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Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Do the imperium have ships that can travel from one star system to another without the warp? That would have to be FTL I guess.

Or is non warp just in system?
   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

Yes, but it's not clearly explained. There are pilgrim vessels that take years to travel between systems so must have some form of FTL (Ship of the Damned is set on one of these).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/30 20:35:29


 
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






So far as I’m aware, there are only two species which don’t rely on Warp Travel.

First, the Eldar. Whichever faction, they all use the Webway. Which is kinda sub Warp, as it couldn’t exist without The Warp to have their tunnels in.

Second? Necrons. In their original fluff, they folded physical space. Not only making their space travel far quicker, but more accurate. Then came their rejigging, where it all got blurred at best. But I’m pretty sure their current Codex they’re back at their physics bending best.

Which makes Necrons the best placed to counter Tyranids, because the Shadow In The Warp means nothing to them in any way, shape or form.

   
Made in gb
Leader of the Sept







The Tau don’t properly breach the warp. They just skim it, which seems to be rather less dangerous, but also a lot slower. Maybe the pilgrim Ships do it in a similar way so they don’t need the expensive proper warp engines.

Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

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Made in us
Dakka Veteran




All the Imperial FTL has to use the warp in some way, but there are a number of variants:
1) normal Navigated warp jumps
2) ‘calculated jumps’ without a Navigator. These are much riskier and less accurate have to be short ranged (as the further you go the more you deviate of course) and they’re usually just on well trodden routes.
3) Warp Gates. These are sort of similar to the webway in how they work, but just two large gates in space that connect point-to-point like a Star Trek wormhole. The 3rd Ed rule book went into detail on them, the IoM can’t make any more but I can’t remember if they were DAOT or alien made.

Edit: potentially the pilgrim ships rely on 2&3 but cruise through real space between known jump points.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/30 21:00:31


 
   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

 Flinty wrote:
The Tau don’t properly breach the warp. They just skim it, which seems to be rather less dangerous, but also a lot slower.

The Fourth Sphere of Expansion used the Warp, and went about as well as you'd expect...
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Buy warp travel wouldn’t be used to go from earth to Mars would it?

But at the same time you’d want to make that trip in a few hours or a day? So must be close to or exceeding FTL.....
   
Made in gb
Battleship Captain




beast_gts wrote:
 Flinty wrote:
The Tau don’t properly breach the warp. They just skim it, which seems to be rather less dangerous, but also a lot slower.

The Fourth Sphere of Expansion used the Warp, and went about as well as you'd expect...


That's what happens when you reverse engineer the Warp Engine but not the Gellar Field...


Tyranids also have non-warp FTL - the Narvhal.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Narvhal



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Made in ro
Dakka Veteran




mrFickle wrote:
Buy warp travel wouldn’t be used to go from earth to Mars would it?

But at the same time you’d want to make that trip in a few hours or a day? So must be close to or exceeding FTL.....


No, you’d have to travel real space- you can’t warp jump close to planets so they don’t use it for travel within one system.

Imperial real space travel is fast, but not FTL fast. I think it’s still days to move Terra to Mars. There’s quite a lot in the HH & SoT books that deals with the logistics of it.
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




mrFickle wrote:
Do the imperium have ships that can travel from one star system to another without the warp? That would have to be FTL I guess.

Or is non warp just in system?


I'm fairly sure most merchant ships that travel between systems in the same sub-sector can get around without a navigator. If I recall cogitators are often sufficient for most short range warp jumps.

Kinda like how the Tau do it.
   
Made in gb
Grim Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplain





Earth

Yes the imperium has near light or FTL travel as when they enter a system at the mandavil point, which is outside gravity well of the planets in a solar system, they can reach the inner planets in mere days, even after burning engines to achieve a high speed they can reach inner system planets in months, this means they clearly have some form of FTL other than Warp drives.
   
Made in ro
Automated Rubric Marine of Tzeentch




dorset

 Formosa wrote:
Yes the imperium has near light or FTL travel as when they enter a system at the mandavil point, which is outside gravity well of the planets in a solar system, they can reach the inner planets in mere days, even after burning engines to achieve a high speed they can reach inner system planets in months, this means they clearly have some form of FTL other than Warp drives.


not really FTL, its just not constrained by the problems of m3 rocket science. the Imperiums ships can just run the sub-light engines for days (compared to the minutes most modern rockets can achieve), gaining massive top speeds as even with quite gentle acceleration, and thus a trip to mars that we would take months to achieve can be done in a matter of days, as they can cut out the long coasting phase and just accelerate to the midpoint, turn over and brake into orbit.

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Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

Lord Zarkov wrote:
No, you’d have to travel real space- you can’t warp jump close to planets so they don’t use it for travel within one system.
You can if you know what you're doing (or think you do) - in The Great Work Cawl jumps directly in Sotha's orbit.

EDIT: But that was from outside the system, so not exactly what you're referring to...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/31 10:31:22


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So far as I’m aware, there are only two species which don’t rely on Warp Travel.

