So, various ships might have various qualities of warp engines. Depending on whom you ask, for instance, the Milosav Warp Engine is almost a given, if you are getting that degree of input into your ship, or you can find one, later, but many other ships, certainly most NPC ones, won't have these, willing to use the "potentially profane" air of them to disqualify their use; even the most "need for speed" Navy vessel, for instance, will probably not use one. Other NPC ships (yours COULD, if you have a reason), might have the Klenova (I think that's the one with no Navigator), which will also probably affect your voyage. The point is this:

You are a part of a group of ships, and want to arrive in approximately the same place, at approximately the same time, but one, or more, of the vessel involved have more "typical" drives, while you might have the Milosav, or something. Can you do something between the ships, perhaps "slow down" the Milosav, so that it doesn't arrive way ahead of its partners, and then have to be safe, alone, for however long, till the rest catch up? Can the separate Navigators group-plot, so the fleet stays together?

Ex: The Exalted Wyrm has a "typical" Sternov 2 drive, normal for a full on Cruiser (I'm not sure why I didn't go silly there, with the rest of the ship being what it is, other than not wanting more frequent Tzeentch's Witnesses knocking on my door, but that's hat I did), but her escort vessel, the Wyvern , has a Milosav G-616.b Frigate Drive, since it is also a "gopher ship" for the Qel-Drake Dynasty. When the ships pair-jump into the Warp, it might be a bit nice, even, for the escort to come out first, and be sure all is well, but if she has to survive, alone, for several days, till her command cruiser arrives, with all its firepower, that could be a problem. Can the Wyvern's Navigator sort of keep the foot off the gas, to more synchronize their parallel arrivals? Or is the plodding cruiser just SOL? I COULD just up it to having a Milosav, too, and it's even smaller, compared to the Sterlov 2, but I'm just curious. Once your groups have started to move in-fleet, so to say, or you have an escort vessel, how do you keep together, warp shenanigans not withstanding, so that the ships are both there, to support one another? Every ship you get can't come stock with the Milosav, I assume, and finding more of the partially proscribed modules shouldn't be super easy, I would think.

Kind of nice that the Tau figured out carrying racks, on their bigger ships, but the Imperium doesn't seem to make use of any such technology, even though they do have the resources to team up a cruiser with several raiders, or a frigate, where such might stretch the Rogue Trader's wallet. Maybe full warp travel would be too much of a strain, while the hooks work for warp-skipping.

Well, in the end, the Immaterium is "just" another plane of existence. The meaning of things such as distance or time may be skewed there, but in some form it still exists.

Thus, if you imagine the Warp to function like hyperspace in Babylon 5 or witchspace in Elite, all you'd have to do would be to stay in formation, which means slowing down all ships to the Warp velocity of the slowest vessel in the fleet. I'd assume that such manoeuvres are a lot trickier than just flying by yourself, for whilst the lead ship may only have to navigate based on the Astronomican, other ships in the fleet will have to navigate based on the flagship.

There would be a notable risk of getting lost if the ships drift too far from one another -- once they lose sight from one another, they may never find each other again, as the ever-shifting nature of the Immaterium would increase displacement to such a degree that the ships may well have entered the Warp at entirely different locations.

At the same time, traveling too close to each other may result in catastrophic collisions, especially if a "dimensional tremor" in the Warp ends up pushing one vessel into another.

As to the nature of maintaining formation, there are multiple possibilities: With the ships being required to maintain line of sight and remain within a few hundred meters of one another, it could be up to the regular helmsmen to steer their ship in such a way as to maintain a relative position to the Navigator-steered flagship. This sounds like the more sensible option, as it would not require the Navigators to be on their posts 24/7; only the flagship's Navigator would have to check their course every now and then. Alternatively, perhaps the Navigators of the other ships in the flotilla have to "lock on" to the psychic presence of the flagship's Navigator, and use him/her as a beacon to steer the rest of the fleet and maintain formation.

I could see a lot of potential in terms of "fleet-based Tests" here -- only the flagship would have to make the usual Warp travel Tests, but voluntarily slowed down to the engine rating of the slowest vessel. All the other ships in the fleet would instead have to test for maintaining formation. On a success, they will emerge from the Warp at the same time and place as the flagship. During the journey, all Warp Travel Encounters use the roll made by the flagship's Navigator. Also keep in mind that, obviously, all ships in the group still need their own Warp engines operational, even if they don't roll for Warp travel themselves. In effect, the Navigator rolls for the entirety of the fleet; his or her luck on the dice will have consequences for all ships in the group.

