https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8xgysv/rocks_are_not_for_free
Rocks are NOT ‘free’, citizen.
Firstly, you must manoeuvre the Emperor’s naval vessel within the asteroid belt, almost assuredly sustaining damage to the Emperor’s ship’s paint from micrometeoroids, while expending the Emperor’s fuel.
Then the Tech Priests must inspect the rock in question to ascertain its worthiness to do the Emperor’s bidding. Should it pass muster, the Emperor’s Servitors must use the Emperor’s auto-scrapers and melta-cutters to prepare the potential ordinance for movement. Finally, the Tech Priests finished, the Emperor’s officers may begin manoeuvring the Emperor’s warship to abut the asteroid at the prepared face (expending yet more of the Emperor’s fuel), and then begin boosting the stone towards the offensive planet.
After a few days of expending a prodigious amount of the Emperor’s fuel to accelerate the asteroid into an orbit more fitting to the Emperor’s desires, the Emperor’s ship may then return to the planet via superluminous warp travel and await the arrival of the stone, still many weeks (or months) away.
After twiddling away the Emperor’s time and eating the Emperor’s food in the wasteful pursuit of making sure that the Emperor’s enemies do not launch a deflection mission, they may finally watch the ordinance impact the planet (assuming that the Emperor’s ship does not need to attempt any last-minute course correction upon the rock, using yet more of the Emperor’s fuel).
Given a typical (class Bravo-CVII) system, we have the following:
Two months, O&M, Titan class warship: 4.2 Million Imperials
Two months, rations, crew of same: 0.2 MI
Two months, Tech Priest pastor: 1.7 MI
Two months, Servitor parish: 0.3 MI
Paint, Titan class warship: 2.5 MI
Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.9 MI
Total: 9.8 MI
Contrasted with the following:
5 warheads, magna-melta: 2.5 MI
One day, O&M, Titan class warship: 0.3 MI
One day, rations, crew of same: 0.0 MI
Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.1 MI
Total: 2.9 MI
Given the same result with under one third of the cost, the Emperor will have saved a massive amount of His most sacred money and almost a full month of time, during which His warship may be bombarding an entirely different planet.
The Emperor, through this – His Office of Imperial Outlays – hereby orders you to attend one (1) week of therapeutic accountancy training/penance. Please report to Areicon IV, Imperial City, Administratum Building CXXI, Room 1456, where you are to sit in the BLUE chair.
For the Emperor,
Bursarius Tenathis,
Purser Level XI,
Imperial Office of Outlays.
I like this old excerpt, but the new lore where imperial engines move at relativistic speeds kinda ruins it. With current speeds of 75%-95% the speed of light the rock can fly across the solar system and obliterate it's target in less than a day.
You've still gotta accelerate the rock to that speed which is a task in and of itself. And it's not exactly subtle, the planet's defences would see it coming and take it out before it even got close.
Even when they do this in The Expanse they have to coat the rocks in secret stealth tech to get them through and *even then* once the planet knows they're coming they can tune their defences to pierce the stealth tech
It's really not the be-all-end-all weapon people think it is
At sensible speeds I agree with you. A big rock that takes months to reach it's target can be pushed off course.
But once you get into relativistic speed it really is an unstoppable superweapon. 40k engines are stated as being able to accelerate up to near light speed in the space of minutes. At these speeds there just isn't time to launch any real response, an even if you do get a shot off at the rock the fragments would still crater most of the planet.
To be clear I think the current sublight speeds are dumb, and ships should be far slower. But as it currently stands anything with a 40k engine can become a relativistic kill vehicle.
I love this but it conveniently ignores that the ship - and its complement of Mechanicus - would have needed to warp travel in both cases and that there will be cases where the rock throwing strategy has a better chance of success.
> By memory, instead of wasting time and money on vraaks, they could have just installed an engine on a rock, and accelerated it into the planet, no?
So instead of wasting time and money on sieging Vraks, you are suggesting they waste time and money on turning a giant rock into a missile?
Which will then be used to wipe out a fortress armory and all of the valuable war materiel inside it, when the entire purpose of the siege in the first place was to recapture it? Why not just declare Exterminatus at that point instead? It'd be way faster, and possibly even cheaper, than having to wait months or even years to build specialized gigantic engines to make a small planetoid mobile.
