Imperial Guard. Out of all of 'em, they are the only one remotely reminding of familiar enemies allowing them to deal with it.
In general, however, it would have no chance at fighting any of those.
The worst matchup for them would be Necrons. Besides them being led by actual GODS, the modern military has no weapons to damage them hard enough in order to stop them from regenerating.
Da Stormlord wrote:This was a hard choice for me, so i posted it here to see what people say. I excluded imperial guard and Astartes from this one for obvious reasons..
What obvious reasons preclude those two that don't preclude, say, the Sisters of Battle?
Da Stormlord wrote:This was a hard choice for me, so i posted it here to see what people say. I excluded imperial guard and Astartes from this one for obvious reasons..
What obvious reasons preclude those two that don't preclude, say, the Sisters of Battle?
Probably Harlequins. Sure, they are ridiculously fast and extremely killy at short range but...so are shotguns. I feel due to their small numbers and reliance on melee to engage the enemy means we'd have the advantage in this.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
Modern military has zero chances against power armor. While there certainly are weapons that can penetrate it, they aren't mass-produced and unavailable for the general army.
/e: Actually, they would easily kill Space Wolves. No helmets isn't as cool as you'd think.
The Necrons open up by starting up the Sun in a massive solar storm that wipes away the entire population of Earth on the dayside of the planet, then sends a message that crashes any technology that receives it. Then they come down and wipe out what little of us are left after our civilization implodes.
In a first war of armageddon scale Chaos incursion; half of the world's combined militaries goes insane and devotes itself to Khorne before Angron and the world eaters even set foot on the planet. Nurglites would leave most of the planet dead of plagues that no science can cure before the plague marines and cultists even set foot on the planet, and by then there's nothing left to resist the oncoming of the plaguefather. Slaanesh is probably going to corrupt a vast deal of everyone as artists, pleasure seekers, perfectionists, and more keep on falling to Slaanesh's embrace until Governments start getting as fascist as possible to prevent more people from falling into Slaanesh's grip; then the Emperor's children come in with cultists and daemons and its much too late. Tzeentch is just going to corrupt every politician and scientist he can get before his forces set foot, and I'd bet a lot of nations would just surrender to the thread of Tzeentch's forces without even offering a fight.
How much damage an Ork WAAAGH! does depends on its size, a hundreds of millions or billions/tens of billions strong WAAAGH like at Armageddon sweeps aside human civilization with ease, while smaller ones in the thousands would be more of a nuisance and ones in the millions to tens of millions would be devastating but not quite civilization ending.
As for the Tyranids, a quote from Warseer.
Let's take your Royal Marines. Nay, let's take the combined might of Her Majesty's Armed Forces. All ~400,000 of them. They are defending their home from an invasion of inconsolable foes that will not bargain or reason with them, giving them an incalculable morale boost. They are on their home turf, they know the lay of the land, logistics are not stretched but at their best.
Now, 'realistically' this isn't a far cry from your average 40k invasion. Most worlds seem to have all the vital things worth guarding clustered within an area the size of Belgium (or the UK in this case). Excluding of course the key to victory which is located somewhere entirely else for the sake of plot. Here, that's Northern Ireland (but there's no deus ex machina waiting there for the Brits). Consequently, as far as the royal defenders of the crown are concerned, the rest of the world but their island may as well be one endless ocean.
So the Brits are ready, their defenses prepared. A storm cloud gathers overhead... Long before any actual fighting begins, key officers, political figures, media icons, and those just plain unlucky enough to get in the way are butchered by assassins literally invisible to any current sensors or the human eye. The only warning of these lethal lictors are dogs barking after a directionless pheromone trail. Guard dogs are quickly stationed everywhere of importance as an early warning system, attached to even individual trooper squads. But the damage is already done.
Around the same time, the clouds break overhead. Soldiers squirm, fidget, and scream as any exposed inch of skin is slowly dissolved over a period of hours by toxins in the air. Their lungs hemorrhage and collapse over a period of days. NBC suits are quickly issued and worn, but it is largely too late for those already infected or affected. No cure can be found against the rapidly mutating phage cells... at least not in time. Simultaneously, corrosive acids rapidly eat through aircraft and armored vehicles alike--the roofs of hangars not prepared to stand up against anything more than rain. Only vehicles housed in hardened underground hangars are safe. But the general infrastructure above them lies in ruins, everything from roads and telephone lines to shallowly buried waste pipes.
That's the first week. For the sake of argument, we'll pretend only 10% of the British soldiers, armored pieces, and vehicles are taken out of commission before countermeasures are employed. The material loss isn't the important thing, it's the blow to morale. How would the average soldier feel after being told that he can't call in air support because of inclement weather, after watching some of his friends die in agony with their flesh sloughing off before a shot is even fired, knowing that there weren't nearly enough NBC suits to go around so his civilian family members and friends are more likely dead than alive, and with public works out of commission, no way of checking for sure?
No, of course he's not going to run away. Where would he even run to? That's not the meaning of discipline; desertion or breaking and running are merely the worst-case-scenario possibilities.
Finally, a chance to go face to face with the enemy. Huge cloud banks roll in from the sea, blotting out the sky and the light. But this is no cloud--this a million (literally) gargoyles attacking but 1 of Britain's defense posts. Shoot up and you can't miss... but at the same time viscous living maggots fall from the sky like rain, too numerous to take cover from outside. They splat into body armor and flak vest alike, before wriggling their way under each soldier's uniform to the weak point around the armpits and burrowing through the flesh and painfully thrashing and chewing their way to the target's nervous system--resulting in paralyzation and more commonly, death. Individual gargoyles swoop low and fast into the garrison, beheading troopers with their scything tails faster than a body can pivot and track them, or belching bio-plasma from their mouths that chews through the side of an IFV's roof in seconds.
As ever, the Brits adapt quickly with redeployed forces, submunition-equipped SAMs, air-bursting rockets and mortars. Even though the garrison suffers crippling casualties, the million gargoyles are killed in a day. A kill ratio more than worthy of such a well-trained and equipped military.
But the Brits can't cheer for long, because they haven't really repelled the first wave. Mere hours after the first, another million gargoyles attack an installation further north up the cost. Hours after that another million attacks still farther south down the coast. For days this goes on. Days that turn into weeks. The Gargoyles were never meant to take and hold anything. They're merely a scouting force, feeding precious tactical data to the Hive Mind before their meaningless lives are cut short, testing England's defenses.
The men can barely sleep with the Hive Mind so close; a constant buzzing disrupts their dreams, and a pressure builds between their eyes into a migraine during the day. In the night, bunkers spotted out by the gargoyles are penetrated by 4 and 5-meter long Raveners burrowing up from underground, twisting writhing serpents whose thoraxes burst open like a frag grenade in the enclosed close quarters, their six bladed limbs a blur as they scythe through flesh and body armor alike.
Skittering hordes of gaunts equal in number to the gargoyles begin their own assaults. Here the individual soldier's attention begins to waver. With the battlenet a constant drone of barked orders and frantic questions, does he shoot at the inexorably approaching gaunts down the hill, or at the gargoyles who just lifted his squad sergeant into the air kicking and screaming?
By the end of the first month, fixed positions become mandatory as they only safeguard against those flying monsters and the still-toxic atmosphere; the bunkers ravener-proofed with seismographs and buried mines. Making yourself like a rock is the only way to withstand such endless numbers. The "home turf" advantage is meaningless now, as the accelerated growth of local flora changes the landscape into something unrecognizable, blocks lines of sight & fire, and shields heat signatures. The enemy has complete air-superiority by now. Even with careful limitations on the duration Britain's fighters and bombers are aloft and constant maintenance, the planes are brought down by gargoyles sucked into their engines' intake valves, or by massive Harridans and Harpies the size of planes but not warm enough to lock onto with heat seekers before they burst forth from the fog rippling off the jungles below into the cold northern air and grapple each plane to the ground.
And then the real assaults begin, led by 3-meter tall Warriors and floating brain-bags that carve through tanks with War of the Worlds-style death rays. Spores fall in an endless barrage of artillery, making even a mad dash from one bunker to the next unconnected by underground tunnels a near-suicidal proposition. The average foe at this stage has carapace too thick to be penetrated by LA80s while their heads have three sets of compound eyes and accompanying antennae to root out royal marines hidden or lying in wait.
Falling back is necessary. Shrink the vulnerable supply lines, concentrate the defenses in the capital. Few are left now. Only the most bad-ass emotionally bereft sociopathic trained killers survive. Every soldier left replaces their automatic rifles for automatic grenade launchers. There is no longer any point in saving equipment for 'specialists' and no expense is spared.
Challenger tanks defend every street with withering fire from behind hastily erected sandbag and steel berms. AA guns crown every roof, keeping gargoyles out of the hair of the soldiers below. Blind-firing artillery create a virtual wall of death around the city's perimeter to prevent the gaunts and warriors, and other gribblies from getting in. Bridges are blown and buildings strategically sapped and collapsed to form critical choke points. Mines, C4, and trip-wires are laid in abundance.
NOW.
YOU are next to a Challenger defending one of the city's intersections. Things seem to be going well according to the 'net. You're keeping the little ones bottled at the far end of the street.
But then everything changes in a thunderous clap that leaves you shell-shocked, disoriented, and deaf. A spore pod larger than any you've seen yet has landed on the Challenger, crushing it flat into the pavement... and rising up out of the spore's leathery exterior is a titanic monster the size of a small building. Instinctively, you fire a 40mm grenade round into its chest, with absolutely no effect.
Now what? You're on the opposite side of the thing from your squad mates. Behind you the gaunts and warriors are bounding up the alley unchecked. What do you do as it leans towards you? If you're creative enough, you might think to try shooting a round into its gaping mouth as it opens to swallow you whole. If you have the hand-eye coordination, you might try shooting the joint of the arm scything toward you and bisecting it. You could try rolling between its legs and dashing for your friends. You could retreat into the storefront next to you and climb to a higher level, where you might have a better vantage point.
No matter what you choose, you're dead. You were dead no matter what from the beginning. Its long reach and surprising agility allow it to carve through you or crush you in a fraction of a second. But how did you die? Did you get a last shot off? Did it count? Probably not. You could've, but you didn't. You failed to make your death meaningful.
That is the breakdown in discipline. That's what sells your life short when you could have been worth more.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
Modern military has zero chances against power armor. While there certainly are weapons that can penetrate it, they aren't mass-produced and unavailable for the general army.
/e: Actually, they would easily kill Space Wolves. No helmets isn't as cool as you'd think.
Likewise, it depends if the Sisters in question are from the Calixis sector.
Calixis Sisters. On the upside, they cast spells. On the downside, they don't get helmets until they make veteran.
Kain wrote: The Necrons open up by starting up the Sun in a massive solar storm that wipes away the entire population of Earth on the dayside of the planet, then sends a message that crashes any technology that receives it. Then they come down and wipe out what little of us are left after our civilization implodes.
In a first war of armageddon scale Chaos incursion; half of the world's combined militaries goes insane and devotes itself to Khorne before Angron and the world eaters even set foot on the planet. Nurglites would leave most of the planet dead of plagues that no science can cure before the plague marines and cultists even set foot on the planet, and by then there's nothing left to resist the oncoming of the plaguefather. Slaanesh is probably going to corrupt a vast deal of everyone as artists, pleasure seekers, perfectionists, and more keep on falling to Slaanesh's embrace until Governments start getting as fascist as possible to prevent more people from falling into Slaanesh's grip; then the Emperor's children come in with cultists and daemons and its much too late. Tzeentch is just going to corrupt every politician and scientist he can get before his forces set foot, and I'd bet a lot of nations would just surrender to the thread of Tzeentch's forces without even offering a fight.
How much damage an Ork WAAAGH! does depends on its size, a hundreds of millions or billions/tens of billions strong WAAAGH like at Armageddon sweeps aside human civilization with ease, while smaller ones in the thousands would be more of a nuisance and ones in the millions to tens of millions would be devastating but not quite civilization ending.
As for the Tyranids, a quote from Warseer.
Let's take your Royal Marines. Nay, let's take the combined might of Her Majesty's Armed Forces. All ~400,000 of them. They are defending their home from an invasion of inconsolable foes that will not bargain or reason with them, giving them an incalculable morale boost. They are on their home turf, they know the lay of the land, logistics are not stretched but at their best.
Now, 'realistically' this isn't a far cry from your average 40k invasion. Most worlds seem to have all the vital things worth guarding clustered within an area the size of Belgium (or the UK in this case). Excluding of course the key to victory which is located somewhere entirely else for the sake of plot. Here, that's Northern Ireland (but there's no deus ex machina waiting there for the Brits). Consequently, as far as the royal defenders of the crown are concerned, the rest of the world but their island may as well be one endless ocean.
So the Brits are ready, their defenses prepared. A storm cloud gathers overhead... Long before any actual fighting begins, key officers, political figures, media icons, and those just plain unlucky enough to get in the way are butchered by assassins literally invisible to any current sensors or the human eye. The only warning of these lethal lictors are dogs barking after a directionless pheromone trail. Guard dogs are quickly stationed everywhere of importance as an early warning system, attached to even individual trooper squads. But the damage is already done.
Around the same time, the clouds break overhead. Soldiers squirm, fidget, and scream as any exposed inch of skin is slowly dissolved over a period of hours by toxins in the air. Their lungs hemorrhage and collapse over a period of days. NBC suits are quickly issued and worn, but it is largely too late for those already infected or affected. No cure can be found against the rapidly mutating phage cells... at least not in time. Simultaneously, corrosive acids rapidly eat through aircraft and armored vehicles alike--the roofs of hangars not prepared to stand up against anything more than rain. Only vehicles housed in hardened underground hangars are safe. But the general infrastructure above them lies in ruins, everything from roads and telephone lines to shallowly buried waste pipes.
That's the first week. For the sake of argument, we'll pretend only 10% of the British soldiers, armored pieces, and vehicles are taken out of commission before countermeasures are employed. The material loss isn't the important thing, it's the blow to morale. How would the average soldier feel after being told that he can't call in air support because of inclement weather, after watching some of his friends die in agony with their flesh sloughing off before a shot is even fired, knowing that there weren't nearly enough NBC suits to go around so his civilian family members and friends are more likely dead than alive, and with public works out of commission, no way of checking for sure?
No, of course he's not going to run away. Where would he even run to? That's not the meaning of discipline; desertion or breaking and running are merely the worst-case-scenario possibilities.
Finally, a chance to go face to face with the enemy. Huge cloud banks roll in from the sea, blotting out the sky and the light. But this is no cloud--this a million (literally) gargoyles attacking but 1 of Britain's defense posts. Shoot up and you can't miss... but at the same time viscous living maggots fall from the sky like rain, too numerous to take cover from outside. They splat into body armor and flak vest alike, before wriggling their way under each soldier's uniform to the weak point around the armpits and burrowing through the flesh and painfully thrashing and chewing their way to the target's nervous system--resulting in paralyzation and more commonly, death. Individual gargoyles swoop low and fast into the garrison, beheading troopers with their scything tails faster than a body can pivot and track them, or belching bio-plasma from their mouths that chews through the side of an IFV's roof in seconds.
As ever, the Brits adapt quickly with redeployed forces, submunition-equipped SAMs, air-bursting rockets and mortars. Even though the garrison suffers crippling casualties, the million gargoyles are killed in a day. A kill ratio more than worthy of such a well-trained and equipped military.
But the Brits can't cheer for long, because they haven't really repelled the first wave. Mere hours after the first, another million gargoyles attack an installation further north up the cost. Hours after that another million attacks still farther south down the coast. For days this goes on. Days that turn into weeks. The Gargoyles were never meant to take and hold anything. They're merely a scouting force, feeding precious tactical data to the Hive Mind before their meaningless lives are cut short, testing England's defenses.
The men can barely sleep with the Hive Mind so close; a constant buzzing disrupts their dreams, and a pressure builds between their eyes into a migraine during the day. In the night, bunkers spotted out by the gargoyles are penetrated by 4 and 5-meter long Raveners burrowing up from underground, twisting writhing serpents whose thoraxes burst open like a frag grenade in the enclosed close quarters, their six bladed limbs a blur as they scythe through flesh and body armor alike.
Skittering hordes of gaunts equal in number to the gargoyles begin their own assaults. Here the individual soldier's attention begins to waver. With the battlenet a constant drone of barked orders and frantic questions, does he shoot at the inexorably approaching gaunts down the hill, or at the gargoyles who just lifted his squad sergeant into the air kicking and screaming?
By the end of the first month, fixed positions become mandatory as they only safeguard against those flying monsters and the still-toxic atmosphere; the bunkers ravener-proofed with seismographs and buried mines. Making yourself like a rock is the only way to withstand such endless numbers. The "home turf" advantage is meaningless now, as the accelerated growth of local flora changes the landscape into something unrecognizable, blocks lines of sight & fire, and shields heat signatures. The enemy has complete air-superiority by now. Even with careful limitations on the duration Britain's fighters and bombers are aloft and constant maintenance, the planes are brought down by gargoyles sucked into their engines' intake valves, or by massive Harridans and Harpies the size of planes but not warm enough to lock onto with heat seekers before they burst forth from the fog rippling off the jungles below into the cold northern air and grapple each plane to the ground.
And then the real assaults begin, led by 3-meter tall Warriors and floating brain-bags that carve through tanks with War of the Worlds-style death rays. Spores fall in an endless barrage of artillery, making even a mad dash from one bunker to the next unconnected by underground tunnels a near-suicidal proposition. The average foe at this stage has carapace too thick to be penetrated by LA80s while their heads have three sets of compound eyes and accompanying antennae to root out royal marines hidden or lying in wait.
Falling back is necessary. Shrink the vulnerable supply lines, concentrate the defenses in the capital. Few are left now. Only the most bad-ass emotionally bereft sociopathic trained killers survive. Every soldier left replaces their automatic rifles for automatic grenade launchers. There is no longer any point in saving equipment for 'specialists' and no expense is spared.
Challenger tanks defend every street with withering fire from behind hastily erected sandbag and steel berms. AA guns crown every roof, keeping gargoyles out of the hair of the soldiers below. Blind-firing artillery create a virtual wall of death around the city's perimeter to prevent the gaunts and warriors, and other gribblies from getting in. Bridges are blown and buildings strategically sapped and collapsed to form critical choke points. Mines, C4, and trip-wires are laid in abundance.
NOW.
YOU are next to a Challenger defending one of the city's intersections. Things seem to be going well according to the 'net. You're keeping the little ones bottled at the far end of the street.
But then everything changes in a thunderous clap that leaves you shell-shocked, disoriented, and deaf. A spore pod larger than any you've seen yet has landed on the Challenger, crushing it flat into the pavement... and rising up out of the spore's leathery exterior is a titanic monster the size of a small building. Instinctively, you fire a 40mm grenade round into its chest, with absolutely no effect.
Now what? You're on the opposite side of the thing from your squad mates. Behind you the gaunts and warriors are bounding up the alley unchecked. What do you do as it leans towards you? If you're creative enough, you might think to try shooting a round into its gaping mouth as it opens to swallow you whole. If you have the hand-eye coordination, you might try shooting the joint of the arm scything toward you and bisecting it. You could try rolling between its legs and dashing for your friends. You could retreat into the storefront next to you and climb to a higher level, where you might have a better vantage point.
No matter what you choose, you're dead. You were dead no matter what from the beginning. Its long reach and surprising agility allow it to carve through you or crush you in a fraction of a second. But how did you die? Did you get a last shot off? Did it count? Probably not. You could've, but you didn't. You failed to make your death meaningful.
That is the breakdown in discipline. That's what sells your life short when you could have been worth more.
That quote about a Tyranid invasion.... really hammers home the futility of fighting Nids. At least for the military forces of our world.
Out of all the 40k races, I think we'd be most effective against Imperial forces simply because they fight in a similar way to what we do now... but in the end we'd lose simply because the Imperium has more numbers than we could ever field.
We'd probably get a much better kill ratio against IG but it doesn't matter - they don't care about casualties and would eventually roll over us.
Ironically, I'd say Marines would be pretty easy to take down, 50 cal machine guns stand a chance of penetrating and 50 cal sniper rifles definitely could with AP rounds. Any HE tank rounds or missiles/ rocket launchers would also kill them. Whilst power armour is good versus small arms, it wouldn't protect very well against spalling or concussive forces. I'm not saying they wouldn't do damage but I do believe a Space Marine Chapter would be so much easier to take down than an IG combined arms regiment.
What the quote didn't mention is how much of the world's defenses would be crippled and sabotaged by genestealer cultist infiltration. Everything from strategic arsenals, to the generalship to our very political, religious, cultural, and scientific circles. You'd see things like the American senate enacting ordinances to cripple America's military years before the invasion begins before leading millions into digestion pools to die while the few remaining nuclear subs, silos, and bombers to survive the gutting of the armed forces are taken out by sudden mutiny and men in economically high places taking the steps needed to crash the economy into deep recessions and depressions. Many countries would collapse into civil war at the behest of the cult as it spreads all across the world; crawling its way up the ladder of command while modern society; not being built with the expectation of literal mind control and genetic subversion, ambles along largely unaware of the rot building within. By the time the hive fleet arrives, the world is a genestealer corrupted shell of its former self as the cult welcomes the end of the world in open arms and arises all at once to pave the way for the swarm.
No modern military is well suited to deal with the kind of world wide attritional war the Tyranids wage. That is because society and modern armies are dependent on a vast web of logistics to keep functioning. Raw materials need to be harvested from fields and mines, and shipped to factories for processing into food and war material and then shipped off to the actual fighting units. Even if frontline units were holding their own against waves of Tyranid attacks, eventually they would run low on munitions and replacement troops. All these vulnerable infrastructure sites and transport lines would eventually be targeted and destroyed as there simply aren't enough troops to escort or garrison them all.
In contrast, the Tyranids can and do process all the incidental biomass of the planet even in sparsely inhabited wilderness. The biomass of the wilderness is of no direct use as a resource to human militaries but every scrap of biomass can be used by Tyranids to birth more Tyranids, and they can recycle the dead. A trained human soldier needs years to mature and then be trained, as well as being dependent on all the material supply chains to supply him his weaponry in order to be useful. An unarmed human is nowhere near the same level of threat as a freshly born Hormagaunt (even if the human kills the Hormagaunt, they will probably sustain injuries incapacitating them and requiring medical treatment before being combat ready again).
Even if humans hunker down into well prepared defensive sites capable of defeating direct attacks, the Tyranids can then just pin them there while they absorb the rest of the planet. That's assuming of course that the humans don't starve from lack of food. Then when the Tyranids have absorbed sufficient biomass, they can just hurl enough Tyranids at human defensive sites to overwhelm them by sheer numbers.
See, I would feel that Astartes would be far beyond our capability to fight, but that's because I assume that humanity has evolved somewhat from M3 to M41. I mean, you'd think it was pretty preposterous to say that a Greek Hoplite or Roman Legionnaire would beat a modern day Navy Seal/SAS, and that's how I feel about our Seals/SAS vs Astartes. I just assume that power armour is made of handwavium that our weapons can't damage, even our strongest. Hell, even nuclear armaments shouldn't affect Marines in my headcanon, but that's just it: headcanon.
Overall, an underequipped AM infantry regiment would be an easy matchup, but a full combined arms force, with artillery, Leman Russes and more guardsmen than you can shake a stick at would be more challenging.
It depends on your interpretation of the Astartes and due to GW's nonexistent canon policies none of them are wrong.
I find discussing the Chaos Space Marines more interesting as I find the factor provided by Chaos to inspire more interesting debate regarding an assault on modern earth.
I like how you guys treat Astartes as if they're just going to stand around and let themselves be butchered, If you actually think a Space Marine would let himself get into a position of extreme disadvantage against us like that you have no Idea what Space Marines are.
Really, 40k is a Fantasy universe with a Scifi skin, and when compared to actual, real armies, they just don't really work.
Modern armies have weapons that would put the capabilities of the Eldar to shame. A modern MBT can move at highway speeds over rough ground and hit another target moving at highway speeds over 2000m away with something like a 90-95% accuracy rate, with shells that can penetrate up to a full meter of steel armor in some cases. Artillery can be fired from 40km away from multiple batteries and all land at the same time within 5m of the target. A modern army will have zero problems fighting at night, sometimes even performing better at night. Aircraft can engage each other from nearly 200km distant without ever seeing their target.