If a vessel fails the formation Test, on the other hand, it will immediately have to roll a standard Warp travel Test with its own engine rating and a -10 penalty, and use that result to determine their new arrival time. Hope you don't get separated!

Agreed this shouldn't be to hard as its rife within the fiction fleets moving together but the question of if its the navigator of the helmsmen doing the heavy lifting would be interesting to resolve

Yeah, I'm not sure, either. My own take on the fluff is just that, my take, and my knowledge is far from complete; other people have read things I've posted here, so that's proven but my take on things is that, when the ship is in realspace, the Void Master, or some other helmsman, is steering the vessel, either while seconding the sensors, or with some augur-operator calling out the minutia they need, while Navigator is picking through charts, playing games, or just resting from some previous warp voyage, and when the ship translates into the warp, the Navigator takes over the steering, while the vista ports are all buttoned up (and I'm not sure how mundane augurs even work in the warp), and the Void Master takes a break, plays some games, or just rests after some strenuous piloting, and battling. The arcane devices often used to describe the Navigator's station seem like they could override/slave into the helmsman's controls, and the Navigator see, steer, and plot, all on their own, adding to the description of pure exhaustion they describe a Navigator having, post-voyage. If that is how it works, however, then the Void Master isn't watching the lead ship; either the other ship's Navigator can see it, in the warp, they can "see" its eddies, in the current, or they can "see" some small, psyker-light, such as the lead ship's own Navigator, or an Astropath (the light of the Astronomicon is, for the most part, psyker-light, just so big, and bright, as to be visible so far away, but I'd think it wouldn't take much for ships to see each other, when already so close as to be traveling in formation, so no Emperor needed (some folks have even described creating mini-beacons, with collections of psykers doing the same thing, but on a smaller scale, for more local steering). Otherwise, I'd think that the lead ship's Void Master would have to be calling out the constant course corrections, fed to him by the Navigator, and sending them to the other helmsmen, throughout the fleet, who'd be flying practically blind. Again, we know that they do move as fleets, but I'm not entirely sure how. I do like the above stuff, though.

You know what would be really 40k?

If all ships in a formation would be anchored to each other using huge chains with links the size of a small house, the helmsmen having to steer the vessels blindly with nothing but the response from these chains to go by.

some folks have even described creating mini-beacons, with collections of psykers doing the same thing, but on a smaller scale, for more local steering

Now that you mention it, that must've been how Bucharis moved his fleets during the Plague of Unbelief, when Terra was surrounded by a Warp Storm and people thought the Emperor was no more.

Now that you mention it, that must've been how Bucharis moved his fleets during the Plague of Unbelief, when Terra was surrounded by a Warp Storm and people thought the Emperor was no more.

Which is impressive considering he was able to take over two whole segmentums and make the lore for Battlefleet Bakka so contradictory at the same time.

Which is impressive considering he was able to take over two whole segmentums and make the lore for Battlefleet Bakka so contradictory at the same time.

I always wondered where the Battlefleet Bakka came from.

I've also always assumed close formations and slower speeds when moving squadrons. A few hundred meters seems too close when considering it take 10s of thousands of miles to turn a ship. One slight miscalculation and you get to watch your doom take place for the next hour. Still, they have to travel tight to stay together and that means moving slow enough to avoid collisions.

Incidentally, Spelljammer used that same concept and I admit no shame in using their numbers for fleet maneuvers through the phlo. It explains aptly why escorts (IMU) outnumber capital ships 2:1.

Which is impressive considering he was able to take over two whole segmentums and make the lore for Battlefleet Bakka so contradictory at the same time.

We are in the year M36. All of Segmentum Pacificus is under Bucharis' occupation... All of the Segmentum? NO! A small fortress-monastery is still desperately putting up resistance against the Guardsmen. Thanks to a magic potion that is brewed by the Wolf Priest, Ranek Icewalker, the Space Marines are virtually invincible. Bucharis realizes that he will not be able to achieve anything by force, and even the spy that he sends into the Fang can't do anything. So Bucharis has the Wolf Priest Ranek kidnapped in order to discover the secret behind the magic potion. But Ragnar and Haegr are quick to head off to the enemy camp to rescue Ranek.

-- synopsis for RAGNAR THE SPACE WOLF, in amphitheatres across the Imperium soon!

Iamsorryihadto

Don't you mean Asterix?

I always wondered where the Battlefleet Bakka came from.