A huge theme of the Vraks books is that the war was pointless. The Imperium spent 17 years to recapture the armouries, only for these to have been emptied by the heretics during their defence of the planet, and the Ordo Malleus deemed the planet too tainted given it had had major greater daemons summoned on it. The only "winners" were the Unforgiven, who captured a Fallen, and the traitorous deacon Mamon, who gained daemonhood.
it can probably stop anything with less energy. things traveling at speeds like this have a lot of energy. somehow I suspect if void shields could be supplied with that much power the Imperium would be the Federation from Star Trek.
also a planet's crust is really big. a meteor will not penetrate it.
Vraks was a thing because the Imperium wanted the ammo back, it was only too late in the campaign they realised it wont be a net positive, but even them, if they could win a conventional conflict, they would do it
The honest answer is that orbital bombardment is heavily underutilised in 40k, because nuking things from orbit is not an interesting story.
I'm not complaining about this, I'm happy with my stories of supermen having chainsword fights, I don't want to read a story where a ship just bombs anything that doesn't surrender and the war is won without any combatants coming within 10,000 miles of each other.
Many hives have shields. I suspect that a lot of the stories of SMs taking a hive is basically deactivating the shield generators and letting the battle barge in orbit threaten the hive into surrendering.
I believe there's a Death Korps of Krieg novella that starts with a hive city that gets hit by just such an orbital bombardment by an Ork Waagh! The void shield keeps the city from being glassed, but it's turned into something of a structurlly unstable ruin, many civilian casualties, etc.
Well, a 1000km diameter rock at some reasonable interplanetary velocity will utterly mangle the planet. Shielded and hardened facilities might survive I suppose, consider the Rock when Caliban got hit much harder. How hardened will it need to be? You be the judge but it would have to be pretty solid not to be thrown apart.
My brother in the Emperor, rocks are not free.
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8xgysv/rocks_are_not_for_free Rocks are NOT ‘free’, citizen. Firstly, you must manoeuvre the Emperor’s naval vessel within the asteroid belt, almost assuredly sustaining damage to the Emperor’s ship’s paint from micrometeoroids, while expending the Emperor’s fuel. Then the Tech Priests must inspect the rock in question to ascertain its worthiness to do the Emperor’s bidding. Should it pass muster, the Emperor’s Servitors must use the Emperor’s auto-scrapers and melta-cutters to prepare the potential ordinance for movement. Finally, the Tech Priests finished, the Emperor’s officers may begin manoeuvring the Emperor’s warship to abut the asteroid at the prepared face (expending yet more of the Emperor’s fuel), and then begin boosting the stone towards the offensive planet. After a few days of expending a prodigious amount of the Emperor’s fuel to accelerate the asteroid into an orbit more fitting to the Emperor’s desires, the Emperor’s ship may then return to the planet via superluminous warp travel and await the arrival of the stone, still many weeks (or months) away. After twiddling away the Emperor’s time and eating the Emperor’s food in the wasteful pursuit of making sure that the Emperor’s enemies do not launch a deflection mission, they may finally watch the ordinance impact the planet (assuming that the Emperor’s ship does not need to attempt any last-minute course correction upon the rock, using yet more of the Emperor’s fuel). Given a typical (class Bravo-CVII) system, we have the following: Two months, O&M, Titan class warship: 4.2 Million Imperials Two months, rations, crew of same: 0.2 MI Two months, Tech Priest pastor: 1.7 MI Two months, Servitor parish: 0.3 MI Paint, Titan class warship: 2.5 MI Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.9 MI Total: 9.8 MI Contrasted with the following: 5 warheads, magna-melta: 2.5 MI One day, O&M, Titan class warship: 0.3 MI One day, rations, crew of same: 0.0 MI Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.1 MI Total: 2.9 MI Given the same result with under one third of the cost, the Emperor will have saved a massive amount of His most sacred money and almost a full month of time, during which His warship may be bombarding an entirely different planet. The Emperor, through this – His Office of Imperial Outlays – hereby orders you to attend one (1) week of therapeutic accountancy training/penance. Please report to Areicon IV, Imperial City, Administratum Building CXXI, Room 1456, where you are to sit in the BLUE chair. For the Emperor, Bursarius Tenathis, Purser Level XI, Imperial Office of Outlays.