If you took something like NATO and pitted it against a 40k faction (unless you're talking something like a Tyranid invastion so massive where they just have such vast numbers that the entire biosphere is overrun and destroyed), the real world military would emerge victorious rather easily. On the table, they'd play much more like Eldar speed, stats, and firepower with IG numbers and heavy armor, almost everything having a "no-LoS-needed" capability, and with Networked Markerlights on damn near everything.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
Modern military has zero chances against power armor. While there certainly are weapons that can penetrate it, they aren't mass-produced and unavailable for the general army.
/e: Actually, they would easily kill Space Wolves. No helmets isn't as cool as you'd think.
Power armor can and has been shown to be able to be defeated by 20th century style weaponry such as small arms and things like Mortars in GW published fluff, even if they're highly resistant to it. In no depiction is something like Power Armor invulnerable to anti-tank weapons, heavy artillery, crew served heavy weapons, etc. Against top-tier 21st century armies,Space Marines wouldn't do very well at all. Sure, they're impressive infantry, but ultimately they're still infantry, and absurdly few in number to boot.
Psienesis wrote: All of the above have the ability to destroy us from orbit. We have no technologies to counter that. We lose.
And yet such is rarely used in the 40k universe. Besides, it's not like Earth doesn't have several thousand nuclear armed missiles capable of striking into orbit.
Tyranids, because as soon as they enter the real world their laughably bad science no longer works and they probably can't even survive long enough to have a battle.
Modern armies have weapons that would put the capabilities of the Eldar to shame.
I completly disagree with this. If you are basing your argument on TT stats, then the only conclusions you will draw will be biased. Range, firepower and mlitary capabilities are toned down in ordrer to make something balanced and playable and I do think that in 40k "IRL", Eldar would beat the sh*t out of their IG equivalent .
You imply our weapons are the best one can ever have . That's essentially because that's the best weapons we actually have. Our militaries have so outstanding capabilities that we think we have arrived to the end of weaponry perfection. Eldar, if they would have to exist somewhere in space right now, would be fighting with stuff we can't even imagine. I don't think the best MBT in the Western world could match the perfect alliance of firepower and mobility a Fire Prism is.
And as usual, you cannot think of military effectivness without thinking about the system within any military unit evolve. Eldar master Webway, teleportation, antigravitic engines, Void Shields and Titans. They fight as one body in a terrific danse that would strike our best tacticians with sheer awe.
Don't think we're the best of the universe because we're the best of our world
Joking aside modern military wouldn't stand a chance against any faction from the 40k universe.
Even petty guardsmen grow up on far harsher worlds than our own, and to survive to adulthood in 40k probably makes them stronger and smarter than most if not all of our population.
Space Marines would just drop pod into the most fortified senior HQ and wipe them from the map, cutting the head off the snake.
Worst opponents would be Chaos or Dark Eldar, because they don't just kill you.
Modern armies have weapons that would put the capabilities of the Eldar to shame.
I completly disagree with this. If you are basing your argument on TT stats, then the only conclusions you will draw will be biased.
It's not just TT stats, but anything portrayed in a 40k setting. I have never seen anything in a 40k background story to match the capabilities of modern militaries, it's all variations of a WW2 paradigm coupled with High Fantasy wrapped in a scifi skin. There's a reason for that. It's easy for the reader to grasp, it's something everyone can visualize, and it makes for spectacular imagery. But it falls flat when forced into reality.
You imply our weapons are the best one can ever have .
Not at all, just that they're better than the overwhelmingly vast majority of what's portrayed in 40k.
That's essentially because that's the best weapons we actually have. Our militaries have so outstanding capabilities that we think we have arrived to the end of weaponry perfection. Eldar, if they would have to exist somewhere in space right now, would be fighting with stuff we can even imagine. I don't think the best MBT in the world could match the perfect alliance of firepower and mobility a Fire Prism is.
Find me a fluff example of any 40k tank, Fire Prism or no, that can move at 50km+ and hit another target moving at even fast speeds, over rough ground, from 2000m+, with shells capable of penetrating up to a meter of steel. 40k just doesn't function on this paradigm, it's not intended to. It's a Fantasy setting, not a hard-scifi setting.
And as usual, you cannot think of military effectivness without thinking about the system within any military unit would evolve. Eldar master Webway, teleportation, antigravitic engines, Void Shields and Titans. They fight as one in a terrific danse that would strike our best tacticians in awe.
Titan's are a stupid real world weapon. They're the kind of thing that's simply obliterated by artillery and aircraft because they can be targeted and destroyed from dozens of kilometers away. There's a reason things like massive railway guns, monster tanks like the P1000 Ratte, and other things never became anything more than failed curiosities. The Webway is nice, but it's not something they can just open up anywhere and pop through in most cases (often requiring a pre-existing portal), and the Eldar as they exist in the current setting can't maintain their entire network either, it's slowly falling apart on them. Anti-gravitic engines are cool, but a Helicopter can manage largely the same thing in terms of battlefield role. Meanwhile, "fighting as a dance" and whatnot is all very well and good, until their position is called out over a radio and artillery shells fired from dozens of miles away simply blanket the area.
Joking aside modern military wouldn't stand a chance against any faction from the 40k universe.
Even petty guardsmen grow up on far harsher worlds than our own, and to survive to adulthood in 40k probably makes them stronger and smarter than most if not all of our population.
Space Marines would just drop pod into the most fortified senior HQ and wipe them from the map, cutting the head off the snake.
This is an often quoted "trueism", but makes no account of how they'd know where that is, no potential defenses, nor any redundant command and control elements. With most modern militaries, they are not that centralized as to be so overwhelmingly vulnerable to such a thing.
The answer is obviously Tau, as they're the only ones that will accept surrender.
The modern armies are torn to pieces by the Tau effortlessly, but those who surrender will be issued pulse rifles and Hammerheads once Earth accepts the Greater Good.
XT-1984 wrote: Even petty guardsmen grow up on far harsher worlds than our own, and to survive to adulthood in 40k probably makes them stronger and smarter than most if not all of our population.
Ehh I think that’s highly unlikely. Most imperial guardsmen hails from worlds where malnourishment and famine is widespread, an as for the guardsmen being smart, remember that the imperium runs on ignorance and censorship, so the greater part of the guard probably suffers from Dyslexia.
Most humans in the imperium, be they a serviceman or a common citizen, would probably be worse off than our average ‘Dark age’ peasant.
XT-1984 wrote: Space Marines would just drop pod into the most fortified senior HQ and wipe them from the map, cutting the head off the snake.
Luckily for us, most developed nation has more than one “head”
Joking aside modern military wouldn't stand a chance against any faction from the 40k universe.
Even petty guardsmen grow up on far harsher worlds than our own, and to survive to adulthood in 40k probably makes them stronger and smarter than most if not all of our population.
Space Marines would just drop pod into the most fortified senior HQ and wipe them from the map, cutting the head off the snake.
Worst opponents would be Chaos or Dark Eldar, because they don't just kill you.
Ya'll are also forgetting the weapon-class that has basically been left as a "worst-case" weapon and a planetary invasion is "worst case"--Nuclear Weapons. We have the capability to build nuclear weapons in the hundred-megaton range if we want. We currently don't, but the technology exists. 2-5 Megaton intercontinental ballistic missiles are a thing along with far more accurate, road-mobile, 500 kiloton weapons. A single warhead of this magnitude can lay waste to quite a large force and cause all kinds of disruptions. Barring orbital bombardment (which is a total game changer we don't have a counter to currently) in a fight on the ground, nuclear weapons are extremely effective at wiping out concentrations of forces--and as described, power armor won't protect you if you are in the blast, nor will much else. It is also a haywire attack across a massive area if you do a high-altitude burst with them.
As for "cutting off the head of the snake" this works for heavily-centralized armies like the Soviet military or the Iraqi military. The US military, and many NATO allies, are designed to be flexible down to the junior officer and sergeant levels. It may be harder to do coordinated strikes, but these kinds of armies are a hell of a lot harder to stamp out.
The greatest weakness of the Imperium of Man armies is also not their technology, but their dogma. They refuse to learn, they believe development of new tactics to be heresy and that there is only one way to fight. If a force with equipment more like a modern military, but the tactical adapability of say...terrorist organizations, you have a really nasty combination. The Imperium of Man has basically forgone the basic adaptability of man to change and develop for new battles. As soon as we start to get our hands on the technology of a new enemies we find ways to adapt it and start using it. Clearly you don't need super-human genes to wear/lift your power armor, so we start to use any we get our hands on.
The longer a war goes against most of the factions, the more we adapt and develop new tactics and start to find new ways of fighting back. The game 40k clearly takes out a lot of the complications of warfare and simplifies it for the sake of gameplay, fluffwise, you rarely read about people winning battles through tactical genius, it's all just glorified individual heroics. Real wars are won with operational soundness punctuated by individual heroism.
Ya'll are also forgetting the weapon-class that has basically been left as a "worst-case" weapon and a planetary invasion is "worst case"--Nuclear Weapons. We have the capability to build nuclear weapons in the hundred-megaton range if we want. We currently don't, but the technology exists. 2-5 Megaton intercontinental ballistic missiles are a thing along with far more accurate, road-mobile, 500 kiloton weapons. A single warhead of this magnitude can lay waste to quite a large force and cause all kinds of disruptions. Barring orbital bombardment (which is a total game changer we don't have a counter to currently) in a fight on the ground, nuclear weapons are extremely effective at wiping out concentrations of forces--and as described, power armor won't protect you if you are in the blast, nor will much else. It is also a haywire attack across a massive area if you do a high-altitude burst with them.
As soon as we start to get our hands on the technology of a new enemies we find ways to adapt it and start using it. Clearly you don't need super-human genes to wear/lift your power armor, so we start to use any we get our hands on.
The longer a war goes against most of the factions, the more we adapt and develop new tactics and start to find new ways of fighting back. The game 40k clearly takes out a lot of the complications of warfare and simplifies it for the sake of gameplay, fluffwise, you rarely read about people winning battles through tactical genius, it's all just glorified individual heroics. Real wars are won with operational soundness punctuated by individual heroism.
The Tau're big on operational soundness.
... and while most factions would have nukes used on them, it's more likely Earth would choose Tau leadership over nuclear suicide.
I would capture the first space wolf I see.. Give him a bath,haircut, and a clean shave. Let him go so he can report to his commanders what those darn Americans will do to them if they get captured.
Really, 40k is a Fantasy universe with a Scifi skin, and when compared to actual, real armies, they just don't really work.
Modern armies have weapons that would put the capabilities of the Eldar to shame. A modern MBT can move at highway speeds over rough ground and hit another target moving at highway speeds over 2000m away with something like a 90-95% accuracy rate, with shells that can penetrate up to a full meter of steel armor in some cases. Artillery can be fired from 40km away from multiple batteries and all land at the same time within 5m of the target. A modern army will have zero problems fighting at night, sometimes even performing better at night. Aircraft can engage each other from nearly 200km distant without ever seeing their target.
If you took something like NATO and pitted it against a 40k faction (unless you're talking something like a Tyranid invastion so massive where they just have such vast numbers that the entire biosphere is overrun and destroyed), the real world military would emerge victorious rather easily. On the table, they'd play much more like Eldar speed, stats, and firepower with IG numbers and heavy armor, almost everything having a "no-LoS-needed" capability, and with Networked Markerlights on damn near everything.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
Modern military has zero chances against power armor. While there certainly are weapons that can penetrate it, they aren't mass-produced and unavailable for the general army.
/e: Actually, they would easily kill Space Wolves. No helmets isn't as cool as you'd think.
Power armor can and has been shown to be able to be defeated by 20th century style weaponry such as small arms and things like Mortars in GW published fluff, even if they're highly resistant to it. In no depiction is something like Power Armor invulnerable to anti-tank weapons, heavy artillery, crew served heavy weapons, etc. Against top-tier 21st century armies,Space Marines wouldn't do very well at all. Sure, they're impressive infantry, but ultimately they're still infantry, and absurdly few in number to boot.
Psienesis wrote: All of the above have the ability to destroy us from orbit. We have no technologies to counter that. We lose.
And yet such is rarely used in the 40k universe. Besides, it's not like Earth doesn't have several thousand nuclear armed missiles capable of striking into orbit.
I'd say Chaos would destroy most liberal democracies in short order. By the time we get hit by a black crusade, half the planet has already given into the dark gods and the Chaos space marines and traitor guardsmen can land in areas devoured by warp storms while a large fraction of the military has forsaken our governments and joined the dark gods while Daemons constantly spew forth and lay waste to everything they see and constantly spread forth the inexorable corruption. Only the most hardnosed of authoritarian states would mobilize to stop the cults from becoming the most popular religion in their borders and thus start causing an explosion of daemons and defections to Chaos. (This would mean Earth's last hope would be nations like North Korea or Saudi Arabia while countries like Sweden and America would be swimming with Daemons and warp rifts)
Also, Earth's nuclear arsenal is incapable of reliably hitting a moving spaceship; or penetrating the void shields of something rated to withstand multiple teratons worth of energy from other space ships.
I do understand your point and that's true, 40k is nothing as a true military wargame. It has its uncoherencies and its specificities but it defines warfare in the 41st millenium. If GW says Titans are awesome, well, they are. And if GW says it takes 8000 tanks to beat a Titan Traitor Legion, well, it does. Long story short, there is no such thing as "it falls flat when forced into reality" because what reality are talking about? Yours?
You want to transpose 40k combat practices IRL and evaluate them against our NATO doctrines and standards. This is just using a 3k paradigm to traduce what you think you understand in 40k. That's why I was emphasizing on the "military system"; LR may be worst than Leclerc MBT but they are hundreds of thousands (quality comparisons is another overdiscussed debate) and there's a combat doctrine which make them work just like an unstoppable hammer. This is reality in 40k. This is what make the enemies of the Emperor die. You may argue that armoured operations of such scale are unrealistic (logistics, communications, coordination, whatever) but it's not the point we making here, we're discussing whether or not modern armies could beat the IG. Obviously, for strategic reasons, the answer is not.
I also think your greatly underestimate the quality of 40k weapon systems. To answer your question about tanks : Hammerheads, Falcon Tanks, Wave Serpents, Predators Annihilator, Land Raiders, Vanquishers and so on.
No matter they match M1 Abrams speed & precision or not, they are sufficiently effective in their operational system to crush anything we would send to them.
Regarding superheavies and stuff like this, it just the same reasoning; Nazi Germany did not have the industrial and technological know-how to build Baneblade. The Imperium has, and if GW says they can be built, sustained and deployed with awesome results on the battlefield, well, I guess we'd better never come accross them.
I do understand your point and that's true, 40k is nothing as a true military wargame. It has its uncoherencies and its specificities but it defines warfare in the 41st millenium. If GW says Titans are awesome, well, they are. And if GW says it takes 8000 tanks to beat a Titan Traitor Legion, well, it does. Long story short, there is no such thing as "it falls flat when forced into reality" because what reality are talking about? Yours?
My ultimate point is that comparing these things to any real world equivalents works only because of what precisely you already stated "just because GW said so". If you actually look at the weapons involved both in real life and in the 40k universe, the capabilities of real world forces, and posted stats and capabilities from GW and FW, it you start comparing it to the real world, the 40k universe falls apart very quickly.
Much the same as with Space Marines, there's simply not enough to be relevant on a galactic scale and taking casualties that resemble anything non-central characters take would have rendered them all extinct thousands of years before the 41st millenium. This stuff all works "just because", and cannot really be compared to the real world as such.
You want to transpose 40k combat practices IRL and evaluate them against our NATO doctrines and standards. This is just using a 3k paradigm to traduce what you think you understand in 40k. That's why I was emphasizing on the "military system"; LR may be worst than Leclerc MBT but they are hundreds of thousands (quality comparisons is another overdiscussed debate) and there's a combat doctrine which make them work just like an unstoppable hammer.
And there's hundreds of thousands of tanks on earth that could merely match something like an LRBT even if it's not as advanced as top end NATO armor. Hell, there's 100,000 T55's alone rolling around. What scale of engagement are we talking about as well? Are we assuming a thousands of Imperial Guard regiments are being deployed, or a single Space Marine Chapter?
I mean, you can always make the quantity over quality argument, but we have to establish that we're talking about that sort of scale to begin with.
This is reality in 40k. This is what make the enemies of the Emperor die. You may argue that armoured operations of such scale are unrealistic (logistics, communications, coordination, whatever) but it's not the point we making here, we're discussing whether or not modern armies could beat the IG. Obviously, for strategic reasons, the answer is not.
If you want to resort to the full might of the Imperium or the like, sure, and I mentioned as much in a previous post (though used Tyranids as an example), but then that's just a matter of scale rather than a comparison of forces or capabilities and at that point anything can be explained away. If we're talking something on the scale of most of the factions in question however, such as Eldar, Space Marines, and the like, things would be very different.
I also think your greatly underestimate the quality of 40k weapon systems. To answer your question about tanks : Hammerheads, Falcon Tanks, Wave Serpents, Predators Annihilator, Land Raiders, Vanquishers and so on.
We actually have some hard stats on some of these vehicles. Predators can be harmed by 40k weapons which are no different than WW2 counterparts (anti-tank grenades, autocannons, etc). Likewise, FW has posted speed and armor values for many of these vehicles in Imperial Armour, and most cannot attain the same speeds as modern MBT's and have nothing near the armor. Using weapons that have real world equivalents in 40k that have been shown in both fluff and game to be capable of engaging a Predator (again, things like anti-tank grenades, autocannons, etc), coupled with FW's posted values for armor, a Predator would be equivalent to a mid 40's-early 60's tank in terms of armor protection effectiveness.
Something like a Leman Russ has a problem simply structurally. It's a cartoony steam punk tank based on early WW2 design principles. With the position of the turret hatch on a Leman Russ, it'd be impossible to use because the tank's gun breach would be taking up the entire space beneath it (and, amusingly enough, the one cutaway we've got of a Leman Russ from FW shows exactly this...) and there's no room for two other critical crew members to boot (gunner and loader). The tank just physically does not work. Also, much like something like a Land Raider, the thing has no suspension (and a Land Raider could very easily get stuck on even a parking lot speed bump with its almost complete lack of ground clearance)
Meanwhile, we've got something like a Falcon or Hammerhead, that have very large, open and exposed unarmored engine parts on the front of the vehicle that would be rather easy for real world tank crews to hit and defeat the armor entirely.
No matter they match M1 Abrams speed & precision or not, they are sufficiently effective in their operational system to crush anything we would send to them.
Only within the realm of a fantasy setting.
Regarding superheavies and stuff like this, it just the same reasoning; Nazi Germany did not have the industrial and technological know-how to build Baneblade. The Imperium has, and if GW says they can be built, sustained and deployed with awesome results on the battlefield, well, I guess we'd better never come accross them.
The Nazi's did make absolutely gigantic war machines. Cannons like Dora and the like. The problem isn't building them, it's the logistical support trail requires absurd over-investment and that they have tremendous difficulty moving from place to place (oh man, there's a river in the way and we're too heavy to use any bridge...), and they're simply so big that they're very easily spotted and very easily engaged with very heavy weapons like aircraft dropped munitions and heavy artillery before they can get anywhere, and are hard to miss to boot. Same reason the Battleship went out of style, smaller craft like airplanes and submarines were all capable of carrying munitions that could destroy them well before a Battleship could bring its big guns to bear against anything.
I'd say Chaos would destroy most liberal democracies in short order. By the time we get hit by a black crusade, half the planet has already given into the dark gods and the Chaos space marines and traitor guardsmen can land in areas devoured by warp storms while a large fraction of the military has forsaken our governments and joined the dark gods while Daemons constantly spew forth and lay waste to everything they see and constantly spread forth the inexorable corruption. Only the most hardnosed of authoritarian states would mobilize to stop the cults from becoming the most popular religion in their borders and thus start causing an explosion of daemons and defections to Chaos. (This would mean Earth's last hope would be nations like North Korea or Saudi Arabia while countries like Sweden and America would be swimming with Daemons and warp rifts)
Also, Earth's nuclear arsenal is incapable of reliably hitting a moving spaceship; or penetrating the void shields of something rated to withstand multiple teratons worth of energy from other space ships.
Something like Chaos likely would stand the best chance, simply because it's not fighting directly militarily, but essentially "infecting" the population and destroying the social and economic functioning of civilization, causing it to collapse.
The reason you don't hear about orbital bombardment much is because it makes for a very, very short story:
The End of Dabbabon VII wrote:
The Imperial World of Dabbabon VII had declared itself separate from the Imperium, refused to pay its tithe, and had killed the Administratum officials that had come to collect it. A week later, Battlegroup XIX of Battlefleet Scarus arrived, lead by the venerable Vindicator of Faith, an Armageddon-class battlecruiser, escorted by three Dauntless-class Light Cruisers, the Hysperon, the Sword of Vengeance and the Dybel's Fury. As Dabbabon was not a naval shipyard, it had only a single Overseer-class space station, primarily for long-range auspex, control of in-system traffic and token defense. Nine hours after the battlegroup arrived in-system, the space station was a smoldering ruin, and the battlegroup took up positions in orbit, commencing forthwith its bombardment of Dabbabon's cities and military structures with lance batters and macrocannons.
Forty-eight hours later, the world was afire, its cities smoking craters and its population fled to the wastelands or dead. Satisfied that the message had been delivered, Lord Captain Rasme Garvin of the Vindicator of Faith gave the order for the battlegroup to break orbit and return to its usual patrol route. A coded dispatch to the Inquisitorial Conclave of the sub-sector's capital informed them that the task was complete.
Kain wrote: What the quote didn't mention is how much of the world's defenses would be crippled and sabotaged by genestealer cultist infiltration. Everything from strategic arsenals, to the generalship to our very political, religious, cultural, and scientific circles. You'd see things like the American senate enacting ordinances to cripple America's military years before the invasion begins before leading millions into digestion pools to die while the few remaining nuclear subs, silos, and bombers to survive the gutting of the armed forces are taken out by sudden mutiny and men in economically high places taking the steps needed to crash the economy into deep recessions and depressions. Many countries would collapse into civil war at the behest of the cult as it spreads all across the world; crawling its way up the ladder of command while modern society; not being built with the expectation of literal mind control and genetic subversion, ambles along largely unaware of the rot building within. By the time the hive fleet arrives, the world is a genestealer corrupted shell of its former self as the cult welcomes the end of the world in open arms and arises all at once to pave the way for the swarm.
so....what you're saying is that here in the U.S., The senate and Obama are actually genestealers.
BlaxicanX wrote: Modern military would wipe it's ass with Sisters of Battle in a ground war.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
you're assuming our weapons could penatrate marine armor.
bad assumption to make
Not an unreasonable assumption. Even if for some reason, handwavium prevents our weapons from penetrating it.... we can still kill the marine inside the armour. High explosive detonations would create spalling inside the armour which would kill the marine and even if again, handwavium protects the armour from spalling effects.. the concussive forces would liquify the marine inside of his armour.
It would not matter whom we would fight. The outcome would be the same in all cases:
We would be completely massacred without even putting up a bit of a fight, against most not even killing a single enemy.
Most factions would just nuke us from orbit, except for Tyranids, Orks and maybe Chaos, who would come down to have some fun. Against the Tyranids we could only put up the weakest of resistance. On the 40k scale tech level we are barely above a feudal world, and the Tyranids have stripped worlds 100 times more advanced than us of all live without even really trying.
The same goes for the Orks, our basic weapons would not even be able to hurt them, let alone the CSM, which would be like facing an army of highly elusive MBTs with agility and reflexes far better than that of an infantryman. Only anti-tank weapons could hurt a CSM, but they are too fast to be hit by an RPG or the like.
And than there is of course also the morale that would completely be gone when facing enemies such as Chaos or Tyranids.
The best enemy would probably be the Harlequins, as there might not be enough of them to completely destroy us.
Psienesis wrote: The reason you don't hear about orbital bombardment much is because it makes for a very, very short story:
The End of Dabbabon VII wrote:
The Imperial World of Dabbabon VII had declared itself separate from the Imperium, refused to pay its tithe, and had killed the Administratum officials that had come to collect it. A week later, Battlegroup XIX of Battlefleet Scarus arrived, lead by the venerable Vindicator of Faith, an Armageddon-class battlecruiser, escorted by three Dauntless-class Light Cruisers, the Hysperon, the Sword of Vengeance and the Dybel's Fury. As Dabbabon was not a naval shipyard, it had only a single Overseer-class space station, primarily for long-range auspex, control of in-system traffic and token defense. Nine hours after the battlegroup arrived in-system, the space station was a smoldering ruin, and the battlegroup took up positions in orbit, commencing forthwith its bombardment of Dabbabon's cities and military structures with lance batters and macrocannons.
