Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

How do!

Something that’s been rattling around in my head for a while, and it’s in the title. What do we know of, from Codex or BL fiction, about planetside, ocean going Navies in 40K.

We know from Armageddon that Orks at least make use of submersible vessels. Orks being Orks, they’re very unlikely to be standardised in anyway. Other warships likely cobbled together according to need.

I’d guess the Eldar just rely on their anti-grav vehicles. Almost certainly very useful on calm water, but possibly not much cop in a storm. But, Eldar being Eldar, probably not the problem it seems, given Commorite and Craftworld are all about picking the right fight at the right time.

Imperial Guard? Much harder to say. I’d imagine we’re looking at early to mid 20th Century preferences. Honking great guns, slab like armour, and carriers for pin point attacks. Chimera are amphibious, but I’m not sure ocean worthy (flat keel, waves a difficulty). Definitely capable of coastal attacks though, as the waters are typically shallower and calmer. But, may be more of a PDF thing?

Astartes? Not a clue. Maybe not quite their jam. Though teleporting Terminators remain a nasty trick.

Tau? Like Titans, I’d imagine it’s all Air Power.

Do we have any reasonable canon sources exploring this further?

A terrestrial navy becomes inconsequential past a certain technological and cultural level.

The reason modern nations have navies isn't to combat piracy or protect trade lanes; it's another theatre of war against the other nations of Earth.

Eliminate the conflict between nations by unifying them into one nation, and the need for the types of military we have in the current day disappears.

You don't need a navy to stop landing craft when the landing craft are coming from space.
An ocean world might have patrol ships along with cargo vessels but that'll be a rarity.

I’m not entirely persuaded there.

Sure, the worlds we see tend to be held by a single galactic power, so you don’t need to worry about rival nations trying to kill your people or nick your resources.

But you do still have to worry about external invaders. Yes, they’ll almost universally be coming from orbit (Webway being the main but not necessarily only exception), but the seas/oceans of your world would still need patrolling to take out any naval forces of then enemy. And bit Bond Villain I’ll grant you, but a sea base is well within the capabilities of such invaders.

Plus, depending on ranges involved, having a traditional Navy can prevent the foe holding coastal areas, unless it has naval assets of its own to tackle yours.

One of the War of the Beast novels featured a wet water navy extensively as it was based on a water world. It featured similar clases of vessels as current navies do though the carriers were much bigger.

Did give much of a description for them? Like armament, tonnage, physical dimensions and that?

Other than a type of police cutter style vessel not that I recall, I will have a hunt and see if I can find details.

No, it's very much "This is a water world, there are boats".

And a navy is much less of an asset in the age of aircraft, drones, and cruise missiles, let alone teleportation, gravity weaponry, literal magic and super soldiers.

90% of modern engagements between nations are done on a scale where one side heavily out-techs the other which is why certain tactics can be used.
Can't really go into it much without delving into current events.

I think there are actually a lot of Imperial planets that have domestic wars going on, the Imperial government just ignores them as long as they don't interfere with tithe collection. And "cold war" style espionage and brinkmanship between the ruling houses is the rule rather than the exception, so they would certainly threaten each other with carriers and such.

But it probably is much more of a planetary thing than an Imperial thing, the big advantage to ships is that they can be huge since they float on water but that's negated if you need to haul them through space to the warzone. So the IG is probably limited to smaller submarine type craft, or they just construct floating ships on site and don't bother bringing them with when they leave.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
No, it's very much "This is a water world, there are boats".

And a navy is much less of an asset in the age of aircraft, drones, and cruise missiles, let alone teleportation, gravity weaponry, literal magic and super soldiers.

90% of modern engagements between nations are done on a scale where one side heavily out-techs the other which is why certain tactics can be used.
Can't really go into it much without delving into current events.

The fact that Emperor Titans and the Capitol Imperialis exist and are considered effective in the setting make any argument of this type silly. Whatever problem a floating warship has those things have a hundredfold, but they work in 40k.

Boats have an in-built benefit in that they float without the need to burn fuel to do so. We have aircraft in abundance and trains and everything, but the internet suggests that 80% of the world’s freight goes by sea.

In military terms, carriers allow an efficient use of materials that allows major airfields to be moved around to wherever they are needed without having to build new ones all the time.

As soon as you have carriers you need defence ships. Again, much more efficient to have floating support vessels rather than grav or constant aircraft support.

