While I have read Relentless I haven't read much other material dealing with naval conflict in 40k. The question I'm left with (which Relentless does not address) is: Can ships detect one another while both are traversing the warp, and/or can they attack one another under these conditions?

I would have to go with yes to detection (souls shine brightly in the Warp, and ships contain tens of thousands of 'em) but now to combat (anything exiting the Gellar field would be torn apart by the Warp, or at least twisted beyond all practical use - and that's making the massive assumption that you can fire out of a Gellar Field without lowering it in the first place)

I'd agree with the above. If you'll recall, in Relentless, they were able to sens the "ghost ship" that was shadowing them while in the warp. I had read elsewhere, though I can't recall where, that most shipmen felt violence was a very bad idea to attempt to perpetuate while in the warp. Even if one ship were to saddle on up to the other and within their field to preform some kind of boarding action (that would be insane), I think most sane and simi-sane sailors have too great a fear of the warp to go tempting it through massive acts of violence while in it.

Except that there have been examples of ship-to-ship combat happening whilst in the Warp, such as in the Bloodquest comics.

The (excellent) BL novel "Execution Hour" features a duel in the warp between an Imperial Dictator class cruiser and a Chaos vessel (Murder class I think but not sure); it is a very dangerous environment and fought at ranges closer than in normal space due to nature of the warp.

DW

I'm just ending up is a position in my game where one ship will be pursuing another and the pursuers cannot wait for the ship they are chasing to emerge from the warp or it will be too late to get what they're after.

Traveller61 said:

The chaos ship was a Hades class heavy cruiser.

*Spoiler Alert*

The Horus Heresy novel Battle for the Abyss also has some examples of ship to ship combat in the Warp. The Furious Abyss drops what is essentually a warp mine (using living Psykers and their death) to cause turbulence and throw off pursuit. A member of the Thousand Sons also is able to stave off the threat of a warp-infected ship at one point as well.

Without knowing the effects of the Geller Field, it seems like certain types of objects or projectiles could be used or fired. Torpedos and shells from cannon may work... assuming they are not torn apart by the Warp itself en route to the target. I think energy discharges (lances, etc.) may be less reliable, but that is just a hunch.

Does battle fleet gothic address the issue at all?

No in general the warp never comes into play. The exceptions being daemon ship (which enter, and exit the warp), and warp rifts. Any ship in the warp in the prior example are not in play. (The daemon ships are visible as ghosts however...)

DocIII said:

Harumph! His Imperial Navy does NOT have time for such friffery.

Does battle fleet gothic address the issue at all?

Not in the actual game, at least.

@Topic

I don't think it can be done. IMO, regular combat and even regular navigation would cheapen the point of the Warp as a wholly different dimension where your best bet for survival is to not look too closely at anything outside the Geller Field. The approach of a fleet should be visible to trained psykers/sensors, but... direct combat almost necessitates an euclidean space/time relationship which I don't want to have a place in the Warp.

Starship combat within the Warp is a fun idea, and as such, I am convinced it is possible and does happen. But it should be difficult and dangerous. Here are some possible house-rules.

Weapons and Ranges: Due to the general instability of the Immaterium and general reality breakdown, all starship weapons have their ranges halved (round down). Additionally, any weapon fired at Long Range has it's damage halved (round down).

Void Shields vs. Gellar Field: While in the Warp, most of a starship's energy resources are dedicated to powering the Warp Engines and maintaining the Gellar Field. As such, the ship cannot maintain Void Shields while within the Warp. However, a Tech Use roll could be made to divert power from either weapons or engines to bring up the Void Shields for one round. If power is diverted from weapons, then the ship can make no Shooting Actions that round. If power is diverted from engines, the ship can make no Maneuver Action that round.

Vagaries of The Warp: The currents and eddies of The Warp are unpredictable and make maneuvering difficult to impossible. Whenever a ship makes a Maneuver Action, after the total number of VU involved in the maneuver has been determined, roll 1D5 and add that number of VU to the total number of VU that have been declared for the ship's movement. If, when rolling the D5 the roll should result in a natural "9" then the ship has been blow off course by a Warp current. Roll 1D10 and compare the result to the Scatter diagram on page 248 on the Rogue Trader core rule book. Change the ship's facing as indicated by the diagram before resolving the Maneuver action.

Warp Leakage: If any attack results in a Critical Hit, the target ship's Gellar Field fluctuates, causing the chaotic energies of the Immaterium to temporarily invade the ship. Roll on table 6-2 (Psychic Phenomena) and apply the result to the entire crew. Subtract any resulting Madness and Corruption points from Crew Morale, and subtract any Damage from Crew Population. The exact effects are left to GM discretion.

Hit and Run: A Hit and Run action, (or any boarding action) can only be declared against another starship within 1 VU of your own, the launches, fighters, and boarding craft flying to the target ship through the area where the two ship's Gellar Fields overlap. Increase the difficulty of the Hit and Run by 1 step.

Alluvian Est-Endrati said:

Or worse: they disappear from view only to reappear en route towards the ship that fired them in the first place.

