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Quick questions how many adeptus astartes can a strike cruiser and a battle barge carry. ?

 Frecklesonfire wrote:
Quick questions how many adeptus astartes can a strike cruiser and a battle barge carry. ?

adeptus astartes are normally built about the same as Imperial guard, they require maintances by servitors, adeptus mechanicus, and general laborers known as serfs. A typical ship easily holds 10,000 if it's a frigate and the sizes you are mentioning only raise from there.

So you are saying a strike cruiser can hold an entire chapter?

IIRC, a Strike Cruiser can carry one company and a Battle Barge can carry three.

 Frecklesonfire wrote:
So you are saying a strike cruiser can hold an entire chapter?

Strike cruisers are quite big, but usually, it holds around 200, max around 400.
Battle Barges can hold an entire chapter
Not strike cruisers.

Serfs and servicemen, make up the big portion of the ship.

okay thanks guys i tried looking it up on Lex and Wiki im currently creating / writtin a w40k book and i needed that info thanks.

The Strike Cruiser can likely carry a few Astartes. The logistical nightmare about the Astartes is akin to having an eating-contest. I mean a single Astartes likely eats as much as Obelix, so an entire Grox might be on the menu during dinner per Space Marine, and the more deranged chapters eats their servants to keep their men fighting fit in times of need. So in my view its the pens for the Grox and other things that they eat that takes place, and that is the true limit to how many Astartes you can house on one Strike Cruiser especially on longer missions. Plus the ammo is hell, nevermind the things necessary just to maintain the weapons and armour.

 Frecklesonfire wrote:
okay thanks guys i tried looking it up on Lex and Wiki im currently creating / writtin a w40k book and i needed that info thanks.

read up about it in space marine books. Astral Knights piled into a battle barge. There were 756 of them that gotten into it.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
The Strike Cruiser can likely carry a few Astartes. The logistical nightmare about the Astartes is akin to having an eating-contest. I mean a single Astartes likely eats as much as Obelix, so an entire Grox might be on the menu during dinner per Space Marine, and the more deranged chapters eats their servants to keep their men fighting fit in times of need. So in my view its the pens for the Grox and other things that they eat that takes place, and that is the true limit to how many Astartes you can house on one Strike Cruiser especially on longer missions. Plus the ammo is hell, nevermind the things necessary just to maintain the weapons and armour.

Marines can go for long periods without eating much. Even when they do eat there is a large range of things they can consume. They aren't limited to what we would be able to eat.

 purplefood wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
The Strike Cruiser can likely carry a few Astartes. The logistical nightmare about the Astartes is akin to having an eating-contest. I mean a single Astartes likely eats as much as Obelix, so an entire Grox might be on the menu during dinner per Space Marine, and the more deranged chapters eats their servants to keep their men fighting fit in times of need. So in my view its the pens for the Grox and other things that they eat that takes place, and that is the true limit to how many Astartes you can house on one Strike Cruiser especially on longer missions. Plus the ammo is hell, nevermind the things necessary just to maintain the weapons and armour.

Marines can go for long periods without eating much. Even when they do eat there is a large range of things they can consume. They aren't limited to what we would be able to eat.

To maintain full fighting fitness, they will consume vast quantities of food, and if you had the choice between eating until you was full or starving yourself, wouldn't you eat until you was full? (I'm assuming you are not suffering from any disorder regarding food, if you are, I profoundly apologize). Basically a normal dinner for a Space Marine is a full Grox. They can of course starve for large periods, but that's not normal, you must agree to that point. Of course my lone source for that interpretation is what's written about dinner-time at a Space Marine chapter where it is described as a feast.

Given the size of a Strike Cruiser, it should be able to carry an entire chapter easily. Modern U.S. Navy Warships can easily fit over 1,000 soldiers, and while it's true Astartes are bigger and bulkier the size difference between a human marine and an Astartes is much smaller then the size difference between. a US Navy Warship and a Strike Cruiser

That being said, a Strike Cruiser is stated to be able to carry an entire Company of Marines. This is the result of:

A.) GW not understanding size (a common thing)
B.) Marines are high maintainence it seems. They each get their own room and service staff. They require large prayer areas and commons. They need a lot of altars and gak. They generally demand a lot of room so to accomodate them on warships is complicated.

