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Maybe I rely on outdated data, but to my understanding the max imperial ship are only 6 km long? In Star Wars the Super Star Destroyer Vader has are 12 km, that doesn't make sense when everything else in 40k universe are super duper extra bonus ultra light classic plus now with citrus flavor OP large!!!! Craft Worlds, titans, space critters etc etc!

...what went wrong?!?!

While I'm not super familiar with the numbers, i'll take the same general rule I take with all of GW's numbers they rarely add up or make any kind of sense

the largest on record may be smaller but the averages are MUCH bigger 1.6 KM is considered biiig by the standards of SW. yet it's very small by 40K standards

The Lunar class cruiser is (by memory) 3.2km or 3.6km long.

HexHammer wrote:
that doesn't make sense when everything else in 40k universe are super duper extra bonus ultra light classic plus now with citrus flavor OP large!!!!

Please, please, please, please don't start thinking like this.

The need for "oh, my setting has to have the biggest X" just results in a snowballing of sizes and a complete lack of internal consistency. Ultimately, it's a completely arbitrary number, so getting into a squabble over it just comes across like two kids playing the "biggest number game" - you know, the one that usually goes:

"I hate you"
"I hate you times two"
"I hate you times ten"
"I hate you times a million"
"I hate you times infinity"
"I hate you times infinity plus one"
"Nuh uh, infinity is the biggerest number"

It's better to stay consistent within the setting. Comparing to reality is perhaps reasonable, but don't get jealous because authors in other settings just happened to pick a bigger big number.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:
Please, please, please, please don't start thinking like this.

I really wish someone had told the BL authors this before they started giving us nine-foot marines and twelve-foot primarchs...

The BFG mailing list consensus was approximately 6km length for Imperial battleships. Andy Chambers (designer of BFG) used to be on this mailing list.

The size is also consistent with that of a Retribution class battleship, as given in the BL book Dark Disciple.

Admiral Rutger Augustine look out over the vast length of his flagship vessel, the mighty Retribution-class battleship, Hammer of Righteousness...Six kilometres from stern to prow...

p. 31, Dark Disciple

This kind of thing is where 'headcanon' becomes so valuable.

Lets be frank GW writers probably don't know that much about engineering or firearms or space travel etc. When they give numbers in their publications its probably just something they've made up, or pulled from real life equivalents but has lost all relevance.

Just make the size whatever makes most sense to you, the universe becomes more enjoyable that way.

Imperial battleships top out at 12 kilometers, not 6. And that's just the battleships, other things are far larger such as Gloriana legion ships (~20m kilometers, each one was individually configured), or Star Forts which can range from just being the size of a battleship or a re-purposed asteroid to being full scale artificial planets.

 Wyzilla wrote:


Imperial battleships top out at 12 kilometers, not 6. And that's just the battleships, other things are far larger such as Gloriana legion ships (~20m kilometers, each one was individually configured), or Star Forts which can range from just being the size of a battleship or a re-purposed asteroid to being full scale artificial planets.

Imperial Navy battleships top out at 6km and I have quoted the evidence to that effect. There are also statements by Andy Chambers, designer of BFG, about the size and crew scale of BFG from the old BFG mailing list. Other BL novels give crew sizes that are more consistent with that scale, and I can quote those too if needed. While perhaps during the Great Crusade there were some Legion flagships that might have been larger, the standard battleships are 6km.

The issue of size inflation is not solely limited to those that think Titans have to be so big they literally have their heads in the clouds and are the size of mountain ranges. For example, the BFG novel author Gordon Rennie wrote a BFG short story once, but the editor thought a cruiser had to be longer than 3km (despite that being the consensus of the BFG list). The editor arbitrarily added a 0, making 30km for a cruiser, without telling the author, who later told the BFG list about this editing since it conflicted so greatly with ship sizes in later works.

I really wish people would think more about what these numbers actually mean instead of making up bigger numbers. Six kilometres long ship is insanely large.

It's not the size that counts, it's how you use it.

 Duskweaver wrote:

 MarcoSkoll wrote:
Please, please, please, please don't start thinking like this.

I really wish someone had told the BL authors this before they started giving us nine-foot marines and twelve-foot primarchs...

Yeah, the size creep of Marines, Primarchs, Titans, Ships, etc really kind of bugs me.

