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Well, first things first:
On a global, galactical level: Yes, there are. We all know the map from 3rd edition and I don't know if anyone did the maths but there are must be millions of worlds with orks on them,
in fact I imagine any inhabitable planet in the galaxy might have some Orks on it. Add all kinds of Rocks, fleets and Space Hulks, yes, they're everywhere and there's overall lots of them.
But!
From every article about Ork society that I know it seems that ork population never is really dense. We have a picture of mektown from gorkamorka, which looks pretty much like a 20th century, partly-industrialized city. We hear about tribes, we know of the Dropz, we know that there are more Grots and Snotlings than Orks, we know about Fungus fields surrounding the Ork cities, we know that orks bring their ecosystem with them, sometimes described as jungles full of squiggly creatures.
What we don't see is orky skyscrapers. Habblocks. Hive cities. So... it seems there aren't actually that many orks on a given planet? They don't appear to be the overpopulated hellhole the imperium is on its hive worlds, instead what we see with Orks is either pre-industrial, tribal societies spread over large areas or post-industrial, mad max style Orks living in the ruins of the people they destroyed or enslaved.

And yes, that doesn't mean Orks "don't work" the way we see them in the fluff, attacking in huge armies and waves and returning over and over again. Why? Entering headcanon now, but I was inspired to this thread because of this discussion about armageddons population and reading about real life tribal societies' warfare. So, even when there aren't as many Orks as humans on a given planet, Orks can still attack in huge numbers because their recruitment amounts to 100% of the Ork population as far as we know. When Orks go to Waaagh, apparently only some meks and grots and snots are left behind, everybody else is on their feet. It's the contrary on the imperial side, where some maths make it out to be less than 1% of the people in the imperial warmachine. So, just like how the tribal celtic societies could amass enough warriors to fight Rome that had a much higher population, I'm wondering if the Orks aren't actually that many on a given planet. They have higher numbers in their military because every Ork is a fighter (and even their enslaved grots are used in high numbers). The other aspect is of course that their numbers seem to replenish immediately, within days, while the other races(tyranids notwithstanding) need years.

What do you think?

It…depends.

Everywhere mankind has been? Orks have beaten them there. So they’re definitely widespread.

We also have entirely Orky held Empires, such as Charadon, which is comprised of an unconfirmed number of worlds.

However, their typically violent lifestyle is going to keep their numbers in check. And the more Orks there are, the worse their scrapping gets, so unless a Waaaaagh! kicks off (falling somewhere between a migration and a holy war), if there’s no-one else to take it out on, they’re going to be kicking seven bells out of each other.

But I’d still bet their numbers are comfortably into the trillions, Galaxy wide

We also need to set a scale size, as Orks can survive the galactic core. But in milky way galaxy, I'd say that every orkoid lifeform outnumber humans at at least 2:1. ACTUAL Orks more like 1:1. Orks don't need to settle an area, they are a spore-based infection on the land that short of a scorchedearth/ Exterminatus campaign they always come back. We also saw in the Octarius war that throwing 'Nids onto a planet to exterminate the Orks and vice versa doesn't work: orks grow stronger more fights, 'Nids eat biomass and adapt. Rinse. Repeat.
Though Orks can survive in conditions that humans can't, they won't just stay there- War is their Reason d'Etre, so though a planet may "only" have 2 billion people in a single hive, that doesn't mean that the other 90% of the planet is Orks, as they'll fight each other and the Humies.

So, in short same as all GW lore: We dunno, GW ain't telling.

Orks are like football hooligans... they are everywhere, even in places you wouldn't expect.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
We also need to set a scale size, as Orks can survive the galactic core. But in milky way galaxy, I'd say that every orkoid lifeform outnumber humans at at least 2:1. ACTUAL Orks more like 1:1. Orks don't need to settle an area, they are a spore-based infection on the land that short of a scorchedearth/ Exterminatus campaign they always come back. We also saw in the Octarius war that throwing 'Nids onto a planet to exterminate the Orks and vice versa doesn't work: orks grow stronger more fights, 'Nids eat biomass and adapt. Rinse. Repeat.
Though Orks can survive in conditions that humans can't, they won't just stay there- War is their Reason d'Etre, so though a planet may "only" have 2 billion people in a single hive, that doesn't mean that the other 90% of the planet is Orks, as they'll fight each other and the Humies.

