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Just been reading the Vigilus warzone book. Finding it difficult to carry on due to 1 major point.
When the marines arrive (can't remember if it was when the Iron Hands first arrived or if it was when the Ultramarines arrived later), it describes that they dealt with the few Ork warships still in orbit that hadn't rammed the planet.
Now I've just got to the section that describes the Marine strength on Vigilus, and counting them up, all the companies and Demi Companies total exactly 100 Companies.
Back in the day Battle Fleet Gothic described a Strike Cruiser as being able to carry upto 1 company + support Vehicles and a Battle Barge able to carry upto 3 + support vehicles. Some chapters had upto 10 strike cruisers + 3 battle barges, not including escort craft (which were described as a squadron or 2 per cruiser or barge). Therefore you would often have a company split over 2 different strike cruisers.
If the marines on Vigulis were all from 1 chapter (they weren't) and if they packed each Cruiser and Barge to the maximum and took absolutely no escorts, the minimum fleet above Vigulus would have been 33 Barges and 1 Cruiser, 100 Cruisers or any combination Inbetween. When counting up for each chapter only being transported by their own fleet and not hitching a ride (assuming each demi company has a Strike Cruiser, 3 companies per Battle Barge and that a Space Wolf strike force is only a company strong whereas fluff says their great companies are bigger), it comes to 16 Battle Barges and 47 Strike Cruisers. This is only if the ships were completely full, which they rarely are, that no spare ships were brought along and no escorts were taken. It is more likely to be a much higher number than this. This is also not taking into account any Imperial Fleet that the chapter masters or Calgar himself requisitoned, the DeathWatch strike cruiser or the fleet travelling with the Free Knights.
Other things to consider:
-Calgar is obviously portrayed as a brilliant military mind.
-The Ork Settlements are in the wasteland with no Imperial presence nearby.
-The DeathWatch have found the elder webway gate that the Eldar and Dark Else are using to stage attacks and have reported it to Calgar.
-The Ork speedfreak hordes are racing around the globe and are quoted as being easily identifiable for miles away due to their dust clouds.
-The White Scars have already established that the Ork warmachines produced in their settlements are gradually getting bigger and bigger and have already reached Gargant size.
-The Orks have trained the guns of their crashed ships on approaches to their scrap cities making any assault very hazardous.

So the big and obvious question is; Rather than assaulting the Scrap Cities on almost suicidal charges with Knights, Warhounds, WSs and DAs... why not just blast them all into oblivion from orbit, along with all the speedfreak columns and the webway gate whilst they are at it? And if the webway gate cant be destroyed by conventional means, keep a watch on it and everytime something emerges, send a lance blast down. For a galactically famous military mind, this seems exceptionally obvious and something the writers have not addressed with an explanation of why he hasn't ordered this.
Until the Chaos fleet shows up, they will have had orbital superiority for a long time.

Anyway, this glaring omission of why the fleet is sat twiddling its thumbs is making it quite difficult to carry on with the story.

I got partway through the fluff in the book and found it rather lacklustre myself, but we're talking 40K. There are just too many things which rarely make sense. You often have to do some mental acrobatics to justify anything that happens in 40K.

 Elbows wrote:
I got partway through the fluff in the book and found it rather lacklustre myself, but we're talking 40K. There are just too many things which rarely make sense. You often have to do some mental acrobatics to justify anything that happens in 40K.

Very true, but usually they will put in some minor explanation such as the being a stalemate in the void, or the assaulting force being in control orbitally and the defenders still having access to surface based orbital defences so the ships can't approach closely enough for an accurate barrage. They simply didn't bother this time.

You have to embrace the nonsense, or the hobby is untenable.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Back in the day Battle Fleet Gothic described a Strike Cruiser as being able to carry upto 1 company + support Vehicles and a Battle Barge able to carry upto 3 + support vehicles.

Yes, but that never made even the tiniest bit sense to begin with. These ships are several kilometres long, the smallest marine ship could easily carry a whole chapter, while one battle barge could carry all marines in existence.

You have my sympathy, 40k always has to handwave basic sense to explain why burly men are hitting each other with chainsaws.

