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Post by: Justicar_Thunderflanks
How many space marines would it take to conquer the world?
A tactical Squad?
A company?
A chapter?
More?
Your opinion and explanation in the comments. Question was made with vanilla marines in mind, but feel free to include opinion on your favourite chapter.
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Post by: motyak
Please no...these threads never end well. I know that is pessimistic and unhelpful, but really...have you ever seen one end well?
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Post by: psychadelicmime
I'd say 2 companies if it was a surprise attack with no 1st company support, if we knew they were coming, I'd say 3 companies. If 80 or so terminators, vanguard, and sternguard total with thunderhawks hit, they would take over. There would be pockets of resistance, but, all effective leadership would be gone.
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Post by: DarknessEternal
A lot of people tend to ignore that is all Space Marines ever do. The Imperial Guard is for conquering.
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Post by: BlaxicanX
With a ship in orbit any number of space marines could probably conquer us pretty easily.
On the ground, though, if they can't rely on deepstriking/teleporting into important places (read: the pentagon, various capitals etc), they eventually just get killed to death by superior firepower.
Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
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Post by: Kaldor
BlaxicanX wrote:With a ship in orbit any number of space marines could probably conquer us pretty easily.
Yeah, a few Chapter serfs could conquer Earth, if they were in a strike cruiser.
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Post by: AndrewChristlieb
Ya one Strike Cruiser and it would all be over :/ assume a single company in that case.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
BlaxicanX wrote:
Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Just curious, what do you think a Bolter would do to a helicopter. Because it sure as gak wouldn't be pretty.
As has been said though, the question is moot, Strike Cruisers win the day, not to mention Battle Barges. They probably have more firepower on those things than all our nukes put together, considering the size of their torpedoes...
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Post by: -Loki-
BlaxicanX wrote:Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Depends on the helicopter. A 0.5cal round to the rotor assembly is going to end its life pretty quickly. And Space Marines fire 0.75cal explosive rounds, so that helicopter better be a Hind.
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Post by: Wight Lord
They'd have to be smart, because if an A-10 caught them in the open, they're done.
No question that Space Marines would be a good force multiplier, and excellent surprise execution team for leaders. I dont think they could conquer it all however. Unless maybe they were able to recuit or press native forces to fight for them...
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Post by: Compel
There's a Gav Thorpe story in 'Tales of Heresy' about the Dark Angels which is essentially 'Space Marine legion invades a modern day -not-Earth.'
If my memory is correct, Tanks are the only assorted things that hurt the marines, then the Deathwing teleport into the UN and kill everyone.
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Post by: Formosa
We would win... they have Alpharius... we have Batman!!
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Post by: Apple fox
I think this can only realy be personal opinion, and more factor in where you stand on personal marine ability. The lore in this swings between rule of cool and rule of fanboyist and makes it realy hard to judge but I would think it also stands at is it and invasion or a geniiside.
Going for the first I would think that even a chapter would find it impossible, but the second would be more up to the intelligence thay could gather and best use of there ships weapons which removes the marines a fair bit.
Thinking of environments on earth some would be deadly for a space marine but relatively easy for a normal human to get passed.
But I also do think in the lore they do use the IG to take worlds with the marines as a elite units doing the suicide missions. So I think it sorta gives its answer with that.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
 Formosa wrote:We would win... they have Alpharius... we have Alpharius!!
Fix'd. 
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Post by: DeffDred
 Justicar_Thunderflanks wrote:How many space marines would it take to conquer the world?
A tactical Squad?
A company?
A chapter?
More?
Your opinion and explanation in the comments. Question was made with vanilla marines in mind, but feel free to include opinion on your favourite chapter.
Please use the Search Bar. You would have your answer and a huge pile of debate to read over.
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Post by: Ratliker
If tasked with capturing/conquering earth, marines need some display of power on local level, then contact one of our superpowers and say "dudes, want to be in charge there (in the name of the emperor that is)? we lead/kill enemy command, you hold territories. Deal?"
Be the earthly party in question russia, china or usa they would imo readely agree, and the conquest will steamroll all oposition, with 3 countries bowing down and joining conquest without fight for every one crushed. untill and unless pissed-of oponent superpower would launch nukes and we happily make exterminatus to ourselves.
Marines would need 1 company with means of deploiment and (more importantly) 1 diplomacy-capable captain. So Ultramarines for the win.
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Post by: juraigamer
Flood the astartes with anime images and sounds, watch as some start to like them, the dark gods cause a splinter from them to occur, boom, horus heresy on earth. Oh wait.
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Post by: BlaxicanX
 AlmightyWalrus wrote:BlaxicanX wrote:
Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Just curious, what do you think a Bolter would do to a helicopter. Because it sure as gak wouldn't be pretty.
As has been said though, the question is moot, Strike Cruisers win the day, not to mention Battle Barges. They probably have more firepower on those things than all our nukes put together, considering the size of their torpedoes...
 -Loki- wrote:BlaxicanX wrote:Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Depends on the helicopter. A 0.5cal round to the rotor assembly is going to end its life pretty quickly. And Space Marines fire 0.75cal explosive rounds, so that helicopter better be a Hind.
A helicopter armed with light anti-armor or anti-armor rounds is going to have an easier time killing a Space Marine than a Space Marine would have trying to kill a helicopter.
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Post by: Lobokai
BlaxicanX wrote: AlmightyWalrus wrote:BlaxicanX wrote:
Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Just curious, what do you think a Bolter would do to a helicopter. Because it sure as gak wouldn't be pretty.
As has been said though, the question is moot, Strike Cruisers win the day, not to mention Battle Barges. They probably have more firepower on those things than all our nukes put together, considering the size of their torpedoes...
-Loki- wrote:BlaxicanX wrote:Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Depends on the helicopter. A 0.5cal round to the rotor assembly is going to end its life pretty quickly. And Space Marines fire 0.75cal explosive rounds, so that helicopter better be a Hind.
A helicopter armed with light anti-armor or anti-armor rounds is going to have an easier time killing a Space Marine than a Space Marine would have trying to kill a helicopter.
Devastators = rubble of AH-64 parts... and once they get flak missiles, over quicker... and that's if the modern military can track marines at all.
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Post by: Lobokai
Two posts by others a while ago. When I cut and pasted these into word docs, I lost the authors... not my words, but these do really really well in saying what I would want to say.
First one from an "invasion" discussion:
...Imperial Armour books give a much better overview of how marines fight than their codex or novels do. They are all about hit and run, shadow strikes, and sabotage. And they are very, VERY good at it. Their drop pod tech means you have NO defensive lines, you have to protect everything at all times against an enemy impervious to small arms fire. And we can't use most of our big guns in that situation.
The tabletop game only simulates one kind of warfare in 40k, small, up close battles where air superiority has not been achieved and heavy bombardment isn't an option. It isn't the most common type of warfare. You aren't even fighting full on battles, just a small portion of one battle for a short amount of time.
I just can't see us doing well against marines. It's not that I think a chapter could conquer our planet without orbital support, any more than a seal team could conquer the Victorian age British empire, they aren't built for it and don't have the numbers. But WE would be the ones at the receiving end of the guerilla warfare. Just think about it:
* They can launch a full scale assault anywhere on the planet at a moment’s notice with total impunity
* Their basic weapon will take out any of our solders in a single shot
* Our troops have to use AT weaponry on infantry to threaten them
* They can and do use advanced jamming technology, while we have no way to respond in kind
* they can typically be in and out before we can bring heavy weaponry to bear
* they can choose the battlefield at will, and will likely choose battlefields where we can't bring our heaviest weapons to bear anyways.
In an open field, I'll grant you, the marines are screwed. But, again, that is like saying 1800's Britain could beat us because they could take on navy seals in open field combat. It is a fact that in open field combat 5000 Red Coats with cannon support could defeat a special forces team. So the special forces would never fight that way.
And neither would the marines. Look how they act in Siege of Vraks. The IG is conducting siege warfare, the SM occasionally swoop in, perform surgical strikes, and dissapear within a half hour.
They couldn't conquer us, but we couldn't beat them.
And this one from a weapon based string
...honestly, I think a lot of people here are downplaying how tough Space Marines are supposed to be.
A bullet penetrates armor through sheer velocity; it dumps enough kinetic energy on a small enough space to punch through what it's aimed at. But it's actually pretty simple to prevent that.
Look at a Space Marine model, or pictures of them in the fluff. See how their armor is made? Barrel chest that slopes away to the sides, rounded arms and legs, big round pauldrons. I doubt GW knows much about armor design, but they got that mostly right actually. Those curved plates will shed bullet like raindrops. A curved piece of metal/ceramics/what have you doesn't have to absorb all the kinetic energy of a bullets impact. Instead, it only absorbs part of the energy; enough to deflect the round to the side,, where it continues flying at reduced speed. I think if you opened up on a Space Marine with a .50 cal machine gun you would see a lot of sparks and maybe some surface scarring or cracking on the power armor (depending on the hardness of what it's made of), but you'd have to get quite lucky to actually penetrate the armor and injure him.
This, by the way, is why most modern anti-tank munitions use methods OTHER than kinetic impact to achieve a kill; the armor of a modern tank is designed to ricochet projectiles away rather than absorbing the full force of the impact. If you want to kill a Space Marine, you need to think of him as a tank. Even if you assumed Power Armor was no tougher than modern composites, look at how thick it is; he's WEARING as much armor as a tank!