So, in short same as all GW lore: We dunno, GW ain't telling.

Yeah, I think what I wanted to get at is that we may have an Ork appearance in the jungles of a hive world with, say, 10 billion humans and only, like, 5 million Orks and 15 million grots (I think codizes only say there are "far more grots than Orks", we don't get an actual ratio, right?). But of the 10 billion humans apparently the imperium can only pull, like, 1 million Guardsmen. While ALL OF THE 5 MIO. ORKS will come at them and still severely outnumber them in battle, despite being a tiny fraction of the human numbers on that planet.
Is that assumption contradicted anywhere? We do have descriptions of Ork settlements and life but I don't think we know what happens to their cities when the Orks go to WAAAGH, whether there are Garrisons left behind, or lots of Runtherders to keep the Grots in check if the Orks on the frontline should get severely slaughtered.

Helsreach describes this a little bit.

By the time the Orks have breached the walls and the Godbreaker Gargant is in the city, the Orks have fully abandoned their landing zones.

They don't need them anymore because the fight is in the city and supply lines aren't something an Ork will consider when there's a scrap.

Food? Eat the enemy (and other dead Orks). Guns? Pick up what the enemy drops or better yet use a Choppa like a proper Ork. Fuel? Take it from the enemy once they've been smashed or just walk.

There are likely billions of Ork planets, outnumbering human planets by a factor of a thousand. Arguably even billions is lowballing it as the milky way is estimated to hold trillions of planets.

But I agree Ork planets are unlikely to be highly populated, probably a few billions per world at most, while it isn't unheard for individual hive worlds to be pushing into the trillions.

But again, they are everywhere, galactic Ork population should be somewhere in the quintillions and as noted they can use a much higher proportion of their population for war.

Orks are repeatedly stated to having arguably the largest population in the Milky Way Galaxy (with only Tyranids being a major contender). It is also fairly likely that there are more Ork planets than Human ones.

That said, Games Workshop was never good when it came to demographics, and few stories take place from the Orks perspective. Obviously the Orks don't have their own version of Terra or Necromunda hives because their societies are too different from humanity. That and unless they're on a major campaign, there's probably an upper limit on the number of Orks an area can sustain before they start killing each other off.

It is also important to remember human worlds are extremely rare. A galaxy has trillions of worlds, of which only a million are human controlled.

That's less than 0.0001% or less that one in a million.

If Orks are truly everywhere, they should absurdly outnumber human worlds.

Well there are also more portable ork settlements. Rocks are tiny little moving ork ecosystems, same with any other ship for the most part. They really can make a home places most species would consider uninhabitable.

They also seem to move around as soon as they have the tech and resources to do so. Flocking to one waaagh or another as they pop up.

Goodness knows how many uncontacted tribes are in some backwater or another just waiting to be stumbled into.

There is an old piece of text that had imperial probes leave the galaxy only to relay the sounds of orks waaaghing, implying that the orks have spread everywhere.

I don't know if there are any sources that go deep into the ork food supply but I usually see their biosphere as revolving around those sort of "fantasy mushrooms" that grow out out of bare rock without sunlight or decaying matter (chemosynthesis? ambient radiation? Waagh energy?). Then squigs eat those mushrooms and orks eat the squigs (or the grots).

If that's the system then you could pretty easily have trillions of orks on a single planet, since nothing else really limits their population growth. But presumably those ork worlds just aren't able to mobilize that much of their population across space, or else Armageddon would have had 100 trillion orks invading (it was a lot but not that much).

