Disclaimer, I only have Rogue Trader and some BFG books.

While I like the universe as a whole, like others no doubt, I have issues with the size of ships crew. For me, they are too big, if I recall the crew count for the likes of a Lunar is in the realm of 100's of thousands of people. Hundreds of people are used to load the torpedoes for a full volley. All for this just seems too big.

The sense of scale that I like is that which is descibed in Elizabeth Moons books (Though the true "Warships" are actually quite rare). Teams of 5 or so people per weapon or group of missile tubes maybe the same off duty. Command Bridge staff being along the lines of 2-3 Helmsmen (Per shift).

All in all the crew count would be around the low hundreds for the likes of Cobra's and low thousands for the Lunar.

Has anybody else thought along these lines?

Shockwave said:

65,000 for a Dauntless

95, 000 for a Lunar

26,000 for a Sword class.

So, i'm looking at reducing the crew count by a factor of 10 for the cruisers (at least) and maybe by factor of 50 for the escorts.

Is this even possible? (I'm unaware of any notable complications) I've got a feeling that I might of read something on here about someone already doing this, if so could someone point me to it?

Other than those figures being accurate for the setting, and reflective of the general lack of mass automation in space travel, and so the Imperium literally runs on the blood and sweat of Mankind, there isn't that much wrong with changing the amount of crew.

However, if you reduced it by a factor of 10, do you realise how empty the ship would be? The size/volume of the ships are based around their requirement for incredibly large crews. If they didn't need big crews, they'd be smaller than they currently are.

Remember, ships are meant to be giant cities floating in space, essentially miniature hives with engines and cannons on it. Can you imagine an entire city with only 5-9 thousand people in it? It'd be like a ghost town.

MILLANDSON said:

Disclaimer also: below are just my opinions

What I have in mind about the voidship in 40k is, in-efficient hive cities.

I always thought that 40k is not Science Fiction / Star Wars / Star Trek / Babylon / name other futuristic setting; in 40k most people have the mindset (and educational level) of medieval dark age. So no automatons whatsoever (at least in the lowdecks). To reload torpedoes, maybe they will need hundreds of people. Tens of people are towing each torpedoes with cartwheel, others are clearing the way. Some might be injured or killed in the process (because of..stampede?) To adjust the cannons, they need hundreds of people manually adjusting them. Or maybe, of course, those are just my fantasies

Btw, the size (length) of the ships is 1.5km to 7km according to Core rulebooks and Into The Storm (342 x 3 = 1026).

And if we'd like to get a volume with multiplication of 3, I thought we need to multiply the number by 27 (3 x 3 x 3) not by 9 (3 x 3 = only area, not volume) but then again I might be wrong, being not a mathematician

and there is the shear scall of the stuff they are loading. The Macro cannons may as well be firing buildings instead of shells and torpedos are hardly any smaller. Plus the guys have to manually pull the guns back into place (and the guns are friggen HUGE too) Plus the work is INSANELY dangerous so lots of crew get injured/killed and thats just for the Cannons, the Lance guns are hardly any better what with the very poor wiring and the ranks and banks of capacitors. The there are the thousand and one other things that a ship needs done on brute force and tears. On a ship that uses its crew up like ration bars a large number of those poor souls are replacement parts and on ships that actually give a rats butt they can still chew up crew like popcorn on a bad day.

Also...well it IS 40k everything is bigger, more killie and generally sucks void if you are not a really REALLY lucky guy. (then it just sucks lemons.)

Telosse said:

Shockwave said:

Warhammer 40K ships are actually a lot more efficient than they are given credit for.

If you want smaller crews for most ships, you could rule that the crew numbers given in the books are for military ships, with extra redundancies in every part of the crews and extra large contingents of combat troops. RT led ships and civilian vessels could have much smaller ones.

Its hard to do an exact multiplication of the length earth's largest naval ship to that of a cobra or any other 40k starship. Not only are they several times longer, they're several times wider (they're almost twice as wide as some of our warships are long) and several times taller. So you'd need to figure out how tall the starships are (I dont think I've seen that information before), figure out how long, and how wide. THEN do the math. Length isn't the only mesurement you need.

As mentioned it would fall outside of the established fluff of 40k overall. But there is nothing really stopping you from doing it.

However, as some others said, you would want to reduce the size of the ships as well. I'd say at least cut them in half (or more).

Another option is to run your PC's ship with servitor crew, to cut down on the amount of "real people" on the ship.

Shockwave said:

Maths please:

triple the length. multiply by 9 for the area, means multiply by 27!!!! for the volume. So you are in the area of 150k crew.

