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At the Founding of a new chapter(supposing it is moon or planet based) what kind of ships would they get and how many? I am working on the narrative for a chapter I am creating, so I am hoping to get these sorts of smaller details worked out in as much of a canon way as I can.


Also, is there a list somewhere that describes most of the Imperium's ships? I would just like to be aware what kinds of ships are out there even if a chapter might not immediately have access to them. Thanks!

List - look up Battlefleet Gothic ships.
I don't see why they don't get the full set, or at least escorts, strike cruisers, and a battlebarge, depending on initial numbers. Marines don't build their own ships (typically, anything is possible).

Considering the resources that are involved with the founding of a chapter, they're likely bequeathed a number of things including ships, wargear, construction support, geneseed stocks, and advisors to get the chapter's internal recruitment and training regimen off the ground.

Ship wise? Probably initially a Battle Barge as a Flagship, with Strike Cruisers for the initial company or two of marines until they can expand, and new ships can be built and provided.

Depends on the how & why of the founding. A couple Strike Cruisers would be the minimum and the rest would depend - the High Lords of Terra gave the Minotaurs a Relic Heavy Assault Carrier for example.

 iGuy91 wrote:
Considering the resources that are involved with the founding of a chapter, they're likely bequeathed a number of things including ships, wargear, construction support, geneseed stocks, and advisors to get the chapter's internal recruitment and training regimen off the ground.

Ship wise? Probably initially a Battle Barge as a Flagship, with Strike Cruisers for the initial company or two of marines until they can expand, and new ships can be built and provided.

Indeed. I think the only sensible way to setup a marine chapter would be to collect a number of same geneline marines to serve as the your training cadre. Hypno-indoctrination would only get you so far. You'd need captains, apothecaries, librarians, techmarines at a minimum. Everyone else could be recruits at first. The whole scout->devestator->assault->tactical progression is stupid anyway.

Honestly I think it very much depends on your chapter’s circumstance- that is to say (as far as I know) there’s no one standard on how marines get their ships. Now the most likely way is that the request for chapter gear (in this case ships) is relayed to the adeptus Mechanicus from whoever was there when the chapter is approved (probably someone in the Adminastratum), and this in turn is relayed to which ever Forge World/Ship yard is either 1) closest to the muster point of the chapter when it is ready, or 2) whichever has the shortest que. Most likely a new chapter would get the more traditional battle barge (ie the stuff marines use in battle fleet gothic) with a couple to a few cruisers, and of course escorts/fighters/bombers/transports.

Having said that “Battle Barge” and “Strike Cruiser” for the space marines is a more general term for its role, and much like in the Horus Heresy it wouldn’t be inconceivable for a chapter to get non standard designs. For example say a Forge World has an order for 3 new strike cruisers and they wanted them yesterday. So the Mechanicus look at 3 heavily damaged Lunar cruisers and rebuild them specifically for the space marines. It’s important to remember that the Mechanicus do invent, it’s not common and there’s often a lot of back and forth but it does happen! Another example I can think of is that unpopular designs in the Navy can get mothballed, so it wouldn’t be impossible to have those issued in an emergency if the chapter needed to be somewhere now.

Also as others have said it is also plausible the founding chapter might take interest in their baby chapter and give them a ship or two, but it’s unlikely to be anything too potent unless they have a spare battle barge or two. One example is Leman Russ gave near half of everything to the one and only (and failed) Space Wolves successor chapter but that’s an extreme case.

The founding of a chapter is a multi century affair normaly anyway.

Between training, gear, construction of a fortress monestety or a flagship to act in the role. Training and preparing the new chapter and establishing a chapter cult.

Ship wise. Likely a battle barge to act as a home or as a solid achor to defend there new teritory. Strike cruisers to be able to react and serve the impirum. Mayne a small number of escorts for lesser missions and fleet defense.

Escorts are no where near as expensive as capital ships.

Depending on how admech are. More or less. If very lucky you might get support of a small forge ship perhaps, or other vessels that help sustain a fleet. Even marines need logistics.

That's the start. The chapters assets will grow over time and conquest. Marines if thry capture ships do sometimes repyropse them as there own.

I don't think you get a barge to start with, they're honoured relics - hard to produce and largely impractical for the main marine role.

A newly founded chapter is going to get steered away from deploying it's forces all at once (the main selling point of a barge) and instead be pointed towards Strike Cruisers for each battle company with the reserves and veterans split between the three to four ships, and the smaller rapid strike vessels (carrying a couple of squads for boarding actions, or the police action/headhunter style operations a smaller team would be called on to carry out).

You're newbies with no friends other than the parent Chapter and perhaps a few other founding mates. You're marines but none of the major players care - you don't know the rules of the game you've been plunged into, and your allegiances may be suspect if your recruitment world wasn't entirely neutral beforehand (plus someone else might have had their eye on it).

