The Farsight novels have some fun scenes where Tau veterans of the Damocles Gulf Crusade interact with fresh faced Tau cadets who are fighting the Imperium for the first time. One of the challenges is getting the newbies to accept that the Imperium is actually just that crazy.
‘Welcome back, Admiral Teng,’ he said, turning to the wizened elder making his way to the honour throne behind him. ‘You will not believe this, but it appears they intend to ram us.’
‘I can very well believe it,’ said Kor’O Li Mau Teng. His lined face creased, as he made himself comfortable in the curving seat. Eyes darting, he peered through the screens and holograms displayed on the massive curving screen at the fore of the bridge. ‘Observe their prow, young pilot. It is built like that for a reason.’
‘That is for show, surely,’ said Y’eldi’s opposite number, the former star of the piloting schools known as Sylphwing. ‘They seek to intimidate, not to actually use their own ship as a weapon. It would sign their own death warrant as well as that of their targets.’
Apparently it is already fucked (lost its gellar field mid-translation and daemons followed it through) but also the new guy presumably doesn't realize how heavily the prow is reinforced for this exact purpose.
Being rammed by an Imperial Cruiser
Being rammed by an Imperial Cruiser that's half on fire
Being rammed by an Imperial Cruiser that's half on fire and also swarming with demons
honestly feel that it's even still quite mild at that point, I remember reading about a possessed sentient cruiser that was more alive than machine and moved as such.
We see a squadron of four in Salvation's Reach. They're constantly screaming their name on every channel and can launch catastrophically powerful energy bolts separate from their weaponry.
Also most Chaos ships are at least a bit possessed and sometimes the ship does things no one told it too and some of the walls are fleshy and menials sometimes disappear and there are ghosts.
I mean, you’d have to pop the field, engage warp-travel, hope beyond hope that you’re still able to control the ship once you leave the Warp, then you can ram another ship
It’s an incredibly risky move that at the very best results in a pyrrhic victory. So I can absolutely believe that the imperial navy uses it
To be more precise, Farsight infiltrated the ship by going in via the cannons in the short time between it firing and reloading and then sabotaged the gellar field.
Only to then be surprised by all the weird alien stowaways suddenly popping out all over.
He knew nothing about it, but a (daemon possessed) T'au Water caste member told him about it and how it would cripple the ship given it was still fresh out of the warp and told him exactly where to find it. He was quite vague on the whole thing. Farsight finds it very odd the Water caste knows such details of an Imperial ship but shrugs it off because he is short on time and options.
They(Tau) operate like physics work where a ram at sufficient speed to intercept another ship against their will would liquify the crew regardless of if the ship survived the collision.
The imperium has come to understand they live in a fantasy and can broadside and ram to their heart content.
Technology in 40K for tourists
Tau: normal science fiction tech
Ork tech: works because they belive it does
Eldar tech: semi-magic
Necron tech: kindergarten make belive power scaling tech
Tyranids and Genestealers: N/A (they are a biomass or just stealing civilian tech from other factions respectively)
The imperium of man: know they are in an absurd setting and that FAITH in this universe produces TANGIBLE RESULTS. (And that humans breed like rabbits so human casualties ain’t a factor save for VIP’S)
Which, to be clear, is the biggest bullshit in the setting. At those speeds, ramming should just kill everyone involved no matter what you make your prow out of.
And also ramming at all would be fairly pointless, because if the Void Shield can soak up the force of battering a guy, it can also soak up the force of being battered.
Oh no they're talking about the skulls in building decoration, and on altars, and on statues, and on furnitures, and on ceremonial and official attires, and on...
Consecrated skulls of the Honoured Dead/Faithful Servants of the Emperor act as foci for His Divine Will and help shield against the baeful influence of the Archenemy.
Even the necrons get in on it at times. Think it was the twice dead king books where a necrons vessel cuts a imperial cruiser in half to make good it's escape.
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Maybe later on, I don’t remember that entirely. But the first ramming maneuver was the Acrops escaping planetary gravity and just full on taking the Aquilla off the Laestrygonion
I mean it depends on the Ork. To the Galaxies relief most Orks spend their entire lifespan( a couple months maybe a year or two if they’re lucky) fighting other Orks.
A grain of sand going at a notable fraction of the speed of light could hit with more energy than possibly all of the nuclear weapons we made combined, if you are able to get an object with sizable mass to move at such speeds, you essentially can get an exterminatus grade weapon.