I actually spotted this thread shortly after going on something of a rant about "10ft Marines" in another thread, talking about why you actually want Space Marines to fit into cramped underhives. (And given that their creation is closely monitored and chemical/hormone levels carefully adjusted, much variation at all in Space Marine height doesn't make sense).

Titans are similar. Speaking as someone with a very slow burn project to build a 54mm scale Warhound (mostly as a display piece), the official size of ~15m is frelling huge - I've not redone this shot in a while (this was done during a fairly early scale check from back in 2012), but when the model scale gets big enough that you can really look up at one, you get a sense of just how soiled your undergarments would be:
(Note that the Battle Sister is also 54mm scale)

And this is a baby titan. With every titan class being about half as tall again as the last, I'm sure that the sight of a Warlord or Emperor on the horizon could easily make enemy armies flee.

"Big" doesn't have to be "biggest" to be big enough.

I agree. People lose sight of how big 6km actually is. I think there was a university paper on whether the Death Star could be built. They reached the conclusion that there wouldn't be enough iron on planet earth to build something that big.

A 6km long starship would be unimaginably huge. Which is why people maybe have a hard time picturing one.

Banville wrote:
A 6km long starship would be unimaginably huge. Which is why people maybe have a hard time picturing one.

Well, for demonstration purposes, I've crudely mocked up an image of a 5km long Lunar Cruiser as if it were over Central London, stretching from Westminster to Rotherhithe. (I'm not sure that 5km is the agreed upon figure for a Lunar cruiser, but it was the first figure I came across, and it will do for demonstrating the general concept of ships that are multiple kilometres long):

If I recall, the *average* battleship in 40k is 6 kilometers, in Star Wars a standard imperial star destroyer (their average battleship) would be 1.6. A Super Star destroyer would be more akin to a dreadnought than a battleship, and produced in much smaller numbers.

 Crimson wrote:
I really wish people would think more about what these numbers actually mean instead of making up bigger numbers. Six kilometres long ship is insanely large.

No, this is 40k where EVERYTHING is ludacris far out, and it makes no sense that Star Wars has 12 km ships when 40k should have least 15 km ships as standard. Everything SW has 40k always have had even bigger ..but navy.

Iracundus wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:


Imperial battleships top out at 12 kilometers, not 6. And that's just the battleships, other things are far larger such as Gloriana legion ships (~20m kilometers, each one was individually configured), or Star Forts which can range from just being the size of a battleship or a re-purposed asteroid to being full scale artificial planets.

Imperial Navy battleships top out at 6km and I have quoted the evidence to that effect. There are also statements by Andy Chambers, designer of BFG, about the size and crew scale of BFG from the old BFG mailing list. Other BL novels give crew sizes that are more consistent with that scale, and I can quote those too if needed. While perhaps during the Great Crusade there were some Legion flagships that might have been larger, the standard battleships are 6km.

The issue of size inflation is not solely limited to those that think Titans have to be so big they literally have their heads in the clouds and are the size of mountain ranges. For example, the BFG novel author Gordon Rennie wrote a BFG short story once, but the editor thought a cruiser had to be longer than 3km (despite that being the consensus of the BFG list). The editor arbitrarily added a 0, making 30km for a cruiser, without telling the author, who later told the BFG list about this editing since it conflicted so greatly with ship sizes in later works.

Scale is a variable in 40k - you have quoted a source but its not exclusive, there is non specific canon for 40k so its not posisble to pin down much definatively. Also

approximately 6km length for Imperial battleships. Andy Chambers (designer of BFG) used to be on this mailing list.

does not mean that they are all this big or there are not ones bigger, as others haev mentioned the Heresy ships are often bigger than "current" deisgns. Forgeworld - so offical GW - have conveyor ships that measure 20+ KM - I'll see if they have any other specific measurements.

Shorter answer is how big do you want the 40k (or whatever) universe ships to be - I have no issue with guiant ships as I do see them as literal cities in space but there is a lot of space to fill,

HexHammer wrote:
No, this is 40k where EVERYTHING is ludacris far out, and...

Again, if you try being the biggest at everything, it becomes completely stupid. Let's take a look at anime, where the "Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann" mecha is 52.8 billion light years tall. No, I'm not kidding - someone really did think it was a good idea to write a mecha more than half the size of the observable universe.

