Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Navy (section)

=== Dispatch ===

The presence of multiple deep-space bomber factories in two Subsectors, Delving and Cognomen, have allowed Battlefleet Cloudburst to field full bays of Marauders and Starhawks on their warships.  This ensures that the Navy can provide strategic air options to Imperial Commanders fighting off the Glasian hordes, so long as their transports can actually get there.  Because of the relative isolation of the Sector, and the relatively recent nature of its threat, the Cloudburst Sector has only had the means and need to build heavy capital ships for a few centuries.  The cloud of distrust under which the Cloudburst Mechanicus operates in the eyes of Mars has only very slowly cleared, and time will tell if the Cloudburst Sector shall one day be as well-equipped as their older counterparts.

The lack of vessels heavier than a Cruiser in the Septiim system is a noted and increasingly loud complaint from the SDF and the Blue Daggers.  Why, they ask, is the Navy unwilling to lend any more firepower to the defense of a regional powerhouse like Septiim, especially given how the Glasians are guaranteed to attack it?  The answer is that the Navy of the Cloudburst Sector is highly overstressed.  The sector has relatively few systems to defend; however, given its sheer size, the absolute volume of territory that needs protection, and the regular losses it suffers from extragalactic incursions, circumstances add up to rapid force depletion.  Building massive battleships is expensive, especially in a sector with so few Forge World quality shipyards, and while the Septiim system is easily worth defending, so too are dozens of others.  Two Retribution battleships are under construction at the Cognomen shipyards, but their time to completion can be measured in decades.  In the interim, two Grand Cruisers of different models (Avenger and Furious) are also under construction, and will launch in one year.

Battlefleet Cloudburst had little active campaigning to do prior to the beginning of the Glasian incursions.  This is not to say that they were idle, far from it.  Their confrontations with Orks and pirates, both endemic to the region to some extent, allowed them at least to maintain a reasonably experienced officer corps.  All of that changed with the arrival of the Glasian menace.  Now, the local Navy accepts the requests of Battlefleet Ultima for support only during those times that the Glasians are not forthcoming, and desperately raids any and all pirate or otherwise uncommitted forces for their shipbuilding capabilities.  They have had very little success in this.  Aside from one or two Raiders captured from pirates and a single, barely-functional Gorlock class pre-fabricated ship cradle captured from the same pirates, the Sector Navy has had no luck in expanding their forces through offensive action.  Battlefleet Rampart has had more luck.  Although they have managed to push the limited Chaotic presence in the region back even further, the Navy is totally reliant on the Mechanicus to expand the Navy flotilla now, and both Cognomen and Cloudburst know it.  Mutual defense priorities demand that they co-operate, for now, and this is perhaps the reason that neither faction is keen in reporting the less-than-perfect adherence the other has to strict Imperial protocol.  This has also resulted in some SDFs in Cloudburst being far stronger than the Imperial Navy contingents in their home systems, which is not always without acrimony on the Navy’s part.  How, they ask, can the Navy keep up with the demands of the local systems if their SDFs gobble up all the new ships?

There are immense opportunities for a Rogue Trader or Imperial Privateer in the Cloudburst Sector in this regard.  The taking of worlds is all well and good, but the Cloudburst defenses are stretched as it is.  The acquisition of new ships or shipyards would allow the Navy to expand their defensive and construction abilities.  This is especially of interest to Rogue Traders Missionary, and the occasional Proselytizer fleet of the Ecclesiarchy.  The Adeptus Ministorum is fully aware of the threat of the Glasians at its higher levels.  They demand that the humans of the Circuit, whether left over from pre-Imperial colonization efforts or colonists from the modern Imperium, be extended the protection of the Holy Armada, so that they may be free of the menace of the Glasians.  Any attempts to capture more ships or modular shipyards for the Imperium would meet with active Ecclesiarchal support, for however little that might be worth.


For the purposes of patrolling the Oldlight Exo-zone, the only real options are [[Setting:Cloudburst/Rampart|Rampart]] in the north and [[Setting:Cloudburst/Maxient|Port Maxient]] in the center of the border region.  Most military officers prefer Rampart for its local defenses and more co-operative Adeptus Mechanicus personnel.