Imperial Navy

Cathedrals IN SPEHSS!

The Imperial Navy is one of the main branches of the Imperial military in Warhammer 40,000 (although very little of the Navy actually appears in the tabletop game). They are also one of the main factions in the beloved spin-off game Battlefleet Gothic.

Unlike the Imperial Guard, who get killed in the thousands millions billions every day, the Imperial Navy rarely suffers that many casualties. This is because, unlike the flashlight used by Guardsmen, the main weapon of the Navy is a giant, heavily-armed, heavily-armored battleship that puts other races' spaceships to shame (well, except Necrons). These ships are also massive, flying, Baroque cathedrals.

Depending on how you look at it (and who you're looking at), the officers of the Navy are either wealthy cowards or badass gentlemen. In either case, their ships have crews numbering the hundreds of thousands or even millions (we're not kidding when we say that each ship has its own language(s) and culture(s)), since the Imperial Navy doesn't understand how auto-loaders work, so loading a gun requires thousands of slaves running on treadmills. Of course, this might be the fault of a certain other branch of the Imperium, who, coincidentally, do have working auto-loaders on their ships. In any case, the Imperium has found it cheaper and more effective to use manpower because they have that many people to throw at even the tiniest of problems. Of course, for a major officer, most days simply require him to press a button and blow something up, then go back to drinking his tea. Oh, and maybe scramble the ground-support flyers, if he's feeling charitable that day.

Note that, back in the Great Crusade, the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy were one and the same, operating under the far-less-badass name of "Imperial Army." However, thanks to the Horus Heresy, the two got split up, so that a single military commander couldn't control too many forces; a Guard commander isn't able to get off any given planet without the Navy, and the Navy isn't able to conduct wars (and, you know, occupy territory) without the Guard. Despite how much they need each other, the two bicker constantly, which, in fact, may be the reason for all the Grimdark the 40k universe is saddled with.

/tg/ has a hard-on for female Admirals, but come on, wouldn't you?

Types of Ships

The Imperial Navy has four types of ships they hide their cowardly asses in. The main ships are battleships, cruisers, escorts, and fighters

Battleship

Supposedly rare, but every Grand Marshal and High Admiral has one to hide in. Bonus points if that coward is also Chaos. The biggest heaviest hitters available, these things are like actual medieval cathedrals in that the grandchildren of the workers who start building them get to live to see their completion.

• Emperor: The "standard" battleship of the 40k 'verse, the ship has multiple fighter decks and weapons batteries. Unfortunately, most commanders like to use this ship as a hideout, causing the lack of sufficient air support in the ground wars. Tabletop-wise, its status as the official battleship of Battlefleet Gothic doesn't stop it from losing carrier duels against the Chaos equivalent.

• Retribution: Packing all gun batteries, the ship can devastate an entire continent in one broadside, but for some reason cannot destroy a hive city or fort with void shields - or in some cases, ones without any shields at all...; either that or GW is just pulling another Michael Bay out of their asses again since, they have no idea on how consistency works, let alone a simple knowledge of physics.

• Apocalypse: This ship packs a lot of lances and a Nova Cannon. Shares all the disadvantages of a Gothic-class cruiser.

• Oberon: The mixed-breed bastard of the Imperial Navy. It has lances, fighter bays, and weapon batteries. Its a powerful ship... when fighting foes half its size "Newer" fluff says the Oberon is rare, but a complete success in making a ship capable of killing anything it comes across, alone. Unfortunately, fluff also says a ridiculously low number of these (apparently) powerful ships were made (like, 3 or so).

• Nemesis: The super-carrier of the Imperial Navy. It has SIX flight decks (the size of towns or small cities, each), more than any other ship in the galaxy. But because of Rule of Cool, it is incredibly rare since the Navy captains prefer to get up close broadside their enemies, or actually rather because all of the ships in this class were just ships modified from Emperor class ships in one particular war, because they were damaged or otherwise.