I ran into this recently in the 30k setting in Titandeath. At the end of the book is one of those scenes where the Imperium is licking their wounds on the battlefield, tech priests struggling to recover wrecked machines, badly depleted troops forming ragged formations. The Imperial commander looks wearily over the battlefield and says “Sure, we won today... but at what cost?”

You know this type of scene, we’ve seen it a zillion times. But... this is the Titandeath. This is the apocalyptic defeat that is the reason why Titans are rare in the 41st millennium and which leads directly to the siege of Terra. We just witnessed it - the Imperium was crushed, Horus exterminates most everyone. The Imperium should be fleeing in full rout.

...how is the Imperium collecting their wrecked titans and lamenting the loses it took to achieve this victory?

It’s like they’re so used to having that scene, they didn’t think that you don’t have scenes like that when Chaos won and is just strolling around taking skulls for their dark master. Maybe I missed something, but that’s how it read to me.

 Crimson wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
Back in the day Battle Fleet Gothic described a Strike Cruiser as being able to carry upto 1 company + support Vehicles and a Battle Barge able to carry upto 3 + support vehicles.

Yes, but that never made even the tiniest bit sense to begin with. These ships are several kilometres long, the smallest marine ship could easily carry a whole chapter, while one battle barge could carry all marines in existence.

I see what you are getting at but I wouldn't go quite that far. I currently live in Shanghai with a population of 25-28million, it has an area of ~2500 square miles, so a population density of ~10,000 per square mile. Reason I chose Shanghai apart from living here is that it is also certainly built upwards just as a Battle Barge also is so a better comparison, its also a very busy and packed city. So if we say a Battle Barge is 10 miles long by 2 miles wide (I'm guessing at these numbers btw, a Strike Cruiser was a few km long and the Barge model is about 2.5 times the length from what I remember. So let's say about 16km to be generous or 10 miles long). So we are looking at it being able to hold about 200,000 human sized people, now we have to account for the crew of the ship (and chapter serfs) which would have been a huge amount considering the size of the ship and insanely low levels of technology used to even aim the guns. Let's call that half of the 200,000. Then marines, especially Primaris marines would need double the room of a normal human for everything they do. So about 50,000, if we don't count non fleet based support elements. And they would be cramped. But still a Battle Barge would have the potential to carry upto 50 Chapters if we are generous with the figures, maybe 25-30 if being more 'realistic' (inverted commas to highlight the obvious irony in that word :-p), so your point still stands at the silly nature of claiming it carries only 3 companies.

Still though, even with only 1 Strike Cruiser or Escort Squadron, let alone a Battle Barge, Calgar could have utterly neutered the Orks and Eldar in a single day. The GS and Chaos Cults are a different matter of course.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Oggthrok wrote:
You have my sympathy, 40k always has to handwave basic sense to explain why burly men are hitting each other with chainsaws.

I ran into this recently in the 30k setting in Titandeath. At the end of the book is one of those scenes where the Imperium is licking their wounds on the battlefield, tech priests struggling to recover wrecked machines, badly depleted troops forming ragged formations. The Imperial commander looks wearily over the battlefield and says “Sure, we won today... but at what cost?”

You know this type of scene, we’ve seen it a zillion times. But... this is the Titandeath. This is the apocalyptic defeat that is the reason why Titans are rare in the 41st millennium and which leads directly to the siege of Terra. We just witnessed it - the Imperium was crushed, Horus exterminates most everyone. The Imperium should be fleeing in full rout.

...how is the Imperium collecting their wrecked titans and lamenting the loses it took to achieve this victory?

It’s like they’re so used to having that scene, they didn’t think that you don’t have scenes like that when Chaos won and is just strolling around taking skulls for their dark master. Maybe I missed something, but that’s how it read to me.

Yep, the massive scale of the cost surely seems to be missing in that quote since the fan base knows what's coming because of it. You're right about the scene being done so many times too.

Vigilus' crust is made up entirely of handwavium. Any orbital bombardment would risk detonating the entire planet. Most worlds in the 41st/42nd millennium are made of the same stuff. Which is why you never get fleets just standing off and surgically blasting things from orbit. It's also why air to ground attack craft are so rarely used.

