writers will give you all sorts of numbers, as will the fans, all of whom have their own ideas on how something "should" be as well. 40k doesn't enforce conformity or consistency when it comes to such detail, so it ultimately falls to you to decide what sorts of numbers or established sources to run with, just like any Black Library novel author would do. There is no "right" or "wrong", and you will not be able to satisfy everyone. Somebody will always point out how this or that doesn't fly with their interpretation of the 'verse, that's how this franchise works, and that's something you should come to terms with before you show your story around.

Personally, I would consider that number to be ridiculously oversized. Then again, I'm operating chiefly on GW fluff, and as I said there's no "right" or "wrong".

On a sidenote, though, a system would just be a star system, usually just about half a dozen planets, most of whom would not be inhabitated. The realm of Ultramar consists of 8 such systems, each with just one major populated world (or at least nobody bothered to describe/name any other planets in those systems).
Sector sizes are not hardcoded but rather determined by strategical and economical concerns, as far as I know - so go wild and throw as many or as few star systems into a sector as you like.
If it's of any help, GW's BFG Campaign Rules PDF has maps of the 7 sub-sectors of the Gothic sector, each listing the important systems. Keep in mind this is more of an example rather than a rule, however. In the Imperium, the only constant is the randomness with which the Administratum seems to work.
I think they even released random sub-sector generation rules, but I cannot recall where those could be found. Might've been in an issue of the BFG magazine...

 Lynata wrote:
Going by GW's sources, this would only be half-correct.

The number of Imperial Guard regiments on Armageddon is raising steadily - as is the number of Orks. Armageddon isn't "over" and "currently" (as in: by the end of M41) sees an escalation in numbers. What you reference is merely the main Ork invasion wave fighting the defenders the Imperium had managed to rally before the First Season of Fire, leaving out IG reinforcements re-routed from other warzones as well as the ongoing influx of Orks as well as on-site flash breeding of Orkoid spore infestation. It's not that difficult to beat Orks in a fight - it is extremely difficult to eradicate them once and for all, as proven by the IoM not managing to kill off the Orks that remained on Armageddon after the Second War, and they had about 50 years to try before Ghazzy came back.

Observe the changes between these two GW charts:

Spoiler:

A lot of people are quick to criticise Games Workshop when it comes to such details, but few seem to consider that all those millions of troops have to be transported by spaceships which aren't exactly commonplace in M41, not to mention any logistical demands such as nourishment, import and distribution of wargear, etc.

On a sidenote: as per their own Codex, it is also rather common for Orks to attack with insufficient numbers or little planning. Their resilience and improvisation tends to make up for that, at least to a degree that allows them to inflict incredible amounts of destruction to their enemy's infrastructure. All in all, Orks are more like a force of nature rather than a conquering army.

This is all nice and sweet but the point still remains, for a factions that have literally unlimited amount of solders to give such low numbers for a battle this big is just... unrealistic.
I agree, they need to transport troops, deploy them, then we have logistics etc... but really now... only arond 3 million solders for Imperials? and 4 to 6 million for Orks? In one of the greatest war the Imeprium remembers in it's newest history?

I didn't get that number by random, I actually calculate it by taking given numbers into account ( both Orks and Imperials ), I took numbers info from here and here. And, at least to me, to have so little forcess accaunt for one of the major wars is ridicolous. In 1939 German Wehrmacht alone numbered 20.700.000 solders, more than double of total solders engaged in Armageddon war from both sides. And that is just Germany, without everybody else. So the logic is that we can get much more fighting force with this small population ( even more now that we have 7 billion Humans ) then Imperium and Orks whose numbers goes in trillions?

I always found GW game of numbers amusing...

 Lynata wrote:

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:According to them Armageddon 3'rd war was fought between 2.5 to 3.5 million Imperials and 3.5 to 6 million Orks. And that was by far the biggest WARGHH Imeprium face in it's newer history.

Going by GW's sources, this would only be half-correct.

The number of Imperial Guard regiments on Armageddon is raising steadily - as is the number of Orks. Armageddon isn't "over" and "currently" (as in: by the end of M41) sees an escalation in numbers. What you reference is merely the main Ork invasion wave fighting the defenders the Imperium had managed to rally before the First Season of Fire, leaving out IG reinforcements re-routed from other warzones as well as the ongoing influx of Orks as well as on-site flash breeding of Orkoid spore infestation. It's not that difficult to beat Orks in a fight - it is extremely difficult to eradicate them once and for all, as proven by the IoM not managing to kill off the Orks that remained on Armageddon after the Second War, and they had about 50 years to try before Ghazzy came back.