Surely it’s not a matter of time before we get some ork models for necromunda

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I don't know if there are any sources that go deep into the ork food supply but I usually see their biosphere as revolving around those sort of "fantasy mushrooms" that grow out out of bare rock without sunlight or decaying matter (chemosynthesis? ambient radiation? Waagh energy?). Then squigs eat those mushrooms and orks eat the squigs (or the grots).

If that's the system then you could pretty easily have trillions of orks on a single planet, since nothing else really limits their population growth. But presumably those ork worlds just aren't able to mobilize that much of their population across space, or else Armageddon would have had 100 trillion orks invading (it was a lot but not that much).

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Because their food grows everywhere they can live everywhere and their numbers rise indefinitely?
An interesting thought but it doesn't seem to be the case, I rather get the impression of... pastoralism or subsistence economy with rather stable populations of Orks. As someone said, one reason is surely their warlike culture. As soon as a tribe grows and borders another one there will be Waaagh.

Orks thrive on conflict but still need technology to reach their peak levels of population.

Feral Ork tribes are a problem but a problem that can largely be controlled or contained.

Various feral tribes smashing each other here and there don't do much in the grand scheme because there will never be enough of them to reach the population density needed for the more advanced Oddboyz to eventually spawn.

They'll get Runtherds and Herdaz, or even the odd Weirdboyz but without technology beyond basic tools, they won't spawn Meks or Painboyz which in turn doesn't push the Orks into the industrial phase of their evolutionary tract allowing for more killing which in turn bumps the population from said killing.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I don't know if there are any sources that go deep into the ork food supply but I usually see their biosphere as revolving around those sort of "fantasy mushrooms" that grow out out of bare rock without sunlight or decaying matter (chemosynthesis? ambient radiation? Waagh energy?). Then squigs eat those mushrooms and orks eat the squigs (or the grots).

If that's the system then you could pretty easily have trillions of orks on a single planet, since nothing else really limits their population growth. But presumably those ork worlds just aren't able to mobilize that much of their population across space, or else Armageddon would have had 100 trillion orks invading (it was a lot but not that much).

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Because their food grows everywhere they can live everywhere and their numbers rise indefinitely?
An interesting thought but it doesn't seem to be the case, I rather get the impression of... pastoralism or subsistence economy with rather stable populations of Orks. As someone said, one reason is surely their warlike culture. As soon as a tribe grows and borders another one there will be Waaagh.

More or less, I don't see another hard bottleneck on them. They obviously need some sort of atmosphere and water but disease and sanitation don't seem like an issue. Metal and fuel would limit industry but not their organic numbers. Interpersonal violence wouldn't seem to be a factor because dying produces spores which reproduces the ork, so as long as the ork-shrooms are able to grow violence increases their total population. There really isn't any way to compare them to human populations, it's a completely different type of organism. The ork population should increase exponentially until new ork-shrooms have no where left to grow, and I don't know what conditions those would be (they're frequently described as growing in places where human colonists couldn't settle).

There's also just the fact that I've read a lot of the ork fluff and I've certainly never seen anything implying that orks are far less numerous than humans but just disproportionately mobilized. They aren't the Tau or Eldar. And in fact the thread linked to here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/814323.page has a passage stating that the native orks of Armageddon outnumbered humans 20:1. And Armageddon is a hive world, one of the most densely-populated in the Imperium. This seems to confirm that orks do not have anything like the population density of pastoral humans but are at least semi-urbanized, like sprawling "shanty-town" conditions or fully occupying natural cavern complexes.

Interestingly this all also indicates that orks are extremely under-mobilized, at least as far as outside enemies are concerned. If every ork is a combatant (even grots are sort of), and they outnumbered humans 20:1 then they outnumbered human combatants something like 200:1, but were nonetheless kept in check by the humans until Ghazghkull arrived. The overwhelming majority of orks must be entirely preoccupied with internal feuds or simply unable to get enough mineral resources to travel long distances. The typical 40k orks we think of with battlewagons and mekboys and roks would then be amongst the best-equipped of their race, and may also represent the small minority of orks who are willing to hold off on fighting their orkish rivals to instead wage war on a more distant enemy.

