40K Titans - let the wank/antiwank begin - (long post here)

[Azazal]

Also, re the cockpit issue-- the Warlord's cockpit extends some way back into the 'body'; we only see about the front 2/3's or so, with two crewmen and the Princeps. The other two crew are in back.

Hey thanks for reminding me, forgot I had scanned this one.

Check out the crew placement in the olden days.

Princeps in the head, two crew in teh "neck", other two in the shoulder joints

[Kojiro]

Everything I've read and seen leads me to believe that the cockpit is self contained in the head. In the novel Space Marine the various crew are spread throughout the titan and actually shot into the head just before the head is ejected when the titan is destroyed. That said I understand novels like Space Marine, though definitive to the game at the time, are no longer canon.

Perhaps the best way to determin size would simply be to build a mock head based on crew compliment, or ask someone who has. Whatever the models tell us they're to scale with themselves if not the game world. The rest should be simple. Extrapolation should be easy enough from there.

All that said I'm old school GW. The last time I wrote to GW about a rules clarification the answer I got was from Rick Priestly and it was hand written (1991 or so) with a stamp of an imperial eagle on it.

[white_rabbit]

I would say theres no question that the older stuff has to be taken in context with newer Titan background, especially as theres such a lot of variety.

I'd say for certain that current thinking is that the Titan head contains the "command" crew, and certain sizes of Titan will have Servitors and tech adepts, right up to a Choir of Astropaths for an Imperator Titan ( Currently pinned at 140 metres, courtesy of Horus Rising, which also mentions the Dies Irae )

[Azazal]

I would say theres no question that the older stuff has to be taken in context with newer Titan background, especially as theres such a lot of variety.

I'd say for certain that current thinking is that the Titan head contains the "command" crew, and certain sizes of Titan will have Servitors and tech adepts, right up to a Choir of Astropaths for an Imperator Titan ( Currently pinned at 140 metres, courtesy of Horus Rising, which also mentions the Dies Irae )

Do you have an advance copy of Horus Rising? If so, I really hate and envy you

As for titan height, don't forget that AT-ATs are ~30m high.

[Steel]

The magical telescopic titan legions!

Original: 30-40m

As of comic: 40- 200 (?) m

Books: 30-40m again

New books: 100m

See them magically change size!

That said, i think that there was definitely a rethink between the adeptus titanicus and 'new' ed epic. Titans went from being mech like things to truly huge war engines.

Theres a limit to how small titans can be, given the necessary size of a powerplant for them to be able to be a threat to starships (as many sources say) given we have a rough idea of the power of starships. (although this may have been removed with the recent stuff)

[white_rabbit]

I would say theres no question that the older stuff has to be taken in context with newer Titan background, especially as theres such a lot of variety.

I'd say for certain that current thinking is that the Titan head contains the "command" crew, and certain sizes of Titan will have Servitors and tech adepts, right up to a Choir of Astropaths for an Imperator Titan ( Currently pinned at 140 metres, courtesy of Horus Rising, which also mentions the Dies Irae )

Do you have an advance copy of Horus Rising? If so, I really hate and envy you

As for titan height, don't forget that AT-ATs are ~30m high.

Mwahahaha

Marines >> Lightning bolts from the sky

As for titan height, don't forget that AT-ATs are ~30m high.

What do AT-ATs have to do with anything ?

[Azazal]

I would say theres no question that the older stuff has to be taken in context with newer Titan background, especially as theres such a lot of variety.

I'd say for certain that current thinking is that the Titan head contains the "command" crew, and certain sizes of Titan will have Servitors and tech adepts, right up to a Choir of Astropaths for an Imperator Titan ( Currently pinned at 140 metres, courtesy of Horus Rising, which also mentions the Dies Irae )

Do you have an advance copy of Horus Rising? If so, I really hate and envy you

As for titan height, don't forget that AT-ATs are ~30m high.

Mwahahaha

Marines >> Lightning bolts from the sky

As for titan height, don't forget that AT-ATs are ~30m high.

What do AT-ATs have to do with anything ?

you sir are evil, guess I'll just wait till my copy arives, at teh end of April

As for AT-ATs, just using them as a scaling referance. They were able to fit 2 crew and a commander in the head fine. Plus it helps people lock in on just how massive a 30m tall warmachine is. 140m, makes me wet myself, but is that in fear or joy?


PS - Dies Irae, was that the big bad ass chaos titan in Storm of Iron? Been a bit since I read the book cover to cover.