That being so, the only way to kill him with a pure kinetic projectile would be to either a) use a round so big or fired so fast that it blew through the PA with only a fraction of it's kinetic energy, or b) hit him in one of the non-curved parts of the armor. Now, PA does seem to have quite a few 'bullet traps' in it; a shot that hit one of the eyepieces could do something, the place where the pauldrons meet the chest-plate might be vulnerable, the knee-joints seem somewhat exposed when the Space Marine's legs are bent. But it's an open question how powerful a round you'd need to get one through the armor even in one of those weak spots; I tend to think it would have to be quite powerful, because, well, an M2 is not going to be able to shoot through the armor of an Abrams. . . and I think that's roughly the level of protection PA provides. Perhaps a direct hit on an eyepiece could punch through.
Then you have to contend with the fact that a Space Marine is simply much, much tougher than an ordinary human. Most people, if they took a .50 caliber machine gun round to the shoulder or knee, would be totally disabled or killed outright. A Space Marine? He's not going to go into shock, he's not going to be disabled by the pain, and he's not going to bleed out, so if he's not dead when he hits the ground he's still fighting. Remember, these guys get into drop-pods and are literally FIRED at their target; that alone would shatter every bone in a normal man's body, and Space Marines do it routinely. If you DO get a round through an open knee-joint, you will only slow him down; and it isn't that likely that you will, since while he's a bigger target than a man he's also faster and more agile, with much better reflexes. Not to mention that your fire will likely be somewhat suppressed by the stream of precisely aimed RPG rounds he's firing back at you.
You need to either use heavy, specialized AT weapons, or literally fill the air with high-caliber machine-gun rounds and play the averages. Normal small arms and grenades will do nothing; Anti-materiel rifles might, but only if you hit him in exactly the right spot. A sniper weapon MIGHT, but once again, only if you hit him in precisely the right place, and even once you pass through the armor most of your shots will only wound him. A radar or laser-guided AT missile will most likely kill or seriously injure a Space Marine, but very little short of that has anything like a good chance.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Space Marines wouldn't conquer earth, they'd make sure our leaders understand that compliance is the only option. Pockets of resistance/dissension would be wiped out brutally, and once the magnitude of the Imperium combined with the brutality of the Marines would be revealed to Earth, its would be surrender and submit time. The Imperium doesn't really do conquer and occupy with Marines. They are the shock and awe with the Adeptus Administratum and IG/PDF following up to support and hold.
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Post by: Alkasyn
 Compel wrote:There's a Gav Thorpe story in 'Tales of Heresy' about the Dark Angels which is essentially 'Space Marine legion invades a modern day -not-Earth.'
If my memory is correct, Tanks are the only assorted things that hurt the marines, then the Deathwing teleport into the UN and kill everyone.
They still lose some Battle Brothers even to that technologically inferior peoples. And that was just an outpost.
For me those nations from the story mentioned were more from the times of the cold war.
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Post by: BlaxicanX
BlaxicanX wrote: AlmightyWalrus wrote:BlaxicanX wrote: Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Just curious, what do you think a Bolter would do to a helicopter. Because it sure as gak wouldn't be pretty. As has been said though, the question is moot, Strike Cruisers win the day, not to mention Battle Barges. They probably have more firepower on those things than all our nukes put together, considering the size of their torpedoes...
-Loki- wrote:BlaxicanX wrote:Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Depends on the helicopter. A 0.5cal round to the rotor assembly is going to end its life pretty quickly. And Space Marines fire 0.75cal explosive rounds, so that helicopter better be a Hind.
A helicopter armed with light anti-armor or anti-armor rounds is going to have an easier time killing a Space Marine than a Space Marine would have trying to kill a helicopter.
A slow moving devestator squad isn't going to do anything but die fighting a helicopter that can just shoot a TOW missile at it from 500 yards away while simultaneously strafing out of the Squad's line of fire. Also, how many devastator marines are there in a chapter? How many helicopters with giant ass guns on them are there in the world? Exactly.
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Post by: Lobokai
BlaxicanX wrote:BlaxicanX wrote: AlmightyWalrus wrote:BlaxicanX wrote:
Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Just curious, what do you think a Bolter would do to a helicopter. Because it sure as gak wouldn't be pretty.
As has been said though, the question is moot, Strike Cruisers win the day, not to mention Battle Barges. They probably have more firepower on those things than all our nukes put together, considering the size of their torpedoes...
-Loki- wrote:BlaxicanX wrote:Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Depends on the helicopter. A 0.5cal round to the rotor assembly is going to end its life pretty quickly. And Space Marines fire 0.75cal explosive rounds, so that helicopter better be a Hind.
A helicopter armed with light anti-armor or anti-armor rounds is going to have an easier time killing a Space Marine than a Space Marine would have trying to kill a helicopter.
A slow moving devestator squad isn't going to do anything but die fighting a helicopter that can just shoot a TOW missile at it from 500 yards away while simultaneously strafing out of the Squad's line of fire.
Also, how many devastator marines are there in a chapter? How many helicopters with giant ass guns on them are there in the world?
Exactly.
You gonna read all the posts, or just cherry pick? How many helicopters can deploy to populated zones, government offices, and vital infrastructure in time to do any good against a Drop Pod/Teleport alpha strike with aerial and orbital support? How many would survive coming in ignorant and with civilians in a mix against technologically superior warriors with 100s of years of experience in regular combat zones almost identical to the one they're in? You do realize that we've lost helicopters to homemade rpgs in the last 10 years and even a stealth fighter to eastern bloc nerds with an outdated soviet missile and a cell phone? What on earth are we going to do against signums, camo cloaks and krak missiles?!
A million helicopters don't do a lick of good if they can't get to the combat zone in time to matter and have to deal with urban combat gods with technological, doctrine, awareness, tactical, and local support superiority. Your helicopter is at best an AV 10 flyer with 2 hull points, some krak missiles, and a heavy stubber. We know (now) that the marines have flakk missiles. Your IG StormTalon isn't that scary... and that's against Table Top marines, Black Library Marines just eat your modern helicopters for lunch... if anyone is even aware of a marine strike until after its just dust and rubble and confusion at the target.
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Post by: Davylove21
Just because his armour is curved, doesn't mean he is infallible - I'll never believe that a tactical squad is going to make all of its saves against the Avenger cannon on an A10 Thunderbolt for example.
That's 4200 rounds per minute of highly accurate, depleted uranium anti-tank fire against a group of men that Orks can pull apart in CC. It's also effective at 1200 meters. There have been 716 A10's built.
Then there are HESH rounds fired at a range of 5 miles. Slap that onto a dreadnought or a rhino and it's gone. Helicopters need to be within 3-4 KM to be able to rain death on you.
I don't see how tabletop Marines can cope with the weight of fire we can bring down. We basically are the Imperial Guard, and the IG codex did pretty good in 6th. BL Marines don't count, because they're written to impress children.
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Post by: Dunwich
It would only take a single Space Marine tactical squad drop podding onto Holy Terra Earth for the loyal god-emperor fearing citizens of dakka to rise up and take this world in His name.
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Post by: DarknessEternal
 Davylove21 wrote:Just because his armour is curved, doesn't mean he is infallible - I'll never believe that a tactical squad is going to make all of its saves against the Avenger cannon on an A10 Thunderbolt for example.
That's 4200 rounds per minute of highly accurate, depleted uranium anti-tank fire against a group of men that Orks can pull apart in CC. It's also effective at 1200 meters. There have been 716 A10's built.
Then there are HESH rounds fired at a range of 5 miles. Slap that onto a dreadnought or a rhino and it's gone. Helicopters need to be within 3-4 KM to be able to rain death on you.
Why would the marines be standing anywhere such weapons could come to bear?
We don't keep any of our important things out in wide open fields. Marines have drop pods and teleportation, for which we have no defense. They would only ever be exactly where our important stuff is.
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Post by: Davylove21
Well teleport enough and you'll scatter onto some rocks and die. They don't have to be in the open to be shot and I don't see why rapid deployment of very small yet highly powered squads wins the war for Earth. Especially if we know they're coming.
We, as a race, are far superior to anything in the Space Marine mythology when it comes to killing humanoids. We kill stuff insanely well. The most powerful weapons of the Imperial Guard are basically described as nuclear weapons. We got 'em by the bucket load.
And if it's a fight for survival planet-wide and 5 Terminators DS into the White House (which would mean nothing anyway) they would have about two minutes to TH everything to death before a cruise missile/fast response jet melted them.
Troop vs troop, we're screwed, but 1000 Marines is too small a number to bring down the planet. It's probably enough to take the USA, Russia or China - in my view any one of those nations could defeat a chapter alone. There are 7 Billion of us to subdue, after all.
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Post by: Anfauglir
As it always does in topics like these; it depends.
If any element of the Astartes Navy is involved - zero Marines.
Otherwise - all of them... and they still probably wouldn't do it. They'd wipe out all of the civilised areas and turn the planet into a husk, sure. But we'd help them along by making sure they're stopped, so they wouldn't win, not ultimately.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Justicar_Thunderflanks wrote:How many space marines would it take to conquer the world?
A tactical Squad?
A company?
A chapter?
More?
Your opinion and explanation in the comments. Question was made with vanilla marines in mind, but feel free to include opinion on your favourite chapter.
Not counting the ability to perform Exterminatus?