If we are searching for a logical (relatively speaking) explanation, there are a couple:

1) 40k Space ship weaponry is absolutely nuts. They regularly fire nuclear armed torpedoes, the macro-cannons are putting out an insane number of imprecise shots, and the various lances or lance-esque weaponry is obscenely powerful. So, you may not want to fire on a planet that is highly strategic, contains numerous heavily-populated human settlements for risk of damaging the atmosphere (by kicking up dust, debris, chemicals, nuclear waste, etc.). This is plausible, but then again, the imperium never seems to care too much about collateral damage, so...

2) The Orks doubtlessly looted their own ships' force fields and built their own. Orks aren't fantasy barbarians, they are techno-savants with some of the most insanely advanced and powerful equipment in the galaxy. One of the new buggies literally rips holes in reality and makes micro-jumps through the warp. So, it is reasonable to conclude that many of the scrap settlements are protected by shields the same way the imperial hives are. This is the most common explanation in 40k for why various factions don't use orbital bombardments more often. Moreover, I like to think of it as the Dune scenario. Striking a shield powerful enough to defend an entire city with something like a lance battery would cause a titanic nuclear explosion that would simply cause too much collateral damage.

Okay so... does the imperium own the air space on vigilius?

where is the imperial fleets? How are they losing if the orks are only on the ground? Wouldn't they I assume... send out the fleets?

We know next to nothing about the space war, and this is the first major engagement of 40k where we know nothing about the space war.

I think it's a good idea to remember that you are reading accounts of what happend which are potentially hundreds of years old. (Even the most up to date stuff isn't reaching your eyes till years after the event) passed down though multiple sources, censored, lost, damaged ect.

Nothing you read is truely accurate. By accident or on purpose.

 Grumblewartz wrote:
If we are searching for a logical (relatively speaking) explanation, there are a couple:

1) 40k Space ship weaponry is absolutely nuts. They regularly fire nuclear armed torpedoes, the macro-cannons are putting out an insane number of imprecise shots, and the various lances or lance-esque weaponry is obscenely powerful. So, you may not want to fire on a planet that is highly strategic, contains numerous heavily-populated human settlements for risk of damaging the atmosphere (by kicking up dust, debris, chemicals, nuclear waste, etc.). This is plausible, but then again, the imperium never seems to care too much about collateral damage, so...

2) The Orks doubtlessly looted their own ships' force fields and built their own. Orks aren't fantasy barbarians, they are techno-savants with some of the most insanely advanced and powerful equipment in the galaxy. One of the new buggies literally rips holes in reality and makes micro-jumps through the warp. So, it is reasonable to conclude that many of the scrap settlements are protected by shields the same way the imperial hives are. This is the most common explanation in 40k for why various factions don't use orbital bombardments more often. Moreover, I like to think of it as the Dune scenario. Striking a shield powerful enough to defend an entire city with something like a lance battery would cause a titanic nuclear explosion that would simply cause too much collateral damage.

I like the Dune scenario, myself, too. It's a very elegant way to get around the 'Nuke it From Orbit' path of least resistance.

I can never understand why you don't get more Navy and Marine aircraft conducting operation, though. Or even a Vulture or stormtalon gunship supporting an infantry assault. I mean, there are literal descriptions in a lot of 40k stuff of enemy columns making their way across flat deserts and ash wastes. They should be sitting ducks for stuff like Avengers and Vultures.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Just been reading the Vigilus warzone book. Finding it difficult to carry on due to 1 major point.
When the marines arrive (can't remember if it was when the Iron Hands first arrived or if it was when the Ultramarines arrived later), it describes that they dealt with the few Ork warships still in orbit that hadn't rammed the planet.
Now I've just got to the section that describes the Marine strength on Vigilus, and counting them up, all the companies and Demi Companies total exactly 100 Companies.
Back in the day Battle Fleet Gothic described a Strike Cruiser as being able to carry upto 1 company + support Vehicles and a Battle Barge able to carry upto 3 + support vehicles.

I have always thought that it means Strike Cruisers usually carry 1 company, not that it is maximum amount on personnel able to fit onboard.