[Currald]

Everything I've read and seen leads me to believe that the cockpit is self contained in the head. In the novel Space Marine the various crew are spread throughout the titan and actually shot into the head just before the head is ejected when the titan is destroyed. That said I understand novels like Space Marine, though definitive to the game at the time, are no longer canon.

Well, I don't know if I'd go that far, but it certainly doesn't jibe very well with the more recent material. Still, Titan Legions fluff is very thin on the ground, compared to Space Marines and Imperial Guard, so nothing should be discounted out of hand.

I just found a reference in the original Codex Titanicus (for 1st edition Epic) which stated that a Warhound only had a single crew member (the Princeps), which certainly disagrees with the latest from Forge World (what is it? 1 Princeps, 2 Moderatii and a Tech-Priest?) Anyway, I try to keep an open mind, and assume that some Titans are bigger than others, some have 1 crew, some have 4 crew, etc. The 40K universe is a big place.

All that said I'm old school GW. The last time I wrote to GW about a rules clarification the answer I got was from Rick Priestly and it was hand written (1991 or so) with a stamp of an imperial eagle on it.

Awesome!!!

[Lazarus]

I was on the London Eye yesterday, which is something like 140m high (?), and at the top I was thinking 'So this is what it's like on a Warlord Titan'. Frankly, there's a point where, regardless of their status as 40k authors, you have to take writers descriptions with a pinch of salt. You tell me how, at 30m tall, the bridge can hold 5 crewmen at consoles, and the titan can also hold a sizeable compartment behind the starboard weapons arm for the crew described in the quote you used in your post AND there can be a cavernous engineering section. It is not physically possible, there simply is not enough room.

If a warhound titan is around 1/3 the height of a warlord, that leaves us with a warhound which is substantially shorter than my house, and is probably not much larger than a Land Raider. Can't anyone see how ridiculous this is? Pretty much every other source you use shows titans to be huge, including the notoriously inaccurate comics. As a relatively new rulebook, the cover of Epic: Armageddon should be where we begin our scaling, not a source we dismiss in favour of a none-graphic book.

[Currald]

If a warhound titan is around 1/3 the height of a warlord,

Is it?

As a relatively new rulebook, the cover of Epic: Armageddon should be where we begin our scaling, not a source we dismiss in favour of a none-graphic book.

Good luck. I can't see any recognizable objects at the same point on the z-axis as the Titan on the cover, but maybe you've got better eyes than I do, or know some fancy way of scaling objects when they are farther than the object you're scaling from.

Just to throw more dubious data into the pyre of our futile analysis, my copy of Codex Titanicus has big pictures of various titans, some of which have guys down by the feet for scaling purposes. For two cents, I'll measure one!
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Okay, I'll measure it anyway! The space marine is 12mm tall (to the top of his head). Space marines are described as being 7 feet tall. The Warlord Titan is 149 mm tall to the top of the carapace. So that's almost 87 feet tall.

The head certainly looks big enough to accomodate two crew members in relative comfort, and you could probably squeeze five in there, considering how much smaller at lighter equipped titan crews are than astartes.

[Kadaeux]

According to the Forge world Warhound Titan the Warhounds only have two (Or is it three) Crew...

[Ford Prefect]

According to the Forge world Warhound Titan the Warhounds only have two (Or is it three) Crew...

Two crew members and a Princeps, from memory.

[Lazarus]

I was suggesting that we take the Armageddon cover as a basic starting point. Clearly, the Titan depicted is NOT 30m tall, and is probably closer to 80m, if not more.

http://fr.games-workshop.com/specialist ... lebook.jpg

The closest thing to a scale factor on the picture may be the Land Raider in the bottom left hand corner, however I would say that it is forward of the Titan quite a bit, so I don't think we can really get an accurate figure from this. I would say though that this illustration gives us a ball park reference, because even with minimalism it is clearly more than 30m. At the absolute least, and saying that the Raider is next to the Titans foot (which I don't believe it is), and factoring in the height of a Raider from IA3, the Titan comes out at close to 50m tall. I would say that this should be the lower limit for a Warlords height, and I myself presume a greater height from sources such as God Machine.

[Ford Prefect]

Has anyone else noted how oddly beautiful the more recent Titans are?

[Kadaeux]

Ooh yes, I just want to splooge all over them......

Cleaner and crisper would be the words i'd use, not more beautiful.

[Azazal]

According to the Forge world Warhound Titan the Warhounds only have two (Or is it three) Crew...

5, if you include the 2 sevritors - Warhound

[Currald]

Has anyone else noted how oddly beautiful the more recent Titans are?

The original Reaver's still my favorite, of the Imperial Titans. Forgeworld's aren't gothic enough for my tastes.