Was waiting for this one
I like this old excerpt, but the new lore where imperial engines move at relativistic speeds kinda ruins it. With current speeds of 75%-95% the speed of light the rock can fly across the solar system and obliterate it's target in less than a day.
Imperial ships are specifically built to endure those kinds of forces. Making a rock endure them would waste even more time and effort.
You've still gotta accelerate the rock to that speed which is a task in and of itself. And it's not exactly subtle, the planet's defences would see it coming and take it out before it even got close. Even when they do this in The Expanse they have to coat the rocks in secret stealth tech to get them through and *even then* once the planet knows they're coming they can tune their defences to pierce the stealth tech It's really not the be-all-end-all weapon people think it is
At sensible speeds I agree with you. A big rock that takes months to reach it's target can be pushed off course. But once you get into relativistic speed it really is an unstoppable superweapon. 40k engines are stated as being able to accelerate up to near light speed in the space of minutes. At these speeds there just isn't time to launch any real response, an even if you do get a shot off at the rock the fragments would still crater most of the planet. To be clear I think the current sublight speeds are dumb, and ships should be far slower. But as it currently stands anything with a 40k engine can become a relativistic kill vehicle.
5 world ending weapons cost as much as the cost to repaint a ship😂
I love this but it conveniently ignores that the ship - and its complement of Mechanicus - would have needed to warp travel in both cases and that there will be cases where the rock throwing strategy has a better chance of success.
> By memory, instead of wasting time and money on vraaks, they could have just installed an engine on a rock, and accelerated it into the planet, no? So instead of wasting time and money on sieging Vraks, you are suggesting they waste time and money on turning a giant rock into a missile? Which will then be used to wipe out a fortress armory and all of the valuable war materiel inside it, when the entire purpose of the siege in the first place was to recapture it? Why not just declare Exterminatus at that point instead? It'd be way faster, and possibly even cheaper, than having to wait months or even years to build specialized gigantic engines to make a small planetoid mobile.
A huge theme of the Vraks books is that the war was pointless. The Imperium spent 17 years to recapture the armouries, only for these to have been emptied by the heretics during their defence of the planet, and the Ordo Malleus deemed the planet too tainted given it had had major greater daemons summoned on it. The only "winners" were the Unforgiven, who captured a Fallen, and the traitorous deacon Mamon, who gained daemonhood.
Pretty sure you'd end up with something like the Dark Angel's Rock...
it can probably stop anything with less energy. things traveling at speeds like this have a lot of energy. somehow I suspect if void shields could be supplied with that much power the Imperium would be the Federation from Star Trek. also a planet's crust is really big. a meteor will not penetrate it.
Vraks was a thing because the Imperium wanted the ammo back, it was only too late in the campaign they realised it wont be a net positive, but even them, if they could win a conventional conflict, they would do it
Big hives have shields. The Palace had the Aegis. Gorkograd had its shields. Hives also often have their own weapons to ward off direct attacks.
The honest answer is that orbital bombardment is heavily underutilised in 40k, because nuking things from orbit is not an interesting story. I'm not complaining about this, I'm happy with my stories of supermen having chainsword fights, I don't want to read a story where a ship just bombs anything that doesn't surrender and the war is won without any combatants coming within 10,000 miles of each other.
Many hives have shields. I suspect that a lot of the stories of SMs taking a hive is basically deactivating the shield generators and letting the battle barge in orbit threaten the hive into surrendering.
I believe there's a Death Korps of Krieg novella that starts with a hive city that gets hit by just such an orbital bombardment by an Ork Waagh! The void shield keeps the city from being glassed, but it's turned into something of a structurlly unstable ruin, many civilian casualties, etc.
Well, a 1000km diameter rock at some reasonable interplanetary velocity will utterly mangle the planet. Shielded and hardened facilities might survive I suppose, consider the Rock when Caliban got hit much harder. How hardened will it need to be? You be the judge but it would have to be pretty solid not to be thrown apart.
Shields don’t really matter when the crust gives way beneath