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We might have less to worry about from the orks than I anticipated. The major forge world Accatran is to our south, which is the home of the Titan Legio Destructor. They have 100+ titans of each class and specialize in ork murdering. There is also the Forge World Metallica and the highly revered Iron Skulls Titan Legion there.
We also have the major Forge Orestes to the south-south-west.
On the negative side, the Chaos Knight world of Ransoryn Alpha is to our west. That might be target #2 for me.
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I expanded on my holds and switched the research station to a full blows promethium refinery. The fluff of the shipyards is also greatly expanded. I have added this to the notebook. As always, comment is welcome.
1) Manifold Radiance of the Omnissaiah Shipyards and Shipbreaking Yards.
Formerly a moon measuring 600km across, but completely hollowed out leaving a crust 100km thick and an interior diameter of 400km providing around 1,260,000 sqkm of interior surface space. Not all space is utilized. Orbits the forge world By Iron Wrought.
The moon formerly known as Princeps Autem Solebat was completely unremarkable until the AdMech noticed it was in a prime orbital position to serve as a shipyard. The moon orbits nearly perfectly in line with the planet's equator and was remarkably dense. The original plan was to hollow out the moon to a shell with a thickness of just a few km, but stability concerns in the event of an attack led to a revision to 100km average.
Some Magi raised concernes about gravitaional changes should all this material be moved too far from the moon. If the material was de-orbited or transferred elsewhere it may interfere with the tidal forces that helped the forge world By Iron Wrought's unique mantle mining. As a result, great heaps of materal now sit on the surface of the moon as tall as mountains. There is a kind of exchange policy in place. For each instalation set up on the surface or on the interior surface, an equivalent mass of raw materials may be removed from the great heaps of ore and minerals on the surface.
Currently, the interior of the moon is capable of building, breaking, repairing, refurbishing, and doing just about anything else to any ship up to and including battleships. Even a Mighty Ark Mechanicus can fit in it's cavernous holds. The surface is dotted with defensive weaponry, but it's sheer size makes defending the whole surface impractical. Instead it's defences are concentrated around several massive holes in the surface that serve as entrances and exits with mountains of debris making the remaining surface difficult to navigate at best.
2) Forge World Fires of Industry
Smaller rocky world focused on producing Titans, titan grade weapons, and titan replacement parts. The world is capable of providing it's own metallic and mineral supplies thanks to soaring mountain ranges with plentiful veins of various ores, but depends on imports of plastics and organics.
Production grade III-Maximus.
The planetary system to which Fires of Industry belongs is dense, in that all of the seven rocky planets orbit within 1.5 AU of the sun. Fires of Industry is number six. This has resulted in extreme tidal forces on the planet and heavy geological activity leading to hight mountain ranges and many active volcanoes. The AdMech saw this and rejoiced. The atmosphere is thick and toxic with sulpher compounds and ash as lava flows make even the night glow rid and yellow. Dotting the surface, massive forges sit across or even in the midst of massive lava rivers where AdMech servitors and Priests harness the fury of the planet into the greatest machines of war the Omnissaiah has yet revealed.
3) Forge World By Iron Wrought
Large rocky world with large, mixed metallic mantle and core. Deep drilling and excavation operations have tapped directly into the mantle of the planet, drawing superheated metal straight into the refineries. This world is responsible for providing raw materials to other worlds, producing spacecraft grade materials and parts, and also produces vast amounts of IG supplies. An ancient ecosystem has been entombed in its crust as plentiful coal, oil, gas, and other crude resources. The planet is completely dependent on food imports. Production Grade II-Tertius. The atmosphere is breathable, but polluted and only getting worse as the AdMech progressivley exploit the world for all it's worth.
4) Agri-World Bread for the Flesh
One of the few examples of a Mechanicus-operated Agri-world. The planet's entire ecosystem, atmosphereic conditions, and natural resources are all carefully controlled and coordinated to maximise agricultural output. 99.23% of the planet's land surface has been effectively turned into some kind of farming, forestry, fishing, or agricultural output. The other .77% is star ports, processing facilities, and infrastructure. Depends on imports of manufactured goods, but it otherwise self-suficient. Production Code III-Prima
5) Promethium refinery Ignatius Dominix
With several Titan Legions in the region, the AdMech saw fit to establish a major Promethium production operation in the region. After extensive scouting, they settled on the world Tricharius VI, a massive gas giant on the verge of becoming a brown dwarf star. The facility was set up in orbit and has grown over time to become a major source of Promethium for the region.