In all honesty the Space Marines wouldn't last very long. The world's largest militaries have tens of thousands of aircraft and hundreds of thousands of artillery guns combined and tens of millions of soldiers and probably a hundred thousand tanks all told to engage them with, they'd be wiped out in hours. Starships can be engaged with nuclear missiles and 40k has shown they are still potent and forbidden weapons, and the marines are highly limited in number, extremely vulnerable to being surrounded and cut off, have limited aircraft and even more limited AA defense, no heavy artillery, etc. We could engage them from the seas once the SM's landed and they'd have no defense from carrier based aircraft.
Hell, even just a ground war, there's so few that they'd be extremely easy to surround in a pocket and simply blast to pieces with artillery.
Space Marines are Fantasy Knights in Space. From any realistic perspective they just do not function. You cold throw all 1 million space marines at earth and they'd likely all be killed.
 DarknessEternal wrote:
Why would the marines be standing anywhere such weapons could come to bear?
We don't keep any of our important things out in wide open fields. Marines have drop pods and teleportation, for which we have no defense. They would only ever be exactly where our important stuff is.
And they'd know all of that how? And be able to hit all of it simultaneously with sufficient force and speed...how? Drop pods are all well and good, but without knowing where to put them and being able to put enough of them in enough places, they quickly become isolated units easily destroyed through air assets and artillery.
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Post by: Gargantuan
50000-80000 marines might be able to do it.
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Post by: Mohoc
People underestimate what can and cannot be done. A strike cruiser in orbit would take years to reduce reistance to a Space Marine strike on Earth. Even a full Chapter would be overwhelmed if dropped unsupported. That being said, Space Marines do not invade planets with just a Strike Cruiser. They are backed up by millions of Imperial Guard troops and fleets of battle cruisers. Depending on preliminary orbital bombardment and warning times for Earth, the Marines would be very effective at creating a beach head for those millions of Guard troops to land and percecute a ground war against Earth. It would be a very bloody ground war, but eventually Earth would fall. I would give most areas of Earth no more than one year of effective resistance in case of a full scale invasion. A single chapter would be useless though.
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Post by: Lobokai
Why do we know they're coming? Why are they unable to scout and infiltrate vital objectives (teleport homer in an air duct would do wonder)?
You really can't use table top marines as the standard. Even their own codex's paint a much more lethal picture, not to mention Imperial Armour and such. GW has consistantly said that SM are toned down to make the game playable.
If we get nukes and everything we have, why don't they get viral bombs, and entire chapter fleet, cyclonic torps etc?
I'm not sure how we stand a chance.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Because we have active surveillance of local space around earth?
Why are they unable to scout and infiltrate vital objectives (teleport homer in an air duct would do wonder)?
I've never heard of such precision teleport capabilities in 40k, and how would they know where the air duct is and that it's a vital location in the first place, and would a genetically engineered 8ft tall 500lb supersoldier fit?
You really can't use table top marines as the standard. Even their own codex's paint a much more lethal picture, not to mention Imperial Armour and such. GW has consistantly said that SM are toned down to make the game playable.
Using Imperial Armor as the standard, the entirety of the Astartes would have been wiped out on Vraks had they tried to undertake that operation.
If we get nukes and everything we have, why don't they get viral bombs, and entire chapter fleet, cyclonic torps etc?
Nobody is going to dispute that if SM's have viral bombs and cyclonic torps, it's over, but at that point it's a matter of pressing a button in orbit and destroying the planet, not conquering it. Fleets can be destroyed in orbit, 40k fluff makes it clear nukes are still very potent weapons and we have thousands of them able to be delivered into space, and the second it comes to war on the ground or the atmosphere, it's over for the Astartes. They die like anyone else to heavy artillery fire, not just on the table but in fluff as well, and we have tanks that can move, shoot, and hit targets with near 100% accuracy at distances measured in kilometers at highway speeds that nothing in 40k resembles.
I'm not sure how we stand a chance.
Against how many and what? Against the combined might of the all astartes fleets coming to annihilate the planet? Absolutely none. A ground war with a chapter? Over in hours with all marines dead.
40k is Space *FANTASY*, it does not work if you look at it realistically.
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Post by: Mohoc
Anyone remember the first Iraq "war" with Sadam's hundreds of thousands of troops, tanks that could not move and shoot effectively and his few planes? Now think of the Imperial Guard.
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Post by: Compel
Offhand...
2 Drop Pods to Washington DC. One for the Pentagon, one for the White House / Capital Hill.
One to the UN and New York in general, just to make a point.
Teleport some termies into Cheyenne Mountain. Then lets say another... 6 pods to assorted areas around the US. Chesapeake Bay, some of the big military bases, any Intelligence sites.
Russia and China, probably the same number of Drop Pods as to the states each.
UK... One to London, one to Faslane, Maybe one more, if they've got marines to spare...
So, lets say, 2 companies worth of Space Marines from 2 Strike cruisers., for a single Drop Pod strike.
Would the drop pods be shot down? Presumably a marines enemies do try to do that, so there would be some countermeasures against SAMs, probably jamming like someone mentioned. - Plus, the pods are relatively thickly armoured.
I can't imagine there would be any real marine armoured deployment, there just wouldn't be any point. It would be a matter of "oh flip, the majority of our command and control people have been killed and "we've just been invaded by spacemen!"
After that, the marines would either established Dawn of War style prefab strongholds while the Guard land, or would just simply withdraw.
I may have just thought about this a little too much...
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Post by: Mohoc
The problem with that is that it would work to decapitate the leadership of the country, but the US is designed for fast and peaceful transfer of power. Kill the President, the VP takes over, killed both, the president pro tempore takes over, etc.. You can kill and cripple a lot of nodes government before it starts to break down. Our system has build in redundancies that are designed to survive a nuclear war, it might take a few hours, but it works.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Compel wrote:Offhand...
2 Drop Pods to Washington DC. One for the Pentagon, one for the White House / Capital Hill.
One to the UN and New York in general, just to make a point.
Teleport some termies into Cheyenne Mountain. Then lets say another... 6 pods to assorted areas around the US. Chesapeake Bay, some of the big military bases, any Intelligence sites.
Russia and China, probably the same number of Drop Pods as to the states each.
UK... One to London, one to Faslane, Maybe one more, if they've got marines to spare...
So, lets say, 2 companies worth of Space Marines from 2 Strike cruisers., for a single Drop Pod strike.
Would the drop pods be shot down? Presumably a marines enemies do try to do that, so there would be some countermeasures against SAMs, probably jamming like someone mentioned. - Plus, the pods are relatively thickly armoured.
I can't imagine there would be any real marine armoured deployment, there just wouldn't be any point. It would be a matter of "oh flip, the majority of our command and control people have been killed and "we've just been invaded by spacemen!"
After that, the marines would either established Dawn of War style prefab strongholds while the Guard land, or would just simply withdraw.
I may have just thought about this a little too much...
And if the relevant people aren't at those locations/they are replaceable/etc? The US military wouldn't stop functioning if the pentagon was taken out for instance, they have backup command systems and the regional commands are quite capable of very extended operations on their own provided their supplies hold out.
I'm not sure what drop pods are supposed to do at cheyenne mountain, they can't drop *into* the mountain and they can seal it up against anything short of a direct hit from a nuclear bomb.
So your two or three drop-pods land, and their contents are shortly thereafter targeted and destroyed by bombs/missiles from fixed wing aircraft or engaged by helicopter attack aircraft and/or engaged by overwhelming numbers of conventional troops within minutes, hours at most. Within the pentagon itself, that place is *HUGE*, 10 marines could not secure that building, and it'd take quite a while to kill everyone inside, they'd never be able to get anywhere near everyone because there just aren't enough to cover to be everywhere they'd need to be.
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Post by: Mohoc
If you want to read a good book on a similar situation, go read John Ringo's "Live Free or Die" on how an attempt to subjugate Earth from space could unfold.The situation is somewhat different, but more likely than a full scale invasion.
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Post by: Compel
I did say "teleport" for Cheyenne. If they're Imperial Fists, they're quite experienced at teleporting into mountains (hehehe).
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Post by: Vaktathi
I don't recall them teleporting into mountains (though I admit my Black Library-fu is weak as of late), but even then, they'd have to know it exists, its significance, and its location, and even then it's a facility that can be quickly sealed and compartmentalized and evacuated/collapsed on itself/reinforced/etc.
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Post by: AtoMaki
I would give Earth like... 30 minutes. 30 minutes plus those few days until the UN council assemble.
Then, hell would break loose quickly, nations would turn against each other, and the people of Earth would tear themselves apart in a massive WW3 deathmatch where everyone wants to prove himself worthy for the goodwill of the galaxy spamming empire. The first Drop Pod would be welcomed by the leaders of the winning nation who would surrender immediaetly with the best conditions (for the invaders of course) in return that the president of the winning nation could be the Imperial Commander of Earth. Civilian unrest would be quickly suppressed by the local authorities (who would call themselves Imperial PDF/Arbites Auxiliria but they would be the same guys as before). And end of story, enjoy your Imperial citizenship in your ruined home (bombed into dust by some random Earth nation).
I doubt if a single bolt shell would be fired. Earth would fall before the SM Strike Cruiser could reach high orbit.
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Post by: Harriticus
They could just blow it up from orbit in a second, or destroy its cities and simply leave. If they were going to simply attack the planet and leave conquest/pacification/occupation to the Guard, theoretically a single Chapter could probably destroy most of our vital targets & cities from orbit.
But to conquer and hold the planet without backup? Hundreds of thousands minimum. They'd face a vicious guerrilla war and GW has little idea of numbers required for warfare.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
 Vaktathi wrote: Justicar_Thunderflanks wrote:How many space marines would it take to conquer the world?