Forty-eight hours later, the world was afire, its cities smoking craters and its population fled to the wastelands or dead. Satisfied that the message had been delivered, Lord Captain Rasme Garvin of the Vindicator of Faith gave the order for the battlegroup to break orbit and return to its usual patrol route. A coded dispatch to the Inquisitorial Conclave of the sub-sector's capital informed them that the task was complete.
The end.
It is important to bear in mind here that in the 40K paradigm space power is not the be all and end all of warfare.
In particular, with reference to the BFG rulebook, the average planetary defense laser silo packs almost as much firepower as the broadside of a Gothic cruiser, with greater range than the Gothic. Likewise, the average planetary defense missile silo has the launch capacity of a full cruiser, and the average planetary defense air base has enough short range aerospace fighters and bombers to match a Dictator cruiser.
we can see the defenses of each hive on Armageddon comprised at least 4 air bases, 8 missile silos, and 8 laser silos. That kind of firepower would be enough to shred your average navy frigate, and even your average cruiser, if they tried to bombard the hive. Even if one takes Armageddon to be a more heavily defended than usual hive world, it still gives a rough gauge of the defenses a typical hive might have, which still is likely to overpower most spaceships.
So in that above scenario, the leader of that patrol group risks being executed after his cruisers sustain disproportionate damage attempting to bombard defended cities that return fire with ground to orbit weaponry. Assuming he doesn't get executed for losing ships or taking crippling damage, the leader of that group also risks being executed for knocking out the economic potential of the world for decades or centuries to come, and creating a drain on the rest of the sector.
There is a reason Exterminatus and bombardment is not used as a first line response to every little rebellion or invasion. The reason is that land and infrastructure is expensive in both cost and time to build, whereas human life is cheap in 40K.
Of course all of this might not be moot anyway. After all...Earth could be a lost world in the Imperium and the Space Marines just haven't come back yet.
Khonsu wrote: I like how you guys treat Astartes as if they're just going to stand around and let themselves be butchered, If you actually think a Space Marine would let himself get into a position of extreme disadvantage against us like that you have no Idea what Space Marines are.
BS.
Your average Space Marines are, by nature and by training, pure shock and awe troops. Sure, they may have been trained extensively in stealth warfare as young men, but Power Armor is far too loud and bulky to allow for such operations.
Harlequins are the nicest thing to fight, followed by Craftworld Eldar. it's not a question of "winning"; both of these forces (Harlequins especially) are likely to appear only to kill a handful of people before disappearing again, their "invasion" lasting maybe half an hour. We'd never know what the aliens were or why they killed those people, but that is preferable to the alternative.
Unless a Craftworld were to claim Earth as one of their lost Maiden Worlds, in which case they may decide to remove the trespassers by force.
Thing is you are thinking of this in ground war terms only. As long as spacecraft aren't in the equation, the United States alone has enough superior aircraft from the 70s that'd wipe the floor with anything the Imperium by itself can offer.
For example to translate into 40K a old fighter like say the F-14 Tomcat, you are looking at a 11/11/10 flyer, with up to 10 S8 Sparrow missiles able to fire up to 6 at 6 different targets while MOVING FLAT OUT. And BS in the 4-5 range just to be fair.
Or an A-10 Warthog, that's a 13/13/12 at minimum, with at least a punisher equivalent gun probably with 2d6 armor pen on each shot, Plus 11 hardpoints for rocket pods, bombs, laser guided missiles, etc. And can fire it while flat outing.
Tau might be the only ones that could hit them in an air battle.
Biggest problems a modern military would have is dealing with daemons, psychic powers, and the higher end defensive abilities like void shields.
Even in a ground battle the MBT of the US army the M1A1 Abrams is a Fast version of a Predator with a gun that's probably S7, Ap3 2d6 armor pen.
Real life physic kicks in, everything from 40k stops working, anything SM simply dies because of the completely wrong biology, so do 'Nids. Earth force bayonet the survivors and dance on their graves. Then we go back to punching eachother in the face with bullets.
the capabilities of real world forces, and posted stats and capabilities from GW and FW
I am convinced that raw arms system capabilities have a limited influence over the final outcome of a war. A Predator may be inferior according to IA, but the way it is used by a SM chapter will probably overwhelm our militaries. I mean, when an armoured batallion can be dropped by a thunderhawk anywhere on the battlefield while drop pods are crushing everything around, your technology will be out of topic. It’s always the same song
Hell, there's 100,000 T55's alone rolling around. What scale of engagement are we talking about as well? Are we assuming a thousands of Imperial Guard regiments are being deployed, or a single Space Marine Chapter?
You’re talking about scale, but you just can’t imagine a war against the Imperium without taking this in account. War is not just “my tanks have AV13 and a 50km/h speed, yours AV11and 25km/h. You loose”. Comparing a LR and a M1 and saying “we beat them because our tank is better” has strictly no sense, it’s just out of context. Go tell to Model and Von Paulus how having better tanks is the key to win a full scale war. Joukov and consorts will probably laugh at this (not only because their T-34 were inferior but because their understanding of strategic and operational stages were also way better than their German counterparts’). Plus SM chapter never operate alone, they will always be backed by IG attrition forces.
I mean, you can always make the quantity over quality argument, but we have to establish that we're talking about that sort of scale to begin with.
You have to make this argument to be relevant in a situation of full scale war. Anyway, the US military is suffering from a technological fetichism in general, and ironically, it does not help it to win modern wars. I’m starting to think you may not be far from this kind of mindset.
If you want to resort to the full might of the Imperium or the like, sure, and I mentioned as much in a previous post (though used Tyranids as an example), but then that's just a matter of scale rather than a comparison of forces or capabilities and at that point anything can be explained away
And that’s why it’s a superior way to evaluate things. In social science, a theory replace another one when it is able to explain a greater number of cases.
We actually have some hard stats on some of these vehicles. Predators can be harmed by 40k weapons which are no different than WW2 counterparts (anti-tank grenades, autocannons, etc). Likewise, FW has posted speed and armor values for many of these vehicles in Imperial Armour, and most cannot attain the same speeds as modern MBT's and have nothing near the armor. Using weapons that have real world equivalents in 40k that have been shown in both fluff and game to be capable of engaging a Predator (again, things like anti-tank grenades, autocannons, etc), coupled with FW's posted values for armor, a Predator would be equivalent to a mid 40's-early 60's tank in terms of armor protection effectiveness.
I read IA but it’s the same arguments as above. Likewise, we have no idea of the IRL performance of an autocanon, nor of the material used to actually built Pedator armor. Perhaps it is way better than a Bradley main gun, perhaps it is supah-dupah-space metal able to withstand any attack but we’ll never know. And don’t say an AC fires at 48’’ (ridiculous range when you put it on the right scale), TT values are TT values and have nothing relevant in terms of military capabilities
Only within the realm of a fantasy setting.
That’s enough to conclude that we’ll be crushed.
The Nazi's did make absolutely gigantic war machines. Cannons like Dora and the like. The problem isn't building them, it's the logistical support trail requires absurd over-investment and that they have tremendous difficulty moving from place to place (oh man, there's a river in the way and we're too heavy to use any bridge...), and they're simply so big that they're very easily spotted and very easily engaged with very heavy weapons like aircraft dropped munitions and heavy artillery before they can get anywhere, and are hard to miss to boot. Same reason the Battleship went out of style, smaller craft like airplanes and submarines were all capable of carrying munitions that could destroy them well before a Battleship could bring its big guns to bear against anything.
You have a point here, and I think like you because I also know my military history. But GW said they’re awesome.
Bobthehero wrote: Real life physic kicks in, everything from 40k stops working, anything SM simply dies because of the completely wrong biology, so do 'Nids. Earth force bayonet the survivors and dance on their graves. Then we go back to punching eachother in the face with bullets.
There's no point to a debate unless you allow the other side to use its powers.
It's like discussing Superman vs Gurren Lagann but saying that Spiral Power doesn't exist in DC so nyah nyah.
Bobthehero wrote: Real life physic kicks in, everything from 40k stops working, anything SM simply dies because of the completely wrong biology, so do 'Nids. Earth force bayonet the survivors and dance on their graves. Then we go back to punching eachother in the face with bullets.
There's no point to a debate unless you allow the other side to use its powers.
It's like discussing Superman vs Gurren Lagann but saying that Spiral Power doesn't exist in DC so nyah nyah.
Exactly. It's fiction, we need to allow for what GW says should happen to happen. Even if all evidence says that Marines would be destroyed in a matter of seconds in our world, there is a reason why they still exist in 40k, so we need to use Ork logic and assume it works.
Exactly. It's fiction, we need to allow for what GW says should happen to happen. Even if all evidence says that Marines would be destroyed in a matter of seconds in our world, there is a reason why they still exist in 40k, so we need to use Ork logic and assume it works.
I really think that our best chance is fighting Tau.
I mean, orks do HUGE scale invasion, throwing rocks into the surface of the planet, reproducing by spore quickly, have nuclear and psy capacity, and above all, love to fight and won't withdraw.
Tau Empire, on the other hand, don't like to take casualities and fight almost like our armies, no huge scale invasion, no psyker, no indestructible Titan... In 40k, they win because of their tactics, which are basically modern warfare. I'm not saying they are easy o fight for our current Earth (battlesuit, technologies...) but I think it's the best scenario.
If we kill enough of them, they will withdraw, and as their main advantages are gone against us (tactics and innovation, as we aren't Imperium and we are still innovating new weapons), we have our chances.
Psienesis wrote: The reason you don't hear about orbital bombardment much is because it makes for a very, very short story:
The End of Dabbabon VII wrote:
The Imperial World of Dabbabon VII had declared itself separate from the Imperium, refused to pay its tithe, and had killed the Administratum officials that had come to collect it. A week later, Battlegroup XIX of Battlefleet Scarus arrived, lead by the venerable Vindicator of Faith, an Armageddon-class battlecruiser, escorted by three Dauntless-class Light Cruisers, the Hysperon, the Sword of Vengeance and the Dybel's Fury. As Dabbabon was not a naval shipyard, it had only a single Overseer-class space station, primarily for long-range auspex, control of in-system traffic and token defense. Nine hours after the battlegroup arrived in-system, the space station was a smoldering ruin, and the battlegroup took up positions in orbit, commencing forthwith its bombardment of Dabbabon's cities and military structures with lance batters and macrocannons.
Forty-eight hours later, the world was afire, its cities smoking craters and its population fled to the wastelands or dead. Satisfied that the message had been delivered, Lord Captain Rasme Garvin of the Vindicator of Faith gave the order for the battlegroup to break orbit and return to its usual patrol route. A coded dispatch to the Inquisitorial Conclave of the sub-sector's capital informed them that the task was complete.
The end.
It is important to bear in mind here that in the 40K paradigm space power is not the be all and end all of warfare.
In particular, with reference to the BFG rulebook, the average planetary defense laser silo packs almost as much firepower as the broadside of a Gothic cruiser, with greater range than the Gothic. Likewise, the average planetary defense missile silo has the launch capacity of a full cruiser, and the average planetary defense air base has enough short range aerospace fighters and bombers to match a Dictator cruiser.
we can see the defenses of each hive on Armageddon comprised at least 4 air bases, 8 missile silos, and 8 laser silos. That kind of firepower would be enough to shred your average navy frigate, and even your average cruiser, if they tried to bombard the hive. Even if one takes Armageddon to be a more heavily defended than usual hive world, it still gives a rough gauge of the defenses a typical hive might have, which still is likely to overpower most spaceships.
So in that above scenario, the leader of that patrol group risks being executed after his cruisers sustain disproportionate damage attempting to bombard defended cities that return fire with ground to orbit weaponry. Assuming he doesn't get executed for losing ships or taking crippling damage, the leader of that group also risks being executed for knocking out the economic potential of the world for decades or centuries to come, and creating a drain on the rest of the sector.
There is a reason Exterminatus and bombardment is not used as a first line response to every little rebellion or invasion. The reason is that land and infrastructure is expensive in both cost and time to build, whereas human life is cheap in 40K.
Since I wrote the story, the planet has no ground-based defenses against a fleet. It relied on the defenses of that space station, which are largely useless against a battlecruiser-class vessel. It has no ground lasers, no kill-sats, none of that. So the planet is pacified in a little over 2 days. Most importantly? We have none of that gak in M3. So it would take even less time.
Each race on that list could pull in soo much more numbers then what Earth has they'd be able to swarm with nothing but sticks and still eventually win by sheer overwhelming body count. Even the Eldar could pull far far far more numbers then present day Earth. But why even waste even the chance of a single life being lost to a primitive non space faring Earth? Orbital bombardment till everything is extinct and then move on. I assume the OP thinks there is something we have that they would want and wouldn't want to risk destroying it or sumfung and want to come invade with foot sloggers. I don't know, I doubt we have anything of concern that can't be found many times elsewhere in the Galaxy. Blow the planet and move on.
I like to think modern Earth could deal with any power-armoured army. I don't really agree with the idea that a squad, or even a company, of Marines can conquer a planet. Planets are big, and ours has lots of ways to destroy things. I see Marines more as shock troops. Even if each Marine is a walking tank...we have lots of ways to knock out tanks, and 1000 men is not a lot. And if a random Grot or insane cultist with an autogun can put a lucky bullet through the lens of a Marine's helmet I'm sure an A-10 Warthog (to pick an example everyone knows, military types might be able to provide more modern examples) could make a mess of power armour.
IG? We'd probably do quite well again. Most IG weapons and vehicles don't seem that far beyond 20th century technology (depends on the author as usual), and it seems a lot of regiments use the kind of tactics we stopped using around 1918. If it's a more forward thinking regiment that doesn't, for example, send huge crowds of troops forward on pain of death, it would be a closer call. Can flak armour stop a bullet?
Orks? An army that runs around in big crowds or riding ramshackle vehicles with little in the way of organisation would probably be the ideal enemy for modern forces. Even Gargants are just a very big, very slow target. Roks, however, would be a problem.
Yes. That's what it's designed to do. You do know that flak armor is a real thing, right?
Orks? An army that runs around in big crowds or riding ramshackle vehicles with little in the way of organisation would probably be the ideal enemy for modern forces.
Irregular forces seem to be the least-easily-defeated forces by modern militaries, looking at the past 50 years or so. Of course, Orks don't blend in to a human population at all, so there's that.
There are not enough bullets, bombs or missiles on the planet to stop a Tyranid invasion.
Since I wrote the story, the planet has no ground-based defenses against a fleet. It relied on the defenses of that space station, which are largely useless against a battlecruiser-class vessel. It has no ground lasers, no kill-sats, none of that. So the planet is pacified in a little over 2 days. Most importantly? We have none of that gak in M3. So it would take even less time.
That is not pacified. That is destroying anything of value on the planet and rendering it of no gain to the Imperium. That is precisely why a ground invasion is launched in the first place, because the Imperium wants worlds and their resources, not a bombed out cinder of no value.
People get all mesmerized by bombardment or Exterminatus as if destroying a world were the sole objective, but the Imperium only uses these methods when a world is deemed lost beyond hope of recovery and there is pressing need to deny it to the enemy. Earth is neither of those for the Imperium.
Not exactly. Fluff-wise, the standard lasgun/autogun isn't penetrating PA regularly at all, and only when you have a lot of people (as in, an entire Company) focusing on one guy who isn't bothering to use cover... and we have no real idea what caliber the autoguns of M40 use, or even what the rounds are made of (perhaps tungsten-nylon penetrators are standard? DPU? Who knows?), and from that extrapolating a lasgun's equivalent stopping power is likewise difficult.
The standard light rounds issued to most modern military armies may be all but entirely ineffective against power armor. We're really not provided enough concrete evidence in the fluff to say for certain.
Yes. That's what it's designed to do. You do know that flak armor is a real thing, right?
I generally assume it to be low quality cheap rubbish compared to real-world body armour...but there's also probably lore that says the opposite. Even the Lexicanum article on flak armour isn't clear, saying that it is meant to absorb the majority of impact from a shot before saying it stands up poorly to a direct hit.
Nuclear weapons don't do much against Void Shields. Or the point-defense lasers of the various voidcruisers.
And, yes, we could win a very Pyrrhic victory (maybe) by nuking large swaths of the planet into oblivion... but since the opposing force came from "somewhere else", then that's a net loss for us, since the invading army can just go back to wherever they came from, and we can't.
It's also erroneous to believe that the Imperium does not adapt to new enemies, tactics and the like. They most certainly do. This is why, for example, there's Preferred Enemy traits, Tyrannic War Veterans, and so on and so forth, to represent such adaptation... in addition to the many varieties of, say, IG Regiments that specialize in one or another type of warfare. These "canon Regiments" are stand-ins for thousands of other Regiments across the Imperium with similar styles.
Yes. That's what it's designed to do. You do know that flak armor is a real thing, right?
I generally assume it to be low quality cheap rubbish compared to real-world body armour...but there's also probably lore that says the opposite. Even the Lexicanum article on flak armour isn't clear, saying that it is meant to absorb the majority of impact from a shot before saying it stands up poorly to a direct hit.
Please note that the lowly flak armor can withstand a heavy machine gun (heavy stubber) round. This is a feat most IRL military vehicles lack completely. Pound-to-pound, the IG flak armor should provide roughly the same level of protection as the armor on the Stryker APC.
Anyway, I would vote Tau. They are not humans, so the USA/Russia/China/EU wouldn't join them as soon as they touch ground (a possibility everyone in this thread has forgotten), and their army and tech is pretty 'meh' - it is better, but not beyond IRL comprehension. We could just reverse-engineer their stuff and get a win through numbers and the home turf advantage.
Psienesis wrote: Nuclear weapons don't do much against Void Shields. Or the point-defense lasers of the various voidcruisers.
And, yes, we could win a very Pyrrhic victory (maybe) by nuking large swaths of the planet into oblivion... but since the opposing force came from "somewhere else", then that's a net loss for us, since the invading army can just go back to wherever they came from, and we can't.
It's also erroneous to believe that the Imperium does not adapt to new enemies, tactics and the like. They most certainly do. This is why, for example, there's Preferred Enemy traits, Tyrannic War Veterans, and so on and so forth, to represent such adaptation... in addition to the many varieties of, say, IG Regiments that specialize in one or another type of warfare. These "canon Regiments" are stand-ins for thousands of other Regiments across the Imperium with similar styles.
BlaxicanX wrote: Modern military would wipe it's ass with Sisters of Battle in a ground war.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
you're assuming our weapons could penatrate marine armor.
bad assumption to make
Fluff says otherwise. Bolter rounds are only .75 caliber; what do you think an anti-tank hellfire missile fired from a drone would to a marine?
What drone?
Drones are only viable when you have complete air superiority and the enemy has no AA, otherwise they get shot down quickly.
A anti-tank missile could kill a Marine if it scores a direct hit. But we would run out of missiles and launch platforms long before we could even eliminate a single company. Marines don't just go stand in the open waiting for enemy airstrikes, they drop pod right into the enemy airbase and take it out.
Earth would be chanceless against Space Marines. In the fluff, we have small SM forces conquering worlds with tech that is far ahead of our current technology level. Modern Earth is rather primitive on a 40k scale.
Thing is you are thinking of this in ground war terms only. As long as spacecraft aren't in the equation, the United States alone has enough superior aircraft from the 70s that'd wipe the floor with anything the Imperium by itself can offer.
For example to translate into 40K a old fighter like say the F-14 Tomcat, you are looking at a 11/11/10 flyer, with up to 10 S8 Sparrow missiles able to fire up to 6 at 6 different targets while MOVING FLAT OUT. And BS in the 4-5 range just to be fair.
These are strict tactical considerations that may be true, but once again, at the operational & strategic stages, the Imperium would crush us. I think we should all stop saying “that IRL weapon system is better than its 40k counterpart then, we win the war”. War is not a rock/papers/scissors, and if the Imperium would have been beaten each time it would have encounter a more advanced independent human/xenos civilisation, it would have never span all over the Galaxy. I’m sure imperial archives are full of records telling how brave were defenders of planet X with their fancy technological stuff that take ages to be produce for a full scale war.
I like to think modern Earth could deal with any power-armoured army. I don't really agree with the idea that a squad, or even a company, of Marines can conquer a planet. Planets are big, and ours has lots of ways to destroy things. I see Marines more as shock troops. Even if each Marine is a walking tank...we have lots of ways to knock out tanks, and 1000 men is not a lot. And if a random Grot or insane cultist with an autogun can put a lucky bullet through the lens of a Marine's helmet I'm sure an A-10 Warthog (to pick an example everyone knows, military types might be able to provide more modern examples) could make a mess of power armour.
Marines NEVER operate alone in planetary invasion. They would be employed to destroy enemy’s most important nods I don’t think the US/NATO command infrastructure would resist the sudden strike of one or two SM chapters. Even though a hundred of thousands of our soldiers are defending these places, they woulds be wiped by orbital strikes and then Dreadnoughts, Terminator and Assault marines would be unleashed upon the few survivors. And don’t even think about calling air support or ground reinforcements; the air is full of spacejets fighters and your main forces are currently trying to survive the ungodly amount of ordnance the IG is throwing at them on the front line.
IG? We'd probably do quite well again. Most IG weapons and vehicles don't seem that far beyond 20th century technology (depends on the author as usual), and it seems a lot of regiments use the kind of tactics we stopped using around 1918. If it's a more forward thinking regiment that doesn't, for example, send huge crowds of troops forward on pain of death, it would be a closer call.
Perhaps we should also stop thinking of IG as a bunch of clowns in flak armor. Only conscripts recruited in time of great need are like this and they never take part in offensive operations like the invasion of Eerth would be. Other regiments like Cadian are the finest of what Humanity can produce and they would tread on us, with not a single feth given to losses. They are trained since childhood in totalitarian environments, their officiers are excelling in every type of warfare and they are backed by powerful psykers that would read in your commander’s mind. Some of them are actually treating their men like cannon fodder, but others are strategically brilliant; Myrondas Odon, Creed and consorts have nothing to be jealous to our commanders. I don’t see why NATO would stop an army that has successfully & almost simultaneously stopped Tyranids & Abbadon.
BlaxicanX wrote: Modern military would wipe it's ass with Sisters of Battle in a ground war.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
you're assuming our weapons could penatrate marine armor.
bad assumption to make
Fluff says otherwise. Bolter rounds are only .75 caliber; what do you think an anti-tank hellfire missile fired from a drone would to a marine?
What drone? Drones are only viable when you have complete air superiority and the enemy has no AA, otherwise they get shot down quickly. A anti-tank missile could kill a Marine if it scores a direct hit. But we would run out of missiles and launch platforms long before we could even eliminate a single company. Marines don't just go stand in the open waiting for enemy airstrikes, they drop pod right into the enemy airbase and take it out. Earth would be chanceless against Space Marines. In the fluff, we have small SM forces conquering worlds with tech that is far ahead of our current technology level. Modern Earth is rather primitive on a 40k scale.
We have more man-portable anti-tank rounds then there are marines in an entire chapter. We have more drones then there are marines with man-portable anti-air weaponry in an entire chapter.
Space Marines drop-podding down and killing "the head" only works in the 40K universe- in the real world, mankind wouldn't surrender because Obama got taken out by Space Marines- there are a million politicians and generals in the chain of command who are trained to command a war-effort in his absence.
The only way Space Marines could defeat modern Earth is with air/space assets, as we don't the technology to attack thunderhawks, battle-barges etc, but then that isn't "the Space Marines" winning the battle, it's basically them sitting in the back and watching their ships pummel us until there's nothing left. If Marines were dropped in say, Montana, and told to fight their way to the White House and capture it, they would never make it without orbital/thunderhawk bombardments paving the way.
Space Marines drop-podding down and killing "the head" only works in the 40K universe- in the real world, mankind wouldn't surrender because Obama got taken out by Space Marines- there are a million politicians and generals in the chain of command who are trained to take his place.The only way Space Marines could defeat modern Earth is with air/space assets, but then that isn't "the Space Marines" winning the battle, it's basically them sitting int he back and watching their ships pummel us until there's nothing left.
Yeah, sure, we would coherently face a full scale invasion without any hgher coordination. Full Spectrum Dominance is relying on heavy linkage between military units and perfect coordination of fires. When you electronic servers are taken down, your commanders are dead, and your satellites are off, I will be curious how you would resist.
