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So some Imperial Navy Vessels do not have launch bays. Can they still deploy drop ships, air-to-ground transports, etc...?

Or is the crew just kinda stuck on them.

For example, the Mercury Class Battle Cruiser has no launch bays on it. If it partakes in a planetary assault, could it drop large amounts of troops or no? Does it attach a large drop ship on its underbelly that is capable of landing troops; how would it do this, if it could.

Considering their sheer size most Imperial warships would have some kind of launch bay/smaller flight craft capable facilities upon them.

Though they likely don't carry sufficient ships to conduct a full assault drop. This doesn't just mean that they won't have enough dropships; but also might not have internal space to house larger number of troops.

Some ships might well have almost no smaller flight capable ships on board or might only have shuttles for ship-to-ship (in space no ground/planetside) flight and transport. Relying more on connector elements to dock at space stations.


Consider it similar to how regular warships work on Earth. Most will have loads of boats for escaping the ship and some for recon and other duties; but only those with dedicated landers and landing facilities and so forth would be used as main transports for a landing operation.




Basically not having "launch bays" doesn't mean you have no smaller flight capable ships; it just means that in a battle situation you don't have enough to meaningfully contribute to the situation; and/or the kind you have are not suited for the combat environment.

Well, most would have some shuttle capacity, but not enough for a combat landing of any real strength.

But this is why you tend to have battle groups mixing a variety of ship classes. And for landing troops, there are warp capable troop ships which can land planet side. And where those aren’t available, the Cain novels, and I dare say others, show civilian cargo haulers being co-opted, with that ship’s own shuttles being used to ferry troops and equipment to and from planets.

Ah ok makes sense. So they have some Valkyries or similar transports.

So I know the Devourer Dropships are carried in larger ships but what about the Tetrarch Heavy Lander?

Theres almost no lore I could find. Could a capital ship without launch bays strap one or two of these things to the hull and drop troops that way?

Honestly? I don’t think we really know.

But it is probably worth keeping in mind that, whilst not exclusively, combat drop into ongoing battle zones is the purview of the Astartes, not the Imperial Guard etc. And so capacity for such may be quite unusual. Of course, 40K being 40K, there will be exceptions to this general approach.

And so even a modest flotilla of shuttles can be used to ferry troops and their gear, including vehicles, planetside from orbit.

With even the humble Cobra Destroyer being of vast size, its entirely possible utility shuttles could be of sufficient size and cargo capacity to carry at least some battle tanks.

I’d also argue, largely without evidence, that more specialised regiments may have specialist craft at their disposal. After all, there’s no point carting a Super Heavy Tank regiment to a war zone if you’ve no means of deploying them. Forces such as the Harkoni Warhawks and Elysian Drop Troops would also likely have some kind of permanently attached naval assets. Not under their command of course, but there specifically to ensure they can play to their strengths (such as being among the exceptions for Guard combat drops).


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As for more general Guard Regiments? Arranging proper and appropriate transport and deployment would be a matter for its commanders.

This would include calculating how slowly or swiftly stuff can get planetside upon arrival, and the appropriate prioritisation based on that information. So, if your job is to establish the beach head, you’d have a different arrangement than if you’re reinforcing an ongoing war from an already secure staging area somewhere on the planet. And that would likely vary regiment to regiment, as an Artillery Company is just gonna have different priorities and challenges to a light infantry company.

That may also include planetside shuttles/loader being requisitioned, creating a swifter offloading, as once the first wave is away, incoming shuttles can be refuelled and loaded, in theory heading back just in time for the ship’s own shuttles to be on the return leg of their own journey.

we've seen in in the fiction. in the Gaunts ghosts and Commisar cain series for example, we've seen that most ships have landing bays used for shuttles and troop dropships, and in several of them we've seen that combat craft can be shoehorned into those in a pinch.. even stuff like thunderhawks. it's just that non-carriers usually can't keep up the same tempo of operations as a proper carrier.

Supporting the above, larger Navy vessels have enough small craft that they can launch boarding assaults on other vessels in (for space terms) close proximity. This is an easier ask than orbital drops of course, no atmosphere or gravity well to contend with and probably over shorter distances on the whole, but larger Nacy vessels can probably deploy ground troops in a pinch. It would be much less capable than a proper drop and in much smaller capacity, and I doubt there are many scenarios where doing so would be considered unless no other option is available and a small force is sufficient for the task.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But it is probably worth keeping in mind that, whilst not exclusively, combat drop into ongoing battle zones is the purview of the Astartes, not the Imperial Guard etc. And so capacity for such may be quite unusual. Of course, 40K being 40K, there will be exceptions to this general approach.

I think Guard combat deployments are more common than you are suggesting, but clearly Guard forces tend to favour dropping in an uncontested zone and advancing from there if they can (like Taros). The impression I get is that Guard landers, which typically can carry at least a company-sized force- are a valuable asset that is difficult to replace if lost in a combat drop.

However, particularly when time is of the essence or there are no uncontested regions, Guard do go in hot. This happened a lot in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, Balhaut being a notable example of massive drops across multiple continents against an enemy fortress world. The Macharius Crusade also seems to have featured aggressive combat drops. It may be that major crusades can afford to be a bit more profligate with landers due to the greater resources they command compared to a typical army grouping trying to put out a dozen fires with not enough forces to manage it.