Navy will keep up a fuss if you get Novas right off the bat, and unless there is a dire need for you where they need it - the Mechanicus will probably drag their feet to do the bare minimum legally required (and try to argue that down, or slip in some 'substitutions', bigging up some retrofitted grandcruiser from the mothballed reserve fleet as being something ancient and powerful, surely roughly equivalent to a Heresy-era battlebarge rather than 15 millennia of bodge-fxies and a unreliable etherdrive)

Once you've built up enough favours, captured enough prizes to strip to upgrade your fleet or trade for new ships - then you're a real force to be reckoned with. Not that a marine fleet isn't right from the start, with the escorts being fully capable of batting aside normal planetary defences and deposing any governor they saw fit.

So assuming that you're not founded as part of a crusade (so we can just give you the Grand Cruiser as a battlebarge and call it quits - Navy will deal with the rest, until you take prizes to serve as escorts and light cruisers), I'd see something like this.


Gryffons Errant - 26th Founding Chapter, Guilleman's youngest sons
1st Company formed from veterans of the Brazen Spears, Burning Lions and Sons of Herecles chapters as advisers and training cadre.

Gryffon's Claw - Strike Cruiser (Flagship):
Chapter master, 40 1st company vets. 5th Company Demi-company. Training/Reserves: 6th Company Demi-company, 10th Company Demi-company

Addewa Triumphant - Strike Cruiser
2nd Company. Reserves: Demi-company of the 6th, 8th and 9th. 10th Company scout squad. 1st Company Veterans/training cadre

Triumph of Karaskis - Strike Cruiser
3rd Company. Reserves: Demi-company of the 7th, 8th and 9th.10th Company scout squad. 1st Company Veterans/training cadre

His Divine Will - Strike Cruiser
4th Company. ReservesL Demi-company of the 7th, 8th and 9th.10th Company scout squad. 1st Company Veterans/training cadre

Four cruisers capable of deploying a battlecompany in a single drop, with a demi-company from the reserves to either reinforce or for secondary in-system or long-term operations.

That leaves half the 5th and 20-30 veterans spread across 5 Gladius Frigates as Rapid response forces - for when a squad of movie marines or a terminator teleport squad is all you need. Reinforcing existing ops, providing orbital cover or just making a show of force or even recruiting.

We've also got 70 members of the 8th and 9th unaccounted for. Half of the 9th (Devastator) is likely to be stationed at the Fortress monastery, along with the most junior scouts and some veterans and one or two of either the more junior 8th company squads or senior 10th who are undergoing basic vehicle training.

The rest of the 9th, and the bulk of the 8th would then be split across two squadrons of three Hunters as actual Space Marines in an anti-shipping role. Long ranged patrol craft with boarding torpedoes that will be the first strike on a Space hulk, anti-pirate or alien convoy hunters who are also looking to seize ships as prizes that can then be added to the fledgling fleet. Each ship has an assault squad and a devastator squad (Space Crusade!) on it, ready to board enemy ships.

So total fleet has
4 Strike Cruisers
5 Gladius
6 Hunter

as a fairly well equipped fleet, that can do pretty much everything but doesn't have a lot of slack. Enough to have a presence in all 15 systems of an Imperial sector at once, but probably has a wider remit than that and might not want to spread itself so thin.

(Roughly 1000pts in BFG - probably a escort of each over in a campaign game, or a strike cruiser if you needed admiral and reroll - but then you're a more aggresively fleet focused chapter so probably have more than a single squad on each escort. Maybe even two on each!)

They'll start to accumulate more RSVs as favours, debts and prizes at first, to back up their cruisers and pad out their escorts so they can start fielding them in squadrons rather than sending them out on their own. Once they start taking losses, say two strike cruisers - half the marines of one will be split out amongst the RSVs and the the others will be combined onto a mothballed Battleship, Grand, Heavy or Battlecruiser brought out of retirement to serve as a battlebarge until they're granted a true 'marine' battlebarge as a debt of honour or due to strategic concerns.

a big part of it is going to depend on what type of chapter you are.Tastyfish's foprmat isn't bad for a brand new chapter with a homeworld. but If you have a chapter that is a fleet based one you might instead have.


1: Battlebarge - the fortress monestary, yes you have it but for god's sake be careful with this as it's got all your geneseed, relics etc aboard.
and a half dozen or so strike cruisers. and then eneugh escorts for everyship.

See I was thinking new chapter, and you're right that ship based ones are a special case (and maybe a little bit eggs in one basket if not part of a crusade where you have the full might of the Imperium behind you) - but a newly founded chapter isn't going to have a lot of relics, or geneseed. And their recruitment world is going to be some out of the way Deathworld that wasn't worth exploiting by the Imperium.

Not enough marines for a decent fight from the Orks, too easy to re-establish for a lightening strike from the Eldar, or elsewhere for an overwhelming Tyranid swarm, and beneath your notice as a Chaos Aspirant.

