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Davor wrote:
To conquer you need to defeat the army first. Then you need to defeat the resistance. Then you need to keep all the people of the country or in this case the entire world 7 Billion people to do your tidings. That is not an easy thing to do.

That's not how it works in 40k. The Imperium does not conquer populations, it conquers territory. Whatever is living there already is exterminated to make room for loyal citizens.

 oldzoggy wrote:

Davor wrote:
Well seeing how Russia and USA and coalition couldn't take Afghanistan I would think it would take a lot to take over a planet let alone a country.

Modern western civilizations vs an orbital warship would be noting like Taliban vs the US. It is going to be like the Dutch vs the Nazi's. If you are lacking the imagination imagine the following while you are one of the leaders of Canada.

Hour 0: Nasa and the other space agencies notice some strange abnormally.
Hour 3: It appears to be an alien space ship, and they demand our surrender.
Hour 5: Long ranged missiles are fired, but they appear to be totally ineffective.
Hour 6:They lance Montreal from orbit, the city is completely leveled. The first reports estimate a death total of at least 1500k and you will get the following message: We will lance Vancouver,in the next hour and continue lancing cities until you offer your unconditional surrender and order all your forces to stand down.

How many cities would you surrender knowing that your army doesn't have a clue how to strike back?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you want any real life historical context just look at this link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotterdam_Blitz

You are talking over 200 countries in the world not just one or one city. The US or Russia or China can't speak for the world. Hell I don't think any of those countries could speak on the behalf of North Korea. There is no way all 200+ countries would agree. There would also be resistance forces. Again this is about CONQUORING and what it would require a total conquer of the earth. A few ships in space will not conquer the Earth. Again, yes they can obliterate all the cities, but once you need "boots on the ground" to take over, it will not be done with the men on the ship. You will need Troops on the ground to control the local populations and dissidents.

Just look at the mid east. Nobody can control what is going on there right now even with all the Nukes and state of the art armies and what not. Why? Because you still need to control the population as well. It's not just taking over the government, but the population as well.

Great article link you provided. Learned more history today.

 455_PWR wrote:
Several warships with 100 marines would crush the earth in a month. The ships would destroy all nuclear weapons from space

And they would magically know where they all are how?

These are issues that are never really addressed.

The fallout would kill many earthlings. Marines would then drop into the major cities to crush the world leaders.

And they know which cities are the capitals of which nations and they know who the leaders are and they know where these leaders are...how?

More to the point, with so few of them, how they can be almost nowhere, the Earth forces essentially have complete freedom of movement while the marines are essentially instantly encircled and concentrated upon.

Normal human with autoguns vs giant hulk with depleted uranium bolter rounds and power armor?

Autoguns and similar weapons like Lasguns have killed marines before in the fluff, and for modern armies these are the absolute most pitiful of weapons that do almost none of the actually killing in a modern conventional war.

Humans with weaknesses vs marines who don't need to sleep in war?

Of whom there would be so few they could essentially be ignored as they'd be easily moved around, encircled, and destroyed in detail.

 oldzoggy wrote:
I am kinda baffled how some of you Americans completely underestimate the effect of orbital bombardment. What do they teach you at school about the bombing of Rotterdam and Hiroshima.

Bombing of major cities has done nothing in most instances except kill and piss off the civilians and cause temporary disruption. German war material production in WW2 peaked near the height of Allied aerial bombardment. Tokyo suffered more dead in a single night from conventional firebombing than in any of the Atomic bomb blasts and kept going. Bombardment is a powerful destructive tool but it has never won a war on its own.

The A-Bombs came when Japan already was trying to look for an out and to get the Soviets to act as intermediaries for peace talks, and had no fuel left to put ships out to sea or aircraft in the air, almost no ships left to even send on suicide runs, was out of material to produce arms and her industry in ruins, almost no tanks to speak of (and basically nothing that could compete with even a Sherman anyway), no air force left, Japan had been completely cut off from her overseas armies, was almost completely out of trained military personnel in the home islands, and was essentially prostrate, helpless, and starving, and with a Soviet invasion in between the two bombs that obliterated the best remaining overseas troops they had and seized their most important colonial possessions in all of two weeks and cut off Japan's last hope of a negotiated peace through an intermediary.

 Insectum7 wrote:


Even if it doesn't hit any harder, I'm sure you recognize the strategic and logistical benefits to a rifle that can be reloaded by putting the battery in a fire. It's at once both ridiculous and amazing (sorta sums up the whole thing, right?).

Right, but fundamentally a Lasgun isn't doing anything an Autogun can't in terms of executing its role.

40K is tricky, because it's medium of choice (written story, tabletop or video game/cinematic) really just goes along with whatever narrative works best. Starships engaging targets hundreds of thousands of kilometers away in BFG, and also broadsiding each other. They can lance targets from orbit with fairly good precision, or just lay waste to continents.