Observe the changes between these two GW charts:

Spoiler:

A lot of people are quick to criticise Games Workshop when it comes to such details, but few seem to consider that all those millions of troops have to be transported by spaceships which aren't exactly commonplace in M41, not to mention any logistical demands such as nourishment, import and distribution of wargear, etc.

On a sidenote: as per their own Codex, it is also rather common for Orks to attack with insufficient numbers or little planning. Their resilience and improvisation tends to make up for that, at least to a degree that allows them to inflict incredible amounts of destruction to their enemy's infrastructure. All in all, Orks are more like a force of nature rather than a conquering army.

For_The_Swarm wrote:Sector or System - how big is the size difference?
is 40,000,000 soldiers to many, to few, or average for an invasion of a sector/ system?
If 40,000,000 is to outrageously huge or way to small of a force, what is a more understandable number?

It's a matter of interpretation and personal preferences, really. Many different sources of fluff written by many different writers will give you all sorts of numbers, as will the fans, all of whom have their own ideas on how something "should" be as well. 40k doesn't enforce conformity or consistency when it comes to such detail, so it ultimately falls to you to decide what sorts of numbers or established sources to run with, just like any Black Library novel author would do. There is no "right" or "wrong", and you will not be able to satisfy everyone. Somebody will always point out how this or that doesn't fly with their interpretation of the 'verse, that's how this franchise works, and that's something you should come to terms with before you show your story around.

Thanks for the info man, I based the 40,000,000 on the idea that this would be multiple waves of reinforcements coming throughout the years. I based the number heavily upon the Sabbat Crusade and the Siege of Vraks.
Sabbat worlds had over a billion guardsmen fighting throughout it during the crusade, and while i don't know the exact numbers of the Imperial Forces of Vraks, i do know that the casualties were over 34 Million.

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:This is all nice and sweet but the point still remains, for a factions that have literally unlimited amount of solders to give such low numbers for a battle this big is just... unrealistic.
I agree, they need to transport troops, deploy them, then we have logistics etc... but really now... only arond 3 million solders for Imperials? and 4 to 6 million for Orks? In one of the greatest war the Imeprium remembers in it's newest history?

At one point in time, yes. Given how space travel in 40k works, you don't just take countless millions of troops and ship them over all at once. The limited amount of transportation available means that you drop off some, then some more a few months later, and then some more ... hence the "meat grinder".
For the Ork warbands it works the same, especially given their reliance on randomly having a Space Hulk pass through their respective homeworld to catch a ride on. It's almost a miracle Ghazghkull managed to assemble 11 of those!

That, and of course that this, despite its size and importance, is just a single warzone in Imperial space. The IoM cannot just commit everything they have, for in doing so they'd weaken other fronts. Which they already have to do anyways, seeing how they are diverting forces meant to the Eastern Fringe in order to keep Armageddon contested rather than having the Orks bleed them out.

This is the major difference between the Imperium and the Wehrmacht. In 1939, the Wehrmacht was at the height of its power, having had a few years of peace to rebuild their forces and infrastructure. The Imperium does not seem to have this luxury - it is engaged in a war that has been lasting for 10.000 years, and to even just preserve the status quo it needs to continuously raise fresh troops and throw them right into the conflict, lest the Imperium's many enemies gain a foothold. Sure, on the short term you can pull off emergency measures such as tripling a planet's tithe, but on the long run this will affect that world's economy as well as further affecting public morale, possibly resulting in secession and creating another warzone. Thus, I think a more apt comparison might be the Roman Empire in its final years, shaken by internal conflict, losing provinces left and right and having trouble to raise loyal legions to do something about it.
In a way, this might be a perception/interpretation issue. I noticed that a number of dakkanauts do not believe in the "total war" description presented in the TT rulebooks, so it is not surprising that their visions "slip out of compatibility" with GW fluff. This, however, would be less of a problem caused by the GW writers themselves, but rather a matter of personal preference on side of the reader.

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:I didn't get that number by random, I actually calculate it by taking given numbers into account ( both Orks and Imperials ), I took numbers info from here and here.