I've also always assumed close formations and slower speeds when moving squadrons. A few hundred meters seems too close when considering it take 10s of thousands of miles to turn a ship. One slight miscalculation and you get to watch your doom take place for the next hour. Still, they have to travel tight to stay together and that means moving slow enough to avoid collisions.

Incidentally, Spelljammer used that same concept and I admit no shame in using their numbers for fleet maneuvers through the phlo. It explains aptly why escorts (IMU) outnumber capital ships 2:1.

My love of D&D appreciates the Spelljammer reference, but I don't recall traveling between crystal spheres, looking out into the void between driving one irrevocably mad. One could watch the ships in Spelljammer, but most people in 40, or my take on it, can't even "look out a window", while the ship is in warp, or they'll die inside. it probably shouldn't even be so complicated as I might be making it, but withvarious Navigators, or possibly various skill, and unique charts, plus the fickleness of dice, throwing in the "this ship also cuts travel times in half" just seem to make the whole thing a headache, and i don't know if the Milosav could "turn it down", functioning more like a typical warp drive, and forgo the more frequent random encounters, on account of not pushing the proscribed tech to its silly limits? I am glad that the wizard is cool, in Spelljammer, though, giving spell essence, or life, to spelljam the ship. Haven't messed with Spelljammer/Planescape in way too long.

I don't recall spelljamming ships being visible to each other, either in voidspace or the phlo. When they came into range of something a particular size they just dropped out of spelljamming speeds, so that made fleet maneuvers difficult. Ships had to calculate identical trajectories but couldn't travel together or they'd knock each other out of spelljamming speeds. I see 40k ships as being visible to each other in the warp, because I've heard of enough instances of synchronizing geller fields together, towing wrecks and stations through the warp, and even boarding actions in the warp, so this leads me to believe there's the possibility of detection, maneuver, and therefore formations.

I do like the idea of psychic beacons, but that also changes the paradigm of psykers on board. They become an absolute necessity to ships traveling in formation, and that means Free Captains impressed for Imperial service during wartime would have to be allocated some psykers if they are to partake in fleet maneuvers.

I'll run another spelljammer sometime in the future but only after I find more appropriate rules, or retire and write my own. There's absolutely no way I'll ever again run something as complicated as D&D 3.x, and I'm not going to buy yet another version x.0 of TSR/Hasbro/WotC rules and 47 supplements. Btw, spelljammer did have void sickness, though it wasn't anything like the 40k variety, though each DM was always free to reinterpret the darkness of their multiverse.

I do like the idea of psychic beacons, but that also changes the paradigm of psykers on board. They become an absolute necessity to ships traveling in formation, and that means Free Captains impressed for Imperial service during wartime would have to be allocated some psykers if they are to partake in fleet maneuvers.

Shouldn't they have some, anyways? Any ship trading via Warp travel needs a Navigator, and the distances involved necessitate psychic communication -- those who don't need/have a psyker are probably incapable of "keeping up with the fleet" anyways.

Absolutely offtopic , but I can't stay away :

I'll run another spelljammer sometime in the future but only after I find more appropriate rules, or retire and write my own. There's absolutely no way I'll ever again run something as complicated as D&D 3.x.

Spelljammer was part of AD&D, AFAIR. As for the alternative rules - Hackjammer?

>>>> no way I'll ever again run something as complicated as D&D 3.x.

L O L except RT, DW, DH, BC, OW, etc....

but I think the navigators can see into the future, so they can therefore also see the way to stay together,

barring unusual happenstance.

Well Lynata, I was thinking specifically of those Free Captains who make the short jumps on the slow boats. They'd already have to be allocated navigators in order to keep up with the fleet. That brings up the question of which is more rare, Astropaths or Navigators? Id'alwasy assumed the latter but never tried to crunch the numbers.

And Jargal, the Spelljammer fan base out there has kept oodles of webpages for conversions of every version of D&D that has come out since AD&D. For that matter, so did the Birthright fan base.

And Egyptoid, no way can you compare the talents in RT to the menagerie of feats in D&D 3.x. I take that back. OIa and MVIb type stars can be compared, so why not? Still, the two systems are two beasts of a different scale.

I always wondered where the Battlefleet Bakka came from.

Yeah, there's this glaring issue with it: . The Big Gun Lobby were the ones purged as heretics along with the rest of the battlefleet due to Bucharis having seized control of the segmentum fortress (Bakka) and them embracing heresy and fighting the forces of the Emperor including the Space Wolves. So there would have been some issue with them also having the support of the inquisiton at the same time as they were fighting against the Imperium.

At least on the scale required to have an entire sector fleet declared heretics, anyway. The space wolves would have objected, if nothing else.

