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So even though every race in the setting (or all the major ones at least) have spacefaring ships, do they also have ships to travel on water too?

Orks are known to use subs as mobile fortresses and I assume the Imperium would do the same. Otherwise, I don't think you'd really find Tau wet navy ships. It seems more like the realm of the PDF.

If you have access to craft that can orbit and deploy, as well as attack from orbit, a seagoing craft is pretty much a liability.

Well... there are ocean worlds in the 40k universe that are also agri-worlds, it's therefore within the realm of reason that there are fisheries and fishing boats (especially on planets where over 50% of surface area is ocean.)

In Codex: Space Wolves, it is said that the feral natives of Fenris would sail during "the time of fire and water", hoping to escape the jaws and maws of the behemoth monstrosities from the deep ocean. So... seafaring ships at least exist on death worlds, and probably on some feral, feudal, agri, and some civilised worlds.

I think curran12 got some valid point however: in a universe filled with freaking laser beams, gene-mod face Om-Nom-Nom-Nomers, space fairies, space orcs, and lots, lots of space ships, no writers would care to write about actual ships (that sails, on water, without levitating).

edit:

As for the other species/factions, Exodites, of all Eldars are most likely to utilize seafaring vessels; some CE might, if their Craftworld has a sufficiently large deposit of water, and DE can just sail with pretty much all their ships, if they disable the anti-grav device and drop em in water, right?

And orks, as stated above, used submarines during the Third War for Armageddon; although it's stated that it saw its first action during it, and it's likely first invented around that time.

Necrons have no need for it, as they have better substitutes for a sea vessel. And since they don't eat, it's not like they need a fishing boat.

Taus can use ships for civilian/industrial transport like we are using them right now. Considering they industrialized worlds are probably less barren than that of the Imperium's (since they've got only about two millennium to mess with their environments, and are reputably more "green").

Nids don't sail, they drink all da water.

There is little point for naval ships, at least at the level of the Imperial Guard.

PDF would probably have ships if the planet had large oceans, and ships would be used to transport materials on the planet itself. Otherwise, aircraft, especially the aircraft the Imperium has, would be more practical.

But the Imperial Guard/Navy wouldn't bother with ships. They'd simply use Space vessels or aircraft instead since they'd already use them to get to the planet.

Also aren't chimeras amphibious?

the IG book "Flesh and Iron" has many, many water borne craft included in it.

I cannot remember if they belong to the planets military forces or what but their scale, firepower, crew compliment etc, are all of course a thousand times more then what a normal ship of today would have.

A battleship with meters (plural) thick hull of solid adamantium armed with a lot of guns, missiles and them some.

A Carrier that is Miles long and wide, able to hold a Space borne carriers worth of Marauders, Lightning and thunderbolt fighters, Valkaries, and everything in between.

There is plenty of mention of smaller attack craft (of course heavily armed. just like the imperium likes it). They are amed almost like they are standardized, named "Orca" attack craft (not to be confused with the tau Orca.)


Water borne navies exist in 40k. But they are not mentioned much. Not every planet has the strategic or tactical need of such craft. If I remember right, the ships were used as staging bases against a set of islands that contained massive cannons that could strike at extreame distances, damaging space craft or cleaving a water borne ship in half with 1 shell. They couldn't be removed by aircraft (or space strike) due to them being mounted on tracks to retrack into a massive mountain and bunker complex.

Im sure there is also another reason they didn't just zap the bunker complex from orbit. But I cannot remember it.

 Engine of War wrote:
Im sure there is also another reason they didn't just zap the bunker complex from orbit. But I cannot remember it.

It's usually pretty hard to capture a site intact if you first pound it with orbital attacks. And as you said, if they have enough anti-air and anti-orbital defenses there to make attack from above too costly then it's surely a site the attacker wants to have intact for their own defense of the world.

 lcmiracle wrote:

And orks, as stated above, used submarines during the Third War for Armageddon; although it's stated that it saw its first action during it, and it's likely first invented around that time.

