Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

(Oh, lets see how this one plays out!)


I seen several (outdated) debates about star wars and 40k. And if they were pitted in a battle. The star wars universe would win. (mostly because Star wars has a HUGE cult following)

Oh, and one more note: don't bring in a conversation about modern tanks in this one (preferably the M1 Abrams)

Star Wars wins because of vastly superior FTL. Firepower/defense/etc in space are roughly equal, but Star Wars ships can cross the entire galaxy in a matter of hours, days at most, while 40k ships are lucky if they arrive at their destination at all. A "war" between the two would consist of swarms of star destroyers annihilating 40k planets while avoiding any attempt to force them to stand and fight. In fact, due to 40k's crippling long-distance communication problems, it's uncertain whether 40k's leadership would even receive notice of the first wave of attacks before the war is effectively over. Meanwhile the 40k counter-attack would arrive at its destinations long after the 40k galaxy has been cleansed of life, making it, at best, one last act of spite.

40k Wins. why?

Attrition. 40k militarily throws more to the meatgrinder per victory than Star Wars has in military assets period.

as far as speed goes, the Imperium may be slow, but the Eldar and Necrons are.. decidedly not.

I prefer the "Halo vs 40k" Argument
Its funny to watch Fanboys defend Halo withot knowing anything about 40k

40k outnumbers the armor es from Star wars on an exponential scale. And just as often as they arrive too late to the party, or receive messages too late to help, they arrive before the issue has come to a head.

The empire could literally run head first into the entire might of the imperium without realising they were there (can't track ship movement in the warp)

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The empire could literally run head first into the entire might of the imperium without realising they were there (can't track ship movement in the warp)

In which case the Star Wars fleet jumps back into hyperspace, transmits a FTL message to the rest of the dispersed raiding fleets that the Imperium's entire fleet is concentrated in one location, and laughs as star destroyers annihilate the un-protected majority of the Imperium's planets. The Star Wars force doesn't need to fight a fleet battle to win, they just have to kill off the Imperium's planets until all that is left is a useless fleet defending a token few survivors.

40k wins, hands down.


Because unlike the oh-so-fearsome Galactic Empire, the Imperium's troops can actually hit what they shoot at.

 Peregrine wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The empire could literally run head first into the entire might of the imperium without realising they were there (can't track ship movement in the warp)

In which case the Star Wars fleet jumps back into hyperspace, transmits a FTL message to the rest of the dispersed raiding fleets that the Imperium's entire fleet is concentrated in one location, and laughs as star destroyers annihilate the un-protected majority of the Imperium's planets. The Star Wars force doesn't need to fight a fleet battle to win, they just have to kill off the Imperium's planets until all that is left is a useless fleet defending a token few survivors.

Bringing Star Destroyers awful close to Heavy duty planet based anti starship weaponry. Plus almost every Imperial system has its own fleet contingent plus the Sector Fleets, orbital fortresses and so on. It is far from the cakewalk you're portraying it as.

 Chapter Master Angelos wrote:
Bringing Star Destroyers awful close to Heavy duty planet based anti starship weaponry. Plus almost every Imperial system has its own fleet contingent plus the Sector Fleets, orbital fortresses and so on. It is far from the cakewalk you're portraying it as.

Those weapons are extremely vulnerable to being knocked out by overwhelming force. A fleet of 500 star destroyers can drop out of hyperspace, turn the surface of a planet into a molten wasteland before the defense crews even know they're under attack, and still have time to hit a few more planets that day. 40k defenses work because 40k ships are slow, and you usually have hours/days/centuries between receiving warning of an attack and having to fight. For example, IA3 explicitly describes the ground-based missile silos taking hours to prepare to launch while a marine assault force slowly crawls into orbit and deploys infantry to take them out. Those silos might as well not exist against Star Wars ships.

Its always funny if someone tries to make such arguments... its pointless...

Why?

we dont have hard numbers....

nothing about the numbers of soldiers , ships and so on...
nothing about the real strengh of weapons shields and armour,
and so on.

Its not realy easy or possible to make such a thing about USA,Russia andChina. and there we HAVE numbers and values and such.

Its just a stupid idea to do that with totaly different Universes... Has anyone a Idea how "the force" and "the warp" work against each other?

