Hey folks. Long time without posting here. I was playing recently whilst watching some WH40K and Battlefleet Gothic content and got curious about the scale of WH40K ships in comparison to Aurora 4x. I turned Space Master mode on and tried to make something with the level of tech I had in my game.
The methodology I used was the following: taking a WH40K ship's measurements from lexicanum, I treated the ship as a cylinder and calculated its volume. The general consensus is that an Aurora ton is a unit of volume that equals 14m³.
Dimensions: 1.5 km long, 0.3 km abeam at fins (approx)
So I turned this into the following formula:
V = (1502) * 3.14 * 1500 = 7,569,643
14
So using those assumptions, a Cobra Destroyer's size would be roughly 7,5 million Aurora tons.
Rounding this up to a clean 8 million tons, I came up with the following design:
Cobra class Destroyer 8,000,000 tons 283,710 Crew 4,219,178.4 BP TCS 160,000 TH 2,480,000 EM 772,200
15500 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 50-3563 Shields 25740-536 HTK 53117 Sensors 1200/1200/0/0 DCR 20200-25 PPV 31,868
Maint Life 4.07 Years MSP 6,592,466 AFR 25600% IFR 355.6% 1YR 637,542 5YR 9,563,133 Max Repair 66,666.7 MSP
Magazine 81,223 / 0
Commander Control Rating 4 BRG AUX ENG SCI
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Morale Check Required
Destroyer Warp Engine Max Ship Size 8000000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Cobra Destroyer Engine Component (310) Power 2480000.0 Fuel Use 35.36% Signature 8000.00 Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 704,280,000 Litres Range 44.8 billion km (33 days at full power)
Void Shield Array (90) Recharge Time 536 seconds (48 per second)
Macro Cannon Battery (200) Range 320,000km TS: 15,500 km/s Power 32-10 RM 10,000 km ROF 20
Dorsal Lasburner Battery (400x4) Range 600,000km TS: 40000 km/s Power 128-40 RM 80,000 km ROF 20
Defense Turret (200x24) Range 40,000km TS: 40000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 40,000 km ROF 5
Weapon Battery Cogitator Array (800) Max Range: 600,000 km TS: 40,000 km/s ECCM-4 98 97 95 93 92 90 88 87 85 83
Generatorum Unit (20) Total Power Output 52,382.8 Exp 10%
Torpedo Tube (40) Missile Size: 75 Rate of Fire 695
Torpedo Guidance Cogitator Array (40) Range 885.3m km Resolution 25 ECCM-3
Guided Torpedo (1082) Speed: 100,000 km/s End: 0.9m Range: 5.4m km WH: 225.0 Size: 75.00 TH: 440/264/132
Augur Array I (5) GPS 1500000 Range 1,201.6m km Resolution 500
Augur Array II (5) GPS 300000 Range 702.7m km Resolution 100
Augur Array III (5) GPS 60000 Range 410.9m km Resolution 20
Infrared Band Augur Array (5) Sensitivity 1200 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 273.9m km
Ultraviolet Band Augur Array (5) Sensitivity 1200 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 273.9m km
Electronic Warfare Jammers: Sensor 4 Fire Control 4 Missile 4
Even though this is all done via SM, I decided to spawn a shipyard that could build one of these things. Here's the interesting thing about the Cobra Manufactorum:
Although this shipyard can pump one of these out every five years or so, the entire complex needs
2 billion people to function properly. This is pretty interesting, since it supports the WH40K lore of forge worlds. Can you imagine that? A production line so large that it essentially takes modern China's entire population to man it.
Here's the cost breakdown:
So that's, roughly speaking: 583 thousand units of Duranium; 60 thousand units of Neutronium; 392 thousand units of Corbomite; 25 thousand units of Tritanium; 320 thousand units of Boronie; 122 thousand units of Mercassium; 57 thousand units of Vendarite; 53 thousand units of Sorium; 939 thousand units of Uridium; 447 thousand units of Corundium and a whopping
1 million and 240 thousand units of Gallicite, for engines and torpedos.
For a quick comparison, the Venusian with the highest total amount of Gallicite in my current galaxy holds about 81 million units. If the entire planet was strip mined for its Gallicite, it would only be sufficient for building 64 of these ships.
Another thing to note about this ship: much unlike the crew listed in the Lexicanum (around 14 thousand), the ship carries 283 thousand crew. It very much is a small city in space. If my entire hometown was pressed into the navy, it would only be enough for 2, maybe 3 such ships.
So I decided to do a fun little experiment and spawn one of these escorts to have a chat with some
precursors.Here is a screenshot of the
Litany of Litany's Litany bonus points if you get the reference arriving at 61 Cygni, home to a small outpost:
I first wanted to test how the 200 defense turrets would work as PD, but was surprised to find
since I made the unknowable decision to have all BFCs be single weapon only that the lasburners already provided enough PD to fight an entire fleet if needed.
This 20 shot salvo did absolutely nothing to the escort.
The return fire from the escort's dorsal batteries and macro cannons was an unambiguous message of the Emperor's peace, however (1368 laser shots with 25 strength each plus 200 plasma carronades with 32 strength each). The 40 torpedos launched for its tubes didn't even have the time to properly lock on their target before it was turned into vapour.
I don't think I've ever seen a ship killed to this degree.
Do you remember the six and a half million MSP this ship has? It very much needs it.
This is what happened when the macro cannons and lasburner batteries both fired upon the previous ship. The insane clown car of damage consumed
20,000 MSP for a single full shot of its batteries. This means the ship has an average of 325 shots before it runs out of MSP. If we only fire when the full batteries are loaded (every 20 seconds), that's six and a half million MSP gone in about one hour and 48 minutes of combat.
The Litany then moves back to torpedo range, safely outside battery distance, and aims at the escort of the previous ship. Since I had the space, I put 40 MFCs for single shot salvos. Why not?
These are the torpedo stats:
Guided Torpedo
Missile Size: 75.00 MSP (187.500 Tons) Warhead: 225.0 Radiation Damage: 225.0
Speed: 100,000 km/s Fuel: 1,250 Flight Time: 54.4 seconds Range: 5,440,000 km
Decoys: 2 ECM-4 ECCM-3 ATG: 32% Retarget Capable
Cost Per Missile: 246.72 Development Cost: 2483
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1,320% 3k km/s 440% 5k km/s 264% 10k km/s 132%
Materials Required
Corbomite 2.15
Tritanium 56.25
Boronide 93.75
Uridium 0.82
Gallicite 93.75
Fuel: 1250
The entire salvo hit the target to hilarious consequence.
40 hits with 225 warhead missiles, amounting to 9000 damage.
The following minutes were spent approaching the outpost and waiting for the missile barrage to end.
Neither the AMMs nor the ASMs could do anything to the Litany. Whenever a missile hit, through sheer luck, the void shields made sure to delete the damage.
I then approached to beam range and used the ship's weapons to blast each defender, one by one.
The void shields shrugged any damage easily. When it was time to fire, the dorsal lasers, macro cannons and defense turrets could output around 57,600 points of damage at point-blank range every 20 seconds. This became a trivial game of re-targeting and opening fire.
After the orbital defenders were turned into excessively fine dust, the Commander of the Litany decided to finish the day with an exterminatus of the Xenos colony.
Total cost of this battle?
- 160 guided torpedos;
- 191,368 MSP
- 47 million liters of Sorium fuel
My point being: The scale of WH40K is absolutely ludicrous when compared to Aurora. Hope this was as fun to read as it was to make, cheers. And remember, the Emperor protects.
Edit: Dumb typing mistakes.
