Space fleets of the various factions and their historical/modern equivalents

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

This topic inspired me to create a topic specifically for discussing the various factions’ fleets including historical/modern equivalents based relative armament and in game as well as lore.

since I covered battle barges and strike cruisers in the above topic, and I think their destroyer and frigate options don’t need much said(feel free to ask about them or bring them up if you’d like) about them so here I’ll be moving on to the Imperial Fleet.

 

battleships

Emperor class- closest to the handful of ‘battle-carriers’ that were built or drawn up on paper.

Nemesis class- super carrier, like the Nimitz class.

Oberon class- kind of a weird one, I’d just fit it as a battleship with a few extra catapult aircraft than typical.

Retribution class- lots of guns, clearly just a battleship

Victory- another battleship

Vanquisher- battleship

Invincible- battleship

Incarnate- WWII fleet carrier

Tyrant- battleship

Ascension- battleship scale version of the USS Vesuvius. Not sure if that was an actual inspiration, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.

 

things will get weird with Grand Cruisers as they’re larger than Battlecruisers and we never had anything between battlecruiser and battleship.

 

Grand Cruiser

Avenger- it would seem to be an aviation heavy battleship. Maybe closer to an outdated battleship like a pre-dreadnought in a post dreadnought world, but carrying airplanes, and given a refit for more armor.

Exorcist- early fleet carrier like the USS Lexington, a carrier built on the hull of a battlecruiser and armed with 2 twin 8” turrets.

Vengeance- is called out as being outdated so again, seems like a pre-dreadnought battleship in a post dreadnought world.

Furious- battleship maybe a ‘pocket battleship’ since they’re noticeably smaller than battleships.

All in all the grand cruisers generally seem to be equivalent to either up armored pre-dreadnoughts, or not so coastal-coastal battleships. A few big powerful guns like a coastal battleship, but not on par with full fledged battleships, and the range of a cruiser.

 

Battlecruisers

Armageddon- standard battlecruiser. Meant to outgun cruisers, but not to join the line of battle.

Chalice- maybe more of a ‘panzerschiff’ heavier weapons than a heavy cruiser but not on the same level as a typical battlecruiser.

Mars- Escort carrier

Overlord- another textbook battlecruiser

Dominion- escort carrier

Mercury- more of a ‘large cruise’ or ‘super cruise’ than a true battlecruiser.

Long Serpent- same as mercury

Jovian- escort carrier

 

Lesser Cruisers (Heavy and Light)

There are so many classes here I’m going to just give some generalities 

Heavy cruisers

Lots of Hangars- Cold War helicopter carriers, like the Moskva, more heavily armed versions of the San Antonio class LPD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskva-class_helicopter_carrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio-class_amphibious_transport_dock

gun/laser focused- standard heavy cruisers, maybe even ‘large cruiser’ if given abnormally heavy armament.

Light Cruisers

hangar decks- WWII sea plane cruisers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSwMS_Gotland_(1933)

guns/lasers/torpedoes- pretty standard light/scout cruiser

 

Escorts

Theres 3 classes of heavy frigates, but not much about any of them I can find, but the escort classification in general is a bit weird from a modern or WWI-WWII PoV. Frigates fill the role of what we’d recognize as destroyers, with the heavy frigates presumably being destroyer leaders.

The Firestorm Frigates I would liken to destroyers like the German Narvik class of DDs, with 150mm/5.9” guns they did mount what were essentially light cruiser guns, on a destroyer.

Meanwhile the BFG destroyer is more akin to the ocean going torpedo boats of the period roughly between 1880 and 1910. Only reason for their existence being torpedoes, with other armament just barely sufficient to engage other ships of their class.

 

 

To be continued

 

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2025 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

‘Battleships’

Ark Mechanicus- Super Battleship like Yamato

Cruisers

Adeptus Mechanicus Cruiser- what I can find about these it just says heavily armed and armored, so maybe equal to a heavy cruiser or ‘large’ cruiser

Tritonos Class- lexicanum just says it has weapons with melta warheads…so torpedo focused cruiser?

AdMech Light Cruiser- Just a standard light cruiser.

Secutor- Pretty standard light cruiser

Lathe- Radar picket cruiser, maybe a destroyer leader due to references of them being under armed.

 

Other

Forge Ship- generally just a supply ship or even a tender.

Archeohort- salvage and rescue ship

to be continued 

[calgar101]

Great work, ive always wished an Imperial Armour book based on 30k/40k Battle Fleet Gothic would be done. 

The old Horus Heresy black books give some details to ships but nothing more than a line or two.

[Gillyfish]

Well, given what has already been contributed, I am not sure that this is quite what you are after, but here goes.

 

The two 'starter' BFG fleets, Imperial and Chaos, had playstyles inspired by periods of naval history. So the Imperials had an age of sail broadside approach for their batteries, but with the addition of forward facing ordnance and self-propulsion rather than wind. So a better analogy might be the early ironclads such as HMS Warrior which still had broadsides, but also had steam propulsion.

 

Chaos, by contrast, was supposedly designed to be closer to a WW2 era fleet, with longer ranges and perhaps less of a fleet line.