The things that are not compareable because lack of information and even more lack of connection is tremendous.

is there anyone here that can explain how exactly shields work? in both francises?
How exactly the capacities of these shields are against energy based weapons.. and further what kind of energy weapons? how about balistic stuff?

so as no one can ever answer these questions and in addition the 1000 ones i left out. how can anyone try to find a winner?

Its like comparing a tennis world master agains a chess worldmaster.... who will win? and what soever? Tennis? chess? chess-3d-tennis?

 Peregrine wrote:
Star Wars wins because of vastly superior FTL. Firepower/defense/etc in space are roughly equal, but Star Wars ships can cross the entire galaxy in a matter of hours, days at most, while 40k ships are lucky if they arrive at their destination at all. A "war" between the two would consist of swarms of star destroyers annihilating 40k planets while avoiding any attempt to force them to stand and fight. In fact, due to 40k's crippling long-distance communication problems, it's uncertain whether 40k's leadership would even receive notice of the first wave of attacks before the war is effectively over. Meanwhile the 40k counter-attack would arrive at its destinations long after the 40k galaxy has been cleansed of life, making it, at best, one last act of spite.

This is not Imperium vs Star Wars, this is 40k vs Star Wars.

The Necrons will eat Star Wars alive.

commander dante wrote:
I prefer the "Halo vs 40k" Argument
Its funny to watch Fanboys defend Halo withot knowing anything about 40k

It is funny to see people don't understand the nature of canon of both 40k and Halo, as I could easily play with numbers to make any side I want win.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The Necrons will eat Star Wars alive.

And yet they can't do the same to the Imperium. It's almost like the whole "Necrons are unstoppable" thing is a massive exaggeration of a relatively modest technological advantage over the Imperium.

Star Wars wins because of the tech they have. They can pinpoint warp to locations with their hyperdrives, can bombard a planet to oblivion (see Taris), don't have to worry about perils of the warp, in addition to having vastly superior communication technology. IoM runs off tech they mostly don't understand. Eldar, Necrons, Tyranids and maybe Chaos Daemons are the only things I could see giving the star wars universe a run for their money. In addition to the person saying that the imperials can't aim at all, the only reference you have is the movies. Storm troopers were actually highly skilled and the reason they have "poor aim" in the movies is because if they had it any other way the movies would have ended with luke getting shot up at the death star.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:


40k wins, hands down.


Because unlike the oh-so-fearsome Galactic Empire, the Imperium's troops can actually hit what they shoot at.

I actually saw a really good argument once that the storm troopers in Star Wars were missing intentionally. They are pretty accurate in Empire, and Jedi, and the Clone troopers in the prequels can take down Jedi. And of course Obi Wan himself notes how accurate troopers are with blasters.

Basically, the ones on the death star were missing on purpose because they WANTED Han, Leia, Chewie and Luke to escape. They'd put a homing beacon on the falcon and wanted to track them to their base. Tarkin was arrogant enough to think the Death Star was impervious, he didn't see any risk in letting them get away.

So they likely have a ballistic skill similar to a space marine.

@Xerics : Actually, most of the case of the Stormtroopers missing was because of a deliberate ploy to let the Rebels escape.

In Episode IV, we see how efficient they are in the boarding action against the Rebel Marines, completely taking over the ship with minimal casualties except during the breach in. Later, on the Death Star, they knew they were being boarded and as such allowed the Princess to escape so they could track the location of the Rebel base.
No point in killing her if she could lead them to where the Rebels were hauled up.

In Episode V, once again, we see how efficient they are in killing the Rebel Troops. Vader just wants the heroes alive so he can get to Luke Skywalker. In the Cloud City, the goal was to funnel him to face Vader (and capture the princess for Intel).

In Episode VI, the entire fleet was under the Emperor's Command to keep them alive to win the war psychologically through annihilating the fleet with the Death Star. On the planet of Endor, it's clear that they were on "capture" orders rather than kill.

So they aren't as useless as people think, but it's not clearly explained in the movies.
____

Regarding the original topic, it's a hard case to make. I think that in a 1 to 1 against a single army, the Star Wars armies would win because of the Hyperspace Tech allowing to avoid losing battles and fight winning ones.

When it comes to actually fighting locations on the ground, I think the 40k armies have a good advantage, simply for the rate of fire of their weapons and the fact that they're good against armour. Most SW warfare is armour based with high strength low rate of fire weapons. And some of it with key structural flaws. I'm pretty sure Lascannon and Vanquisher cannons would melt through the armoured vehicles of the Imperial Army.