Yeah, don't mind that for now, as the full resource system is still pretty beta at the moment.
For now, all I need is a notion in the fluff that the planet is exporting x or importing y.
Also: you are free to come up with the names of the systems your holds are located in.
I am sorry guys, life has left me with precious little time to cook any of these planets or other things I need to do...
I will get to it soon, I hope.
Ah just throwing in that I'm still here too.
I just forgot to switch over the newsfeed spying on all you guys' posts to the discussion thread so I thought things got quite and I have some time to write up my stuff.
Gonna catch up and throw my stuff in
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So, I've run into a lore conflict with my little floating Forge. Either it doesn't have enough power, or it's not the right kind. Lemme essplain.
Complicating Factor: I'm fleet based.
Most standard Divisio Militaris Titan legions are Forge World based and take some of their identity from that world. This is part of the resond that Titan patterns are named for the Forge World that "created" them. This makes my little Forge in a Box awkard because I really should be Based at a planet if I'm a regular titan legion
The most common fleet based Titan Legions are of the Divisio Mandati who travel in temple spacecraft to bring the peace of the Empire to distant worlds. The issue is that they roll with significantly more Thunder than I have, typically between 2 to 5 Emperor Class titans. Wow. I think that might be turning the dial up to 13 and I'd have nowhere to go but Dakka.
There is a pseudo fleet based order that is specifically dedicated to fighting Chaos, the Divisio Telepathica. They are based on secret forge worlds, which fits why mine aren't on the map, and operate Psi-Titans which might be fun in a kina warpy way. This has a LOT of blanks that can be filled in by us, but explaining why secretive Psi-Titans are engaging orks might be touchy. Possibly that massive tear in reality is forcing our hand? This would lead to a lot of narrative weirdness with the others, in my opinion. Especially as the main armament is a vortex bomb via beam weapon.
This last option is the Divisio Investigatus. They prefer warlords, but they are the scientific arm of the Collegia Titanica and field their Titans to test experimental tech. So my forces fit the description, but we need to come up with what about my titans is "experimental".
So ya. This rabbit hole is fun! :D
Personally I'm leaning toward the last as that would keep my forces mostly unchanged. We would just have to tweak a few things to make it fit.
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Alright. Here's an ice world mining world I cooked up for Simmins originally.
In the countless worlds of the Imperium the Hive World of Insol-8 is just another mote of icy dirt under the ceaseless gaze of the Holy Emperor; just another ink-blot on the ledger of his Administratum. But where most Hive Worlds push the poor to the lower levels while the privileged nobility live above, closer to the heavens and the stars, the opposite is true on Insol-8.
For the surface of Insol-8 is more akin to a frozen Death World than a Hive World. Roiling tempests, some millennia old, roll over the tortured land showering down seemingly endless storms of dagger like ice shards stabbing into a pock marked landscape close in temperature to absolute zero. Elsewhere drifts of snow as large as continents shift and morph, sculpted into alien forms by the ceaseless howling wind before being blown flat again.
It is only the stability of the stolid crust underneath the hellish frozen surface and the vast riches of mineral wealth deeper still that has drawn the attention of the Imperium. Once it was discovered that boreholes and solid vents and shafts could be tunneled deep into the crust with only minimal engineering a project was launched to create a mining outpost. Success breeds success and the initial post was expanded again and again under the auspices of the barely human servitors from the Adeptus Mechanicus with orders only to dig. Now a vast underground rat's nest many layers deep has been created. Vast mining complexes plumb the riches of the planet and a dizzying number of Hab tunnels house the countless millions of miner-citizens.Initially brought in from other Hive and Penal Worlds the population of Insol-8 has been self-sustaining now for generations. Giving the planet worth as it spouts out raw materials to feed the endless wars of the 41st Millenium.
Iceworld...
Cool!
How is the population being fed (as you have written 'self-sustained')?Basically, a world with quite a lot of population, most living underground and exporting mining goods, right?
@Choon:
Another example is Gryphon IV (I think).
They are *now* fleet-based due to their forge world being overrun by 'nids (iirc), so it is not entirely unlikely.
