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Fleet stuff is always down played in 40k. As far as I am concerned, naval engagements are far more important to any campaign than most ground battles. BUT, as stated a few times already, if they did that, GW would have to push more BFG(which makes less money).

Well, there's several possible explanations:


1) Orbital bombardment does happen all the time, but there's still lots of battle where it is either overkill or endangering some objective or other. This minor subset of battles are what we fight when we play a game of 40K.
2) Orbital defenses, or an equally matched enemy fleet keep the orbiting enemy fleet from vaporizing everyone, but a small taskforce might just be able to break through and destroy those defenses...
3) It's 40K. screw logic.

 TheCrazyCryptek wrote:
Fleet stuff is always down played in 40k. As far as I am concerned, naval engagements are far more important to any campaign than most ground battles. BUT, as stated a few times already, if they did that, GW would have to push more BFG(which makes less money).

I wouldn't say its downplayed. Its just that those engagements that are solved by overwhelming naval force don't make interesting stories.

Its why there aren't stories about a guy who had a nice family and was a successful businessman for 67 years before finally passing away peacefully in his sleep.


Especially on something on the scale of the Imperium. An event would have to be pretty dang big to attract any attention. An entire species of aliens could be wiped out and only commemorated with a single line of data(M36.465: Imperial Force 871 eliminated hostile alien race on planet GX113. 3 regiments tasked with colonization.)

Grey Templar wrote: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.

Iracundus wrote: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.

These and like a lot of people have already pointed out.

It's not just as simple as rolling up to a planet and bombing the bejesus out of it from orbit. There is whole orbital defense arrays, fleets of ships, potection of resources. Armageddon, Cadia, Terra, all have incredible rescorce value and more than enough defenses to protect against full orbital bombardment

 Psienesis wrote:
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.

Yeah, firing lasers into an atmosphere is going to reduce their effectiveness fairly considerably. On the other hand, if your laser reaches the target in sufficient strength to vapourize part of it, that's going to release a tremendous amount of energy in a destructive manner, and that same atmosphere will very likely propagate a firestorm as a result. You could probably ruin a city with a lance volley fairly easily.

Also, given how comparatively small and fast the starships lances are designed to target are, I doubt the ship's cogitators would have much trouble hitting a big fat target like a city on a relatively slow moving planet. You're probably a lot closer to that planet that you are to the average enemy ship, too.

All that said, lances would be a sub-par weapon for conducting orbital bombardments anyway, what with most warships lugging around batteries of mcro-cannons.

e; the situation I asked "why the hell didn't they use orbital bombardment" about most was the Imperial intervention on Aexe in Straight Silver. We're never told what the Imperial fleet actually consists of, but there had to be armed ships of some description, and huge artillery pieces seemed to be the pinnacle of Shadik technology so I very much doubt the Republic had any kind of orbital defences. Of course, it's a story about trench warfare and that would have kinda ruined it, but still.

Indeed.

While the beam itself may only be 20 meters across, that amount of material getting vaporized will have enough energy to cause heavy damage to a much larger area. The rapid conversion of solids into gases alone will be very destructive. gunpowder operates on the same principle, the instantaneous conversion of a solid into a gas causes rapid expansion.


Just 20 or so shots could kill the majority of LA's population directly. Not to mention any secondary effects from fire or collapsing buildings.

And the denser the target the greater damage it will cause.

Lance weapons don't actually vaporize anything, though. They tend to melt through the armor and hull-plating of enemy starships. They don't disintegrate it.

Also, if you're lancing, say, a Hive? It's built to kinda withstand that. The Imperium is not the only space-born threat to bear lance weapons, and Hive Worlds are expected to defend themselves to an extent.

The intense heat will vaporize the matter. Turning something into a gas is the very definition of vaporizing it.


Hives have void shields to protect themselves. the actual physical material won't withstand nearly enough to be a decent defense.

Orbital Bombardment exists in the fluff and is used for great effect. In the Battle for Terra, for example Horus bombarded the planet so long and hard that the crust cracked open in places.

Look at the boardgame Horus Heresy. Those red lines are representing actual lava-spewing cracks in the Earth's crust around the Imperial Palace:

In 40k, planets aren't helpless rocks waiting to be shot at. They shoot back.

In Calth, the titular planet has enough firepower to force the sun to go nova.

Wondering why there are 40k armies when there are 40k navies is about as silly as wondering why there are still real-world armies in a world of cruise missiles and ICBMs. There are tons of reasons you still would want to send boots in, rather than just missiles.

You may be concerned about collateral damage (the imperium would lose huge if it were forced to exterminatus a forgeworld, for example), you may need to stamp out endless insurgencies or pockets of xenos which you can't do with point and click weapons alone (or the US would LONG ago have wiped out the taliban in afghanistan). It's also a matter of logistics. The US spent millions of dollars on boats, and planes, bombs and shells, but it killed roughly zero japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima. It took infantry to actually win that battle.

Also, there's the matter of cost. A techno-slave in a factorum can probably produce a thousand lasguns a day, but it would take a thousand techpriests a hundred years to create a single guided missile. Given that the imperium has an inexhaustable supply of manpower, that makes the cheapest way to fight a war to give a bunch of dudes some guns and point them in the right direction.

Usually you want troops on the ground to either perform a surgical strike, or to mop up an area. Especially when collateral damage is an issue.