[Azazal]

Has anyone else noted how oddly beautiful the more recent Titans are?

The original Reaver's still my favorite, of the Imperial Titans. Forgeworld's aren't gothic enough for my tastes.

Same here, I always liked the reaver

[Azazal]

I was suggesting that we take the Armageddon cover as a basic starting point. Clearly, the Titan depicted is NOT 30m tall, and is probably closer to 80m, if not more.

http://fr.games-workshop.com/specialist ... lebook.jpg

The closest thing to a scale factor on the picture may be the Land Raider in the bottom left hand corner, however I would say that it is forward of the Titan quite a bit, so I don't think we can really get an accurate figure from this. I would say though that this illustration gives us a ball park reference, because even with minimalism it is clearly more than 30m. At the absolute least, and saying that the Raider is next to the Titans foot (which I don't believe it is), and factoring in the height of a Raider from IA3, the Titan comes out at close to 50m tall. I would say that this should be the lower limit for a Warlords height, and I myself presume a greater height from sources such as God Machine.

Yeah, but you can run into some real trouble real quick with images.

From the Titan VS Eva thread

here are some pics of a Warlord from EPIC: ARMAGEDDON, this is the current rulebook/fluff for EPIC scale, of which titans are a key part. Also as the rulebook is free to download, I ask all to give it a read through. Any way, from Part 3: War Engines, page 4 we have a great picture of a warlord titan.

I went ahead and pulled the image out for those who do not want to download the PDF. Given that it is on a publicly available document that is free, I do not thing GW's IP police will crack down on posting it here.

Here is the warlord in its glory: Warlord

The points I want to note are in red squares: Access Doors The lower door looks like an access door and a later to it. The upper part looks to be a service scaffold/catwalk.

Here is a close up of the lower door: Door

And the catwalk: Catwalk

Unfortunately the zooms are not the clearest, but hopefully they help to show that size of a warlord. If the door at the muzzle end of the gatling blaster arm is 6 to 7 feet in height, that a grown man could easily walk down the length of the barrel. One of the little side stories form the previous edition of EPIC talks of a warlord firing tank sized shells, with that gun, I can see it.

This is going to be real rough. The width of the gatling gun near the elbow is about 90 pixels, guesstimating the equivalent width in the foreground, its about 150 pixels, and the door is about 10 pixels. Thus, the gun (if the door is about 6' tall) is about 90' in diameter.

The upper body height is ca 330 pixels, let's assume the total height is about twice this; 660 pixels, or 7.33 times the gun, i.e. about 660' tall.

This is more than three times the 200' figure, and more than eight times the 80' figure. <sigh>.

Of course, it sould be noted that GW images are not the most trustworthy as far as scaling is concerned. Recent text may be more consistent.

So as I said back in the OP, we might be better off by going off of the dialogues then the images, the images are too all over the board to get a constant size. The dialogue however tends to be more reigned in on the size flux.

PS - there links in the quotes, but I appear to be lakcing in the eleite skills to make the text come out red

[Currald]

Nice catch. That Warlord looks bigger than an Imperator!

[Kadaeux]

According to the Forge world Warhound Titan the Warhounds only have two (Or is it three) Crew...

5, if you include the 2 sevritors - Warhound

Ahh i'm glad you pointed that out, i'd only ever seen the open cockpit view, I had never seen the pic with the servitors in it, so the full crew comes to five if you count the servitors as alive.

[Lazarus]

Well perhaps an actual in-game reference would help?

When I was at Conflict Manchester GW had a full size, scale Warlord Titan model on one of the tables. It seemed accurate, and when I asked one of the staff if that was how big a real Titan was they said that it was. I asked how come it was different in size to those found in Epic, and he said they had to be scaled down in Epic for game reasons. The picture is on my phone, which annoyingly means I can't transfer it here. However, if anyone wants to see it for themselves PM me your number and I'll text it.

Anyway, this Titan was approximately 4-5 feet high (it is on a table so I can't measure it to someones height). Scaling to a model, a Land Raider would come up to about the beginning of the lower shin armour plate at most. This fits well with the picture from the front of Epic:Armageddon, if as I thought the Land Raider there is forward of the Titan's foot.

Given the height of a Raider as 13 and a half feet, and the approximate comparison with a Raider, the height of this in-game Titan can be calculated as somewhere in the region of 180 feet, or about 54 metres. Obviously this is approximate, but I'm going to go with rounding up instead of down to make my opinion of the height of a Warlord at 60 metres. Still not as much as I thought, but enough to be actually Titannical and not merely reasonably large like the 30m figure suggests.

