# Imperator Titan Size



## MontytheMighty (Jul 21, 2009)

In _Helsreach_ the Imperator Titan is 60m tall. Is this a retcon? On the 40k wiki, the relevant article says Imperators are 150m tall (I think this figure is from the Epic rulebook). 

Personally, I think 60m is a bit short for the largest class of battle titan. 
What say you guys?


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## Phoebus (Apr 17, 2010)

60m tall is about 200 feet tall. That's as tall as a 16-story building. That sounds tall, but then I think of other qualifiers... like entire units of soldiers descending down stairways built into the Imperator's legs. So I kind of agree with you.


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## Djinn24 (Jan 12, 2008)

I would say 150m is probably closer. You can alway look at the and measure the guy vs the titan a guy is appx 1.9m


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

Actually 60m is pretty much what it's originally been. Check _Storm of Iron_, _Titanicus_, _Mechanicum _and other titan featuring stories. 

A warhound is 15
A reaver is variously 20-30 (just checked Imperial Armour which puts a reaver at 22.3m 
A warlord is variously 30 to 50
and a Imperator 60m. 

Titan's while always being described as truly huge have never been that, colossally big. Well 60m is still big of course but it's not the same as what some would suggest. All official fluff has titans in the above height ranges. It's only fan debate which pegs them larger.

-You can't rely on the 40k wiki which is user edited. You can find anything on there and it's not always correct. There's also very little citation or referencing.


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## jaysen (Jul 7, 2011)

The imperator titans, I believe, were masterpiece items built to requirement. No two were exactly alike. That also gives people who are scratch building models some room for artistic interpretation.


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## MontytheMighty (Jul 21, 2009)

Phoebus said:


> I think of other qualifiers... like entire units of soldiers descending down stairways built into the Imperator's legs.


Agreed, I think the descriptions say that entire units of troops are housed in compartments in the titan's legs



Rems said:


> You can't rely on the 40k wiki which is user edited. You can find anything on there and it's not always correct. There's also very little citation or referencing.


True...I've noticed that the 40k wiki has sources at the end of each article but no reference numbers in the actual body of text.


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## Deadeye776 (May 26, 2011)

When I think of the the palace of terra and the seige at the final stage of the Heresy 60meteres seems small. To think with all those forces arrayed on both sides something like that would knock out the wall is a little hard to believe. There are daemons bigger than that. 150m seems a bit more like what's on the cover of Titanicus even if that's not an imperator.


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## TheReverend (Dec 2, 2007)

60m is huge. And to a mere mortal, 60m could seem like 600m when you're standing next to the thing on the battlefield!! just like Space Marine is huge to a guardsman.


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## doofyoofy (Mar 8, 2011)

Something else to take into acount that often comes up in these threads, is that 60m migh not include the spires.
It seems since each forge world is a little different the spires will be different. If u look at the model the head is almost in the middle. possibly with spires making the total closer to 120m.


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## Deadeye776 (May 26, 2011)

Okay first of all in a reality where they have interstellar spacecraft and colonized other worlds 60m is not big. If you also take into account the palace of terra and the scope of most of these architectual and industrial achievements the Imperium has seen staggering sights in its history. A 16 story equivalent construct wouldn't even be able to look over the walls of the Emperor's palace. Think of that. If the walls were that short the Heresy seige would have been a lot different.


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## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Deadeye776 said:


> Okay first of all in a reality where they have interstellar spacecraft and colonized other worlds 60m is not big. If you also take into account the palace of terra and the scope of most of these architectual and industrial achievements the Imperium has seen staggering sights in its history. A 16 story equivalent construct wouldn't even be able to look over the walls of the Emperor's palace. Think of that. If the walls were that short the Heresy seige would have been a lot different.


Height isn't everything, although if it's short enough for a titan to step over yeah it would be short, that being said titans can't exactly jump.God knows what those walls were made of, not to mentions the shitload of shields, artillery, Infantry, tanks, and god knows what. I doubt the center of the Imperium is guarded by a couple of neighborhood watch guys with flashlights, i.e. lasrifles.


