Black Ark Capacity?

[Seanzala]

Hey,

After a very long absence I have returned with a question. How many soldiers can a Black Ark hold/maintain, in real terms, and, what would this equate to in game terms.

Thanks

Sean

[Khel]

I haven't really ever thought about this but I'll try to shed some light upon it.

I can picture the large ones (the much older ones, the ones from the old country) to hold up to maybe 6,000 to 10,000 typical Druchii troops. In other words, one or two legions of Druchii.

The smaller ones (ones which are made at Clar Karond) maybe 2,500 to 5,000 typical Druchii troops.

Game wise, I'd see the larger ones holding about 5,000 points worth of troops while the smaller Black Arks hold around 3,000 points worth.

[Master of arneim]

Welcome back!

Remember that there is room even for slaves and not only for regular troops. In my opinion there could be room for 10000 people at least. In the end they're cities floating, aren't they?

[Kir]

yes, but in the end, fighting force is all what matters ingame, plus it's effective strength. just double the points inside, and you have yourself a total of enemies needed to siege one.
So for khels guesses, that would be 10 k points of enemies for large ones and 6 k for small ones. As floating cities, every man or woman can fight, which'd bring the total up by about 1 k points worth of warriors in a last defense kind of fight.

[Seanzala]

Game wise, I'd see the larger ones holding about 5,000 points worth of troops while the smaller Black Arks hold around 3,000 points worth.

Hmm, that's smaller than I was anticipating. I was hoping for something along the lines of 12000pts, similar to kir's estimate. Anyone else?

[Kir]

that were estimated forces to siege a black ark with, not inhabitants
But i agree, the really ancient and big ones should ahve a population of 10k or more druchii, which'd result in about 100k points. Depending on city size and monster pen size. ( inhabitant*10 points should gives some estimate for the last stand fights, halve it for normal combat forces.

[Drainial]

Well if you consider your average town you are usualy talking in the tens of thousands, now admitadly we are more densly populated today than the Druchii are likly to be but I would have thought that each Black ark would not have less about 10-20 thousand inhabitants. Maybe more for the larger ones. Now take away the children, the incredibly aged and personel that are required elsewhere to keep the ark runing and the troops suplied and you need to halve that number, possibly more than halve it. I think that the American Military has 16 suport troops for every fighting soldier, which takes things to the extreeme and for this kind of warfare the figure would be much smaller, but you can see my point. But then each Druchii warrior costs 7 points, and each Corsair 10. So a full strength defense of the whole ark might be 50K or more.

So you would be better of either playing it as the epic version (I cannot remember the name) or taking just one section to defend for your game.

[Khel]

So you would be better of either playing it as the epic version (I cannot remember the name) or taking just one section to defend for your game.

Legendary Battles it's called.

I wouldn't think 10K Druchii warriors on a Black Ark would sum up to 100K point wise. That's a bit much in my opinion, remember even if we have a unit of 32 warriors fielded, fluff wise that's 300-1000 warriors.

[Mr. anderson]

Considering that cruising ships nowadays have a capacity of ca. 3000 (correct this number if I'm mistaken. I only did very brief research on this one...), I think a black arc, which is not only far bigger than a cruising ship but also not planned for comfort but for efficient carriage of people, I would say that a large black arc can easily hold up to 30 000 people - slaves included. That'd give you about half the crew able to carry weapons and about 10 000 regular soldiers, which should be equal to 10 000 points I think.

HUZZAH!

[Lethalis]

To compare a Black Ark with a ship is, I believe, a mistake. It is a large floating city which can house an entire fleet (see Man o'War). I seem to recall that building such a thing to scale would require the space of two or three large living rooms if you were to include it in your games

As for the number of inhabitants... I'd estimate it on 50k at the very least. Excluding slaves that is, which can be crammed at appropriate places, such as between the decks of the ships which come to pick them up from the shores in the first place. So I'd say that with 20k points (assuming a norm of one model representing some twenty five [25] actual soldiers) you'd be pretty spot on the total of combatants aboard.

[Drainial]

So you would be better of either playing it as the epic version (I cannot remember the name) or taking just one section to defend for your game.

Legendary Battles it's called.

I wouldn't think 10K Druchii warriors on a Black Ark would sum up to 100K point wise. That's a bit much in my opinion, remember even if we have a unit of 32 warriors fielded, fluff wise that's 300-1000 warriors.

No its come back to me, Warmaster, which you may well not play. Legendary battles is the equivilent of Apocolspse, whilst Warmaster is the equivilent of epic.

[Fingol darkwater]

To compare a Black Ark with a ship is, I believe, a mistake. It is a large floating city which can house an entire fleet (see Man o'War). I seem to recall that building such a thing to scale would require the space of two or three large living rooms if you were to include it in your games

'nuff said. Just stuff as many points as you can in the appropriate space.

[Coldeyes]

hard to say, all we know is that theyre basically floating castles and ive seen barely any pictures, and who knows they probobly vary in size in capacity like normal cities and ships

[Arcadian]

Considering that cruising ships nowadays have a capacity of ca. 3000 (correct this number if I'm mistaken. I only did very brief research on this one...), I think a black arc, which is not only far bigger than a cruising ship but also not planned for comfort but for efficient carriage of people, I would say that a large black arc can easily hold up to 30 000 people - slaves included. That'd give you about half the crew able to carry weapons and about 10 000 regular soldiers, which should be equal to 10 000 points I think.

HUZZAH!

With respect to Mr. Anderson, I will share a joke that many folks in the security capacity I have worked found very funny.. (No disrespect to French folks and please know that despite one of my forms of employment/job, I am not personally a "Bush/Bush Administration, Yeay!" kinda guy....(IE: I mean no one offense to anyone by this post..))