Heh, Lexicanum. My advice: go to the original source ->
http://web.archive.org/web/20031022141749/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/Campaign/Troops/ork_forces.html

Note how whatever fan wrote the section you are referring to operated not with a medium of the estimated numbers (like I did when calculating the total strength) but with the minimum and maximum, obviously creating huge gaps between the numbers in the process. And then ended with the sentence "easily in excess of 4,000,000" when that's the maximum, whereas the minimum would be 879,600. "Citation needed", indeed.

For_The_Swarm wrote:I based the 40,000,000 on the idea that this would be multiple waves of reinforcements coming throughout the years

Oh, that sounds more possible (to me anyways).
And the Sabbat Crusade and Siege of Vraks books are a good example of what I meant with lack of consistency; they're written by a different team (Forgeworld) and the writers obviously have a different opinion on planetary invasions than the GW core studio.
And on some other details in the fluff.. *grumblegrumblebluesistersgrumble*


Also, I actually managed to dig up GW's Subsector creation rules! They were in my Warp Storm book. Was looking for info on the Planet Killer for the Armageddon thread, just stumbled over the campaign article and remembered this discussion.

Quick and dirty rundown:

Step 1
Roll 3d6 or 2d6+6 to determine number of populated and/or strategically vital star systems.
Place star systems randomly on map.

Step 2
Start with system closest to sub-sector map.
Roll 1d6 for each star system to determine number of warpspace channels:

1: No more channels (re-roll on first system)
2-4: Add one more channel and then finish
5-6: Add one more channel and roll again

Draw warpspace channel to nearby system, preferring those that have the fewest channels already connected.
A warpspace corridor can never run through another channel. (don't cross the streams!)
Two systems can only ever be connected by a single warpspace corridor.
After assigning all channels (due to dice roll or because of the next channel crossing another), proceed to next system, preferring one that is already connected.

Step 3
Check number of warpspace channels connected to the system and then roll 1d6 to determine capital planet type.

1: 1-2 uninhabited (Penal Colony), 3-4 Agri-world (Penal Colony), 5-6 Mining world (Penal Colony)
2: 1 uninhabited, 2-3 Agri-world, 4-5 Mining world, 6 Civilised world
3: 1-2 Mining world, 3-5 Civilised world, 6 Hive world
4: 1 Civilised world, 2-4 Hive world, 5-6 Forge world
5+: 1-3 Hive world 4-6 Forge world

@Lynata

I know all of that and I agree, but you missed my point. My point was that GW are unrealistic when it comes to numbers of solders in battles. When battler rage across the entire planet and they are fought in cities that are size of entire countries the number of several hundred or thousand Guardsmen defending it seems a little silly. Or the fact that a single Chapter can beat down entire planetary defense and conquer it.

As for Orks I calculate from the original chart later ( in case that someone invent some numbers ) and I again came to same conclusion, it all comes down to size of warbands and I calculate with minimum and maximum Orks in Warband. According to GW Armageddon 3'rd war didn't saw over 6 million Orks, and that is if every single warband was on maximum number of Orks witch I doubt.

And I agree with your point on Vraks and Sabat, 14 million solders to take down one Hive City - quite realistic. Million Orks taking down Hive City - hilarious.

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:I know all of that and I agree, but you missed my point. My point was that GW are unrealistic when it comes to numbers of solders in battles. When battler rage across the entire planet and they are fought in cities that are size of entire countries the number of several hundred or thousand Guardsmen defending it seems a little silly. Or the fact that a single Chapter can beat down entire planetary defense and conquer it.

It depends on what you expect from an invasion. I think I mentioned this elsewhere before, but I do not believe that battles truly "rage across the entire planet" WW2-style. Instead, both the attackers and the defenders seem to try to force a (relatively) quick decision, usually around the capital or major population / industry centers or other important locations - but not for every kilometer on some Emperor-forsaken no-man's-land. This is a result of the high mobility with which the armies in the 41st millennium tend to move as well as aerial support and orbital bombardment being capable of area denial operations limiting large movements of conventional forces. And this is also why the Imperial Guard does not appear to have surface naval ships, at least as per GW.

Lastly, it may also be (in part) a result of the civilian populace often being ill-equipped to offer resistance. People are described as overworked, exhausted and barely getting along as-is, whereas weapons of war are tithed away to Imperial troops sent off to fight on other worlds. Aside from hive gangs, nobles and some professions that may require guns, I don't think it would be common for people to own weapons (that's technology, too, after all) - so it would often take time for the Imperium to arm the general citizenry, if they want to do so at all. Note how the number of militia forces on Armageddon is much higher on the 2nd chart than on the 1st. Perhaps that was because they had to gather a sufficient amount of weapons to hand out first, and/or perhaps it was because the leadership did not wish to draw the populace away from their assigned duties in the workshops etc. Every hour people don't spend in the manufactorum means the IG has X tanks less to fight its many enemies with.

