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I've been reading the Horus Heresy books and the Lexicanum and how come that the Imperium don't have boats for combat there must be some world were boats would be needed for combat purposes. Or would they just evaporate the water from orbit? Ork boats would be really cool looking.

Chimeras ignore the effects of water, as they are AT, but I agree that some boats would be nice. However, since few players from my experience use water features frequently, it seems that this isn't likely to happen any time soon.

If I remember, Land Raiders are also supposed be amphibious, too.

Orks used subs on Armageddon, which was quite a surprise for the Imperials as they did not expect an assault from the seaside.

All in all, however ... why would the Imperium need boats if they have spaceships? For troops to be landed on any world, interstellar transport is required, which means huge kilometer-long starcruisers with dropships, cannons and fightercraft. Said dropships can make planetfall anywhere they want already, and aerial superiority would simply bombard anything on open waters.

There may be some few exceptions to this rule, such as a waterworld with an atmosphere that hinders aerial deployment somehow, but I doubt the Imperial Guard would keep millions of boats in cold storage just because two or three out of the million worlds in the Imperium have special environmental conditions.

That being said, I would expect many Planetary Defence Forces to make use of traditional boats, simply because for them it might actually make sense for policing local waters. No need to transport them off-world, perfectly attuned to their own planetary conditions, and probably more economical than aircraft.

Unfortunate really now there will never be a WAAAGH ON WATA.
Still for any large scale engagements they would need something bigger and more floaty that's not a word. But still the Adeptus Astartes Battle Yacht!

Imperial Worlds that don't have access to interstellar travel would be limited to using boats for long distance freight hauling across continents.

You could find some boats in BL novels. Mostly small ones, of forces specializing in jungle warfare and thus meant for rivers. Or a few for the open seas.

There must be boats somewhere. I suppose on the bigger, more advanced planets of the imperium they would have some provisions for orbital bombardments, negating the need for big surface ships with long range missiles. I'd imagine most planets under the protection of the emperor, who don't have their own orbital defenses, have some part of an imperial defense fleet reasonably near by.

I cant imagine there would be a lot of need for a military surface navy in the imperium. Maybe commercial marine traffic but not military.

Other races might though. I'm sure that there must be some ork infested planets were the clans zoom about on boats and things. Kinda like what waterworld is to mad max, these planets are to gorka morka.

Good points on this didn't know about the Ork subs though, seems like they would never need boats but the Guard have enough dead weight around anyway (*cough* lasguns *cough*) (HAYO) that having proper battleships could be of use if the Guard have a ground force but can't get aerial reinforcements.

LumbarGibbon wrote:Good points on this didn't know about the Ork subs though, seems like they would never need boats but the Guard have enough dead weight around anyway (*cough* lasguns *cough*) (HAYO) that having proper battleships could be of use if the Guard have a ground force but can't get aerial reinforcements.

I suppose there are few instances where such a situation would occur. Guard regiments are mostly raised on an as-needed basis to help defend Imperial worlds, or to partake in a crusade and invade some other world. In both cases, their delivery means they already have the aerial support they'd need to drop down anywhere they want, whereas boats would be limited to deployment on water with little effect on what's going on landside (where the actual strategic objectives would be located).
I am sure the Imperial Navy could theoretically transport boats in their ships' hulls, but this is cargo space that may as well be taken up by more men and machinery that could be used in land fights. Throwing a bunch of boats into the water would, in most cases, not serve anything. All that could be attacked by these boats can be attacked from air as well - and an air element needs to be present, else those boats could not be brought down in the first place.

There are some garrisoned regiments, too, of course - but even those would have to be mobile and ready to redeploy on another world, hence I'm thinking that boats would be a PDF thing for worlds where the local military deems it necessary or useful. I would assume that they fall under IG authority in case the Munitorum assumes command of the world as a warzone, though. So the potential is still there, it's just circumstantial.

By the way, here's some GW fluff on the Ork subs, just in case you're interested. It's a fun read - also note how at least civilian merchant vessels are referenced in the PDF:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060520211348/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/News/sub-tempestora.asp
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1180080_Ork_Datasheet_-_Submersible.pdf

Seem like GW sold that sub at some point wonder if they still do pretty interesting that Orks do something smart and new.

I can imagine Ocean World PDFs operating patrol boats and navy's. Warships can stay in an area in water without wasting fuel or hovering relentlessly like aircraft.

Main reason they haven't been seen is because GW doesn't want to release a line of warships for every faction. As for what the factions have already been established to have:

-Imperium: Land Raiders, Rhino's, and Chimeras are all amphibious, Land Raiders are completely able to submerge. Space Marines in full armor can also operate underwater, as the Space Wolves have done so.
-Orks: Submarines
-Tyranids: Aquatic organisms are quickly made by the Hivemind (see the old 40k Trading Card Game, Tyranids have giant squids and hermit crabs)
-Tau: Underwater cities, aquatic battlesuits, and submarines (detailed in an underwater battle they had with the Space Wolves).

I seem to recall a BL IG book where battleships that sound a lot like seagoing Leviathan Command Vehicles were mentioned.

LumbarGibbon wrote:Seem like GW sold that sub at some point wonder if they still do pretty interesting that Orks do something smart and new.

I do not think they ever sold it - the one and only place this baby showed up was the worldwide campaign during the Third War of Armageddon. However, GW has always occasionally provided instructions on how to scratch-build cool things or even provide rules for them, which it appears is what they did here, too.

Unfortunately, that has become a lot less frequent in the last couple years.

I still have that cardboard SoB chapel from WD #212. It came with a guide on how to further tweak it with plastic bits, too. And a mission in which it was an objective.

