Unlike most ships with launch bays, Terror ships do not tend to loiter at long range while sending waves of attack craft against their targets. More commonly the assault boats and fighta bommas attack in close support of the Terror ship. The Terror ship also mounts torpedoes giving it some relief from close-quarter fighting, and has the usual assortment of Ork Gunz.
A variant of the standard Kroozer, Ork Terror ships have been associated primarily with raids made in the Cyclops Cluster against lightly defended outposts and augur stations. Terror ships deliver packs of Ork attack craft into combat and act as parent vessels for refueling and rearming their ferocious progeny. Most Terror ships appear to be built around salvaged hulks, it being comparatively easy to open up large launch bays by the simple expedient of chopping big sections out of the flanks of the wreck. Terror ships carry a mixture of Ork Fighter Bombers and large numbers of Assault Boats. Fighter Bombers are equipped not only to intercept enemy ordnance but also to carry bombs and missiles capable of damaging a warship. Ork Assault Boats are basic armored shells with an engine at one end and a piercing beak at the other, more akin to giant boarding torpedoes than the more sophisticated craft employed by other races.
A typical example of Ork brutality was the attack on Mirrobel, a small resupply base used by long-range patrols. Two Terror ships appeared in-system with half a dozen Escort ships. Taking up orbit around Mirrobel’s moon, the Terror ships sent waves of Assault Boats packed with Ork warriors to overwhelm the small garrison. Even as the base was being overrun, a scouting patrol comprising the Dauntless Light Cruisers Abdiel and Uziel together with four Firestorm class frigates arrived in the vicinity for resupply and were set upon by the Terror ships. Even though the Terror ships’ squadrons were busy on the planet’s surface, their crude gunpower was still enough to drive off the scouting patrol with Abdiel crippled and one frigate lost.