Right, and that's really the issue. 40k isn't consistent even with itself, much less reality, and direct comparisons break down quickly.

Antigrav = Helicopters. It's true, they're not dissimilar. Falcons are capable of flying above the clouds, or hugging the earth. They are hermetically sealed and can operate in a vacuum. I think they can deploy from space. As for their weapons, to me at least, that remains hard to judge. Weapons are limited in range for tabletop purposes. In my mind a Bright Lance is intended to represent a highly capable AT weapon. Even if the range is short, in a Vs. battle with modern tanks, Falcons could just descend on them from above the elevation limit of the 120mm cannon and pick them apart, or (as per the rules) land in the midst of them and disgorge elite troopers with miniature fusion weapons. Holo-fields making the vehicles hard to target, etc.

Sure, and some of that I'd buy, though they've shown they're also perfectly vulnerable to weapons which have been available to the real world for decades if not over a century (such as autocannons), and wouldn't be inordinately difficult targets to destroy. Even the tactic you describe would be outrageously difficult to pull off (evade AA systems until you get close enough to essentially dive bomb without allowing a ground based target enough elevation to engage you) and there's a reason stuff like dive bombers that operated that way no longer exist and why helicopters like an Apache don't engage from close and high above but from very far away, often from behind hills or mountains if they can.

I guess I don't know what you mean then. Aircraft using radar? That seems analogous to starships using sensors. I feel like I've read that 40K aircraft have similar capabilities in some books, but I honestly can't be specific. I think the game goes "hollywood", but the fiction varies between hollywood and more legit. All depending on plot, of course.

In this sense, with "beyond visual range", I mean stuff like aircraft engaging each other by radar reading from beyond the horizon or radar guided artillery delivering GPS guided munitions to moving targets a dozen miles away or cruise missiles being fired from submarines at ground targets from under the water. Stuff like that. Spaceships pretty much by definition have to operate beyond such ranges due to the scales involved, but terrestrially we see very little of this sort of thing beyond a very limited handful of items. AA weapons tend to be direct fire guns or limited range missiles largely replicating WW2 and Korean War aerial combat, artillery tends to be either relatively short ranged or dumb-fire artillery not much different from that in WW1, guided missiles tend to be extremely rare and usually limited to something akin to an Apache launched Hellfire like a Tau seeker missile.

You might be right there, in regards to the actual aircraft. I really don't know, honestly. It's been a while since I've read any BL stuff with actual areal battles. Planetary defenses obviously can track orbital and areal targets though. They can communicate to the fighters in flight. I know that doesn't help if the aircraft are sitting ducks for long range AA missiles, but it seems likely that they have at least some countermeasures. If ground defenses can fire at orbiting spaceships,(which does take missiles/lasers/whatever that track via instrumentation) then it seems likely that they could also fire at aircraft, right?

One might think, but pretty much the only representations of AA weapons and the like are guns with missiles being relatively rare. This is also the same universe that has nukes but almost never uses them unless they're obliterating an entire planet.

Hmm, what you're looking for sorta sounds like a Melta Torpedo or similar weapon. Or, why fire a missile when a lance strike will do? I feel like the strategic niche is covered.

Maybe? Depictions of these vary extremely wildly, but ultimately most 40k battles seem to be fought without fire support from orbital vessels. Naval support for IG seems exceptionally rare while even for Space Marines its portrayal in fluff is more of an exception rather than the rule. And without said naval support no even remotely similar capabilities seem to exist.

That's a good point, but if the Imperium isn't concerned about collateral damage, and is also unconcerned about time and cost (AKA, the IG), then why bother with smart munitions?

Because while the Imperium isn't against spending lives, it doesn't look to actively expend more than it needs to, it just kinda does out of incompetence, but on the attritional and strategic levels the Imperium generally wins its wars on (as opposed to the operational or tactical level where they get butchered all the time), such things would matter a great deal.

I guess it's unclear how accurate orbital bombardment is. The one in 40K (that a Chapter Master calls in) is small, but pretty accurate. The bombardment in Epic 40K was much bigger, but still fairly accurate on that scale.

yeah, Lance strikes alternatively are city killers nuke level weapons or are merely as powerful as an IG Medusa's gun depending on the portrayal. Ostensibly Lances also are something SM's aren't supposed to have lots of either according to the Imperial Navy and Codex Astartes and BFG ships portrayals, but they seem to have Lances sprouting from everyone in most fluff depictions

Drop Pods are obviously pretty damn accurate. It's a little difficult to say, since the accuracy moves around in service of the game or the plot. Can the Imperium put a missile through a window without an on-site spotter? Maybe not. Can it level a city block from orbit? That seems pretty clear.

Sure, but such capabilities are so rarely utilized in a such a manner as to be effectively nonexistent.

