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Ideally, I would like to know how long it would take for a vessel with a good warp drive to cross the galaxy. I do know the Light of Astronomican ranged approximately 50,000 light years in all direction.

I wonder however the following, tne nature of Warp is probably extremely unstable and unpredictable are there official sources on how fast one can travel, let us how long does it take to traverse 1 Light year? or 1000 light years or going from edge from Terra all the way to edge of Ultima Segementum.

I know galaxy is impossibly large and that also , not sure Quting it now if its true

"The numbers I'm seeing quoted are 2-6 minutes Warp Time (43 minutes to 4.5 hours real time) to travel one lightyear. Traveling the span of the Imperium, roughly 75,000 lightyears edge to edge, will take about 300 days Warp Time and 6 to 40 years real time"

or

"From infinity to zero times C.

The warp is less like space and more like a turbulent ocean. Some ships cross the galaxy in seconds. Some take eons, to the point of actually appearing now only after being sent out 20,000 years ago by Adeptus Mechanicus."

I wonder how Indomitus crusade worked? How do you get to save someone on corner of galaxy if they send distres signal that signal takes decades to reach and maybe even decades for armies to come we are talking about maybe century long time empire can fall.

Warp travel ,speed,instability etc can be quite confusing. Can anyone provide accurate insight? I thank thee?

Given that the warp sometimes spits you out before you left, this is an impossible question to answer. At best you can say that short jumps of a few light years yalltakes less time than longer jumps, but even that depends on the warp currents present for any given jump.

Warp travel is generally reliable enough for empires to function.

So ignoring the edge cases, the common travel times are relatively fast and reliable.

If you can get a copy of the RPG supplement Rogue Trader Navis Primer, you'll find warp travel times across stable routes within the Koronus Expanse.

Here's a map of the expanse to compare physical distances between the worlds:

https://th.bing.com/th/id/Rd9d8292c485004d5dfbd80bdcce1f3ee?rik=RROjS9TIFHiqEA&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.cold-moon.com%2f40k%2f40kRP%2fRTCampaign%2fImages%2fKoronus+Expanse+Map+2.jpg&ehk=K4DgryPoW4QhCErGnV4r1AlIzPY4D2msqshJjh3y%2bwU%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw

It varies a lot, but the impression I've gotten from various BL novels is that it takes most of a year to make an especially long (length, not time) journey.

It seems to be more about the route you take than the physical distance involved. Some warp routes have faster "currents" than others, and the speed of those currents can vary from time to time. Warp storms can alter the behavior of those currents or block off paths entirely. SImilarly, you might have to find a detour if you get to one of the pit stops on your route and find out your next pit stop is actively being eaten by tyranids right now.

As Flinty said, less distance seems to generally mean less travel time and vice versa (though the speed of a given route might occassionally break that rule.) Warp weirdness means that you occassionally emerge from the warp before you entered it, and sometimes a short trip ends up taking centuries or even millenia. But those last two are extreme exceptions. Warp travel times are hard to pin down, but they're at least predictable enough to coordinate supply shipments with an acceptable amount of irregularity.

I wonder how Indomitus crusade worked? How do you get to save someone on corner of galaxy if they send distres signal that signal takes decades to reach and maybe even decades for armies to come we are talking about maybe century long time empire can fall.

They basically didn't do this. The Indomitus crusade was/is largely about securing important systems (ones with important worlds or ones where a lot of stable warp paths converge), and securing systems that border the giant rift across the galaxy.

With a very few exceptions, the northern half of the galaxy is written off for recovery later. The main exception being Baal, the homeworld of the Blood Angels and designating the whole thing Dante's problem to sort out and hold whatever remnant of the Imperium he can.

This is old fluff, but I don't think there's anything newer:

It's faster than any other FTL used in 40k and tbh that's all that really should be known about it IMO. The Warp is a dangerous place and using it for long periods of time makes it more likely the ship is lost/consumed/boarded/possessed. Like a planetary ocean, it has waves, currents, and storms which can all affect travel time.

There are also Warp Engines, and Warp Engines.

Being a poorly understood technology in 40K, they’re of varying quality. Some ships pre-date the Imperium, and others are relatively new. Some are salvaged, some have always been in-situ as the surrounding ship has been repaired, rebuilt and renovated.

Then there’s the Warp itself. If it’s stable, you’ll likely get a predictable transit time. If not? Well, you might never get there, and you might get there far sooner than you expected.

Some routes are well traveled and mapped as well as they can be. Others are just about stable enough, but your Navigator will have to be on their toes all the time.

With the Cicatrex thingy now affecting things, who knows?

Wolfie1991 wrote:



I wonder how Indomitus crusade worked? How do you get to save someone on corner of galaxy if they send distres signal that signal takes decades to reach and maybe even decades for armies to come we are talking about maybe century long time empire can fall.

Warp travel ,speed,instability etc can be quite confusing. Can anyone provide accurate insight? I thank thee?

The short answer is the Imperium, as a cohesive intergalactic entity, doesn't exist. Instead, you have hundreds of sector and regional entities, that all share the same name, stated intentions and generally co-operate with each other.

When a planet calls for help, its generally not to direct to terra, as you said its pointless. They normally send it to the subsector or sector command levels, who can allocate support form their own subsector/sector, and if thats not enough they elevate it to the next level of authority, and so on. Each planet is supposed to have its own PDF capable of defending the world for some time while this response is organised. In practice these vary wildly form a tribal horde that has a few laspistols, to the former PDF of Cadia that was able to stop a full on Black Crusade in its tracks.


the saving grace for the Imperium is that everyone else is working under the same constraints as they are, or at least similarly constricting ones, and that they are still the biggest thing in the galaxy. They can simply afford to loose a world here and their because of warp <love>ery, as they can just organise a crusade in a few decades to go take it back. They have simple mass to absorb these blows and strike back. If any empire was able to operate on the scale that the imperium could but without the problems forced on it by the warp, it would collapse in short order.

Ships in the warp travel at the speed of plot. Exactly fast enough to arrive on time, or not depending on the situation. At least in the stories anyway.

Generally there would be some stable travel lanes that have predictable travel times, but due to the nature of the warp, probably none of them are consistent with each other. Other than 'its faster than light speed to cross the same realspace distance' - the answer is largely 'it depends'.