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So, thing is I'm trying to build my Iron Wardens Space Marine chapter and ive run into a small problem fluff wise. I want to get hold of models from Gothic to represent my chapter's full fleet, but the thing is I cant really find examples of Marine fleets out there. I'm hoping i'm just looking in the wrong places, but could any of you guys give me directions/help me with whats in a Marine fleet and what the ships do ie transport (squads, companies)

If this is the wrong forum for this i apologize.

Well, here's a basic primer on Space Marine fleets http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Space_Marine_Fleet#.VCIHixZv8Qg .

But I'm not certain if that's what you want. Are you looking for specifics of troop transports, or the whole fleet?

I've read through that source, its really good for the ships and such, but I'm looking more for number... does a marine fleet have 4 strike cruisers, 2 of this 5 of that. or is that all dependent on the chapter? I mean i dont weant to build an "unfluffy" theroetical fleet if that makes sense. i read something about 3 battle barges, any more an the inquisition get upset.

and with regards to transport cap. I want to be able to write fluffy battle forces, ie my 1st company captain has taken a force from xyz companies and abc from the fleet to escort/transport them into this sector for a conflict, whislt another captain has gone elsewhere with xyz of his own battle group.

Depends on the Chapter. Some of them only have 1 ship.

Typically 2-3 Battle Barges, Strike Cruisers are more common and usually hold a company so potentially at least 10 (although only 100 are said to operate in the entire Segmentum Obscuros), Hunter Class Destroyer, as developed by the Dark Angels is the Marine version of the Cobra and the Dark Angels are said to maintain 'large flotillas in all of their battlefleets. Then you have frigates which are said to potentially carry only a single squad of Marines so these will be more numerous but still relatively few in number.

Of course Fleet based Chapters will obviously have more ships than others but, as a theoretical average I would say twenty ships for the Chapter would be reasonable.


PS: Good luck finding the models and I hope you have deep pockets!!!

Depends on the chapter and the extent of their holdings.

Ultramarines probably have the largest fleet outside of maybe the Imperial fists (since they have a large chunk of space to protect).

Black Templars are a crusading chapter (or at least were) so would have only what they had with them.

BT are a fleet-based Chapter, and are the largest of the currently-existing Chapters (estimated at three times the size of the Space Wolves), so probably possess the most ships, given that they are covering basically the entire Imperium in their Eternal Crusade.

And then you have those poor schleps like the Soul-Drinkers who only had the one Cruiser left.

Also, points wise in BFG you could include 1 Battle Barge per 1000 points with a maximum of 3 Battle Barges. Strike Cruisers you could have up to ten and they were 145 points each with the other escort ships varying in point costs between 35 and 50, average about 40 or so. That gives you some kind of indication of how many escorts and Strike Cruisers you would need to allow you to take 3 Battle Barges in what would then be a considerable Chapter Fleet.

The average Chapter will have roughly 1-3ish Battle Barges. and maybe 2-3 times as many Strike Cruisers. And then a few dozen Escort ships.

Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers are what transports marine companies. An Escort would only ever carry a squad or two, especially since only Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers have large hangers and drop pod launchers.

A Battle Barge can transport 3 full companies of marines, along with all their supporting equipment. A Strike Cruiser generally can carry one.

Also, Battle Barge and Strike Cruiser are only role designations, not a specific class of ship. The Mechanicus does make special ships for the Astartes to fulfill those roles, but really any Capital ship of appropriate size can be made into a Strike Cruiser or Battle Barge. Many chapters use retrofitted Navy ships.

the number of ships a chapter has varies widely, generally speaking a space based chapter is going to have more ships.

the new 6th edition SBs gives us fleet figures for the Grey Knights and the Space Wolves.

the Grey Knights have 4 Battle Barges, 12 strike cruisers, and 8 "rapid strike vessels" (destroyers or frigates)

the space Wolves meanwhile have 2 Star Forts (presumably on station over fenris) 8 Battle barges, 30+ strike cruisers, 20+ hunter destroyer squadrons. 20+ frigate squadrons.


this gives us a fairly wide varying force size.. and it's possiable the space wolves may not even have the largest fleet. (although I suspect their fleet is one of the larger) one thing worth noting is that for both fleets listed this is comfortable in excess of what's actually needed to transport their forces. Indeed, in both cases you could transport pretty much the entirity of the chapter on the battle barges alone.