If The fleet tried to do ariel bombardment to take out say the US capitol they would end up bombing cities like New York and LA avoiding Washington DC all together since it looks nothing like what the Space Marines would term a Capitol city. its small low level and flat, they think in terms of high rises and such as being major capitol centers.

then if you got boots on the ground even if they sent in 1K marines in say a city like My town of Stockton, they would be out gunned and out numbered, and if it was a City like LA in say the Hood, they would be lucky if they could get off of one block let alone the city.

Davor wrote:
Just look at the mid east. Nobody can control what is going on there right now even with all the Nukes and state of the art armies and what not. Why? Because you still need to control the population as well. It's not just taking over the government, but the population as well.

Again, because in the real world we can't massacre civilians to accomplish the goal of "peace". We have nukes, but we can't use nukes. The Imperium has no such moral conflicts. Killing civilians as collateral damage in an attack on a military target is a good thing, because it means fewer civilians for the extermination force to kill once the military is destroyed.

Well, we *could* use Nukes. We *choose* not to because we are not comfortable with the level of destruction that entails relative to the threat posed to our civil societies. Sufficiently threatened we certainly would. I imagine the Assyrians that used to dominate the middle east, were they still a power today, would have simply levelled every city that was a problem and extirpated their populations

Asterios wrote:
If The fleet tried to do ariel bombardment to take out say the US capitol they would end up bombing cities like New York and LA avoiding Washington DC all together since it looks nothing like what the Space Marines would term a Capitol city. its small low level and flat, they think in terms of high rises and such as being major capitol centers.

Why would they avoid DC? Lance strikes from orbit are free. LA and NYC would be destroyed, DC would be destroyed, as would every other significant population center. Our valuable resources (mines, farmland, etc) are mostly located outside of cities, so there's no reason to bother capturing cities intact. Reduce them to radioactive glass, and only land troops to secure useful resources against the terrified and confused residents of the 500-person farming town nearby.

then if you got boots on the ground even if they sent in 1K marines in say a city like My town of Stockton, they would be out gunned and out numbered, and if it was a City like LA in say the Hood, they would be lucky if they could get off of one block let alone the city.

Lol no. Random criminals with guns are no threat to marines. They don't have heavy weapons capable of defeating power armor with anything but an incredibly lucky shot, and I doubt they have the morale to willingly die by the thousands in human wave attacks for the small chance of killing a single marine. Resistance would be over within a few minutes of the first exchange of fire as the defenders see their weapons doing nothing and their comrades exploding in a rain of gore from bolter rounds or being cut in half by chainsaw swords. Not that running would save them for long, of course, but perhaps an orderly execution in the death camps would be preferable to dying in battle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, we *could* use Nukes. We *choose* not to because we are not comfortable with the level of destruction that entails relative to the threat posed to our civil societies. Sufficiently threatened we certainly would. I imagine the Assyrians that used to dominate the middle east, were they still a power today, would have simply levelled every city that was a problem and extirpated their populations

Yes, that's what I mean. We have the capability of using nukes, but moral and political reasons that prevent their use in the middle east. The Imperium, on the other hand, would not hesitate at all to use WMDs on civilian targets.

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
then if you got boots on the ground even if they sent in 1K marines in say a city like My town of Stockton, they would be out gunned and out numbered, and if it was a City like LA in say the Hood, they would be lucky if they could get off of one block let alone the city.

Lol no. Random criminals with guns are no threat to marines. They don't have heavy weapons capable of defeating power armor with anything but an incredibly lucky shot, and I doubt they have the morale to willingly die by the thousands in human wave attacks for the small chance of killing a single marine. Resistance would be over within a few minutes of the first exchange of fire as the defenders see their weapons doing nothing and their comrades exploding in a rain of gore from bolter rounds or being cut in half by chainsaw swords. Not that running would save them for long, of course, but perhaps an orderly execution in the death camps would be preferable to dying in battle.

have you not been watching the news? seriously thinking gangs don't have heavy weapons and such? I remember watching one of the gun turn ins they had in Oakland, one of the things turned in was a LAW rocket, yes gangs have the drive to protect their territories and the weapons to do it with. and some well placed bombs could take out marines very easily, it doesn't take much to make a IED to fight the marines.

you seriously underestimate human kind and overestimate the Space Marines.

Asterios wrote:
have you not been watching the news? seriously thinking gangs don't have heavy weapons and such? I remember watching one of the gun turn ins they had in Oakland, one of the things turned in was a LAW rocket, yes gangs have the drive to protect their territories and the weapons to do it with. and some well placed bombs could take out marines very easily, it doesn't take much to make a IED to fight the marines.

Ok, one LAW rocket. No tanks, no nuclear weapons, no AA missiles, etc. And none of these things are likely to be immediately available when a drop pod smashes down onto someone's house and marines start slaughtering everything in sight. Nobody is going to be making IEDs because the "war" is going to be over in minutes.

