lcmiracle wrote:
I ways thought they (Followers of Chaos) would use pre-heresy pattern warships, and commission the daemon possessed vessels within the Eye of Terror (was there a daemon forge world of sorts? Somehow the name escapes me ATM). However, as you've mentioned, renegade SM chapters turned to chaos, such as Red Corsairs would use later patterns for obvious reasons.

Writers tend to write things based on what they know, hence the many contradictions amongst the BL books; besides, using pre-heresy warships further reinforce the Forces Chaos as Elderly Abominations, with their ancient and twisted appearances.

However, it's certainly within the realm of rationality that Chaos Warbands would commandeer Imperial vessels, or raid worlds for such resources. It may not be so practical however, as it'd require massive resources input to achieve such goals (the formal being in risk of losing the raider's own vessels, the latter could quickly escalate into full-scale planetary warfare a warband can ill afford).

Moreover, It'd be difficult to put together a considerably large fleet through such means. Thus it could be much more cost-effective for warbands to just raid worlds for slaves, and sell them for warships in the eye of terror, or some secret pirate base (not sure if the latter is possible tho). Take this with a grain of salt.

jareddm wrote:
The vast majority of chaos ships are not pre-heresy. The Murderer, the Slaughter, the Repulsive, etc. All those types of ships were designed post-heresy with a fatal flaw in their warp drives that led to them being easier to corrupt. It is this class of ships that we commonly see chaos using.

 Psienesis wrote:
Remember that a lot of ships in the Chaos armadas are renamed once they "go over". So what is called, by the forces of Chaos, a "Rapetastic-class Battleship" might have been a "Lunar-class cruiser" six months ago.

 Psienesis wrote:
Well, you know that no Chaos Captain or Traitor Naval Officer is going to tool around the Eye in an "Emperor-class Battleship" (apparently, just saying the name is painful to Daemons, if we want to take Abnett's writings into account). They're going to rename the ship itself and, if they have a few (a super-lucky defection, let's say) probably rename it to a "Hellfire-class" or a "Corpsegod-class" or something particularly Chaosy, because that's how they roll.

I doubt, given the naming patterns of other Imperial vessels, that the pre-Traitorous "Murder-class cruiser" that are now a part of the fleets of Chaos had similar class designations when part of the Imperium. Doesn't really fit the naming pattern of other Loyalist ships.

TiamatRoar wrote:Gotta wonder what the Imperium was thinking when they dubbed one the Despoiler class.

 minigun762 wrote:
I know that hard facts for the Imperial Navy and 40k warships are hard to come by, however I'm looking for a rough idea of how often or likely Chaos forces will capture and use IN capital ships.

With more limited ship building resources in the EoT, I'd imagine that pirating ships would be mandatory but most texts refer to ancient heresy era ships being used, not more modern ones.

Only two examples I can think of are the SW cruiser and Huron and the light cruiser from Retribution Hour.

jareddm wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:Gotta wonder what the Imperium was thinking when they dubbed one the Despoiler class.

A number of these ships came into service around M35-M36, during the height of the Age of Apostasy, and Goge Vandire was particularly famous for his...rather savage and fear-mongering practices. The Pre-Sabastion Thor period and the height of the Ecclesiarchy's power was a very different place in the Imperium.

 Psienesis wrote:

jareddm wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:Gotta wonder what the Imperium was thinking when they dubbed one the Despoiler class.

A number of these ships came into service around M35-M36, during the height of the Age of Apostasy, and Goge Vandire was particularly famous for his...rather savage and fear-mongering practices. The Pre-Sabastion Thor period and the height of the Ecclesiarchy's power was a very different place in the Imperium.

While that's true (about Vandire), it still doesn't line up with other, still-Loyalist vessel classes of the same period, with names like "Defiant", "Endeavor", "Dauntless" and so forth. While I suppose it's perfectly possible that there was an Imperial class of ship called the "Murder", the list of Loyalist ship-classes does not list it anywhere. You'd think that, if there were a Loyalist "Murder-class cruiser" that a few fleets in some backwater sector would still be sporting a few... the Reservists of the Imperial Navy, making do with vehicles the Imperial Navy mothballed 50 years ago.

 minigun762 wrote:
I see your point Exergy but I don't think that component differences would yield different naming conventions.

The reason is it's often mentioned that ships made at Forgeworld A can be radically different than those from Forgeworld B but both retain the same class title.

That said, the conversation has shifted some and I wanted to get a better idea of "Loyalist" ships in traitor hands.
Looking at this another way, would you agree that Chaos fleets are equal parts ancient, captured or homegrown vessels? Or would the proportions be different.

Iracundus wrote:


Given the fact the Imperium has existing ship classes with class names like Tyrant or Dominator, a class called Murder doesn't really stand out as unusual.

 Psienesis wrote:
I would think that the current Chaos fleets are more-heavily skewed towards "ancient" ships (Heresy-era and a few millennia post-Heresy) in their battleships, grand cruisers and other capital ships, with a growing number of escort and frigate vessels being of more-recent construction, as getting 25,000 people to follow a charismatic, Chaos-aligned Naval Captain is much easier than expecting 150,000 people on a larger vessel to do the same thing. More safeguards, more personnel to question the direction the Captain is taking things, more likely presence of Naval Commissars, etc.

TiamatRoar wrote:

Iracundus wrote:


Given the fact the Imperium has existing ship classes with class names like Tyrant or Dominator, a class called Murder doesn't really stand out as unusual.

Murder is yada yada yada and all, but... Despoiler? That's like, one step away from naming a battleship, the "Horus" class and two steps away from naming it the "Chaos" class.