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I've been wondering this for awhile, but given the size and scale of the setting, is there any particular reasoning (behind, of course, the fact 40k is a ground based game) why fleet based actions aren't more prominent?

The primary events that I'm curious about are the 13th Black Crusade and the Siege of Terra, which can be boiled down to "why did they bother landing troops in the first place?" Is there any particular reason why they would deploy troops as opposed to just blasting the world to bits? I mean, Abaddon had a ship literally called the Planet Killer during the 13th Black Crusade... why didn't he just shoot Cadia with it? I understand he wants to overload the pylons or whatever, but it seems to me blowing up the planet is a bit more straightforward than trying to fight on top of one of the most fortified planets in the Imperium.

because if fleet based engagements were primary in 40k GW would have to push BFG more

For Terra, it is a symbolic and psychological act to capture the seat of the Imperium and slay its Emperor. Theoretically, taking Terra, and finishing the Big E would have broken the rest of the wide Empire's morale, and Ultramarines would have been on the defensive, securing their little corner of the galaxy.

As for Cadia? IDK, but I suspect Abs doesn't want those pylons all gone. I mean, the reason he has to go through Cadia is b/c of the stable warp travel those Pylons provide.

Because infrastructure, resources and technology is useless when it's been atomized.

Removing Cadia removes one of the few stable routes out of the Warp.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Because infrastructure, resources and technology is useless when it's been atomized.

Basically this: that and in 40K orbital superiority means a lot less than it would in reality in addition to being able to teleportation and warp technology

Because that would be easy. Think of harry potter, Herminoy has a time machine watch, why not go back in time to kill baby voldimort? Because that would make a boring book!

The Planet Killer blew up the prison world. But because it was activated by an Imperial player they said that the prisons power systems were overloaded.

Warhammer 40k is all about the crazy heroicness of whoever. Most characters have huge egos and would rather personally slay mankind than blast it from afar.

Hospy wrote:
I've been wondering this for awhile, but given the size and scale of the setting, is there any particular reasoning (behind, of course, the fact 40k is a ground based game) why fleet based actions aren't more prominent?

The primary events that I'm curious about are the 13th Black Crusade and the Siege of Terra, which can be boiled down to "why did they bother landing troops in the first place?" Is there any particular reason why they would deploy troops as opposed to just blasting the world to bits? I mean, Abaddon had a ship literally called the Planet Killer during the 13th Black Crusade... why didn't he just shoot Cadia with it? I understand he wants to overload the pylons or whatever, but it seems to me blowing up the planet is a bit more straightforward than trying to fight on top of one of the most fortified planets in the Imperium.

Largely because 40k is a High-Fantasy-in-Space Universe, and because if we applied logic to 40k, it stops working *real* fast.

To the Imperium, who has essentially an infinite population but a fininite amount of worlds, expending 10 million lives to claim a planet and secure its resources/infrastructure is far more valuable then orbital bombardment.

Also much of the time fleet actions just aren't feasible, particularly true against Tyranids where unless resistance is provided on the ground the Hive Fleet will only grow stronger.

Not to mention that in the case of the Imperial Palace it had to of had the best shielding technology in mankind's hands installed to protect it. Also there is the symbolic power of having the head of the enemy leader to claim which would be impossible if you just nuke him and Horus wanted to make sure the Big E was really dead.

People also forget that a lance weapon on a starship is an absolutely terrible weapon for attacking something the size of a planet with.

Sure, it shoots a laser beam that's 20 meters wide at a target thousands and thousands of kilometers away... big whoop.

Twenty meters is not even 100 feet across, and you want this to wipe out a city? Please. You'll be there for a month just trying to take out a city block. For one, the planet is moving away from you, two, it's swinging around its local star, three, it's got an atmosphere that is going to play hell with your laser ballistics and, four, the planet might be shooting back at you.

Depends on if the lance disperses once it strikes a target as dense as... well, a planet.

With multiteraton blasts, orbital bombardment by the big guns will quickly leave you with a rather useless planet. There's a reason why en masse orbital bombardment from heavy ship mounted guns is almost always only used as part of Exterminatus. That magnitude of firepower isn't useful for conquering a planet as it quite rapidly leaves you with nothing useful.

The biggest and most rational reason is because there's stuff and/or people on the ground that aren't economically efficient to destroy. Even evil totalitarian overlords have to bow to the whims of economics. This isn't a comic book.

Blow up Terra and you blow up the Astronomicon. Sure Horus can order all Navigators to turn to daemonomancy but it'll take time to implement, and how much of the Imperium will fall apart in the interim? Oh and as for Orders, well, he just blew up the Imperium's communications hub. Ooopsie. Of course he can send out ships, to every single world of the Imperium, its not like he just blew up the primary repository of census records etc.

Usually, you want to capture a planet, not destroy it. Also, if the Chaos Gods themselves couldn't destroy the Dark Angles fortress monastery, then even with the whole power of Horus's fleet, they couldn't even breech the shields before reinforcements arrived.

Annihilate a planet and show you just don't care? Or capture it and keep it as a symbol of your power? Choices, choices...

 Psienesis wrote:
People also forget that a lance weapon on a starship is an absolutely terrible weapon for attacking something the size of a planet with.

Sure, it shoots a laser beam that's 20 meters wide at a target thousands and thousands of kilometers away... big whoop.

Twenty meters is not even 100 feet across, and you want this to wipe out a city? Please. You'll be there for a month just trying to take out a city block. For one, the planet is moving away from you, two, it's swinging around its local star, three, it's got an atmosphere that is going to play hell with your laser ballistics and, four, the planet might be shooting back at you.