40k weapons are not that accurate and missing by a mm in space is a lot of km on the ground you would probably hit your own forces and what you are doing is effectively a mini exterminates and the imperium only does that if there is 0 chance or a few hundred billion would die in a day so its not worth it. also think about this those hive cities took 10,000 years to get to this point and so the amount that they can produce even if you have to repair some things is far easier than rebuilding it all. finally all the other factions might have fleets and they are all preventing each other from getting to a place where then can orbital strike. you can orbital strike but in doing so your 1 ship has to face a whole fleet shooting you

So the big and obvious question is; Rather than assaulting the Scrap Cities on almost suicidal charges with Knights, Warhounds, WSs and DAs... why not just blast them all into oblivion from orbit, along with all the speedfreak columns and the webway gate whilst they are at it? And if the webway gate cant be destroyed by conventional means, keep a watch on it and everytime something emerges, send a lance blast down. For a galactically famous military mind, this seems exceptionally obvious and something the writers have not addressed with an explanation of why he hasn't ordered this.

If I went how this would go down in the real world, at least in the eastern europe or asia. I would say that Gulliman or Calgar want to get rid of non ultramarines, but they can't or dont want to start a civil war. So he sends them on suicide missions, so that they either get crippled or wiped out. if they fail, and the bombardment is still an option, it gets even better for ultramarines, because they can always use is as a levarage to call out non ultramarines in efficient. Specially if at the same time ultramarines get some "big" win. Doesn't have to be a real one, as long as the propaganda machine makes it so.

40k weapons are not that accurate and missing by a mm in space is a lot of km on the ground you would probably hit your own forces and what you are doing is effectively a mini exterminates and the imperium only does that if there is 0 chance or a few hundred billion would die in a day so its not worth i

but the human population of vigilus is unimportant from both a tactical and strategical point of view. And if you do wipe them out, but it helps to secure the planet, you can always ship in more people. Also with so many ships accuracy stops being a problem you can turn small continents in to glass plains. At the same time burning out the orc spores making later spawns of them less common. using orbital bombardment is a win/win.

deotrims 16th wrote:
40k weapons are not that accurate and missing by a mm in space is a lot of km on the ground you would probably hit your own force...

Unless 40k targeting systems are less accurate than 21st Century targeting systems, then this isn't the case. We can put a missile through a window of a moving car from a moving drone, compensating for wind resistance etc etc. A laser or lance weapon, fired from stable orbit, should be able to hit a square metre of a planet's surface, even using our current levels of technology.

You pretty much have to accept that ships cannot bombard planets otherwise the whole premise of 40k wars falls apart. Or has to be so small that ceases to matter. I mean you wouldn't (probably) bombard a Hive City to kill 50 Chaos Space Marines. But depending on who is writing the lore, 50 CSM are not going to defeat a billion humans. So they are just there, being inconsequential until a lucky autogun shot kills them.

I agree they usually try and have some justification for why the fleets are busy - but these don't hold up. After all if you are having month/year long wars planetside its hard to explain why ships in orbit could never find 30 minutes to aim some ludicrously over sized ordinance at strategic locations and blast away. "The Tau engaged the imperials in hit and run attacks so they couldn't just nuke Farsight's counter attack from orbit" - what, every 5 minutes? How would that work? How come they then have the time to go "Eh, this hasn't worked out, load the cyclonic torpedoes and lets get out of here."?

What's perhaps even less believable is that Vigilus has been a strategic lynchpin for several centuries at this point, and yet nobody seems to have been particularly interested in it until now.

Why has it taken so long for Chaos to attack it?
Why hasn't the Imperium transferred noctilith pylons to the surface (they recovered at least two of them originally from Cadia)?
Did Guilliman not think to transform it into a fortress world before now despite the necessity of controlling the Nachmund Gauntlet?

As Sergeant Gideon of the Blood Angels said to then acting sergeant Zael, "Epic accounts of bravery courage don't write themselves, Zael. No need for heroism means there's no need for Astartes. Great job, Zael. You just wiped the space marines from Games Workshop's product line. Now what? Play Tau? Yeah, Good job [expletive deleted].

 Lord Damocles wrote:
What's perhaps even less believable is that Vigilus has been a strategic lynchpin for several centuries at this point, and yet nobody seems to have been particularly interested in it until now.

Why has it taken so long for Chaos to attack it?
Why hasn't the Imperium transferred noctilith pylons to the surface (they recovered at least two of them originally from Cadia)?
Did Guilliman not think to transform it into a fortress world before now despite the necessity of controlling the Nachmund Gauntlet?