Remember, outside the geller field, unreality and time/space fluctiations are common instances. Virtually ANYTHING could happen to any projectile trying to navigate outside the geller field.

If im the GM I will houserule that ship combat in the warp will be impossible. While psykers may sense that another shop is "nearby", it wouldn't be "nearby" in a logical proximity sense, but rather from an emotional and unreal sense. From my point of view, two ships could simply phase through eachother in the warp, because they don't exist in the same timeline any more.

If ship to ship combat were possible in the warp, then the warp would sort of lose it's appeal as an alternate universe based on chaos and pure energy, rather than the laws of physics.

Although warp combat is not mentioned in the rules per-say, I do believe that the Battlefleet Gothic fluff does say that boarding actions and normal combat is indeed possible in the warp but since it runs such a high risk of damaging the Gellar field, an inconvenience in realspace, a fate worse than death in the warp, it is seldom considered worth the risks.

Varnias Tybalt said:

A bit off topic, but that train of thought there sparked a great idea for a warp traveling event. If two ships were to phase trough one another, each existing in a different time and place, but with enough resonance tat, wile phasing trough one anouther, their realities start to mingle a bit producing a most unique ghost-ship/haunted decks situation out there... for both ships!

And my PC's have just set set out on what will be a 6 month voyage...

Graver said:

An extra twist: and when its over a few of the passengers and crew from one ship are left on the other and vice versa....

Graver said:

It's a pretty cool idea. I did something similar in Dark Heresy when the transport the Acolytes were using phased through a slow moving Ork 'ulk that was transitioning to the same destination

Detect ships yes(although not exact location),combat definatly no..Also keep in mind that not everything in black library novels is 40k canon.

Everything published by Games-Workshop and Black Library is cannon, except the things that aren't.

Well it all depends on your take on BL books. In Execution Hour they can engage in combat in space but at point blank range only and also have editional worries of Geller Field collapses, the Imperial Ship doesn't appear to be able to intentionally engage as the skills of Navigators (even the excelent navigator of The Lord Solar Macharius) do not seem to be able to let ships move through the Warp to a degree where they can effectively engage but the Chaos Demon Navigators can use the warp much more precisly.

Also in the Rogue Trader series they say on a couple of occasions when a ship enters the warp they are on thier own you could take this to mean that they wouldn't have any interaction in the warp.

Plus in most of the BL books (Rogue Trader, Horus Heresey and Execution Hour) the ships when they translate back into realspace often have to wait at the edge of a system while the rest of their fleet translate back into realspace. This can some times take a couple of days in the books (and I think in the Rogue Trader series at one point it takes weeks) although the ships may have left seconds behind each other.

I would think as a general rule ships could not engage in the warp but there may be exceptions such as Chaos ships deliberitley engaging in the warp.

Cadarnofjeal said:

Personally, I'd say that in order to engage in direct ship-to-ship combat in the Warp, you'd need to be close enough that your ship is brushing Gellar Fields with the enemy - brutally close ranges (to limit the amount of Immaterium your attacks have to pass through), and a dangerously unstable predicament to be in (because the Gellar Fields may disrupt one another, particularly during exchanges of fire)

Cadarnofjeal said:

I tend to rationalise that groups of ships moving to the same location at the same time try and stick as close together when they translate into the Warp, so they travel in a single Gellar Field bubble rather than several. As they're, for all practical purposes, moving as a single object in the Warp, they'll emerge simultaneously at the end of their journey. The problem then is the risk of ambush - the ships would be extremely close together and unshielded in the minutes after translation to realspace, as they reorient themselves and get their bearings, during which time, a few salvoes of torpedoes could rip them to pieces.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Either way you'd hav concerns when exciting the Warp. As individual ships you would have no knowledge of the loss of ships before you translated plus according to the BL books when you translate into real space your effectively blind for a few hours while the energy dissapates and you restart all your systems.

I understand where your coming from with the extended Geller field idea but I'm not sure if that would help as the geller field itself doesn't propel the ships through the warp (as far as I'm aware from books and other fluff) as Tau ships use gravity fields (although admitedly they act more like submarines) and the Orks use Space Hulks etc. and Tyranids use their Bio Ships (I dont know how they work in the warp but they do cause a shadow so maybe that has something to do with it) so they may not stay close enough together to keep the Geller buble encapsulating every ship. I've left out the Necrons, Eldar and Dark Eldar as they all use diferent forms of travell to the warp as far as I remember.

There doesn't appear to be a single word on the notion of Warp Combat in Rogue Trader . That said, I think it's a fun idea, one that GMs should explore. Not right away, but later when stuff really starts to suck for the players.

Detect? yes

Pinpoint? sort of (the warp does not follow Reality's rules)

Combat? its up to you [(see above) anything from realspace not contained in a geller field will be distorted and likely destroyed, all kinds of random fun could come of firing weapons in the warp. But, as the warp is reactive to the will of the living, you could argue that the will of the crew makes the intended things happen. and then they get eaten by huge friggin war creature that has now noticed them.]