Grand Cruiser

Backwater and frontier commanders use these when battleships aren't available. Basically an older type of cruiser that has more armour, but consequently lower speed (and can nearly match a battleship in firepower). It is basically meant to be to advance screening what battleships are to full fleets, and it does this job well (though the lack of dakka means Imperial commanders tend to mothball it).

• Avenger: The granddaddy of "modern" Imperial warships. The Avenger was the winner of a GW-sponsored ship design contest, and was originally known as the Furious. Highlights include a half-armored prow that resembles those on standard Imperial ships but provides no additional protection, no forward-firing armament, and the firepower of two Lunar-class cruisers.
  • Exorcist: An Avenger that has carrier bays in place of lances. Useful in providing carrier support to any Imperial fleet.
  • Vengeance: An Avenger with only macrobatteries. Intended to break the line of battle like Nelson's ships at Trafalgar, while suffering from the lack of an armored prow.

Battlecruiser

What do you do when you forget how to maintain an entire category of heavy warships? You build a new bunch of heavy warships, with simpler technology.

Battlecruisers are basically upgunned cruisers, with more weapons (usually adding dorsal weapons and some armor), and are intended to fill the gap between true battleships, which are rare, and normal cruisers, which tend to die really easily to the ancient Chaos cruisers and grand cruisers.

• Armageddon
• Overlord
• Mars
• Overlord

Cruiser

Cruisers are the bread and butter of the Imperial Navy. Much larger than escorts and light cruisers, but less rare than battleships, cruisers are what the Imperial Navy (and Chaos and Xenos) use to fight their campaigns across the stars. Thus far, all Imperial Cruisers have been shown to utilize the same hull-type: a squat armored prow in front, capable of mounting a prow-mounted weapon system, and a big bunch of engines in the back, with baroque and Gothic architecture in-between.

• Dictator
• Dominator
• Gothic
• Jupiter: A kitbashed design, converted from other classes of cruiser that have been heavily damaged in battle. By stripping out all the damaged components and replacing them with launch bays, you get a pretty sturdy carrier. Just don't let the enemy get anywhere near it. Apparently the Imperium doesn't build these normally at all.
• Lunar
• Tyrant

Light Cruiser

Smaller than true cruisers, light cruisers are used in two ways. Either you use a fast, maneuverable light cruiser like the Dauntless to add some extra firepower to a scouting squadron or long-range patrol, or you use a pocket cruiser like the Voss light cruisers to add some heavy firepower and armor to a convoy, fleet, or base. The advantage of the light cruisers are that they're cheaper to build and operate than real cruisers.

• Defiant
• Dauntless
• Endurance
• Endeavor
• Siluria

Ironclad

8 kilometer long battering rams. No, really.

Escort

Most common ship class in the Imperium, ranging from about 1-1.5km long. They are used for all sorts of duties, from transporting important officials to convoy escorts to attack squadrons in fleet engagements. They are almost always squadroned in the latter cases, and it's absolutely necessary on the tabletop for them to be effective.

• Cobra: The PT-Boats of the Imperial Navy. Small, fast, and lightly armed, their one purpose in life is to fire shoals of torpedoes from 3-8 ship squadrons. A great part of the Imperium's military advantage (in fluff and on the tabletop) comes from all the torpedoes they can fire at the enemy, and the Cobra's are a big part of that.
• Falchion: A new (245 years old) class of escort ship built by Voss Prime. Slow as balls but still capable of firing torpedoes. While Cobras are used offensively in fleet actions, Falchion's are designed to be convoy escorts and stick close to larger warships to defend them from enemy escorts.
• Firestorm: A Sword-class frigate with a prow-mounted Lance. Gives the Sword some extra anti-ship punch that it dearly needs.
• Sword: The most common warship in the Imperial Navy, and one of the simplest. No torpedoes or lances to distract you here; a Sword puts two massive laser batteries behind a pointed armored prow and cuts into enemy formations like a multi-laser through canon.

