Editing Imperial Navy (section)

== Notable Problems ==
These are problems some have with the Imperial Navy and their fluff....

=== General Logistical Problems ===

The big problem that the Imperial Navy has is that it's the only organised navy in the galaxy that's trying to defend its massive amounts of space. To do this takes vast numbers of ships but rather thinly spread out. Given the problems of warp travel it's also extremely hard to reinforce friendly fleets under attack. The foes of the navy come essentially in two flavours; raiders who might just manage to scrape together a few converted transports (building even escort-sized ships is a huge undertaking, akin to building damn near the entire American Navy combined from iron ore and making it fly) which take an escort squadron to murder, and huge organized invasion fleets that take a whole fleet to fight. These combine together to mean that outside of fleet bases and important strategic worlds there is nowhere in the Imperium that is actually well-defended. At best a fleet has to be formed and sent out and they could arrive months later. Travel takes a lot of time, and out in the void it can be extremely hard to know what you are actually fighting against, especially since the enemy tend to kill anyone who tries to look at them. So when there's a large enemy force that you absolutely must fight (not fighting is much preferable) you don't just band together whoever was within shouting distance of the flagship and go murdering, you pull together every single vessel in the sector and hope to the Emperor it's enough to do the job.

TL,DR: Acquiring a force sucks when command thinks paperwork and red tape are forms of worship and maintenance thinks the toilet needs a prayer before it is unclogged.

Warships genuinely are vast things and obscenely expensive and risking them at all in major actions is not something anyone does lightly. Each cruiser is larger and more complex than a fully-kitted titan legion. These things are MASSIVE. In the BFG book there's a fluff story of a cruiser being built at a shipyard that orbits a primitive world. The entire population of the planet were given over to mining the resources needed to build one single cruiser. It took them eleven years to mine the ore. Sure, that's a primitive world, but if you think about it that makes carving out the rocks for it the largest single project ever engaged upon without mechanization. If you add together all seven wonders of the world you aren't even close to the pile of rock we're talking about. So these things are a big fucking investment and the high lords really don't like risking them without a really good reason (makes you question why they wouldn't build 20 smaller ships instead).

So if you ever wondered why the Navy doesn't get more action, now you know. By the time the big, awesome ships get on the scene the invasion already probably finished and the bad guys moved on. Then you nuke the shit out of them from orbit or drop millions of poor bastards into the meat grinder. Far better idea all round. It's the reason that the enemy, even nutters like Chaos, don't fight in the void without reason. On the ground it's just a scrap, and maybe you win or maybe you don't. If you lose in the void then your campaign on the surface is dead. No reinforcements, no support and a massive constant orbital bombardment to kill everyone left (which sometimes doesn't happen, because, you know, plot armour). That tends to mean fleets hover around and not fighting, one ensuring the other can't directly interfere with the surface war. This is actually an excellent and realistic explanation for why there is significant ground warfare in 40k. Also, ground-based defenses, mobile theater-shields, etc. are common. So, attacking a planet worth anything is like attacking a planet-sized Death Star without the super-weapon. Your ground forces taking out shields and anti-space batteries is critical to achieving anything. But, by that point, most of the enemy is dead and the survivors have either moved to the next defended region or got so stuck-in with your dudes that you can't shoot without killing your own army. Unless you worship Khorne, in which case you really couldn't care less who you kill, even yourself.

Besides that, there are strategic locations to take in order to take or destroy the anti-orbit defenses. Those locations have strategic locations and so on and before you know it, you’re invading the whole damn planet.