Also, gangs have a drive to protect their territories against other gangs. Not against massive super-human soldiers wearing tank armor and carrying rapid-fire grenade launchers. There's a huge difference between doing a drive-by on a guy who is selling drugs in "your" territory and making a suicide attack alongside thousands of fellow casualties in the desperate hope that you might kill something before dying. Or even so that your death might be enough of a distraction for the guy with the LAW to take a shot before also being blown apart by a bolter round.

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
have you not been watching the news? seriously thinking gangs don't have heavy weapons and such? I remember watching one of the gun turn ins they had in Oakland, one of the things turned in was a LAW rocket, yes gangs have the drive to protect their territories and the weapons to do it with. and some well placed bombs could take out marines very easily, it doesn't take much to make a IED to fight the marines.

Ok, one LAW rocket. No tanks, no nuclear weapons, no AA missiles, etc. And none of these things are likely to be immediately available when a drop pod smashes down onto someone's house and marines start slaughtering everything in sight. Nobody is going to be making IEDs because the "war" is going to be over in minutes.

Also, gangs have a drive to protect their territories against other gangs. Not against massive super-human soldiers wearing tank armor and carrying rapid-fire grenade launchers. There's a huge difference between doing a drive-by on a guy who is selling drugs in "your" territory and making a suicide attack alongside thousands of fellow casualties in the desperate hope that you might kill something before dying. Or even so that your death might be enough of a distraction for the guy with the LAW to take a shot before also being blown apart by a bolter round.

you must live in a nice town, i've seen the seedy side of cities, when cops don't even go into certain neighborhoods(or drive thru very fast) for fear of being shot at and where military vehicles are very available yeah the marines will do a lot of killing but when their ammo runs dry, they will be dying. if not sooner.

Asterios wrote:
you must live in a nice town, i've seen the seedy side of cities, when cops don't even go into certain neighborhoods(or drive thru very fast) for fear of being shot at and where military vehicles are very available yeah the marines will do a lot of killing but when their ammo runs dry, they will be dying. if not sooner.

Again, cops don't go there. Cops are normal humans. Space marines are god-like killing machines, even once they run out of bolter rounds and have to use their chainsaw swords. Taking shots at the cops driving by is not at all the same thing as voluntarily making a suicidal human wave attack in the desperate hope to maybe, if you get very lucky, do a little damage. Professional soldiers with tanks/heavy weapons/etc would be tested by the horrors of fighting against space marines, a bunch of thugs with their personal guns are going to break and run as soon as the suicidal nature of the fight becomes obvious.

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
you must live in a nice town, i've seen the seedy side of cities, when cops don't even go into certain neighborhoods(or drive thru very fast) for fear of being shot at and where military vehicles are very available yeah the marines will do a lot of killing but when their ammo runs dry, they will be dying. if not sooner.

Again, cops don't go there. Cops are normal humans. Space marines are god-like killing machines, even once they run out of bolter rounds and have to use their chainsaw swords. Taking shots at the cops driving by is not at all the same thing as voluntarily making a suicidal human wave attack in the desperate hope to maybe, if you get very lucky, do a little damage. Professional soldiers with tanks/heavy weapons/etc would be tested by the horrors of fighting against space marines, a bunch of thugs with their personal guns are going to break and run as soon as the suicidal nature of the fight becomes obvious.

and I repeat you drastically underestimate humans. you would be surprised how many drive-bys would be going on and such. California has some serious gangbangers who are well armed. not too mention the military trained gang members which even the FBI is worried over.

Asterios wrote:
and I repeat you drastically underestimate humans.

And you don't seem to understand how humans react to hopeless situations. You're expecting random thugs with handguns to stand their ground and fight as they're blown apart by the hundreds and their weapons barely scratch the paint on their killers. A gang member might be willing to do a drive-by on a rival dealer, but that's not at all the same as facing certain death to fire one last shot as their best friend is torn in half by a chainsword. Morale would be a serious issue for professional soldiers, gangs are going to break and run when exposed to that horror.

you would be surprised how many drive-bys would be going on and such.

Very few, because a drive-by would be committing suicide for the sake of forcing the marines to spend some bolter rounds. Shooting from a moving car means not being able to concentrate fire and have any hope of penetrating power armor, and return fire from the marines is going to turn the car (and everyone inside) into a ball of blood-splattered wreckage. If you have a car in the horrifying slaughter of a space marine attack you're going to use it to get as far away as possible.

not too mention the military trained gang members which even the FBI is worried over.

And, again, the FBI is not the space marines. The FBI has normal humans that can be killed just like any other humans. Space marines have 10' tall walking tanks that are virtually immune to anything short of anti-tank weapons. An ambush that would kill a whole group of FBI agents probably wouldn't even scratch the paint on a squad of marines. And, unlike the FBI, the marines are free to call in an artillery strike in retaliation and level a whole city block before continuing on.