... and yet, it immediately loses its crown if I decide that my own completely imaginary mecha is 52.9 billion light years tall.

When the numbers are pulled out of the writer's butt anyway, it's beyond pointless trying to have the biggest number, because someone else can always think of a bigger number.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
No, this is 40k where EVERYTHING is ludacris far out, and...

Again, if you try being the biggest at everything, it becomes completely stupid. Let's take a look at anime, where the "Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann" mecha is 52.8 billion light years tall. No, I'm not kidding - someone really did think it was a good idea to write a mecha more than half the size of the observable universe.

... and yet, it immediately loses its crown if I decide that my own completely imaginary mecha is 52.9 billion light years tall.

When the numbers are pulled out of the writer's butt anyway, it's beyond pointless trying to have the biggest number, because someone else can always think of a bigger number.

Yes. Absolutely this.

Iracundus wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:


Imperial battleships top out at 12 kilometers, not 6. And that's just the battleships, other things are far larger such as Gloriana legion ships (~20m kilometers, each one was individually configured), or Star Forts which can range from just being the size of a battleship or a re-purposed asteroid to being full scale artificial planets.

Imperial Navy battleships top out at 6km and I have quoted the evidence to that effect. There are also statements by Andy Chambers, designer of BFG, about the size and crew scale of BFG from the old BFG mailing list. Other BL novels give crew sizes that are more consistent with that scale, and I can quote those too if needed. While perhaps during the Great Crusade there were some Legion flagships that might have been larger, the standard battleships are 6km.

The issue of size inflation is not solely limited to those that think Titans have to be so big they literally have their heads in the clouds and are the size of mountain ranges. For example, the BFG novel author Gordon Rennie wrote a BFG short story once, but the editor thought a cruiser had to be longer than 3km (despite that being the consensus of the BFG list). The editor arbitrarily added a 0, making 30km for a cruiser, without telling the author, who later told the BFG list about this editing since it conflicted so greatly with ship sizes in later works.

What Andy Chambers thinks is irrelevant considering, as with most things, subsequent material has paved over the old. Nevermind the mailing list is what, over a decade, even fifteen or greater years old, making what information it contains barely even related to modern 40k. Meanwhile, back in the modern world-



That and things such as the artwork and comics have pretty clearly contradicted the idea that battleships are only six kilometers long since probably around BFG's own time of existence.

Also large ships are perfectly realistic, sensible even when you reach the Imperium's level of technology. You people seem to be forgetting that the Imperium throws fusion power around like candy and has the ability to literally stripmine entire planets of their ore. If the Imperium was remotely realistic they would have entirely abandoned planets altogether as a civilization, having no need for them. They are well within the logistical means of constructing world-ships, and possibly even a dyson sphere (gigantic web-work of metal used to catch and harvest the energy of a star with maximum efficiency).They even make miniature stars, not just fusion reactors, as a form of energy production. Then there's also issue of shipping. With planetary hive world populations in the trillions you need to ship around an unfathomable amount of food and water on a daily basis to prevent starvation. This also demands absolutely gigantic commercial ships (both in size of the ship itself and the flotilla) being constructed with regularity as hulls are lost over their centuries of use to warp phenomena, pirates, xenos, etc.

actually I've always thought the large size of ships was more a LIMIT of the Imperium's technology. Notably I suspect the warp drive is likely a VERY large piece of equipment, likely stretching out an entire kilometre or two by itself (this would explain why even the smallest star faring ships are so large) then you have the need for manual loading etc. basicly the IoM's ships are so big because their miniturization and automation tech SUCKS

I think that passage shows exactly how the writers do not grasp the implications of the scale. Tens of thousands of crew and troops! Really? 330 metres long Nimitz class aircraft carrier has over 6000 personnel. Ten kilometres long ship would have roughly 27 000 times the volume of Nimitz! So if we scale the crew accordingly, we would get something like 160 million!

 Crimson wrote:
I think that passage shows exactly how the writers do not grasp the implications of the scale. Tens of thousands of crew and troops! Really? 330 metres long Nimitz class aircraft carrier has over 6000 personnel. Ten kilometres long ship would have roughly 27 000 times the volume of Nimitz! So if we scale the crew accordingly, we would get something like 160 million!