'There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims.


What does he intended to do, bomb them?"

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly, "Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.


We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?"

You could have heard a pin drop.'

My point being that personally I believe that any Black Arc should well out do that.. as an example.. and thats saying quite a bit...

My personal thought as to the capacity of a Black Arc to be about 125,000 Max.. (This from Growing up in small isolated Appalachian Mountains)

Just my opinion... But if Huntington, West Virginia can reach over 124,000...then I would hope to the Dark Goddess, a Black Arc could do the same...(grin)

[Arquinsiel]

I'd guess that there's a population somewhere between 10 and 50k inhabitants, most of which would be non-combatants such as slaves or overseers.

[Kinslayer]

For some reason i think almost all of you are guessing too low, the black arcs are floating cities remember not just big ships. They are huge chunks of Nagarythe broken off, so would once have been cities - the largest of which perhaps equal to London, perhaps not... perhaps dwarfing London? Who knows, the Warhammer world has been roughly said to be twice the size of planet Earth, so would they cities be twice as big?

A rough estimate for me would be something like room for 20-30,000 armed soldiers, 10-20,000 'crew' who can defend the arc but are mainly slavedrivers and other needed jobs. Then the slave holds could probably hold at least 20,000 slaves

[Lethalis]

Their cities might be twice as big, but then stick to medieval standards. Cities buzzing with life (like wealthy European cities in the late medieval times, or large Islamic cities in early medieval times) were huge if they were over 100 000 or so, and that's from ze human race which had a much higher population density especially back then and a much higher birth rate. Now, Dark Elves have the highest birth rate of all Elves but they're not such rabbits that they can equal medieval humans. I still stand by my guess of at least 50k, excluding slaves.

[Arquinsiel]

Bear in mind that Rome in it's heyday had only a population of around five million, or about 1.25mil/mile^2, while the modern Greater London Area has a population density of around 12k/mile^2. The Black Arks would have to have facilities approaching those of modern standards to prevent all but the wealthiest few living in complete squalor at even that size. This in turn increases the amount of space needed for food storage, sleeping quarters, bath-houses etc. How physically big is the Black Ark in question? How many decks? How tall is each deck? How far below the surface does it extend and how much of that is usable?

[Drainial]

Just to think in tearms of realism if all black arks were the size of modern day london and the six cities each considerably larger the Druchii population would be nearing the billion mark. In a medivel setting (ish) where the entire world population was probobly less than this.

[Fingol darkwater]

For some reason i think almost all of you are guessing too low, the black arcs are floating cities remember not just big ships. They are huge chunks of Nagarythe broken off, so would once have been cities -

There are like eight of those left (don't quote me on that, there may be more, there may be less. The point is that those ancient wonders are rare as hell these days. Eight is not the magic number here).

Most Black Arks produced in Clar Karond are actually just gigantic vessels, being significantly more boaty than the old Arks.

[Archon_matt]

I'd say that the population of an original Black Ark, being equivalent to a large medieval citadel, would probably be no more than 30-40K. If we're talking about floating CITIES rather than CITADELS, then you'd easily have 100K. BUT, the Druchii, although they live densely, live in decadence. And in a citadel, that would require spaced out housing rather than extreme squalor.
Also, take into account the fact that these Black Arks would probably been rebuilt a bit so that they can be defendable. So I'm sticking with my first guess.
Oh, and for people who think they're cities rather than citadels- imagine a giant city (which is basically a one-walled, flat-ish bit of land) coming up to Ulthuan:
"Ahh sir, we have a large vessel in sight...looks like it could be shut down by a small siege assault. The onboard warriors may be a bit of trouble, but then again, Lothern has more people than that place."
Compared to a citadel, which would require a huge cost of Asur lives to take, because they are so easily defendable. I think Black Arks are more a base of operations/launching point for massive invasions rather than crappy ginormous skiffs made to get an army to shore. Using a CITY (rather than citadel) Black Ark to launch an invasion would result in horrific losses to the Druchii. As soon as the Druchii army got away from the Ark, the enemy would storm it, take it, and slaughter the inhabitants. Compare this to a citadel, which would be much harder to take, and full of warriors rather than peasants and nobles.
Just a thought.
::BTW:: the population estimates there do not include slaves.

[Venkh]

The Black arcs float on huge chunks of bedrock which form a natural barrier to any invaders. You could assault by sea if you could get past the fleet of sea monsters that guard it. You would then have to get your ships into the fissures which form the entrances or somehow grapnel along side and scale the cliffs to reach the city itself. All the while the arc would be under the control of the defenders who would direct it to smash enemy ships into splinters with its rocky sides.

I am sure it could be assaulted by air but then you would have to overcome the airmada of manticores and harpies which guard it.

So even if they arent completely fortified 'which they probably are' they are virtually impregnible to anything other than the most powerful enemies.

[Drainial]

Of course no city is ever difficult to take, there defences are allways paltry (sarcasm). Thats not to say that I would regard them stricktly as a city, or a citidel. Something of a half way house, a VERY heavily fortified town.

[Coldeyes]

Thats not to say that I would regard them stricktly as a city, or a citidel. Something of a half way house, a VERY heavily fortified town.

im not sure if this part was also sarcastic, but to think of the Black Arks as the equal to a heavily fortified town is disgusting and insulting to the dark elves. the first black arks were castles of nagarythe torn from the ground and im sure the druchii have found many ways to improve the first and new black arks. while the new black arks are smaller they are still impressive and shouldnt be that downsized to a town.

[Drainial]

I said VERY ( in capitols for emphasis) townlike in size (as in smaller than a city, but larger than a castle) but incredibly well defended.