Why Chaos doesn't just drop ships onto Imperial Planets?

[Moonreaper666]

One of the crazier ideas to blow up a planet (or eradicate everything on the surface) is having Meteors or Ships hit the planet at high speeds

 

I find it strange that the Forces of Chaos don't do this very often

 

-This plan was used in the "Battle of Harmony". ONE of Abaddon's Chaos Sorcerers USED HIS PSYCHIC POWER to throw a Cruiser at a planet, destroying everything at the surface (Killing all Emperor's Children on the planet and destroying the Hive City)

 

-One OUTRAGEOUS plan of Warsmith Shontu was to throw a Space Hulk at TERRA ITSELF! (Plan failed, but did kill many Terminators of the Imperial Fists, especially their Chapter Master)

 

-The Imperium does this during the War of the Beast, dropping :cussloads of Asteroids in the Third Invasion of Ulanor/Armageddon

 

 

 

So why don't they do it that often?

 

 

 

 

Throwing ships or asteroids do rely on a few things:

 

-Space superiority

 

-Somebody or something to control the kamikazi ships or asteroids

 

 

 

BUT, not only is it pragmatic (and very brutal which fits Chaos) it is easier to do rather than sieging a planet

 

There are reasons this is viable and should be done more often by most factions, especially Chaos

 

-Cheaper and Easier to do than most other Planet-Scouring Weapons (Only need a powerful Psyker or/and Astropath)

 

-More effective than the Life-Eater Virus! Had Horus just dropped a Space Hulk at Isstvan 3, there would be no battle

 

-Harder to stop. It is harder to destroy a ship, bunch of asteroids or a Space Hulk than a Cyclonic Torpedo

 

 

In fact, there are several battles in which this strategy would have been useful for Chaos:

 

-Battle for Calth. The Word Bearers could have used their Sorcerers to drag a Space Hulk through the warp and throw it at the Smurf planet

 

(The 50k Word Bearers Astartes could be used elsewhere while all 200k Ultrasmurfs would have been dead)

 

(Even if it didn't kill everyone on the surface, the Daemons and Orks inside the crashed Space Hulk would have killed the survivors)

 

-Battle of the Coronid Deep (It would be easy for the Traitors to find Space Hulks and THEY ARE plenty and bigger than Gloriana Battleships!)

 

-Battle of Pluto (A simultaneous Space Hulk drop on Terra, Luna and Jupiter would have grave consequences for the Solar System)

 

-SIEGE OF FREAKING TERRA! (DROP the MOON ONTO EARTH! A small group of Iron Hands did it to Bodt)

 

 

 

 

IT'S NOT JUST during the Heresy/Scouring when this tactic would have een useful to Chaos:

 

-Battle of the Fang (M32): Thousand Sons should have just dropped Space Hulks on every planet in the Fenris System (It would only take a day to cleanse all of the planets. While it would take Forty Days for the Wolves to return)

 

(The Fang's fortifications and Void Shields COULDN'T EVEN resist falling spaceships during the Months of Shame)

 

-Black Crusades. Abaddon would have won a LONG TIME AGO if he just stayed to dropping ships/asteroids at planets

 

 

 

 

 

What are your thoughts on the matter? What other things should be taken into account when using this plan?

 

Would the Chaos Long War against the Imperium be a cakewalk if they just drop Space Hulks at specific Imperial Planets?

Edited August 17, 2017 by Moonreaper666

[The Unseen]

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.

 

 

Void Ships in 40k are effectively irreplaceable, so you aren't dropping those for sure, so your limited to rocks, which read the above.

 

Also, for example, the void shields around the Terran Palace could probably laugh off the moon falling on it.

 

Another thing is that Chaos wants/needs resources the Imperium manufactures, if you drop an asteroid on every planet, you very soon won't have anything to pillage/steal/take over for when the war is over, whereas once Chaos takes hold of a planet, the Imperium would rather Exterminatus is than let Chaos keep it, and you can't go back once Chaos takes over often, the corruption it leaves behind is to dangerous.

 

Also just because it makes bad stories if they do it all the time, suspension of disbelief and all.