A tactical Squad?
A company?
A chapter?
More?
Your opinion and explanation in the comments. Question was made with vanilla marines in mind, but feel free to include opinion on your favourite chapter.
Not counting the ability to perform Exterminatus?
In all honesty the Space Marines wouldn't last very long. The world's largest militaries have tens of thousands of aircraft and hundreds of thousands of artillery guns combined and tens of millions of soldiers and probably a hundred thousand tanks all told to engage them with, they'd be wiped out in hours. Starships can be engaged with nuclear missiles and 40k has shown they are still potent and forbidden weapons, and the marines are highly limited in number, extremely vulnerable to being surrounded and cut off, have limited aircraft and even more limited AA defense, no heavy artillery, etc. We could engage them from the seas once the SM's landed and they'd have no defense from carrier based aircraft.
Hell, even just a ground war, there's so few that they'd be extremely easy to surround in a pocket and simply blast to pieces with artillery.
Space Marines are Fantasy Knights in Space. From any realistic perspective they just do not function. You cold throw all 1 million space marines at earth and they'd likely all be killed.
DarknessEternal wrote:
Why would the marines be standing anywhere such weapons could come to bear?
We don't keep any of our important things out in wide open fields. Marines have drop pods and teleportation, for which we have no defense. They would only ever be exactly where our important stuff is.
And they'd know all of that how? And be able to hit all of it simultaneously with sufficient force and speed...how? Drop pods are all well and good, but without knowing where to put them and being able to put enough of them in enough places, they quickly become isolated units easily destroyed through air assets and artillery.
Again, a single Strike Cruiser probably carries more firepower than our combined Nuclear arsenals. They routinely fire torpedoes the size of skyscrapers at their enemy.
As a side-note, nukes are outlawed because they irradiate perfectly good planets, not because they're "too powerful". Look at Krieg, their crime isn't that they blew the living crap out of themselves, it's that the planet is now a radioactive wasteland. In a setting where habitable planets are useful, that's not a good idea.
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Post by: Vaktathi
AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Again, a single Strike Cruiser probably carries more firepower than our combined Nuclear arsenals. They routinely fire torpedoes the size of skyscrapers at their enemy.
That fire otherwise conventional warheads that are manually loaded into place by chain-gangs of slave crews, likewise the turrets are rotated by chaingangs of slave crews. I'm not saying they couldn't make a mess of things, but to actually conquer (not simply blast it into oblivion) earth by conducting anything but an orbital bombardment from out of range of our rockets/missiles, just isn't possible from any realistic perspective. Hell, their own ships don't work from a realistic perspective even in real-space.
Again, 40k is Space Fantasy, not Science Fiction.
As a side-note, nukes are outlawed because they irradiate perfectly good planets, not because they're "too powerful". Look at Krieg, their crime isn't that they blew the living crap out of themselves, it's that the planet is now a radioactive wasteland. In a setting where habitable planets are useful, that's not a good idea.
They're still powerful enough to destroy a hive world to the point where a single IG regiment and whatever support it was able to drum up was able to then challenge the rest of the planet. They're still very powerful weapons even in the 40 universe.
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Post by: bfdhud
1 no space marine loyal would step foot on holy terra.
2 six billion humans vs. 1000 marines? Really?
Plus we have nukes knives and sharp sticks. 3 up as isn't gak compared to an atomic weapon or two. Humans have proven when it comes to killing nothing on this planet is more efficient at it than us.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
Vaktathi wrote: AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Again, a single Strike Cruiser probably carries more firepower than our combined Nuclear arsenals. They routinely fire torpedoes the size of skyscrapers at their enemy.
That fire otherwise conventional warheads that are manually loaded into place by chain-gangs of slave crews, likewise the turrets are rotated by chaingangs of slave crews. I'm not saying they couldn't make a mess of things, but to actually conquer (not simply blast it into oblivion) earth by conducting anything but an orbital bombardment from out of range of our rockets/missiles, just isn't possible from any realistic perspective. Hell, their own ships don't work from a realistic perspective even in real-space.
Again, 40k is Space Fantasy, not Science Fiction.
The point wasn't that they'd shoot us, but that Strike Cruisers are built to withstand punishment far in excess of what we are capable of dealing out. Those torpedoes are way beyond anything we've ever built. Not to mention the fact that we'd have a hard time hitting them in the first place; between Void Shields, countermeasures and all our satellites being shot down we'd not stand a chance at shooting down a Strike Cruiser as presented in the fluff.
EDIT: Then again, we have the God-Emperor of Mankind.
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Post by: Vaktathi
We have literally tens of thousands of satellites in orbit, and a whole lot of space junk, nobody is shooting them all down, much less determining which do what and picking them out, in any meaningful amount of time
As for void shields and countermeasures, relatively simple macrocannon are described as effective, and those are just upsized conventional cannons, I'm sure nuclear warheads would be effective. The big problem would be targeting, but even near misses result in EMP waves, etc.
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Post by: DarknessEternal
Vaktathi wrote:
DarknessEternal wrote:
Why would the marines be standing anywhere such weapons could come to bear?
We don't keep any of our important things out in wide open fields. Marines have drop pods and teleportation, for which we have no defense. They would only ever be exactly where our important stuff is.
And they'd know all of that how?
Because that's how they attack. They wouldn't be attacking if they didn't know.
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Post by: Somedude593
DarknessEternal wrote: Vaktathi wrote:
DarknessEternal wrote:
Why would the marines be standing anywhere such weapons could come to bear?
We don't keep any of our important things out in wide open fields. Marines have drop pods and teleportation, for which we have no defense. They would only ever be exactly where our important stuff is.
And they'd know all of that how?
Because that's how they attack. They wouldn't be attacking if they didn't know.
the only 3 reasons they know where stuff is in the fluff is because the guard has encountered these threats and has relayed the information, they have been tracking those people for a while, or an inquisitor is able to give them some info..... the enemies of the imperium are not as subtle as we are
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Post by: Aun Tier
Honestly, you can't compare the details of Earth and the details of 40K and make a nice fit. I think that if you want to imagine a space marine invasion, you have to consider what Earth's equivalent would be in 40K.
Now, everything in the Imperium uses las/plasma/other sci-fiish weaponry. You could say that it's just for cool scifi, or you could say that it's because it's vastly superior. In that scale, most of our technology is still at a primitive 'slug-thrower' level. If you consider that a lasgun can't pierce Ork armour, and that our bullets will tear through anything short of specifically designed bullet-proof armour, we start to realise that our good armour is about on par with Orks.
I would estimate a standard earth rifle to be about S2 Ap - range 12-18 if it were balanced to 40K. Our anti-tank weapons probably don't get past S6, with some of our biggest guns maybe Being AP3. Also, I'd say that our big big tanks, are probably only AV10 or 11. Maybe cutting to 12 for the uber-big ones.
Then, if you consider us on the 40K scale, we realise that we're a primitive human world still throwing lumps of metal at each other. By that comparison, I would estimate a single company backed up with some Imperial Guard.
As much as we like to think our guns are big, we need to remember that they're now alot bigger than they were a century ago. How much bigger do you think they got in 40,000 years?
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Post by: FinalAnswer
Vaktathi wrote:We have literally tens of thousands of satellites in orbit, and a whole lot of space junk, nobody is shooting them all down, much less determining which do what and picking them out, in any meaningful amount of time
As for void shields and countermeasures, relatively simple macrocannon are described as effective, and those are just upsized conventional cannons, I'm sure nuclear warheads would be effective. The big problem would be targeting, but even near misses result in EMP waves, etc.
Lol.
IRL nukes actually are complete garbage compared to the arsenal they have in 40k. Deathstrike missiles are more powerful then the Tsar Bomba, the strongest nuke we have ever made. Deathstrike missiles are inadequate in taking down thing like Titans, let alone space ships. Hell, Macrocannons are capable of more firepower then any nuke we have, we could do absolutely nothing to a strike-cruiser were it to park itself in our orbit.
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Post by: BrotherGnaeus
If space marines came, it wouldn't matter if it was just one I would proclaim my faith in the God Emperor and fight beside him like any true servant of the emperor would. Also if a space marine came then the Emperor would appear and then it would be let the good times roll.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
Vaktathi wrote:
As for void shields and countermeasures, relatively simple macrocannon are described as effective, and those are just upsized conventional cannons, I'm sure nuclear warheads would be effective. The big problem would be targeting, but even near misses result in EMP waves, etc.
Yeah no. You're not gonna get an EMP from a nuke against something outside of the atmosphere. As for the macro-cannons, we don't know how much better than ours the adamantine cores of the rounds fired make them. And, again, who on this planet actually has one of those anyway? Not to mention that we'd get a few shots off and then have it eat a Bombardment-cannon to the knee.
There's also another fault with our nukes: they're not armour piercing. Have fun having the missiles impact the Battle-barge and then do almost no damage at all compared to what a hit from a torpedo would've done, which it's designed to survive.
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Post by: Ratliker
Cmon guys, exact technicalities are of little importance. If SM force, unsuported by IG, woulddhave to conquer earth...
Conquiring is NO defeating all of the oponent's armies. It is forcing opponent to bow down.
Well, remember how Pizarro conquered huge Inca empire? He did not defeated all their armies, he showed the power and local malcontents, oppressed tribes and much more started joining him,giving inteligence info, supplies and manpower.
We vs Marines = Incas vs Pizarro
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Post by: Castiel
Potentially only one, if he was a good enough diplomat.
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Post by: Frakhead
Does it have to be loyalist marines?