QFT if you apply math The radius of the earth is about 6.4 thousand Km, making the area of the planet 510 million KM^2. London (a relativley "normal" city) is 1200 KM^2. Therefore a hundred ships of this size would have to cover an area 42000 times the size there own diameter, so even if you had a fleet of city sized spaceships it's unlikely you're going to have the firepower to glass a planet.

Also if you assume your looking at "habitable" planets, most will be bigger than earth, as smaller planets have to be moving at immense velocities or orbit at much wider vectors to sustain orbit with their star.
So in this instance earth is a reasonably easy planet to "nuke".

In context to 40k people still overestimate an armies capability to damage the univers as a whole, even with superhuman soldies and massive psychic gods, we are still dwarfed.

Ferros wrote:
Removing Cadia removes one of the few stable routes out of the Warp.

That is true but Abaddons Crimson Path is supposed to encompass Cadia by increasing the size of the Eye and do the same thing as he goes along.

If he is trying to increase the expanse of the Eye then he shouldn't need a stable path out of it as eventually he wants the whole galaxy to be covered.

As many others said, it was for resources(in the case of Abaddon) and the fact of having your enemy's(Emperor's) head(in the case of Horus)

Because orbital bombardment in 40k is so powerful it can level continents.

Not exactly desirable when you are trying to capture a planet.

Bombardments do occur but as a prelude to invasion meant to soften the defenders up.

Plus, a ship has to maintain a steady position to bombard a planet. If there are still surface to space defenses that are operational, or the space is still contested, they leave themselves vulnerable while bombarding the surface.


And as was mentioned, you don't glass a planet with lances. You would have to either use an ungodly amount of torpedoes, Nova Cannon, or Virus Bombs to actually destroy the planet.

And Horus actually DID glass Terra. There were still oceans at the time of the battle. The orbital bombardments blew them away. Now they are basically gone, the only thing that remains is whatever is buried beneath the world city.

Thanks for the replies. While some of the options don't necessarily make much sense to me, I guess it's plausible enough to be be believable.

This does have me wondering about Cadia though, and it being the only stable path out of the Eye of Terror. If Abaddon doesn't want to destroy it because it's the only way out, then... why doesn't the Imperium blow it up and lock up all the CSM into the Eye of Terror?

It seems to me that the Inquisition has exterminatus'd planets for far less.

Because the Pylons are actually containing the EoT.

Blow them up and the EoT would expand.

Then the traitors could emerge from anywhere at any time. Instead of knowing where they will emerge.


Of course the traitors won't have it any easier, but overall its favorable to chaos.

I'm probably missing something here then, but if that were the case, then why doesn't Abaddon blow it up? Break the containment the pylons provide and expand the Eye of Terror, isn't that the point of the 13th Black Crusade?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because the Pylons are actually containing the EoT.

Blow them up and the EoT would expand.

Then the traitors could emerge from anywhere at any time. Instead of knowing where they will emerge.


Of course the traitors won't have it any easier, but overall its favorable to chaos.

Abaddon wants the cadian gate intact, or he did until this crimson path rubbish was introduced.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because the Pylons are actually containing the EoT.

Blow them up and the EoT would expand.

Then the traitors could emerge from anywhere at any time. Instead of knowing where they will emerge.

Of course the traitors won't have it any easier, but overall its favorable to chaos.

There is a flaw in your logic: The reason the Imperium knows chaos will emerge from the gate is because chaos needs to use the gate to get in and out with any level of reliability, the rest of the Eye of Terror's borders being too turbulent. Increasing the size of the Eye won't change that. Blowing up Cadia would give them a bigger playground in the Eye, but drastically reduce their ability to break out of it. It'd be a case of winning the battle but losing the war. Destroying the Cadian Gate is a "peace-time" goal, something to be done only after the Imperial sectors beyond are firmly in chaos hands.

I say we take off and nuke the entire galaxy from orbit.
It's the only way to be sure.

They often use orbital bombardments to shatter defenses or turn armies to dust. But if a position or planet is desirable (whether it be for it's location, it's resource, spiritual significance) the most they might do is a little preliminary bombardment to soften them up before sending the troops in (which is the parts of warfare we are exposed to the most). Sometimes if a target is too valuable they might not soften them up at all.

But if there's nothing of significant value, and they manage to secure the space-side of the battle, I don't see why they wouldn't be blasting the enemy to dust, it's just not in books because it's less interesting. I know in one of the Gaunt's Ghosts books they were fighting a long time over a massive temple-like structure because they believed it had spiritual importance, then realized it didn't and just pulled the troops out to blast it from space.

GW has constructed a universe where the military paradigm is that space power is NOT the supreme be all and end all of the military forces.

In the 40K universe paradigm, space power is one arm, an important one, but not the only one that matters. In particular, with reference to the BFG rulebook, the firepower of ground defense installations actually is superior to a bombarding ship, and is likely far more affordable in terms of cost. The average planetary defense laser silo packs almost as much firepower as the broadside of a Gothic cruiser, with greater range than the Gothic. Likewise, the average planetary defense missile silo has the launch capacity of a full cruiser, and the average planetary defense air base has enough short range aerospace fighters and bombers to match a Dictator cruiser.

From the old GW Armageddon 3 website archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20040805101210/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/Campaign/BFG/BFGmap.html

we can see the defenses of each hive on Armageddon comprised at least 4 air bases, 8 missile silos, and 8 laser silos. That kind of firepower would be enough to shred your average navy frigate, and even your average cruiser, if they tried to bombard the hive. Even if one takes Armageddon to be a more heavily defended than usual hive world, it still gives a rough gauge of the defenses a typical hive or fortress might have, which still is likely to overpower most spaceships.

Then we have also multiple examples extant in the universe of facilities and cities shielded by void shields or other more esoteric shields, so orbital bombardment isn't some instant "I win" card.