[Brother Ramael]

Ships are out of question for the cost factor, Space Hulks are rare and hard to use anyway ( Chaos doesn't get a free ride thicket with genestealers, warband level groups would get slaughtered, bigger groups probably would rather risk a battle with imperials than risk losing chapter-sized chinks of csm to the hulk like happened many times with the Imperium); on top of that space superiority is a rare beast for Chaos, usually they get the troop down and then get chased away.

[Marshal Loss]

You need psykers of prodigious power, powerful ordnance or spare ships floating around to do this. None of these things are commonplace, and all of them are valuable commodities, the sorts of things that CSM are not going to throw away. Additionally, the majority of the time CSM attack a planet for a specific reason. An artifact, raiding for supplies, etc etc. Blowing up a planet defeats that purpose.

 

As was stated in other threads, please just make a 'what if' thread.

[HeritorA]

Cause dropping ships and rocks will the populance they come to slaughter and drumms the greatest giant reason of them all 'PLOT ARMOR'

[Moonreaper666]

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.

 

 

How long did the Battle of Harmony last?

 

I didn't read the book, but it is implied to only been just one day

 

And Khayon's lieutenant did THROW A CRUISER at the planet in the first phase of the battle

 

Void Ships in 40k are effectively irreplaceable, so you aren't dropping those for sure, so your limited to rocks, which read the above.

 

Also, for example, the void shields around the Terran Palace could probably laugh off the moon falling on it.

 

Another thing is that Chaos wants/needs resources the Imperium manufactures, if you drop an asteroid on every planet, you very soon won't have anything to pillage/steal/take over for when the war is over, whereas once Chaos takes hold of a planet, the Imperium would rather Exterminatus is than let Chaos keep it, and you can't go back once Chaos takes over often, the corruption it leaves behind is to dangerous.

 

Also just because it makes bad stories if they do it all the time, suspension of disbelief and all.

 

Has it ever been shown in lore that Void Shields are strong enough to stand against FTL Space Hulks or Moon Drops?

 

 

 

The Forces of Chaos don't always invade a planet for resources.

 

In fact the following battles/wars would have better outcome for Chaos if they just dropped a Space Hulk or two:

 

 

Battle of the Fang (M32)

-Not invading for resources

-It would take over 50 days for the Space Wolves to return

-Thousand Sons have plenty of psykers

-By the time the Space Wolves return, all of their planets would have been scoured

 

Ultramar Campaign:

-Black Legion and Purge just drop TEN Space Hulks onto Macragge and kill Guilliman, the Space Elves and the Smurfs! (Also the Primaris Astartes)

[Olis]

Rocks are NOT ‘free’, citizen.

*snip*

Always a pleasure to wheel this one out. ^_^

Anyhoo, back to the topic at hand - I agree that it should be a more prevalent tactic. Chaos is unpredictable. They will not always do what is reasonable or prudent. Far from it. Smashing a kilometres long object at relativistic speeds into a target you want annihilated would be easy(ish) compared to trying to defeat conventional armies. Board a merchantman, capture it, get some cultists to man it and <BOOM> Chicxulub, eat your heart out.

It can't be done too often, of course, because that would be boring. But more ships falling out of the sky? Yes please.

[JH79]

Is this not counter productive to the whole purpose of Chaos... the "Gods" of Chaos don't want to exterminate all human life, they want never ending war, they want strife, pain, torture, worship etc etc... wiping out the entirety of the Imperium planet by plant is not in their best interest. Let the Imperium fester, let it rot, let the mortals struggle, just a little more.

 

As for the one click KO of dropping a Hulk / Ship onto a planet... how boring. Sure, great fun at first, but think of it like this, all warriors, be they SM, CSM or Chaos cultists etc... what do they enjoy? War. They literally enjoy the endless meat grinder of war. They have no fear and activly want to let rip on the population of a planet, regardless of their losses. If Abaddon tells the entirety of his Black Legion that from now on all Imperial planets will be destroyed with long range weapons while everyone sits back and has a brew... you got a lot of disgruntled soldiers on your hands, polishing their big shiny chain axes and just itching to kill something, or in this case the person who's told em there's no more fighting to be had.