First, the Eldar. Whichever faction, they all use the Webway. Which is kinda sub Warp, as it couldn’t exist without The Warp to have their tunnels in.

Second? Necrons. In their original fluff, they folded physical space. Not only making their space travel far quicker, but more accurate. Then came their rejigging, where it all got blurred at best. But I’m pretty sure their current Codex they’re back at their physics bending best.

Which makes Necrons the best placed to counter Tyranids, because the Shadow In The Warp means nothing to them in any way, shape or form.

The Eldar do use warp travel - not every destination will have a webway gate of sufficient size to accommodate an ship, after all. It is more dangerous for them though.

Necrons were never stated to 'fold space'. Their non-Dolmen Gate FTL consisted (consists) of phase teleportation, and just going really fast in realspace (always presumed to be at least partly due to their inertialess drives).

The 3rd edition codex claimed that during the War in Heaven they had ships which could 'cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye'; although whether this is exaggeration, reference to teleportation, or perhaps required the input of the C'tan isn't clear. Literally being able to blink and be anywhere is not something which Necron ships have ever been shown or otherwise implied to be able to do.

Dark Creed was (re-)published post introduction of Dolmen Gates in the 5th edition codex, and explicitly describes realspace FTL, which proves beyond doubt that it wasn't retconned by 'newcron' background. Realspace FTL is still slow compared to some other methods though (the ship in Dark Creed still taking at least three months to reach its destination) because space is really big.

Attack of the Necron features Doomscythes travelling FTL too. But the Warhammer Adventures books are stupid.
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




beast_gts wrote:
Lord Zarkov wrote:
No, you’d have to travel real space- you can’t warp jump close to planets so they don’t use it for travel within one system.
You can if you know what you're doing (or think you do) - in The Great Work Cawl jumps directly in Sotha's orbit.

EDIT: But that was from outside the system, so not exactly what you're referring to...


Normal jumps are to and from a star system's Mandeville point, which is the point where the interference of gravitational forces is low enough for a safe jump. That is what nearly all human ships do because it is known to be safe. When jumping within a gravity well, the risk is high that bad things happen, such as the suicidal jump of the Dominus Astra battleship at the height of the space battle against Hive Fleet Behemoth during the Battle of Macrragge.

However that means that there could exist secret or transient areas (transient due to celestial body motion) where the net gravitational forces cancelled out and are low enough for a ship to jump in (or out) if they know what they are doing. Such points would likely also be closely guarded secrets as it can result in significant time savings and thus commercial or military advantage.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/31 11:10:48


 
   
Made in gb
Leader of the Sept







xerxeskingofking wrote:
 Formosa wrote:
Yes the imperium has near light or FTL travel as when they enter a system at the mandavil point, which is outside gravity well of the planets in a solar system, they can reach the inner planets in mere days, even after burning engines to achieve a high speed they can reach inner system planets in months, this means they clearly have some form of FTL other than Warp drives.


not really FTL, its just not constrained by the problems of m3 rocket science. the Imperiums ships can just run the sub-light engines for days (compared to the minutes most modern rockets can achieve), gaining massive top speeds as even with quite gentle acceleration, and thus a trip to mars that we would take months to achieve can be done in a matter of days, as they can cut out the long coasting phase and just accelerate to the midpoint, turn over and brake into orbit.


and Imperial ships have artificial gravity and inertial dampers allowing much higher acceleration.

Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

Terranwing - w3;d1;l1
51st Dunedinw2;d0;l0
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
   
Made in gb
Grim Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplain





Earth

xerxeskingofking wrote:
 Formosa wrote:
Yes the imperium has near light or FTL travel as when they enter a system at the mandavil point, which is outside gravity well of the planets in a solar system, they can reach the inner planets in mere days, even after burning engines to achieve a high speed they can reach inner system planets in months, this means they clearly have some form of FTL other than Warp drives.


not really FTL, its just not constrained by the problems of m3 rocket science. the Imperiums ships can just run the sub-light engines for days (compared to the minutes most modern rockets can achieve), gaining massive top speeds as even with quite gentle acceleration, and thus a trip to mars that we would take months to achieve can be done in a matter of days, as they can cut out the long coasting phase and just accelerate to the midpoint, turn over and brake into orbit.


See thats really interesting, I assumed FTL as some systems are described as vast taking weeks at high speed to get to the inner system, others taking hours at full burn to reach the mandival point, so my guess was that close to or just past FTL at an average, we do know from Know no Fear that imperial ships can reach near light speed (they rammed one into the ship yards), but this long burn time to gain momentum while moving in system have me wondering what top speeds could be achieved.

really interesting
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




There is no theoretical top speed. You can keep accelerating as long as there is reaction mass to accelerate though the amount of energy required to gain velocity increases the closer to lightspeed one gets. However, in BFG, it is said that most Imperial ships keep to a certain set velocity in order to have energy for other things. They also would not be able to maneuver very effectively at super high velocities.

