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Hello, and good morning.

So I was looking into how much pressure is needed to get through the ground and such. Well I do not have the book on me at this moment but they mention in mining it can take 1500 psi to dig down around 50 feet. So with that said most tanks are designed the way they are to give as much area as possible to touch th ground so needing less torc. So if a reaver titan existed the psi it would put out would be in the bilions hell the plastice warhound bends my wooden shelf. Would the reaver titan sink chest deep apon landing?

Could it exist, in the sense that you could build a Reaver-shaped object and have it move around? Probably. Would it be in any way an effective military unit? Hell no.

Well presumably they have weird tech mumbo jumbo that keeps the titans like the reaver stabilized and not be completely hosed by the planet's gravity but if taken as is they'd definitely not be feasible in most combat situations.

Without anti-grav fields, the feet would sink into the ground and would be unable to move.

An M1 generates 15psi of ground pressure.
A passenger car generates 30 psi of ground pressure.

A Reaver weighs 1,627,000 pounds so it needs feet with 753 square feet of ground contact to have the same ground pressure as a tank. That would be two square feet that are 19'x19'.

Measuring the feet from pictures (it's 22m tall) if the whole of the foot puts pressure on the ground, not just the articulated toes, then it's pretty close.

There are 2 concerns I have for input into this thread:

The square-cube law, as well as basic engineering, suggests that walkers with the same technological base will necessarily have less armour than tanks of the same tonnage. This is usually a bad thing, because larger with less armour in combat is bad.

That said, lots of technology and engineering in 40k is basically magic, and not in the "arcane and unexplored sense" but in the "a wizard did it." So I find Titans and the like perfectly acceptable in 40k as the heaviest ground combat units (as opposed to a similar tonnage tank) because a wizard did it.

Don't forget, according to Forge World 40K tanks have armour far inferior to present day. (the guys that come up with the stats are WW2 buffs and clearly didn't realise how much tank armour has improved...) That makes armouring a titan slightly less implausible.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
Don't forget, according to Forge World 40K tanks have armour far inferior to present day. (the guys that come up with the stats are WW2 buffs and clearly didn't realise how much tank armour has improved...)

I always thought this was a misinterpretation born out of the term "steel" meaning something different to the Imperium 38000 years from now than it does to us.

That's the rationalization. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the best 40K tanks have double the armour of the best WW2 tanks.

I really think that what make possible for such HUGE mechanized monster to exist and perform on battlefields is shields (void shield etc no matter the name you give it).
It removes the (great great) weakness it has: easily spotted and destroyed with missiles, rockets etc by far far away.
If you are able to stop this, why shouldn't it work ?

In a true battle, even an infantryman can have a rocket launcher that blow up a tank.
Absolutely stupid to make a bigger tank, as it even more easy to blow it up.
But if you can't just destroy it so easily, (thanks the his shield) so you have a wonderful way to have even better guns and point of sight.

No ?

It's an interesting thought. Tanks want to be low for defence. If you feel that defence is covered and you're only interested in offence then taller is better.

why? given such shields exist. any tank could also use them. Why the need to be tall? Weapons do the job. no matter how tall you are. its only a mater of choosing the right weapon. and again. a tank-like thing or even a flat walker wir 6 legs will be much better than a Reaver or anything else like this.

this reminds me of a discussion on if Megazords could exists.

GO! GO! GO! Mighty Morphing Power Rangers!

 _ghost_ wrote:
why? given such shields exist. any tank could also use them. Why the need to be tall? Weapons do the job. no matter how tall you are. its only a mater of choosing the right weapon. and again. a tank-like thing or even a flat walker wir 6 legs will be much better than a Reaver or anything else like this.

Line of sight. Being taller lets you shoot over enemies to hit other enemies, shoot over terrain, etc.

There's a reason having the high ground is considered an advantage.

Ah i see. But beeing honestly. there are better ways to get target information than building gigantic robots. and even if they were buildable. given the tech tanks of flatter walkers would still be better. If you want to shoot over anything you can eighter use artilery or some fancy cruise missles

 Ashiraya wrote:
Line of sight. Being taller lets you shoot over enemies to hit other enemies, shoot over terrain, etc.

There's a reason having the high ground is considered an advantage.

It also makes it considerably easier to be shot, since you're standing way above any cover. This is only a good thing if the titan is literally invulnerable to all enemy weapons, and if this is true then you've already won and it doesn't matter what you bring to the fight. In a more relevant scenario the titan will be a huge exposed target, and will have much weaker firepower, armor and shielding compared to a tank of equivalent size. The only reason to even consider building a titan is if you have a religious obligation to build giant avatars of your god and don't care how many battles it costs you.

The bigger you are, the bigger are your guns, I guess^^

 _ghost_ wrote:
why? given such shields exist. any tank could also use them. Why the need to be tall? Weapons do the job. no matter how tall you are. its only a mater of choosing the right weapon. and again. a tank-like thing or even a flat walker wir 6 legs will be much better than a Reaver or anything else like this.

Being taller gives you a better angle on the frontal armour of tanks, it exposes the top armour and it exposes more of an emplaced target.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are 2 concerns I have for input into this thread:

The square-cube law, as well as basic engineering, suggests that walkers with the same technological base will necessarily have less armour than tanks of the same tonnage. This is usually a bad thing, because larger with less armour in combat is bad.

That said, lots of technology and engineering in 40k is basically magic, and not in the "arcane and unexplored sense" but in the "a wizard did it." So I find Titans and the like perfectly acceptable in 40k as the heaviest ground combat units (as opposed to a similar tonnage tank) because a wizard did it.

I think they are more of a intimidation tool. Like a give up now look how tall this tank is we made.