Like I said, matter of preferences and clashing interpretations.

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:As for Orks I calculate from the original chart later ( in case that someone invent some numbers ) and I again came to same conclusion, it all comes down to size of warbands and I calculate with minimum and maximum Orks in Warband. According to GW Armageddon 3'rd war didn't saw over 6 million Orks, and that is if every single warband was on maximum number of Orks witch I doubt.

Which is why I'm thinking it was somewhere around 2 to maybe 3 million. As I said, I used the medium.
At the same time, the number of Orks is likely to rise in time due to their nature of reproduction. Unfortunately, I only know of an Imperial chart for troop strength following the First Season of Fire, but not an Ork one.

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:And I agree with your point on Vraks and Sabat, 14 million solders to take down one Hive City - quite realistic. Million Orks taking down Hive City - hilarious.

Huh? That's not what I said.

The problem with the idea that the Orks go in underprepared and suchlike, and therefore a couple of million is enough, is that they invaded a hive world. Armageddon is known to have major manufacturing facilities and a substantial PDF. If Lexicanum is to be believed about the population of hive worlds, they can range from 25 to 500 BILLION! Armageddon is marked as unknown but given that the modern Earth is definately not in the same league as a hive world, you must be able to expect at least 10 billion to be classed as such, and that would probably need to be quite a small planet in the first place.

Even with a miniscule percentage of people under arms (unlikely given the grimdarkness of the background and the constant preparation of new Guard regiments) a couple of million orks just wouldn't get anywhere. No assistance would be needed as the world just pours troops onto the problem.

Now I agree that on pastoral, agri or other low population worlds, quite a small warband would do a lot of damage, I just don't think its realistic for hive worlds. Also I think most SF writers have a poor sense of scale for such all-out military endeavours

That's forgetting about the effects of bombardment (hell, the Orks hurled an asteroid at an entire Hive city) and the aforementioned internal conflict (van Strab), though.
If a Hive's population is really so downtrodden and malnourished as the fluff makes it out to be, any militia troops you conscript from them will be about as effective as the German Volkssturm from WW2 - or possibly less, seeing that Armageddon may well not have 10 billion lasguns just lying around.

That, and it's just been ~50 years after the Second War. Armageddon did not recover fully from that in the short time it had to rebuild.

I think Armageddon is an example for how close to the edge the Imperium as a whole stands - the constant state of war and its demand on the various worlds having pushed the people and the economy to the brink of collapse. And then a bunch of Orks show up.

Keep in mind this is the far future with weapons that can destroy cities by themselves (i.e. Titan class). As the tech of a civilization increases the percent warrior to population decreases due to the need of more production to equip the soldiers with adequate equipment and the relative ease in killing said soldiers.

This means you need to keep your soldier density low enough that a single attack by a force of Titans doesn't wipe them out but high enough so they can contest until you can respond with similar force.

You also need the VAST majority of your populace as a labor force to produce said titans and armaments.

A few million to start a war is fairly reasonable if A) they are supported with a large force of mobility and Titan class fire power and B) they will have plentiful reinforcement so that they can always contest an attack.

The numbers on Armagedon are actually semi reasonable for the start of that fight as the gargants can do the work of actually killing stuff and the orks reinforce very quickly.

For the op 40 million seems reasonable for a pretty good sized battle to take or hold a planet. At the peek of a fight this number would be good for a large but not hive or forgeworld war I would image for a forgeworld at the peek of fighting the numbers would be 120 million plus and the numbers of titan class war machines would reach the dozens.

Just remember that battles are usually lost or won in the transportation stage. 40 million of anything but demons appearing out of no where is unrealistic and the demons would require huge populations sacrificed to their gods to get that portal going. Renegade guard/chaos cults could account for large numbers of the "soldiers" though as they would already be in place. Your average joe in the IoM is not even allowed to hold any tech (ie guns) without being suspect so they would be pretty easy to scare into submission with the average cultist wearing what amounts to better than modern bullet proof vests. Additionally they are used to not asking questions of their leaders wish means that their leaders can go renegade and the populace will go along never suspecting the lie.