 Psienesis wrote:
BT are a fleet-based Chapter, and are the largest of the currently-existing Chapters (estimated at three times the size of the Space Wolves), so probably possess the most ships, given that they are covering basically the entire Imperium in their Eternal Crusade.

True, they'd need a lot of ships. But the individual Crusades aren't necessarily very big - aren't they often about company-sized strike forces? So most can probably haul all their marines and vehicles on one ship, with a transport tagging along with supplies and support staff to set up the next recruitment base.

As such I'd imagine the BT is one of very few Chapters that have a large percentage of unarmed or lightly armed civilian ships alongside their military grade vessels.

Black templers fleet will be huge.
They have many crusades, spread in multiple fleets from battle barges and the mighty eternal crusader able to support 600 marines at once in combat to lesser crusades and fleets.

Fleert based will always have more ships, armoury, stores, forge ships and all they needs to maintain a chapter at war.

Black Templars will very likely have the largest fleet of any Astartes because:

1) Imperial Fists had the largest Heresy era fleet at 1500 ships.
2) Templars are estimated to be 3000-6000 marines strong.
3) Entire Chapter is void based.

For a more "compliant" Chapter,;the numbers can still vary wildly but as a very rough approximation, two battle barges and four strike cruisers are enough to carry the entire Chapter into combat. One could safely assume that each ship would have at least two escorts, gives us a total of 18 ships.

Fleet Based chapters also tend to have Fortress Monastery star forts in addition to their larger than normal fleet. These act as their mobile home base.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Fleet Based chapters also tend to have Fortress Monastery star forts in addition to their larger than normal fleet. These act as their mobile home base.

Very few chapters have mobile star forts, Battlefleet Gothic Armada (page 26) estimates only 2-5 such Fortress Monasteries operating in the entire Segmentum Obscura. More commonly their Monastery will be a (possibly oversized) Battle Barge or else a 'Chapter barque' (converted freighter).

The Black Templars IA didn't cover the entire chapter but did detail several crusades, the largest of which (Donian, reprinted inside the back cover of Codex: Black Templars) numbered some 580-odd marines but only comprised only a single Battle Barge, strike cruiser, forge ship and a mere three escorts. The may only have been a tenth of the chapter, but the ratio of marines to ships doesn't really support the idea of them being overflowing with fleet assets. Likewise the Flesh Tearers were a (full strength) fleet based chapter for three millenia before they claimed Cretacia and they only had a single capital ship at the time.

 minigun762 wrote:
Black Templars will very likely have the largest fleet of any Astartes because:

1) Imperial Fists had the largest Heresy era fleet at 1500 ships.
2) Templars are estimated to be 3000-6000 marines strong.
3) Entire Chapter is void based.

1. At the beginning of the Heresy, how many were left by the time Horus' fleets had smashed their way to Terra is unknown.
2. In the 41st millenium. It's questionable they would have had that many at the time of their founding, more likely - unless you really like the Black Templars to be Dark Angel wannabes - it's a product of millenia of decentralised recruitment (the Marines Errant are a fleet based codex adherent Ultramarines successor, but have also been noted as greatly exceeding codex strength at time due to their similar recruitment practices).
3. Except for those stationed in the Chapter's many Keeps.

Considering everyone lost significantly portions of their fleets and resources, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I believe it's safe to assume that the relative fleet sizes stayed the same when comparing Legions to Legions.

This means the biggest fleet at the start of the was likely still the biggest at the end.

As far as the chapter keeps, I would imagine it's a skeleton crew at most sites. Focused on recruitment and basic maintenance.
It's often quoted that many keeps are left vacant until needed.

That said, I still believe it's a safe bet that they house the largest loyalist astartes fleet.

Most SM fleets will have 1-3 Battlebarges, 3-12 Strike Cruisers, and perhaps as many smaller Escort vessels. Keep in mind even a Strike Cruiser is several kilometers long, and an entire chapter of Marines would have no trouble fitting inside even a small escort vessel (though launch bays and areas for tanks their dropships and the like may be lacking).

Some Chapters, like the Ultramarines or Black Templars, will have much larger fleets. Others will have very few naval assets, there are Chapters that may not have any Battlebarges for example.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of SM fleets are built around delivering SM's to surface engagements. Few SM fleets are built for direct fleet to fleet engagement (This is in large part due to the breakup of the Legions following the Horus Heresy, so that the Space Marines cannot challenge the Imperial Navy in open battle if the Chapter or Company or whatnot turns renegade), most are intended for planetary assault or space raiding. As a result they'll usually have few Lance weapons or things like Nova Cannon but large numbers of heavy macrocannon for surface bombardment and lots of launch bays/torpedoes.