Umm...to the people who are claiming that our technology is better than the Imperium, you have to be joking. I get that we are talking about taking a fictional setting and applying it to real world, so we all have to suspend reality for a moment. But, seriously, you seem to be conveniently forgetting that imperial tanks are not made out of steel. Even low grade ceramite is supposed to have significant heat and shock absorption qualities. We really do not have a great way of gauging the durability and strength of high quality ceramite, let alone adamantium. Our weapons are designed to penetrate known alloys, not the substances used in the 40k world where steel does indeed exist. To just assume that our guns could penetrate their defenses because our guns perform so well against our own defenses is significantly flawed logic.
Beyond that, we do not have lascannons, we do not have force field generators or void shields, we do not have the genetic engineering skills of the Astartes, etc. Titans may appear silly when you could just fire a missile at one...except that it would not penetrate its shields and even if it did, why is it safe to assume that it would penetrate its armor that is crafted from entirely unknown materials? They have vastly superior technology and to argue otherwise is just ludicrous (again, the conversation is already ludicrous so take that statement with a grain of salt). People have mentioned our nuclear arsenal. Ok...it is not as if the Imperium does not have the same technology, saying nothing of things such as viral bombs and the unrestricted chemical warfare that they would be more than willing to employ. Besides, if you nuke the planet then we are at an incredible disadvantage. Between their genetic engineering and experience fighting in such environments, they would have the upper hand.
To extend that statement to include Xenos tech...does anyone honestly think we have anything even remotely comparable to some of the more exotic weaponry that dissolves targets at the molecular level? Let's not get carried away with overestimating Earth's military forces or technology...
RazgrizOne wrote: Yeah, sure, we would coherently face a full scale invasion without any igher coordination. Full Spectrum Dominance is relying on heavy linkage between military units and perfect coordination of fires. When you electronic servers are taken down, your commanders are dead, and your satellites are off, I will be curious how you would resist.
It's almost as if you're not paying attention to the discussion.
Space Marines drop-podding down and killing "the head" only works in the 40K universe- in the real world, mankind wouldn't surrender because Obama got taken out by Space Marines- there are a million politicians and generals in the chain of command who are trained to command a war-effort in his absence.
This is wrong. Politicians want their power preserved, that's their No#1 objective. If they can't do this because the baddies can just pop up next to them and put mini-rockets into their bodies, then they will surrender, beg for mercy, and hope that their new conquerors won't mess up the established power structure. Politics 101.
Of course, this could only happen if they even try to fight. I think the chance for this is actually negligible. The world leaders would probably surrender without firing a single shot because submission is a billion times better option here than resistance.
BlaxicanX wrote: Modern military would wipe it's ass with Sisters of Battle in a ground war.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
you're assuming our weapons could penatrate marine armor.
bad assumption to make
Fluff says otherwise. Bolter rounds are only .75 caliber; what do you think an anti-tank hellfire missile fired from a drone would to a marine?
What drone? Drones are only viable when you have complete air superiority and the enemy has no AA, otherwise they get shot down quickly. A anti-tank missile could kill a Marine if it scores a direct hit. But we would run out of missiles and launch platforms long before we could even eliminate a single company. Marines don't just go stand in the open waiting for enemy airstrikes, they drop pod right into the enemy airbase and take it out. Earth would be chanceless against Space Marines. In the fluff, we have small SM forces conquering worlds with tech that is far ahead of our current technology level. Modern Earth is rather primitive on a 40k scale.
We have more man-portable anti-tank rounds then there are marines in an entire chapter. We have more drones then there are marines with man-portable anti-air weaponry in an entire chapter.
Space Marines drop-podding down and killing "the head" only works in the 40K universe- in the real world, mankind wouldn't surrender because Obama got taken out by Space Marines- there are a million politicians and generals in the chain of command who are trained to command a war-effort in his absence.
The only way Space Marines could defeat modern Earth is with air/space assets, as we don't the technology to attack thunderhawks, battle-barges etc, but then that isn't "the Space Marines" winning the battle, it's basically them sitting in the back and watching their ships pummel us until there's nothing left. If Marines were dropped in say, Montana, and told to fight their way to the White House and capture it, they would never make it without orbital/thunderhawk bombardments paving the way.
Mankind would not surrender after Obama was killed, yes. But would mankind surrender after an entire Space Marines Chapter drops into New York City, massacres the population and gets out before army units are mobilised enough to put up an organised defence? We have enough drones and missiles to kill an entire Space Marine Chapter, yes. But would those still be any use after the Marines have dropped in and destroyed their base? Even if our weapons and armour were more advanced than those of the Space Marines, we would still lose because the Marines have a crucial advantage over us. Mobility. Mobility is far mor important in warfare than numbers or raw strenght. The Marines could strike wherever we are weak and get out before we can respond (modern armies are notoriously slow to do so, requiring days up to weeks or even months to set up an operation.) The war would be fought entirely on their terms. It would be a massacre.
BlaxicanX wrote: Modern military would wipe it's ass with Sisters of Battle in a ground war.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
you're assuming our weapons could penatrate marine armor.
bad assumption to make
Fluff says otherwise. Bolter rounds are only .75 caliber; what do you think an anti-tank hellfire missile fired from a drone would to a marine?
What drone?
Drones are only viable when you have complete air superiority and the enemy has no AA, otherwise they get shot down quickly.
A anti-tank missile could kill a Marine if it scores a direct hit. But we would run out of missiles and launch platforms long before we could even eliminate a single company. Marines don't just go stand in the open waiting for enemy airstrikes, they drop pod right into the enemy airbase and take it out.
Earth would be chanceless against Space Marines. In the fluff, we have small SM forces conquering worlds with tech that is far ahead of our current technology level. Modern Earth is rather primitive on a 40k scale.
We have more man-portable anti-tank rounds then there are marines in an entire chapter. We have more drones then there are marines with man-portable anti-air weaponry in an entire chapter.
Space Marines drop-podding down and killing "the head" only works in the 40K universe- in the real world, mankind wouldn't surrender because Obama got taken out by Space Marines- there are a million politicians and generals in the chain of command who are trained to command a war-effort in his absence.
The only way Space Marines could defeat modern Earth is with air/space assets, as we don't the technology to attack thunderhawks, battle-barges etc, but then that isn't "the Space Marines" winning the battle, it's basically them sitting in the back and watching their ships pummel us until there's nothing left. If Marines were dropped in say, Montana, and told to fight their way to the White House and capture it, they would never make it without orbital/thunderhawk bombardments paving the way.
Mankind would not surrender after Obama was killed, yes. But would mankind surrender after an entire Space Marines Chapter drops into New York City, massacres the population and gets out before army units are mobilised enough to put up an organised defence?
We have enough drones and missiles to kill an entire Space Marine Chapter, yes. But would those still be any use after the Marines have dropped in and destroyed their base?
Even if our weapons and armour were more advanced than those of the Space Marines, we would still lose because the Marines have a crucial advantage over us. Mobility. Mobility is far mor important in warfare than numbers or raw strenght. The Marines could strike wherever we are weak and get out before we can respond (modern armies are notoriously slow to do so, requiring days up to weeks or even months to set up an operation.) The war would be fought entirely on their terms. It would be a massacre.
Mankind would probably surrender after the eastern seaboard was left a flaming ruin by orbital bombardment, with another highly populated area probably getting glassed by multiple teratons worth of energy just to show they can do it again. Repeat this act of genocide until the remainder surrenders.
BlaxicanX wrote: Modern military would wipe it's ass with Sisters of Battle in a ground war.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
you're assuming our weapons could penatrate marine armor.
bad assumption to make
Fluff says otherwise. Bolter rounds are only .75 caliber; what do you think an anti-tank hellfire missile fired from a drone would to a marine?
What drone?
Drones are only viable when you have complete air superiority and the enemy has no AA, otherwise they get shot down quickly.
A anti-tank missile could kill a Marine if it scores a direct hit. But we would run out of missiles and launch platforms long before we could even eliminate a single company. Marines don't just go stand in the open waiting for enemy airstrikes, they drop pod right into the enemy airbase and take it out.
Earth would be chanceless against Space Marines. In the fluff, we have small SM forces conquering worlds with tech that is far ahead of our current technology level. Modern Earth is rather primitive on a 40k scale.
We have more man-portable anti-tank rounds then there are marines in an entire chapter. We have more drones then there are marines with man-portable anti-air weaponry in an entire chapter.
Space Marines drop-podding down and killing "the head" only works in the 40K universe- in the real world, mankind wouldn't surrender because Obama got taken out by Space Marines- there are a million politicians and generals in the chain of command who are trained to command a war-effort in his absence.
The only way Space Marines could defeat modern Earth is with air/space assets, as we don't the technology to attack thunderhawks, battle-barges etc, but then that isn't "the Space Marines" winning the battle, it's basically them sitting in the back and watching their ships pummel us until there's nothing left. If Marines were dropped in say, Montana, and told to fight their way to the White House and capture it, they would never make it without orbital/thunderhawk bombardments paving the way.
Mankind would not surrender after Obama was killed, yes. But would mankind surrender after an entire Space Marines Chapter drops into New York City, massacres the population and gets out before army units are mobilised enough to put up an organised defence?
We have enough drones and missiles to kill an entire Space Marine Chapter, yes. But would those still be any use after the Marines have dropped in and destroyed their base?
Even if our weapons and armour were more advanced than those of the Space Marines, we would still lose because the Marines have a crucial advantage over us. Mobility. Mobility is far mor important in warfare than numbers or raw strenght. The Marines could strike wherever we are weak and get out before we can respond (modern armies are notoriously slow to do so, requiring days up to weeks or even months to set up an operation.) The war would be fought entirely on their terms. It would be a massacre.
Mankind would probably surrender after the eastern seaboard was left a flaming ruin by orbital bombardment, with another highly populated area probably getting glassed by multiple teratons worth of energy just to show they can do it again. Repeat this act of genocide until the remainder surrenders.
I have to disagree with your last statement; modern armies aren't bad with mobility: I don't know for your country, but French army (I mean, a part of it, I don't remember how many soldiers/tanks) can be moved nearly anywhere in 48h on this planet. As America has a lot more planes, boat and bases all over the world, I don't think it's hard to go from a point A to a point B quickly .
I'm picking Tau because modern military wouldn't stand a chance in hell against any faction from 40k. It would just be a series of short battles followed by quick surrender/extermination.
The Tau are precise enough that civilian casualties would be minimized, and because of the "greater good" doctrine they'd probably let us keep most of our culture and join their empire. With Chaos, Orcs, Necron, etc. the population of Earth would be buthered, and with any Imperial faction we'd be forced to follow the Imperial Cult and there'd be mass killings to eradicate all other religions from our planet.
Religion is EXACTLY why the Imperium would have to kill almost every last soul on Earth. There is no way in hell any nation rolls over, even in the Marines iced every world leader it would not force a surrender. If anything it'd have the direct opposite result, forging the planet into a united front against the threat.
Not to mention people are assuming Marines COULD drop into a city like New York AND get out. Those pods drop and stay there. And those Thunderhawks, Stormravens, Valks, Vendettas, etc. that COULD evac would be getting blown apart by the handfuls by YF-22s, Su-47s, etc. (As I said before the aircraft from the 70s are better then the Imperium's offerings.) that the Imperium's amazingly backwards sensors wouldn't even be able to lock onto or SEE. It'd be a massacre for the Space Marines. And even the IG can't win an air battle, and our ground vehicles are generally faster and more maneuverable.
A Chimera is a slug compared to even a Bradley or Striker. And a Bradley has comparable firepower to the Chimera.
The only advantage is the orbital bombardments which if we are assuming they are here to take offer would not be used.
The worst match up for humanity is Chaos Daemons and CSM. As those two can play on our more fractious nature, and only attack after they have corrupted several high ranking officials. I.E. they'd make us kill ourselves and then pick off the remnants.
But anything that just shows up on our doorstep and tries to go full invasion is going to get hurt badly.
Yes. That's what it's designed to do. You do know that flak armor is a real thing, right?
I generally assume it to be low quality cheap rubbish compared to real-world body armour...but there's also probably lore that says the opposite. Even the Lexicanum article on flak armour isn't clear, saying that it is meant to absorb the majority of impact from a shot before saying it stands up poorly to a direct hit.
Please note that the lowly flak armor can withstand a heavy machine gun (heavy stubber) round. This is a feat most IRL military vehicles lack completely. Pound-to-pound, the IG flak armor should provide roughly the same level of protection as the armor on the Stryker APC.
Anyway, I would vote Tau. They are not humans, so the USA/Russia/China/EU wouldn't join them as soon as they touch ground (a possibility everyone in this thread has forgotten), and their army and tech is pretty 'meh' - it is better, but not beyond IRL comprehension. We could just reverse-engineer their stuff and get a win through numbers and the home turf advantage.
Outside of some of North America's natives, which nation has *ever* let someone else walk in and tell them what to do without a fight?
The big nations'd treat the Imperium the same way Chechnya treated Russia when it tried to throw its weight around.
On the other hand, Tau have a history of using advanced EMP tech to wreck Imperial forces on a battlefieldc level. (Farsight Enclave pg 20). Given that their tech works even on a LR battle tank, I'm pretty sure the Tau'd be capable of rendering entire earth tank divisions useless before they could make it to the battlefield. Remora drones would be able to strike Earth aircraft on the ground before they could make a response and be nigh-immune to counter-attack.
If you're wanting a model of what resistance to Tau rule would look like, Tibet is a good example. Earth would go from a primitive back-galaxy society to one with super-advanced technology. When the lot of the common people improves, resistance isn't as forthcoming.
I loathe this kind of question. The background of 40k has far too many writers without a idea of the way things work in the real world- which doesn't become a problem until you rely on them as your main source of evidence. One side is debating using things like actual physics, real weapons and their abilities, and the practice of war... while the other uses the unrealistic descriptions of sci-fi authors.
It's not anything that can really be answered "correctly", as one side is right simply because the authors of the universe state something to be true, and the other is right because of the application of a more realistic understanding.
And it's also not something that is wrong, and I'm not trying to insinuate one side to be smarter or anything, as my logic is telling me both are equally right.
That said, our military's could handle... probably no 40k armies. Size is essential here. One planet is nothing in the scale of the 40k universe. The United States has one of the largest military's on Earth, and we have around 2 and a quarter million soldiers, counting reserves, and all the different branches (and its dropping). Think about it, the Army is one of the largest branches and has a force of around 470,000 active duty members. That's it. I don't think there is a force in the 40k universe that comes even close to being as low as that. In fact, the Space Marines have theoretically TWO TIMES as many soldiers as the US Army active duty personnel. Then you think about the fact that there is only 7 Combat Arms branches, that number falls. Then you consider the tooth to tail ratio and other miscellaneous logistical problems and such. So we are down to much less than 100,000 soldiers that can take the field in either offensive or defensive operations (probably about half that number) in one of the largest ground army's in the world. Even if we had mind blowingly sophisticated and effective technology, we have absolutely no chance of winning anything but a small skirmish against any army in 40k.
And those Thunderhawks, Stormravens, Valks, Vendettas, etc. that COULD evac would be getting blown apart by the handfuls by YF-22s, Su-47s, etc. (As I said before the aircraft from the 70s are better then the Imperium's offerings.) that the Imperium's amazingly backwards sensors wouldn't even be able to lock onto or SEE. It'd be a massacre for the Space Marines. And even the IG can't win an air battle, and our ground vehicles are generally faster and more maneuverable.
Some of the Imperial aerial armada would certainly be shot down by those planes but after? The USAF of yours will scramble its 187 F-22, they would launch 250 missiles, return to base to refuel and get caught at ground by Elysian/SM/Orbital Strike/anything else. And it is certainly not the 2000 F-35 that would balance the war in the air, for the exact same reasons. Modern airbases are easy targets for an all-seing enemy coming from outer space; perhaps the first wave of Imperial fighters would be destroyed, but strategically, their better mobility and superior numbers will prevail. F-22 is an excellent tactical tool, nothing more, nothing less.
Needless to say, their stealth properties could probably countered by Imperial cruisers in space or whatever technology they have (don't forget the AdMech detain the secrets of the IA of the past, they know perfectly how to neutralize electronics since they are tasked withmakig sure the reemergence of any kind of computer would never happen). Stealth is not an automatic "I won"; even in our XXi° century, the stealth capabilities of the F-22 are getting more compromised with every day that goes by. Just like the Chinese/Russian Air Force will do, the Imperial Navy would rely on a far superior numbers and unavoidable waves of cheap missiles.
Imperial sensors are sometimes able to catch Eldar vessels in combat, I highly doubt Western technology will afraid them.
Problem is against Space Marines, 250 dead targets, with marines, dreads, vehicles etc. Wipes out chapters of equipment and man power. Guard a bit less so, But I just used the best example. A world invasion everything up an F-4 Phantom or Intruder is going to wreck the every loving hell out of the Imperium. And it's not just the USAF, Russia's Migs and SU-47, and the Euro craft like the Dasaults will be in the air, and British Harrier jump jets. Space Marines might take out one or two air bases or a carrier, but they'd have to do it via teleporter at best, cause they won't make it to the ground with drop pods or aircraft.
If it doesn't have void shields it burns.
Plus you are assuming the ship drops out of warp right over Earth. It CAN but the likely hood, with no astropath available, could dump a ship anywhere in the solar system and they'd have to advance with thrusters only, giving earth a lot of prep time.
Plus you are assuming the ship drops out of warp right over Earth. It CAN but the likely hood, with no astropath available, could dump a ship anywhere in the solar system and they'd have to advance with thrusters only, giving earth a lot of prep time.
Sounds you're mistaking Imperial strategists for dummies. They are used to plan planetary invasion, and just like I stated in my previous posts, they have already crushed many independant human civilisation, whether their technology was better or not. I see no reason why no Astropaths would be available.
Moreover, they are not stupid enough to waste their elite troops. Marines will never assault our defence without heavy preparation. Do you really think they will drop an entire chapter among hundreds of fighters? There are two things to wipe this out even before Marines pop out, they are called Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard. Marines are way too precious and NEVER operate alone in operations of such scales.
BlaxicanX wrote: Modern military would wipe it's ass with Sisters of Battle in a ground war.
For that matter, we'd likely do the same to a Marine chapter.
you're assuming our weapons could penatrate marine armor.
bad assumption to make
Fluff says otherwise. Bolter rounds are only .75 caliber; what do you think an anti-tank hellfire missile fired from a drone would to a marine?
What drone?
Drones are only viable when you have complete air superiority and the enemy has no AA, otherwise they get shot down quickly.
A anti-tank missile could kill a Marine if it scores a direct hit. But we would run out of missiles and launch platforms long before we could even eliminate a single company. Marines don't just go stand in the open waiting for enemy airstrikes, they drop pod right into the enemy airbase and take it out.
Earth would be chanceless against Space Marines. In the fluff, we have small SM forces conquering worlds with tech that is far ahead of our current technology level. Modern Earth is rather primitive on a 40k scale.
We have more man-portable anti-tank rounds then there are marines in an entire chapter. We have more drones then there are marines with man-portable anti-air weaponry in an entire chapter.
Space Marines drop-podding down and killing "the head" only works in the 40K universe- in the real world, mankind wouldn't surrender because Obama got taken out by Space Marines- there are a million politicians and generals in the chain of command who are trained to command a war-effort in his absence.
The only way Space Marines could defeat modern Earth is with air/space assets, as we don't the technology to attack thunderhawks, battle-barges etc, but then that isn't "the Space Marines" winning the battle, it's basically them sitting in the back and watching their ships pummel us until there's nothing left. If Marines were dropped in say, Montana, and told to fight their way to the White House and capture it, they would never make it without orbital/thunderhawk bombardments paving the way.
Mankind would not surrender after Obama was killed, yes. But would mankind surrender after an entire Space Marines Chapter drops into New York City, massacres the population and gets out before army units are mobilised enough to put up an organised defence?
We have enough drones and missiles to kill an entire Space Marine Chapter, yes. But would those still be any use after the Marines have dropped in and destroyed their base?
Even if our weapons and armour were more advanced than those of the Space Marines, we would still lose because the Marines have a crucial advantage over us. Mobility. Mobility is far mor important in warfare than numbers or raw strenght. The Marines could strike wherever we are weak and get out before we can respond (modern armies are notoriously slow to do so, requiring days up to weeks or even months to set up an operation.) The war would be fought entirely on their terms. It would be a massacre.
Mankind would probably surrender after the eastern seaboard was left a flaming ruin by orbital bombardment, with another highly populated area probably getting glassed by multiple teratons worth of energy just to show they can do it again. Repeat this act of genocide until the remainder surrenders.
I have to disagree with your last statement; modern armies aren't bad with mobility: I don't know for your country, but French army (I mean, a part of it, I don't remember how many soldiers/tanks) can be moved nearly anywhere in 48h on this planet. As America has a lot more planes, boat and bases all over the world, I don't think it's hard to go from a point A to a point B quickly .
A teraton detonation would cause so much ecological damage that it would cause agriculture the world over to collapse. You can't fight a war if your country's collapsing behind you and the only way to stop a Dinosaur killer level blast from slamming into your planet every hour on the hour is to give up and bow to the Emperor.
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KingmanHighborn wrote: Problem is against Space Marines, 250 dead targets, with marines, dreads, vehicles etc. Wipes out chapters of equipment and man power. Guard a bit less so, But I just used the best example. A world invasion everything up an F-4 Phantom or Intruder is going to wreck the every loving hell out of the Imperium. And it's not just the USAF, Russia's Migs and SU-47, and the Euro craft like the Dasaults will be in the air, and British Harrier jump jets. Space Marines might take out one or two air bases or a carrier, but they'd have to do it via teleporter at best, cause they won't make it to the ground with drop pods or aircraft.
If it doesn't have void shields it burns.
Plus you are assuming the ship drops out of warp right over Earth. It CAN but the likely hood, with no astropath available, could dump a ship anywhere in the solar system and they'd have to advance with thrusters only, giving earth a lot of prep time.
As someone who was in the Russian Army I can assure you the Earth has no defenses against a ship capable of shrugging off the dinosaur killer asteroid and dishing out dinosaur killer asteroid level blasts repeatedly. Just point at a country's most vital areas and blast it. Repeat until the world's ecosystem collapses or humanity surrenders. It's like the situation Japan faced at the end of world war 2. It might be able to fight America and make it bleed a million lives; but there's nothing it can do to stop America from dropping a nuke every few weeks and vaporizing a city. Only this time it's not a city but entire regions of the planet having chixilub sized craters being blasted into them and global environmental disruptions occuring after each full powered shot from a space ship that we can't even reach or even scratch the void shields of.
If none of them have orbital superiority, yet certain capabilities coming from it, such as even though they don't have a strike cruiser marines are allowed to deploy by drop pod still it would be interesting.
I have to say, if the dark elder in particular didn't have much in the name of air vehicles, they could be the easiest to handle maybe... The world would still end most likely, but if the DE are just hovering about on their readers, I have to guess that F-22's and the like could probably blow them out of the air currently.
I'd happen to guess that the same could happen with guard or marines in a ground war also, but if the marines have thunder hawks and the like in abundance, then it would be very different. Air to ground missiles should take a single marine out though, so you just go big on the air power.
Though, when they are dropping down and taking the air bases, then that tactic is out.
Subs with cruise missiles? Haha.
Tau, Necrons, elder, nids, chaos would wipe the floor with our world so fast it would be ridiculous, same goes for marines dropping down with a tech marine to hack, straight into the pentagon as well, control of all the US's nukes in probably under 10 minutes.... There will be no ground war.
Yes, there's not much hope to have facing the Imperium.
I'd happen to guess that the same could happen with guard or marines in a ground war also, but if the marines have thunder hawks and the like in abundance, then it would be very different. Air to ground missiles should take a single marine out though, so you just go big on the air power.
Even with guided ammo like GBU or Hellfire, that would not be a very cost-effective way to defeat the whole Imperial Forces. We would have to save this kind of ordnance for bigger stuff like Russes and LR, letting regular marines facing smaller weapons on the ground. And when our air superiority is over, well, we're fethed even harder.
Don't try to withstand the full might of the Hammer of the Emperor for bowing before him shall save your day
Outside of some of North America's natives, which nation has *ever* let someone else walk in and tell them what to do without a fight?
Any that had the chance to do so of course. That's the whole colonialism era plus some. India, China, half the mini-nations in the Prussian and Italian Unification Wars, and so on and so forth. Hell, if you want a recent example, then Crimea.