There is a difference between how many it can carry and how many it can be accomodate.

Iv heard the same thing with regards to Strike Cruisers carrying a company and Battlebarges carryign 3 companies. I think it might be Gothic quote.

Sure a chapter could pile into a Battle Barge or even a strike cruise... but that doesnt mean it can accomodate them, weapons rooms, dormitories, training facilities, kitchens, serfs, armamaments, facility to deploy them via drop pod or Thunderhawk.. All facilities would be stretched or unable to accomodate the numbers. But im sure they could all fit... its just the might be bedding down in a cargo bay.

 Coolyo294 wrote:
IIRC, a Strike Cruiser can carry one company and a Battle Barge can carry three.

This is correct, as far as I'm aware.

 Eetion wrote:
There is a difference between how many it can carry and how many it can be accomodate.

Iv heard the same thing with regards to Strike Cruisers carrying a company and Battlebarges carryign 3 companies. I think it might be Gothic quote.

Sure a chapter could pile into a Battle Barge or even a strike cruise... but that doesnt mean it can accomodate them, weapons rooms, dormitories, training facilities, kitchens, serfs, armamaments, facility to deploy them via drop pod or Thunderhawk.. All facilities would be stretched or unable to accomodate the numbers. But im sure they could all fit... its just the might be bedding down in a cargo bay.

And then there's this to consider. Yes, going on ship volume, probably a single Strike Cruiser and easily a Battle Barge could hold several chapters - in just Marines. However, the whole point of the single/three Company number is that they are shipped around with all their armoury, logistical and support elements that help them deploy and function properly. Whatever amount of space a Company of Marines take up, it's many times that space in keeping them supplied and sufficiently battle-ready, etc.

Just look at a carrier. 100 fighters with pilots. 6000 guys. Logistics is the key. But that transforms any ship the Imperials have into huge storage-areas, which actually explains a few things like that the ships need to contain firing-ranges for the crew to maintain their skill with guns, freezers and other storage foor food and muntions and so on.

My personal take on this is, Strike cruisers and battlebarges were designed for a time when far more marines were transported aboard these ships, perhaps all the way back to the horus heresy.

using a almost 2 km craft that is likely 200-300 m tall as well to transport 100 marines 10 rhinos 3-5 land raiders , and a dozen or so various other vehicles, along with at most maybe a dozen T-hawks is like housing a modern company of soldiers in the empire state building

These ships would have huge interior spaces, which no doubt now are made to look all gothic and grimdark with gargoyles and massive wasted spaces, since it is stated in numerous sources that Astartes ships require much lower crew numbers , due to automation and such.

The 1 company to a strike cruiser and 3 to a battlebarge are likely more of a now doctrine thing to prevent the loss of a entire chapter to a single ship going boom!

Its just another element of the 40k setting..huge dark cavernous ships lit by candles ..flying through warp space, delivering a small force of superhumans into hellish warzones...just go with it.

In theory even a tiny, barely warpcapable corvette could easily transport an entire chapter, even if we include tanks and weapons.
In practice BFG ( if my memory serves me right ) states that strike cruisers are used to deploy a company while battlebarges are used to deploy up to three companies.
Perhaps this is done to ensure that a single lost ship, which is already difficult to replace, will not mean that half ( or even more ) of the chapter is gone as well.
Perhaps Papa Smurf simply calculated that 100 marines are the perfect match for the continent shattering firepower of a strikecruiser, we will never know.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
To maintain full fighting fitness, they will consume vast quantities of food, and if you had the choice between eating until you was full or starving yourself, wouldn't you eat until you was full? (I'm assuming you are not suffering from any disorder regarding food, if you are, I profoundly apologize). Basically a normal dinner for a Space Marine is a full Grox. They can of course starve for large periods, but that's not normal, you must agree to that point. Of course my lone source for that interpretation is what's written about dinner-time at a Space Marine chapter where it is described as a feast.

Or they can eat some kind of extremely dense nutrient rich paste, laced with all kinds of handwavium chemistry, that means they barely ever need to eat actual food.