Lances, Bombardment/Macro cannon, and salvos of hundred-meter-long torpedo are definitely neither of those.

It's also very likely that many worlds of the Imperium have atmospheres that make targeting from orbit difficult, if not impossible.

 Ailaros wrote:
Also, there's the matter of cost. A techno-slave in a factorum can probably produce a thousand lasguns a day, but it would take a thousand techpriests a hundred years to create a single guided missile. Given that the imperium has an inexhaustable supply of manpower, that makes the cheapest way to fight a war to give a bunch of dudes some guns and point them in the right direction.

There's plenty of rocks floating around in space though, and all they really need is a nudge in the right direction; from there on it's all downhill.

Depending on the size of the rock thrown, you can wipe out a civilization, a country, a city, or "merely" army, or even just a single tank.
So for the purposes of 40K, it boils down to: "no one throws rocks because everyone's too stupid because GRIMDARK or everyone throws rocks all the time, except where special circumstances prevent it (the real estate is too valuable, there's something else down there that needs to be extracted first, or the target can shoot the rocks down before they get there), and those are the cases represented in games of 40K.

(Sits back and waits for someone to post ye olde "Rocks aren't free, citizen".)

I think they did use rocks as improvised missiles at one point. I think the orks or the nids did it. The IoM are probably too busy mining the rocks for minerals to be using it as a weapon

There may not be properly sized asteroids available and the effort to locate them would be too great. You might as well have solid slug weaponry that does the same thing.

A rock also won't have as precise a flight path as a uniform slug.

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

QFT

Screw orbital bombardment, drive me closer so I can hit it with my sword!

 Dakkamite wrote:

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

QFT

Screw orbital bombardment, drive me closer so I can hit it with my sword!

I shall surf towards them on my razorback and punch them!

I swear, if I ever go SM (unlikely. Too many SM players out there), I will totally put a dude with a powerfist on a razorback. He will have a multilaser and a suit of terminator armor as well.

Will he be performing backflips?

Of course. And any rock he throws will instantly wreck Eldar vehicles.

Bran Dawri wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
Also, there's the matter of cost. A techno-slave in a factorum can probably produce a thousand lasguns a day, but it would take a thousand techpriests a hundred years to create a single guided missile. Given that the imperium has an inexhaustable supply of manpower, that makes the cheapest way to fight a war to give a bunch of dudes some guns and point them in the right direction.

There's plenty of rocks floating around in space though, and all they really need is a nudge in the right direction; from there on it's all downhill.

Depending on the size of the rock thrown, you can wipe out a civilization, a country, a city, or "merely" army, or even just a single tank.
So for the purposes of 40K, it boils down to: "no one throws rocks because everyone's too stupid because GRIMDARK or everyone throws rocks all the time, except where special circumstances prevent it (the real estate is too valuable, there's something else down there that needs to be extracted first, or the target can shoot the rocks down before they get there), and those are the cases represented in games of 40K.

(Sits back and waits for someone to post ye olde "Rocks aren't free, citizen".)

... provides it:

Rocks are NOT ‘free’, citizen.

Firstly, you must manoeuvre the Emperor’s naval vessel within the asteroid belt, almost assuredly sustaining damage to the Emperor’s ship’s paint from micrometeoroids, while expending the Emperor’s fuel.

Then the Tech Priests must inspect the rock in question to ascertain its worthiness to do the Emperor’s bidding. Should it pass muster, the Emperor’s Servitors must use the Emperor’s auto-scrapers and melta-cutters to prepare the potential ordinance for movement. Finally, the Tech Priests finished, the Emperor’s officers may begin manoeuvring the Emperor’s warship to abut the asteroid at the prepared face (expending yet more of the Emperor’s fuel), and then begin boosting the stone towards the offensive planet.

After a few days of expending a prodigious amount of the Emperor’s fuel to accelerate the asteroid into an orbit more fitting to the Emperor’s desires, the Emperor’s ship may then return to the planet via superluminous warp travel and await the arrival of the stone, still many weeks (or months) away.

After twiddling away the Emperor’s time and eating the Emperor’s food in the wasteful pursuit of making sure that the Emperor’s enemies do not launch a deflection mission, they may finally watch the ordinance impact the planet (assuming that the Emperor’s ship does not need to attempt any last-minute course correction upon the rock, using yet more of the Emperor’s fuel).


Given a typical (class Bravo-CVII) system, we have the following:

Two months, O&M, Titan class warship: 4.2 Million Imperials

Two months, rations, crew of same: 0.2 MI

Two months, Tech Priest pastor: 1.7 MI

Two months, Servitor parish: 0.3 MI

Paint, Titan class warship: 2.5 MI

Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.9 MI

Total: 9.8 MI


Contrasted with the following:

5 warheads, magna-melta: 2.5 MI

One day, O&M, Titan class warship: 0.3 MI

One day, rations, crew of same: 0.0 MI

Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.1 MI

Total: 2.9 MI


Given the same result with under one third of the cost, the Emperor will have saved a massive amount of His most sacred money and almost a full month of time, during which His warship may be bombarding an entirely different planet.

The Emperor, through this – His Office of Imperial Outlays – hereby orders you to attend one (1) week of therapeutic accountancy training/penance. Please report to Areicon IV, Imperial City, Administratum Building CXXI, Room 1456, where you are to sit in the BLUE chair.


For the Emperor,

Bursarius Tenathis,

Purser Level XI,

Imperial Office of Outlays.