Yep, and as they besieged & took over the docks at Hive Helsreach, it's fair to assume there would have been some Imperial/PDF sea-going vessels there too, albeit in numbers too small to deal with the scale of the Waaagh.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Orks are known to use subs as mobile fortresses and I assume the Imperium would do the same. Otherwise, I don't think you'd really find Tau wet navy ships. It seems more like the realm of the PDF.

Anti-grav is great and all, but ships are really efficient means of carrying large or heavy loads. No energy needed to maintain lift. I would imagine that any of the races that still have planetside heavy industry on worlds with water (or other equivalent liquids) would also have shipping of some kind.

WAAAGH!

 Dancingwolf91 wrote:

WAAAGH!

Zoggin bootiful

Only naval vessels I have ever heard of were those old Ork subs. In actuality, no other civilization probably wants them, considering the large amount of mutant giant squids that seem to want to kill everything.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Only naval vessels I have ever heard of were those old Ork subs. In actuality, no other civilization probably wants them, considering the large amount of mutant giant squids that seem to want to kill everything.

One of the Cain books has a big dredger in it and a couple of other references to other surface shipping. Fire Caste has a range of boats and ships in it. Is it the Iron Snakes anthology that has them in little boats hunting sea serpents, or is that one of the Space Wolf ones? There are naval vessels in one of the Soul Drinkers books as well I think. They are not common references, because the normal interactions between the reaces are the higher tech space forces, but it doesn't mean that boats have gone out of style completely.

 Tennants Lager wrote:

 Dancingwolf91 wrote:

WAAAGH!

Zoggin bootiful

Now dat's a lotta Dakka!

 Tennants Lager wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:

And orks, as stated above, used submarines during the Third War for Armageddon; although it's stated that it saw its first action during it, and it's likely first invented around that time.

Yep, and as they besieged & took over the docks at Hive Helsreach, it's fair to assume there would have been some Imperial/PDF sea-going vessels there too, albeit in numbers too small to deal with the scale of the Waaagh.

yup. there are explicit mentions of imperial ships in the fluff about the assault on hive helsreach and all over armageddon, precisely very large tankers (used to evacuate civilians), as well as an "imperial defense fleet".

funny that this topic comes up around the time i decide to build a 40k IG sea battleship based exactly on the helsreach fluff

In a thousand sons some space wolf guy mentions wolfships and hunting fenrisian kraken.I find it impossible to not imagine these as long ships.But with WOLVES....

They are longships. With wolves. Apart from the Space Wolves, Fenris is, itself, an Iron Age barbaric society, living by basic agriculture, hunting/gathering and fishing, and raiding its neighbors when their local village fails to produce enough food to feed itself.

It's like it's always 1200 AD on Fenris.

I have the old apoc rules for an orc sub. I'll upload a pic of the sub in a sec.

In the SW codex there is some fluff about SW in Land Raiders figthing Tau submarines etc. underwater.

Land Raiders are a sealed environment and can operate under water.

Their mobility in such an environment is highly questionable however.

They're more like a Semi-mobile bunker as it is anyway. So its not a huge downgrade or anything.

I wonder if it would float...

I'm going to check it's mass vs size to see if it could. I mean some spaceships are apparently made of Styrofoam.

The Land Raider? It definitely does not float. It is capable of sub-aquatic operations, though, at least for limited durations.

Using the stats from IA:10 the land raider has a densisty of 279kg/m³. The density of water is 1,000.00 kg/m³. A land raider would not only float, but it would barley stay in the water.

*Sigh.*



The demesion from IA:10 are 10.3m/6.1m/4.11m and the mass is 72 tonnes (I'm assuming metric tonnes).

Well thats because GW doesn't know their face from their arse when it comes to reasonable stats for anything.

If I had a land raider I would calculate a bit more accurate density, but it's still pretty good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sneak peek at the new model from forgeworld


Alright, I shall derail this thread no further.

Why is an aircradt carrier obsolete? it seems like a very safe way to launch fighter support when the enemy would have to swim to get to you.

Because space-ships exist.