Orbital Plate
Orbital Plates were immense, FUCK HUEG Imperial Navy Space Stations built by the Imperium. Essentially the space-borne version of the Zaythan Landships, these floating cities orbit around their patron worlds in geosynchronous orbit hence their name, Orbital Plates can hold untold millions and often sport important industries, trading centres, and defences. Only The Rock can rival these things in size.
- Length: approximately 500km
- Mass: approximately 24+ gigatonnes
- Crew: approximately 12,000,000 crew including 1,000,000 pilots and support personnel, and millions of potential passenger capacity
- Acceleration: approximately 0.1 gravities max sustainable acceleration
Overview[edit]
Imagine a Tau Orbital City grown several orders of magnitude too large. Orbital Plates are marvels of Imperial/Human astroengineering and are the largest semi-mobile space assets in the Imperium. Eclipsed only by the Eldar Craftworlds and the Necron World Engines.
Terra used to be home to some of the largest and most glorious Orbital Plates which were mainly constructed during the Dark Age of Technology. Most of these were destroyed over the course of the Horus Heresy, either by Rogal Dorn decommissioning them for fears of their vulnerability for the coming Siege or by Horus' forces during the Siege itself.
During the Siege of Terra the last of Terra's Orbital Plate, the Sky Plate, was used as an aerial carrier and weapons platform but was destroyed during the White Scars counteroffensive on the Lion's Gate Spaceport where it crashed into the Imperial Fleet College, devastating the traitor lines in a titanic explosion.
This is not to say, that Imperium wit large stopped using these things. Macragge and Theta-Garmon V still have their Orbital Plates floating around. But the vulnerability of these things such as its abysmally slow speed, sluggish manoeuvrability, predictable orbital patterns and its impractically huge size have put a dent on its reputation as no Imperial governor wants to construct what is essentially an over-glorified arcological vanity project. However on ocean worlds and lava worlds it would actually make sense so it would not be surprising if a few are built every once in a while.