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
and I repeat you drastically underestimate humans.

And you don't seem to understand how humans react to hopeless situations. You're expecting random thugs with handguns to stand their ground and fight as they're blown apart by the hundreds and their weapons barely scratch the paint on their killers. A gang member might be willing to do a drive-by on a rival dealer, but that's not at all the same as facing certain death to fire one last shot as their best friend is torn in half by a chainsword. Morale would be a serious issue for professional soldiers, gangs are going to break and run when exposed to that horror.

you would be surprised how many drive-bys would be going on and such.

Very few, because a drive-by would be committing suicide for the sake of forcing the marines to spend some bolter rounds. Shooting from a moving car means not being able to concentrate fire and have any hope of penetrating power armor, and return fire from the marines is going to turn the car (and everyone inside) into a ball of blood-splattered wreckage. If you have a car in the horrifying slaughter of a space marine attack you're going to use it to get as far away as possible.

not too mention the military trained gang members which even the FBI is worried over.

And, again, the FBI is not the space marines. The FBI has normal humans that can be killed just like any other humans. Space marines have 10' tall walking tanks that are virtually immune to anything short of anti-tank weapons. An ambush that would kill a whole group of FBI agents probably wouldn't even scratch the paint on a squad of marines. And, unlike the FBI, the marines are free to call in an artillery strike in retaliation and level a whole city block before continuing on.

Well to be fair a marine only has a 1000 or so bolter rounds before they need to use a normal gun and trust in there 100+ years of experience and godly armor.

Not every marine is some sort of megaveteran of many decades, most probably aren't, and their army can be defeated by modern day equivalent weapons, just not easily.

More to the point...how many spare mags do you see Space Marines carry? Usually none, sometimes one or two.

But really, the issues with things like gangs or other sorts of civil insurrection wouldn't really be inflicting of casualties on Space Marines, but rather in sabotage and distraction. Cave in the freeway tunnel the SM's are using and you've made one hell of a headache for them. Randomly snipe at them to force them to halt and react momentarily. Standard guerilla tactics where the guerillas lose any sort of straight up fight but still cause major issues for the stronger force.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Not every marine is some sort of megaveteran of many decades, most probably aren't, and their army can be defeated by modern day equivalent weapons, just not easily.

Sure, but random gang members aren't going to be calling in a B-52 strike to wipe out a squad of marines. Modern Earth would need high-end military stuff to have a chance, so if the marines sit in orbit and nuke the military until the only resistance is civilians with their personal weapons it's going to be a one-sided slaughter.

But really, the issues with things like gangs or other sorts of civil insurrection wouldn't really be inflicting of casualties on Space Marines, but rather in sabotage and distraction. Cave in the freeway tunnel the SM's are using and you've made one hell of a headache for them. Randomly snipe at them to force them to halt and react momentarily. Standard guerilla tactics where the guerillas lose any sort of straight up fight but still cause major issues for the stronger force.

An attack by marines isn't going to last long enough for this kind of thing to happen. How do you cave in a freeway tunnel when you don't have anywhere near enough time to set up an explosives lab and build the required IEDs? And suicide sniping to momentarily delay a squad of marines is going to be rather difficult to get recruits for. "Die to delay the enemy for a few seconds" is a difficult sales pitch even for professional soldiers with a realistic hope of winning. A drug dealer with an AR15 is going to run as fast as possible in the other direction.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Not every marine is some sort of megaveteran of many decades, most probably aren't, and their army can be defeated by modern day equivalent weapons, just not easily.

Sure, but random gang members aren't going to be calling in a B-52 strike to wipe out a squad of marines.

Right, sure, I just wanted to better reflect the reality of a typical space marine.

An attack by marines isn't going to last long enough for this kind of thing to happen. How do you cave in a freeway tunnel when you don't have anywhere near enough time to set up an explosives lab and build the required IEDs?

Marines don't always just drop pod down and thunderhawk immediately back up, there's gobs of fluff of them moving about cities and being engaged in constant combat for days, as well as even mundane stuff like occupation duties.

And suicide sniping to momentarily delay a squad of marines is going to be rather difficult to get recruits for. "Die to delay the enemy for a few seconds" is a difficult sales pitch even for professional soldiers with a realistic hope of winning. A drug dealer with an AR15 is going to run as fast as possible in the other direction.

Two things. First, you underestimate human stupidity. Just look at US combat in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan and you'll see huge numbers of instances where people do insanely stupid and obviously suicidal things like running into open streets in front of tanks and shooting with AK's that obviously can't hurt the tanks and then the predictable happens. I watched some Syrian civil war footage where bullets were landing around some fighters while they stood there in the open randomly shooting and continued to stand there with bullets literally snapping into the ground around their feet for like fifteen full seconds or so until some finally made contact.