What about all those CSM? Now that would be far more of a challenge, as you know they are much better at these kinds of actions.
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Post by: Elector
Vaktathi wrote: Because we have active surveillance of local space around earth?
Active surveillance can detect ships that are approaching in the Warp? By the time they exit, they're basically on top of us.
Personally, I'd say the Space Marines would lose in many cases for a ground war. I mean, it'd be a tough fight, and many of us would die, but there's a very key reason as to why they'd lose: They aren't there as conquering armies. They aren't there to conquer an entire non-Imperial world on their own. It's not their role, and it hasn't been their role since the Great Crusade.
Conquering is the Imperial Guard's job. The Imperial Guard are there to flatten enemy resistance through a slow, unstoppable hammer of millions or troops, tanks and artillery, with plenty of orbital support. They are the Hammer of the Emperor. The Astartes are the Emperor's Scalpel. Deadly, but not there to smash a planet of enemies to bits.The Astartes' job is crippling key targets and performing surgical strikes, on, say, nuclear weapon depots or major command posts, likely making the Guard's job easier.
But send them in alone without outside Imperial aid? That's like sending the scalpel to cut down a man in armor. The Hammer would be far more easy and effective, especially if the scalpel severed some tendons first. And honestly, given our planet of heretics, launching an actual, full Imperial force wouldn't be out of the question.
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Post by: Vaktathi
 Elector wrote: Vaktathi wrote: Because we have active surveillance of local space around earth?
Active surveillance can detect ships that are approaching in the Warp? By the time they exit, they're basically on top of us.
Ships don't exit the warp in direct orbit, or anywhere near it generally. They typically emerge at the edge of a system and spend days or weeks moving in.
Personally, I'd say the Space Marines would lose in many cases for a ground war. I mean, it'd be a tough fight, and many of us would die, but there's a very key reason as to why they'd lose: They aren't there as conquering armies. They aren't there to conquer an entire non-Imperial world on their own. It's not their role, and it hasn't been their role since the Great Crusade.
Not to mention that their numbers would be so small they'd be easily surrounded, isolated and destroyed by heavy weapons/artillery/etc (as at the Falaise Pocket) with attempts at break out easily countered given their limited numbers.
AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Yeah no. You're not gonna get an EMP from a nuke against something outside of the atmosphere.
Huh? That's where they're actually at their most effective. Blast is what isn't going to affect things as much outside and atmosphere, the EMP is significantly more effective from a nuclear blast when it doesn't have an atmosphere to deal with.
As for the macro-cannons, we don't know how much better than ours the adamantine cores of the rounds fired make them.
They're still basically big cannons, that can all be calculated theoretically, and unless the density of adamantium is mind-bogglingly greater than anything imagineable today, nuclear weapons could match them.
And, again, who on this planet actually has one of those anyway? Not to mention that we'd get a few shots off and then have it eat a Bombardment-cannon to the knee.
Bombardment cannons have limits, Vraks alone, a world of a mere 8 million souls, the vast majority of which were laborers, with anti-orbital defenses only around one limited area, was strong enough that no Space Marine chapter would take on the job until the Imperial Guard had been fighting for years and was able to present a greater threat to SM ships that bombardment would back. Against a world with thousands of scattered and hidden launch sites, I wouldn't worry about it.
There's also another fault with our nukes: they're not armour piercing.
...they don't need to be.
Have fun having the missiles impact the Battle-barge and then do almost no damage at all compared to what a hit from a torpedo would've done, which it's designed to survive.
40k Torpedos are packed with conventional explosives that detonate on impact, and are big enough on their own that by any realistic perspective would be easily intercepted and destroyed. A nuclear missile packing half a dozen multi-megaton warheads on MIRV launcher the size of a commuter car would be significantly more dangerous. Again, 40k is space fantasy, it doesn't actually work when looked at realistically.
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Post by: Gargantuan
 Aun Tier wrote:Honestly, you can't compare the details of Earth and the details of 40K and make a nice fit. I think that if you want to imagine a space marine invasion, you have to consider what Earth's equivalent would be in 40K.
Now, everything in the Imperium uses las/plasma/other sci-fiish weaponry. You could say that it's just for cool scifi, or you could say that it's because it's vastly superior. In that scale, most of our technology is still at a primitive 'slug-thrower' level. If you consider that a lasgun can't pierce Ork armour, and that our bullets will tear through anything short of specifically designed bullet-proof armour, we start to realise that our good armour is about on par with Orks.
I would estimate a standard earth rifle to be about S2 Ap - range 12-18 if it were balanced to 40K. Our anti-tank weapons probably don't get past S6, with some of our biggest guns maybe Being AP3. Also, I'd say that our big big tanks, are probably only AV10 or 11. Maybe cutting to 12 for the uber-big ones.
Then, if you consider us on the 40K scale, we realise that we're a primitive human world still throwing lumps of metal at each other. By that comparison, I would estimate a single company backed up with some Imperial Guard.
As much as we like to think our guns are big, we need to remember that they're now alot bigger than they were a century ago. How much bigger do you think they got in 40,000 years?
So you're saying our heavy tanks are about as tough as an ork buggy or killa kan and that this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M829_(munition)#Variants.23M829A2 can't penetrate terminator armour?
I think you're severely overestimating Imperial gear.
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Post by: LordOfTheSloths
BlaxicanX wrote:With a ship in orbit any number of space marines could probably conquer us pretty easily.
On the ground, though, if they can't rely on deepstriking/teleporting into important places (read: the pentagon, various capitals etc), they eventually just get killed to death by superior firepower.
Space Marines are deadly against a squad of dudes armed with small arms, but a single helicopter armed with armor piercing weaponry would make short work of a Space Marine. We have way more helicopters, and jets, and artillery, and basically weapons that can one-shot a Marine, than a chapter has marines.
Not to mention tactical nukes. I've always found the lack of tactical nukes in a universe that uses virus bombs and cyclonic torpedoes to be less than believable.
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Post by: davou
I cant beleive no one has pointed out that marines can only hit our fliers on sixes....
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Post by: Hetelic
davou wrote:I cant beleive no one has pointed out that marines can only hit our fliers on sixes....
QFT; Epic Win
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Post by: AtoMaki
Well... You can disable a modern MBT with normal fragmentation grenades only. Frag grenades in the 40k verse = S3. So the weakest point of the Abrams should be around AV9. Actually, I would say that the AV should be less than 9, as you can immobilize (penetrate) a modern MBT with frag grenades rather easily.
So personally, I don't think that our MBTs would be that tough as an Ork buggy or killa kan  .
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Post by: Vaktathi
 AtoMaki wrote:
Well... You can disable a modern MBT with normal fragmentation grenades only.
Not really, not without physically clambering about the vehicle and stuffing it in somewhere very specific to explode, like tearing open an armored engine covering and putting grenades in there to explode inside. The "saving private ryan" stuff you see in movies is mostly fantasy, and modern MBT's are leagues more difficult to disable or destroy than old WW2 tanks, with frontal armor roughly equivalent in many cases to over a meter of tempered steel in terms of protection (for reference, a WW2 Tiger had frontal armor protection about 1/10th of that) and treads that are significantly thicker and tougher.
[Frag grenades in the 40k verse = S3. So the weakest point of the Abrams should be around AV9. Actually, I would say that the AV should be less than 9, as you can immobilize (penetrate) a modern MBT with frag grenades rather easily.
Frag grenades were S4 when used in tanks assaults last edition, either way, you're not going to immobilize, much less penetrate, a modern MBT with fragmentation grenades, at least not without strapping half a dozen to detonate simultaneously to a single section of tread.
So personally, I don't think that our MBTs would be that tough as an Ork buggy or killa kan .
An Ork Buggy...an open topped quad with a gun platform...? Really?
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Post by: AtoMaki
Vaktathi wrote:Not really, not without physically clambering about the vehicle and stuffing it in somewhere very specific to explode, like tearing open an armored engine covering and putting grenades in there to explode inside. The "saving private ryan" stuff you see in movies is mostly fantasy, and modern MBT's are leagues more difficult to disable or destroy than old WW2 tanks, with frontal armor roughly equivalent in many cases to over a meter of tempered steel in terms of protection (for reference, a WW2 Tiger had frontal armor protection about 1/10th of that) and treads that are significantly thicker and tougher.
I saw quite a lot immboilized-by-frag-grenades Abrams tanks in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was suprised too, like, I would think that a simple fragmentation grenade is useless against a modern MBT, but as it turned out, those little buggers are pretty dangerous in the hands of an experienced attacker. Ridiculous stuff like that just happens... So yeah, on the tabletop, I would vote a 11/11/10 for a modern MBT.
And we are even talking about MBTs now, and not about Mr. Wet- WC-Paper-Armour Stryker.
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Post by: Evileyes
Marines could and would kill anything on earth. But the issue isn't with firepower or strength, but just the sheer fact that our population is huge, guardsmen would be better suited to the task.
217,212 new people are born every day, meaning that the marines would probably have to kill this many -per day- to start to reduce numbers.
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Post by: blood reaper
AtoMaki wrote: Vaktathi wrote:Not really, not without physically clambering about the vehicle and stuffing it in somewhere very specific to explode, like tearing open an armored engine covering and putting grenades in there to explode inside. The "saving private ryan" stuff you see in movies is mostly fantasy, and modern MBT's are leagues more difficult to disable or destroy than old WW2 tanks, with frontal armor roughly equivalent in many cases to over a meter of tempered steel in terms of protection (for reference, a WW2 Tiger had frontal armor protection about 1/10th of that) and treads that are significantly thicker and tougher.