Apparently because we have moved on for 200 years and nobody bats an eyelid at Primaris.

It is precisely for these 'handwavium' reasons that I refuse to buy any further GW fluff books as they are approaching nonsensical.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
What's perhaps even less believable is that Vigilus has been a strategic lynchpin for several centuries at this point, and yet nobody seems to have been particularly interested in it until now.

Why has it taken so long for Chaos to attack it?
Why hasn't the Imperium transferred noctilith pylons to the surface (they recovered at least two of them originally from Cadia)?
Did Guilliman not think to transform it into a fortress world before now despite the necessity of controlling the Nachmund Gauntlet?

Apparently because we have moved on for 200 years and nobody bats an eyelid at Primaris.

It is precisely for these 'handwavium' reasons that I refuse to buy any further GW fluff books as they are approaching nonsensical.

Not strictly true. Vigilus spells out that the DA, at least, distrust the Primaris and deliberately keep them in the dark and/or use them as tools of convenience.

 Grumblewartz wrote:
If we are searching for a logical (relatively speaking) explanation, there are a couple:

1) 40k Space ship weaponry is absolutely nuts. They regularly fire nuclear armed torpedoes, the macro-cannons are putting out an insane number of imprecise shots, and the various lances or lance-esque weaponry is obscenely powerful. So, you may not want to fire on a planet that is highly strategic, contains numerous heavily-populated human settlements for risk of damaging the atmosphere (by kicking up dust, debris, chemicals, nuclear waste, etc.). This is plausible, but then again, the imperium never seems to care too much about collateral damage, so...

2) The Orks doubtlessly looted their own ships' force fields and built their own. Orks aren't fantasy barbarians, they are techno-savants with some of the most insanely advanced and powerful equipment in the galaxy. One of the new buggies literally rips holes in reality and makes micro-jumps through the warp. So, it is reasonable to conclude that many of the scrap settlements are protected by shields the same way the imperial hives are. This is the most common explanation in 40k for why various factions don't use orbital bombardments more often. Moreover, I like to think of it as the Dune scenario. Striking a shield powerful enough to defend an entire city with something like a lance battery would cause a titanic nuclear explosion that would simply cause too much collateral damage.

Everything important on a planet has big old void shields and anti ship batteries. A ship would die if it took up an orbital position to bomb a major emplacement in 40k. And yes you can easily think of ways around that, but why bother?

Thanks for everyone's goes at explanations but here is why I don't buy them:

Crust made up of something radioactive:
Millienia ago, the Mechanicum fired 3 spire sized boreing drills down into the planet that bored almost all the way down to the core. These set of major volcanic eruptions and earthquakes as you'd expect. But they didn't destroy the planet. If these didn't destroy the plant by igniting whatever the crust was made of I'd doubt lance blasts would have that power.

Innacurate bombardment hitting Imperial forces:
The Hive Sprawls are quoted as being the size of continents. There are whole Hive Sprawl distances between Imperial positions and the Ork Settlements. Bombarding from orbit is in void terms the same as the ships being pretty much side on to each other. At that distance they aren't going to miss by a continents distance. And the webway is even further away. If ships did miss by that distance from that range BFG and every ship engagement in the fiction would have been exceptionally boring games and books respectively.

Weapons being the equivalent to a modern day nuclear blast:
Ships in 40k are a few Km long, if the weapons (outside of the Planet Killer which can one shot ships) were the equivalent to a nuclear blast, 1 broad side once shields were down would always disintegrate a ship, hell - 1 shot should, but this doesn't happen in either the fluff or tabletop unless the ship is already badly damaged structurally. The planet is already badly polluted, the population can rarely see the nights sky due to the dust and pollition. The dust sent up by a bombardment is something the planet is already used to coping with.

Orks have erected their own forcefields:
1 doesn't exist over the webway or else the Mechanicum would have noticed during their millennia on the plant. As to the Orks - Warhound Titan guns can bypass the settlement's shields from distance but fleet guns can't? Plus their being no mention of them in the text. The DA and WS were literally inside 3 of the settlements, their primary goal would have been to disable those shields if they existed.

