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How close can you be to a planet to be able to do an emergency warp jump?

Majority rules, what people say the most will become fact unless someone has a bit of fluff to hand of corse.

Are you talking about the residual fallout of daemons and warp entities from the jump, or if it would destroy the planet from kinetic force?

Sorry let me clarify, I just meant what is the closest you can be to a planet to make a safe transistion into the warp for all, planet included.

I'd stay on the safe side and head for the edge of the system. Warp Storms can engulf huge swathes of space, a Warp jump near a planet might be catastrophic.

The fluff states you must be safely out side the gravity well of the sun.

But doesn't a sun's .gravity well extend to the outer edges of a solar system?

Yeah it does, as everything in system dances to the suns gravity. system edge is what I would say as well.

Generally from the fluff ships try to jump in/out of the edge the system as there is less chance of appearing in the wrong place or in debris or planetary body, there is no exact "safe" distance for warp jumps. and technically the sun's gravity effects everything in the universe just as an vastly diminishing rate

Heh, that is far, far more technical then 40k ever gets man.

The main issue with conducting a (departure) warp jump near to a planetary body, if I am not mistaken (and not confusing my sci-fis...) are due to the gravity wells of stellar bodies such as the sun and planets as they affect the translation into the warp. I recall reading this somewhere, I think it might have been either in the BFG book or one of the Gothic War novels.

Arrival-wise, clearly you want to avoid jumping into the sun or a planet...

My chapter fleet got into a rukus and need to do an imeadiate emergency warp jump from in-system. what I gather your saying is it's very dangerous but not impossible?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My chapter fleet got into a rukus and need to do an imeadiate emergency warp jump from in-system. what I gather your saying is it's very dangerous but not impossible?

Nothing is impossible with the warp. Whether you make it out at the other end, of course, is a completely different story.

Its possible, but very, very bad. Likely to leave the ship damaged or ya know..inside a star.

Cheers, I think they can live with a badly damaged ship instead of surtain death if they stay put. Plus it will give me a reason for them to be off the radar for a bit while they effect repairs for a do or die mission.

Thanks dakka, this was very helpful.

By badly damaged, we mean more or less a space hulk man. Death in battle be more merciful.

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
By badly damaged, we mean more or less a space hulk man. Death in battle be more merciful.

I can't imagine how pleasant it might be to have a planet's gravity well damage your ship's Geller Field as you enter the immaterium... Death in battle certainly beats daemonic possession...

Oh yes, an breached warp core is also very possible and not, I repeat Not a good idea for you and anything in say 100'000 km or so.

 Enigwolf wrote:

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
By badly damaged, we mean more or less a space hulk man. Death in battle be more merciful.

I can't imagine how pleasant it might be to have a planet's gravity well damage your ship's Geller Field as you enter the immaterium... Death in battle certainly beats daemonic possession...

Also the momentum and sudden introduction of planetary bodies and their gravity fields upon the ship could cause some tears in the hull, sucks if you're in that compartment

I would worry more over damage to the warp or or plasma drive, either of which dooms you. But yeah jumping even in the face of death from within a system is almost certainly a bad, bad death.

Doh! thanks guys for saving me Has anybody got a rough safeish distance I could work with please, but it has to be in-system.

If they are trying to bug out fast, at least have them speeding for the system edge. When time runs out, jump.

The Emperor protects, do it!

In system is more or less death. The closer you are to the edge the less damage you may inflict, but good chance any in system jump will be that ships last without years in a dockyard. You are gonna cripple it at lest and lose a good amount of crew, if you do not kill everyone on the ship.

It is a gamble and a bad one any how you look at it.

I'm going to have them unwillingly pushed away from orbit and go with what arcsquad said.

Sorry Barrywise but my lads don't believe the big E is a god, they rely on their bolter's to do that. But you can bet the crew will be praying like fek that he does.

The closest 'safe' jump with an Imperial ship was 2.3 million kilometres (Savage Scars) although it was an Inquisitorial vessel. A few sources (like Bleeding Chalice) have hinted at closer but no specific distances have been mentioned)

Next closest explicitly stated distance was tens of millions of miles as per the old 'Eye of Terror' novel, but that isn't terribly precise.

The Ravenor novels and a few others (like Rogue Star) have starships emerging 1-2 AU from the nearest habitable planet.

By and large, though, the bulk seem to favor billions of km (Chaos Child by Ian Watson, Space Fleet/Rogue Trader, Execution Hour, and a few others.) which seems to be te 'typical' distance for the vast majority of Imperial starships (particularily civilian) so it leads me ot believe some billions of km is the closest 'safe' distance.

If you have a good navigator (CF Wolfblade) and good technology (again Savage Scars) you can of course get closer.

Other races like the Orks have made closer warp jumps - in Rynn's World (which reproduced the events in the Index Astartes entry for the Crimson Fists) the Orks dropped out of the warp within 10 planetary diameters (about half a light second) to attack... but many of their ships were destroyed in the translation.

Based on that and my own vague guess, I'd say 1 AU of a planet is perhaps the closest you want to try entering/exiting the warp.

I believe it has to do with the gravity of the star effecting the opening of the warp rift. Gravity is theorized to be able to rip through dimensions, Black Holes possably having an exit point in another dimension due to the massive gravity, bla bla bla...

Plus the gravity could pull all sorts of nasty warp stuff into realspace.


Thats not to say you couldn't make a Warp jump in the middle of a system. it would just be an act of desperation or something like that.

This thread did make me want to dig up what Rogue trader RPG says on the topic( as it deals with ships heavily).

p. 318 RT
The safe point is indeed the edge of the star system. Activating the warp drives before hand if one is lucky just knocks you a 1000 or so light years off course . Most common result is the total destruction of the ship as it is torn apart by an unstable warp transit.


In other words never try it.

That just adds to the fun though! 1% chance of success or fiery death?

1% might be on the high end. But ripped apart by the warp..does not sound like a fast death.

Certainty of death or a 1% chance to live...I like those odd. I'l just have to figure a way to get them as close to the edge as possible before the jump, still going to be dangerous though.

Didn't the einstien do an in system jump. She was badly damaged before hand, but she made it. Was it luck, a good navigator or fluff armour do you think?