Also, while a planet may be under the nominal rule of one faction on the macro scale, noble houses are constantly at war with themselves and each other and modern piracy shows how few resources are required to take over a modern unprepared civilian vessel.

Regardless of space flight capabilities, if there are substantial bodies of water on a world it would be fundamentally obtuse not to have surface shipping. Now this is 40K, so I’m sure that dogmatic reasons would arise that could prevent a world from using maritime vessels, but I think it would be bizarre not to expect modern shipping across the imperium.

Titans are warmachines that can be deployed on any world to fight any foe.

Boats are a one trick pony.

Humans are pretty dependant on the wet stuff to survive, so a large proportion of human worlds are likely to have some kind of open water, and therefore it’s quite an important trick. From memory, Fenris has quite the maritime tradition.

Do the assault elements of the Imperial armed forces routinely need water vessels? Most likely not. Is there going to be billions of maritime vessels in trading houses and PDF armouries, Definately.

I think you would have three main types of seaships:

1. Cheap warships spammed by the noble houses of planets with a lot of coastline, used to enforce their rule over the planet itself. Not really capable of dealing with orbital bombardment, although there would be so many that blowing all of them up could take a while. The noble houses engage in limited warfare so it's rare for the ships to fight peers all-out, they're more for intimidation and compliance of the lesser powers.

2. Relatively small versatile submarines used by the Imperial Guard on mostly-aquatic worlds. These are light enough to be transported by ship so they can be equipped pretty well; they probably hold Chimeras for amphibious attacks. They rely on being deep underwater for protection.

3. Huge floating carriers fully equipped with void shields and point defense. Only useful in a long protracted war on a planet with a lot of coastline, because you're probably paying half the cost of a spaceship for something that can't fly and it takes years to build (even with imported parts). But if it's on a planet where it's guaranteed to see out its usefulness, like Armageddon or Cadia, that's still a good deal.

Well, aren't Chimeras Amphibious?

But more to the point, Why do you need a navy when every Custodes or Eldar vehicle can fly?

It seems like you don't need a navy when your tanks, bikes, and troop transports can fly alongside your aircraft.

Does that mean the Custodes battle-yacht isn't happening?

Boats only stop being useful when you can build vehicles weighing thousands of tons that can float along in planetary gravity wells without using energy sources that require large quantities of fuel. Custodes are such an inconsequentially small force that they have no need for their own large vehicles of any type. They will commandeer other imperial assets to do their heavy lifting. Same with Marines in general, noting the old story of a chapter fighting Tau underwater in land raiders.

At their height, the Eldar may well have moved beyond the need for military and cargo maritime vessels, but I’m sure they had pretty boats to play with. In their current state their use of webway portals probably negates the benefit of maritime vessels. See Pandora’s Star by Peter F Hamilton for a nice take on an heavily industrialised interstellar civilisation using portals for logistics.

I can see Tau being pragmatic enough to use maritime transport where it’s useful. While they have a lot of AG vehicles, they seem to need substantial energy sources to keep them flying.

Necrons teleport, not relevant.

Dark eldar portal it as well. Tyranids would just splice up aquatic versions of their bigger beasties as required.

Chaos is hard to say. Corrupted imperial worlds, see the imperial stuff. Daemon worlds are anyone’s guess.

I don’t know enough about Votann. High G worlds may make more use of maritime transport over flight.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Well, aren't Chimeras Amphibious?

But more to the point, Why do you need a navy when every Custodes or Eldar vehicle can fly?

It seems like you don't need a navy when your tanks, bikes, and troop transports can fly alongside your aircraft.

Waves, essentially. Big honking waves. Essentially, the terrain you’re repelling is ever shifting. I expect sufficient pilot skill and computerised scanning will help there. Waves aren’t exactly random after all. So if you’ve a a reliable way to model them, or simply have an auspex type thing which can show what’s coming next, you can compensate. But get it wrong? And a big enough wave could easily spell disaster.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I think you would have three main types of seaships:

1. Cheap warships spammed by the noble houses of planets with a lot of coastline, used to enforce their rule over the planet itself. Not really capable of dealing with orbital bombardment, although there would be so many that blowing all of them up could take a while. The noble houses engage in limited warfare so it's rare for the ships to fight peers all-out, they're more for intimidation and compliance of the lesser powers.

2. Relatively small versatile submarines used by the Imperial Guard on mostly-aquatic worlds. These are light enough to be transported by ship so they can be equipped pretty well; they probably hold Chimeras for amphibious attacks. They rely on being deep underwater for protection.