Edited August 17, 2017 by JH79

[Aothaine]

I think the main reason that chaos raids imperial planets if for slaves. They are Space Marines still. They are tactical and calculated. They attack specific points for specific reasons. If they started using that tactic all the time they would quickly find themselves short staffed and bored. They are not there to kill everything even space marines of Khorne are not killing someone/thing all the time. You have to keep in mind that most Chaos Space Marines are still mostly sane. They just don't think that the Emperor is "all that" anymore and have turned from a life of service to the Imperium to a life of serving themselves. Sure some of them lose their minds but it could easily be stated that having blind faith is a state of insanity as well. 

 

I think the more I delve into Chaos Space Marines the more I find that they are not always evil. They just have different view points and thoughts about events that take place.

 

Reading The Talon of Horus right now and so far.. it is amazing.

[Panzer]

You also underestimate how many many planets the Imperium actually has. Far more than there are spacehulks. :D They could do it a few times but it's kind of a one-trick pony on that scale.

[OPTIMVSCHRISTVS]

Agree with OP. Don't forget about Skalathrax, either. More recently, this tactic is used at one point in Shroud of Night (not going to spoil any further as I'm not sure how the spoiler tag works...)

 

And to echo what Olis said, Chaos warbands are portrayed as constantly raiding Imperial shipping and capturing merchant vessels (I would generally agree that dropping warships on a target would be a waste of resources and not really sustainable). Dropping one of these on a hive (or really, any target) would still cause massive amounts of damage, especially if you overload the reactor on the way down- and if the defenders manage to shoot it down, you now have loads of debris raining down indiscriminately at high velocity.

 

I wouldn't think this tactic would be used for the purpose of annihilating a planet/or hive, however, as that could be accomplished far more efficiently through other means. I see this more as a method of clearing out a landing area for your forces in an otherwise unassailable position so they don't have to eat a ton of anti-air during planet fall. I really think of this as the 41st Millennium version of ISIS armored suicide trucks attacking a position before an infantry assault- after all, say your warband is 100 strong, maybe less. What is a more logical tactic for your raid- parking your ancient, irreplaceable strike cruiser in geosynchronous orbit to clear out the target area with bombardment cannons and risk getting blown out of the sky by ground-based fire, or capturing a random Imperial ship and dropping it on the target? Not to mention the other tactical possibilities it opens up- they enemy now has to focus all their fire on the incoming suicide ships instead of, say, your actual fleet translating into realspace, giving your actual warships an opening to destroy the enemy's defending fleet.

Edited August 17, 2017 by OPTIMVSCHRISTVS

[Scammel]

Alternatively, Chaos Lords do this all the time, they're just off-screened or effectively relegated to a footnote in the list of worlds killed by Dread Lord Turdface or whoever. De facto, novels just aren't written about such incidents and games don't take place on such worlds. The novels and tabletop don't reflect the norm ​of the 41st millennium, otherwise every book and every game would be Orks vs Orks.

[Kol Saresk]

Usually the point of fighting over a planet is to actually harvest its resources. Blow up the planet and you destroy its food, water, and most importantly, its citizens. And citizens represent the greatest value to the forces of Chaos. Slaves, future soldiers, future Chaos Marines, and sacrifices to the Dark Gods, to continue Their favor.

 

Also, even the smallest ship represents a vast amount of resources. They take forever to build in 40K as even the smallest ship is the Cobra destroyer I believe, with a length of 1.5km. That's just 100 meters short of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer.

 

The average 40K cruiser? Roughly 5km. Roughly 1/4 the length of the Executor, Vader's flagship.

 

The average battleship/battlebarge? In 40K, the average Imperial ship is 8-12km long.

 

But in the Heresy? The sizing gets ridiculous.

 

In other words, yes, it'd work spectacularly. But if the ship is still in viable usage, then it'd be a massive waste in resources. Both in what you are literally throwing away, and in what you'd be destroying that you could be salvaging.