Fighter

Reusable torpedoes

Armed Freighter (in the Battlefleet)

Ships bought, borrowed or stolen and then armed in the misguided attempt to boost the strength of a fleet in desperate need of ships (instead of simply using the legio cybernetica to make robots to do the monotonous manual labor so 90% of the hundred thousand crew members can be spread out amongst a hundred more warships)

Important Details

Crews

Consists of either bridge officers, techpriests, slave drivers or slaves. Due to the Imperium's aversion to AI and Automation each ship needs at least thousands of people to man it. Whenever the crew count gets low, the Imperial Navy sets up fake strip clubs on a planet claiming "Free Hookers" to lure in unsuspecting men (and the occasional woman). Once a future crewman steps in, he/she's knocked out, bound, gagged, and taken to the ship, where they'll slave away the rest of their soon-to-be-short existence doing everything needed to make flying through space and fighting in the void possible. This includes dragging shells the size of houses into cannons (instead of using chimeras or winches like a modern sane person would have done) while being whipped. Still, at least for the crew sex is allowed, infact encouraged, if for no other reason than the fact that ships will often be in space for long enough periods that natural means is the most viable way of getting replacement personnel. Seriously, whole fucking cities and civilizations arise from the more massive ships, every bit as intricate as say a long lived Hive City. Here is an idea of how it works, right up to the Roman armor, whips and beatings. Oh and apparently besides whole civilizations, there are whole civilizations of mutants around too. They can more or less settle new worlds for da Emprah by simply disgorging their excess population, which the crew is probably all to happy to do.

Travel

The ships of the Imperium travel through the Warp using what's called a warp drive to get to where they're going. However, this isn't your happy, fancy tunnel-of-light like in Star Wars, or everything-moves-fast Star Trek, it is an alternate dimension full of Chaos. In order to avoid being turned inside-out (think event horizon) and getting hentai-raped by every daemon in the warp, the ships rely on what is called the Gellar Field to keep the furries, undesirables, and various other evil beings out of their ship when traveling through. The Baroque decorations are also implied in helping to ward off said daemons. They rely on a Navigator that uses the Empra as a beacon to safely navigate the Warp, hence the title "Navigator".

Ranks in the Navy

While the Imperial Navy uses a lot of the ranks in similar fashion to modern militaries, they invariably hold to a more archaic form and are not equivalent to modern day ranking systems. Particularly since it's quite clear that commissions in 40k can often be purchased rather than earned, and that a "Warrant" would most likely hold to the original term and be an "officer by appointment" rather than an enlisted grade. Though considering the immense variety of units within the Imperium, this may not necessarily be the case galaxy-wide, so all options are equally valid.