Titans are a terror weapon, simple as that.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
Being taller gives you a better angle on the frontal armour of tanks, it exposes the top armour and it exposes more of an emplaced target.

Not by much, unless you're at point-blank range. And it comes at a severe cost in turning your own armor into tissue paper. TBH if titans were realistic they'd have an AV 9/8/8 stat line and even lasguns would be able to damage them.

Anti-grav tech exists, if it's not already explicitly given as a fluff reason why battleships have been able to grow legs so as to fire from an elevated position without deepwater (and, for that matter, explain why superheavy tanks can use roads without crushing them) then I'd expect it to be added, just as Terminators gained a forcefield when invulnerable saves could no longer be explained by 'sheer thickness of armour'.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
Being taller gives you a better angle on the frontal armour of tanks, it exposes the top armour and it exposes more of an emplaced target.

Not by much, unless you're at point-blank range. And it comes at a severe cost in turning your own armor into tissue paper. TBH if titans were realistic they'd have an AV 9/8/8 stat line and even lasguns would be able to damage them.

Absolutely. As I said, it makes sense only if you feel that void shields make defence not worth considering.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lindsay40k wrote:
Anti-grav tech exists, if it's not already explicitly given as a fluff reason why battleships have been able to grow legs so as to fire from an elevated position without deepwater (and, for that matter, explain why superheavy tanks can use roads without crushing them) then I'd expect it to be added, just as Terminators gained a forcefield when invulnerable saves could no longer be explained by 'sheer thickness of armour'.

Actually, I showed the math further up. A reaver has a similar ground pressure to a modern tank. Anti grab is not required.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
Actually, I showed the math further up. A reader has a similar ground pressure to a modern tank. Anti grab is not required.

Similar static pressure. The ground pressure of each step (we'll assume that the titan actually wants to move instead of being a fixed emplacement) is much higher than the static pressure, a problem a tank doesn't have to worry about.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
Being taller gives you a better angle on the frontal armour of tanks, it exposes the top armour and it exposes more of an emplaced target.

Not by much, unless you're at point-blank range. And it comes at a severe cost in turning your own armor into tissue paper. TBH if titans were realistic they'd have an AV 9/8/8 stat line and even lasguns would be able to damage them.

What? No... no. That isn't how ballistics work at all. Elevation and distance mean a *lot* to attacking units behind cover. In fact, if you are at point-blank range and have elevation? You're actually worse off, because the target is below your field of vision.

Basically, if you have someone that is, say, crouched behind a low wall, 100% behind it if you were at the same elevation as they are (at any range), if you were ten stories up and five hundred meters away, you would be able to shoot them in the top of the head, because you're now able to look over their cover at that altitude. Same thing with a tank. You're now looking down at its top hatch, which is impossible to see from ground-level.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
Actually, I showed the math further up. A reader has a similar ground pressure to a modern tank. Anti grab is not required.

Similar static pressure. The ground pressure of each step (we'll assume that the titan actually wants to move instead of being a fixed emplacement) is much higher than the static pressure, a problem a tank doesn't have to worry about.

This is true. At minimum the pressure will double during it's stride (assuming that each foot is placed VERY carefully). Since it also needs a forwards component 4x or more is likely. This is still a reasonable amount of pressure though. The foot design of the FW titans is as practical as such a thing could pretend to be.

Of course, the far bigger obstacle is how it manages to bring it's center of gravity over the planted foot whilst striding. This a problem with most of the imperial walker designs.

 Psienesis wrote:
What? No... no. That isn't how ballistics work at all. Elevation and distance mean a *lot* to attacking units behind cover. In fact, if you are at point-blank range and have elevation? You're actually worse off, because the target is below your field of vision.

Basically, if you have someone that is, say, crouched behind a low wall, 100% behind it if you were at the same elevation as they are (at any range), if you were ten stories up and five hundred meters away, you would be able to shoot them in the top of the head, because you're now able to look over their cover at that altitude. Same thing with a tank. You're now looking down at its top hatch, which is impossible to see from ground-level.

You're missing the point there. Elevation is important, but titans aren't that tall (at least compared to superheavy tanks like the Baneblade). It's like having that guy crouched behind a low wall a mile away and standing on a chair to try to see over the wall. The difference in LOS angle is so small that it doesn't give you any meaningful benefit.

Now, if the titan is up close the elevation difference starts to matter a lot more because the difference in LOS angle is much greater, but a "real" titan would be dead by that point. Its paper armor would be torn apart by every random lasgun on the battlefield, while its ridiculously tall profile leaves it unable to make use of cover to defend itself while it closes in. If you want to shoot something behind cover you lob a shell in an arc over the cover, you don't build a titan that is laughably ineffective at everything else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
This is true. At minimum the pressure will double during it's stride (assuming that each foot is placed VERY carefully). Since it also needs a forwards component 4x or more is likely. This is still a reasonable amount of pressure though. The foot design of the FW titans is as practical as such a thing could pretend to be.

Oh, it will be way more than double. Remember, it's not just the "down" foot taking the whole weight of the titan while the other foot is in the air, it's the force of the foot slamming into the ground with every step.

The adamantium and other materials in 40k are very very solid, maybe they are lightweight enough to make walker that are solid and that can move (I don't recall it).
Not as solid as a tank made with the same material, but still solid enough to endure and survive.
What is the AV of a warhound ? 13 or 14 ?

The Baneblade is 6.3m tall. The smallest Imperial Titan is 14m tall "at rest", which means it's in a half-crouch. At over twice its height, the Titan is looking down on the Baneblade pretty much at all times... though the weapon complement of a Titan doesn't really care so much.

Yeah, like I said, tanks with the same tech (super materials, void shields, turbolasers) would be better [combat] units, strictly speaking.

That said, titans are awesome and technology is magic, so WOOOO!