Second, a lot of this also wouldn't necessarily be suicidal. Pop off a couple rounds from behind a wall a couple hundred meters away just to land a couple shots near the SM's and then skate away, and you're probably not instantly dead by any means. That sort of thing happens all the time in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And while it may not delay troops for many hours, it may (or may not) delay them critically for a few minutes while they ascertain what they're being engaged by so they know they're not walking into a bigger ambush or something, which can mean the difference between the SM's accomplishing their mission in time or not.

I'm not saying it *would* necessarily actually be much of a grave threat to the Space Marines, just that it *could* be, it'd likely be an outlying marginal factor in the greater strategic sense, but there's damage to be done by outmatched urban insurgents as we've seen in the middle east.

Asterios wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
you must live in a nice town, i've seen the seedy side of cities, when cops don't even go into certain neighborhoods(or drive thru very fast) for fear of being shot at and where military vehicles are very available yeah the marines will do a lot of killing but when their ammo runs dry, they will be dying. if not sooner.

Again, cops don't go there. Cops are normal humans. Space marines are god-like killing machines, even once they run out of bolter rounds and have to use their chainsaw swords. Taking shots at the cops driving by is not at all the same thing as voluntarily making a suicidal human wave attack in the desperate hope to maybe, if you get very lucky, do a little damage. Professional soldiers with tanks/heavy weapons/etc would be tested by the horrors of fighting against space marines, a bunch of thugs with their personal guns are going to break and run as soon as the suicidal nature of the fight becomes obvious.

and I repeat you drastically underestimate humans. you would be surprised how many drive-bys would be going on and such. California has some serious gangbangers who are well armed. not too mention the military trained gang members which even the FBI is worried over.

As someone who lives in Los Angeles I could tell you that it's highly unlikely a bunch of poor 17 year old kids armed with 9mm handguns and maybe a second hand SMG driving a clapped out '97 Honda civic could do much damage against a bunch of post human super soldiers in advanced full armor. Military trained or not.

It amuses me to see Peregrine defend Space Marines, but then, I suppose 'desire to be right' (which he, as usual, is!) overrides 'hatred for Space Marines'.

But yeah, those thinking gangs are going to organise a guerrilla counterattack after seeing Marines butcher everything in their path are waayyyyyy overestimating the gangs. They are crackheads, not samurai.

Or maybe the "hatred of space marines" doesn't actually exist to the extent you want to believe it does, and you shouldn't be such an irrational fanboy. There's perfectly good reasons to believe that less than a dozen space marines could not conquer Earth, and not really very many reasons to believe they could.

I don't really care for this particular line of reasoning. It's obnoxious and irritating to think that people honestly believe that gangbangers matter in a situation like a planetary invasion. They really don't, except insofar as they damage or help the infrastructure of the invaded nation, or join up with an actual military force to help defend the nation.

Rather, IMO it's quite clearly been established what kind of force people who disagree with this "ten space marines" crap would expect could actually conquer the Earth. A standard Imperial invasion force, and Ork WAAAGH!, a Tyranid splinter fleet-- things of that size and quality would be required. Most standard Imperial invasion forces would include some Space Marines, but they would not actually be MERELY Space Marines.

Which is not to say Earth is particularly well defended. None of these things are a particularly large force for any of the factions involved (except maybe for Tau and Eldar, but even to them it's not insurmountable, and honestly they probably wouldn't bother), it's just that, like I keep saying, we're talking about an invasion of Earth, not an invasion of a generic Earth-like world.

And the biggest difference between the two, assuming physics is similar enough for this to happen in the first place, is that the history of 40k follows a narrative structure... and Earth does not. Simply put, in 40k, many times, armies in 40k win because they're required to win by the author. There is no author enforcing such wins if they actually invaded Earth. I know I'm making a big deal about it, but this, to me, makes a massive difference, and thus we need to be more realistic about this than we would about a traditional 40k discussion.

Conquering Earth would still be trivial for a major 40k faction. Chaos, the Imperium, Orks, Tyranids, and so on all have massive amounts of forces, billions upon billions, that they can use to invade. It wouldn't take but a fraction of a percent of their power to invade Earth. It's just that fraction of a percent cannot merely be "a dozen astartes".

Why would Earth attempt to fight off Imperial conquest at all?

Keep in mind we have no real access to the 'truth' about the galaxy at large (unending war, soulless bureaucracy). Even if we did, joining the Imperium is basically our only defense against the dangers out there. We can't even defend our orbital space, so there's on way we could fight off any invasion.

The Imperium is made of millions of worlds of humans, and espouses the manifest destiny of humanity. They have a superior grasp of the nature of reality (nature of souls, existence of VERY malevolent gods we need protection from). They follow a very Roman style of governorship (run your own show, just pay your taxes), which the wealthy/powerful of Earth would not likely oppose. Their religion is highly adept at playing the LONG game to convert local religions over - much like the Catholic Church did to many faiths by absorbing local divinities a saints. Once the majority of the planet has joined the Imperial Faith they can go about the business of eliminating the 'heretical' hold-outs themselves.