 KingDeath wrote:
In theory even a tiny, barely warpcapable corvette could easily transport an entire chapter, even if we include tanks and weapons.
In practice BFG ( if my memory serves me right ) states that strike cruisers are used to deploy a company while battlebarges are used to deploy up to three companies.
Perhaps this is done to ensure that a single lost ship, which is already difficult to replace, will not mean that half ( or even more ) of the chapter is gone as well.
Perhaps Papa Smurf simply calculated that 100 marines are the perfect match for the continent shattering firepower of a strikecruiser, we will never know.

I always thought that the troop limit is so that you can get more strike forces out and about. For example, in Dawn of War II, the Strike Cruiser Armageddon only held 4 sqauds (hell, more like one tac squad overall - those squads are tiny.) A few staff, such as the Apothecary, Librarian, Captain and Dreadnought. Ravens obviously had a lot of stuff.

Space Marine ships date back from the Great Crusade, and Legions... wow, basically, there were around +2 million space marines at the start of the Horus Heresy. Battle Barges would have to transport a load of cr*p.

And, some space marine chapters have more assets than others. The Black Templars have lots of space marines, in which case the Battle Barges are perfect for them. The Salamanders actually have 220 THUNDERHAWK GUNSHIPS. Yet they only have 720 active-duty space marines, and 60 scouts. Those Thunderhawk gunships can fully carry 6600 Power-Armoured Space Marines. They can carry 9.1 times the number of the Salamanders. Their fleet can carry 1600 Space Marines (and a bit more, if you count the Rapid Strike cruisers.) Battle Barges have to accomodate every type of chapter. Even the awesome ones.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
To maintain full fighting fitness, they will consume vast quantities of food, and if you had the choice between eating until you was full or starving yourself, wouldn't you eat until you was full? (I'm assuming you are not suffering from any disorder regarding food, if you are, I profoundly apologize). Basically a normal dinner for a Space Marine is a full Grox. They can of course starve for large periods, but that's not normal, you must agree to that point. Of course my lone source for that interpretation is what's written about dinner-time at a Space Marine chapter where it is described as a feast.

Or they can eat some kind of extremely dense nutrient rich paste, laced with all kinds of handwavium chemistry, that means they barely ever need to eat actual food.

But they do eat food, and nothing can replace real food, and the paste-thingy I was under impression was a combat-solution for feeding them inside their powered armours when on combat-duty. Plus their training often produce food serving as a mixture of hunting and military exercises.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Frecklesonfire wrote:
okay thanks guys i tried looking it up on Lex and Wiki im currently creating / writtin a w40k book and i needed that info thanks.

read up about it in space marine books. Astral Knights piled into a battle barge. There were 756 of them that gotten into it.

There is difference however between transporting troops to warzones with a full complement of serfs, servitors, food, open training areas and armouries and pavking a ship to hold as many space marines as possible in a suicide mission. A battle barge is designed to HOUSE three companies but it can HOLD more.

It is the same as saying a people carrier can transport 8 people., but if you take out all the seats and make everyone lay on top of each other it can carry a hell of a lot more.

Yes them imperial ships are big. But we don't have clues how much of that volume is thought to be needed for machines and fuel, do we? Even considering this is an entirely fictional technology it might be quite a lot. Plus the empire hates a.i., so the high automatisation level of astartes ships consists of wired-in servitors and machine spirits (a.k.a. brain-tube) wich at least need some degree of life support system, or even cog-wheel apparati like the mechanical calculators of Leibnitz and co... no compact solution integrated circuits, really. I imagine the interior space of those flying cathedrals one or more quite small gothic cloister-like areas with halls, quarters, chapels, weapon chambers and the like, and then you take one false door or elevator booth and you stumble into a giant labyrinth of grotesque machinery crossover between steampunk and the "Nostromo" filled with rattling, puffing, hissing, stomping, clanging sounds of a 19th century ironworks completed by the moaning, wailing and wordless pledging of those lobotomized cyborgs wired in on the most strange places
I have the image of a great airlock door, and above the finely crafted gothic arch of the framework there is lashed into a small niche a deafened and blinded, legless poor soul with some feeding pipes leading into his mouth and - other pipes leading out elsewhere, his left hand is lashed onto the lever that triggers the air valves of the pressure chamber, the right hand is riveted to the turning wheel that controls the airlock doors. There is a rope dangling from his nose ring - pull here.
You need a lot of space for this kind of "technology".