I think it wouldn't end in a war of conquest, with both having capabilities to destroy/exterminatus planets, the SW having clear fleet superiority and the W40k universe having ground superiority.

If it comes to who destroys what first, it's probably going to be a tough call in favour of SW but not by much. They'll zip around system to system glassing planet surfaces with their star destroyers, while the Imperium sends independent Exterminatus capable warships around.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
The Necrons will eat Star Wars alive.

And yet they can't do the same to the Imperium. It's almost like the whole "Necrons are unstoppable" thing is a massive exaggeration of a relatively modest technological advantage over the Imperium.

At the 'now' in 40k, the Necrons are still in the process of waking up.

The 'modest technological advantage' includes things like phasing technology, precision timetravel, inertialess drives and the Celestial Orrery.

 Peregrine wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The empire could literally run head first into the entire might of the imperium without realising they were there (can't track ship movement in the warp)

In which case the Star Wars fleet jumps back into hyperspace, transmits a FTL message to the rest of the dispersed raiding fleets that the Imperium's entire fleet is concentrated in one location, and laughs as star destroyers annihilate the un-protected majority of the Imperium's planets. The Star Wars force doesn't need to fight a fleet battle to win, they just have to kill off the Imperium's planets until all that is left is a useless fleet defending a token few survivors.

Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

In the time it takes the Star Wars fleet to punch in co-ordinates, they would either be floating scrapmetal or boarded and controlled by the Imperium. They might be able to get a transmission off.
Youre also forgetting that 40k worlds have planetary defense lasers and orbital defenses designed to take out 40k ships.
I'm not questioning the EVIL GALACTIC EMPIRE's will to Base Delta Zero entire worlds of the Imperium. Rather, I'm skeptical that they'd last a minute in orbit against 40k scale weapons.

GreyCrow wrote:


Regarding the original topic, it's a hard case to make. I think that in a 1 to 1 against a single army, the Star Wars armies would win because of the Hyperspace Tech allowing to avoid losing battles and fight winning ones.

I agree that hyperspace is a great advantage, in that it allows you to get troops reliably from A-B but I don't think it would let them just evade fights. It took 1 minute, 20 seconds for Han to get from blastoff to hyperspace, much of that spent dodging constant fire from star destroyers while he waited for the Nav computer to spit out a solution.
It's unlikely that ISD's could do the same against 40k battlecruisers.

40k can do emergency drops into warp- though they are similarly limited in that they need to get out of the warp shadow of a planet before they can do that. See the flight of the Eisenstein.
In BFG, battlecruisers can also power down and be lost amidst the maelstrom of energy signatures that happen in a 40k ship to ship battle. This is also a function of the range at which 40k ship battles take place though, so in the event of a lone Imperium Sword class frigate being ambushed by several ISD's at Star Wars combat range, that's not going to help the Sword.

It might be something the Empire might try, Han Solo style or to buy time for the Nav computer but it relies on other Empire ships being able to keep the Imperium ships busy long enough.

Hyperspace only works if they have the location mapped out. And no they can't land pippoint out of lightspeed, only certain spots that were pre-mapped. Also we don't have a clear number for how strong the SW weapons are. The numbers on the wiki are stupidly exaggerated. Also same with 40k. The lasgun gets laughed at on the TT for its power, but in the fluff, it blows limbs off with ease. I doubt the Stormtroopers armor is any better then flak.

The fleet that travels fastest wins, hyperdrives let you cross the galaxy in hours the imperial warp drives can't match that.

So the 40k fleets for most races could not possibly protect their planets from raids.

hobojebus wrote:
The fleet that travels fastest wins, hyperdrives let you cross the galaxy in hours the imperial warp drives can't match that.

So the 40k fleets for most races could not possibly protect their planets from raids.

They might though.

I've said it before and I'll say it again every time this topic pops up.

It's impossible to determine based on lack of useful data on the Warhammer 40k side of things.