Well much of an Imperial ship's functions are automated by servitors. The guns are powered and aimed by humans converted into targeting computers, the navigation is handled by human brains converted into nav computers, etc. Probably would cut down on the numbers quite significantly, so all you have left is the Navy Troopers and the staff making decisions and repairing things. Although 40k does have a serious problem with low numbers in general. So you have planetary campaigns with just a couple hundred thousand people, a mere million marines, or gigantic ships with a sparse population.

Although at least it's not Abnett levels. His ships are practically ghost towns.

 Crimson wrote:
I think that passage shows exactly how the writers do not grasp the implications of the scale. Tens of thousands of crew and troops! Really? 330 metres long Nimitz class aircraft carrier has over 6000 personnel. Ten kilometres long ship would have roughly 27 000 times the volume of Nimitz! So if we scale the crew accordingly, we would get something like 160 million!

How much of that interior space is machinery that is outright hostile to human life though? also how many servitors are aboard a ship? As I said earlier I've personally suspected warp drives are HUUUGE and make up a decent chunk of a ships interior.

A quote about Great Crusade era ships is not really relevant to the 40k era because we know the Imperium has gone downhill technologically since then. Nor is citing examples of civilian cargo ships larger than 6km since the discussion was about warships, specifically battleships. Warships would be more heavily armored, have more durable redundant systems, larger power requirements, and have more crew than a comparable civilian freighter, which can be a nearly uninhabited flying box. Modern freighters vs modern warships shows this difference between ship and crew sizes. The attempts to handwave about the crew as all servitors also does not fit all the existing background of the ships using manual labor to load weapons, and being Hornblower in Space with the gun decks being flying ghettos.

The citing of the BFG list consensus and also of Andy Chambers’ crew and size scales is relevant as actually the BL novels have been remarkably consistent across years of novels by different writers in adhering generally to that scale. Size inflation is a thing though with more recent writers seemingly creeping the size up and inventing new previously unknown ship classses or individual ships. That does not make it any more reasonable than those previous depictions of a Warlord Titan as big as a mountain. As MarcoSkoll pointed out, it gets into stupid territory. Given the previous surprising consistency in BL with regards to ships it is tantamount to a writer suddenly writing bolters shooting out lasers or daisy flowers. I.e. they didn’t do their background research.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
No, this is 40k where EVERYTHING is ludacris far out, and...

Again, if you try being the biggest at everything, it becomes completely stupid. Let's take a look at anime, where the "Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann" mecha is 52.8 billion light years tall. No, I'm not kidding - someone really did think it was a good idea to write a mecha more than half the size of the observable universe.

... and yet, it immediately loses its crown if I decide that my own completely imaginary mecha is 52.9 billion light years tall.

When the numbers are pulled out of the writer's butt anyway, it's beyond pointless trying to have the biggest number, because someone else can always think of a bigger number.

Imo it's a moot comparison, it's unreasonable to imagine an imperial spacecraft being that big, as no one could fund it, nor could it really fly anywhere or be practical in use.

12 km are still within reason.

Holy, just get your ships out a measure em boys!

 Crimson wrote:
I think that passage shows exactly how the writers do not grasp the implications of the scale. Tens of thousands of crew and troops! Really? 330 metres long Nimitz class aircraft carrier has over 6000 personnel. Ten kilometres long ship would have roughly 27 000 times the volume of Nimitz! So if we scale the crew accordingly, we would get something like 160 million!

No, quite the contrary. If you want space craft with void shields you have to have quite huge areas for engines to power those shields, not to mention cannons that have to penetrate enemy armor and shields.

The bigger the vessel the bigger areas for guns, engine and armor, also you can have thicker armor and bigger guns. Win/win!

HexHammer wrote:
Imo it's a moot comparison

You can't have it both ways. If you're comparing to any other setting, then you have to compare to all other settings, because any other line you draw in the sand is completely arbitrary. What if another setting has ships 20 km long? 50km? 100 km? 1000 km? 10,000km? Where should we say "actually, that's believable" or "no, that's complete tosh"?

The only argument you can prove for the line being in one place or another is what the canon says and, although this might surprise you, anything from other settings is not WH40K canon - it's just pointless cock measuring.
This entire argument boils down to "I want my imaginary space-going phallus to be bigger than their imaginary space-going phallus".