Is it possible? Are there RAW that allow shooting surface objects from the orbit? They've got one macrobattery and one lance and the whale is coated in thick, very valuable shell that they want to sell, so they wouldn't like to damage it.

Battle Fleet Koronus has some notes on using macrocannons and lances against ground targets.

Lances oblirate about a square kilometer of area as I recall, and macrocannons about 4 square kilometers.

How big is the whale? Because I'd honestly expect orbital bombardment to atomize it.

It's just not that accurate, a macro-cannon strike isn't a predator missile it's a barrage of dozens of bullets the size of houses fired from what are probably railguns and the actual targeting computers are a semi-lost technology. If you just want to kill the whales it will work just fine because you'll kill everything else in the ocean within a hundred kilometers. If you want recoverable carcasses with neat little bullet holes in them you're not going to get that.

The way I put it to my players is this, if you want to take out the Hollywood sign with your macrobatteries you can, but just keep in mind you are going to level all of LA in the process.

Battlefleet Koronus has rules for Planetary Bombardment on page 133 and 135. It is overkill for ... pretty much everything.

Lances: "Anything directly hit by a lance is completely annihilated, with no chance of survival. However, the ensuing blast wave affects an area of roughly one square kilometre, setting buildings afire, boiling away bodies of water, and leaving little behind but ashes and molten stone."

Macrobatteries: "Like a lance, each separate shell or energy blast affects a relatively small area of little more than a few dozen metres across, and anything directly hit is completely destroyed. However, the sheer volume of fire and the ensuing kiloton explosions, raging plasma fires, and hellish blast waves affects everything within ten square kilometres."


You'd basically be hunting a butterfly with a multi-melta.

The slightly interesting question is how does an ocean negate the force of impact from your bombardment. There aren't any rules governing it, so you're free to add your own interpretation if you'd like. Keep in mind that Warhammer 40K ships are much, much larger than most other Sci-Fi ships, so presumably their firepower is also much, much larger. Also 40K scanners are much worse than what Sci-Fi usually portrays, and there's no such thing as a "life signs" scanner, so you can't detect where in the ocean the whales are. Statistically after a few hours of orbital bombardment you've probably hit one though.

Well on second thought it might actually work, think fishing with dynamite just scaled way the hell up. Still not how I'd approach it though I figure what I'd do is build a big **** hook and cable out of adamantium, bait it and hang it off a halo barge.

Even a regular blue whale weighs about 6 times as much as a halo barge can carry, just sayin'.

The closest you could come to hunting whales with a voidship, I guess, would be boiling the oceans and watching what floats up. As long as the widespread ecological damage doesn't matter to you, it *could* work.

Incidentally, "boil the oceans" is one of my favourite orders to give.

Even a regular blue whale weighs about 6 times as much as a halo barge can carry, just sayin'.

Not once it's been the target of an orbital bombardment for a number of hours.

The closest you could come to hunting whales with a voidship, I guess, would be boiling the oceans and watching what floats up. As long as the widespread ecological damage doesn't matter to you, it *could* work.

Incidentally, "boil the oceans" is one of my favourite orders to give.

I have no idea why Rogue Trader introduced the concept of colonies. They're just giant targets for some random person with a void ship that you've pissed off to take care of over the course of a few hours.

..... They're just giant targets for some random person with a void ship that you've pissed off to take care of over the course of a few hours.

That is exactly why they are useful. Think of all that time and effort the PC's put into it, and now they pissed off the wrong (or right) person/thing/creature/xeno/dynasty/administration/group. It gives them something to care about, and for you to toy with (as a GM).

 

Battle Fleet Koronus has some notes on using macrocannons and lances against ground targets.

 

Lances oblirate about a square kilometer of area as I recall, and macrocannons about 4 square kilometers.

 

How big is the whale? Because I'd honestly expect orbital bombardment to atomize it.

It's Massive. It has about 90 wounds with 16TB and 5 Armour. Should it be hunted with conventional weapons it may last forever to kill one in the depths of the ocean.

And I don't think the seneschal would agree to the use voidship weapons. The turtle whale's shells can't bear any signs of damage if they should remain valuable and this would be inevitable.

I think they should observe them and gather info. Once per seventeen years the great whale turtles of Phobos crawl out of the ocean and lay eggs in sand. They're critically vulnerable during this time and easy to hunt.

I think they should observe them and gather info. Once per seventeen years the great whale turtles of Phobos crawl out of the ocean and lay eggs in sand. They're critically vulnerable during this time and easy to hunt.

Too bad their research completely failed to uncover the fact that this is also when the incredibly deadly acid spitting razor eagles emerge from the mountain to hunt whale turtle eggs, or anything else that interferes with their precious hunt.

Even a regular blue whale weighs about 6 times as much as a halo barge can carry, just sayin'.

Not once it's been the target of an orbital bombardment for a number of hours.