Enemy ships preventing such bombardments:
The text has told us that all the remaining Ork ships have been dealt with and that both forms of Eldar use the webway, not ships, to assault the planet. The Imperials are the only ships there. Side note: further reading has indicated that other Forge world's sent fleets to assist Stygis so we can also add Mechanicum fleets to the ones listed above.

I would assume the reason they don't bombard from orbit is the geological instability brought about by the Mechanicus operations. If there are frequently occurring earthquakes of such severity that populations are being displaced and significant damages to infrastructure is being inflicted, perhaps bombing from orbit isn't actually an option.

Banville wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
What's perhaps even less believable is that Vigilus has been a strategic lynchpin for several centuries at this point, and yet nobody seems to have been particularly interested in it until now.

Why has it taken so long for Chaos to attack it?
Why hasn't the Imperium transferred noctilith pylons to the surface (they recovered at least two of them originally from Cadia)?
Did Guilliman not think to transform it into a fortress world before now despite the necessity of controlling the Nachmund Gauntlet?

Apparently because we have moved on for 200 years and nobody bats an eyelid at Primaris.

It is precisely for these 'handwavium' reasons that I refuse to buy any further GW fluff books as they are approaching nonsensical.

Not strictly true. Vigilus spells out that the DA, at least, distrust the Primaris and deliberately keep them in the dark and/or use them as tools of convenience.

Good point but I see your 'not strictly true' and raise you one of my own.

We have a DA Lt. so they seem to have come to terms with them and even elevated them in the ranks - meaning they get a bit more insight into the DA murky past.

Either that or GW just can't stop making Lt. models.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:

Banville wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
What's perhaps even less believable is that Vigilus has been a strategic lynchpin for several centuries at this point, and yet nobody seems to have been particularly interested in it until now.

Why has it taken so long for Chaos to attack it?
Why hasn't the Imperium transferred noctilith pylons to the surface (they recovered at least two of them originally from Cadia)?
Did Guilliman not think to transform it into a fortress world before now despite the necessity of controlling the Nachmund Gauntlet?

Apparently because we have moved on for 200 years and nobody bats an eyelid at Primaris.

It is precisely for these 'handwavium' reasons that I refuse to buy any further GW fluff books as they are approaching nonsensical.

Not strictly true. Vigilus spells out that the DA, at least, distrust the Primaris and deliberately keep them in the dark and/or use them as tools of convenience.

Good point but I see your 'not strictly true' and raise you one of my own.

We have a DA Lt. so they seem to have come to terms with them and even elevated them in the ranks - meaning they get a bit more insight into the DA murky past.

Either that or GW just can't stop making Lt. models.

The DA Primaris Lt is shown to have no idea what's going on, he was just told to attend a meeting. He was probably just an officer from the Indomitus Crusade who only nominally kept his rank.

I haven't read that particular bit of fluff but thanks for the insight.

As others have said, this is Science Fiction. You need to have some willing suspension of disbelief to enjoy it.

Regarding orbital bombardment and the Ork encampments, the Vigilius book does address that (page 60). They have "bubble fields" scavenged/repurposed from their original Force fields. Think of it as the Hoth scenario from Empire Strikes Back.

Lance blasts use laser energy. They are used in space to space combat as there is no atmospheric presence for the lasers to scorch or be distorted by.

Firing a single Lance battery into the atmosphere sears away the surrounding air as well as the target; One blast, large enough to destroy a superheavy or a single building wouldn't be much of an issue.

Firing a barrage - something large enough to destroy a town or similar would be devastating to the atmosphere; the atmosphere might end up taking the brunt of the damage instead if the pulse is large enough, or it may ignite the atmosphere, burning it and every inhabitant - as well as any hive cities - completely away. Leaving it an airless, lifeless glassed rock that shatters from heat and pressure changes.

At least, it's something to think about.

The sad truth is that Games Workshop currently doesn't support Battefleet Gothic. [As opposed to when it did, during say the third war for Armageddon.] That means it has no motivation to detail any fluff or particularly acknowledge the existance of any sides space/orbital forces. They don't want people interested in that, or they'll be wondering why they can't buy the models for it.

That's why for this new mega episode, we're oblivious to everything that's not happening on a scale that we can recreate with toy soldiers.