Well Lynata, I was thinking specifically of those Free Captains who make the short jumps on the slow boats. They'd already have to be allocated navigators in order to keep up with the fleet. That brings up the question of which is more rare, Astropaths or Navigators? Id'alwasy assumed the latter but never tried to crunch the numbers.

Easily the latter, I'd say. Every single planet has at least several, split up between various Imperial Adepta and the nobility. Then the space stations, and every single starship. Navigators you only really need one per vessel. Plus, just about every psyker who passes inspection on the Black Ships can be trained to become an astropath, whereas Navigators have to interbreed with themselves, else they don't pass on the navigator gene.

As for those short 5LY jumps -- would a ship committed to such tiny distances even be equipped for longer voyages?

What does Bakka have to do with Bucharis?

Also, at that time in Segmentum Pacificus, Bucharis effectively was the Imperium. That was his entire game.

What does Bakka have to do with Bucharis?

Also, at that time in Segmentum Pacificus, Bucharis effectively was the Imperium. That was his entire game.

The Fleet Bucharis wasted attacking the Space Wolves was Bakka. This was in Tempestus. The Young School would have been effectively sided with the Space Wolves (and, IMHO is probably where the Wolves got that Emperor class BB from). Supposedly, they beat the Young School in a mass fleet battle that... sort of wouldn't have happened if they were all busy attacking the Fang at the same time.

Hmm, that doesn't seem to correspond to the codex fluff I know:

"Cautious of approaching too close to Earth until his power war total, Bucharis forged his bloody path ever northwards. To the south, he stopped just short of the Navy base at Bakka, fearing that Sehalla's fleet would draw unwelcome attention from the squadrons stationed there."

-- 2E C:SoB p. 39

But why would parts of the Navy side with the Space Wolves, anyways? There's a chain of command, so it'd take something rather extraordinary for loyal officers to go renegade, betraying their oath as well as their faith for ... what?

Also .. a Naval battleship in Marine hands? That sounds like a huge breach of the post-Heresy reforms. Where is that from? >_>

Hmmm. I've heard people speak in numbers of 1 psyker/1 billion population. That means 1-4 million psykers for a human population of 1-4 quadrillion. Many never see Terra. Most of those get eaten for breakfast by the Emperor. I don't see there being enough Astropaths for several per planet and space station and at least 1 per starship. And according to our glorious rules interpreters, FFG, it takes an Astropath Transcendant to lead a choir, and only a choir can project a message far enough to be useful. That few million gets cut down quickly.

~100 Naval ships per sector and approx. 5k sectors means 0.5 million Imperial Navy vessels, but they only comprise 10% of the total, so that's 5 million ships. I don't see there being enough to go around, Astropaths or Navigators.

There is definately a need for rules defining squadron movement through the warp, and it would appear that only the lead ship must have a Navigator. Of course, this means that losing track of that lead ship is deadly...at best.

Well Lynata, I was thinking specifically of those Free Captains who make the short jumps on the slow boats. They'd already have to be allocated navigators in order to keep up with the fleet. That brings up the question of which is more rare, Astropaths or Navigators? Id'alwasy assumed the latter but never tried to crunch the numbers.

And Jargal, the Spelljammer fan base out there has kept oodles of webpages for conversions of every version of D&D that has come out since AD&D. For that matter, so did the Birthright fan base.

And Egyptoid, no way can you compare the talents in RT to the menagerie of feats in D&D 3.x. I take that back. OIa and MVIb type stars can be compared, so why not? Still, the two systems are two beasts of a different scale.

My opinion would be that Astropaths are more common; as rare as they might seem, the Imperium actively harvests a vast number of psykers, and of those who don't become protein shake for the Emperor, or amplification for His beacon, I'd think more are "strong, but a little shaky, so let's soul bind them, and have them stick to cell service" than are "let's train these to fight, instruct, and then we'll hand them off to the Guard." Psykers are common enough that the Imperium has to harvest them, and they can just "spontaneously mutate" from any society, but my take on Navigators is that their mutation is double-recessive, so only two Navigators make one, and they don't live many places. You shouldn't accidentally get more Navigators, especially with them mutating so much, potentially, that they may no longer be fertile, or physically designed to still carry a child to term. Whole spans of their lives, they might not be contributing to their procreation.

I remember some of the Spelljammer stuff, and the Birthright stuff, too. Was also glad someone tried to tackle Dark Sun; it was a weird, but interesting, at least to me, concept for D&D. Sort of wish some of my games had gotten to use some of these assorted alternate settings, though Forgotten Realm will ALWAYS be my favorite campaign setting.

