# 40K Ships Size, Power, and Crews.



## Warlock in Training

Most Fluff online I find have little or no info on the actual size comparison of Strike Cruisers, Battle Barges, or Battle Ships. Im in the Navy and Aircraft Carriers are the biggst war ships in the World. Yet their smaller than most might think. Reading BL Books about Space Hulks like the Broken Back, or Infernal Battle Ships like the Crucious Maledictius in the Word Bearers leave little visual comparison to anything. 

Battle Barges dont sound as big as some Imperial Battle Ships, but can stroll into a ring of three or four ships to be blasted for hours and still come out on top. So how much Firepower do some of these possess? How about Strike Cruisers? 

I cant find Artwork, Models, or anything. Any Sites or Pics from GW books be appreciated.


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## Baron Spikey

Well if you go by the idea that a 40k frigate (i.e the BFG IN escorts) are roughly 1km in length then you're pushing as much as 10km in length for the largest Battleships (heck it might be more but I'm trying to limit myself here).

The largest Battleships have crews that number in the tens of thousands, I'd say that Battle Barges are roughly equivilent in size to a large Heavy Cruiser (though with the armour of the largest Battleship).
Basically imagine Astartes ships of being a similar size to their Naval compatriots (Barges= Heavy Cruiser/Battleship, Strike Cruiser=Cruiser) but much more heavily armoured, if not quite as well armed for traditional naval engagements.


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## Warlock in Training

I know our recent Nimitz Class Carriers have 5 thousand crew. The new Amphibs have crews of around 250, yet they can house over 800 in Marines and 20ish tanks/ 3/4 varying aircraft and a Thunder Bird size LCAT. It seems to fit the Strike Cruiser in size, but definatly not power.


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## Baron Spikey

Oh there's definitely nothing on Earth that even compares to the size of 40k warships- a Strike Cruiser can happily transport a Company of Astartes with all the equipment and vehicles necessary, a Battle Barge can transport 3 Companies (though some of these craft have been modified such as the Flesh Tearer's Barge which can carry all 4 companies). So that's what? At least 10 tanks, a half dozen or so Thunder Hawks, and all the supplies to last decades without resupply- just for a Cruiser, triple all that for a Barge.

I'd imagine the crew of a Stirke Cruiser, minus the Astartes, would be in the realm of a few thousand serfs- they are truly gigantic craft by our standards.

Hell a frigate, one of the smallest interstellar warships, would be twice the size of a modern day Super-Carrier.


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## Warlock in Training

Thats the felling I was getting. Is their any sources for Pics and visual art? I know Battle Fleet Gothic should be a giveaway but I cant find nothing BFG related on the net.


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## Akatsuki13

Baron Spikey: Indeed. And the Astartes warships are designed primarily to withstand what the enemy can bring long enough to deploy SM to the target, whether its a planet, a space station or a warship. Boarding actions tend to be the favored tactic of SM and CSM naval forces, where the superiority of the Space Marines can be utilized to the fullest.


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## Warlock in Training

Found this and it shows that some of these Ships like a Light Cruiser istwice the size of a Carrier. http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs30/f/2..._Gothic_Scale_Chart_by_The_First_Magelord.png wether it is cannon or acurate Im not sure on. However reading some Novels it seems right.


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## Tebok

This site compares the scale of Spaceships from a lot different shows and movies. A 40K Battleship and Destroyer are included as well. 

http://www.merzo.net/


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## Warlock in Training

According to that the Battle Ships are larger twice as big as Borg Cubes and 3 times larger than a Star Destroyer.


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## CDAdair

Hello 
In the newest Horus Heresy book, Know No Fear, they actually give you a few lenghts and ship sizes.
battleship Spirit of Konor = 17 km
grand cruiser Antrodamicus = 12 km
Other ships maybe referred to later. haven't finished the book yet, but it should help.


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## Archon Dan

The scale of 40K ships is apparently staggering. I know that Imperial Star Destroyers are 1.6 to 1.8 Kilometers and are crewed by/carry 10,000. Not to mention the 6 full fighter squadrons, 5 AT-ATs and a myriad of drop craft or captured enemy vessels. Then you have Executor, Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer at 8km and aside from the Death Star, the largest starship in that universe. To build the Executor, the Empire had to strip mine an entire planet. So the Imperium is regularly destroying entire worlds for its warships. Intense.


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## Rems

A whole planet's worth of metals to build one ship is nonsense. From the amount of iron in the Earth for example you could create 2 billion Death Stars, which was far larger than the Executor. Source

In 40k even primitive worlds are capable of mining the necessary amount of minerals for cruisers (though it does admittedly take many decades) so Forgeworlds and orbital shipyards should have no problem.


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## Archon Dan

Umm. Your source says we'd have to mine the core. Pretty sure we'd destroy Holy Terra in the process. And even if we didn't mine that deep, I meant that the planet was left uninhabitable. The industry needed to mine that much produces a lot of waste material, polluting both air and water. And it does boil down to cost. It is much cheaper to mine the surface than the core. Of course there are billions of uninhabitable, resource rich worlds in the galaxy. Put a shipyard in orbit, blast the planet apart and mine the asteroids left behind. Oddly enough, that is what the Empire told the scientists who designed the Death Star that it would be used for similar mining purposes.


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## Rems

My point was that it wouldn't take a whole planets resources to create just one ship, rather a world could produce hundreds, thousands or millions before exhausting it's resources.