In brief, the Imperium is superior to Earth in basically every way, even if they are very backwards from what they were 10,000 years earlier.

 Ashiraya wrote:
It amuses me to see Peregrine defend Space Marines, but then, I suppose 'desire to be right' (which he, as usual, is!) overrides 'hatred for Space Marines'.

But yeah, those thinking gangs are going to organise a guerrilla counterattack after seeing Marines butcher everything in their path are waayyyyyy overestimating the gangs. They are crackheads, not samurai.

I agree gangs are not much of a threat. But the rest of the armed populace and military sure could be. In my mind it all depends on what the intent of 'conquer' is. If the invaders intend to actually occupy their lives would be interesting. If 'conquer' just means 'destroy cities from space' there would be some resistance (we can shoot down satellites now) but you can't really prevent the bombardments. Any force attempting to land, even if just conducting raids, will face some problems. I've personally put three 120mm sabot rounds into an area you could cover with a kevlar helmet at over 2k meters. Hitting something as big as a space marine would not be hard, and I suspect a DU penetrator will do bad things to one.

ISR in support of targeting is something I don't see much of in the 40k world. Yeah, some drones are used but our real world capabilities in the ISR realm seem a lot more advanced than the 40k world. Targeting big things like cities is easy.

 Melissia wrote:
Or maybe the "hatred of space marines" doesn't actually exist to the extent you want to believe it does, and you shouldn't be such an irrational fanboy.

Jesus man, it was a joke (hence ). I am well aware of Peregrine's opinions on Marines and they are fair, it is a subject we have discussed at length. There is no need to instantly go for the throat.

Peregrine wrote:

Davor wrote:
Just look at the mid east. Nobody can control what is going on there right now even with all the Nukes and state of the art armies and what not. Why? Because you still need to control the population as well. It's not just taking over the government, but the population as well.

Again, because in the real world we can't massacre civilians to accomplish the goal of "peace". We have nukes, but we can't use nukes. The Imperium has no such moral conflicts. Killing civilians as collateral damage in an attack on a military target is a good thing, because it means fewer civilians for the extermination force to kill once the military is destroyed.

All you keep saying is killing. I am saying what the original poster said. How would they CONQUER the earth. Just kill everyone? That is not conquering. That is genocide.

So answer this. You have a few ships. How are they going to take over the earth WITHOUT reinforcements as to the original question.

Define "conquer" Davor - as far as I'm aware, it means taking somewhere by force, whether that ends up in nobody getting killed or everybody getting killed

 Vaktathi wrote:

40K is tricky, because it's medium of choice (written story, tabletop or video game/cinematic) really just goes along with whatever narrative works best. Starships engaging targets hundreds of thousands of kilometers away in BFG, and also broadsiding each other. They can lance targets from orbit with fairly good precision, or just lay waste to continents.

Right, and that's really the issue. 40k isn't consistent even with itself, much less reality, and direct comparisons break down quickly.

Hmm, what you're looking for sorta sounds like a Melta Torpedo or similar weapon. Or, why fire a missile when a lance strike will do? I feel like the strategic niche is covered.

Maybe? Depictions of these vary extremely wildly, but ultimately most 40k battles seem to be fought without fire support from orbital vessels. Naval support for IG seems exceptionally rare while even for Space Marines its portrayal in fluff is more of an exception rather than the rule. And without said naval support no even remotely similar capabilities seem to exist.

That's a good point, but if the Imperium isn't concerned about collateral damage, and is also unconcerned about time and cost (AKA, the IG), then why bother with smart munitions?

Because while the Imperium isn't against spending lives, it doesn't look to actively expend more than it needs to, it just kinda does out of incompetence, but on the attritional and strategic levels the Imperium generally wins its wars on (as opposed to the operational or tactical level where they get butchered all the time), such things would matter a great deal.

I guess it's unclear how accurate orbital bombardment is. The one in 40K (that a Chapter Master calls in) is small, but pretty accurate. The bombardment in Epic 40K was much bigger, but still fairly accurate on that scale.

yeah, Lance strikes alternatively are city killers nuke level weapons or are merely as powerful as an IG Medusa's gun depending on the portrayal. Ostensibly Lances also are something SM's aren't supposed to have lots of either according to the Imperial Navy and Codex Astartes and BFG ships portrayals, but they seem to have Lances sprouting from everyone in most fluff depictions

So, on the one hand you can wave it away and say, "We can't know, the fluff is inconsistent."