I saw quite a lot immboilized-by-frag-grenades Abrams tanks in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was suprised too, like, I would think that a simple fragmentation grenade is useless against a modern MBT, but as it turned out, those little buggers are pretty dangerous in the hands of an experienced attacker. Ridiculous stuff like that just happens... So yeah, on the tabletop, I would vote a 11/11/10 for a modern MBT.
And we are even talking about MBTs now, and not about Mr. Wet- WC-Paper-Armour Stryker.
You mean the tanks that have survived RPG hits with only minor innocence?
Alone, the number of those tanks deployed by the American Military could easily defeat a force of Space Marines, but casualties would be high.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
Vaktathi wrote:
Huh? That's where they're actually at their most effective. Blast is what isn't going to affect things as much outside and atmosphere, the EMP is significantly more effective from a nuclear blast when it doesn't have an atmosphere to deal with.
No, really, without an atmosphere you won't get an EMP (at least not one dangerous to our technology, let alone that of Space Marines). You don't have any electrons to displace outside the atmosphere.
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Post by: AtoMaki
You can hammer certain sections of the front armour of an Abrams with nearly any kind of modern-day AT weapon and it will survive. Hit the weak points with some HMG bullets, and it will fall apart like a house of cards. Or at least that's how I heard it  .
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Post by: Vaktathi
Are we talking fragmentation hand grenades? I've never heard/read anything on main battle tanks being damaged by fragmentation hand grenades, at least that weren't tossed into an open turret or the like. Hell even RPG's usually bounce off most modern MBT's in most locations.
We also have information from Forgeworld on relative Imperial armor thickness and capabilities, and they're nowhere near what modern tanks are if I'm remembering correctly.
Remember, 40k is more Space Fantasy than Science Fiction.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Vaktathi wrote:
Huh? That's where they're actually at their most effective. Blast is what isn't going to affect things as much outside and atmosphere, the EMP is significantly more effective from a nuclear blast when it doesn't have an atmosphere to deal with.
No, really, without an atmosphere you won't get an EMP (at least not one dangerous to our technology, let alone that of Space Marines). You don't have any electrons to displace outside the atmosphere.
Only if we're talking deep space, anywhere near a planet with a decently strong magnetic field, especially anything that could be considered close orbit, the EMP will work wonderfully.
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Post by: blood reaper
AtoMaki wrote:
You can hammer certain sections of the front armour of an Abrams with nearly any kind of modern-day AT weapon and it will survive. Hit the weak points with some HMG bullets, and it will fall apart like a house of cards. Or at least that's how I heard it .
Yes, a heavily armoured tank will be defeated by machine gun bullets.
I could imagine Bolters may have a chance, if the target are the tracks, the main turret or the rear, but other wise the tank will be able to score a few good shots that will probably kill a good proportion of the Space Marines.
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Post by: Somedude593
AtoMaki wrote:
You can hammer certain sections of the front armour of an Abrams with nearly any kind of modern-day AT weapon and it will survive. Hit the weak points with some HMG bullets, and it will fall apart like a house of cards. Or at least that's how I heard it .
You heard wrong...... If MBT could be pierced in any way by mere HMG bullets the designers would put it back to the drawing board., governments spent too much money on it for them to be that shoddy.. Leman russ battle tanks are not that different from tanks we have today because... really... theres not much to improve upon.... Unless the ceramite the LRBT's are made of are majorly superior to Steel then they are basically the same...
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Post by: AtoMaki
Vaktathi wrote:Are we talking fragmentation hand grenades? I've never heard/read anything on main battle tanks being damaged by fragmentation hand grenades, at least that weren't tossed into an open turret or the like. Hell even RPG's usually bounce off most modern MBT's in most locations.
It wasn't like super-duper effective damage, but small and annyoing damage. Like severed track links and shattered optics. While these kind of damage effects sound neglible, they are rather scary in a combat situation. Or at least thats how others said it to me, as I was only a rifleman and not a tank crewman.
Vaktathi wrote:We also have information from Forgeworld on relative Imperial armor thickness and capabilities, and they're nowhere near what modern tanks are.
Those numbers are funny .
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Post by: Void__Dragon
40k does have nukes.
Hellfire missiles are explicitly nuclear in nature, albeit each missile has a yield of 610 gigatons (Each warhead having a yield of 5 gigatons, with 122 warheads total). A single warhead is 50 times more powerful than Tsar Bomba.
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Post by: FinalAnswer
Vaktathi wrote: A nuclear missile packing half a dozen multi-megaton warheads on MIRV launcher the size of a commuter car would be significantly more dangerous.
No it wouldn't. Hellfire missiles are stated to possess 610 gigatons of firepower each. We could not begin to hope to match 40k firepower, our nukes would be useless against 40k ships.
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Post by: Vaktathi
 Void__Dragon wrote:40k does have nukes.
Hellfire missiles are explicitly nuclear in nature, albeit each missile has a yield of 610 gigatons (Each warhead having a yield of 5 gigatons, with 122 warheads total). A single warhead is 50 times more powerful than Tsar Bomba.
What are Hellfire missiles from? I don't recall them specifically. Are they cyclonic torpedoes? The Tsar Bomba was reduced in yield intentionally due to fear of starting a tectonic event, 610 Gigatons is a planet killing weapon, 60 gigatons (1/10th as strong) would be a weapon powerful enough to leave a crater a couple hundred miles across, and 610 gigatons is about 1,220 times as powerful as the Tsar Bomba which was a mere 50 megatons.
And I never said 40k didn't have nukes, I was rather explicit that they did and they were still very powerful.
indeed, like Chimeras matching King Tiger tanks for weight
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
Vaktathi wrote:
Only if we're talking deep space, anywhere near a planet with a decently strong magnetic field, especially anything that could be considered close orbit, the EMP will work wonderfully.
E1s won't occur at all due to the lack of atmosphere, E2s are easily defeated by a mere lightningrod. I'll give you E3s though, but there's no reason at all to suspect that a spacefaring vessel capable of travelling through the galaxy wouldn't have some sort of protection against magnetic fields interfering with their electronics.
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Post by: Kaldor
If it came to a ground war, the Marines are boned. Flat out boned.
But why would it ever come to a ground war? They have vastly superior firepower in the form of the Strike Cruiser they used to get here. They simply make a demonstration (let's say they level a few cities to make a point) and then make their demands. Either we comply, or they continue to level cities until either we do comply, or we're all dead.
If I were in command, I'd order all people on the planet to make their way to evacuation points where they'd be loaded into massive transports and sent off as workers for industrialised planets, then I'd import settlers from somewhere else and turn Earth into an agri-world.
Honestly, there'd really be no reason for Marines to even turn up. We're not going to present the sort of fight that they'd be useful in. We'd cave almost instantly, and then it would just be a case of mopping up pockets of resistance and clearing out pockets of people who refused to comply with the evacuation orders.
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Post by: BlaxicanX
 Kaldor wrote:If it came to a ground war, the Marines are boned. Flat out boned.
But why would it ever come to a ground war?
Because there is no point in discussing whether Space Marines with a Strike Cruiser for backup could take over Earth. We all know the answer is yes.
Dunno how this is on page 3. In a ground war 1000 space marines with no air support would get rolled by Earth's military. With air support they would win.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Kaldor wrote:If it came to a ground war, the Marines are boned. Flat out boned.
But why would it ever come to a ground war? They have vastly superior firepower in the form of the Strike Cruiser they used to get here. They simply make a demonstration (let's say they level a few cities to make a point) and then make their demands. Either we comply, or they continue to level cities until either we do comply, or we're all dead.
A Strike cruiser itself isn't capable of annihilating every major city in short order and could be struck back at, and history has shown that bombardment of cities typically does not force capitulation, if anything it generally stiffens resistance.
Honestly, there'd really be no reason for Marines to even turn up. We're not going to present the sort of fight that they'd be useful in. We'd cave almost instantly, and then it would just be a case of mopping up pockets of resistance and clearing out pockets of people who refused to comply with the evacuation orders.
Methinks you're missing the history of the human race for most of the 20th century. That's been tried. It's typically failed.
BlaxicanX wrote:
Dunno how this is on page 3. In a ground war 1000 space marines with no air support would get rolled by Earth's military. With air support they would win.
Even with air support, 1000 marines isn't going to beat anything unless we're talking a fleet or tens of thousands of aircraft killing anything they can see flying all the time. 1000 troops, no matter how powerful, can be isolated, surrounded, and destroyed in just a few hours, there aren't enough of them to hold anything or prevent encirclement, and unless there's such air supremacy that the ground troops are effectively meaningless and your goal is simply to destroy opposing forces.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
 Vaktathi wrote: A Strike cruiser itself isn't capable of annihilating every major city in short order and could be struck back at
Arguably.
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Post by: FinalAnswer
Vaktathi wrote:What are Hellfire missiles from? I don't recall them specifically. Are they cyclonic torpedoes?
“Four Gothic-class cruisers–Intolerable, Invincible, and Righteous Force–awaited four parsecs from target. Each ship carried 100 Hellfire nuclear missles. Each missle 122 warheads, each with a firepower of 5 GT. If boarding action fails, nuclear missles will turn a ship to dust.” Space Hulk Rulebook, p.3 - Scenario Book
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Post by: phantommaster
Has nobody realised that Marines get Land Raiders, Predators and Vindicators. I bet we'd really struggle to deal with them.