 Beaviz81 wrote:
nothing can replace real food

And nothing can ossify bones to steel-like density, or make humans spit acid, or do anything else the Marines can do. This is the 41st Millennium, and I'm quite sure they can replace real food completely. While Marines might also eat real food, I'm certain it's not a necessity.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
nothing can replace real food

And nothing can ossify bones to steel-like density, or make humans spit acid, or do anything else the Marines can do. This is the 41st Millennium, and I'm quite sure they can replace real food completely. While Marines might also eat real food, I'm certain it's not a necessity.

Of course, but even te most humble of them is a glutton that eat much. And as far as I know, food doesn't cause people to do that, but surgery on the other hand....

As for this discussion, I have accused the Space Marines of eating much food, not raping civilians or murdering for fun. I can't really see the hazzle about a Grey Knight eating his own weight in food per day. It's noted that they eat large amounts of food in fluff. What is the offense? How is this offensive? I really want to know that.

No one said it was offensive...
They are noted as eating nutrient paste whilst on campaign.
This replaces food since people tend to eat food for the nutrients.
I think it was calculated during WWII what the minimum a working human needed to eat to stay reasonably healthy. (Mainly because Britain was under rationing for a long time but it also helped during the Berlin airlift if anyone wanted to know why)

I mentioned that purplefood earlier. The paste is a combat-thingy, not a daily thingy since the paste can't reproduce the taste to make them tick in the end. As for rationing humans, that trend started during WWI in Germany. You Brits got a really chilling tale there recorded in the 1960's I believe, just search it up on Youtube and add BBC. Even so the ultimate warriors of the Imperium eats their hearts out daily (unless on combat missions) to remain fighting fit.

The architecture that is used to build the majority of the Imperium ships was designed in a time when entire legions numbering in the hundreds of thousands of Astartes needed to be ferried around. That's why so many Imperium ships number in the multiple kilometer lengths. As these ships are still being used, even though the Legions are no longer around, Id' wager that you could probably fit an entire chapter into a single battle-barge or some such.

I think a very large factor in this, as mentioned, is that these are BATTLE ships. The vast majority of their storage is reserved for space combat equipement.

In addition, as people said, force concentration experiments during the Great Crusade have probably given them optimal space firepower-to-ground troops ratios, vs the risk of those ships getting destroyed.

Clearly it's not really an issue of actual space, and in emergency situations, yes, entire chapters could fit in a cruiser... but that's just asking for that cruiser to be blown to bits, and they wont have all their training/vehicle and logistical support necessary for protracted journeys.

I'm not certain that you'd be able to cram an entire Chapter into a Strike Cruiser unless you kept them in standing space the entire time and were prepared to run out of food relatively quickly; I'd guess maximum reasonable caps of 100-200 Marines for Strike Cruisers and 500-800 for Battle Barges make sense.

BlaxicanX wrote:
The architecture that is used to build the majority of the Imperium ships was designed in a time when entire legions numbering in the hundreds of thousands of Astartes needed to be ferried around. That's why so many Imperium ships number in the multiple kilometer lengths. As these ships are still being used, even though the Legions are no longer around, Id' wager that you could probably fit an entire chapter into a single battle-barge or some such.

But back then, battle barges were some of the smallest ships the legions had at their disposal. All of their largest ships were given over to the Imperial Navy after the heresy when the Imperial Army was broken up. That's why I feel three companies is the max they could hold at battle readiness, but for transport only, you could probably squeeze up to 500 if you absolutely had to.

Absolutely. Back then they didn't all hang around in the same vessel.
In fact during 'The First heretic' the Serrated Suns Chapter which was about 1000 strong was spread across 3 vessels Battle Barges I believe but I can't remember.

True monsters of ships such as the Vengeful spirit could carry way more. But typically the Marines were spread far and wide across the galaxy attached to army groups.