 

However, those are fairly loose analogies as cruiser class vessels form the main battle lines rather than battleships, as would have been the case in the world wars. Even in the latter Age of Sail, battle line ships like the 3rd rate '74s were pretty slow and the role of a WW2 'cruiser' was performed by frigates in that era (eyes and ears of the fleet and hunting down merchant vessels).

 

So we should be wary of drawing too clear parallels; I suspect the reason that battleships are not the norm for battlelines in BFG is because they wanted them to be 'special' and a centrepiece ship for your fleet.

 

Andy Chambers has said that one of his design regrets was that escorts and 'aircraft' did not work in quite the way that he had envisaged, something that he remedied in Dropfleet Commander, where both work rather differently and play a far more significant role in fleets.

[Karhedron]

16 minutes ago, Gillyfish said:

Andy Chambers has said that one of his design regrets was that escorts and 'aircraft' did not work in quite the way that he had envisaged, something that he remedied in Dropfleet Commander, where both work rather differently and play a far more significant role in fleets.

 

Curious because most players found ordnance to be too good in the original BFG. Fighter and Bomber wings in particular were so good that they had to be toned down in BFG 2.0. Escorts didn't really do much as the wide fire arcs and numerous turrets meant they were not really many blind spots for small, fast ships to exploit.

[calgar101]

I was just reading up on Armada Imperialis and Astarte ships this morning, ships like Warspite battle barges, Dictatus battle ships and Tiamats. They should definitely make an Imperial Armour/Black book for 30k and 40k ships, throw in Xenos races too if they must.

I can't comment too much on BFG as a game, I played some games a loooong time ago but here's to hoping it makes a come back.

[jaxom]

On 11/16/2025 at 10:34 AM, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Ark Mechanicus- Super Battleship like Yamato

Cruisers

I’m guessing these are the knock-off Arks? I was under the impression true Arks are much more rare and more like mini-Hives in size.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, jaxom said:

I’m guessing these are the knock-off Arks? I was under the impression true Arks are much more rare and more like mini-Hives in size.

No idea, I am just going based off of what the lexicanum says. It didn’t mention size or rarity directly. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

On 12/29/2025 at 2:36 PM, Gillyfish said:

Well, given what has already been contributed, I am not sure that this is quite what you are after, but here goes.

 

The two 'starter' BFG fleets, Imperial and Chaos, had playstyles inspired by periods of naval history. So the Imperials had an age of sail broadside approach for their batteries, but with the addition of forward facing ordnance and self-propulsion rather than wind. So a better analogy might be the early ironclads such as HMS Warrior which still had broadsides, but also had steam propulsion.

 

Chaos, by contrast, was supposedly designed to be closer to a WW2 era fleet, with longer ranges and perhaps less of a fleet line.

 

However, those are fairly loose analogies as cruiser class vessels form the main battle lines rather than battleships, as would have been the case in the world wars. Even in the latter Age of Sail, battle line ships like the 3rd rate '74s were pretty slow and the role of a WW2 'cruiser' was performed by frigates in that era (eyes and ears of the fleet and hunting down merchant vessels).

 

So we should be wary of drawing too clear parallels; I suspect the reason that battleships are not the norm for battlelines in BFG is because they wanted them to be 'special' and a centrepiece ship for your fleet.

 

Andy Chambers has said that one of his design regrets was that escorts and 'aircraft' did not work in quite the way that he had envisaged, something that he remedied in Dropfleet Commander, where both work rather differently and play a far more significant role in fleets.

I’d say including turrets, and fighters/bombers  and torpedoes/missiles destroyed any attempt they made at a real comparison to age of sail ships. After all WWI and WWII surface combatants still wanted to fight broadside on.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Adepta Sororitas fleet

 

Aqua Seeder- not really a warship, I cannot find any weapons listed but I’m sure the have some for self defense. Makes it rain holy water though. Could actually be useful to blunt assaults or prevent reinforcements in rural undeveloped parts of the front.

 

Clarion Craft- Orbital propaganda speaker ships.

 

Piety Class Cruiser- a ‘lumbering’ cruiser, with a combustion projection array. I cannot find any information on that weapon…based on name and faction theme, I’m guessing it’s some sort of flame weapon.

Void Cathedrum- An interesting ship class. Its armament puts it on par with the larger cruisers, but seems specifically designed to conduct boardings and planetary assaults, being capable of itself landing on a planet. So would classify this as a heavily armed amphibious ship, maybe an LPD with offensive armament? (No mention of carrying fighters/bombers so not an LHA/D)

 

 

 

[Magos Takatus]

I think the Adeptus Mechanicus ships are somewhat hard to classify. In the BFG game I recall they were just tweaked Imperial Navy ships, but the Ark Mechanicus seem to be pretty much whatever the authors need them to be at the time, from powerful battleships to pretty much floating continents loaded with hidden archaeotech in the case of the Speranza. I think in-lore they would be similar to Ordinatus platforms, typically having a comparable backbone but vary significantly based on intended function. Of course, in Battlefleet Gothic I think we only got a model for a generic ship roughly comparable to an Imperial Navy battleship? As such I would struggle to compare them with any existing ships. Maybe we might have been looking at something like Project Habbakuk made real, a massive staging post that was too impractical to exist in reality?

[calgar101]

I feel that some ships such as an Ark Mechanicus even Glorianna have a very very broad category. The Mechanicus fleet is probably a creators dream, can customise ships/classes as much as you like.