No need to crazy defence to defend your home when starting out, it'd be a mark of shame for the chapter - but that's an expensive price to pay in the long term for looting some backward world that might have 50 trainees and instructors on.

Might as well wait for them to build a legacy, and a fleet.

that depends a new chapter might have some relics, gifts given from the progenator chapter for example.

"Since you're a new ultramarines suecssor allow us to give you a gift, this gladius was used by Captain Tim when he slew the mighty orc warlord during the great crusade. May it guide you long"

Speaking of ships and marines, is not every chapter pretty much expected to be constantly making marines (unless on a penitent crusade) as well as be shipping off some percentage of gene seed back to Terra so that a chapter can either grow big enough to break off a few hundred troops (a company or two) to make a new Chapter when directed/allowed/capable, or:
Terra will found a new chapter from whole cloth via making a few hundred marines from all the geneseed they have collected.

As for ships, they can either come from their progenitor chapter as gifts, or from Terra/AdMech as part of their initial complement of gear. I think their intended purpose also factors into what they get. If they are a planet based chapter, they will probably get a few strike cruisers and a battle barge. A space based chapter will get a few more ships for escort duty. Also, the ships will have a lot more equipment on the space based chapter to make new marines, train them, repair all the armor, a lot of drop pods, etc. A space based chapter would probably be a lot more expensive overall than a planetary based one.

-STS

What's on hand?

How hard is it to build a new Battle Barge? Are there any floating around from otherwise destroyed Chapters they can patch up and pass on (it's far easier to kill the crew than destroy the ship).

Even if a given Shipyard can only produce a single Battle Barge or Strike Cruiser every hundred years, and only perhaps 10 (numbers for illustrative purposes only), that should be enough to ensure a constant ability to resupply existing and new Chapters - again, because in 40k, ships are very difficult to completely destroy beyond all hope of salvage.

I would assume that the creation of a Space Marine Chapter would be significant enough that they would have a contract, with the Mechanicus, for ships lined up early enough. It took only 11 years to construct a Lunar Class cruiser Lord Davos above a Feral World. It takes 55 years for vat grown clones to make 1000 geneseed from 1. So there is likely enough time to construct a few ships. Also it is unlikely the Mechanicus would build them 1 at a time.

This is all great info so far! Thank you all so much!

To be more precise about my chapter(which may help guide your opinions on what would be provided for them) I can give some of the details I have worked out.

The chapter will be an offshoot of the Iron Hands located in Segmentum Pacificus from the 26th founding. I do not expect them to really have much of a connection to the Iron Hands, so it would be unlikely that they would receive any sort of support from the Iron Hands. The idea behind their creation is as a force to bolster the defense of the region, so they would be less concerned with traveling across the galaxy and more about patrolling their "local" area.

 Mud Turkey 13 wrote:
This is all great info so far! Thank you all so much!

To be more precise about my chapter(which may help guide your opinions on what would be provided for them) I can give some of the details I have worked out.

The chapter will be an offshoot of the Iron Hands located in Segmentum Pacificus from the 26th founding. I do not expect them to really have much of a connection to the Iron Hands, so it would be unlikely that they would receive any sort of support from the Iron Hands. The idea behind their creation is as a force to bolster the defense of the region, so they would be less concerned with traveling across the galaxy and more about patrolling their "local" area.

If they don't travel around a lot, they'd probably have less ships than normal. Since they'll always have their fleet concentrated in a relatively small area rather than spread out across the galaxy, they won't need a large amount of assets to gather an effective fighting force. Battle Barges are only rarely used since they are a bit on the roomy side for a Space Marine chapter, so I'd guess a chapter with fewer ships than normal would just have one to serve as a flagship (normal amount is 2-3). The amount of Strike Cruisers would be at least 10, possibly one or two more so that every company always has a ship for transport when needed. Then there'd be a bunch of frigates used for escort and patrol duties, probably at least 2 for every strike cruiser.

That is what I would go with. But it is up to you. Beyond the limited number of Battle Barges, there isn't much in the way of exact information on Space Marine fleet sizes. They don't tend to be very large however. Even large First Founding chapters like the Ultramarines have only something like 15 Strike Cruisers (in addition to 6 Battle Barges and one Battleship).

Battle barges might be given to new chapters, it depends. Of there fleet based they will need a fortress monstery to call home.

If thry had a land based citidel or orbital station etc to call home base. Yeah a compliment of strike cruisers and smaller ships etc.

Its not regular but the chapter who became tie legion of damned has there own starfort, so a mass produced star Fort could become there home base. There mobile to a degree, risky but mobile and effective citidel.

Expensive yes, but the impirum can prodiluce them in the modern age and in a right situation could be assiend to marine as a quick fix to supply a sector fortress monesrety in a vital zone if thry need a defensive chapter outpost in a vital system quickly ans stronger than a battle barge.