3. Huge floating carriers fully equipped with void shields and point defense. Only useful in a long protracted war on a planet with a lot of coastline, because you're probably paying half the cost of a spaceship for something that can't fly and it takes years to build (even with imported parts). But if it's on a planet where it's guaranteed to see out its usefulness, like Armageddon or Cadia, that's still a good deal.

I think that there's potential for larger ships in specific strategic roles - a large battleship equipped with anti-orbital defense lasers (we know they exist and their size, while large, is small enough that mobile versions exist, in the general range you could build a ship around) could work as a force projection/tactical denial unit that's rather hard to pinpoint for an invading force without exposure to return fire at least. Picture their use like the late-generation BOLOs, if you're familiar: you lie in wait and snipe stuff that comes over the horizon.

In a similar vein, large submarines, equipped with surface-to-orbit missiles, deathstrikes for ground targets and so on, could work as one-shot glass hammers, waiting for an invading force to become exposed (i.e. having moved valuable capital ships into orbit, or having deployed larger landers into supposedly safe bridgeheads), then popping up from submersion and delivering a salvo for maximum effect before being destroyed by return fire. Somewhat like the third-strike forces that existed during the cold war.

 Gert wrote:

You don't need a navy to stop landing craft when the landing craft are coming from space.
An ocean world might have patrol ships along with cargo vessels but that'll be a rarity.

Imagine if the Earth were to be invaded from space - you'd put anti-air and anti-space weapons on every bit of land to try and prevent the dropships from landing. Then you'd leave the whole of the Pacific Ocean bare and open for them to fly in with. They could bring down huge forces and now they've got a landing zone. Now they can fly super low or even bring sea craft of their own to strike at your undefended shorelines all along global coastlines.


Meanwhile armies like Tyranids can infest the air with spores so thick that regular flight is all but nearly useless.

Not to mention other invading forces might attempt to secure local air superiority.



I do agree the nature of ships would change, but the idea of a ship would remain on any world that has large bodies of open water; for the same reason that trenches, AA guns and a bunch of other things work in the setting for ground combat as well. Lets not forget a lot of 40K warfare is basically WW1-2 style warfare and ships were a huge part of those wars. From open conflict to transportation and invasion and more. Even if you've got hover-tech, having a ship that floats and doesn't require any power to do so is a big boon.


I suspect the only reason we don't see them is that Epic 40K and similar games has never really lasted long enough to get every faction fleshed out with huge forces for GW to go looking for a new theatre of war; and because in 40K they are basically took big to include beyond a dingy or terrain feature.
Meanwhile GW never pushed to return to Man O War and the sea-game for 40K was always in space with BFG.




Plus lets not forget many worlds are not safe. They have massive fauna and flora that are an active threat; they have rebellions and uprisings; they have waring factions; nobles fighting proxy wars over the land as they play "chess" from their vast super-castles in the sky. Heck we have whole worlds that are kept in the Medieval ages.
Any and all of those would have arguments for having fleets of ships. Be they patrol ships all the way up to huge carriers and battleships.

 Overread wrote:

 Gert wrote:

You don't need a navy to stop landing craft when the landing craft are coming from space.
An ocean world might have patrol ships along with cargo vessels but that'll be a rarity.

Plus lets not forget many worlds are not safe. They have massive fauna and flora that are an active threat; they have rebellions and uprisings; they have waring factions; nobles fighting proxy wars over the land as they play "chess" from their vast super-castles in the sky. Heck we have whole worlds that are kept in the Medieval ages.
Any and all of those would have arguments for having fleets of ships. Be they patrol ships all the way up to huge carriers and battleships.

Also, don't forget that the Imperium does a lot of things for entirely nonsensical reasons, and for theological/doctrinary reasons, and it has a huge variety in tech level, culture and customs. Not every world has access to technology that is generally common in the larger Imperium, and not all factors are present all the time. It's entirely possible that there are world where they build super-battleships to get around a ban on building "fortifications" that got put in place late M32, or where some wiseguy decided that see, there's this prohibition on having a standing army exceeding a million men, but there's no such ban on a navy, so technically these 12 million soldiers are just ratings, and that is good and proper...

Third, building and maintaining spaceships ought to be much, much more expensive than having surface ships, and your spaceships have other important stuff to do in-system and in the general vicinity... so while it's possible a spaceship would do an overall better job at a number of tasks, a surface-battleship might still be the second-best option for some of them and the more economical option.