OK, we presume that crappy governments try to send peace treaties whilst the Strike Cruisers advance. We are ignored and they attack. We would have no chance of taking out Drop Pods.
1000 marines deployed with Land Raiders, Thunderhawks etc would take some beating.
Humans are weak. We care about innocent people, we would try search and rescue missions instead of just carpet bombing the place.
Eventually we could drag them down but it would take a long time.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
 FinalAnswer wrote: Vaktathi wrote:What are Hellfire missiles from? I don't recall them specifically. Are they cyclonic torpedoes?
“Four Gothic-class cruisers–Intolerable, Invincible, and Righteous Force–awaited four parsecs from target. Each ship carried 100 Hellfire nuclear missles. Each missle 122 warheads, each with a firepower of 5 GT. If boarding action fails, nuclear missles will turn a ship to dust.” Space Hulk Rulebook, p.3 - Scenario Book
On the other hand, Intolerable, Invincible and Righteous Force are three cruisers. Where's the fourth? 
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Post by: Vaktathi
FinalAnswer wrote: Vaktathi wrote:What are Hellfire missiles from? I don't recall them specifically. Are they cyclonic torpedoes?
“Four Gothic-class cruisers–Intolerable, Invincible, and Righteous Force–awaited four parsecs from target. Each ship carried 100 Hellfire nuclear missles. Each missle 122 warheads, each with a firepower of 5 GT. If boarding action fails, nuclear missles will turn a ship to dust.” Space Hulk Rulebook, p.3 - Scenario Book
Ah, ok, either way however, gigaton range weapons are annihilation weapons, and nobody is debating about their ability to *destroy* earth, but you couldn't really use such weapons if you wanted to *conquer* earth, 122 5 GT warheads would be more than enough to destroy the atmosphere hundreds of times over and spew enough radiation and heat to kill everything that survived blasts in days, assuming tectonic events don't kill everything first.
 phantommaster wrote:Has nobody realised that Marines get Land Raiders, Predators and Vindicators. I bet we'd really struggle to deal with them.
Going by what Forgeworld has stat'd them out as, not really actually, any MBT designed in the last 30 years would be markedly superior.
Either way, unless they're able to be resupplied, which is doubtful once they make planetfall with a force that small, they're done after a couple hundred miles or one/two days good fighting when they run out of fuel, and we're talking a couple dozen tanks at most here?
OK, we presume that crappy governments try to send peace treaties whilst the Strike Cruisers advance. We are ignored and they attack. We would have no chance of taking out Drop Pods.
Possibly not, however how do they know where to strike, and can they deliver enough marines to enough locations to do much of anything other than be scary?
1000 marines deployed with Land Raiders, Thunderhawks etc would take some beating.
Lets say a couple of dozen real tanks and several dozen rhino/razorback type vehicles. Thunderhawks are gigantic and easily intercepted and destroyed and there aren't that many in a chapter, perhaps 20-50. Compared to the worlds major air forces capable of fielding tens of thousands of actual fighter aircraft made for air to air combat (unlike thunderhawks), even if somehow the Thawks kill their foes 10-1, (though would be lucky to manage 1:1 odds) they'd still be swept from the skies very quickly.
Humans are weak. We care about innocent people, we would try search and rescue missions instead of just carpet bombing the place.
Hahaha you clearly have not been paying attention to world events. We'd like to think care about innocent people, but in reality, no major world government would hesitate to obliterate an area where such a force was located, innocent people or not. And that's assuming the marines landed anywhere anyone cared to save in the first place.
Eventually we could drag them down but it would take a long time.
Not really. A small tactical nuclear weapon would do it in minutes, a few squadrons of aircraft coupled with infantry and armor could do it in a couple of days. Marines work in a Space Fantasy setting, they do not work once inserted into anything realistic.
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Post by: FinalAnswer
Vaktathi wrote:Ah, ok, either way however, gigaton range weapons are annihilation weapons, and nobody is debating about their ability to *destroy* earth, but you couldn't really use such weapons if you wanted to *conquer* earth, 122 5 GT warheads would be more than enough to destroy the atmosphere hundreds of times over and spew enough radiation and heat to kill everything that survived blasts in days, assuming tectonic events don't kill everything first.
They could probably use their arsenal to cow Earth's nations into surrendering by demonstrating their capabilities on something we can observe, namely the Moon, or perhaps Mars.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Right, but then it's not really about the Space Marines ability to defeat anyone at that point, it's about the choice between arbitrary annihilation without any sort of defense on an unimagineable scale, and surrender. You don't need a Space Marine for that
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Post by: Evileyes
We would fare better with the marines, than we would if an ork Roc hit here xD
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Post by: FinalAnswer
Vaktathi wrote:Right, but then it's not really about the Space Marines ability to defeat anyone at that point, it's about the choice between arbitrary annihilation without any sort of defense on an unimagineable scale, and surrender. You don't need a Space Marine for that
Well, I'm part of the crowd that doesn't believe that Space Marines without some support are capable of conquering Earth by themselves, unless our reaction to a galaxy-spanning empire would do the work for them. In a conventional fight with our military against a chapter, we could probably stomp them. The only way their ground forces could beat us is to quickly decapitate our leadership in acts of shock and awe, then teleport back to their impenetrable strike-cruiser. Our lack of ability to counter-act this, along with the mass hysteria that would go through our population, would probably be enough to break Earth's morale, but even then, the Space Marines would probably need help from the local population to effectively conquer the planet, else they just be left with a world now in anarchy.
But, like it's been said several times, the Marines are not a conquering force by themselves. That's the Imperial Guard's job.
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
Vaktathi wrote: FinalAnswer wrote: Vaktathi wrote:What are Hellfire missiles from? I don't recall them specifically. Are they cyclonic torpedoes?
“Four Gothic-class cruisers–Intolerable, Invincible, and Righteous Force–awaited four parsecs from target. Each ship carried 100 Hellfire nuclear missles. Each missle 122 warheads, each with a firepower of 5 GT. If boarding action fails, nuclear missles will turn a ship to dust.” Space Hulk Rulebook, p.3 - Scenario Book
Ah, ok, either way however, gigaton range weapons are annihilation weapons, and nobody is debating about their ability to *destroy* earth, but you couldn't really use such weapons if you wanted to *conquer* earth, 122 5 GT warheads would be more than enough to destroy the atmosphere hundreds of times over and spew enough radiation and heat to kill everything that survived blasts in days, assuming tectonic events don't kill everything first.
610 gigatons won't "destroy the atmosphere hundreds of times over". The Chicxulub impact was more than a hundred times stronger than that, and while it caused a mass extinction it didn't destroy the atmosphere even once.
And the entire point is that that is their anti-ship torpedoes, which means that the only thing our nukes will do is scratch the paintwork, if we even get through the Void Shields. Sure, 610 Gigaton per missile is a ridiculous number fetched by the authors from God knows where, but IIRC you said something about 40k being SciFantasy?
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Post by: Kaldor
Vaktathi wrote:A Strike cruiser itself isn't capable of annihilating every major city in short order and could be struck back at
Bombardment cannons are more than capable of leveling entire cities, and we have not a single weapon that could even scratch the paint on something like a Strike Cruiser.
and history has shown that bombardment of cities typically does not force capitulation, if anything it generally stiffens resistance.
No one in history has ever had the capability or willpower to unleash devastation of the sort the Imperium is more than happy to. It's quite literally a case of "Capitulate, or we'll exterminatus your planet and come back in a few centuries to repopulate."
History has shown that almost all nations, when faced with certain and overwhelming force, will capitulate.
Methinks you're missing the history of the human race for most of the 20th century. That's been tried. It's typically failed.
The Astartes, if faced with resistance, could systematically destroy every population and manufacturing centre. There'd be no fuel, no ammunition, no communications, no spare parts, no air support, nothing. And any reports of resistance would result in everything within ten kilometers of the reported resistance being scoured to the bedrock from orbit.
It's kind of like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Except instead of sending troops in to fight the enemy, they'd simply blow up the entire country, and every neighbouring country, just to be sure.
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Post by: Decio
Question: why on Earth (pun?) would anyone even argue for a second that we could fight back and wipe out the invaders? They're 38000 years in the future with super cool armor and guns and vehicles with overlarge guns!
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Post by: Kaldor
 Decio wrote:Question: why on Earth (pun?) would anyone even argue for a second that we could fight back and wipe out the invaders? They're 38000 years in the future with super cool armor and guns and vehicles with overlarge guns!
Well, stranded on foot they're just big, heavily armoured targets. Their weapons lack the range or capability to combat our own. Even in the 40K universe, their strength lies in their rapid deployment and evacuation abilities. They can teleport into an area, kill every bastard there, and teleport out again before anyone can do anything about it. Each and every Marine is a bad-ass, and it's their ability to get a lot of those bad-asses into a very small area, very quickly, without actually having to cross the intervening space, that makes them so kick-ass.
In terms of actual warfare, if an Imperial Guard advance is being held down by, say, a massive artillery battery that is preventing their advance across a critical area then the Marines can teleport in thirty or forty Terminators, obliterate that artillery battery, and be gone again inside of five minutes, allowing the Guardsmen to advance. But if they had to actual walk anywhere, and try to defend or attack fortified positions in the traditional sense, they'd be in a lot of trouble.
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Post by: AndrewC
The Hellfire Torpedo was originally classed as an exterminatus weapon when Space Hulk first came out. (When did I get that old!) Of course GW being GW this may have been retconned into normal ship weaponry.