But yeah, an Investigus branch seems like an interesting solution after all.
So, what could be your 'new tech' to field test ...
>> Start brainstorming.exe
1) A drop-Harness for titans, allowing Reaver and Warhounds to be dropped from orbit, allowing for fast deployment and surprise attacks
--> deemed too risky for the revered god-machines and also requiring extensive maintenance after each deployment in such a way
--> the harness itself is single use as most of it is burned away during atmospheric entry and the remainder is pulverized upon landing
2) a void-dome shield generator pattern, allowing to greatly expand the protective area of the void shield to include allies within the protective field
--> deemed heretical by some factions as it requires nearly all of a titans energy output, shutting down its main guns if used that way, preventing it from killing the enemies of the imperium while keeping up the shield
--> it also is also said to weaken the shield but that is not scientifically proven
3) - 99) have to wait for the next train ride...
@Imperial Guard:
Have a look at this page as it features probably the best layout for an guard regiment I've seen so far.
I'd like to use it as a template for your regiments.
For tank regiments, I'll allow you to take different patterns for each company of an armoured regiment (similar to demi-company composition of SMs).
Well when I said self sustaining I did mean in terms of population when I first wrote it up.
I can imagine a load of underground fungus farms in mined out caverns of the planet taking care of most of the food requirements of the population (might even be a delicacy for other parts of the subsector) but if planets should be more dependant on each other for the purposes of the game (to make trade routes necessary for survival) then we can say that Insol-8 requires regular deliveries of food alongwith machine parts to repair the mining equipment.
Choon: For the Titans it does seem like something like Divisio Investigatus fits the best. But can' you say you're more interested in field testing established technology rather than being very experimental?
@Azih:
Not necessarily.
You can probably go with a precarious situation where without external supplies the food has to be strictly rationed but *should* be enough to have everyone fed. Such measures are generally disliked and you'd look at civil unrest if the situation continues for too long - or if something would happen to one of those 'shroom farms.
Do you imagine Insol-8 to use most of its mining resource (essentially generate lots of GGs) or be mostly a supplying world?
Are there spaceports? Or something like space-elevators to ship goods on/off worlds with all those storms going on surface-side?
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3) Improved power output.
A new way of braiding the power cabling into sympathetic magnetic feedback patterns has increased the efficiency of power delivery to the systems, resulting in a better use of the Fusion plant's output and a faster rate of fire for energy based weapons.
--> Deemed heretical by some as it requires changing a significant amount of the Titan's internal wiring.
--> Increased power flow risks increased wear on the other electrical components
4) Precision Targeting matrices
Additional targeting sensors with greater sensitivity and integrated environmental variance compensation added to existing hardware. Allows more accurate shots targeting weak points or smaller targets.
--> Possible tech heresy
--> No, probable tech heresy
--> Jealousy from the other Gun Moderati
5) Heavy armor plating
A massive shield of interlocked metal to protect the titan from incoming massed fire. Shaped to deflect projectiles and coated to reflect energy.
--> High resource requirements
--> Possible Cowardice
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Choon: For the Titans it does seem like something like Divisio Investigatus fits the best. But can't you say you're more interested in field testing established technology rather than being very experimental?
The thing is, the Warlord Titan is VERY widely used for a titan and it's tech is very universal and well established already. If the gracious and wise GM wants to give me other toys to play with I could, but the underlying tech is solid and well proven, unfortunately.
@Choon:
5) seems a bit too much like something a guard commander would do, than a long-term experiment by the AdMech: 'slap some moar armor in it, eh?'
The others are very fitting.
Aren't Forge Worlds the planets that generate a lot of GGs? I always imagined Insol-8 as one of the worlds that supply the raw materials that Forge Worlds voraciously consume.
For the food situation I think it's fine for imports of food keeping the population morale from being incredibly terrible but the planet being able to get by for a little bit on its own food supplies and rationing before descending into rebellion and chaos.
Space elevators going from underground right up to space is an incredibly cool visual so let's go with that.
@hives&Forge Worlds: Hives usually produce a lot of goods, but usually nothing particularly high-tech. Mind you, many of them are well capable to produce small arms and even standard vehicles and even frigate-class space ships if given enough time and some of the rarer material required.
