Land, Air and.....hmm. Something is missing.

[Stephen James Hand]

I think in the 40k world ships might always be a much more niche weapon than they are on Earth simply because many planets wouldn't have significant amounts of surface liquid for them to fight on.

The reality is that the only way you could have 40k ships would be to have them in their own game, 40k battlefields aren't big enough to have combined land & sea battles (although it might have worked in Epic as special rules?), and when they decided to make a 40k based game about ships, they (quite rightly) concluded SPACEships were much cooler than the floaty sort and made Battlefleet Gothic.

I certainly don't think arguments about ships being obsolete in 40k hold any water (see what I did there?). 40k is crammed full of weapons that would be hopelessly obsolete in a space faring military already. If Thunderhawks / Drop Pods / Teleporters were so ubiquitous they rendered naval transports obsolete, surely the same would go for ground based APCs like Rhinos and Chimeras? Main Battle Tanks have been rendered obsolete by helicopter gunships and attack drones in the 21st century, yet they are a mainstay of the 41st millennium's military and don't even get me started on guys who run up bash people with chainsaws when they have perfectly serviceable guns available or horse riders...

Why are these things in 40k? Well do you want to tell the 40k player base that you're taking their tanks away for no other reason than that they're silly?

You're right that Eldar, Tau and Necrons could simply use the same vehicles the use on land so having 'ships' would make no sense, but anti grav technology is rare in the Imperium and getting rarer (no more 30k Imperial Jetbikes in 40k, well okay, one...) so I could totally see them making use of surface ships, and a big gothic style battleship would look awesome, as would cobbled together Ork gun barges and 'Nid sea monsters.

[Lurker]

I don't think they'd become obsolete, however planets that did have a need of a militarized surface fleet, i could see them being relegated to essentially the same job as coast guard. They might be operated by Arbites, PDF or even local LEO's for rescue and intervention ops. Looking out for smugglers and saving rich, drunk idiots on their luxury vessels.
As far as mainstream Guard and Marine forces, just can't see them using them except as specialized troops with light vessels, like the Navy Seals small boats or river patrol craft.
However- I do think it would be neat to see a specialist game, sort of a fusion of BFG and Necromunda (but with better rules, i'm looking at you necro) ala WW2 style surface warfare. I could see something like that allowing you to field whole invasion fleets; Carriers, battleship etc, as well as troop transports (for the island hopping campaigns of course). then you could run games in tandem like they used to with BFG and 40k. Any of the current armies could easily work in it, also you might even be able to use smaller BFG warships (destroyers and frigates for example) to add yet another tie in there.

Of course, that's just wishlisting though...

[CoffeeGrunt]

In Helsreach, the Orks attack from the sea, but the Imperium has no fleet on Armageddon to contest them. Thus they destroy a series of offshore prometheum platforms then engage in a beach assault against the city.

If Thunderhawks / Drop Pods / Teleporters were so ubiquitous they rendered naval transports obsolete, surely the same would go for ground based APCs like Rhinos and Chimeras? Main Battle Tanks have been rendered obsolete by helicopter gunships and attack drones in the 21st century

Except they wouldn't. On the one hand only Space Marines get Thunderhawks, Pods or Tellyportas, so the Guard that do most of the fighting and more of the dying still need APCs. Additionally, said APCs are much cheaper to produce, can burn almost anything to run, and can project force in a way aircraft can't. They can take and hold ground.

Tanks as well are still used in the 21st Century because everyone else is still using tanks. They're not as essential as they were in WWII, obviously, but they exist to combat other armoured threats that Drones or Gunships couldn't really engage.

[Stephen James Hand]

In Helsreach, the Orks attack from the sea, but the Imperium has no fleet on Armageddon to contest them. Thus they destroy a series of offshore prometheum platforms then engage in a beach assault against the city.



Except they wouldn't. On the one hand only Space Marines get Thunderhawks, Pods or Tellyportas, so the Guard that do most of the fighting and more of the dying still need APCs. Additionally, said APCs are much cheaper to produce, can burn almost anything to run, and can project force in a way aircraft can't. They can take and hold ground.

Tanks as well are still used in the 21st Century because everyone else is still using tanks. They're not as essential as they were in WWII, obviously, but they exist to combat other armoured threats that Drones or Gunships couldn't really engage.