The Lunar should be 500k crew if judging by the sword class frigate. If anything 40k needs larger crews instead of smaller ones.

Food for thought:

Under extreme, heavy labour a human being will need about 4kg of food to keep them going, multiply that by 1000 people equals 4tonnes they're eating every day, then multiply that by about 180days your ship can operate and you're looking at about 720tonnes of food for 1000 people. Multiply that by 100,000 people = about 72,000 tonnes of food. Its rough metric dimensions are kind of... like the size of a cruise liner, slightly bigger because of density.

MKX said:

Storage Space isnt really a problem. Food is more dense than water after all, plus Ships in 40k are rather large. Flying all that stuff up from a planet with shuttles is an actual problem though.

Halo Barges are a fun toy, but one needs to think more like 747 in size dimensions with 40k tech behind it (so about 3 times as wide) to get all that food transported to a cruiser.

WhiteLycan said:

Indeed - its also the case that the largest vessels we have today (the super carriers) are largely hollow, as they're basically huge floating aircraft hangers with engines attached. We can't really compare them to 40k ships, which are packed with more weapons and related systems than any aircraft carrier ever was.

Voronesh said:

It would appear that the whole exercise requires a lot more than I thought. The crew sizes are too small for ships as they currently stand, and to make them smaller the ships will need to much smaller as well..... arg

Another example of the insanity gained by delving into the greater mysteries of the 40k universe.

Sry of it has already been mentioned.

You know what? If you cant beat them, join them.

The power of Tzeentch compels you. Reason why Tzeentch is the most powerful god of the four? Hes the one with brains, Slaanesh drugged them away, Nurgles are rotten away, and Khorne is lobotomized.

Seriously 40k is a mass of way too many writers wanting to leave their mark.

Someone once told me he read a story of around 10-50 space marine. Defending a planet against a small hive fleet. Yes it was supposed to be a small one, but get this:

Captain muses by himself: It will be a hard fight, but he has enough troops to defend the planet.

Uhhh, last time i checked a planet had more than 2 strategically important locations.

Personally i simply went with the Sword class frigate as being correct and calculating from there. If we would use those US Carrier numbers as base for a sword, wed end up with 150 for a frigate and a mere 3 million for a Lunar. BTW thatd be up to 18 million people for a universe class.

RT wants to conquer planet, hes buys every single lasgun in footfall only to arm his crew.....how much of an aquisition modifier for 3-18 million lasguns?

Voronesh said:

Doesn't that depend on the planet? Its size, population and exactly what was deemed important about it. If the population was an imperial outpost housing a mine or excavation site of some sort - i would say it has exactly one strategically important locations.... or if it us covered by farmland,but only has one central starport. I would not hold be surprised to hear that a small contingent of space marines ignored the population dying in the thousands - but prided themselves in having protected the planet if they were able to destroy the fleet or convince it to move on. While the warhammer40k fluff is certainly expansive it is not really that messy as some make it out to be (at least disregarding a few books and texts best forgotten) - it is just that the universe is a very large and weird place.

As for the topic of starship population. One is certainly free to amend the fluff (and perhaps the rules) as your group sees fit. Make more automated systems, require less crew or even just reduce the size of the ships entirely - it is your story after all, if you have to violate some fluff to make it "right" go ahead. There are also rules for having servitors man your ships - and a quick rewrite can make them completely mechanical and thus minimize the amount of "living" people needed. (as a previous poster suggested this might make the ships feel extremely empty if you do not also reduce their size)

I would still recommend thinking twice. The large ships, and populations, feel "epic" - and being the captain in charge of 60 000 men can be a lot more fun then 600 or 6000. I also find it to be an immense source of drama/fluff and adventure. You can have the explorers govern over the ship as they would a relatively large city, with all the fun and drama that entails. Build up a wealth of NPC officers and induviduals that help and manage what the Rogue Trader and his friends do not care to get involved with.

The size, both in volume and population, can be a vessel for having almost any exciting story you can imagine happen right there on the ship - and thus being "up close and personal" for the PCs - rather then just happen on a planet below them that they can easily leave behind in warp dust. You can have different factions, people unaware they are actually on a starship, various cults (both good and bad), internal trade or crime, love stories, tragedies - it can all happen right there on the starship. There is great fun to be had finding that forgotten corridor or deck that a dynasty ancestor sealed of hundreds of years ago, does anyone live there? what society have they mutated into? or really bringing some personality to the next mutiny attempt that will happen. Personally i love the size of the ships and the stories that enable you to tell - i have built up a collection of NPCs (administrators, historians, security enforcers etc etc) that deal with the unimportant events - but lets the Rogue Trader and his party know whenever something "interesting" shows up. I feel it adds greatly to the immersion when the 2nd officer uploads a list of details of "what has happened on board the ship this mega-segment" to the Rogue Traders dataslate - and it is an invaluable tool to give hints/plot hooks to future challenges and to make the explorers realize exactly what power they have and what stories they can help create.