Also, it is worth noting that every time a nation resisted, they had:
- Backing from another, more powerful nation or nations.
- A chance in the long run to succeed.
Earth would have neither against the Imperium.
I don't say that Earth would surrender without any fight, just that the nations wouldn't fight. Maybe a general or two would turn renegade and attack the new governance, but they would be put down by other Earth forces supported by Imperial assets.
If you're wanting a model of what resistance to Tau rule would look like, Tibet is a good example. Earth would go from a primitive back-galaxy society to one with super-advanced technology. When the lot of the common people improves, resistance isn't as forthcoming.
More like Afghanistan vs USA. Yeah, that worked out just fine, didn't it ?
Da Stormlord wrote: This was a hard choice for me, so i posted it here to see what people say. I excluded imperial guard and Astartes from this one for obvious reasons..
There is a small chance to beat Orks depending on the technology level of the Orks and the intelligence of the warboss by that i mean maybe 10 %.
More like Afghanistan vs USA. Yeah, that worked out just fine, didn't it ?
Aye. Every conqueror has eventually decided that Afghanistan isn't worth the trouble keeping. You can take it just fine if you have the technology and troops, but there's nothing to fight over and no reason to really be there. Once you finally decide to cut your losses and go home the tribal warlord system is back in effect. It's a country where entire families have a guaranteed career watching this or that mountain pass for the local warlord, whoever that might be - pay them and they'll watch the pass for you too. They don't care who pays.
Earth would probably be the same kind of place for any 40K enemy who doesn't fall down dead due to biology (Tyranids). We'll take their pay, learn their stuff and then steal everything they brought. And on their ships (or webway, or whatever) their doom would come to them. Poor bastards.
Modern armies would probably want to fight against the Cult Mechanicus most. They're numbers are small, and the potential reward from even the smallest victory would be massive. More than any other opponent listed, the Cult Mechanicus' weapons would be the easiest to reverse-engineer, would could make the battle start lopsided against us, but would end with us gaining much closer battlefield-parity. Tyranids would be the worst to fight, since even just a few escaping bioforms from even a small engagement would devastate the planetary ecosystem and we'd probably still die. Orks are similarly disastrous, and we would gain very little technological edge as most of their weapons are held together by sheer Orky will.
However, from an "our world vs them" angle, the Tau would be the best to encounter, since we can try to use diplomacy, and thieves and criminals might succeed in stealing tech, getting us to a closer-to-even match. Those that survive the eventual Tau victory would at least survive with at least a modicum of a good life. All others would result in not only our loss, but our extinction or complete loss of humanity (as in the case of Chaos Space Marines).
Yarium wrote: Given the question "most WANT to fight";
Modern armies would probably want to fight against the Cult Mechanicus most. They're numbers are small, and the potential reward from even the smallest victory would be massive. More than any other opponent listed, the Cult Mechanicus' weapons would be the easiest to reverse-engineer, would could make the battle start lopsided against us, but would end with us gaining much closer battlefield-parity. Tyranids would be the worst to fight, since even just a few escaping bioforms from even a small engagement would devastate the planetary ecosystem and we'd probably still die. Orks are similarly disastrous, and we would gain very little technological edge as most of their weapons are held together by sheer Orky will.
However, from an "our world vs them" angle, the Tau would be the best to encounter, since we can try to use diplomacy, and thieves and criminals might succeed in stealing tech, getting us to a closer-to-even match. Those that survive the eventual Tau victory would at least survive with at least a modicum of a good life. All others would result in not only our loss, but our extinction or complete loss of humanity (as in the case of Chaos Space Marines).
Of course, they might be carrying the space-flu that wipes out the planetary population in a week, just like our own bacteria, germs and virii do to them.
Yarium wrote: Given the question "most WANT to fight";
Modern armies would probably want to fight against the Cult Mechanicus most. They're numbers are small, and the potential reward from even the smallest victory would be massive. More than any other opponent listed, the Cult Mechanicus' weapons would be the easiest to reverse-engineer, would could make the battle start lopsided against us, but would end with us gaining much closer battlefield-parity. Tyranids would be the worst to fight, since even just a few escaping bioforms from even a small engagement would devastate the planetary ecosystem and we'd probably still die. Orks are similarly disastrous, and we would gain very little technological edge as most of their weapons are held together by sheer Orky will.
However, from an "our world vs them" angle, the Tau would be the best to encounter, since we can try to use diplomacy, and thieves and criminals might succeed in stealing tech, getting us to a closer-to-even match. Those that survive the eventual Tau victory would at least survive with at least a modicum of a good life. All others would result in not only our loss, but our extinction or complete loss of humanity (as in the case of Chaos Space Marines).
Of course, they might be carrying the space-flu that wipes out the planetary population in a week, just like our own bacteria, germs and virii do to them.
Yarium wrote: Given the question "most WANT to fight";
Modern armies would probably want to fight against the Cult Mechanicus most. They're numbers are small, and the potential reward from even the smallest victory would be massive. More than any other opponent listed, the Cult Mechanicus' weapons would be the easiest to reverse-engineer, would could make the battle start lopsided against us, but would end with us gaining much closer battlefield-parity. Tyranids would be the worst to fight, since even just a few escaping bioforms from even a small engagement would devastate the planetary ecosystem and we'd probably still die. Orks are similarly disastrous, and we would gain very little technological edge as most of their weapons are held together by sheer Orky will.
However, from an "our world vs them" angle, the Tau would be the best to encounter, since we can try to use diplomacy, and thieves and criminals might succeed in stealing tech, getting us to a closer-to-even match. Those that survive the eventual Tau victory would at least survive with at least a modicum of a good life. All others would result in not only our loss, but our extinction or complete loss of humanity (as in the case of Chaos Space Marines).
Of course, they might be carrying the space-flu that wipes out the planetary population in a week, just like our own bacteria, germs and virii do to them.
Yarium wrote: Given the question "most WANT to fight";
Modern armies would probably want to fight against the Cult Mechanicus most. They're numbers are small, and the potential reward from even the smallest victory would be massive. More than any other opponent listed, the Cult Mechanicus' weapons would be the easiest to reverse-engineer, would could make the battle start lopsided against us, but would end with us gaining much closer battlefield-parity. Tyranids would be the worst to fight, since even just a few escaping bioforms from even a small engagement would devastate the planetary ecosystem and we'd probably still die. Orks are similarly disastrous, and we would gain very little technological edge as most of their weapons are held together by sheer Orky will.
However, from an "our world vs them" angle, the Tau would be the best to encounter, since we can try to use diplomacy, and thieves and criminals might succeed in stealing tech, getting us to a closer-to-even match. Those that survive the eventual Tau victory would at least survive with at least a modicum of a good life. All others would result in not only our loss, but our extinction or complete loss of humanity (as in the case of Chaos Space Marines).
Of course, they might be carrying the space-flu that wipes out the planetary population in a week, just like our own bacteria, germs and virii do to them.
Pathogenic viruses are species specific.
Are you calling War of the Worlds a lie?
The original book had the diseases killing the martians be bacteria.
It was the 2005 remake that changed it into viruses.
Talking about AdMech, I've seen somewhere they have a perfect knowledge of AI and digital stuff we currently love so much but oviously, they hide it deep inside their Martian crypts as they have forbidden this in the Imperium. For this reason, they would be able to IEM the feth out of computers and softwares and neutralize it in a minute. Such weapons would certainly make our military not want to fight them...
I've even stated this in my previous posts because I was sure of my info but can someone confirm/detail it further?
RazgrizOne wrote: Talking about AdMech, I've seen somewhere they have a perfect knowledge of AI and digital stuff we currently love so much but oviously, they hide it deep inside their Martian crypts as they have forbidden this in the Imperium. For this reason, they would be able to IEM the feth out of computers and softwares and neutralize it in a minute. Such weapons would certainly make our military not want to fight them...
I've even stated this in my previous posts because I was sure of my info but can someone confirm/detail it further?
Even if, there's a number of reasons why we wouldn't worry:
#1 - A lot of conventional weapons that don't need a computer chip.
#2 - They keep that information secret, which means they would only use it sparingly in the most dire circumstances - we wouldn't be worth the effort.
#3 - Again, without ready access to that knowledge, it may even be possible to reverse-use it on them!
KingmanHighborn wrote: Religion is EXACTLY why the Imperium would have to kill almost every last soul on Earth. There is no way in hell any nation rolls over, even in the Marines iced every world leader it would not force a surrender. If anything it'd have the direct opposite result, forging the planet into a united front against the threat.
Humans? United front? ... ...
Don't be so naive. We humans much prefer tearing each other apart rather than external threats. If anything, some of the world's nations will ally itself with the Imperial to defeat their rivals.
KingmanHighborn wrote: Not to mention people are assuming Marines COULD drop into a city like New York AND get out. Those pods drop and stay there. And those Thunderhawks, Stormravens, Valks, Vendettas, etc. that COULD evac would be getting blown apart by the handfuls by YF-22s, Su-47s, etc. (As I said before the aircraft from the 70s are better then the Imperium's offerings.) that the Imperium's amazingly backwards sensors wouldn't even be able to lock onto or SEE. It'd be a massacre for the Space Marines. And even the IG can't win an air battle, and our ground vehicles are generally faster and more maneuverable.
A Chimera is a slug compared to even a Bradley or Striker. And a Bradley has comparable firepower to the Chimera.
The only advantage is the orbital bombardments which if we are assuming they are here to take offer would not be used.
The Space Marines could drop into New York quite easily. It is not as if we are constantly tracking the skies for any possiblity that something from outer space drops right into the city. Even if they used Thunderhawks they could land and get out before quick reaction jets could be scrambled. And even if we could scramble them in time, we wouldn't fire. The military doesn't just fire on unidentified aircraft, especially not if they are UFO's from outer space. By the time we would have realised they are hostile, they would have already taken out our aircraft. Imperial aircraft successfully take on threats far greater than a Su-47, F-16 or whatever modern jet on a daily basis all across the galaxy. What makes you think our aircraft could defeat them if even the hyper-advanced stealthy Eldar aircraft can't do that?
Also, a Bradley has nothing even close to the firepower of a Chimera. Multilasers and lascannons would tear through any of our vehicles like a hot knife through butter.
KingmanHighborn wrote: But anything that just shows up on our doorstep and tries to go full invasion is going to get hurt badly.
Nyet. Apart from maybe Orks, but they actually think it is fun. Against Space Marines and CSM our only effective weapons would be expansive and heavy anti-vehicle weaponry not designed for taking out nimble infantry, or heavy explosives that would cause huge collateral damage (something we can't tolerate, but the Imperium can). Even against Eldar or IG our small arms would be ineffective.
KingmanHighborn wrote: Problem is against Space Marines, 250 dead targets, with marines, dreads, vehicles etc. Wipes out chapters of equipment and man power. Guard a bit less so, But I just used the best example. A world invasion everything up an F-4 Phantom or Intruder is going to wreck the every loving hell out of the Imperium. And it's not just the USAF, Russia's Migs and SU-47, and the Euro craft like the Dasaults will be in the air, and British Harrier jump jets. Space Marines might take out one or two air bases or a carrier, but they'd have to do it via teleporter at best, cause they won't make it to the ground with drop pods or aircraft.
If it doesn't have void shields it burns.
Plus you are assuming the ship drops out of warp right over Earth. It CAN but the likely hood, with no astropath available, could dump a ship anywhere in the solar system and they'd have to advance with thrusters only, giving earth a lot of prep time.
Firstly, we would not know an invasion is coming because for obvious reasons we have no way to detect hostile spaceships. Even if they came at sublight speed it would be a total surprise until they enter orbit.
Secondly, all those aircraft amounts to only a few hundred aircraft at most. All of which have to return to base after a single attack run (which equals being destroyed thanks to Imperial bombardment and strike capabilities). Even if we assume every available modern military aircraft on earth will take down one Imperial fighter, they will not even put a dent in the Imperial fighting machine, a tiny scratch in the paint at most. Also, modern aircraft would not be able to intercept something travelling at the speed of a drop pod.
Thirdly, you have not read into 40k background enough. Imperial aircraft are not made of any material that is known to us today. It is quite a big thing to assume our weapons will even be effective against it. Imperial aircraft fight and are effective against threats far greater than 21st century jets. Why would we even be a threat? Due to the sparse and conflicting background on the subject, we also know next to nothing about the quality of Imperial sensors. Some background has Imperial vehicles with sensors capable of monitoring entire planets or continents, and locking onto Eldar aircraft without problem, while in other stories their sensors are on a WW2 level.
Now questions like this are always kinda useless because it involves a fictional universe operating under vastly different rules than our world, while we only have conflicting and incomplete information. Nonetheless, realistically after ten thousand years of technological advancement, Imperial technology should be to 21st Century technology like our technology is to that of the Stone Age.
Cult Mechanicus would be the easiest to fight? Uhm, ever heard of the Life-Eater virus? Or Cyclonic Torpedoes... Yeaaaaah, good bye Earth, while they go back to Mars.
By the way, Jesus comes back to life after being crucified, Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach, and Darth Vader is Luke's father.
How dare you...
If i had to choose, probably Eldar
Since they will probably lose since they are eldar.
But really because they will probably be the most accepting of an actual diplomatic resolution. maybe tau for the same reason.
Oh I can keep on going.
Zeus can't keep it in his pants and Hera gets jealous, the protagonist goes crazy at the end of Call of Cthulhu, and the Trix Rabbit doesn't get the Yoghurt.
Elysian Drop Troops. Simply because every piece of fluff about them has them coming in, achieving their objective, and getting wipeout before anything happens because their reinforcements don't arrive.
Seems like the perfect scenario. Sure, we take loses, but the rest of the Imperium never shows up, and we spend the rest of eternity wondering what the happened over that week.
A little sad to see orks being downplayed for the most part. Yes, other races can be much scarier, but a full blown WAAAAGH can devastate systems. Yes, an ork army can be subject to bombardments, but a in a head on fight, orks can take on fortifications made by the Iron Warriors (aka siege experts). The common soldier will have little hope of taking on an ork, which is very resilient and if a soldier manages to down an ork it will only draw more orks to him as they know their is good sport to be had there. Orks can also mass reproduce, and humanity probably won't figure out how to stop the spores until it's too late.
Not to mention the roks the orks will use to get onto the planet, which are devastating by themselves, especially if it lands on a capitol. Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair. One more factor is the WAAAAGH energy itself, it might incapitate humans. Space marines can struggle against its pure energy. Once again, to be fair, if humanity can get the orks to degrade to infighting, things will be simple, but orks like to unite against a common enemy, do they not? Sorry for the rant, I just was a little disappointed by the lack of orky support.
For the sake of the OP, I will say humanity would probably prefer to fight the tau, as diplomacy is pretty good and would be a nice upgrade to have an interplanetary government take care of debt, hunger, disease, etc with advanced tech, if the countries are willing to give up their freedoms to be led of course, but I have a feeling many countries will take the deal, especially if any country is willing to say no and be made an example of.
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?
IG are the equivalent of Navy Seals crossbread with Army Rangers.
Yeah, in 40k they are horde troops, but that is because that is the only way to stop a horde of deamons sometimes.
Farseer Anath'lan wrote: Elysian Drop Troops. Simply because every piece of fluff about them has them coming in, achieving their objective, and getting wipeout before anything happens because their reinforcements don't arrive.
Seems like the perfect scenario. Sure, we take loses, but the rest of the Imperium never shows up, and we spend the rest of eternity wondering what the happened over that week.
2BlackJack1 wrote: Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.
A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.
Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.
When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.
Chute82 wrote: haircut, and a clean shave. Let him go so he can report to his commanders what those darn Americans will do to them if they get captured.
2BlackJack1 wrote: Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.
A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.
I was just pointing out that a rok crashing into the Pacific would not be good for the orks as they can't just blind rush into a nearby enemy. The crash itself would be devastating, much like other large asteroids, but the orks would prefer a big boom and being able to get into melee right away, which they cannot do in the middle of the Pacific. (Unless they miraculously land close enough to a ship to board and loot, which they could use to get right up close to a port and have some fun).
Well just to give the Orks a further nudge. The Orks in Waaaaaagh! Ghazghkull have submersibles thanks to Orkimedes and they seemed pretty accurate with their Roks. He chose where the Roks were to land ahead of time including even the intentional annihalation of Hive City Hades by having a Rok land on it instead of getting into a long portracted fight with it like they did in their first invasion of Armageddon. But yeah the humans were curious as to why Roks were landing off the continants until suddenly one of the coastal hive cites got hit by submersibles that also brought in boyz.
Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?
Ratius wrote: Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?
You mean CSM rather than C:SM? Chaos unleashed on Earth would simply be hell on earth, literally. The Imperial Guard as it is struggles to fight them, and we would be pressed to fight the Guard either.
Ratius wrote: Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?
Well, the Necrons depends on the Dynasty.
If they're like the Maynarkhs and open up by juicing up the sun to make a solar storm that instantly fries everyone on the day side of the planet while crashing all our technology with a memetic signal; then yeah we're boned. Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating. Trazyn's dynasty wouldn't even cause that much damage;
he'd just teleport in with an army and just nab some loot and disappear before any resistance can be mounted.
Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.
Kain wrote: Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.
Basically, fells like another Christianity or Islam, but except this time the miracles are true and we are in for even more horrors.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kain wrote: By the way, Jesus comes back to life after being crucified
Silly story anyway, nobody cares. That was one hell of a Deus Ex.
Psienesis wrote: One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
You start with a caste that's bred to be diplomats for thousands of years that has made it its job, for the last 6,000 years, to quickly learn new languages.
The Water Caste going with the third sphere expansion probably know 15-20 variants of low Gothic each. Picking up a new one wouldn't be that hard at that point.
I'm sorry I don't understand the question. Shouldn't the answer beyond a doubt be that they "want" to fight none of them? If you meant "want" as in the easiest to defeat for them / least difficult to defeat then I'd say maybe Dark Eldar. a couple of RPG's and a good old fashioned machine gun could kill some space rapists and blow up their pirate ships/rape van.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
godardc wrote: I really think that our best chance is fighting Tau. I mean, orks do HUGE scale invasion, throwing rocks into the surface of the planet, reproducing by spore quickly, have nuclear and psy capacity, and above all, love to fight and won't withdraw. Tau Empire, on the other hand, don't like to take casualities and fight almost like our armies, no huge scale invasion, no psyker, no indestructible Titan... In 40k, they win because of their tactics, which are basically modern warfare. I'm not saying they are easy o fight for our current Earth (battlesuit, technologies...) but I think it's the best scenario. If we kill enough of them, they will withdraw, and as their main advantages are gone against us (tactics and innovation, as we aren't Imperium and we are still innovating new weapons), we have our chances.
You forgot one thing aside from the insane power of their weapons they do have a ton of ways to IGNORE COVER. Any strategy we use wouldn't be too useful with the combined power, accuracy, and ability to ignore cover thanks to their more advanced tech. You say we are the same in that we rely on tactics. Well then even with the same exact tactics and ability to innovate, better more advanced equipment would win every time. Movies are dramatizations and often assume that the aliens aren't tactically savvy and often underestimate their foes. The Tau wouldn't have this issue since they have dealt with Orks and their flying rodent gak insane "tactics" and "strategy" for generations. As a side note have you heard of the Barracuda tau fighter craft? Our planes would never win so air superiority is out as well plus their tanks can fly so we done screwed.
PS Tau are always advancing and researching new tech too so under the generous assumption that we both "innovate" at the same rate that still gives us a net gain of zero.
PS If bolter shells which are literally miniature grenades can't easily penetrate the armor of their basic infantry, why would a modern day gun be able to? Even if us humans shifted to a completely war driven production globally we couldn't compete. The entire Imperium is not unlike WW2 era America in terms of its production directed mainly towards war. The main difference being that the Imperium has the production of multiple star systems of planets. Also read about the outset of the Third Sphere expansion. A hive city is considerably more difficult to overtake in both population and output than our planet and this one was fortified and waiting for the Tau to arrive. We would literally stand zero chance if the Tau brought even a slightly respectable army.
To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.
Psienesis wrote: One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.
RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?
High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.
Enigwolf wrote: To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.
Assuming we keep the FFG cannon out concerning sterilization.
Honestly will probably cause lots of issues with the powers at Be, Religion will be a hella mess for a while. But for the most part i though Tau usually left most planets alone.
Enigwolf wrote: To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.
Assuming we keep the FFG cannon out concerning sterilization.
Honestly will probably cause lots of issues with the powers at Be, Religion will be a hella mess for a while. But for the most part i though Tau usually left most planets alone.
They do, but typically they like their planets to be peaceful, not at war with each other. So expect pacification of some sort.
2BlackJack1 wrote: Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.
A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.
Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.
When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.
Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.
Enigwolf wrote: To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.
Assuming we keep the FFG cannon out concerning sterilization.
Honestly will probably cause lots of issues with the powers at Be, Religion will be a hella mess for a while. But for the most part i though Tau usually left most planets alone.
They do, but typically they like their planets to be peaceful, not at war with each other. So expect pacification of some sort.
Would be super cool if they finally wrote more fluff on that. maybe more grimdark to pacify all the tau fluff haters
Peregrine wrote: Tyranids, because as soon as they enter the real world their laughably bad science no longer works and they probably can't even survive long enough to have a battle.
Well, your contributions to these threads are always fun.
Psienesis wrote: One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.
RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?
High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.
But Low Gothic is not a universal language, not even close. We're told that it's not in several sources. In-universe, it is known that Low Gothic is so diverse, so dialectical, so debased, evolved, modified and mutated that people from one planet might be entirely incapable of speaking to people from another planet, even though they both, technically, speak "Low Gothic". It's like the banker from Boston trying to talk with the farmer from south Alabama turned way up past 11. Their individual accents make them entirely unintelligible to one another.
curran12 wrote: It's not a matter of who modern Earth could possibly beat, it is a matter of who modern Earth will get obliterated by in the longest time.
Every faction would crush Earth, really without that much effort.
Just in the spirit of the game we lose.
Take tyranids. I think wed all agree earth would lose.
Now being game developers and narrative writers, the playable races all need to have some chance against each other in the narrative to make the game enjoyable (cough cough) and there for we would lose vs basically every race.
Kain wrote: Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.
Basically, fells like another Christianity or Islam, but except this time the miracles are true and we are in for even more horrors.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kain wrote: By the way, Jesus comes back to life after being crucified
Silly story anyway, nobody cares. That was one hell of a Deus Ex.
2BlackJack1 wrote: Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.
A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.
Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.
When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.
Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.
Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.
2BlackJack1 wrote: Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.
A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.
Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.
When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.
Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.
Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.
Eldar aspect warriors are incredibly specialized and are deployed only to deal with things that suit their specialization unless something has gone horribly wrong. Earth doesn't even have any suitable targets for Banshees (who are specialized for killing armored infantry at close range when Dark Reapers won't be enough) so I'd think a warhost would leave them at home. Scorpions are said to be able to cloak themselves and in my experience in the Russian army we don't have any contingencies for chameleonic enemies sneaking in and killing us at camp.
Wyches; like virtually all Dark Eldar units, are 100% hit and run. The Dark Eldar appear out of nowhere via webway gate, strike hard and fast and then leave before any more serious resistance can be mustered. A Dark Eldar campaign would involve a lot of teleporting right into populated cities to kidnap huge numbers of largely defenceless civilians and then drop back into the webway long before any assets are mobilized. Most modern armies are small and not concentrated near major cities and few modern cities are built with the assumption that they'll be facing military attack without prior notice (or that they'll be facing military attack at all).
A foe who drops in and completely bypasses military assets, attacks civilians, and leaves without warning within an hour is not the kind of enemy that modern society is built to face. Our civilians are very easy targets. Armed civilians, as I've been trained to learn, are no serious match for a military force. They're going to be (ineffective without training in guerilla warfare) partisans at best, and will get slaughtered with ease if ever forced into pitched battle. What Partisans do is be a resource drain on occupiers, and Dark Eldar are simply not interested in occupation. Taking and holding ground is like; the very antithesis of the Dark Eldar way.
The Dark Eldar could probably get away with huge numbers of slaves without even once engaging any military force. Similarly, infrastructure at the moment is generally not built with the assumption that it will come under attack. Things like power plants, factories, stock exchanges, and other lynchpins of modern society aren't going to stop a raid or even appreciably slow it down. You could just keep on popping in and out of the webway and level places of importance to our economy and you'd greatly increase the amount of distress to the fabric of society already being caused by huge numbers of people being abducted and taken out of labor pools.
