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Ok now we will NOT discuss who is going to win the Cadian Gate here, this could apply to the Cadian gate or any other one of the main paths of warp travel. Please.

I got the idea from the whole extended star wars universe. If anyone else knows it, there are ships which are in an 'Interdictor' class. Long story short, they use gravity wells to affect the passage of ships travelling at hyperspeed and pull them into where they can be shot to hell/captured. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Interdictor_Star_Destroyer is one of these.

My question as this relates to 40k is a bit convoluted, but here it is. Could untouchables be used in the same way? Eisenhorn's Distaff can be used to block the influence of the warp in a small area, and thats part of the basis for this argument. The next is related to psykers. Psykers can be boosted with all kinds of arcane technology, so why couldn't the null zone of an untouchable be boosted too? And if it could, would a cadre of 20, 50, 100, sufficiently boosted, be able to 'null' the warp travel in an area? So you could create a ring around the cadian gate, or along the main warp paths used by invasions and the like, which would pull ships out of the warp right infront of a bunch of waiting guns and ships.

Does that make sense? If not I'll elaborate based on your questions...

I think the problem with this would be making such technology. If someone who is a psychic null is around, according to most fluff makes them unbearable to be around, so how do you test such equipment??

Secondly, supposing you DO create such a boosting device, the rites and religious BS that swirls around anything the techpriests do would make it almost impossible to build them en mass.

But i think that within the theory of the 40k universe it could work

I would imagine that the attacking side would just gather up the most powerful psykers they have, and just push harder at this defence. I think they would overcome it eventualy,

although most likely at a terrible terrible cost, lots of lost sanity and the like.

Or the mass-less tech of the Necrons would be stolen and just use that instead, but that would be heresy, because we would start the 42nd millenium

The Necrons tech is the only way to seal a warp gate permanently but the billions of veteran soldiers seems to work well enough

It sounds plausible, but I would presume that it would require both an understanding of the warp and levels of warp-manipulating technology entirely beyond the Imperium's capabilities - possibly beyond any living civilisation's. Even the Word Bearers - whom one would presume, know quite a bit about the immaterium - needed scavenged Necron tech to block the Boros Gate.

Sorry, I don't mean that they 'close' the warp gate like shut it down, I mean that they interdict enemy cruisers and transports coming along the key lines of travel, drawing them out of the warp in a certain area. a few hundred kilometres out or whatever counts as a middle distance in space battles, the ships would be forced out of the immaterium onto the guns of the imperium, forced to either brave mass fire or turn around in the face of fire and retreat. And the turning around itself would be dangerous, as it could result in a massive jam up of ships as the fleet is forced to translate back.

Only tech or method the Imperium can use to defend the Cadian Gate is what they've been doing for 10,000 years: fortify every world and flood it with troops/ships. They don't have the technology or initiative for some of the more out of the box plans.

Yes, we did rather wander away from your initial question, sorry. Plausible as it sounds, I'd be inclined to presume that since it hasn't (to my knowledge) ever come up in studio spaceship fluff, the logical inference would be that nobody can do it.

Occasional mention has been made of Lagrange points and gravity wells governing whether and where a ship can enter the warp, which, I presume, fills the Interdictor's plot device niche.

True. Ah well, they can just send straken into the eye if this is unfeasable, he'll beat khorne down with his metal arm and fill slaanesh full of buckshot

I'm confused by one thing in 40k, how has noone found the Emperors secret plan to finish chaos forever. Give Straken SM upgrades and take cover

Try Again Bragg, heavy stubber, loader. the end

Get a ton of large asteroids or moons and move then in and around the realspace interface by the Eye. When they drop out into realspace they'll slam into them, although I'm not sure what sort of density would be rquired.

Alternate is minefields and automated defense platforms (bomb pumped laser or particle beam weapons)

Its a smart idea and very cool IMO, however given grimdark I imagine it would be tried after much arse-kicking in high places and prove a step too far (!), pulling vast warp entities directly into real space to devour whole worlds*!

On minefields, I have no doubt the Cadian Gate has plenty and the forces of Chaos have plenty of cheap suicide rams to clear them even if at great cost.


*Question: if a massive daemon eats a null, will he digest easily? More seriously, what happens when a null dies, is he still absorbed by the warp or are they tragically held in a blank, grey puragatory forever? Or just die like we do.

Connor MacLeod wrote:Get a ton of large asteroids or moons and move then in and around the realspace interface by the Eye. When they drop out into realspace they'll slam into them, although I'm not sure what sort of density would be rquired.

Alternate is minefields and automated defense platforms (bomb pumped laser or particle beam weapons)

Space is big, like...realy big. Unless the realspace entrance is tiny then mining it won't work.

Space itslef is big, yes, but warp routes are not neccesarily big. That's one of the problems of the warp. In theory you can travel anywhere. But in reality if you want to get anywhere in a decent timeframe, without being destroyed or having your soul consumed or driven insane, or have some sort of temporal nastiness inflicted on you, you have to opt for one of the more stable, safer, and known routes (EG those little lines that often connect systems together on maps like you get in Battlefleet Gothic.) Those routes are why blockades can be effective at all (and there are tons of mentions of the Imperial Navy blockading systems and planets, despite the fact they can't have enough ships to adequately garrison every planet in the Imperium, and you'd need that to blockade space) and they enforce a certain predictability in combat (not unlike jump points in other sci fi universes.)

It still probably encompasses a truly immense volume of space to watch and guard against (light seconds if not light minutes in any given direction) but it makes planning that sort of stuff safer. And if they can generate huge volumes of mines to actually protect planets (EG like the Ring of Steel in the bAdab War, and similar examples in the novels) they probably can do something similar at warp points.

Isn't the only thing holding the Eye in check the Necron pylons on the surface of Cadia? Being Necron tech, they're obviously warp-resistant/null-ish (don't know how to phrase it but you know what I mean). So yeah it's possible but not something the Imperium would do because trying to figure out how the Necron the works would be heresy.

For interdiction ideas, read Death or Glory. The orks use one.
For a large scale nullification, Trying to contain chaos in the Eye of Terror using it will end poorly. No ammount of nullification can contain a chaos god.

I don't think that nulls actually affect the warp, just real space. So any ship traveling in the warp would be able to cruise on by with no problem.

cordan123 wrote:Try Again Bragg, heavy stubber, loader. the end

If you read all of the GG novels, you would know how silly you sound now

Clearly not...
You may want to spoiler that by the wya.

.