That was a book written by someone for 40k.

Its a Tyranid hive fleet.

They want to conquer the planet. A Planet that supports life can never be so small, that 2 cities would be deemed important enough to cover the whole planet with defensive structures or such.

Think about it like this, Space Marines defend only city, rest of planet is turned to mush. The space battle i know nothing about (I aint touching that book), but if it would have been decisive, the planet would have never been in danger.

Compare it with attacking Russia. Moscow isnt the only important target.

If in the story "planet" meant an earth sized rock with a lot of developed cities and naturally developed biomass(plants/people/whatever) and that "defending" it mean killing millions of tyranids, with no strategic targets that could save time, that were busy harvesting all the biomass on the planet - and that the space marines "defended" the planet due to no ingenious device simply by winning one small battle and all the other tyranids gave up - then i grant you it seems like lazy writing. I must confess i have never come across any stories quite that nonsensical in the warhammer fluff though (perhaps outside of "legends" and oexaggerated rumours told in front of a dying fire by Imperial Guardsmen that need to calm themselves by putting every space marine up there with the emperor himself.

However this is the grimdarky warhammer universe we are talking about and when you say "50 Space Marines defending a planet" it can just as easily be to defend a planet of barren rock, with toxic or no atmosphere, that has an important installation, a mine or a shrine perhaps, that need to be covered until the limited amount of troops the hive fleet was willing to sacrifice to gain the limited amount of biomass available before it moves on to better targets or reinforcements arrive, or it is destroyed in space. Or it can be that the Tyranid Fleet dropped down a (or a few) nexus beast on a earth sized (and inhabited) planet and that due to the limited size of the hive fleet taking out these nexus beasts would be enough to disrupt the hive mind and thus "save" the planet. There is nothing wrong with creatively, and with at least a moderate adherence to plausibility, device a story where "a few important space marines save a planet". In fact it has been done many times, in a both (in universe) plausible and exciting manner. But if you feel that particular story did not make a good case of "why" or "how" these space marines were able to save the planet - i will take your word for it.

I assume you have not read the book.

Neither have i, the person who told me about that book was very precise though. In German a planet is a planet, a minimum of atmosphere is required, i am sure the same accounts for English.

Beyond that even an Imperial planet focused on agricultural products with a single city+spaceport has more than one strategical location. Unless we are talking about a perfectly smooth planet. But the rhine river plains are a rare feature and not a dominant one.

Have you read the necron worldship being destroyed by a single battlebarge? Space Marine codex? Lazy writers abound everywhere. GW tried their best to make Necrons seem imposing and deadly even for space marines for a long time. A single codex reduces them to cannon fodder. The raid of St. nazaire seems to be the minimum of Space Marine accomplishment these days.

I simply have grown disillusioned with the 40k fluff being put out if it concerns Space Marines. They have turned into Marysues at every corner.

Im not saying that every writer at Black library is lazy or bad, but there are enough examples of writers that should never have left fanstories and amateurdom (even in a codex).

In the interest of science i would like to point out that the definition of "planet" has nothing to do with life or life capable, and very little to do with atmosphere. Most planets are likely to have a degree of atmosphere off course, as do most large celestial bodies for the simple reason that their gravity/chargewill hold on to "something". It is just a matter of how much density you think it should have to matter. When i said "no atmsphere" i simply meant "too little for it to matter in the context" - such as would be the case for our Mercury or Moon. The definition of planet, in german or otherwise, is a celestial body with enough mass to make itself spherical and in orbit around a star that it is dominating (having "conquered" the orbit from all lesser celestial bodies). I am sorry if i did not pick up the fact that you were alluding to an inhabited world with your planet - I simply tried, as an aside to the topic of the thread, to say that there is nothing at all wrong with having planets with only one or few strategic areas if the story warrants it. Just imagine Mercury or Mars with nothing but a small settlement, science station or vault filled with relics - neither Tyranids or Marines will care about the remaining "biomass-less" wasteland.

