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So SM ships will have 5, 10, maybe 20 SMs on board then all of the chapter acolytes to actualy crew the ships . But would a chaos fleet have about the same? My friend, the Chaos player, seems to think that nearly 1/3 to 1/4th of the crew would be actual chaos marines and not cultists. I am under the impression that they might have at tops 20 on average per ship. What do you guys think?

Really depends on how big a warband the Lord in charge of the ship has attracted.

Also depends on the size of the ship.

But yes, you're more likely to be correct. "Astartes warships" have marines as the command officers - they don't man sensor systems or guns.

The one example we've ever been given specifically is the Gladius-class frigate which are supposedly "seldom carrying much more than a single squad of Space Marines who are invariably spread across its decks and control centres supervising the much more numerous chapter serfs upon whom the chapter relies for actual operation of its vessels".

Note that you are nevertheless both sort of right; a cruiser in a chaos warfleet might only have a few dozen astartes officers in the crew but it'll have potentially several hundred aboard - the 'troop complement' is not part of the crew; they're warriors to drop onto a planet (or another ship) and superfluous to actually manning the ship.

At the same time; they won't be that many compared to the crew complement. A 40k cruiser-class ship has not far short of a hundred thousand souls in her crew (the Lunar-class has 95,000) - by comparison, a 'line cruiser' might carry a couple of astartes companies (200, maybe nearer 300 by the time you take into account command squads, tank crews and attached scouts and veterans). But certainly 1/4 would be pushing it a lot

Even pre-heresy legion strengths were only a few hundred thousand for the bigger legions - there's no way they could afford to use ten thousand plus astartes to crew a single warship.

Dont think of chaos ship crew as "cultists" most of them will be ex-imperial navy. Think of them more as Traitor Navy.

Also remember there are differences between Chaos Marine Ships and Chaos Ships.

I doubt many non-chaos marine ships will have any marines on at all.

but again not "cultists"

TheWanderer wrote:
Dont think of chaos ship crew as "cultists" most of them will be ex-imperial navy. Think of them more as Traitor Navy.

Also remember there are differences between Chaos Marine Ships and Chaos Ships.

I doubt many non-chaos marine ships will have any marines on at all.

but again not "cultists"

That and the fact the legions and navy were pretty much under the one banner during the great crusade, so there'd be even a difference in the crews from that era(if any survived til now via warp messing)

Inksoul wrote:
So SM ships will have 5, 10, maybe 20 SMs on board then all of the chapter acolytes to actualy crew the ships .

Do they? What is your source for that. I never got that impression and it clearly wasn't the picture I got from reading the beast arises series.
Also there doesn't exists a general agreed on dogma on how to run things on the non corpse emperor worshipping side of the human spectrum. Hell there isn't even something like a single fleet under one command. Sure there are temporary alliance under a great warlord but they don't have the support of all the separate factions at their peak of power. And what do you include in your definition as a chaos ship. Are deamon ships ships or space hulks?

Actually controlling the ship? Could be as low as one, or could be a few squads. You have cultists and their watchers to keep an eye on the ship, if the ship can't take care of itself with daemon power.

Actually onboard the ship, well in the Dark Apostle trilogy over 1000 chaos marines are onboard a single strike cruiser.

Its become increasingly obvious to me that the whole 30k and HH resurgence has caused a lot of confusion and twisting and turning in what people think about how marines opperate, their numbers and structure.

Marines in the Crusade/Heresy era and so different from 40k.

Space Marines (loyal or traitor) don't normally operate starships, this is left to mortal crew. Space Marines are marines, they are for fighting, not controlling ships.
How many Marines are actually on board a SM ship could vary from none at all to thousands, depending on the mission requirements.
As a rule of thumb, loyalist strike cruisers will usually carry a demi-company up to a full company (but this of course varies depending on the mission). Frigates will usually carry only a single squad and battle barges in the rare cases they leave port nornally carry a significant portion of the Chapter, at least a full Company.
For Chaos, the variation is much greater because Chaos warbands differ a lot in size and often use many different ship designs. How many CSM are on board a CSM warship depends on how large the warband is, on how many ships it has and in case it has multiple ships it also depends on how large and important the ship is.