Officer Ranks

• Lord-High Admiral of the Imperial Navy - This guy is a High Lord and is the single dude responsible for the ENTIRE Imperial Navy, though likely he doesn't do much other than delegate to his subordinates and attend tedious High Lord meetings.
• Lord-High Admiral - There are five of these guys, one for each Segmentum. While they're probably never anywhere near the front lines they probably have more to do, since its their job to oversee the deployment of fleets and materials from sector to sector.
• Lord Admiral - The guy in charge of a sector fleet who gets direct command of vessels and formations. You see these guys in the fluff quite regularly when "key" worlds (like Armageddon) need defended or attacked.
• Solar Admiral - Often a terminal rank... no really. Occasionally regular Admirals who do good jobs can put themselves forward for promotion to this position, which needs to be approved by the Lord-High Admiral, then the officer needs to travel to Terra be reviewed by the Lord-High Admiral of the Imperial Navy. Obviously this can take a very, VERY long time to approve. So they might often be dead before the promotion gets approved. If they get approved they are likely to get promoted straight up to sector commander (see Lord Admiral) as a position will have probably opened up while he was waiting. More rarely, Solar Admirals can get sent on "detached duties" which is basically a license to do as they please with their independent fleets.
• High Admiral - Commands several group of naval fleets (e.g. Battlegroups), often the most senior Navy officer in a Crusade
• Admiral - Gets put in charge of a fleet and told to oversee some subsectors. He's usually the highest of the "front line" ranks and much of his time will be on active duty patrolling his assigned region.
• Vice Admiral - Fleets traditionally get split into three parts, with the highest Admiral taking up the portion containing the larger ships, while the "Vice" Admiral takes the "Vanguard" portion of faster moving ships.
• Rear Admiral - the third portion of a fleet would be the "Rearguard" and usually gets assigned to the youngest/least experienced Admiral in the fleet. His job is usually the quietest one as he gets the mop-up and repair duties.
• Commodore - an experienced Captain in command of a squadron of capital ships. It's traditionally only a temporary rank, as capital ships don't always get assigned to each other the same way that escorts do. But the realities of war often mean that ships stay together for extended periods, often well beyond the lifespans of generations of captains.
• Lord Captain - not actually a rank, but an honourific applied to Captains of detached vessels operating independently. The "Lord-" part implies that they operate with the full authority of the the Imperial Navy when they act so they can deal with outside organisations (like planetary governors, Space Marines or Imperial Guard) on relatively even footing.
• Captain The commander of a single capital ship or the lead starship in an escort squadron.
• Commander - Usually the commander of an escort vessel. Is also the ranking officer on board orbital space stations. It also gets used as the terminal rank amongst Pilots, since small attack craft all fall under the remit of the Navy; so a Wing Commander would get command over all pilots based on a single carrier.
• Lord Lieutenant - The second-in-command to captains of capital ships, bizarrely Commanders don't hold that role and hold their own positions. Thankfully because a chain of command exists in any military, despite a Wing Commander holding higher "actual" rank over a Lieutenant on a carrier vessel he would not hold any higher authority on that ship than his duties allow for.
• Lieutenant - a "working" rank. Either holds command over small system vessels or acts as second in command to Commanders of escorts, or as department heads on Capital ships. They are also Squadron leaders amongst pilots.
• Sub-Lieutenant / Ensign - Team leaders or attack craft pilots
• Midshipman - Apprentice officers who haven't passed any exams or earned any responsibility, they would exist below the Warrant Officers in terms of authority, despite holding a commission. Midshipmen are commissioned from Imperial Nobility as part of the Imperial Tithe (which can mean virtually anyone gets the job if they send their useless heirs just to keep the best ones at home) but they are also assigned from the Schola Progenium. In addition, Midshipmen also may be taken on as a personal favour from the Captain of a vessel if he knows the family. This echoes the ancient real-world practice of young noblemen showing up while the vessel was in dock with a letter from their family and being granted a commission on the Captain's say-so.