As to grenades affecting our MBTs, in one encounter within Iraq a Challenger 2 came under attack from irregular forces with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. The driver's sight was damaged and while attempting to back away under the commander's directions, the other sights were damaged and the tank threw its tracks entering a ditch. It was hit directly by fourteen rocket propelled grenades from close range and a MILAN anti-tank missile. The crew survived remaining safe within the tank until the tank was recovered for repairs, the worst damage being to the sighting system. It was back in operation six hours later after repairs. One Challenger 2 operating near Basra survived being hit by 70 RPGs in another incident. I remember that the worst injuries sustained by the crew was deafness due to all the noise. However, since all British vehicles come fitted with kettles a nice cup of tea helped pass the time.
Space Marines represent the ultimate fighting force of the Imperium. They are not invulnerable or invincible.
Cheers
Andrew
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Post by: calgar 2.5
FinalAnswer wrote: Vaktathi wrote: A nuclear missile packing half a dozen multi-megaton warheads on MIRV launcher the size of a commuter car would be significantly more dangerous.
No it wouldn't. Hellfire missiles are stated to possess 610 gigatons of firepower each. We could not begin to hope to match 40k firepower, our nukes would be useless against 40k ships.
Hellfire missiles? I think you mean Hellfire bolts, or Hunter Killer missiles, and those are basically AT4's.
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Post by: Kaldor
I really want this to be true!
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Post by: Sir Bushwookie
They would have no reason to attack earth, if I recall correctly Earth is pre-holy terra.
And even if they did invade, when they attack Norwich and walked into the GW the space marines would realize that we are there creators. Therefore believe that the warhammer community was the collective consciousness of the immortal Emperor and practically worship us. More specifically the owners of GW.
Or they would realize that they are a work of fiction and pop out of reality.
"POP goes the space marine"
Sir Bushwookie
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Post by: Vaktathi
Kaldor wrote: Vaktathi wrote:A Strike cruiser itself isn't capable of annihilating every major city in short order and could be struck back at
Bombardment cannons are more than capable of leveling entire cities, and we have not a single weapon that could even scratch the paint on something like a Strike Cruiser.
Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can, and a strike cruiser isn't going to be able to level every major city on earth in any quick amount of time. I didn't say they couldn't level a city, just that doing so to every major city on earth would take...a very long time given that there are over a thousand cities in the world with populations in excess of half a million people.
No one in history has ever had the capability or willpower to unleash devastation of the sort the Imperium is more than happy to. It's quite literally a case of "Capitulate, or we'll exterminatus your planet and come back in a few centuries to repopulate."
And a single strike cruiser isn't capable of that, and actually humans have pretty much done that to each other multiple times over the course of history. Not on planetwide scale, but on a scale enough to wipe out civilizations (which, to those being wiped out, is basically the same thing). Hell, the US threatened to do it to the Japanese. The Romans did it to Carthage. The Mongols destroyed several ancient city states, with unique civilzations that were thousands of years old, to the point where they were almost forgotten entirely from human memory and almost every inhabitant slain to the last.
History has shown that almost all nations, when faced with certain and overwhelming force, will capitulate.
Typically such has to be exerted and they must be exhausted and unable to fight on in any meaningful way. For example, in WW2, the Japanese only surrendered after not only being threatened with nuclear annihilation, but having their best remaining reserves overrun and destroyed by the Red Army in mere days, with less petrol and coal left in their entire national reserves than what a US naval battlegroup went through in a couple of weeks, along with having an air force that was reduced to almost complete obliteration and building aircraft out of wood for suicide attacks and almost no ships and absolutely no fuel to fight with. The Germans only surrendered at the end of WW2 after having their capitol and almost all major cities overrun, no more than a few dozen flight capable aircraft, practically no fuel, all their industrial capacity destroyed, almost all of their armor lost, having to recruit 12 year olds and retirees directly onto the front lines, and taking (and inflicting) almost as many casualties in the last year of the war as the preceding 4 years combined.
The Astartes, if faced with resistance, could systematically destroy every population and manufacturing centre.
Only through massive orbital bombardment, certainly not through a ground campaign. And without a massive fleet simultaneously engaging thousands of major population centers, there'd be plenty of opportunity for escape.
There'd be no fuel, no ammunition, no communications, no spare parts, no air support, nothing. And any reports of resistance would result in everything within ten kilometers of the reported resistance being scoured to the bedrock from orbit.
That assumes they have any idea where all these facilities, warehouses, communications centers, command bunkers, production facilities, military bases, etc are. Leveling cities is one thing, gathering the intelligence and acting on it to identify all these other facilities and the time to engage them would be substantial. And it's not like the Astartes exactly have a wealth of recon assets. A few dozen scouts for ground insertion and orbital surveillance of a planet you're completely unfamiliar with wouldn't likely yield impressive intelligence results for quite some time. It's another reason Marines work as Space Fantasy and not as Science Fiction.
It's kind of like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Except instead of sending troops in to fight the enemy, they'd simply blow up the entire country, and every neighbouring country, just to be sure.
They tried that in Vietnam in many areas, it didn't work. We dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than was dropped on both Germany and Japan in WW2 combined. Hell, they tried it in world war one, dropping such tremendous amounts of ordnance on battlefield as to physically change the geography, yet when it came time to go over the top, lo and behold there the enemy was to fight back. The Germans tried it in Warsaw and still had to send in ground forces. Completely annihilating large numbers of people/machines/emplacements/etc through bombardment alone is almost impossible short of nuclear carpet bombing.
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Post by: AndrewC
Yep. Part of the specifics of any new armoured vehicle is that they contain BVs (Boiling Vessels) or Bivvies designed specifically to heat water seperately for consumption. IIRC this was because in WW2 the british forces kept causing breakdowns on their vehicles by misusing them to brew tea. Authorities bowed their heads to the inevitable and made it part of their design specifics.
Cheers
Andrew
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Post by: FinalAnswer
Vaktathi wrote:Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can.
Macrocannons have been calculated to possess 475.2 teratons of kinetic energy per salvo, assuming all the shells hit.
As I said, we can do absolutely nothing to a strike-cruiser if it parks itself in orbit.
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Post by: AndrewC
FinalAnswer wrote: Vaktathi wrote:Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can.
Macrocannons have been calculated to possess 475.2 teratons of kinetic energy per salvo, assuming all the shells hit.
As I said, we can do absolutely nothing to a strike-cruiser if it parks itself in orbit.
Please do not use those calculations as they are so... wrong as to make any use of them irrelevant.
What you have written states that a macrocannon does app 2000 time more damage than the stated hellstrike missile, yet the hellstrike is an exterminatus weapon. Also one shot would be sufficent to not only flatten anything hit, but sufficent to knock chunks off the planet itself. Since these weapons are required to fire in batteries just to damage, not destroy, eg a rok, magnitudes smaller than a planet, this means that the figures are wildly inaccurate.
Or GW fiction writers simply dont care. I'll let you make that decision.
Cheers
Andrew
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Post by: SickSix
The question is Space Marines yes?
So let's throw out the space ships because that makes everything moot.
Earth is not defenseless.
Going against us:
1. Small caliber projectile infantry rifles/carbines
2. Fragile troops by comparison (IG)
3. Power Armor. The armor is a given. I am talking about all the integrated systems; Night Vision, Thermal, Bio-Chem filters, waste management, medical aid
4. Bolters. Bolters are like 20mm cannons. They negate most cover/barriers and light vehicles.
For us:
2. Tanks. Our modern tanks would outmatch Predators.
2. Air Superiority.
3. A Navy.
4. Engagement Range. SM and a lot of their weapons are for close in fighting. Most modern day weapons that don't fit into a grunts hands, have very long engagement ranges.
5. Armed Populace. The staggering number of firearms available to the masses.
I know a mere Company couldn't take earth (no space ships). But I don't know how many or how long.
Even with space ships, I don't think Earth is probably as defenseless as most of us would believe.
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Post by: FinalAnswer
 AndrewC wrote: FinalAnswer wrote: Vaktathi wrote:Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can.
Macrocannons have been calculated to possess 475.2 teratons of kinetic energy per salvo, assuming all the shells hit.
As I said, we can do absolutely nothing to a strike-cruiser if it parks itself in orbit.
Please do not use those calculations as they are so... wrong as to make any use of them irrelevant.
What you have written states that a macrocannon does app 2000 time more damage than the stated hellstrike missile, yet the hellstrike is an exterminatus weapon. Also one shot would be sufficent to not only flatten anything hit, but sufficent to knock chunks off the planet itself. Since these weapons are required to fire in batteries just to damage, not destroy, eg a rok, magnitudes smaller than a planet, this means that the figures are wildly inaccurate.
Or GW fiction writers simply dont care. I'll let you make that decision.
Cheers
Andrew
Sci-fi weapon calcs generally are ranged in ridiculous amounts, but they generally coincide with 40k fluff, what with the conventional weapons on starships being capable of razing continents, and completely obliterating planets under sustained bombardment. That said, a lower revised calc in the thread I found the first one puts a macrocannon salvo at about 1 teraton, if all the shells hit, so meh.
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Post by: Kaldor
AndrewC wrote:in WW2 the british forces kept causing breakdowns on their vehicles by misusing them to brew tea.
Oh, that's brilliant!
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Post by: motyak
Kaldor wrote: AndrewC wrote:in WW2 the british forces kept causing breakdowns on their vehicles by misusing them to brew tea.
Oh, that's brilliant!
Its a neccesity of life
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