If they really wanted us all dead; it's canonical that the Dark Eldar have the means to destroy planets fairly trivially, it's just counter-productive. Just give the planet a black hole in a box and we're dead within an hour.
Ratius wrote: Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?
Well, the Necrons depends on the Dynasty.
If they're like the Maynarkhs and open up by juicing up the sun to make a solar storm that instantly fries everyone on the day side of the planet while crashing all our technology with a memetic signal; then yeah we're boned. Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating. Trazyn's dynasty wouldn't even cause that much damage;
he'd just teleport in with an army and just nab some loot and disappear before any resistance can be mounted.
Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.
Necrons may be mean, but to compared to Chaos they are fun-loving guys. I'd take being roasted by the sun over an eternity of being tortured by deamons any day.
Psienesis wrote: One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.
RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?
High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.
But Low Gothic is not a universal language, not even close. We're told that it's not in several sources. In-universe, it is known that Low Gothic is so diverse, so dialectical, so debased, evolved, modified and mutated that people from one planet might be entirely incapable of speaking to people from another planet, even though they both, technically, speak "Low Gothic". It's like the banker from Boston trying to talk with the farmer from south Alabama turned way up past 11. Their individual accents make them entirely unintelligible to one another.
It depends on the source you read. Some sources have the entire Imperium speak only variants of Low Gothic, others have different languages with Low Gothic as a form of lingua franca. Logically, the first idea is absolutely absurd if you know even the slightest bit about linguistics. Even if all humans spoke Low Gothic during the Dark Age of Technology (which already is impossible), the Age of Strife lasted so long that Low Gothic should not exist anymore, not even in a very slightly recognisable form. It would be like calling English a debased form of Proto-Indo-European.
Even if Low Gothic is just a name for the billions of different human languages, there should be a common language that allows two humans from different sides of the Imperium to actually communicate with each other,
2BlackJack1 wrote: Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.
A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.
Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.
When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.
Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.
Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.
Until we realise our guns are completely ineffective against their armour, that is.
Kain wrote: Eldar aspect warriors are incredibly specialized and are deployed only to deal with things that suit their specialization unless something has gone horribly wrong. Earth doesn't even have any suitable targets for Banshees (who are specialized for killing armored infantry at close range when Dark Reapers won't be enough) so I'd think a warhost would leave them at home. Scorpions are said to be able to cloak themselves and in my experience in the Russian army we don't have any contingencies for chameleonic enemies sneaking in and killing us at camp.
Wyches; like virtually all Dark Eldar units, are 100% hit and run. The Dark Eldar appear out of nowhere via webway gate, strike hard and fast and then leave before any more serious resistance can be mustered. A Dark Eldar campaign would involve a lot of teleporting right into populated cities to kidnap huge numbers of largely defenceless civilians and then drop back into the webway long before any assets are mobilized. Most modern armies are small and not concentrated near major cities and few modern cities are built with the assumption that they'll be facing military attack without prior notice (or that they'll be facing military attack at all).
A foe who drops in and completely bypasses military assets, attacks civilians, and leaves without warning within an hour is not the kind of enemy that modern society is built to face. Our civilians are very easy targets. Armed civilians, as I've been trained to learn, are no serious match for a military force. They're going to be (ineffective without training in guerilla warfare) partisans at best, and will get slaughtered with ease if ever forced into pitched battle. What Partisans do is be a resource drain on occupiers, and Dark Eldar are simply not interested in occupation. Taking and holding ground is like; the very antithesis of the Dark Eldar way.
The Dark Eldar could probably get away with huge numbers of slaves without even once engaging any military force. Similarly, infrastructure at the moment is generally not built with the assumption that it will come under attack. Things like power plants, factories, stock exchanges, and other lynchpins of modern society aren't going to stop a raid or even appreciably slow it down. You could just keep on popping in and out of the webway and level places of importance to our economy and you'd greatly increase the amount of distress to the fabric of society already being caused by huge numbers of people being abducted and taken out of labor pools.
If they really wanted us all dead; it's canonical that the Dark Eldar have the means to destroy planets fairly trivially, it's just counter-productive. Just give the planet a black hole in a box and we're dead within an hour.
Exactly. Eldar are the master of asymmetric warfare; they avoid pitched conventional battles and deploy their units to maximize their short-term effect against enemies. Fighting against Eldar would be like fighting against a guerilla/terrorist force, but one that is better trained, insanely mobile, has superior tech and guaranteed air superiority, and can literally see the future and warp reality to their will.
Kain wrote: Eldar aspect warriors are incredibly specialized and are deployed only to deal with things that suit their specialization unless something has gone horribly wrong. Earth doesn't even have any suitable targets for Banshees (who are specialized for killing armored infantry at close range when Dark Reapers won't be enough) so I'd think a warhost would leave them at home. Scorpions are said to be able to cloak themselves and in my experience in the Russian army we don't have any contingencies for chameleonic enemies sneaking in and killing us at camp.
Wyches; like virtually all Dark Eldar units, are 100% hit and run. The Dark Eldar appear out of nowhere via webway gate, strike hard and fast and then leave before any more serious resistance can be mustered. A Dark Eldar campaign would involve a lot of teleporting right into populated cities to kidnap huge numbers of largely defenceless civilians and then drop back into the webway long before any assets are mobilized. Most modern armies are small and not concentrated near major cities and few modern cities are built with the assumption that they'll be facing military attack without prior notice (or that they'll be facing military attack at all).
A foe who drops in and completely bypasses military assets, attacks civilians, and leaves without warning within an hour is not the kind of enemy that modern society is built to face. Our civilians are very easy targets. Armed civilians, as I've been trained to learn, are no serious match for a military force. They're going to be (ineffective without training in guerilla warfare) partisans at best, and will get slaughtered with ease if ever forced into pitched battle. What Partisans do is be a resource drain on occupiers, and Dark Eldar are simply not interested in occupation. Taking and holding ground is like; the very antithesis of the Dark Eldar way.
The Dark Eldar could probably get away with huge numbers of slaves without even once engaging any military force. Similarly, infrastructure at the moment is generally not built with the assumption that it will come under attack. Things like power plants, factories, stock exchanges, and other lynchpins of modern society aren't going to stop a raid or even appreciably slow it down. You could just keep on popping in and out of the webway and level places of importance to our economy and you'd greatly increase the amount of distress to the fabric of society already being caused by huge numbers of people being abducted and taken out of labor pools.
If they really wanted us all dead; it's canonical that the Dark Eldar have the means to destroy planets fairly trivially, it's just counter-productive. Just give the planet a black hole in a box and we're dead within an hour.
Exactly. Eldar are the master of asymmetric warfare; they avoid pitched conventional battles and deploy their units to maximize their short-term effect against enemies. Fighting against Eldar would be like fighting against a guerilla/terrorist force, but one that is better trained, insanely mobile, has superior tech and guaranteed air superiority, and can literally see the future and warp reality to their will.
Except they are eldar
They are always destined to lose. Even in there own book they lose
Ratius wrote: Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?
Well, the Necrons depends on the Dynasty.
If they're like the Maynarkhs and open up by juicing up the sun to make a solar storm that instantly fries everyone on the day side of the planet while crashing all our technology with a memetic signal; then yeah we're boned. Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating. Trazyn's dynasty wouldn't even cause that much damage;
he'd just teleport in with an army and just nab some loot and disappear before any resistance can be mounted.
Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.
Necrons may be mean, but to compared to Chaos they are fun-loving guys. I'd take being roasted by the sun over an eternity of being tortured by deamons any day.
Psienesis wrote: One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.
RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?
High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.
But Low Gothic is not a universal language, not even close. We're told that it's not in several sources. In-universe, it is known that Low Gothic is so diverse, so dialectical, so debased, evolved, modified and mutated that people from one planet might be entirely incapable of speaking to people from another planet, even though they both, technically, speak "Low Gothic". It's like the banker from Boston trying to talk with the farmer from south Alabama turned way up past 11. Their individual accents make them entirely unintelligible to one another.
It depends on the source you read. Some sources have the entire Imperium speak only variants of Low Gothic, others have different languages with Low Gothic as a form of lingua franca. Logically, the first idea is absolutely absurd if you know even the slightest bit about linguistics. Even if all humans spoke Low Gothic during the Dark Age of Technology (which already is impossible), the Age of Strife lasted so long that Low Gothic should not exist anymore, not even in a very slightly recognisable form. It would be like calling English a debased form of Proto-Indo-European.
Even if Low Gothic is just a name for the billions of different human languages, there should be a common language that allows two humans from different sides of the Imperium to actually communicate with each other,
2BlackJack1 wrote: Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.
A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.
Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.
When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.
Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.
Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.
Until we realise our guns are completely ineffective against their armour, that is.
Bring a bigger gun. A battlecannon kills a Space Marine pretty well. Typical MBTs these days carry 105mm guns on average. Let's say a battlecannon is a 120mm gun. Eh, not too unreasonable.
I think the thread has gone off-topic, it was about which one we'd be most willing to fight, not which one we'd stand a chance against, either way, this is a part of 40K that I loved to examine, and I'd like to present my points:
The one we'd be most willing to fight is the Tau, not because we'd have a chance, we'd probably get creamed in every battle, but because the Tau are willing to accept surrender, and actually follow some rules of war, both sides can understand this and follow it.
The one we'd probably have a chance against, assuming we're facing something equal in numbers to the combined forces of the major countries of earth. We'd have a chance against Orks, since their Ramshackle tech is terrible, and the horde charge technique opens itself to bombing and other explosives.
... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.
We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.
Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.
Psienesis wrote: ... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.
We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.
Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.
True on both accounts, but any asteroid that can safely deliver troops alive, even orks, are not going to be planet ending, and the Spores would be a problem.
Ignoring the long term effects and insertion methods, if both sides were deployed on a mostly equal field, the usualy Ork horde-rush opens itself up to artillery, bombing, and whatever. Or even better, just use aircraft and victory would be easy.
Psienesis wrote: One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
Tau have psyker xenos allies capable of ripping information from somebody's head. They can simply send one down to basically download the contents of somebody's brain and work with that information from there.
Modern military LOVES obliterating slow, massed targets with carpet bombing, guided artillery, cruise missiles and the like (and tactical nukes if needs be); including well armored targets mind you.
And warhammer 40k armies tend to present a lot of those targets once they are deployed.
However, as with all planetary invasions, it’s all about Space domination. Invader with ships in orbit can deploy troops and bombard ground targets (inaccurate as wh40k orbital bombardments are), including army bases and carried battle groups. But if earthly militaries can shoot those ships out of orbit with nukes/ secret orbital weapon platforms flying around since cold war, any wh40k armies left stranded on the ground would be matched, and most probably destroyed (due to lack of supplies and air superiority) by earthly forces.
Ratliker wrote: Modern military LOVES obliterating slow, massed targets with carpet bombing, guided artillery, cruise missiles and the like (and tactical nukes if needs be); including well armored targets mind you.
And warhammer 40k armies tend to present a lot of those targets once they are deployed.
However, as with all planetary invasions, it’s all about Space domination. Invader with ships in orbit can deploy troops and bombard ground targets (inaccurate as wh40k orbital bombardments are), including army bases and carried battle groups. But if earthly militaries can shoot those ships out of orbit with nukes/ secret orbital weapon platforms flying around since cold war, any wh40k armies left stranded on the ground would be matched, and most probably destroyed (due to lack of supplies and air superiority) by earthly forces.
Except tyranids who can make supplies as they go, and orks who can craft supplies as they go - along with unending reinforcements due to their unique way of reproduction, and dark elder who don't need ships as they can just dart in and out of the web way, and daemons who don't need supplies, and necrons...
Modern militaries don't have the capacity to wage total war like we could during WW2 anymore. Everything is simply too expensive and requires specialized production facilities (you can't really make tanks at car and tractor factories like before for example) so anyone who makes it into a drawn out slug fest is going to win sooner or later. Even the countries most capable of sustaining a total war (by modern standards) footing like America and China can only manage for about a decade before their economy and supplies collapse.
Similarly, modern society is hugely dependent on the continuation of trade for raw materials other countries don't have enough of. If you start disrupting that supply network modern society starts unravelling and collapsing as fuel stops being provided and countries that are net importers of food start experiencing mass famine. Internally you can do things like seize the American breadbasket and cause a knock on effect that causes countless millions of people to starve as you take the most agriculturally productive area on earth.
Similarly, modern armies are flat out tiny and we can't really drum up more men and materiel with the same kind of pace we did in world war two. The coalition found itself critically low on Javelin missiles after just a years worth of engagement in afghanistan and that's a war that didn't have things like all those factories and mines that are essential to getting the raw materials and working the assemblies to make Javelin missiles get taken out. And as I mentioned before, the civilians in most countries today are largely entirely defenseless against a military attack. We don't have any serious fortifications to prevent areas like New York City from becoming a slaughterfest for invaders as the enemy keeps on pressing the attack while we expend our last anti-tank only to find ten thousand more Daemon Engines over the horizon.
More important that people forget is that most 40K armies are pretty capable of wiping out our power grid with very little issue. A marine just has to nom on somebody's brain, a psyker rip the information from some poor sod's mind, a Dark Eldar just torture the information out, etc to get the locations and boom. Mass riots everywhere as civilization slowly collapses as power is quickly knocked out across the state that causes a massive crisis.
You don't have to occupy Earth, you just have to break the morale of the civilians in the major nations until they demand their superiors surrender (if such a thing is an option). Of course if this is Chaos, Tyranids, Orks, etc, then it simply speeds along the destruction of the afflicted nation.
Ratliker wrote: Modern military LOVES obliterating slow, massed targets with carpet bombing, guided artillery, cruise missiles and the like (and tactical nukes if needs be); including well armored targets mind you.
And warhammer 40k armies tend to present a lot of those targets once they are deployed.
However, as with all planetary invasions, it’s all about Space domination. Invader with ships in orbit can deploy troops and bombard ground targets (inaccurate as wh40k orbital bombardments are), including army bases and carried battle groups. But if earthly militaries can shoot those ships out of orbit with nukes/ secret orbital weapon platforms flying around since cold war, any wh40k armies left stranded on the ground would be matched, and most probably destroyed (due to lack of supplies and air superiority) by earthly forces.
We have no way of attacking a ship in orbit. And even if we could, we couldn't bypass it's defenses.
Psienesis wrote: ... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.
We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.
Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.
True on both accounts, but any asteroid that can safely deliver troops alive, even orks, are not going to be planet ending, and the Spores would be a problem.
Ignoring the long term effects and insertion methods, if both sides were deployed on a mostly equal field, the usualy Ork horde-rush opens itself up to artillery, bombing, and whatever. Or even better, just use aircraft and victory would be easy.
The problem there is that the Orks have aircraft and AA of their own, and even the Orks are far more technologically advanced than we are.
Psienesis wrote: ... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.
We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.
Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.
True on both accounts, but any asteroid that can safely deliver troops alive, even orks, are not going to be planet ending, and the Spores would be a problem.
Ignoring the long term effects and insertion methods, if both sides were deployed on a mostly equal field, the usualy Ork horde-rush opens itself up to artillery, bombing, and whatever. Or even better, just use aircraft and victory would be easy.
The problem there is that the Orks have aircraft and AA of their own, and even the Orks are far more technologically advanced than we are.
Theres also our reliance on technology from communications networks to software in military kit.
Any faction that can "hack", disrupt, or plain destroy that would be a total nightmare for our current armies. So Tau, Eldar, Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicus, Crons.
Other armies are probably less adept at it - Nids, Orks, DE.
The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.
Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.
Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.
Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.
Ratius wrote:Theres also our reliance on technology from communications networks to software in military kit.
Any faction that can "hack", disrupt, or plain destroy that would be a total nightmare for our current armies. So Tau, Eldar, Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicus, Crons.
Other armies are probably less adept at it - Nids, Orks, DE.
The amount of software actually in current military kit worldwide is laughable compared to what people think most armies have. Although knocking out comms would be disastrous.
Big Blind Bill wrote:Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.
The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.
Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.
Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.
Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.
The Imperium does have guided missiles, I don't know where you got the impression that they didn't. It's just that auto-tracking systems and a ton of explosive shells are a heck lot cheaper to produce and more reliable than a massive guided missile.
Ratius wrote: Theres also our reliance on technology from communications networks to software in military kit. Any faction that can "hack", disrupt, or plain destroy that would be a total nightmare for our current armies. So Tau, Eldar, Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicus, Crons. Other armies are probably less adept at it - Nids, Orks, DE.
Nids' Shadow in the Warp also affects normal real space communications.
Big Blind Bill wrote:Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.
The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.
Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.
Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.
Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.
The Imperium does have guided missiles, I don't know where you got the impression that they didn't. It's just that auto-tracking systems and a ton of explosive shells are a heck lot cheaper to produce and more reliable than a massive guided missile.
Not in the actual game they don't. SM get 1 tank. Skittari have the dune crawler. That is it. In the whole imperium.
Everyone else is firing flakk. Hydras, aegis lines etc.
Firing flak is more reliable than a guided missile? Sorry, no. You are wrong. That is why we progressed from using flak guns to guided missiles half a century ago. Flak is cheaper, and much much worse.
Guided missiles are much more reliable, can hit targets at greater altitudes and are more destructive.
The amount of software actually in current military kit worldwide is laughable compared to what people think most armies have.
Not the high level stuff though. Things like nukes need some serious software to even launch them let alone target them, hell the missile likely wont even fly if its electronics are fried/disrupted.
Anything nuclear too - all of it is controlled by software systems - Iran Stuqnet etc.
Most MBTs also rely on targetting software, very few afaik rely on the old gunner pointing and physically shooting the shell.
Aircraft fly by wire and aeronautic controll flaps/vectors and trust are all 90% computer controlled afaik - wasnt it said without the software programme governing its surfaces the f22 couldnt even fly straight?
I could go on - point being, unless we';re talking about ground pounding troops, mortars or pre 1980s vehicles we're likely to have a severe time with our software and electronics fried. Its why many countries fear solar flares so much (and I dont even mean militariliy - I mean power grids etc).
Big Blind Bill wrote:Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.
The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.
Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.
Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.
Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.
The Imperium does have guided missiles, I don't know where you got the impression that they didn't. It's just that auto-tracking systems and a ton of explosive shells are a heck lot cheaper to produce and more reliable than a massive guided missile.
Not in the actual game they don't. SM get 1 tank. Skittari have the dune crawler. That is it. In the whole imperium.
Everyone else is firing flakk. Hydras, aegis lines etc.
Firing flak is more reliable than a guided missile? Sorry, no. You are wrong. That is why we progressed from using flak guns to guided missiles half a century ago. Flak is cheaper, and much much worse.
Guided missiles are much more reliable, can hit targets at greater altitudes and are more destructive.
In 40k, we can presume that targeting systems built in to flak guns (as opposed to manual-aim flak guns of WW2) are far more accurate than anything we can produce now. Look at the Sicaran Battle Tank, for example. Hydras, in lore, are also noted that "once locked, they don't lose target lock". With regards to reliability, I am referring to field maintenance and vulnerability to EMP. If you EMP a missile battery, that's it. Out of action. You EMP a guided flak weapon, you can at LEAST still fire the flak weapon manually. Additionally, flak weaponry have the second function of being very effective at troops and light vehicles, as the Germans and Soviets found out.
Ratius wrote:
The amount of software actually in current military kit worldwide is laughable compared to what people think most armies have.
Not the high level stuff though. Things like nukes need some serious software to even launch them let alone target them, hell the missile likely wont even fly if its electronics are fried/disrupted.
Anything nuclear too - all of it is controlled by software systems - Iran Stuqnet etc.
Most MBTs also rely on targetting software, very few afaik rely on the old gunner pointing and physically shooting the shell.
Aircraft fly by wire and aeronautic controll flaps/vectors and trust are all 90% computer controlled afaik - wasnt it said without the software programme governing its surfaces the f22 couldnt even fly straight?
I could go on - point being, unless we';re talking about ground pounding troops, mortars or pre 1980s vehicles we're likely to have a severe time with our software and electronics fried. Its why many countries fear solar flares so much (and I dont even mean militariliy - I mean power grids etc).
My bad. I thought you were referring to the warfighter's equipment, which in my research thesis used "kit" a lot to refer to. You are right about ICBMs, vehicles, aircraft, etc.
Ratius wrote: Sorry, yeah I meant our general tech overall and reliance on electronics really.
This goes beyond tech and into doctrine too. Most combat units are so reliant on communications with HQ and getting battlefield sitrep (much like we are reliant and used to being ever-connected on our phones) that most infantry units at the company level and below will be hard-pressed to properly operate once cut off from their immediate report-ups - we're not trained for that anymore, unless you're talking special forces-type (aka commandos, SEALs, Delta Force, etc.)
The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.
Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.
Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.
Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.
There isn't a country in the world that can afford to give a substantial enough air defence grid to protect all of its major metropoli or resource stations. Especially not from an enemy that can teleport in and out of the webway whenever it feels like it.
The Dark Eldar pointedly ignore our militaries while stripping whole million+ person cities bare of any and all people and kidnap the miners, factory workers, and other workers who operate the means of production and laugh as the fragile global economy enters a death spiral from which it can't recover.
Our military never even sees the Dark Eldar while their support structure collapses all around them; and then all our tanks are running without fuel, our soldiers don't have bullets, and we can't manufacture any missiles anymore while most countries collapse into anarchy as the economy implodes.
Also to nitpick, EMP's are largely overblown as a threat. You can easily "harden" targets against them- the Abrams for example was meant to wade through post apocalyptic nuclear wastelands to slug it out with the Soviets.
I feel like people really underestimate our race. We aren't the dominant species (by miles) on our planet for nothing. One victory vs the tau, or mechanicus even a small one. (As in, hey look! We managed to salvage some of the enemies tech!) Would jump our technology by leaps and bounds.
War is the mother of invention. Many things civilians use today were developed for war in the 40s/50s/60s.
Someone stated earlier that tau and human innovation would be at the same rate. When you have tech you can reverse engineer the one doing the reverse engineering will advance by leaps and bounds until they are not so far behind from their tech. Within ten years either of war or acceptance of the greater good we would be on par with the tau, if not advancing further.
Also people here seem to underestimate the human spirit as well, wars are won by men, honestly a nid invasion would end us most likely unless it was a tiny splinter fleet it would radically change and disrupt our world in more ways than one even then. However I feel if we survived a splinter fleet given a few decades we would be much better suited to combat the bugs than before. If you know you are going to die if you don't win you do crazy yet amazing things. Honestly I feel like the end result would be similar to gears of war sadly.
Now let's look at this realistically. Our planet is not that large, or important the guard would not send an increbliy large army or fleet against us. Let's say max size of the millions. If they tried diplomacy first no country on earth would accept in the end. The regime is to facist, racist, etc. Even russia and China would join usa GB etc to fight them off. The terrorists of Islam would quite quickly turn against the relegion of the imperium.
Could we win? Perhaps. Who knows, if we could reverse engineer their plasma tech and even melta its quite possible. We may even figure out a way to create stronger materials cheaper. And as someone said before our military would love their giant convoys of men. The likely hood of any space marines being deployed is almost non existent unless chaos was found here. The army would resort to the communication used in Vietnam and other lesser tech if the mechanicus shut down the other. I fully believe that if we were invaded people would flock to support the worlds militaries (sure you'll have some fools preaching peace but those are always there) and possibly a few joining the imperium, but the funny thing about dictators is they don't like being below someone... I doubt many would decide to bend their knees quickly.
The problem does arise that surrender is an option, however with the way the world is now (half the world belonging to one relegion or another, the other half mocking relegion) I doubt many would want to join the almost theology based imperium.
Another problem can come from our reliance on advanced tech. Satillites and the like are extremely vulnerable, as are our other systems. Either to hacking or plain out shutting them down. IMO its a toss up depending on just how advanced their tech and materials are to ours and to how fast we advance from reverse engineering. Drafts can still conscript a lot of people, many of which would be trained for 6-8 months (at first) and sent to fight, with the more intellectual and schooled going into logistics and the like.