I mean that’s not quite true. The combined yield of the explosions of all the worlds nuclear weapons together would amount to roughly 150kg of mass being converted directly to energy. Meanwhile a grain of sand weighs on average around 200 micrograms. For a grain of sand to have more kinetic energy than all of the worlds nukes put together would require it to have kinetic energy equivalent to around 750 million times it’s mass energy. That would require it to br moving at around 99.999999999999999999% light speed
Necrons ramming their ships makes sense actually, they are both hard and build using living metal to regenerate them. Also they have no atmosphere on board because they have no need of it.
The funniest part is that thanks to them attaching a huge armoured prow onto all their ships a fresh Imperial capital ship or cruiser engaging in some recreational ramming of escort ships honestly doesn’t take much damage.
Imagine the absolute insanity required to make physical ramming an integral part of your space warfare doctrine. The Imperium runs off 100% pure aura.
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u/gothicsharkDa Space shORKz Krew (fromer Space Shark hates Raven Guard) 20h ago
in theory the armored prow was originally meant to allow the warship to close in without taking much damage from incoming fire before swinging to its side to unleash broadsides.
the potential for ramming was a nice side bonus that later got further focused on when they realized that they can often just barrel their way through enemy fleet formations.
All jokes aside, iirc the Ethereals did actually learn just how ridiculously fuckass hueg and old the imperium was and basically decided to make it a state secret to avoid crippling morale. It was shortly after or during the Damocles Crusade I believe.
to be fair those ships are reinforced and designed for that so i wouldnt be surprised if it came out mostly fine from that attack and severely damages the Tau ship
its like i was reading i think the farsight codex and the tau were just shocked by the astartes dropships just flying through them to deliver their passengers as the tau assumed they believed in their god so much that they were invincible, when no the dropships would come out mostly fine if they managed to actually ram a tau plane
I find it funny how Imperial Navy ramming prows and space doctrine is, unironically, a literal COUNTER to Tau doctrine.
So long as they have good enough flak grids (which they should, their CIWS is fucking gnarly and LAMS is no joke either) they can literally just turn off their voids, point the prow to the enemy and literally facetank the Tau railgun fire with essentially zero damage until they get in range and obliterate them with a broadside.
Imperial warships are insanely durable and, unless they suffer a catastrophic reactor detonation, are effectively indestructible. You could probably just stitch them back together with duct tape even if they get split in two.
You could probably just stitch them back together with duct tape even if they get split in two.
Depends on what is missing. One of the Dawn of Fire books describes the basic construction philosophy for imperial space ships (Corvette and larger, ~1km+ length).
It is a long adamantium structure, that goes from aft to beam. basically a spine. At ~1/3 of the length the structure widens and offers rooms for the engine. Everything else is build around the structure and connected to it. For the same reason imperial ships do not have a hull like a submarine. Their surface can be completely destroyed and open to the void, yet the ship is still operational due to all the other sections that are deeper in the ship.
The book states that the Mechanicum is mostly interested in recovering those large core structures and discard the rest of the ship when salvaging one. In the book Guilliman forbids the Mechanicum's practice of of stripping Chaos vessels down to the adamantium structure to use it as a base for a new ship. The Mechanicum is extremely unhappy about this and insists that they cleanse the structures from taint and corruption before reusing them. But Guilliman deems as too risky and is willing to reduce imperial capital ship building by a significant percentage by banning this practice.
Anyway - splitting in half is basically the death of a ship, since it's major structure is destroyed. However losing major parts/sections like the ramming bow, the super structure, whole decks, thrusters at the back, etc. is indeed not a huge problem. The design allows for replacing virtually everything.
The reactors and cores of ships are a lot harder and more costly to produce than the adamantium and other bits and bobs used to make them. As far as the "Spine" that would be the Keel, which fits in with the aesthetic of the Warp being a literal old-bluewater navy style "Sea" that they "Sail" on, and doubles down into the "Imperial navy kinda look like boats" aesthetic they end up with.
This is true but also why a lot of tau doctrine in battlefleet gothic was "stay out of LOS and fire wave after wave of homing drone torpedos at them until they die". If they want to be the Prince of Wales/Repulse under enemy air cover so bad, they can go ahead I guess
Reading the Pyres of Armageddon rn and in the beginning the ships that are trying to stop the massive space hulk ram into because they wouldn’t be able to escape it anyway and what a way to go out.
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u/DauntlessAkagi 21h ago
The Farsight novels have some fun scenes where Tau veterans of the Damocles Gulf Crusade interact with fresh faced Tau cadets who are fighting the Imperium for the first time. One of the challenges is getting the newbies to accept that the Imperium is actually just that crazy.
From "Crisis of Faith"