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Do we have any solid canon or just homebrewn fluff on the subject? I know there are giant trawler ships on planets such as Vogen and such, but does background material on seabattles exist at all(not counting the ork submersible assault during the 3rd war for armageddon (was it tempestora hive? (multi-parenteses for the win)))

Does the imperium employ battleships? subs? hangarships? How about the eldar?

I oodled a little once on a imperial nucleur submarine with two subtypes. In the game they would have been some 60" long (of which forty above the waterline).

Charybdis pattern nucleur missile submarine: never put on the table. Range in game terms redicioulous. armament of 8 deathstrike missile warheads (any variant)

Scylla pattern sea-to-coast combat submarine: Two sabre platforms, two optional pintle mounts. Transport capacity of 35 infantry or 3 fully loaded landspeeder storms.

Any Ideas?

And yes, in retrospect I do feel a little silly about writing the rules in this forum, but not silly enough to erase them.

Seas = Confined to Worlds

Ergo, it is up to the individual worlds to deal with it.

Simple really.

Yes, absolutely, but how about starfaring races and armies? Eldar and Tau for example, would they have a use for submarines or hangarships?

Of course seas are confined to worlds, but do we have anything official besides the ork submersible going over seas?

Why bother with what is, essentially, an extremely inefficient means of transportation? The worlds themselves may deal with boats, but if you have transatmosphereic landing and transport craft, why bother with trying to land a boat. It really seems like a waste of time and resources to me.

Gwar! wrote:Seas = Confined to Worlds

Ergo, it is up to the individual worlds to deal with it.

Simple really.

That was my gut response, too. But continents are also confined to worlds, and yet the Imperium makes huge investments in land armies, including Titans and super-heavy tanks that are the same size as a ship would be.

I think the better answer is that "modern" 40k fluff has emphasized air and space power to such an extent that traditional surface navies make even less sense than land-based armies. But I think official Imperial naval assets would have made a lot of sense in the older 40k fluff, when Imperial air support was much more limited, and landing troops from orbit was a much more complex endeavor.

I would think a PDF would have a true 'Navy' comprised from ships. The point about Titans is that Titans are (more) easily mobile than a ship would be. You can land a Titan in bits and assemble on site but a ship is a little different if you want it to be watertight.

The OC-D

Well, there was one instance in which a Land Raider was used for an assault from water, and I believe it was mentioned that it was built to be able to handle most environments, including sea. So maybe they don't so much have a navy as have units than can easily be converted for sea battles if necessary.

AFAIK, only Orks have a naval unit that can be represented in the game (submersibles).

I think the need for a liquid based Navy would depend on a number of things. I can imagine scenarios where certain assets or resources are "sea" based.....as such, the only way of extracting those assets or resources would be via some kind of oceanic platform.

If said platform were to be compromised by the many nasties that roam the WH40K universe, then the type of response would depend on certain atmospheric considerations, for example, maybe the weather systems are so bad that insurgence craft from the air would mean too many casualties......maybe, due to air defence batteries, flying a drop ship or gunship onto the platform would be suicide....maybe, the platform is actually beneath the waves and therefore even if you could deploy from a dropship, you still need to cross a titanic gulf of "undersea" enviroment to reach your target.

I think if you have the imagination, anything is possible in the 40K setting. Asking whether these things can or should happen, only limits your experience of the game.

If I were you, and I wanted to play a "sea" based assault, then just go for it, make up some enviromental rules that work and off you go!

All races in 40k are primarily land based, so most battles are fought on land. While there is some mention of Nids and orks using the water, it wasn't major.

Woah underwater nids! that's a scary thought.
I bet they'd have all sorts of huge gribbly squid type things with loads of scary pirahna/shark/type beasts ready to burst forth.

As another point Chimeras are Amphibious so technically any mechanised army is a small fleet to boot as well.

The OC-D

Not every planet is at a point where air and space transport is commonplace. Places which have long term warfare would use naval ships and transports to save materials and fuel that are more needed for the airforce or planetary defences.
Even on hive worlds there'd be water navies of a sort to patrol the waterways from pirates etc. Waterways, seas are pretty poluted in such places but people who don't want to live in the hives or are on the run might prefer to hide out on various floating barges and ships that form alternative communites. Such places would be crime magnets and would need to be policed.

Theocd, amphibious does not mean sea going, I very much doubt a chimera could do more than float in relatively calm water such as crossing a shallow lake or landing on a beach from a landing craft.

One does need to think about 'what's the use' of a water-navy. Most of the strategic value of a navy still applies to a PDF. Carriors, battleships, etc would still be of tactical value.

However, for the invading force there is must less strategic value, as the positional and bombardment values of Naval forces are taken over by spaceborn craft. As noted, Imperial Navy Air support drop down from obital carriors, then climb back up to them when they're out of weaponry or low on fuel.

As for chimera's i've heard them being used for a D-day style beach invasion. But I'd agree they're likely not very sea-worthy. But a small bit of sea or a like would be fine for them.

As in the other thread of this type...

Please, some of you, think about why we use boats still in our own world.

Just because you can fly, it does not make it the most energy and resource efficient method of doing something.