After all, you have to keep all those people working, right. We can't have them have free time, can we?!
In-game, a well established hive world can generate quite a lot of GGs and are able to recruit/repair standard pattern vehicles and weaponsystems if they have access to ore quite well. You will go to a forge world if you need rare patterns, high-rise weapons, major space ships, titans or need a full regiment of tanks right f@*+ing now.
You have to keep in mind that forge worlds are rather rare, with Choons cooked up one's, the sector will pretty much be populated with them. Both types are usually very dependant on food imports. A pretty autonomous hive is a rare thing indeed and mostly a rather 'new' hive world as the older ones tend to be desolate, planet size trashballs...
The majority of 'small' stuff is produced on Hives or planets with _some_ Mechanicus manufactorums, but entire forge worlds are few and far between. That's why the AdMech keeps them under such close observation and has entire Legions of Titans guard them...
@all: remember that there are other types of planet as well, like feudal or death worlds, if not as productive, they tend to be self-sustained and make for excellent (if not as frequent) recruitment places
@Insol-8: actually, wouldn't a death world signifier be more fitting for Insol-8? Just because it has a rather big underground city after discovering of the mining opportunities, does not make it a hive world yet. Maybe there are still a lot of surface dwelling people barely aware of the underground populace? They could be trading rare material found on the surface for industrial goods, living a nomadic, harsh life otherwise.
As always: just giving options. If you imagine it to be a full-blown, only-undergriund hive planet, that is fine too!
"Mining-World" is an official world type is it not? I thought of Insol-8 as a Mining world sending resources to Hive and Forge Worlds.It could be both that and a Death World.
Ah right.
It can be one of those places with a decent yield of rare Minerals (and ore, but those tend to be found on a dozen world for every one with rare Minerals).
Rare minerals make sense to make it a notable world.
I added a link to my work-in-progress chapter notes in the notebook.
I'll either copy the gist of it into onenote once I'm finished or if it is not
too much of a hasle for everyone I'll keep it there.
Being able to make edits(and commits) offline, then push them online once I'm
back out of radio blackhole X seems great to me.
Not to mention being able to write the stuff in markdown in good ol' vim
Seems like the rendering of is somewhat bogous, ignoring most line breaks, making it somewhat hard to read, unless reading it 'raw'.
E.g.
Name: Lightning Claws Primarch: Covus Corax Founding: 19th, mid m36 Successors of: Raven Guard Home world: Fleet based
Rather than the clearly intended
Name: Lightning Claws
Primarch: Covus Corax
(...)
Nah, thats entirely on me.
I started writing it as pure txt so right now there are no markdown style linebreaks or paragraphs yet.
Converting it to md was an afterthought when I realized putting it on my git server will render it for me. Gonna fix that in time.
EDIT: Most line breaks and paragraphs should work now
@All: Would you all like a wiki better?
fandom.com lets you set up your own wiki for free.
Pages can be created by a neat on-page editor or (for IT nerds) via a markup-like language, so one could likely compose pages off-line, then copy-pasta it into the page-source upon crawling back out of that no-inet-hole.
I just willed one into existence.
Feel free to have a look and play around with it, whether that may be an alternative for you.
I'm a pretty committed microsoft nerd but I think a wiki might be better suited for this sort of collaboration.
@Choon, all: I have reworked the trade route section you asked for. Maybe this makes more sense now and gives a good picture of how I imagine it working?
@Choon: I have bad news for you ...
To keep with lore numbers, I am forced to raise the numbers of titans you can field. Hard stuff, I know ;-)
Legions are said to consist of at least a dozen machines (going all the way up to 200-300 machines per Legio and some forge worlds have multiple Legios to boot). And keep in mind that if the Legio Titanicus talks about Titans, they do not mean Knights.
We will keep on the very lower end of the scale though (to prevent general mind overload), but I think we can go with the following set-up:
- 1 ancient Warlord class, host for your Veteran Princeps
- 2 'new' Warlord class Titans
- 2 ancient Reavers
- 5 packs of 2 Warhounds each, all of which are 'new'
==> 5 Battle-Titans and 10 Scout Titans (your Knights remain the same)
'New' Titans may house one (or two in the case of the Warlords) experimental designs.