It wouldn't surprise me if PDFs and civilised worlds did have a number of larger vessels, submersible or otherwise.

In a civilisation where Orbital weapons are a prime target for an invading force, they are static and the first target for an invading army.

By having oncean launched weapons platform, eliminating a planets ordital defences becomes significantly more difficult. Its even feasable they could be void shielded. Once the fighting starts.

As traditional warships I agree with the above. As a platform for orbital defence weaponry I believe they still have a role to play.

Read the novel, Flesh and Iron by Henry Zou. The main regiment in that are an aquatic one specialized in river patrols (they use gun boats and other small water craft, ie think US Vietnam river units), whilst there's also a large naval (as in boats, not planes) force (which oddly is a guard regiment, not a separate wing of the army). Along with much of the Imperial Forces focus being aquatic, they also come up against rebel gun boats and junkers. A lot of the novel is focussed on this aspect (its a bit Apocalypse now, an army moving up into the mainland via rivers to take out a big gun that's preventing the troop carriers from hitting the mainland, and later a naval battle on the open water).

So yes, there are regiments dedicated to naval warfare, as are there those committed to anti gravity, mining, etc. Its the issue however that not every battle requires this, so it happens that such regiments are only committed to fighting in their own specialized field, otherwise, when there isn't enough soldiers available, they're just flung in with the foot grunts. <Ie Gaunt's Ghosts being told to fight a trench war when they're stealth experts experienced in forest and urban warfare.>

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Read the novel, Flesh and Iron by Henry Zou. The main regiment in that are an aquatic one specialized in river patrols (they use gun boats and other small water craft, ie think US Vietnam river units),

Considering how Zou plagiarized extensively from real soldiers accounts, that's not surprising.

In the Space Wolves codex there's a tale of an underwater campaign against the Tau.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Read the novel, Flesh and Iron by Henry Zou. The main regiment in that are an aquatic one specialized in river patrols (they use gun boats and other small water craft, ie think US Vietnam river units),

Considering how Zou plagiarized extensively from real soldiers accounts, that's not surprising.

=P The plot's Apocalypse now to a T, whilst the character development comes from that one Iraq War novel. Meh, I hardly think it was intentional however, or at least he thought that they'd transfer well into science fiction.

Imperial forces just typically use aircraft instead of boats, why would the guard worry about getting a boat when they may have a Valkyrie available, why would SM use a boat when they could probably call a Thunderhawk. The Land Raider is at least a sealed environment, in the SW codex there is an account of a great company driving their LRs underwater to attack a Tau base.

That isn't to say there aren't boats, of course there are, I just don't think the IoM is concerned with them on a large scale because they will typically have aircraft and spacecraft that can do the same job, most of the time even better.

I'll read that novel you said about maybe and all points are very good, overall if the Imperium did get boats then well there would be lots of sick wolves.

0.o Are we going to start discussing the merits of nautical air craft carriers and troop transports over air ones? Aircraft carriers allow you to have a mobile location from which to launch planes from, where say the distance from the nearest air base is prohibitive (for instance if the Imperials didn't have any bases on the land). Troop carriers could deploy Imperial troops and vehicles in large numbers along with other equipment in much larger numbers than aircraft could, whilst doing so in a more secure manner (rather than dropping them out of the back of a plane). They're not widely seen in the fiction or the game itself because most of the battles take place on land, outside of the area of influence of the ships. I would guess they'd also not be used in the cases where the space fleet could provide constant assistance, but I would say the fleet would be used for support, not to directly to replace the nautical forces.

What can a boat do that a landing craft couldn't do?

BlaxicanX wrote:
What can a boat do that a landing craft couldn't do?

If you're talking about the bog standard IG dropship: shoot. (*this is based on current fluff, which may at any time past or future be revised without warning by our spiritual liege)

0.o Say there's a load of AA guns, or you need a more stable base from which to launch your attack. Discussing the the pros and cons is a bit of a fools errand really as its simple to just come up with a fictional situation where such an eventuality would require one solution or the other (thus why I loathe the blanket statements that the fluff makes).

A couple reasons. People live on land. And the scope of 40K is interstellar, not inter-littoral, lol.

There are probably lots of boats in PDFs, and the IGuard probably also have boats that get used.

But it's not really relevant to the game.

It's the same reason that 40K didn't have fliers for a long time. It was supposed to be small unit actions between infantry units. Demand from players (and probably near-saturation of the infantry and tank market) created the advent of fliers for 6th Edition 40K.

Look for boats in 8th or 9th.

LOL, 9th Edition were the models have evolved and can move and shoot so when your model dies its dead for good. I want that.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:
What can a boat do that a landing craft couldn't do?

If you're talking about the bog standard IG dropship: shoot. (*this is based on current fluff, which may at any time past or future be revised without warning by our spiritual liege)

That's what the bombers and air superiority fighters are for. Besides, all the IG dropships are bristling with guns.

So, what can a boat do that IG ship can not?

When you have amphibious transports, and hermetically sealed tanks that can run through vacuum, hazardous atmospheres and underwater - and anti-grav, oceans and wet-navies become mostly irrelevant.

The only blue water navy i read about in 40k. Is in Flesh and Iron
It has Atleast a giant multi mile long Aircraft carrier for support aircraft (carrying squadrons of Marauder bombers, lighting fighters and more), a massive Battleship with "Meters thick adamantium hull"
and other ships liek Cruisers and destroyers.

Even Assault boats called Orcas or smaller river craft, often armed and armored like a typical IG war machine.

the enemy the IG were facing also had small watercraft. most were modified civilian craft but they still had plenty of guns onbaord.

Otherwise. aside from the Ork sub. I have no knowledge of a wet navy.