So for a typical SM fleet you'll probably see something like a couple of Battlebarges, half a dozen Strike Cruisers, and a couple squadrons of Escorts.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Most SM fleets will have 1-3 Battlebarges, 3-12 Strike Cruisers, and perhaps as many smaller Escort vessels. Keep in mind even a Strike Cruiser is several kilometers long, and an entire chapter of Marines would have no trouble fitting inside even a small escort vessel (though launch bays and areas for tanks their dropships and the like may be lacking).

Some Chapters, like the Ultramarines or Black Templars, will have much larger fleets. Others will have very few naval assets, there are Chapters that may not have any Battlebarges for example.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of SM fleets are built around delivering SM's to surface engagements. Few SM fleets are built for direct fleet to fleet engagement (This is in large part due to the breakup of the Legions following the Horus Heresy, so that the Space Marines cannot challenge the Imperial Navy in open battle if the Chapter or Company or whatnot turns renegade), most are intended for planetary assault or space raiding. As a result they'll usually have few Lance weapons or things like Nova Cannon but large numbers of heavy macrocannon for surface bombardment and lots of launch bays/torpedoes.

So for a typical SM fleet you'll probably see something like a couple of Battlebarges, half a dozen Strike Cruisers, and a couple squadrons of Escorts.

Thanks, this is great info. I always figured that aside from teleporters the space marine ships were less complicated then maybe ships however they also say that a lunar class cruiser can be built in only about a decade in a world without a heavy shipbuilding industry. So I assume a wealthy space marine chapter could have a fleet of more regular style navy ships for support in void combat. That might run you afoul of the inquisition though.

At least a few chapters have space hulks as headquarters, which means those chapters could potentially project DAoT levels of naval force on occasion. Although I imagine committing a hulk to battle is a very risky proposition. My own background for the mentors ( my chapter) has them based out of an extremely haunted space hulk.

 minigun762 wrote:
Considering everyone lost significantly portions of their fleets and resources, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I believe it's safe to assume that the relative fleet sizes stayed the same when comparing Legions to Legions.

This means the biggest fleet at the start of the was likely still the biggest at the end.

As far as the chapter keeps, I would imagine it's a skeleton crew at most sites. Focused on recruitment and basic maintenance.
It's often quoted that many keeps are left vacant until needed.

That said, I still believe it's a safe bet that they house the largest loyalist astartes fleet.

proably a safe bet to assume similer ratios. but no garentee. the Imperial fists where the defenders of Terra after all and it's entire possiable that their fleet suffered disproportionatly heavy losses when Horus invaded. Particularly if Dorn was willing to take losses to try and kill as much of Horus' ships in orbit as he could.

at time of invasion of Ultramar by the Tyranids, they seem to have more than normal compliment in battle barges, i belive the fluff says moth balled or in storage for some reason but at my quick count 6 of them available?

hmm odd for the lot who regard it akin to the Bible or similar book.

jhe90 wrote:
at time of invasion of Ultramar by the Tyranids, they seem to have more than normal compliment in battle barges, i belive the fluff says moth balled or in storage for some reason but at my quick count 6 of them available?

hmm odd for the lot who regard it akin to the Bible or similar book.

as far as we know the Codex astartes has no limits on the size of a Space Marine fleet.

The breakdown of Space Marine Legions was what led to the breakup of their fleets. More respected and older Chapters might get away with more fudging of the rules, but in general Space Marine Chapters are not meant to be able to fight against the Imperial Navy in full on fleet battles in order to make sure that the Imperial Navy can contain them in case of Chapters going rogue. It is the same rationale behind their whole breakdown into Chapters as opposed to the original Legions.

If a Chapter were to go too far out or be too blatant in breaking these rules, then it would invite retribution from the Inquisition, the Imperial Navy, and even other Space Marine Chapters who might start taking a dim view of what could appear to be private empire building. Like with so much else in the Imperium, there is the letter of the law (which most Chapters have to at least appear to obey), the spirit of the law (which some Chapters appear to violate), and the practicalities of politics (more respected Chapters appear to get away with more).