'Ancient' ones are way too revered to use as platforms for experimental tech. Maybe those Titans are leftovers from an actual, frontline Legio that lost nearly all machines and was thus reassigned to oversee the 'new', experimental machines?
Hmmm
I'm reading up on the rules in the notebook(kinda ignoring them for now and just building a vanilla space marine chapter but good to know for later) and I don't think the idea of throwing 10 squads of the same kind together to form a unit works.
I can't for the life of me imagine a scenario where I'd want 10 squads of scouts to be fielded in the same campaign unless the whole chapter goes to war in a single zone. Which is a big nono to begin with. If the planet happens to explode the whole chapter is gone and no one will remember your honorable deeds.
I think since we decided a demi-company is the smallest unit which should be deployed we could either have differnt kinds of demi-company or we could have a demi-company as the unit type and different unit attributes, like veterans, stealthy, fast, terminators
Yeah, I imagine demi-companies to be SM-Player's building blocks, bringing them up to 20+ units to toss around, with the units inside a demi-company being pretty much standardized.
But obviously, you could combine different demi-companies, e.g. one scout, one tactical, one assault and one fire-support for a well-rounded 2 company force.
Going all the way down to squad level seems troublesome, as it would mean keeping track of 100+ units...
EDIT: I expanded the Space Marine section in the oneNote with load out options (and the demi-company concept), which can be changed in-between missions reflecting the great flexibility of space marines.
EDIT2: @Keen
You will want to read-up on Reiver Squads for obvious reasons, the Raven Guard LOVE this Primaris formation.
And also note that they can be taken as Close-Range Support squads (in-line with Assault Marines or Inceptors), so you can field a lot of them if you want to.
@all: Note the new 'Game System' -> 'Combat' page.
This is how I imagine how we are going with more complex engagements.
Obviously, there will be engagements that do not need that degree of tactics, e.g. an Ork raid on a remote system.
You will simply dispatch a guard regiment to mop up the mob in such a case and that's that.
I'm reading up on all the new stuff. The concept of Reivers is pretty cool.
They don't seem all that well thought out tho...
They are stealth infiltrators, giving up their mobility once down on the ground for arriving silently.
Yet they use monstrous bolters and even activly shriek like a parody of noise marines once they attack.
"Yeah, guys we're here. We already put away all our mobility so please come kill us now."
Just put that grav harness on normal assault marines so they can get down silently, then have a choice between swooping over the battlefield and sinking back into the shadow.
Probably going to be my main Primaris component thought.
I'm still not really comfortable with that idea. Having a demi company of 5 squads of scouts still sounds ridiulous to me.
I'd suggest having a demi-company as basic unit.
A vanilla demi-company consisting of(just a quick example)
- leutenant
- some tactical squads
- a devastor squad
- an assault squad
This unit gets a combat strength or w/e stats you want to assign to those units.
Adding specialist units gives the demi-company traits.
For example the demi-company which is commanded by the actual capatain gets the
"captain" trait for +2 leadership and +1 healthpoint
If I want to add a scout squad it gets the "scout squad" trait for +2 infiltration
+1 supply requirement
So on a macro level you can think of a list of demi companies with a final score of stats without bothering with the internals
-> I can decide which demi-company has the best stats for the job
On a micro level I can decide I REALLY need to get this mission done and add 2 terminator squads adding +10 reslience +10 firepower +4 supply requirement +1 maintenance difficulty
So basically you can just work with the final stats of the demi company while I can do micro management of troops within it.
Edit: No idea while I didn't post this earlier, I'll check the combat page and see how my idea works with it.
@Reivers: well, if I recall it correctly there is such a thing as stalker bolt shells, which makes bolters quite stealthy. For that mobility things, well scouts do not have either and assault marines are usually not concerned with stealth. And for shreaking well, that's a bit silly, but terror shock Troops are a thing after all. And more weird shrieking = most fear obviously. I do like the Incesors too. One-man drop-pods with extra powerful armor and jump packs is an awesome concept^^
@system: I actually didn't intended to go that crunchy for the game. I would never get it even remotely balanced. That's why I am looking for mostly homogeneous units where I can come up with fitting traits.
That assign special troop X to unit Y to get trait Z is interesting. But one may soon run into trouble of only jack-of-all-traits units...
Check the link you posted earlier:
Breaking from stealth in a cacophony of Bolter fire, grenade detonations and guttural, Vox-amplified roars.