I always thought that Ork populations were partly perceptional. Like Ork hordes will always outnumber human militaries since all Orks are fighters with Gretchin handling the non fighting aspects. But with human militaries they need to be supported by a big civilian infrastructure farming the food and making the weapons, etc.

 Tyran wrote:
It is also important to remember human worlds are extremely rare. A galaxy has trillions of worlds, of which only a million are human controlled.

That's less than 0.0001% or less that one in a million.

If Orks are truly everywhere, they should absurdly outnumber human worlds.

While I agree with the logic, the numbers may be off. The galaxy might have a trillion worlds (for its 200 billion stars, I think?), but we don't know what fraction of that is actually habitable/habitable by orks.

Also, do orks do terraforming?

Orks are spore-based and bring their own ecosystem with them. So orkiform. Not sure if that naturally brings human-compatible atmosphere as well, but given that human and ork survival ranges overlap it’s not out of the question.

He thing with orks is that there may not be that many active orks at any one time compared to humans, but they don’t need all the support systems that human society needs to divert people to do. Food generation basically deals with itself and there is no education or bureaucratic services needed. Logistics systems apparently self-organise, and although they are hugely inefficient and based on violent theft, there are always more Orks spawning, basically fully formed and ready to join the fray. Technological capabilities again spring fully formed into being without all that tedious need to dedicate whole planets to research.

It’s not just Orkiforming. We can see from how they board and utilise Space Hulks they’re well capable of using Force Fields to seal in breathable atmosphere. So there seems little to stop them doing the same on relatively barren planets.

Also worth noting of all Orky tech? Their Force Fields are incredibly reliable. Provided they remain powered, they don’t seem to flicker or randomly fail.

So whilst they don’t terraform as other races do (deliberate, long term alteration of the atmosphere via technological means), they certainly have the ability to create at least pockets of breathable atmosphere.

Their logistics are also somewhat simplified by the fact Meks make ready use of scrap. And as they don’t seem to follow particularly set plans? The same outcome can be achieved through various means, widening the options available to whatever it is that gives a Mek his knowledge.

So they have a lessened requirement for specific raw materials, either freshly smelted or recovered from the battlefield. Like how Rom was able to patch up Quark’s holosuites in highly unconventional ways. Including if memory serves, using a spatula, the constituent materials of which offered the appropriate resistance properties.

I’m still not convinced that cottage industry recycling efforts can really provide sufficient supplies for a conflict of any size, but I’m willing to suspend disbelief because they are so cuddly.

It’s hardly cottage industry scale. The Mekboy isn’t alone. He’s all manner of Grots, Spannas and bored Boyz/anyone he can bully into it to lend a hand.

Burna Boys for instance, are often kept out of trouble between fights by carving up the scrap. Tankbustas need to trade the remains of their victims for more Rokkits.

And it’s far from unknown for Meks to work together, if only on a project to project basis in many instances. Most settlements will have multiple Mek Workshops, providing some level of competition.

And ORKS will readily put any population to work as slaves as well. Take over a city and you get a huge workforce and some food if they. Can’t work.

I understand that, but the Imperium has whole planets dedicated to complex production lines to keep the ammo and power packs flowing. I'm not aware that orks get the same kind of logistics description. Yes, Meks will work together and create big construction yards for gargants, etc, but it still seems to be competing and overlapping bodge jobs of individually crafted items, rather than hardcore production lines.

I mean you can get a huge population of humans as slaves, but who teaches them how to make forcefield generators before they get beaten to death for incompetence?

I assume that most of the boring stuff like making bullets is done by enslaved gretchin or humans. I assume that orkish industrial capacity is highly decentralized (think Japan in WWII), so there are probably as many factories as there are mekboyz in any given town.

There’s also outright pilferage. When taking over an enemy held planet, they’ll gain any ammunition reserves. And Orky tech being Orky tech, their guns seem to be relatively calibre agnostic.

Provided it goes bang loud enough, it seems to work.