Against chaos we have little chance, religions would see it as the end times and wait for their god, governments would fall as people would riot either due to being turned or because they want answers the government can't give assuming the government wasnt turned themselves. (Ha)
Works would pose a strange issue in that, if it is a small waaagh (most likely) their tech won't be much more than wagons, guns, boyz, and maybe some walkers. We won't advance as quickly as we would vs tau or imperium but we still would advance faster than we do now if only from the -need- to advance. I'd imagine a seal being able to go toe to toe vs an ork boy and win, perhaps not easily but win. In a us marine (much more numerous) would have a decent chance IMO. A nob would be a completely different story, but still doable. (With the right CC gear of course) the very nature of orks would work for us in that they would bypass civilians and fight the military because its "more fun" giving draftees time to learn and be trained. Eventually cities will begin to be more prepared against attacks as new buildings were made etc. Humanity would adapt and grow. Seals would be sent in with assistance from bristish special forces and other European forces to take out the warboss which would cause in fighting among the orks. After all we have to assume the same weakness for the armies as they are in the fluff not just strengths.
In the end, earth would gain the most from fighting tau, imperium, space marines or even orks. (A common enemy for people to unit against)
Even a tiny splinter fleet of nids as we would be forced to unite and perhaps advance our tech at astounding levels. (Especially if we managed to stave them off and survive).
Dark eldar would be one of the worst, following behind chaos, as, as said above they would quite literally out maneuver the military and cause such fear that people would begin rioting demanding protection, and even with martial law the forces patrolling cities will probably fall to the eldars swift attacks. Though I do believe we would begin to inflict casualties.
In many of the "die or die" wars (nids, chaos, necrons, dark eldar) many people would give in to despair and mass suicide may be a problem however I do believe more would fight to the last and die standing giving everything they can and taking as many of the bastards with them as they could. I know I would.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As an amedium I'd say 75% of our production would shift to military in any of these situations. And most people would be okay with it. (Well, countries like China and Russia, Nkorea would probably force their entire populace into the military and leave any that disobeyed to starve. And probably starve most of the infrastructure personal as well.) Other countries would not be much better off but the tech and designs for creating military grade equipment would become widespread. After all, the survival depends on it.
The world doesn't have the capacity to wage conflict on the scale it did in world war two anymore. It's too expensive and we don't have the infrastructure in the countries that matter to rapidly equip a large army like in the second world war. In a global invasion taking place all over the world at once, we wouldn't have enough time to start the rust belts back up, or at least not fast enough for the supply chains that make modern economies work.
Like, what they don't show you in global alien invasions is the collapse of the global economy, mass famine, and disruptions to supply chains caused by supply systems built on the assumption of safety suddenly being disrupted by worldwide conflict. And not even just global in the sense of a world war, but global in the sense that every country is in the front lines and nowhere is safe. Supply is what wins wars, and if you can break the back of our supply chain, our militaries would fall apart.
Like, in the cold war, it was assumed that in the event of a nuclear war, that while the armies might possibly survive their home countries glowing in the dark, the destruction of their supply chains would mean they'd only have enough for one big maneuver. You can replicate something as equally bad to the world's supply network by just invading everywhere at once with overwhelming numbers, preventing the global network from reaching other parts of itself. This leaves our forces only enough to fight for a brief while before tanks run out of shells, planes run out of fuel, and ships are all out of missiles. At that point if Nuclear weapons are out of the picture the only thing left to do is surrender because no more effective resistance can be mounted.
Or if it's like, Hive Fleet Behemoth dropping on our doorstep we can, as a planet, extend our middle digits in a last gasp of defiance before we're devoured.
That's it though, if these factions operate entirely as they do in the fluff their are some vulnerable to that last big maneuver. (If DoW is to be considered cannon, and I find much of that game suiting. Specificly the idea of an ork war boss freebooter fighting and saving a system for a hat and a "good fight", then nids -are- vulnerable to highly poisonous and deadly venom or chemicals made to specificly attack them. Which could work. 1/100000000000^1000 but hey. Would be worth the shot) or another option would be to launch ever nuke we have, most likely destroying the world 1000 times over and causing so much fallout and fire that almost any bug in our atmosphere or close space fries. Which is also quite possible. They are purely biological after all.
Automatically Appended Next Post: About famine and crippled nsupply. I point you towards Russia in WW2.
Also, in any case of non chaos/nid/necron its very unlikely they attack -everywhere- at once.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Another thing is that nations capacity for total war is no less than it was back then. Simply the US only endured total war for about 4 years, the other nations endured it for 7+ and you see what happened to even the victors. Russia recovered though which was an amazing feat in itself.
I'm not disagreeing with you on no supply=no fight just on the idea that supply would be shut down entirely immediately.
raiden wrote: That's it though, if these factions operate entirely as they do in the fluff their are some vulnerable to that last big maneuver. (If DoW is to be considered cannon, and I find much of that game suiting. Specificly the idea of an ork war boss freebooter fighting and saving a system for a hat and a "good fight", then nids -are- vulnerable to highly poisonous and deadly venom or chemicals made to specificly attack them. Which could work. 1/100000000000^1000 but hey. Would be worth the shot) or another option would be to launch ever nuke we have, most likely destroying the world 1000 times over and causing so much fallout and fire that almost any bug in our atmosphere or close space fries. Which is also quite possible. They are purely biological after all.
Automatically Appended Next Post: About famine and crippled nsupply. I point you towards Russia in WW2.
Also, in any case of non chaos/nid/necron its very unlikely they attack -everywhere- at once.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Another thing is that nations capacity for total war is no less than it was back then. Simply the US only endured total war for about 4 years, the other nations endured it for 7+ and you see what happened to even the victors. Russia recovered though which was an amazing feat in itself.
I'm not disagreeing with you on no supply=no fight just on the idea that supply would be shut down entirely immediately.
I am Russian.
Allow me to point you to the massive areas of Russia that were not under any threat. It's why the whole move factories to the east thing worked. There was space that was not under threat to bury our materials safely.
In addition, there were countries with Surplus' of food that could trade with the Soviet Union or any of the other allies even under the darkest days. I.E America, which was never at any one point under any serious threat by the Axis powers.
If you were to take out the American midwest, you'd instantly lose humanity the most productive farming area on the planet and cause mass starvation not only in America, but throughout much of the world that relies heavily on American Produce as millions of people start dropping dead in weeks. Similarly, countries like America have the majority of their power come from easily disrupted sources such as coal. Once you start interrupting the coal supply chain, the power grid starts failing en masse and people are quite literally left in the dark. The military will be fine as they have their own power production capabilities, but Civilians will again start dying in their millions as civilization collapses around them.
And the military will have to worry about factories going dark or being taken out or even sabotaged by enemy infiltration. Given how the current military can vastly outstrip the country's ability to build higher end munitions in intense combat situations (America was running low on javelins after just a year of combat ops in Afghanistan. In a global war America would be out of Javelins in weeks or days, along with other high end munitions) any disruption to munitions production is catastrophic to the ability of forces like the Russian or American army to operate.
Our highest end equipment like the T-90 or the Abrams are also very maintenance intensive beasts that require huge amounts of fuel and spare parts to keep running at optimal capacity. When cut off from their supply of such parts, vehicles start being unable to show up for battle because the drive train broke down and nobody could find a replacement or the barrel's too dangerous to use from wear and tear but the order for more is so backlogged that you won't be getting a new one for months. Planes stop being able to run sorties because there's not enough materials left around to maintain them and we're left dragging out museum pieces because there's nothing else that can fly.
In essence, it'd be the apocalypse and it's something that the world's standing armies can at most delay for a little while before we run out ammo, fuel, and spare parts for all our best toys while our countries devolve into anarchy and suffer catastrophic die offs as medicine, electricity, and food stop being available and attrition wipes away all the initial professionals and forces us to give guns and uniforms to random hicks just to hold the line a little longer.
That's the thing. We would most likely be forced to move back to less maintenance intensive and lowered end tech that can be produced in random Joe blows car manufacturer. Munitions don't need highly specialized equipment to create. Still if it is simply a tau/imperium invasion I highly doubt it would be a large enough force to threaten every supply station/manufactory we have. (Any of the other factions would probably be GG in minutes. With humanity most likely nuking themselves and the invaders as a final feth you)
But to the imperium or tau, our world nwouldnt be considered a prime target or a terribly large threat. (Whether or not we are) if the imperium come in with 15 million guardsmen for our planet/system it would be max tops. I doubt that they would bring that many.
All we have to do is survive and defend for a bit. Eventually their tech would be our tech (probably better in the case of the guard) I highly believe we could. The problem is people are treating the guard as having unlimited reinforcements and supply when they most likely wouldn't or, at the least, would have weeks to months of waiting for the supplies to come in. Drafting would be a thing. And I'd gaurentee you 50% of the american population would be deemed combat ready (after minimal training) in a month. More depending on how bad things are going. The biggest problem we would have would be the 5-8 giant ships floating around our planet. Though I don't believe that many orbit to surface weapon strikes would be used at first.
As always we would adapt or lose. Though tau would most likely end at negotiations with us somehow nabbing their tech and using it to create our own.
I was simply saying based on fluff and in fluff tactics they would be the factions we would have the -best- chance against.
Automatically Appended Next Post: After all, what are vox casters but amped up radio ;p
raiden wrote: That's it though, if these factions operate entirely as they do in the fluff their are some vulnerable to that last big maneuver. (If DoW is to be considered cannon, and I find much of that game suiting. Specificly the idea of an ork war boss freebooter fighting and saving a system for a hat and a "good fight", then nids -are- vulnerable to highly poisonous and deadly venom or chemicals made to specificly attack them. Which could work. 1/100000000000^1000 but hey. Would be worth the shot) or another option would be to launch ever nuke we have, most likely destroying the world 1000 times over and causing so much fallout and fire that almost any bug in our atmosphere or close space fries. Which is also quite possible. They are purely biological after all. .
America has enough active nukes to destroy the world 59 times over. Alone. Not counting the ones we could make in a month or the ones that aren't considered active. america and Russia both have somewhere in the 2k+ range of nuclear missiles that are active. With almost the same amount awaiting dismantlement, along with other, lesser scale warheads of nuclear level.
We might not reach 1000 times over, but it would hardly be needed to obliterate most life on our planet
raiden wrote: America has enough active nukes to destroy the world 59 times over. Alone. Not counting the ones we could make in a month or the ones that aren't considered active. america and Russia both have somewhere in the 2k+ range of nuclear missiles that are active. With almost the same amount awaiting dismantlement, along with other, lesser scale warheads of nuclear level.
We might not reach 1000 times over, but it would hardly be needed to obliterate most life on our planet
There are 16300 nukes in the whole planet.
Assuming the average nuke is 1 megaton of explosive power, we have 16.3 gigatons in total. In comparison, the rock that killed the dinosaurs caused an explosion of 100 teratons, almost 10000 times more energy than all our nukes put together, and yet the world didn't end.
We have enough nukes to kill ourselves, but the planet is going to be fine, it has endured far worse than that.
raiden wrote: America has enough active nukes to destroy the world 59 times over. Alone. Not counting the ones we could make in a month or the ones that aren't considered active. america and Russia both have somewhere in the 2k+ range of nuclear missiles that are active. With almost the same amount awaiting dismantlement, along with other, lesser scale warheads of nuclear level.
We might not reach 1000 times over, but it would hardly be needed to obliterate most life on our planet
There are 16300 nukes in the whole planet.
Assuming the average nuke is 1 megaton of explosive power, we have 16.3 gigatons in total. In comparison, the rock that killed the dinosaurs caused an explosion of 100 teratons, almost 10000 times more energy than all our nukes put together, and yet the world didn't end.
We have enough nukes to kill ourselves, but the planet is going to be fine, it has endured far worse than that.
Actually even at the peak of our nuclear arsenals during the cold war, it was expected that humanity would survive a nuclear war. It'd be devastated and undergo a massive civilizational setback, but it would recover. It was expected that Brazil would probably become the world leader in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
raiden wrote: I feel like people really underestimate our race. We aren't the dominant species (by miles) on our planet for nothing. One victory vs the tau, or mechanicus even a small one. (As in, hey look! We managed to salvage some of the enemies tech!) Would jump our technology by leaps and bounds.
That assumes our scientists all will work together and can find out how the alien technology works all before we are defeated.
raiden wrote: War is the mother of invention. Many things civilians use today were developed for war in the 40s/50s/60s.
That depends entirely on the length of the war. If the war drags on too long or is too destructive, invention will actually decrease due to scientists getting killed, lack of resources and a focus on simple and cheap mass produced stuff.
raiden wrote: Even russia and China would join usa GB etc to fight them off.
You severely understimate Russia.
Putin would just strike a secret deal with the Imperium (they share a lot of values) to remove the degenerate West. Then the Imperium would reward him and Putin would rule Earth as planetary governor.
Humans rarely can get over their hatred for each other, even when faced with a common enemy. Their hatred for each other just outweighs their hatred for the third party.
raiden wrote: Could we win? Perhaps. Who knows, if we could reverse engineer their plasma tech and even melta its quite possible.
No, even if we found out how it works we still would need to have all the infrastructure to mass produce those weapons (which might very well also require technologies or materials we don't have) produce enough of them and distribute them to our troops. All before the enemy wipes us out. It could work if we had a decade. But we will have a few years at most.
raiden wrote: I fully believe that if we were invaded people would flock to support the worlds militaries (sure you'll have some fools preaching peace but those are always there) and possibly a few joining the imperium, but the funny thing about dictators is they don't like being below someone... I doubt many would decide to bend their knees quickly.
People want to live. As long as we don't fight an enemy that will exterminate us all, you will have many people deciding "Feth it, I don't want to die" and try their best to avoid the war as much as possible. Also, the Imperium rewards loyalty. The possible gains for joining the Imperium could be great if they win.
And even if people flock to join the military, in a total war there is no time or possibility to train or even properly equip them. We would have to rely on large groups of massed conscripts like in WW2 and 1 again.
raiden wrote: The problem does arise that surrender is an option, however with the way the world is now (half the world belonging to one relegion or another, the other half mocking relegion) I doubt many would want to join the almost theology based imperium.
You would not think it from the internet, but far more than half of the world is religious. But that aside, Earth is fundamentally divided. There is no way we would suddenly all stop fighting each other and sing 'kumbaya' when an alien invader starts showing up.
Orks would pose a strange issue in that, if it is a small waaagh (most likely) their tech won't be much more than wagons, guns, boyz, and maybe some walkers. We won't advance as quickly as we would vs tau or imperium but we still would advance faster than we do now if only from the -need- to advance. I'd imagine a seal being able to go toe to toe vs an ork boy and win, perhaps not easily but win. In a us marine (much more numerous) would have a decent chance IMO. A nob would be a completely different story, but still doable. (With the right CC gear of course) the very nature of orks would work for us in that they would bypass civilians and fight the military because its "more fun" giving draftees time to learn and be trained. Eventually cities will begin to be more prepared against attacks as new buildings were made etc. Humanity would adapt and grow. Seals would be sent in with assistance from bristish special forces and other European forces to take out the warboss which would cause in fighting among the orks. After all we have to assume the same weakness for the armies as they are in the fluff not just strengths.
Even a small WAAAGH! is huge. As long as they have even a single Big Mek they will have highly advanced tech (by our standards). There is no way a US marine could take out an Ork boy in close combat, let alone a nob. A Cadian guardsmen can't normally do that, and they are trained from birth, far more heavily than the US marines.
Dark eldar would be one of the worst, following behind chaos, as, as said above they would quite literally out maneuver the military and cause such fear that people would begin rioting demanding protection, and even with martial law the forces patrolling cities will probably fall to the eldars swift attacks. Though I do believe we would begin to inflict casualties.
Dark Eldar would probably be the worst. The Dark Eldar have wiped out planets without firing a single shot by getting the population to commit suicide and die out of fear and terror alone.
raiden wrote: Automatically Appended Next Post: As an amedium I'd say 75% of our production would shift to military in any of these situations. And most people would be okay with it. (Well, countries like China and Russia, Nkorea would probably force their entire populace into the military and leave any that disobeyed to starve. And probably starve most of the infrastructure personal as well.) Other countries would not be much better off but the tech and designs for creating military grade equipment would become widespread. After all, the survival depends on it.
Such a conversion would take too long. To convert our present society (where many people don't even know what the hell war is) in a total war society would take many years. By that time we'd already be conquered. Our militaries are divided, and on their own they are tiny and insignificant. Combine that with the fact that any attack coming from space is a surprise attack and has a huge mobility advantage, our enemy could destroy all of our organised militaries in their bases one by one before we figure out what the hell is going on and who is attacking us.
A lot of really good points made here in the last few points. With regards to supply chain, there was something we in Infantry used to joke about our buddies in Armor: "Break through, and break down". Because while Armor can punch through an enemy line very easily, without follow-through troops to secure the breach, even massed tank formations grind to a halt as their supply elements struggle to keep up.
Good points on my points. I'm just unsure if people as lower hungry and big headed as the leaders of Russia/Nkorea/china etc would bow to the imperium. They may tell everyone to feth off and try to handle it themselves but eh.
Another note, nuclear weapons in the cold war, even at its peak, are not as powerful as the ones we have now.
So...
Tau- we broker a deal, most nations in EU and America with Japan and other more democratic nations would join the GG. Russia and the like would probably fight and be eliminated efficiently by using info from the other countries we would leap ahead in terms of tech eventually to equal or even surpass the tau.
Imperium comes- IMO all nations would resist, but eventually if they really wanted earth we would be ground down or forced to surrender.
Nids- dead, game over unless its an extremely small splinter fleet.
Chaos- dead dieing for eternity
Eldar- possible diplomatic ends, unless earth is really a craftworls.
Deldar- same level of screwed as chaos.
Orks- toss up, we either survive the initial attack of a fairly small waaaagh and learn to cope, or are ovverun due to the size of the waaagh.
While I agree that we would lose, don't underestimate how clever we are as a race, our computer tech is vastly superior to that we have seen in the fluff and our ability to backwards tech is also amazing, if we could hold on for just a few years and capture some tech, we could conceivably fight back, our greatest advantage over all the 40k races (including tau and nids) is our ability to adapt and overcome, we'd lose but it would be a hell of a fight.
We wouldn't "adapt" fast enough vs a large nid fleet. Its the thing that would kill us. Or, in other words unless we encountered tau before nids our tech wouldn't be able to stop anything but the smallest splinter fleet. Even then it would be hard won with devastating aftereffects
Tyran wrote: There is no small enough splinter fleet for us, a single Hive Ship is enough to nomnom our planet.
I'd disagree, but eh.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And even then that would only give us an actual -chance-
Even the smallest splinter fleet will be able to win by a war of attrition. The moment they get boots (hooves? claws?) on the ground, it's over. We may win skirmishes and fights against them, but we're going to do so with losses. So are they. But every loss they take, they can recover rapidly, especially if they've free reign on parts of the world lush in biomass which we can't defend adequately (Amazon rainforest comes to mind). Us? Every human dead will take 18 years to replace (combat-age male). Eventually, even if we win every major engagement, their ability to sustain their growth and our inability to replace losses will grow to a point where critical mass will be reached and we get subsumed under a rolling horde of 'nids grown/spawned from the biomass of our own planet. It may take five years, it may take a dozen years, it may take a hundred years. But we will still lose eventually - that's the scary part about tyranids, unless you wipe out every single last one of them down to the last ripper organism, they will always remain a threat.
How the hell are Orks winning by such a large margin!? So I guess the majority of voters are assuming that the "modern military" from the topic title are a bunch of totally bat- insane, suicidal dummies? Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense.
Now, assuming that the "modern military" actually want to, you know, have any chance of surviving the encounter, the only logical, reasonable choice is, of course, Tau.
Anfauglir wrote:How the hell are Orks winning by such a large margin!? So I guess the majority of voters are assuming that the "modern military" from the topic title are a bunch of totally bat- insane, suicidal dummies? Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense.
Now, assuming that the "modern military" actually want to, you know, have any chance of surviving the encounter, the only logical, reasonable choice is, of course, Tau.
Why?
Tyran wrote:Tau, IoM, and some Necrons are the only choices that will let us surrender and be incorporated into their empires.
Everyone else is slavery, genocide or worse.
The title of the topic is "most want to fight", rather than "most want to negotiate with", and so I think most people took it as negotiation and surrender being out of the question.
Because choosing Orks is suicide. Obviously. Choosing Tau is not. Again, obviously. I still live in a world where the most logical assumption is that the "modern military" want at least a chance of surviving the fight, even if they can't win. You?
The title of the topic is "most want to fight", rather than "most want to negotiate with", and so I think most people took it as negotiation and surrender being out of the question.
Even if negotiation is out of the question, the correct answer is still Tau. Why? Because all the other factions will appear to the "modern military", by comparison, as completely insane, genocidal psychopaths with utterly unstoppable and uncompromising tactics in warfare - extreme ones with little regard for casualties and/or collateral damage. The Orks being particularly abhorrent in this regard. The Tau, however, a) have at least a recognisable attitude to "civilised" warfare with regards to unacceptable losses and the like. And b), negotiation would never be totally out of the question. They will offer peace terms, pummel us for a while, request surrender, pummel us some more, and so on and so forth.
Because choosing Orks is suicide. Obviously. Choosing Tau is not. Again, obviously. I still live in a world where the most logical assumption is that the "modern military" want at least a chance of surviving the fight, even if they can't win. You?
I'm Army. Let's use a hypothetical scenario where we're fighting to the death, because that's what this topic is, not about which race we can barter a peace treaty with. I'd rather fight the Orks than the Tau. Why? Because our weapons and armor are completely ineffective against the Tau. A lasgun, a laser rifle, is AP5, and can't even penetrate Tau armor. Think about how ineffective a 5.56 round would be. Any bigger weapons we can bring to bear, particularly armor, will be completely outmoded by the fact that Broadsides and Hammerheads can snipe them from leagues away while disruption pods negate our ability to use electronic targeting systems for counter-fire. On the flip side, I'd rather get hit by a bullet than a plasma bolt, which are what pulse weapons are. We have no air superiority against Barracudas and Tigersharks (one variant of which, by the way, mounts weaponry that took down a Titan during the Damocles Crusade). Nevermind Manta missile destroyers, which are larger than any aircraft we can even field right now.
With Orks, we have a fighting chance because they'd rather charge into melee with all guns blazing. Like IG would counter Orks with, massed heavy guns is just as effective a solution. Fire and maneuver works against them. We can still maintain air superiority with far more maneuverable aircraft with the ability to eliminate Ork aircraft at over-the-horizon standoff ranges while they try to get in range to use their guns. Yes, Orks are bizarre, abhorrent, and utterly alien, but you learn to lose your humanity when you enter a firefight. It's what keeps you alive. Modern military fighting doctrine and technology works effectively against Orks. Not against Tau. Seriously, pick up Imperial Armour 3, it's a very textbook example of the Imperial Guard using tactics very similar to the greater battle strategy in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and soundly getting their butt whooped because they had no way to deal with kau'yon and mont'ka type attacks.
The title of the topic is "most want to fight", rather than "most want to negotiate with", and so I think most people took it as negotiation and surrender being out of the question.
Even if negotiation is out of the question, the correct answer is still Tau. Why? Because all the other factions will appear to the "modern military", by comparison, as completely insane, genocidal psychopaths with utterly unstoppable and uncompromising tactics in warfare - extreme ones with little regard for casualties and/or collateral damage. The Orks being particularly abhorrent in this regard. The Tau, however, a) have at least a recognisable attitude to "civilised" warfare with regards to unacceptable losses and the like. And b), negotiation would never be totally out of the question. They will offer peace terms, pummel us for a while, request surrender, pummel us some more, and so on and so forth.
You're missing the point. I don't think the author of the thread was interested in who we could negotiate with. I think he was more interested in seeing what we realistically thought we had the most fighting chance against.
Enigwolf wrote: Because our weapons and armor are completely ineffective against the Tau. A lasgun, a laser rifle, is AP5, and can't even penetrate Tau armor. Think about how ineffective a 5.56 round would be.
I mean in 40K lore science doesn't work so that may be true, but in reality 5.56 would probably wreck armor that works against lasers. Power armor would also equally get wrecked by explosives, heavier rounds, and even enough 5.56. Most likely a space marine chapter sent to conquer Earth for the purpose of living here would have a sweet alpha on some country then get simply destroyed by even smaller countries armies due to numbers and how science actually works.
We don't want a fight with anyone that has a warship in orbit.
Mmh, I will also say Orks, as they are the only ones that will maybe forget about using orbital bombardment so we could have a chance against them if they are few.
In a pure fight, tau would be out of the question, that tech is scary. But if the question is an all out war, would you rather fight someone who would want to make a truce, or one that would go to the last man, crawling after you with one arm left and pure, unadulterated single mindedness brutality, and then produce spores to remake another army that is ready for annuvah' go. Orks would be terrifying to fight in a face to face battle. Luckily we could bomb the gap out of them with artillery, but they could loot our vehicles and gear and when they do get close, things will not be good for us.