I'd also like to suggest that, given the obvious difference in designs for Warlord Titans through RL time and different games, different Forge Worlds produce different Warlord Titans. I suggest that, rather than being actual designs, the designations of Warhound, Reaver, Warlord and Imperator are used to define different types of Titan. Clearly, many differnt designs of Warlord Titan exist in RL, could this not be the case in game as well? This would explain many of the differences in descriptions of Titan properties.

[Lazarus]

Another point I've just thought of, in a battle log from the Warlord Titan 'Semper Sanctus' fighting at the Battle of Macragge (IA3), the Princeps engages a Hierophant Bio Titan with the warlords chainfist, and loses when smaller nids clog the leg joints, so self destructs. In the log, the Princeps says of the Hierophant that it is 'bigger than Imperator Titan'. I didn't think that Imperators were much bigger than Warlords, but if the figure is 140m...thats one helluva big Hierophant!

On the topic of chainfists, are these subsitutes for longer ranged weapon arms, or do they deploy somehow? And also in the log there is a reference to 'carapace rocket launchers', and 'all other weapons cycle auto loaders...'. The turbolasers and volcano cannon don't use kinetc rounds, and 'all other weapons' could hardly apply only to the starboard weaponry. This was just something I had been looking for evidence for: that, although of course it makes logical sense, titans are armed with numerous smaller weapons for point defense. Another source tells me that multilasers are also mounted.

[Azazal]

Another point I've just thought of, in a battle log from the Warlord Titan 'Semper Sanctus' fighting at the Battle of Macragge (IA3), the Princeps engages a Hierophant Bio Titan with the warlords chainfist, and loses when smaller nids clog the leg joints, so self destructs. In the log, the Princeps says of the Hierophant that it is 'bigger than Imperator Titan'. I didn't think that Imperators were much bigger than Warlords, but if the figure is 140m...thats one helluva big Hierophant!

On the topic of chainfists, are these subsitutes for longer ranged weapon arms, or do they deploy somehow? And also in the log there is a reference to 'carapace rocket launchers', and 'all other weapons cycle auto loaders...'. The turbolasers and volcano cannon don't use kinetc rounds, and 'all other weapons' could hardly apply only to the starboard weaponry. This was just something I had been looking for evidence for: that, although of course it makes logical sense, titans are armed with numerous smaller weapons for point defense. Another source tells me that multilasers are also mounted.

That's a big bug, I wonder how much raid one would need..

As for the chain fist, yes they take up an "arm weapons slot" in place of a ranged weapon. As for the auto-loaders comment, probably for the rocket launcher and most likely the point defence systems - however, the PDS has been traded back and forth through the editions of epic. Orginally titans did not have any, then when infrantry were introduced in a WD article, they added in head mounted heavy bolters for titans. These were removed for 2nd ed epic, they were factored into the titans close combat actions. They were readded as ranged weapons in a different WD article as carapce mounted multi-lasers as an add on option. The multi-lasers are still an option with the play test rules for Titan Legions 2, free PDF from Specialsit Games. Why these would need auto-loaders though? unless the titan came from a forgeworld that used heavy bolters instead, and in game the effect was the same.

[white_rabbit]

Another point I've just thought of, in a battle log from the Warlord Titan 'Semper Sanctus' fighting at the Battle of Macragge (IA3), the Princeps engages a Hierophant Bio Titan with the warlords chainfist, and loses when smaller nids clog the leg joints, so self destructs. In the log, the Princeps says of the Hierophant that it is 'bigger than Imperator Titan'. I didn't think that Imperators were much bigger than Warlords, but if the figure is 140m...thats one helluva big Hierophant!

On the topic of chainfists, are these subsitutes for longer ranged weapon arms, or do they deploy somehow? And also in the log there is a reference to 'carapace rocket launchers', and 'all other weapons cycle auto loaders...'. The turbolasers and volcano cannon don't use kinetc rounds, and 'all other weapons' could hardly apply only to the starboard weaponry. This was just something I had been looking for evidence for: that, although of course it makes logical sense, titans are armed with numerous smaller weapons for point defense. Another source tells me that multilasers are also mounted.

Remember that Titans can have hugely different weaponry fits. Warlords have their "main" weapon hardpoints. Two carapace mounts, two arm mounts.

They can also be fitted with point defence weapons, auxiliary weapons (like the missile launchers on Imperious Dictatio's volcano cannon and carapace). As I recall, "carapace multi-lasers" is a wargear item as well.


They don't "have" to be turbolasers, gatling and volcano.