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## MontytheMighty (Jul 21, 2009)

just for reference...
the wheel of dublin is 60m tall

here it is:

















60m might be mighty impressive for a war-construct by our 21st century standards...in 40k, not really


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## SonOfStan (Feb 20, 2011)

I personally always imagined Titans as being much larger. That, and the artwork on the cover of Titanicus seems to suggest that they're a bit larger then 60m. The book even describes the Chaos Imperator Titan as looking like 'a piece of the Hive had detached and was walking around,' or something along those lines. That is certainly much taller then a mere 200 feet.

On that note, whenever I read something that contradicts my imagination, I just ignore it. That's the whole point of fiction. :biggrin:


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## jaysen (Jul 7, 2011)

I would think that the balance and mechanics of bipedal locomotion would be the limiting factors. In order to balance while striding, the machine must shift weight side to side, temporarily balancing over the static foot. The larger the machine, the further this shift must be and the quicker it would have to move.

For reference, redwood trees in california grow to about 360 feet tall. Of course, they don't go walking around.


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## Zymosis (Aug 4, 2011)

i think the problem here is that FW have started making titans.
as soon as they did that they sot of set a pecident on relative size.

epic 40k, where most people get relative comparisons from was not ment to be a true scale game was it ? just a representation. like a chess set. a rook is made smaller than the queen, but most queens i know are smaller than their castles.

in the same vain, not many writen references are consistant. 
imperial armour can't be trusted fully [see my fist reason / statement....]

the other thing i'd say, is that titans from different forge world would likley be different sizes. slightly at least. most where constructed while the mechanicum still had the understanding, they lost it during the heracy. havent heard of titans being built since.
while they may have used similar designs the end result could be anywhere within 50%

i like the comment over bi-peedal motion, balance is everything. again techology may overcome somewhat.

as far as height copared to palaces / hives etc, history tells us that height is progressive.

if you attack a 10ft wall with a 12ft lader one year, next year it will be 20ft. you now need a bigger ladder. . . 

the imperial pallace was designd to keep titans out. the emperor after all is ment to have known what was comming. 

with respect to titans moving as if the hive had come to life. same principle. some hives are little, some reach into space.

basically i see no reason why you can't think big. 

my reaver if it ever gets built will be 30" ish 
so :
30" = 758mm, 758/28mm (40k scale) = 26.8, 
26.8 x 2m 
(foot to eye of a marine, hence mehod of 28mm scaleing)
marines being just over 2m heigh,

26.8x2 = 53m in reality.

in my mind a warhound should be half as tall as a reaver. so 15" on the board.

i think the fw hound could achive this, leg positioning variable.

end o rant . . .


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## 13illfred (Jun 23, 2010)

to quote False Gods, "Like some colossal armoured giant of steel, the Titan stood forty-three metres tall on crenellated bastion legs, each one capable of mounting a full company of soldiers and their associated supporting troops." 
This is in reference to the imperator-class titan Dies Irae


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## jaysen (Jul 7, 2011)

Zymosis said:


> i think the problem here is that FW have started making titans.
> as soon as they did that they sot of set a pecident on relative size.
> 
> epic 40k, where most people get relative comparisons from was not ment to be a true scale game was it ? just a representation. like a chess set. a rook is made smaller than the queen, but most queens i know are smaller than their castles.
> ...


Good summary. WH40K is meant to be somewhat controlled by the players and fans. Authors write what they will, determined by their literary needs. When modelling an imperator, I see no reason to be held by what is stated in one book, written by one author.


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## Bakunin (Mar 27, 2010)

Zymosis said:


> epic 40k, where most people get relative comparisons from was not ment to be a true scale game was it ? just a representation. like a chess set. a rook is made smaller than the queen, but most queens i know are smaller than their castles.


This is kind of debateable. The Space Marine rulebook (second edition epic) stated that epic was meant to be a true scale game. In this way an epic marine (6mm) can be used as a basis of working out Titan size.

However, Epic 40K and Epic Armageddon are meant to represent a scaled down version of 40K with fire fights representing 40K games. Ranges for some units weapons (such as Leman Russ) were adjusted to represent their 40K equivilant. GW have argued that 40K models represent trueish scale (with exaggerations to make models look heroic). Yet the battlefield and weapons ranges are not true scale with the battlefeild representing a lot larger area scaled down. This is why some weapons only have ranges of 15" and artillery does not sit a few kilometres back but moves to around 100 metres from there nearest enemys. Yet GW have also argued that you can look at 40K battles as being basically up close battles where territory and the quick nature of assaults is preventing weapons being used to their full capacity. In effect the same way as urban warfare both allows and requires advancing under cover with close quarter shooting. I personally prefer this explaination since it suggests that the 40K battle is only an intense assault to take territory that occurs during larger combats where troops have been moving in, shooting at each other and so on for many hours before the actual battle (or is a sudden surprise assault). This fits in better with the fluff of the armies and explains the large number of close assault weapons.