So, the navies of the galaxy ultimately get pushed down into either raiders, escorts against raiders, raider-hunters, or babysitting and logistical duty for groundpounders. Which of course brings back the question of why the Navy has such a desire to get more interceptors and bombers for ship-to-ship combat when they rarely engage in combat in the first place and the attack craft are insufficient. Could be to weaken the enemy ships' ability to shoot at the surface, but by the point they would have a target it would have (as stated) gone to a new defended location or whatever else, defeating the point of sending attack craft to weaken the enemy ships' offensive power. They won't shoot at each other, and they can't shoot at the surface (or at least can't shoot anything worth shooting at). In exchange for packing in so many attack craft into hangars designed for countless atmospheric air support fighters and bombers, the Imperial Guard has to die in radically greater numbers than they have any need to since they have limited anti-air capabilities and all of their enemies have no problem sending massive swarms of fighters and bombers at them. That is without even getting to engage the enemy on the ground and not counting the countless soldiers killed as the transports are shot to pieces due to their escorts commonly ditching them to go after obvious bait tactics. Oh, and sending reinforcements from other worlds, let alone the loss of expensive and valuable drop ships and interstellar transport vessels, is far more expensive than just using damn atmo-fighters and bombers for the Guard. Heck, an escort ship variant was created specifically to resolve this problem as even the High Lords got pissed about it. A ship designed as an escort vessel specializing in carrying atmospheric fighters, bombers, etc. just to provide support for the Imperial Guard. The Navy promptly took the ships built, removed the atmospheric craft, and replaced them with Furies and Starhawks. They already have a light cruiser escort carrier and the number of attack craft they crammed in was abysmal.

Thus the rumor that the Navy has no balls. But who needs balls when you have a nova cannon sized dick and eighteen dice worth of fire power.

=== Ship Size ===

No one is quite sure how big the ships really are. One story claims the Retribution-Class is a mere 3 kilometers long, while another says it is 9 kilometers and up to 20 kilometers.

Your best bet is Rogue Trader, although going by those figures, anything bigger than a cruiser has an average density around that of hydrogen... Everything after Rogue Trader became much larger, though, so this is likely inaccurate (though pretty big vessels anyway). Given the constant references to “city sized” weapon batteries and hangars, perhaps take Rogue Trader ship sizes and multiply ten or even a hundred. From a helpful poster on [http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=63267&page=2 Heresy-Online] we have this:

For the most accurate scale, look towards the Battlefleet Koronus Expansion, as it is more a stat/rule book than a story. That and previous consensi, as well as cross referencing with the Horus Heresy rulebooks by Forge World (which places Battleships at 8-12km) place Cruisers just above 5 kms, and Battleships in the mid 8s. Please note that most ships above the size of 8ish kilometers are either a unique modified/purpose built flagship or a ship of a small class that is not in widespread circulation. For a sense of scale the largest warship in the world is currently the US Navy's Ford Class Aircraft Carrier measuring in at 337 meters long or 0.337km making the USS Ford the size of a cannon. They have guns literally the length of an Aircraft carrier!

*Transports and other Attack Craft, typically rated for atmospheric operation; also includes ships designed to be boarding torpedoes.
**<1 kilometer. That's the small ones, there are super transports in 40k as well. (A [[thunderhawk]] would go here).
*Escorts are "small" ships, like the Cobra, designed to flank foes and operate in squads.
**1-2 kilometers.
**Heavy Frigates
**Frigates
**Corvettes
**Destroyers
**Freighters
*Light Cruiser, a smaller Cruiser.
**3-5 kilometers.
*Cruiser, the standard fighting vessel; every Imperial fleet has them.
**5-6 Kilometers.
*Battle Cruiser, a beefed up Cruiser; generally more 'modern' than a Grand Cruiser.
**6-7 kilometers.
*Grand Cruiser; pocket-sized Battleship, very old.
**7-8 kilometers.
*Battleship; the biggest of the lot, simply put.
**8-12 kilometers.
**Battleships
**Fleet Carriers

The Horus Heresy novel "Know No Fear" had this to say about ship sizes, taken from [http://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/22848349/ /tg/] who quoted it from the book and written here is just the lengths and names of the ships, for simplicity and space:

*Macragge’s Honour. Twenty-six kilometers - Flagship
*Spirit of Konor. Seventeen kilometers - Battleship
*Antrodamicus. Twelve kilometers - Grand Cruiser
*Antipathy. Nine kilometers - Cruiser (note that the book said it had "six thousand lives" on board, which would be an absurdly small crew for its size by 40k or even 21st century standards, but it wasn't fully crewed at the time; maybe for an astartes or mechanicus vessel its a bit closer to reasonable but definite not for the Navy)
*Aegis of Occluda. Seven kilometers - Class unknown
*Gladius. Four kilometers - Escort
*Then there is the Abyss-class created by Lorgar that is said to match the Phalanx in size. He made three of them. In reality, they matched it in beam, but the Phalanx is round, so iut probably wasn't quite as big.