Also, a Chaos ship in 40k would not be crewed by cultists, but by a dedicated crew that are unlikely to ever leave their ship. Spaceship crew in 40k are born on their ship and die on their ship.

Probably the largest CSM fleet, Abaddon's, is "only" 7 Battleships, 13 Heavy Cruisers, 23 Cruiser Squadrons (~69), and 30 Escort Squadrons (~90). It's about the size of a single Navy Battlefleet.

The crew compliment of chaos ships is mostly slaves. There are a few chaos marines. How many depends on the chaos lord as others have said.

The command crew is usually manned by some soul or deamon slaved to the ship that responds to commands from the chaos lord but can still operate independandly (and with loyalty) when the Lord is not there.

Navigators are usually stolen and enslaved from raids on the imperium, or demonic magiks are used to enable warp flight if not navigators are found.

 Harriticus wrote:
Probably the largest CSM fleet, Abaddon's, is "only" 7 Battleships, 13 Heavy Cruisers, 23 Cruiser Squadrons (~69), and 30 Escort Squadrons (~90). It's about the size of a single Navy Battlefleet.

Is there a source for that you could provide for that?

In general, a Chaos warfleet would vary a great deal. You could have thousands of Chaos Space Marines on even a Strike Cruiser. Or you could have none. Anywhere inbetween is possibly.

Based off of the night lords and iron warriors omnibus, many more than SM chapters. For chaos, those ships are their homes. They've got nowhere else to go unless they like the cold embrace of space . So they really don't have a choice if they want to live on it or not, most of the warband, if not all, would stay on their ship(s). The crew is servitors and slaves. Most slaves stay in the underbelly of the ship, rotting away, most likely doing more bad than good for it. The lucky serve the marines and ship. A marine, usually the lord, would command the ship.

your average chaos ship does not have chaos space marines aboard. in BFG chaos Space Marines was an upgrade, (you'll notice BTW , if you play it, that BFGA just made CSMs a purchaseable upgrade as well)

Is there a source for that you could provide for that?

The Eye of Terror codex had an 'order of battle' for both sides, as I recall.

Bear in mind that the forces attacking Cadia were Abbadon's Fleet plus Tyhpus' Fleet plus probably a couple of other named fleets, not included in the numbers above - those are only the Despoiler's personal command.

And it being the size of a Navy Sector Battlefleet makes sense; after all, if Abbadon's command was massively larger or smaller, the Gothic War would have been substantially more one-sided than it was.

ADB's Night Lords trilogy details life aboard a CSM warship. Basically a large cruiser that held the battered remains of a company worth of marines alongside tens of thousands of slave meatbags (which they occasionally hunt and skin for sport).

 oldzoggy wrote:

Inksoul wrote:
So SM ships will have 5, 10, maybe 20 SMs on board then all of the chapter acolytes to actualy crew the ships .

Do they? What is your source for that. I never got that impression and it clearly wasn't the picture I got from reading the beast arises series.
Also there doesn't exists a general agreed on dogma on how to run things on the non corpse emperor worshipping side of the human spectrum. Hell there isn't even something like a single fleet under one command. Sure there are temporary alliance under a great warlord but they don't have the support of all the separate factions at their peak of power. And what do you include in your definition as a chaos ship. Are deamon ships ships or space hulks?

They certainly can't have that many marines per ship. As mentioned cruisers have tens of thousands of crew. If even 10% would be marines chapters could multiply their fighting strength by simply fielding crew of single cruiser...

Similarly chaos marines aren't unlimited and are pretty much too valuable to have as ship crew. Again makes only sense grunts are manning ship and chaos marines are at most in command duty.