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## ChaosRedCorsairLord

BFG Rogue Trader 2010 update said:


> Imperial cruisers are gigantic constructions, most of them centuries or even millennia old. Those few that are constructed anew are often the result of years of toil by the population of an entire world – enormous shipyards that might produce a single vessel every few decades. Even the mighty Forgeworlds with their unimaginably vast, serried ranks of orbital docks and laying yards may only complete one of these behemoths every year or so despite easily having a dozen or more of them in varying stages of construction at any one time.





BFG Rulebook said:


> The Lunar class cruiser forms the mainstay of Battlefleet Obscuras with over six hundred ships serving throughout the Segmentum and more than twenty ships fighting in the Gothic war. The uncomplicated design of this class ensures its enduring utility, enabling vessels to be built at hive and industrial worlds normally unable to muster the expertise to construct a capital ship. Perhaps the most remarkable example of this is the Lord Daros, constructed at the feral world of Unloth. The primitive tribesmen dwelling there were influenced to mine and smelt metals which were then presented for ‘sacrifice’ at sky temples established by the Planetary Lord. The raw materials were then lifted into orbit at each vernal equinox. After a period of eleven years the tribes were rewarded for their effort with the sight of a bright new star moving across the heavens as the Lord Darosboosted out-system to join Battlefleet Obscuras.


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## Giant Fossil Penguin

You wouldn't need to mine your Homeworld, though. Our Solar System alone is chock-a-blok with all the goodies would ever need for a looooooong time. And that's only looking at the Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt. Add in what you could mine from Mercury (that must be one gigantic strip-mine in the far future!) and from any and all of the moons and planets, and you could build Emperor knows how many ships.
Once outside the local System, you have the rest of the galaxy to mine. Who knows what metals can be mined from a gas giant? Who knows what could be done by using Venus as a planet-sized smelter, or using the pressure of the deep layers of something like Jupiter or Saturn?
When it comes to the crew of Astartes ships, wouldn't this be a lot lower because of automation? Loads of Servitors would enable smaller Chapters to crew their fleet; otherwise each Chapter would need a planet's worth of warm bodies just to keep them void-capable.

GFP


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## doofyoofy

In Execution Hour the stated crew of the Macharius is 10,000 give or take a couple of hundred, whith room for a couple of Regiments of Ig plus Vehicles if you wanted to pack the bulkeads and nooks and crannies with stuff.
As to the above post by Warlock, the battleship is off I think. There are references to 5km long battleships. But Irrc the " standard" as much as there is one, is 7-8 km for most battleships, also shows up in Execution Hour and Shadowpoint.
A couple of older novels have 5km Battleships. 
In a short story of Into the Maelstrom, (lol, really old book) the Ultramarines battlebarge, which is a converted battleship is 10km long.

On a side note, someone kinda worked out the math for a battleship, based off Execution Hour and Shadowpoint. If the Macharius is 3km long with a crew of 10,000 and a battleship is rouchly 8km long, with the design style and pictures going off of( really really rough estimate), the battleship sould be 3 times as wide, 2.5 times as long, and 3 times as tall. So, 10,000* 3(3 times width)*3(for the height) * 2.5( for the length, equals 225,000 crew roughly. Except that battleships have consequently bigger guns and more of them plus larger engines and reactors requiring a larger ratio of crew per gun and reactor than the Macharius. Also a consequently larger Armsmen crew as they are bigger and more valuable targets.
Another side note, lol. Shadowpoint puts the Cobra destroyer as .5 km irrc with a crew of only 800. Make of that what you will.


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## CDAdair

Found another one.
Escort = 3 km I think. Lots my place in the book.


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## Klomster

I would suggest you get a few of the rouge trader source books.

They have lots of juicy fluff, espescially regarding 40k ships.

Sure most of the 40k ship sizes are retarded, but they are supposed to be retarded.


The general 40k ship sizes go as this.

Transport.
<1 kilometer-ish. That's the small ones, there are super transports in 40k as well though.
Escort.
1-1.5 kilometer. "Small" ships, like the cobra. Designed to flank foes and operate in squads.
Light cruiser.
4-6 Kilometer. A smaller cruiser, not super common.
Cruiser.
7-ish Kilometer. The standard fighting vessel, every imperial fleet has them. And they are the most numerous. (Perhaps some escorts are more common, i might be wrong though)
Heavy cruiser.
7-10 kilometer. A beefed up cruiser, our term for it would probably be pocket battleship.
Looks big and honking. Big guns, but still only is a cruiser.
Battleship.
8-12 Kilometer. The biggest of the lot. Simply put.


The problem with 40k ships, is that their numbers are never written down properly. Hence why there are so many versions.

Rouge trader has a bunch of vessels written down. And should be the best bet you have for 40k ships.

They state width and length, how much crew and how may "slots" you can use.
The game have slots which the players themselves put in things like engines, gellar fields and all other goodies in. It is explained well in the rulebook.

It's fun to sit and build ships as well. Good luck with the hunt.


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## Angel of Blood

I'm wondering what the size was of the _Vengeful Spirit_. At any one time it seems to have a minimum of four companies onboard, although it would seem even more than this, aswell as the Dies Irae, and I imagine a healthy portion of Byzant Janizars.


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## Baron Spikey

Well more than once it's mentioned as being surpassed only by the Phalanx (and I'd presume, the Furious Abyss) in terms or size and power.


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## CDAdair

I would personally go with which ever document gives you the biggest numbers. Makes writing fanfiction so much more satisfying when you cross over and everything else is tiny.


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