===Weapon Effects===

The calcs for Imperial Navy warships are one of the [[FAIL|<u>''worst''</u>]] things in GeeDubs' illustrious history. From Macrocannons [[Wat|outputting fewer joules than a punch from an 8-year-old child]] to [[Exterminatus|broadsides breaking continents]] [[Derp|making the existence of Cyclonic Torpedoes feel impotent.]] Calculating the strength of naval weapons have been one of the biggest pain in the ass for /tg/, not helping with the fact that many BL authors have no sense of fucking scale, let alone consistency.

Nevertheless, even if naval vessels shot out megatons per broadside, many newer folks around here may wonder, "Why can't the Imperial Navy do an orbital bombardment of a heavily defended position on land?". The answer is simple. Collateral damage. Yes, even the most incompetent of Imperial commanders recognize that too much collateral damage is a bad thing and would really affect the health of a good Crusade. After all, life is the Emperor's currency. '''SPEND IT WELL'''. This is not helped by the fact that the naval weapons of the Imperial Navy aren't the most accurate of the lot. Sure, fluff dictates that Macrocannons have an effective range in excess of tens of thousands of kilometres. But there is a <u>BIG DIFFERENCE</u> in providing suppressive fire against multi-kilometre spaceships and trying to hit a well-defended bunker that is only ten meters across. The only weapons that could be counted as 'accurate' are Lances and Nova Cannons. But firing them is overkill and the resulting shockwave will fuck up anyone indiscriminately, including ''Titan legions''. This is not counting into the basis of Void Shields and anti-orbital weapons like [[Defense Laser]]s for example.

As such, whilst it is theoretically possible to do orbital bombardment, in reality, most of the time it is just far more efficient to direct your naval assets to spar against ''other'' enemy naval ships, rather than risk a fleet that a) may or may not hit the target or worse, their allies due to inaccuracies, b) must come dangerously close to Defense Laser range or any other anti-orbital weapons and c) when they ''ARE'' given the chance to perform the role, the enemy has either become too insignificant to order a bombardment or have already captured and took hold of the entire planet plus its defences. Ergo, whilst it is tempting, orbital bombardment isn't really popular and just risks splitting your forces where it could have been better suited to, you know, deny the enemy of any potential orbital superiority in the first place.

=== Lack of Balls ===

It is well-known that most Imperial Navy Officers don't have em. Other times their balls are too big and get themselves and their crews killed in idiotic attacks.

An Imperial Navy fleet is most effective when Inquisitors take it over. [[Exterminatus|See Here]].

=== Carrier Hate ===

Back in M36, the Imperial Navy fought a lowkey civil war over fleet doctrine in Segmentum Tempestus known as the Gareox Incident. A cabal of chaos worshipers worked their way high enough in the navy to start designing ships that were ready-built to turn traitor, most of which were carriers. The battlefleet eventually figured out something was off and the result was a giant carriers vs battleships fight that went down the way the Battle off Samar would have if the Japs hadn't been scared shitless by three destroyers. The surviving carriers went openly traitor and since then building new carriers has been borderline heresy so far as the navy is concerned. Doesn't stop them from building a bunch of them anyway. Hating something has never stopped the Imperium from doing whatever is necessary to do its duty (or else).

Strangely, this battle is contradictory in how attack craft fare in any other battle. Normally, you read about bombers and interceptors ravaging and destroying ships with impunity unless you have a way to counter them such as dedicated anti-air ships and interceptors of your own. Which the attacking loyalists in this battle lacked. And the keel-built ships are faster so should have been able to stay out of range and cripple the Imperial ships’ engines and weapons and sensors easily.