NCO Ranks

• Ship Master - the most senior Warrant officer on board a starship, also quite possibly the busiest man on the starship. It's his job to maintain the logs, update stellar navigation charts, oversee ships stores and order supplies, and command a hanger deck if there is one. Basically he's the guy who knows the ship better than anyone. In real-world historical usage, this guy would have an authority equivalent to a Lieutenant on board a starship, and would "mess" (ie: occupy the same space) as the other officers do.
• Bosun - (Shorthand for Boatswain) The NCO directly responsible for all of the common crew members, including maintaining discipline. Despite his position, his actual rank may vary depending upon the size of vessel or operational requirements, in practice it never really matters since he's unlikely to ever meet another Boatswain. (real-world Boatswains could be proper Warrant Officers or not and held responsibility over all areas of the ship other than Engineering, which was left to the Chief Engineer, as if they disciplined/executed/imprisoned an skilled crewman from that department the ship could be crippled).
  • Note that most Capital Ships, but not all Escort ships, may have an actual Naval Commissar on board in this role, tasked with maintaining discipline up to and including the Officer compliment.
• Chief Warrant Officer - Also called "Chief Petty Officer" on some vessels. Will often be given command of important ship sections (like Chief Engineers, helmsmen, or auspex control, as these are are critical to ongoing operation of a starship)
• Warrant Officer - You'll find lots of guys of equivalent rank on a ship, in command of various operational sections keeping the ship running at all times:
  • Masters of Ordnance - make certain that Torpedoes and Attack craft (if any) are fueled and maintained.
  • Master Gunner - have responsibility over all of the weapons batteries and make ensure they are loaded and fired when required.
  • Master-at-Arms - responsible for all "small" arms on board a starship, overseeing all Sergeants-at-Arms, as well as maintaining order over any barracked Guard regiments currently in transit.
  • Master of the Vox - making sense out of the bazillions of messages that run through the bridge at any given moment both internally and externally (crews can get pretty massive, and a lot of traffic can come through at once).
  • Steward - the guy who keeps everyone else well fed.
• Gun Captain - Funnily enough, the man in charge of a single gun crew. Makes sure that the weapon is taken care of, is reloaded quickly enough, and is accurate when asked to fire. All of that comes back to this guy.
• Sergeant-at-Arms - Man in charge of the weapons lockers and leader of boarding parties, as well as maintaining ship-board security. Usually they are transferred from Imperial Guard regiments so that they don't have any prior association with the crew.
• Armsmen - Crewmen trusted to carry weapons. They are not true soldiers as offensive boarding actions tend to be rare. So these guys still have their own regular responsibilities on board ship. Since they are trusted more, they have slightly more freedom to move around the vessel as well, though most Imperial employees really don't want the job, since it means they get scrutinised more, or they could end up beating up their buddies.
• Voidsmen - the lowest rank of crewman on board a Naval Starship above the Servitors unless the Captain is cool with slavery. If they have a skill or a trade they may be referred to as Able Voidsmen which is an official rank that might require examinations. Additionally, if they show leadership qualities they might be promoted to Leading Voidsman and put in charge of work gangs and be considered for promotion to Warrant Officer if a position opens up.

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 aircraft carriers from iron ore) 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.

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 mechanisation. 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.

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. That tends to mean fleets hover around and not fighting, one ensuring the other can't directly interfere with the surface war.

Thus the rumour 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. From a helpful poster on Heresy-Online we have this:

For the most accurate scale, look towards the Battlefleet Koronus Expansion, as it is more a stat/rulebook rather than a story. That and previous consensuses, as well as cross referencing with the Horus Heresy rulebooks by Forge World (which places Battleships at 8-12kms) place cruisers just above 5 kms, and Battleships in the mid 8's. 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 calculations.

Transport.

<1 kilometer-ish. That's the small ones, there are super transports in 40k as well though (a thunderhawk would go here).

Escort.

1-2 kilometer. "Small" ships, like the cobra. Designed to flank foes and operate in squads.

Light cruiser.

3-5 Kilometer. A smaller cruiser, not super common.

Cruiser.

5 Kilometers. 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.

5 kilometers. A beefed up cruiser.

Battle Cruiser. 5-6 kilometer. Beefed up Cruiser, generally more 'modern' than a Heavy Cruiser

Grand Cruiser. 6-8 kilometer. Pocket Battleship. Very old.

Battleship.

8-12 Kilometer. The biggest of the lot. Simply put.

The Horus Heresy novel "Know No Fear" had this to say about ship sizes, taken from /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, small crew for it's size)

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.

Weapon Effects

If the weapons can annihilate a continent, why can't it destroy a mere hive? Because different writers don't talk to each other that's why. Also shields maybe.

Lack of Balls

It is well-known that most Imperial Navy Officers don't have em.

An Imperial Navy fleet is most effective when Inquisitors take it over. See Here.

External Links

• A Comprehensive List of Ships
• Battlefleet Gothic Additional Ships Compendium

Gallery

• 

  The Lord Admiral's Love Shack

• 

  The Grand Marshal's Summer Palace of PWNAGE

• 

  Imagine how quick land battles would be if these things actually helped They do help, but they can't do it too much or they risk fucking up the planet they came to save

• 

  The Bullet-Catchers of the Navy

• 

  Another demonstration of too much spare time

• 

  One of the revered ships of Battlefleet /tg/: Flankitus

• 
•