Yeah, comparing these to each other would be like comparing Star Wars Revised to Saga, and/or then to Edge/Age/Destiny; the only real similarity is "Star Wars". Should look into Stargate SG-1, though. As d20 goes, while fun, it was worse, and more complicated than even d20 Modern, which I found to be total garbage. Oh well, sometimes a rules change is cool. New Star Wars is weird enough I might never totally get it, but D&D 5e has some promise, if I can ever figure it out.

Hmm, that doesn't seem to correspond to the codex fluff I know:

"Cautious of approaching too close to Earth until his power war total, Bucharis forged his bloody path ever northwards. To the south, he stopped just short of the Navy base at Bakka, fearing that Sehalla's fleet would draw unwelcome attention from the squadrons stationed there."

-- 2E C:SoB p. 39

But why would parts of the Navy side with the Space Wolves, anyways? There's a chain of command, so it'd take something rather extraordinary for loyal officers to go renegade, betraying their oath as well as their faith for ... what?

Also .. a Naval battleship in Marine hands? That sounds like a huge breach of the post-Heresy reforms. Where is that from? >_>

Both have since been retconned, though I'll have to go find the quotes. I believe the business with Bucharis was in the most or second most recent 40k core book.

I seem to recall the Retribution class (got confused with Imperial Fists) in Grey Hunter, but it's existence is provided for in BFG (Venerable Battlebarge, a lovely fluff catch all for any large ship that falls outside what should normally be available). Remember in Armageddon fluff the Space Wolves seized part of the fleet following the first war for Armageddon.

As far as the chain of command goes; remember Rule 0 of Imperial Command - if your superiors betray the Emperor, they're not in charge anymore. Report to the nearest loyalist command for further orders.

Concerning the topic of Astropaths the lore is extremely patchy when it comes to Psykers and their prevalence. Considering that Hive Worlds apparently send hundreds of psykers off planet each year (or few years) to the point where planets like Desoleum have entire ghettos populated by nothing but psykers the numbers must be much, much higher than any "estimates" the Imperium sells to the general public.

My thought on the matter is that pskyers are probably much more common than most would imagine approaching numbers of 1 in a million on some worlds, a number that is constantly growing as the End Times approach (mentioned as "humanity's psychic awakening" and all that). To keep the population feeling safe the Imperium must hide these growing numbers as best they can, hence the idea that psykers are exceptionally rare.

Also I may be grasping at straws here, which I probably am, but there is a Thought For The Day written back in the good old days of 3rd Ed that reads:
" Official! The graves of wariors who have given their lives for the Emperor now outnumber the stars themselves. "

Now this may just be Imperial propaganda, but considering its one of the rare instances the actual population of the Imperium is ever even ******* mentioned it deserves to be scrutinized. Now the best guesstimate of how many stars there are in the universe is 100 octillion, or 1 followed by 29 zeros, an absurd number to be sure. But if that Imperial propaganda has even the smallest grain of truth to it, we are looking at a human population that could support the demands of Astropaths, Navigators and all other form of viable mutant.

Or... it could all just be space magic and none of it makes any sense anyway....

But why would parts of the Navy side with the Space Wolves, anyways? There's a chain of command, so it'd take something rather extraordinary for loyal officers to go renegade, betraying their oath as well as their faith for ... what?

Also .. a Naval battleship in Marine hands? That sounds like a huge breach of the post-Heresy reforms. Where is that from? >_>

Well, we are talking about Space Wolves here. To put it mildly, the fluff has a bit of tendency to put them on a pedestal.

I don't know, it's a bit vague, to me, but I always assumed that, within reason, the Guard should obey the gene-sons of their God, so I kind of assumed that the Astartes could, when necessary, boss around the Peon Guard, sort of like an Inquisitor can, since the Space Marines are the most important property of GW. And yes, I agree that the Space Wolves, the Blood Angels, and sometimes the Ultramarines, if only to NOT be one of the other two, DO get elevated to weird places, by the fanbase, and sometimes the writers.

Of course, I can also see various examples where the Guard WOULD blatantly decline to be led around by the Space Marines, and not only in video games, where the plot demands they be adversarial. As said, there is a chain of command, and the Astartes don't fall within it, so the Guard, or the Navy, in the case of the ship, could just say nope; I just don't see it often, as the Space Marines are living legends, and often portrayed as beyond petty, so they wouldn't grab the Guard "for nothing". If they have a genuine need, I'd thing the IG/Navy would just back them, and see what happens.