 

In 40K, planet killing is rightly treated as a last resort. There are only a handful of instances in which it is used or even wanted to be used as something. The creation of the Ruinstorm, Canticle City, the Gothic War, and a few others. And each time, it was because the aggressor believed it would help cut short the battle by demoralizing the enemy.

 

But more often than not, it's used as a salt and burn method of depriving the enemy of their victory.

[Bonzi]

Don't mix reality and 40k fantasy. Kinetic energy weapons cancel most of the 40k fantasy of planetary conquest. Iron Warriors built a fortress? Why would you lay siege from the ground when you could take 10 ton bars of aerodynamic iron and drop it from orbit to hit with the force of a nuke. Need more? Drop another. Cheap. Won't even reck the planet if you can do math.

 

40k requires a suspension of disbelief on several levels.

[Kol Saresk]

Don't mix reality and 40k fantasy. Kinetic energy weapons cancel most of the 40k fantasy of planetary conquest. Iron Warriors built a fortress? Why would you lay siege from the ground when you could take 10 ton bars of aerodynamic iron and drop it from orbit to hit with the force of a nuke. Need more? Drop another. Cheap. Won't even reck the planet if you can do math.

 

40k requires a suspension of disbelief on several levels.

All fiction requires a suspension of disbelief. Otherwise it wouldn't be fiction.

[Closet Skeleton]

Planetary force fields being able to block orbital bombardment is basically a requirement in all space opera settings.

[HeritorA]

Olis

Round of applause for you great Warmaster

[Moonreaper666]

Planetary force fields being able to block orbital bombardment is basically a requirement in all space opera settings.

Didn't help in the Battle of Bodt or the Battle for Harmony

 

Debris from one of the Ork's Death Stars killed a lot of people on Terra

[Sception]

I always understood the reason ships aren't dropped on planets to be that individual ships are often more valuable than entire planets. Heck, the Imperium has freauently gone through the considerable bother of de-chaosifying captured battleships and cruisers for their own use despite the lingering risk of daemonic corruption that remains, but thinks little of purging entire planets with virus bombs to avoid daemonic corruption from chaos cults.

[Slayer le Boucher]

There is more Planets in the Galaxy then there is Space hulks/Ships.

 

WHile an asteroid could do a lot of damage, it doesn't guaranty total annihiliation, look at us, asteroid came down, Dinos died, but mammals still lived...

[Trevak Dal]

At Calth, the Word Bearers had a troop ship assault the orbital space docks/elevator platform and hit Calth at near light speed.

 

It :cussed Calth up bad and was the trigger for the Ruinstorm.

 

I think the reason chaos doesn't crash ships is because Horus had half of the Imperiums military might and still lost.

 

After 10000 years in Hell, they have even less and their stuff is Fallout quality (held together by duct tape and mutant mucus). All their stuff is broken and not very reliable so they can't easily commit the heavy equipment to move asteroids into a weapon, Guilliman wrote the codex and witnessed the Battle of Calth first hand, so he probably has a few chapters dedicated to such a tactic and the defense against it.

 

On space hulks, it seems like crashing them onto planets if available, would be the best way to deal with them...renders them flightless, keeps them in real space for purgation and salvage. But space is big.

 

And I think shielded cities/hives would be weak or susceptible to cyclonic torpedos. Just aim for the outskirts and cause a tectonic shift, collapse the city/hive in on itself.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Trevak Dal

[Olis]

When I first read about the Campanile in Know No Fear, I thought the entire episode was so grandiose and such a spectacle that I thought it fitted into the 40k universe pretty snugly. It's not a sensible or clever thing to do but... when has many of the things that happen in 40k ever been about what is sensible or clever? ^_^

[Kol Saresk]

When I first read about the Campanile in Know No Fear, I thought the entire episode was so grandiose and such a spectacle that I thought it fitted into the 40k universe pretty snugly. It's not a sensible or clever thing to do but... when has many of the things that happen in 40k ever been about what is sensible or clever? ^_^

Case in point would be a World Eater who beat an Ultramarine to death with a skull attached to a spine while surfacing on a ship that would burn up in the atmosphere.