It does make sense - not just murdering your enemies but breaking their morale at the same time.
It just doesn't seem like the default way of doing things for the raven guard. More like another tool in the toolbox.Hmm I understand the need to keep it simple but unlike army tank or infantery divisions, or titan units it is hard in my mind to justify 50 space marines of the same type to go anywhere together.
I'll see what I can come up with(or just get used to the fact of sending 50 terminators to completly ruin someones day)
If the crunch itself is the problem thought I'd totaly be fine with "I'm sending over 3 company 2nd demi-company to orkclusterfrakkplanet. The demi-company has a high number of scouts and assault marines. Planned tactics are ambushes enticing orks to advance towards the main force for a brawl while the scouts and assault marines wait in ambush, falling into their backs just before they reach the main lines, allowing for a counter charge."
Then you just handle that engagement however you see fit. Even if it means my marines get curb stomped because reports did not mention that Garganth stomping around in the back and my scouts are overcome with a fit of blindness =P
Where is the idea of a demi-company coming from?
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I think I heard it mentioned that I was coming from some of the newer Space Marine books. But I'm not sure on that one.
I think it had something to do with the Space Marines not having any lieutenants and that being a little bit silly.
@Cmd-keen: We might also be in a situation where the environment that were fighting in requires a full commitment of forces. At first I thought I would have mine scattered all over the sector as well, but it was hinted that I would only take up assignments that were worth my full commitment of effort. That makes me think that very bad things are going to happen quickly in this setting.
It might also have something to do with the fact that when I go somewhere everyone's going to notice.
Space Marines at any level of engagement above DeathWatch style squads only tend to get involved after everyone else is up to their eyeballs in blood, guts, and misery though. They're so rare that they HAVE to be reactive in nature to face true threats unless they're following their own secretive agendas.
Where is the idea of a demi-company coming from?
It comes from the boss.
Roboute Guilliman himself in his amendments to the Adeptus Astartes as a side effect of introducing Ng Primaris marines into the greater whole of a chapter.He added a commanding rank below captain, making it easily possible to field 2 demi-companies.
Read about it here, under 'Recent Reforms'.
Then you just handle that engagement however you see fit. Even if it means my marines get curb stomped because reports did not mention that Garganth stomping around in the back and my scouts are overcome with a fit of blindness =P
That won't happen.
I mean getting fullroflstomped by a surprise garagant.Not that a surprise garagant is a particular unlikely event, but it makes for such a good 'oh shiiiiiit' moment followed by frannatic thinking about how to beat one, that I won't use it like that.
It will much rather be an event, canceling any planned actions for the round as scouts come back with their findings about the gargant and deployment is cancelled due to a very real need to reconsider ones strategy...
And yeah, for 'small' battles, it is totally fine to 'yeah, send 3rd company over to deal with that. They are short on men anyway and the target is close to our hold. They can fetch a batch of neophytes on their way back...'
And for large scale ones, you probably want to be there with several companies anyway.
I'm looking at the IG resource on the notebook and it makes sense. For super heavies, do the different tank types matter? I mean fwik Bane Blades are the biggest and the best... Right?
I think I'll shift the IG of the sector to be a little more mechanized as they started to shift in response to the recent Tyranid troubles.
Scouting is usually a big deal in 4x style games, will that be handled by the GM sending us intelligence or would we be expected to take an active role in that part of the strategic and Tactical layer?
Is faction morale going to be a complete function of how well resourced a particular location is? I think that's best to keep things simple and not get into building arenas and churches and what not like you would in a Civ game.
It seems a bit weird for the IG to be completely dependant on the IN for protection as they move about space. How good are bulk transport void ships at defending themselves or running away? I hope only very special and sensitive cargo would require the IG asking the IN for special escorts.
In fact overall it seems like the IN and IG are completely dependant on each other. Am I wrong in that?
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No, you're pretty right on that front. The Navy requires the guard to secure planets and such for them to operate from and the guard requires the Navy to move about. Other than that they're pretty well segregated. The Navy doesn't really care what the guard does on a planet as long as it gets its supplies. The guard doesn't really care where the Navy does as long as it gets its ride.
That's how I understand it at least.
Edit: I don't think it has to be our Imperial Navy guy who does your movement? Maybe?