For example, the humble lasgun has been noted of having a power output of 19 Megathules. This does not tell us anything as there is no such unit as a thule (at least not in relation to power). Furthermore, book "X" will have lasguns going through Eldar armour without difficulty, where book "Y" will have lasguns stopped by wet paper (this is obviously extreme hyperbole).

commander dante wrote:
I prefer the "Halo vs 40k" Argument
Its funny to watch Fanboys defend Halo withot knowing anything about 40k

Thats another topic for another day

Several outdated debates? Dude, this topic pops up like twice a month!

In any case, this kind of question is incredibly hard to answer because we have no reliable data to compare. Everything in both Star Wars and 40k depends heavily on plot. Space Marine armour can stop tactical nukes in some books, but in others it is cracked open by a lasgun. Stormtroopers are terrifying elite soldiers in some SW books, but in others (and the movies) they are slaughtered in great numbers, show no tactical skill and can't hit the broad side of a barn. Therefore it is impossible to determine how powerful a Space Marine or a Stormtrooper (or everything else in both universes) is. The power fluctuates depending on the plot.

The whole discussion is pointless because neither side can do anything as nobody has good navigation outside their own universe.

Even if there are guys that could do that.... whats the point?

different universes.. different rules and scales and no way to translate one into the other.... because the non existing hard data.

I think the IoM vs. the Empire would be a fairly close match, with the IoM having a slight advantage. Space marines in their powered armor would have an advantage over stormtroopers, but the maintained tech of the Empire (and the fact they can develop new and more powerful weapons as the fight goes on) helps to even out the overall odds. At the same time, I don't think the Empire has anything as powerful as Titans, but in ship-to-ship I think they're pretty evenly matched.

If you start throwing in some of the other races in 40K though, things get harder for the SW universe. Eldar and Grey Knights and Jedi are probably a match for one another, but there's far more Eldar than Jedi. At the height of the Jedi, there was probably only as many as there are Grey Knights.

Same goes for the Voong vs. Tyranids, they'd be a match for one another, but if they starting chewing on IoM and/or Empire, its going to really screw with the outcome.

I don't see a SW corrolation to Daemons, and if you were to assume that Jedi get their powers from the Warp - well, that could have some disasterous consequences for the Jedi.

Likewise, Necrons don't have an analog in SW, and that coul swing things depending on who the Necrons start battling.

Tau are about par with the Rebellion in size and overall strength, I believe.

Well conditions need to be set

Scenario one conditions
-Galaxy vs galaxy
-IoM vs Empire only
-all other races moot or gone.

Outcome: anyone game.

Honestly anyone's game at this point, if empire went total war stats and just burned every planet and blew it up, then they would probably win. But ground battle, IoM would loose simple because out classed, However, SM would dominate empire because the empire uses laser weapons which dont do much to Space marine armor

Scenario two:
-Galaxy vs Galaxy
-all races are in the game

IoM would win, they would win simply because the empire would be over welmed fighting everything else. IoM already has experience doing that.

Scenario three:
-Isolated battles
-Deathstar vs SM

Spacemarines would win hands down with out a competition. If it was the first company deathwing vs the deathstar, the deathwing are trained and designed to fight in corridors and they can easily repel a laser shot.

 Stormonu wrote:


If you start throwing in some of the other races in 40K though, things get harder for the SW universe. Eldar and Grey Knights and Jedi are probably a match for one another, but there's far more Eldar than Jedi. At the height of the Jedi, there was probably only as many as there are Grey Knights.

Same goes for the Voong vs. Tyranids, they'd be a match for one another, but if they starting chewing on IoM and/or Empire, its going to really screw with the outcome.

I don't see a SW corrolation to Daemons, and if you were to assume that Jedi get their powers from the Warp - well, that could have some disasterous consequences for the Jedi.

Likewise, Necrons don't have an analog in SW, and that coul swing things depending on who the Necrons start battling.

Tau are about par with the Rebellion in size and overall strength, I believe.

Are we fighting in the Star Wars galaxy or the Milky Way? If we're in the Milky Way, we're making a massive assumption that Force even functions on things from beyond the SW galaxy. The Milky Way doesn't have (/shudder) midichlorians, so the Force is likely useless, and the Jedi are just a bunch of old people in dresses trying to have staring contests with their enemies and waving around flashlights.

40k wins. Necrons annhilate all life or Tyranids consume everything. I don't know why people are so focused on the IoM.

However, if one side had a single M1 Abrams then that would clearly tip the battle in their favor. That tank could blow a 100m hole in an Executor-class Super Star Destroyer.