I've looked into this myself and in my opinion this is one area of fluff that has never been "tidied up" so there are numerous conflicting figures out there. We do know, however, that Strike Cruisers are regularly dispatched with only part of a company onboard so there must be at least one other capitol ship assigned to that company.

Imo the largest fleets would be with Chapters that are assigned guard duties of specific portions of space, such as the Death Specters, especially where the local Navy is weak or entirely absent. The fluff in my head has such a Chapter who are in a poorly populated area of space on the eastern border with the Halo zone. They are ordered to keep numerous Ork empires and other Xenos from flooding into an area with several important forge and agri worlds, originally as penitence but they keep going long after the Inquisition has "forgiven" them. Due to Ork and Dark Eldar pirates, all convoys have to be escorted and all Capitol ships must travel with escorts which gave me the following numbers:

2x Battle Barge, 14x Strike Cruiser, 8x Hunter Destroyer, 32x Gladius Frigate, 8x Nova Frigate – this would be optimum numbers, which would rarely be achieved due to regular losses.
Essentially, apart from the first and tenth companies (which travel as part of other companies), each company would have two capitol ships, each of which would be escorted by two Gladius Frigates and either a Hunter or a Nova.

hoenstly? the optimal number would eb three capships for each company, assuming maintaince works for starships similer to modern fighting vessels

The Space Wolves now have huge amounts of ships:

2 Ramilies Class Star Forts
8 Battle Barges
30 + (!) Strike Cruisers
20+ (!) Hunter Destroyer Squadrons
20+ Gladius/Nova Frigate Squadrons

so.......nearly 200 ships!

Space based Chapters should have a goodly amount..... The Black Templars should be as powerful as the Wolves really ..........

 Mr Morden wrote:
The Space Wolves now have huge amounts of ships:

2 Ramilies Class Star Forts
8 Battle Barges
30 + (!) Strike Cruisers
20+ (!) Hunter Destroyer Squadrons
20+ Gladius/Nova Frigate Squadrons

so.......nearly 200 ships!

Space based Chapters should have a goodly amount..... The Black Templars should be as powerful as the Wolves really ..........

If not more powerful, given the wolves are NOT a space based chapter.

BrianDavion wrote:hoenstly? the optimal number would eb three capships for each company, assuming maintaince works for starships similer to modern fighting vessels

Optimal yes, but would the Inquisition allow it? I originally thought 3 per company, but that didn't sit well in my head with the "Space Marines aren't allowed to be able to challenge the Navy" stuff. I'd be happy to be wrong though in all honesty, other people have read a lot more than I have!

Mr Morden wrote:The Space Wolves now have huge amounts of ships:

2 Ramilies Class Star Forts
8 Battle Barges
30 + (!) Strike Cruisers
20+ (!) Hunter Destroyer Squadrons
20+ Gladius/Nova Frigate Squadrons

so.......nearly 200 ships!

Space based Chapters should have a goodly amount..... The Black Templars should be as powerful as the Wolves really ..........

But the Wolves aren't the equivalent of just one Chapter, unless things have changed since I last read up on them....

But the Wolves aren't the equivalent of just one Chapter, unless things have changed since I last read up on them....

It varies they are supposed to be a overlarge Chapter but their size get bigger every time they are written about. They now have

vastly

more ships than anyone else. Hell just to crew the 200 ships with reaosnable number of Astartes to oversee the ship is going to need a normal Chapters worth of Marines

Black Templars were always thought to be the largest until the current SM Codex - now its not clear and there is all the stuff about the Dark Angels being super large - hell I used to like those guys before the HH novels and increasingly tedious and ever increasing secrets.............

The current SW Codex provides numbers on the largest 2 of the GCs (200 and 188, respectively). This allows us to give a hard cap of some 2300 Marines in the entire Chapter... and that's assuming the other 10 have 187 Marines each (which is exceedingly unlikely).

In reality, assuming an average of 100 Marines per GC, the SW have less than 1400 Marines in the entire Chapter.

 Psienesis wrote:
The current SW Codex provides numbers on the largest 2 of the GCs (200 and 188, respectively). This allows us to give a hard cap of some 2300 Marines in the entire Chapter... and that's assuming the other 10 have 187 Marines each (which is exceedingly unlikely).

In reality, assuming an average of 100 Marines per GC, the SW have less than 1400 Marines in the entire Chapter.

yep - so not really enough to even fully crew their ships I don't think