In regards to the fluff i am certainly not going to argue that all the fluff is perfect, but i would comment that it is not all hopeless. Sure each book and codex will take liberties in order to make their army/faction stand our and be heroic - or to creative epic tales of heroes and villains. Remember also that if something is too over the top (and some of if certainly is) a lot of if can be interpreted as legends or imperial propeganda. Personally i am mcuh less affected the by the "larger then life" or "hero worship" histores that show up - such things are generally written by the victor/private poet anyhow. I am more annoyed with the times the writers contradict each other regarding technology or other science - or simply just throws any adherence to consistency out the window entirely. Still even this can usually be accepted/adapted with some good will.

I think your critique of the "battle barge" story is a good example that one can read the fluff in various ways. While you apparently read the story of the battle barge vs the world engine in the space marine codex as a deconstruction of the menace presented by necrons due to a single battle barge being instrumental in destroying it. Thus trivializing the danger of the necrons in order to make the space marines look good. I on the other hand read about a nearly unstoppable necron warship housing tens of thousands of necron soliders that was only taken down by the concentrated effort of a whole sector fleet (read: thousand upon thousand of ships of all sizes), all space marines within distance, many millions of war casualities, the self-sacrifice of an entire space marine chapter and plenty of heroic fighting, last chances and dumb luck. It is true that the space marines were "larger then life" and clearly written to be the hheroes of the piece. But remember that taking out the necron ship in this case required: the sacrifice of one of the finest and largest warships the empire has in order to penetrate the shields, the sacrifice of an ENTIRE chapter of space marines in order to bring down the shields and then the firepower of an entire sector to destroy the necron warship. From my perspective this would not be a case of trivializing the necrons just to make the space marines look good - but a way to present them both consistently and in an exciting manner.

So i must respectfully disagree that "a single codex reduced them to cannon fooder" at least in any way related to the battle barge story. I am sure Necrons have been demystified somewhat, and such invariable leads to a bit reduction in their menace - but i honestly can't agree that their "objective" power level has changed much.

For me this piece of fluff kept the necrons as scary neigh-unstoppable villains - if it took that much to take down one of these warships, and they may have thousands............While also allowing for the space marines to stand out as heroes. If we want the universe to be fun we have to allow for the bad guys to loose somtimes - and if they can do that and still be a threat, like i venture the necrons do inthis story - it is great fluff.If you want the necrons to be completely unbeatable as opposed to "neigh"-unbeatable they simply could not take an active part in the setting or the whole universe would literally die.

I will not disagree with you however that perhaps the authors take too many liberties at times and the adherence to the "meta-fluff" and general competence differs between works. I would however strongly advice against not giving it the benefit of the doubt and dismissing it (or just the part concerning space marines). Remember to read conservatively, include the context, and allow the Imperial Poets or Propeganda Officials to take some liberties in order to make their side stand out. This is not so unlike how it is in our world - if reading the outcome of any battle or endevour, of which you only get to read texts written by one of the sides, you have to be somewhat conservative and read between the lines. If any of the fluff regarding space marines bother you - read it as if it was written by an Imperial official, not Black Library Author, FFG or GW.

Ahh perfect case of us two actually talking about different things.

When talking about Tyranids i always assume a living world. No biomass planets hold no interest for the Tyranids (unless there was a further retcon that i missed). Hence "Defending the planet" means more than a single defensive location (Which 50 marines can hold of course).

If we were talking abotu Orks/CSM/Necrons attacking something, the target is not as clear cut. And defending the planet would actually work.

But since is a planet attacked by Tyranids, all you need is to hold the spaceport, evacuate the important stuff and call up an Exterminatus. Hardly what i would call "defending the planet".

Option 2. You actually defend the planet (hold on to it), you now have to defend the biomass as well, since that is what you need for a planet to actually work.

Regarding the Necron Worldship. Yes the Empire sacrificed a battle barge and more than half a chapter, but it took only 500 Space marines to fight into said worldship and wipe out alot of Necrons. Tens of thousands of them. Each of which is easily a match for said Space Marine (except in close combat). This is the loss of backdrop i was alluding to.

Yes the Worldship itself was quite fearsome, its simply that the Necron Warriors themselves were devalued by quite a bit. I guess i went a little overboard with the pessimism, but i do play Necrons, and they went from "Fear incarnate" to "just another little alien like an ork". But we really did pick out two very different aspects of that story (Its just that any fan could have conjured a story of at least the same magnitude, why pick such quality?).

Going back to topic in regards to ships size.

I heard that on the bigger vessels such as the Nimitz class carriers and such like, the higher officers need to walk around with body guards becuase of the Ghettos that form on those ships (Validity of this is unknown, possible Urban legend).

In the second Sandy Mitchell book, Innocence proves nothing some of the character travel on a large vessel where parts of the ship have become isolated and almost hostile, but I got the impresion that the size of this ship was akin to that of an Emperor....