So presumably if the Guard still need APCs to get across land, they would also need transport ships if they needed transporting across water or needed to perform an amphibious assault?

And helicopter gunships perform anti armour roles excellently, one of the main reasons MBTs are obsolete is that they are a liability against forces using gunships, far too easily taken out. There are 2 reasons modern armies still have MBTs, 1 is inertia, military forces are conservative and tend to hold onto things after they are obsolete, think cavalry being used up until WW1 when they'd arguably been obsolete for 100 years. The other one is that they are pretty good for terrorizing civilians that might be thinking of rebelling, but in tactical terms, the MBT's usefulness in a first rate 21st century military is marginal at best

[Fueldrop]

The major problem with Naval battles is that ships are hard to transport. Whoever owns the planet likely has a wet navy, but ships are too large to easily transport through space and getting them from space to the planet is equally difficult.

So the only practical way to get ships on a planet in any significant numbers is to take over a shipyard and build your own, or else steal someone else's.

[CoffeeGrunt]

So presumably if the Guard still need APCs to get across land, they would also need transport ships if they needed transporting across water or needed to perform an amphibious assault?

And helicopter gunships perform anti armour roles excellently, one of the main reasons MBTs are obsolete is that they are a liability against forces using gunships, far too easily taken out. There are 2 reasons modern armies still have MBTs, 1 is inertia, military forces are conservative and tend to hold onto things after they are obsolete, think cavalry being used up until WW1 when they'd arguably been obsolete for 100 years. The other one is that they are pretty good for terrorizing civilians that might be thinking of rebelling, but in tactical terms, the MBT's usefulness in a first rate 21st century military is marginal at best

The last cavalry charge was during the Siege of Warsaw in 1939. It went better than you'd think, but ultimately still failed. Military commanders are also acutely aware that sometimes the old school is the best school. Take Operation Barbarossa. The German Panzers tear their way through Russia until they're in sight of Moscow, the whole way along they're rounding up millions of Russian militia and laughing at their poor equipment, especially the fact that they transport themselves via horse and cart.

Then the winter hit, the ground froze, fuel froze in the tanks of their vehicles, and the horses were fine so long as they were looked after. Then the Germans got it, hence why a lot of them stole horses to escape the counter-attack from 41 very angry Siberian regiments.

Then you have things like Vietnam, where the military talks about changing the game by using leap-frogging helicopters and all this other new-fangled tech. Turns out it's easy to counter and pretty ineffective if the enemy knows about it, so you start to have a military failure on your hands.

Never discount the tactical validity of something that is said to be obsolete.

[Houghten]

So presumably if the Guard still need APCs to get across land, they would also need transport ships if they needed transporting across water or needed to perform an amphibious assault?

Those Guard APCs are the amphibious assault!

Chimeras float.

[CoffeeGrunt]

The question is, when you can theoretically attack from any front or bombard a target from orbit, when will you ever need to engage in an amphibious assault? They're only done currently because the easiest way to transport materiel with our current technology is by sea until an airfield can be secured, and because we rarely have the means to simply land in a relatively undefended area with several regiments plus support without flying over said country first anyway.

[Fueldrop]

Okay, first thing I'm going to suggest is that a wet navy can do stealth really well. Submarines are difficult to detect, are comparatively simple (requiring only modern level technology to make pretty good ones), are very difficult to attack without specialized weapons, and can be loaded out for a lot of different roles.

For example:
Long Range Missile Support.
Covert Insertion.

If you want to upsize a bit the Covert Insertion could include an aircraft carrier that pops up out of nowhere, unleashes a wing of bombers, vanishes, then reappears to recover the bombers later.

EDIT:
From the point of view of planetary defense having mobile, concealed weapon platform is hugely useful. Any invading force is likely to try and alpha-strike any defenses they can locate and target, or they'll send infiltrators to sabotage them. Ditto for any PDF motorpools or aircraft hangers. By making them ocean-borne they become harder targets for both the alpha strike and the sabotage.

[Sigismund420]

I think it would be like its own game, but like a planetstrike or apoc type thing, a special 40k games. rules for not only transports, but fighting on ships. fighting ship to ship. honestly though it could jus tas easily bea board with boats as terrain features, and water as impassable terrain. you give the boat terrain special rules to move if manned by infantry and boom, you have very simple sea battles at least.
Far as lore goes though, plenty of aquatic action in 40k. most notably to my memory, armageddons orky subs.