The problem is that it also raises questions about epic. If battle field scales are not true then are the large models (i.e. titans) true to scale? It depends how you look at it. Large units are not always modeled to scale in epic. Aircraft are the most obvious example, although they are meant to represent units high above the battlefield. Forge world also started modelling these units to scale and reaffirming that epic was a game that was meant to be true to scale. Some old war engines would struggle to fit units inside, yet they were either ended up going the way of the squats or were due to have new properly scaled models before epic lost its support. Super heavy tanks are a good example, with the Forge World models based on the 40K equivalents, being about a cm larger than the official range. Likwise, each time a new landraider model was released it grew slightly until the current version, which is in proportion to the 40K equivalent, suggesting that epic is menat to be in scale, but due to poor design, rather than some intent, some models are out of scale.

With this in mind, the titan models are in scale wiht the fluff that puts them at around 60 metres. Yet loads of pictures show them bigger and books mention them bigger. One reason for this is of course the need for artistic license. Yet another (in fluff) explaination is that paintings are just that; they are paintings. Just as battle paintings in the 20th. century (or any other century) are not true to scale, paintings from the 41st millenium are not true to scale. They represent someone painting a heroic titan assault who was not there and might of never seen a titan up close. But they do capture the glory of the legion and are hung in imperial buildings to remind the servants of the imperium of the glory and power of the imperium.

Likewise descriptions in books of the hive appearing to come alive are meant to invoke what it felt like if you were on the ground and suddenly saw an Imperator Titan bearing down on you for the first time. Apart from terror you would remember and later describe something massive and of terrifying power that made the ground shake. Novels are generally written in this way. 

(This is also how I explained the over the top performance of the Space wolves in the 'Battle of the Fang' and the useless performance of the Thousand Sons. It is a story told from the axagerated perspective of the Space Wolves and not a rendition of fact. Either that or it's just poorly written and just presents a thin parody of the 40K universe...)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that epic is to scale, the forge world 40K titans reaffirm and so does a lot of the fluff. But the 40K universe is full of legend, myths and exageration. The background reaffirms this and so the idea that titans are the size of cities is meant to represent commonly held beliefs, in the same way that some imperium citizens would believe that astartes are almost literally angels sent by the Emperor, bot genetically modified soldier monks with decent war gear.


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## Angel of Blood (Aug 18, 2010)

That Wheel of Dublin really puts it in to perspective of just how small they would be, in comparison to the artwork anyway. Regardless of what forge world or some novels might say, i'm going to keep on imagining them to be immensly tall, much taller than 60m anyway. I mean, just look at the front cover of Galaxy in Flames, that is surely not meant to be 60m's


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## stevey293 (Aug 16, 2011)

This could go on for years.

From forgeworlds point of view a land raider isnt far off the size of a land raider my understanding from whats written above is that the imperator titan can carry a full company so it must be hellofa big! I dont know the rules i dont play only paint (threads like this do make me intetested in the fluff though) but dosn't a land raider only fit 25 or so??? Whats a company around 500 at least??? It would have to be huge 200m+


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## Bakunin (Mar 27, 2010)

A company varies in size depending on the regiment and attrition, so this introduces a new size question :grin:

But an epic imperial guard company (steel legion) has 13 stands so would consist of 65 men. The game rules state that it is assumed the company has already seen battle and taken casualtys so is not at it's original strength. 

Epic Armageddon rules included the Imperator as a collectors model and not in the actual army lists. it left out the transport capacity altogether. I can't remember how many could hitch a ride in epic 40K and I never played with the model in 2nd. Edition (having taken a 'break' from gaming when it the Imperator and Titan Legions came out). But it should be remebered that the transport of troops doesn't necessarily indicate it's size. If you can get 60-100 men in fairly small spaces if they all squash up!


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