The approximate normal cruising/fighting velocities of Imperial warships can be estimated from the BFG scale (given by Andy Chambers on the old BFG mailing list) of 1 cm = 1,000 km and a telescoping time scale (long range, 1 turn = 1 hour, 15cm and under 1 turn = 15 minutes). So that means a Lunar cruiser operates normally between 20,000-80,000 km/hour. On special orders of All Ahead Full, it could theoretically move a maximum of 44 cm within a 15 minute turn, which means 176,000 km/hour. That works out to roughly 3.02-4.91 G's of acceleration.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/05/31 20:21:37


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





So there’s no way to cross systems in an imperial ship without it taking years I guess. I remember reading that the first galactic empire was created using generation ships or seed ship from both terra and Mars but I don’t know if we have a time frame of leaving earth and Mars to colonies being fully established
   
Made in fr
Stalwart Tribune





I don't think the first "generation ships" were used to create an empire. Without FTL, those colonies had to be completely isolated from each other. No trade, no immigration, no help against nasty aliens...

Humanity probably only started expanding for real when the warp drive was invented. I think the first navigators were created artificially through genetic engineering, too.
   
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Battleship Captain




Iracundus wrote:
There is no theoretical top speed. You can keep accelerating as long as there is reaction mass to accelerate though the amount of energy required to gain velocity increases the closer to lightspeed one gets. However, in BFG, it is said that most Imperial ships keep to a certain set velocity in order to have energy for other things. They also would not be able to maneuver very effectively at super high velocities.

The approximate normal cruising/fighting velocities of Imperial warships can be estimated from the BFG scale (given by Andy Chambers on the old BFG mailing list) of 1 cm = 1,000 km and a telescoping time scale (long range, 1 turn = 1 hour, 15cm and under 1 turn = 15 minutes). So that means a Lunar cruiser operates normally between 20,000-80,000 km/hour. On special orders of All Ahead Full, it could theoretically move a maximum of 44 cm within a 15 minute turn, which means 176,000 km/hour. That works out to roughly 3.02-4.91 G's of acceleration.


Lines up pretty well with the Rogue Trader RPG, where a Dauntless-class light cruiser can manage a sustained 5g acceleration.

Note that ship's do have a practical if not theoretical top speed - driven by the ability of a ship's void shields to absorb continuous dust and micrometeor collisions at increasingly high relativistic speeds.

See thats really interesting, I assumed FTL as some systems are described as vast taking weeks at high speed to get to the inner system, others taking hours at full burn to reach the mandival point


It also depends what you're trying to escape the Mandeville point OF. Smaller systems are often bigger problems.

every object with a meaningful gravity well has a Mandeville point - a safe altitude that you can jump at without a first-rate navigator, archeotech drives or a death wish.

But that's every object, including the star.

Once you escape pluto's Mandeville point, you can jump. But once you escape Mercury's, you're still inside Sol's. Worlds inside the inner cauldron - and often primary biosphere- often have this problem, and that's what leads to weeks at sublight.





This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/05/31 22:07:09


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The best State-Texas

 Lord Damocles wrote:
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So far as I’m aware, there are only two species which don’t rely on Warp Travel.

First, the Eldar. Whichever faction, they all use the Webway. Which is kinda sub Warp, as it couldn’t exist without The Warp to have their tunnels in.

Second? Necrons. In their original fluff, they folded physical space. Not only making their space travel far quicker, but more accurate. Then came their rejigging, where it all got blurred at best. But I’m pretty sure their current Codex they’re back at their physics bending best.

Which makes Necrons the best placed to counter Tyranids, because the Shadow In The Warp means nothing to them in any way, shape or form.

The Eldar do use warp travel - not every destination will have a webway gate of sufficient size to accommodate an ship, after all. It is more dangerous for them though.

Necrons were never stated to 'fold space'. Their non-Dolmen Gate FTL consisted (consists) of phase teleportation, and just going really fast in realspace (always presumed to be at least partly due to their inertialess drives).

The 3rd edition codex claimed that during the War in Heaven they had ships which could 'cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye'; although whether this is exaggeration, reference to teleportation, or perhaps required the input of the C'tan isn't clear. Literally being able to blink and be anywhere is not something which Necron ships have ever been shown or otherwise implied to be able to do.

Dark Creed was (re-)published post introduction of Dolmen Gates in the 5th edition codex, and explicitly describes realspace FTL, which proves beyond doubt that it wasn't retconned by 'newcron' background. Realspace FTL is still slow compared to some other methods though (the ship in Dark Creed still taking at least three months to reach its destination) because space is really big.

Attack of the Necron features Doomscythes travelling FTL too. But the Warhammer Adventures books are stupid.


The new 9th codex talks about Necron FTL travel as well, saying it's slightly slower than Warp, but much safer. They also still have the Dolmen Gates as well for instant webway travel.

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