It also seems that the Guard used to be used more aggressively in combat drops, but has become more conservative as technology has faded. A common assault method was using specialised assault carriers dropping down with anti-grav projectors that made several cones of low-grav below the ship- the Guardsmen on board simply stepping into the cones and dropping to the ground. Specialist training on grav chutes being unnecessary for this type of grav deployment. This is a very rare deployment method by the 41st millennium, the ships are rare, difficult to maintain, and finicky and unreliable. If the cone is out of whack, all your guardsmen just drop to the ground at terminal velocity...

It may be primarily informed by what orbit to surface transport is available.

If you’re relying on civilian ships, and have an option in landing zones, the preference would likely not be dropping into a live combat area.

But, if you’ve dedicated combat drop ships, then you’d have more options.

And this is again going to depend on what sort of Regiment is being deployed.

Artillery just isn’t much use being dropped into a combat zone, as they’re intended to be deployed supporting, but not on, the front line.

A mechanised force can deploy somewhat further back and still get into the fight compared to light or medium infantry etc.

And of course there will be exceptions to all of this, dictated by availability and type of transport, whether there’s a safe landing zone, which side if any has air superiority, whether you’ve a naval fighter escort etc etc.

But I still stand by my assertion that, by preference, it’s the Astartes that are armed, trained and equipped for dropping straight into the thick of it. To the point that when conditions allow, the preference of most Guard forces will be to land in a secured area, allowing them to marshall their forces before heading off to engage. Not only does this prevent a piecemeal deployment, but also allows their command to properly liaise with existing Imperial forces and decide where best to start engaging the enemy.

I think that is fair, it definitely isn't the favoured approach in most scenarios.

...thinking about it combat drops seem to be particularly prevalent in stuff written by Dan Abnett... The Sabbat Worlds Crusade is full of them, the passage below is from the Tactica Imperialis background book, and the end of Eisenhorn: Xenos involves a large-scale combat drop by multiple units. There are some in the Cain novels but they tend to be... less than planned in most cases.

Anyway, here is a good example of how an Imperial Guard combat drop might go, using the antigrav ships and the Tetrarch lander mentioned above. Aside from the image which is on the preceding page (and Lexicanum), this is all the lore on Tetrarchs.

It is clearly a much more cumbersome and vulnerable approach compared to an Astartes drop gunning in.

Edit: it actually had rules in the Planetstrike expansion from 5th edition, which I have finally located:

I would echo some of the above posts. all spacecraft will have launch bays, shuttleports and suchlike for the wide range of support vessels needed for transport and logistics.

I think the difference with formal BFG launch bays is more that the ship has extensive facilities to support loads of squadrons. In the game, it looks like there are just a few attack craft deployed each time, but given the scale of BFG, a single attack squadron marker would need to comprise dozens of individual spacecraft. Even a spacecraft the size of a small building (as the Starhawk seems to be) would barely scratch capital ships kilometres in length.

The only one that doesn't scale very well would be Marine attack craft (Thunderhawks) just due to the number of marines that would be needed to crew large number of such things.

As well as the launch bays, there will be space needed for recovery bays, repair facilities, consumables logistics, manufacturing for spare parts and probably ammunition.

ships without formal attack squadron launch bays could do similar operations, just not as efficiently and not to the same scale.

I think it might be like modern IRL warships. Some may have heli-pads, but might they may not also have a hanger.

Dug up the info from BFG about boarding actions:

For reference, vessels were considered to be a few thousand kilometres apart when close enough to board. Every vessel, including escorts, were able to engage in boarding actions, so you can expect enough launch capacity to ferry hundreds of crew across space to attack on even the smaller vessels like a Cobra. Note it mentions life pods though- clearly in a desparate situation these are used as makeshift attack shuttles. Also BFG considers that all Imperial capital ships have enough teleporter capacity to carry out hit-and-run attacks.

Presumably ALL void vessels have at least one launch bay where shuttles can dock and unload cargo. Otherwise any sort of resupply would be kinda difficult unless you had a void station to dock with.

As said above, Launch bays just means that the ship has a large dedicated hanger of offensive craft. And has a large trained crew of personnel to rearm and reequip these craft in combat as a main offensive ability of the ship as opposed to just auxiliary roles.


In the event a warship without a dedicated Launch Bay is tasked with transporting troops, presumably a large quantity of new shuttles will be taken aboard to allow for deployment in addition to the normal ones the ship has, if the ship doesn't have a bunch of extras already. These are very large ancient ships with a lot of unused space in them, so no reason you couldn't have plenty of spare shuttled stuffed in a corner somewhere.

And even on a ship without a dedicated combat aircraft facility, they are still going to at least have some fighters to escort the ships shuttles back and forth. Its just a question of scale. A half dozen Fury interceptors would be fine for the ship's shuttle protection, but they're not going to do much in a real void battle.

Yarp.

Carrier decks are also about launching a large number of craft in a short period of time, and being able to rearm under combat conditions.

The sheer, staggering size of Imperial ships require a lot of supplies. And you can’t possibly just resupply using dinky cargo shuttles.

So whilst I don’t think our attention has been drawn to say, a Lunar Class Cruiser’s shuttle compliment and bay capacity? It can’t be entirely negligible. They need to ferry crew, equipment, supplies, ammunition etc in quite significant quantities, and can’t always assume there’s a space dock on hand to manage that.

Ah yeah a lot of good information. I have never thought about the logistics of running a capital ship and having food and supplies ferried up to them. It makes sense.

Was a bloody good question though, that’s the main thing