Hey, once it fits in an ashtray it no longer counts as a whale.

As for "why colonies", I've been thinking that myself. Many, many times. I suppose you could say that the odds of *finding* someone's colony are pretty small, but the way I've done it myself is to allow players to buy ship components for their colonies.

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WARNING: House Rule Tangent Below

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We've had colonies in my game since long before SoI, and we never bothered with the rules from that book, but to put it in simple terms: colonies get morale, population, hull points and armour based on size and composition, and can buy stuff like extra armour and void shields, but no weapons. Infinite space, power limited only by how many plasma generators the players feel like buying, and about a Word page's worth of other stipulations. Secondly, I make system defense ships and space stations available for much less than actual voidships.

The one thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to keep people from nova cannoning planets from a zillion void units away.

I think they should observe them and gather info. Once per seventeen years the great whale turtles of Phobos crawl out of the ocean and lay eggs in sand. They're critically vulnerable during this time and easy to hunt.

Too bad their research completely failed to uncover the fact that this is also when the incredibly deadly acid spitting razor eagles emerge from the mountain to hunt whale turtle eggs, or anything else that interferes with their precious hunt.

I'm sure that even Sir David Attenborough would think about this idea for a while and then say: "This **** is good".

This makes me think how life of the imperials would be easier if they had David(us) Attenborough(us) making movies about space animals and their customs.

It's Massive. It has about 90 wounds with 16TB and 5 Armour. Should it be hunted with conventional weapons it may last forever to kill one in the depths of the ocean.

Yep. If targetted with macro cannons or even lances, it's vapour.

It would be very much in keeping with the average Rogue Trader's style to show up at some hunting club, tip a vase of ashes on the table and ask if anyone would like to inspect his kill of the continent of some Death World somewhere.

Not ashes from the continent. Ashes OF the Continent.

It's stuff like this that makes me think my group's being all sane and bloodthirsty.

It's stuff like this that makes me think my group's being all sane and bloodthirsty.

They're lulling you into a false sense of security.

Sorry but am I the only one that are thinking on strapping a belt with a few pounds of melta bombs and some promethium to boot and then just take a step back.

In other news, why have none of the players thought of using poison? Order a big barrel of the stuff, smear some krill on it or whatever such a turtle whale eats and wait a while or two. Or why have they not swooped down, pulled one out of the sea and then let it hang to dry, pulling it up into the upper atmosphere if needed, maybe is it a beast of some sort, but I do not think that such a thing can survive without air and water for long

The biggest problem is that it lives in the ocean, quite deep actually. That brings me to question: is aquila lander capable of diving?

Still, water is full of adamantine-jawed sea-pyranhas that feed on the whale turtle shells. But hey. It wouldn't be fun if it would be easy.

I don´t really think that they are... but are that not what the rouge trader hired all his tech priests for?

If they want to rebuild one... no wait that would be heresy. I mean if they want to upgrade one, can I not really see what there stops them for doing so.

By the way, adamantine jawed fish? Why do they bother with the turtles when they can fish adamantine out of the ocean O_o And if none of the players gets the idea to try to make a chainsword with those fish teeth (if they are like the ones on a shark), could you then please hit one of them for me? Thank you in advance

I can only really echo what has already been said: No.

Macrocannon fire would saturate a large area of ocean and end up killing lots of sea life, but wouldn't leave much to be salvaged afterwards.

Lance strikes would evaporate a sizable chunk of the ocean and wipe out any trace of creatures that happened to be in the blast zone.

Torpedoes don't really work against planetary targets (the ship to ship torpedoes in the books we have access to would just burn up on entry) but even if they could they would be as devastating as a lance strike.

Nova cannon.... don't even go there, it doesn't work against planetary targets for much the same reasoning as torpedoes but if it did it would be crazy powerful and not leave anything to be salvaged.

Strike Craft - these might actually be your best bet... if you could somehow coax the whale to the surface, you could call in a strike craft for a precision strike, but you'd need someone on the ground relaying targeting data to your carrier in orbit AND it's still gonna cause damage to the shell.

I don't really understand why your group would think that an orbital strike would be the best way to kill something WITHOUT damaging its hide/shell etc...

Water is very good at transmitting concussion damage. While the turtles within 10 square km might be broken hulks, the ones dozens of km away might die of internal organ rupture without destroying the shells. Otherwise, sufficient laser strikes to vaporize large areas of the oceans should raise the temperature of the surrounding waters enough to cook the turtles...

Shoot AROUND it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure?

I am going to have to try this. Somehow.

It's a big ocean, right? So you have lots of chances to try different solutions...

You identify an ocean world, and call all your fellow Rogue Traders to participate in the Expanse's biggest clam bake! Everyone gets a section of orbit and twelve hours of "cooking" time. Whomever produces the most edible dish, wins!