But on the other hand you can say: Strike Cruisers of the Space Marines have more than just a single class of weapon on them. They can pinpoint strike with small (in comparison to the ship-to-ship lances the navy uses) lances or torpedoes, they can use much larger weapons to engage whole armored formations (like in Epic), they can level cities (not used in-game, obviously), and they can launch world annihilating cyclonic torpedoes. A Strike Cruiser is a big and complicated ship, and it's got a lot of options available (conveniently viable for multiple game scales).

Marines do officially have "Anti Starship Lances", btw. In Battlefleet Gothic the Nova Frigate is specifically armed with them (and the Navy doesn't like it). But the sort of lance strike that a Chapter Master calls in a regular 40K game obviously isn't that. It's like the difference between a Lasgun and a Lascannon. They're both "Las" weapons, but that's just a description of their method, not their magnitude.

Side note:
Detecting nuclear weapons is not magic. There are multiple programs and technologies that are currently developed or being developed.

Davor wrote:
All you keep saying is killing. I am saying what the original poster said. How would they CONQUER the earth. Just kill everyone? That is not conquering. That is genocide.

Taking over the earth's resources (mining, farms, etc) is the only kind of conquering the Imperium is interested in. Even if the Imperium, for act of plot reasons, decided to conquer the civilian population without just killing them all the immediate next step would be to organize industrialized genocide that the Nazis would envy.

General Annoyance wrote:Define "conquer" Davor - as far as I'm aware, it means taking somewhere by force, whether that ends up in nobody getting killed or everybody getting killed

What I view in "conquer" my friend is the enemy taking over the country or in this case the ENTIRE planet of Earth/Terra. While you may not get the population to side with you, you can keep them under control. Like the Romans did with many countries. While the population didn't really follow the Romans they did as they said. So the Romans had lots of man power to keep the population in check.

So that is what I thought the answers to the original's posters question needs to be addressed. What or how many would take to conquer the earth. So in order to conquer the earth what is needed to be done. First you need to defeat the armies of all the countries of earth. I am not saying it can't be done. I am arguing about pacifying the humans to follow the way. Either by brute force, cunning guile combination of both or something else.

Nobody is saying how to "keep the people" in check and to do that how would it be done. Once you have kept the population "in check" you have conquered them.

 Insectum7 wrote:


So, on the one hand you can wave it away and say, "We can't know, the fluff is inconsistent."

But on the other hand you can say: Strike Cruisers of the Space Marines have more than just a single class of weapon on them. They can pinpoint strike with small (in comparison to the ship-to-ship lances the navy uses) lances or torpedoes, they can use much larger weapons to engage whole armored formations (like in Epic), they can level cities (not used in-game, obviously), and they can launch world annihilating cyclonic torpedoes. A Strike Cruiser is a big and complicated ship, and it's got a lot of options available (conveniently viable for multiple game scales).

In some sense sure, though and atmosphere would make many of those smaller weapons dramatically less capable at engaging ground targets, but it's also an area where it's never actually differentiated like that in the fluff, at least as far as I can recall. The only torpedoes I can recall for instance are the huge ICBM sized behemoths carrying massive warheads that are used against other gigantic starships and to deliver massive payloads of strategic level devastation to planets. Lances we see used more widely but the background seems to treat them all as being the actual same weapon with just wildly different capabilities depending on the game you're playing

Marines do officially have "Anti Starship Lances", btw. In Battlefleet Gothic the Nova Frigate is specifically armed with them (and the Navy doesn't like it).

Right, but they don't have tons of them. Lances tend to be relatively rare equipment for Space Marine fleets, with the overwhelmingly vast majority of Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers lacking them completely, with only relatively rare "character" vessels getting them.

But the sort of lance strike that a Chapter Master calls in a regular 40K game obviously isn't that. It's like the difference between a Lasgun and a Lascannon. They're both "Las" weapons, but that's just a description of their method, not their magnitude.

Perhaps, and I could buy that, but I don't recall any such distinction made anywhere in any actual fluff.

Side note:
Detecting nuclear weapons is not magic. There are multiple programs and technologies that are currently developed or being developed.

My understanding of these technologies is that they're intended to detect devices that may be hidden in cargo containers or smuggled in a truck or the like, something where the mild radiation can be picked up, and not a warhead inside a missile deep underground beneath many tons of concrete, steel and earth that will completely block all that mild radiation from escaping.

Pop off a couple rounds from behind a wall a couple hundred meters away just to land a couple shots near the SM's and then skate away, and you're probably not instantly dead by any means. That sort of thing happens all the time in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And while it may not delay troops for many hours, it may (or may not) delay them critically for a few minutes while they ascertain what they're being engaged by so they know they're not walking into a bigger ambush or something, which can mean the difference between the SM's accomplishing their mission in time or not.

The auto-senses in the helmet of the PA means you get a bolter round to the grill the second your head pops out around cover. Space Marines are super-humanly fast, with reactions that cannot be matched by unaugmented humans.