For clarity though I don’t hold that “it works because psychic”. Rather Orky tech is, by design (however unconscious that design) incredibly robust, and bizarrely advanced. So I wouldn’t rule out self adapting chambers and barrels. It might be beyond our immediate ken, but that doesn’t mean an awful lot in 40K.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:
I understand that, but the Imperium has whole planets dedicated to complex production lines to keep the ammo and power packs flowing. I'm not aware that orks get the same kind of logistics description. Yes, Meks will work together and create big construction yards for gargants, etc, but it still seems to be competing and overlapping bodge jobs of individually crafted items, rather than hardcore production lines.

I mean you can get a huge population of humans as slaves, but who teaches them how to make forcefield generators before they get beaten to death for incompetence?

Depends what you put them to work on.

Orks work entirely off of what is, for them, instinct. There is some stuff they just don’t seem to comprehend or not care about (humie slaves being quite squishy, and needing a certain quality of food for decent performance). But remember their higher end tech is referred to as “Orky Know Wots”.

That suggests at least some understanding that some of the stuff the Waaaagh or Tribe needs has to be sourced from a Mek, and made with the Mek’s direct involvement. So Traktors, Power Fields, Blastas and other stuff at the fancier end wouldn’t be expected from the slaves, as they’re not Orks, so can’t be expected to Know Wots there.

Bullets, body armour, replacement tyres, more basic stuff? Absolutely. Even if a large part of that labour is the super basic stuff, like sorting spent shell casings into sizes, casting up the rounds, sorting scrap into different piles. It all helps the Mek(s) with efficiency, as with the sorting of gubbins arranged, they’ll know, more or less, exactly which pile or wreck a Number Nine Gubbins can be found.

Same as working down mines to extract raw materials, dragging stuff around and other labour intensive things Grots are generally too weedy for, and which an Ork would soon get bored of.

 Pariah Press wrote:
I assume that most of the boring stuff like making bullets is done by enslaved gretchin or humans. I assume that orkish industrial capacity is highly decentralized (think Japan in WWII), so there are probably as many factories as there are mekboyz in any given town.

I think that’s rather proving my point the Japanese had terrible logistics and very much relied on capturing supplies to use in future battles. Compared to the Allies in general and the US specifically they were very much the cottage industry side of the war.

I know this will be a cop out, but given Orks have been merrily wreaking havoc for goodness knows how long, it’s self evident their logistics are more than just cottage industry level.

Exactly how they go about it, as the discussion is proving, isn’t 100% clear. But it must be at some scale.

Not only is provision of ammo not presented as ever being a particular problem, but their propensity for long, uncontrolled bursts, shows it must be on a significant scale.

Probably worth keeping in mind that, whilst not on the battlefield, Grots significantly outnumber Orks in a settlement, the vast majority of which are indeed slaves. It’s only the more enterprising that become Squig Sellers or equivalent little Spiv, and only the bravest (nuttiest?) that take the field willingly.

That’s a significant workforce, even if it’s not particularly well skilled.

And due to Ork society being what it is, being gainfully, erm, enslaved, by the Meks provides significant protection from random kickings provided you keep churning out whatever it is you’ve been told to churn out.

So, even if we argue there’s One Grot Per Ork (which isn’t the case), that’s a lot of grubby, nimble little hands beavering away on menial tasks, such as ammo production.

Most if not all Ork Households will also have its own Grots, so it’s entirely possible part of their “do it, or I’ll kick your head in” duties include sourcing and making ammo for their master’s shootas.

Imperial logistics are absurdly inefficent, as in wasting away ammunition in overcrowded depots while the neighboring system is downing in orks.

All the planetary scale industry is worthless if you completely fumble the last step in the logistics chain: distribution.

I wouldn't be surprised if the average Waaagh can rely on abandoned ammo planets the IoM just forgot about.

Calbear wrote:
there's probably an upper limit on the number of Orks an area can sustain before they start killing each other off.

That limit is probably 2... maybe 3 on a good day.

-STS