Enigwolf wrote: Because our weapons and armor are completely ineffective against the Tau. A lasgun, a laser rifle, is AP5, and can't even penetrate Tau armor. Think about how ineffective a 5.56 round would be.
I mean in 40K lore science doesn't work so that may be true, but in reality 5.56 would probably wreck armor that works against lasers. Power armor would also equally get wrecked by explosives, heavier rounds, and even enough 5.56. Most likely a space marine chapter sent to conquer Earth for the purpose of living here would have a sweet alpha on some country then get simply destroyed by even smaller countries armies due to numbers and how science actually works.
That is not true. Armour in 40k is made of materials that do not even exist in reality, so there is no possible way of telling whether any of our weapons could penetrate it. Also, Space Marines don't work like that. They would deploy from orbit and take out one country's military and infrastructure in a surprise assault, get back into orbit and pick the next country where they would repeat the process.
2BlackJack1 wrote: In a pure fight, tau would be out of the question, that tech is scary. But if the question is an all out war, would you rather fight someone who would want to make a truce, or one that would go to the last man, crawling after you with one arm left and pure, unadulterated single mindedness brutality, and then produce spores to remake another army that is ready for annuvah' go. Orks would be terrifying to fight in a face to face battle. Luckily we could bomb the gap out of them with artillery, but they could loot our vehicles and gear and when they do get close, things will not be good for us.
Not to mention that the Orks have some very heavy weapons that would absolutely devastate us, even their basic infantry is probably sturdy enough to withstand a basic rifle and there is a near endless horde of them.
Enigwolf wrote: I'm Army. Let's use a hypothetical scenario where we're fighting to the death, because that's what this topic is, not about which race we can barter a peace treaty with.
It doesn't say "which army would the modern military most want to fight to the death", or "... most want to win against/destroy" or any other variation. It simply says "most want to fight" Like it or not, the word "fight" leaves a lot more room for the possibility of surrender than it does for a death match. Now, obviously you (and many other voters, it seems) are different to how I see and think about this... but I'm working under the assumption that the "modern military" are not complete idiots and/or suicidal, by realising that, out of the factions left to pick from, Tau is the sanest choice in that however the fight may go, it's their best chance at not being horribly, horribly slaughtered to a man. Orks are one of the worst choices, in this regard.
I'd rather fight the Orks than the Tau... [snip]
You're drastically underestimating the Orks and overestimating 2K Terrans. Sorry, but if 2K earth weaponry and tactics are as effective against the Orks as you say, then they would have been wiped out long before 40K rolled around. Only they're not. They're still massed in every corner of the galaxy, stomping around and smashing skulls in, giving every other faction a colossal, green-coloured head-ache. Simply shooting lots of big guns and throwing lots of big bombs cannot stop the Orks. We've been trying that for millennia. It's failed miserably. 40KIoM still dread the coming of the Orks. 2K Terrans have no chance whatsoever. They fire all they can at the hoard, until they hear that first WHAAGH!, the first charge and the first melee... then they break, and again, and again. As soon as an earth soldier catches a glimpse of a greenskin up close, sees how his small arms fire only seems to make it more angry and run even faster forwards, sees what it does to those who it catches... that soldier just lost all wits, will and taste for battle. They try to surrender, the Orks laugh. The genocidal slaughter/enslavery begins. No modern military would choose that fight. They would choose the fight that gives them the best chance at facing a "civil" (by comparison) opponent, one who agrees to fight at the farthest distance possible, with the fewest, cleanest casualties possible, a fight that leaves an option of survival open. Or at the very least, an option of causing the opponent to give pause through infliction of casualties. Tau fear losses. Orks don't. Tau take prisoners. Orks take skulls and (later) slaves. Tau offer subjugation. Orks offer annihilation. We'd at least understand our enemy in the Tau, recognise tactics, strategy. Orks are abhorrent, unknowable, insane to us. We wouldn't even know how to begin to fight them.
I don't think the author of the thread was interested in who we could negotiate with. I think he was more interested in seeing what we realistically thought we had the most fighting chance against.
Yes. And the correct answer is still the Tau. The topic title might as well be read as: which army would stomp us the gentlest? Orks is suicide. No two ways about it. Anyone who thinks that the Orks give us the "most realistic fighting chance" are painfully ignorant of just how terrifyingly dangerous, and good at fighting, the greenskins are - in the 40K setting, let alone 2K!
Iron_Captain wrote: That is not true. Armour in 40k is made of materials that do not even exist in reality, so there is no possible way of telling whether any of our weapons could penetrate it.
Also, Space Marines don't work like that. They would deploy from orbit and take out one country's military and infrastructure in a surprise assault, get back into orbit and pick the next country where they would repeat the process.
I mean its fairly clear that Terra = Earth and Space Marine power armor was originally conceived and built uses resources from Earth. You can say that its some mystical material, but...its not. It would almost certainly be made using the current elements we known. The most realistic scenario is the main components of power armor are simply an alloy made using currently know metals that is doped with some unknown/man made element that is somehow completely stable and safe or a new method of producing some incredibly hard, durable, lightweight alloy was found and used. An extremely hard, but somehow non-brittle ceramic may also of been made, but the armor appears metallic in origin (grey knights). In either case this would mean the best case scenario is current RPGs would probably mortally wound a Space Marine in Power Armor with a direct hit to the chest, if not outright kill him. Assuming you are directly hitting the chest the power armor would most likely survive many hits from 5.56 or smaller ammo with minimal damage to the space marine(bruising) and armor. Larger ammo would significantly wound the marine being hit, with multiple shots being required to kill and the armor would have to be replaced after a few shots due to the damage caused by the bullets. It would be very likely that multiple 5.56 to the head would simply penetrate the helm and kill the space marine as the helmet would be so much thinner then the main components.
But in the world of 40K science doesn't exist, so materials, namely space marine armor are probably all made from admantium harvested from the bones of wolverines.
Kain wrote: The Necrons open up by starting up the Sun in a massive solar storm that wipes away the entire population of Earth on the dayside of the planet, then sends a message that crashes any technology that receives it. Then they come down and wipe out what little of us are left after our civilization implodes.
In a first war of armageddon scale Chaos incursion; half of the world's combined militaries goes insane and devotes itself to Khorne before Angron and the world eaters even set foot on the planet. Nurglites would leave most of the planet dead of plagues that no science can cure before the plague marines and cultists even set foot on the planet, and by then there's nothing left to resist the oncoming of the plaguefather. Slaanesh is probably going to corrupt a vast deal of everyone as artists, pleasure seekers, perfectionists, and more keep on falling to Slaanesh's embrace until Governments start getting as fascist as possible to prevent more people from falling into Slaanesh's grip; then the Emperor's children come in with cultists and daemons and its much too late. Tzeentch is just going to corrupt every politician and scientist he can get before his forces set foot, and I'd bet a lot of nations would just surrender to the thread of Tzeentch's forces without even offering a fight.
How much damage an Ork WAAAGH! does depends on its size, a hundreds of millions or billions/tens of billions strong WAAAGH like at Armageddon sweeps aside human civilization with ease, while smaller ones in the thousands would be more of a nuisance and ones in the millions to tens of millions would be devastating but not quite civilization ending.
As for the Tyranids, a quote from Warseer.
Let's take your Royal Marines. Nay, let's take the combined might of Her Majesty's Armed Forces. All ~400,000 of them. They are defending their home from an invasion of inconsolable foes that will not bargain or reason with them, giving them an incalculable morale boost. They are on their home turf, they know the lay of the land, logistics are not stretched but at their best.
Now, 'realistically' this isn't a far cry from your average 40k invasion. Most worlds seem to have all the vital things worth guarding clustered within an area the size of Belgium (or the UK in this case). Excluding of course the key to victory which is located somewhere entirely else for the sake of plot. Here, that's Northern Ireland (but there's no deus ex machina waiting there for the Brits). Consequently, as far as the royal defenders of the crown are concerned, the rest of the world but their island may as well be one endless ocean.
So the Brits are ready, their defenses prepared. A storm cloud gathers overhead... Long before any actual fighting begins, key officers, political figures, media icons, and those just plain unlucky enough to get in the way are butchered by assassins literally invisible to any current sensors or the human eye. The only warning of these lethal lictors are dogs barking after a directionless pheromone trail. Guard dogs are quickly stationed everywhere of importance as an early warning system, attached to even individual trooper squads. But the damage is already done.
Around the same time, the clouds break overhead. Soldiers squirm, fidget, and scream as any exposed inch of skin is slowly dissolved over a period of hours by toxins in the air. Their lungs hemorrhage and collapse over a period of days. NBC suits are quickly issued and worn, but it is largely too late for those already infected or affected. No cure can be found against the rapidly mutating phage cells... at least not in time. Simultaneously, corrosive acids rapidly eat through aircraft and armored vehicles alike--the roofs of hangars not prepared to stand up against anything more than rain. Only vehicles housed in hardened underground hangars are safe. But the general infrastructure above them lies in ruins, everything from roads and telephone lines to shallowly buried waste pipes.
That's the first week. For the sake of argument, we'll pretend only 10% of the British soldiers, armored pieces, and vehicles are taken out of commission before countermeasures are employed. The material loss isn't the important thing, it's the blow to morale. How would the average soldier feel after being told that he can't call in air support because of inclement weather, after watching some of his friends die in agony with their flesh sloughing off before a shot is even fired, knowing that there weren't nearly enough NBC suits to go around so his civilian family members and friends are more likely dead than alive, and with public works out of commission, no way of checking for sure?
No, of course he's not going to run away. Where would he even run to? That's not the meaning of discipline; desertion or breaking and running are merely the worst-case-scenario possibilities.
Finally, a chance to go face to face with the enemy. Huge cloud banks roll in from the sea, blotting out the sky and the light. But this is no cloud--this a million (literally) gargoyles attacking but 1 of Britain's defense posts. Shoot up and you can't miss... but at the same time viscous living maggots fall from the sky like rain, too numerous to take cover from outside. They splat into body armor and flak vest alike, before wriggling their way under each soldier's uniform to the weak point around the armpits and burrowing through the flesh and painfully thrashing and chewing their way to the target's nervous system--resulting in paralyzation and more commonly, death. Individual gargoyles swoop low and fast into the garrison, beheading troopers with their scything tails faster than a body can pivot and track them, or belching bio-plasma from their mouths that chews through the side of an IFV's roof in seconds.
As ever, the Brits adapt quickly with redeployed forces, submunition-equipped SAMs, air-bursting rockets and mortars. Even though the garrison suffers crippling casualties, the million gargoyles are killed in a day. A kill ratio more than worthy of such a well-trained and equipped military.
But the Brits can't cheer for long, because they haven't really repelled the first wave. Mere hours after the first, another million gargoyles attack an installation further north up the cost. Hours after that another million attacks still farther south down the coast. For days this goes on. Days that turn into weeks. The Gargoyles were never meant to take and hold anything. They're merely a scouting force, feeding precious tactical data to the Hive Mind before their meaningless lives are cut short, testing England's defenses.
The men can barely sleep with the Hive Mind so close; a constant buzzing disrupts their dreams, and a pressure builds between their eyes into a migraine during the day. In the night, bunkers spotted out by the gargoyles are penetrated by 4 and 5-meter long Raveners burrowing up from underground, twisting writhing serpents whose thoraxes burst open like a frag grenade in the enclosed close quarters, their six bladed limbs a blur as they scythe through flesh and body armor alike.
Skittering hordes of gaunts equal in number to the gargoyles begin their own assaults. Here the individual soldier's attention begins to waver. With the battlenet a constant drone of barked orders and frantic questions, does he shoot at the inexorably approaching gaunts down the hill, or at the gargoyles who just lifted his squad sergeant into the air kicking and screaming?
By the end of the first month, fixed positions become mandatory as they only safeguard against those flying monsters and the still-toxic atmosphere; the bunkers ravener-proofed with seismographs and buried mines. Making yourself like a rock is the only way to withstand such endless numbers. The "home turf" advantage is meaningless now, as the accelerated growth of local flora changes the landscape into something unrecognizable, blocks lines of sight & fire, and shields heat signatures. The enemy has complete air-superiority by now. Even with careful limitations on the duration Britain's fighters and bombers are aloft and constant maintenance, the planes are brought down by gargoyles sucked into their engines' intake valves, or by massive Harridans and Harpies the size of planes but not warm enough to lock onto with heat seekers before they burst forth from the fog rippling off the jungles below into the cold northern air and grapple each plane to the ground.
And then the real assaults begin, led by 3-meter tall Warriors and floating brain-bags that carve through tanks with War of the Worlds-style death rays. Spores fall in an endless barrage of artillery, making even a mad dash from one bunker to the next unconnected by underground tunnels a near-suicidal proposition. The average foe at this stage has carapace too thick to be penetrated by LA80s while their heads have three sets of compound eyes and accompanying antennae to root out royal marines hidden or lying in wait.
Falling back is necessary. Shrink the vulnerable supply lines, concentrate the defenses in the capital. Few are left now. Only the most bad-ass emotionally bereft sociopathic trained killers survive. Every soldier left replaces their automatic rifles for automatic grenade launchers. There is no longer any point in saving equipment for 'specialists' and no expense is spared.
Challenger tanks defend every street with withering fire from behind hastily erected sandbag and steel berms. AA guns crown every roof, keeping gargoyles out of the hair of the soldiers below. Blind-firing artillery create a virtual wall of death around the city's perimeter to prevent the gaunts and warriors, and other gribblies from getting in. Bridges are blown and buildings strategically sapped and collapsed to form critical choke points. Mines, C4, and trip-wires are laid in abundance.
NOW.
YOU are next to a Challenger defending one of the city's intersections. Things seem to be going well according to the 'net. You're keeping the little ones bottled at the far end of the street.
But then everything changes in a thunderous clap that leaves you shell-shocked, disoriented, and deaf. A spore pod larger than any you've seen yet has landed on the Challenger, crushing it flat into the pavement... and rising up out of the spore's leathery exterior is a titanic monster the size of a small building. Instinctively, you fire a 40mm grenade round into its chest, with absolutely no effect.
Now what? You're on the opposite side of the thing from your squad mates. Behind you the gaunts and warriors are bounding up the alley unchecked. What do you do as it leans towards you? If you're creative enough, you might think to try shooting a round into its gaping mouth as it opens to swallow you whole. If you have the hand-eye coordination, you might try shooting the joint of the arm scything toward you and bisecting it. You could try rolling between its legs and dashing for your friends. You could retreat into the storefront next to you and climb to a higher level, where you might have a better vantage point.
No matter what you choose, you're dead. You were dead no matter what from the beginning. Its long reach and surprising agility allow it to carve through you or crush you in a fraction of a second. But how did you die? Did you get a last shot off? Did it count? Probably not. You could've, but you didn't. You failed to make your death meaningful.
That is the breakdown in discipline. That's what sells your life short when you could have been worth more.
This person should write fan fict regarding a nid invasion. God, I'd buy that book so fast.
Also for those doubting the Orks, don't. Orks aren't the memetic savages bumrushing people with choppas- that's only a single part of their military. Orks practice combined arms just as much as the Imperial Guard, preferring to assault with an ungodly large amount of armor columns backed up by infantry (consisting of everything from melee grunts to elite infantry carrying energy cannons that can strip MBT armor) formations and air support. The only weakness that Orks may have is that they tend to cluster their numbers, but this isn't that big of an issue as they have so many they often cover the horizon.
They're like the Russians at Kurks on steroids. It's just this giant green wave consisting of nonstop attack by armor, infantry, artillery, titans, and aircraft. This is also not factoring in how Orks often lead with esoteric tech. Above all other factions (possibly even the Necrons) the Orks make the most widespread use of teleportation, zapping infantry and armor right into the heart of the enemy while dropping asteroids on cities. Orks of significant tech progression can even loot planets and use them as gigantic world-ending missiles.
One, in situations of theory such as this you must allow for fictional material. You can't say "it just doesn't work" here's the thing. IIRC laser rifles are not much stronger than a stubber (or in some cases weaker) the reason they are used is threefold-
Accuracy- laser rifles have little kick, they are more accurate than conventional rifles.
Munition- one battery pack for a laser rifle lasts an extremely long time. Its much easier to mass produce them, and they are much more ammo sufficient.
Range- being a laser, its going to go straight for over a mile, depending on fluff it can still prove deadly at that range.
I support this in that in any guard fluff I read, higher upnguardsmen prefer to use more conventional weapons over the rifle.
Sorry, greenskins are tough, but I'd wager any modern day machine gun would tear through then. (After all, most today can go clean through 2 inches of reinforced steel)
Not to mention a 50 cal. Would devastate them even a nob. (Working on an assumption of a 50 cal most likely equating a heavy bolter or more)
Greenskins are not good at fighting. In every fluff on them except ghazzy they are killed in the hundreds and only win from numbers.
A small waaagh would not have the psychic energy, nor the scrap and meks to have stomoas and gargants etc. At least not for a while.
raiden wrote: One, in situations of theory such as this you must allow for fictional material. You can't say "it just doesn't work" here's the thing. IIRC laser rifles are not much stronger than a stubber (or in some cases weaker) the reason they are used is threefold-
Accuracy- laser rifles have little kick, they are more accurate than conventional rifles.
Munition- one battery pack for a laser rifle lasts an extremely long time. Its much easier to mass produce them, and they are much more ammo sufficient.
Range- being a laser, its going to go straight for over a mile, depending on fluff it can still prove deadly at that range.
I support this in that in any guard fluff I read, higher upnguardsmen prefer to use more conventional weapons over the rifle.
Sorry, greenskins are tough, but I'd wager any modern day machine gun would tear through then. (After all, most today can go clean through 2 inches of reinforced steel)
Not to mention a 50 cal. Would devastate them even a nob. (Working on an assumption of a 50 cal most likely equating a heavy bolter or more)
Greenskins are not good at fighting. In every fluff on them except ghazzy they are killed in the hundreds and only win from numbers.
A small waaagh would not have the psychic energy, nor the scrap and meks to have stomoas and gargants etc. At least not for a while.
Lasguns are significantly stronger than modern small arms fire, with single lasgun shots being powerful to blow apart limbs or even fully detonate small animals like cats in a shower of gore. Plus 40K autoguns are significantly different to modern small arms, as 40K's standard assault rifles fire sniper rifle caliber rounds at fully automatic speeds. Modern munitions are 5.56mm and 7.62mm, Autoguns typically fire 8.5mm. Orks are stupidly durable, even shooting one clean through the brain won't immediately kill it. Warbosses for example can have their entire chest cavity liquified and will simply walk off such wounds despite lacking lungs, a heart, and intestines because "lol Orks".
You really ought to bother to read some 40K material before forming your strange perceptions of the franchise.
Im not sure what fluff you are reading... But any fluff I've read about lasguns have the beams burning a home the size of the beam through a human. No exploding...
Yeah, a warboss is damn scary, especially a big one with enough psychic energy behind them due to their waaaagh. But an average ork boy? Three hits from a 50 cal would probably end them, they might not die immediately, but if one round hits their heads is a golf ball sized hole+ they will fight for a bit more, but that'd be it. Nobs depend, some of the bigger ones may prove resistant enough to even a 50cal, or more with eavy armor.
raiden wrote: Im not sure what fluff you are reading... But any fluff I've read about lasguns have the beams burning a home the size of the beam through a human. No exploding...
Yeah, a warboss is damn scary, especially a big one with enough psychic energy behind them due to their waaaagh. But an average ork boy? Three hits from a 50 cal would probably end them, they might not die immediately, but if one round hits their heads is a golf ball sized hole+ they will fight for a bit more, but that'd be it. Nobs depend, some of the bigger ones may prove resistant enough to even a 50cal, or more with eavy armor.
Warboss/= regular boyz.
Maybe you should do some reading?
Gaunt's Ghost, Guns of Tanith, or Straight Silver, mentions Cuu exploding a bird larger than a heron with a lasgun.
Ork boyz have been stated in the 5th Edition Ork Codex to be able to participate in combat for a good while after their head has been removed from it's body.
Sorry, greenskins are tough, but I'd wager any modern day machine gun would tear through then. (After all, most today can go clean through 2 inches of reinforced steel)
Not to mention a 50 cal. Would devastate them even a nob. (Working on an assumption of a 50 cal most likely equating a heavy bolter or more)
You don't seem to understand the difference in power between 2K Terran armaments and those of Warhammer 40K. Not to mention the numerical difference. Anything we could throw at the Orks pales in comparison, on both counts. 40K factions who outgun and outnumber our own military capabilities, vastly, still have trouble fighting the Orks. What chance could we possibly have? None. It's that simple.
Greenskins are not good at fighting.
Categorically untrue. This just further demonstrates to me that you have little-to-no understanding of the Orks, or the setting.
Orks really aren't good at fighting, -on an individual scale-. Boyz can't shoot the broad side of a barn, they work off instinct and rely on overpowering foes in melee. As they fight and get experience this changes, but boyz are, IMO, not much better at "fighting" than a guardsman.
raiden wrote: Im not sure what fluff you are reading... But any fluff I've read about lasguns have the beams burning a home the size of the beam through a human. No exploding...
Yeah, a warboss is damn scary, especially a big one with enough psychic energy behind them due to their waaaagh. But an average ork boy? Three hits from a 50 cal would probably end them, they might not die immediately, but if one round hits their heads is a golf ball sized hole+ they will fight for a bit more, but that'd be it. Nobs depend, some of the bigger ones may prove resistant enough to even a 50cal, or more with eavy armor.
Warboss/= regular boyz.
Maybe you should do some reading?
I am not sure, as I don't know all that much about calibres and such, but the Agripinaa pattern autogun is .825 cal. That seems pretty big to me, and that is for a second-rate infantry weapon only issued when lasguns are not available. If you look at the weapon, from the size of everything it definitely looks like it fires a round more like that in a sniper rifle.
raiden wrote: Orks really aren't good at fighting, -on an individual scale-. Boyz can't shoot the broad side of a barn, they work off instinct and rely on overpowering foes in melee. As they fight and get experience this changes, but boyz are, IMO, not much better at "fighting" than a guardsman.
But they are, though. We're not talking about "individual scale" here. We're talking one army fighting another army. Not that it matters. On both scales 2K human soldiers are just as fethed. One soldier with a rifle and a combat knife vs. a Boy with a shoota and a choppa... without some tremendous luck, is fethed. Our army vs. an Ork army, is fethed.
It actually is a caliber used in some sniper rifles. It'd be even worse to fire than an M14 unless it has an exceptional recoil mitigation system. Although the grip does appear to fit some sort of gas system.
Since we're now at a point of comparing 2k Terran armaments to 40k Imperial armaments, if you've cited a weapon caliber for comparison (autogun, stubber, etc.), I'd like to see your citation for that.
And for the record, a 7.62mm round strikes with enough kinetic force to blow a limb apart. Even with both hard and soft kevlar plates, the kinetic force of one round hitting your chest is enough to pulp your internal organs. Nevermind that, it has enough penetrating power to go in one side of an armored M113 and out the other side.
A .50 cal would be hitting with the power of a heavy bolter, I'd reckon. And if you've never carried a belt of .50 cal ammunition (note: not .50 Action Express, I'm talking .50 BMG) before, you're delusional to think that the standard Imperial autogun is a larger caliber than that. The autogun on the end of page 7 would maybe fit eight rounds in that magazine and weigh like a brick.
To those unfamiliar with firearms, yes, the size of a round matters, but there's a reason why 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds are so much more powerful and destructive than 9mm rounds. It's not size that matters.
Enigwolf wrote: Since we're now at a point of comparing 2k Terran armaments to 40k Imperial armaments, if you've cited a weapon caliber for comparison (autogun, stubber, etc.), I'd like to see your citation for that.
And for the record, a 7.62mm round strikes with enough kinetic force to blow a limb apart. Even with both hard and soft kevlar plates, the kinetic force of one round hitting your chest is enough to pulp your internal organs. Nevermind that, it has enough penetrating power to go in one side of an armored M113 and out the other side.
A .50 cal would be hitting with the power of a heavy bolter, I'd reckon. And if you've never carried a belt of .50 cal ammunition (note: not .50 Action Express, I'm talking .50 BMG) before, you're delusional to think that the standard Imperial autogun is a larger caliber than that. The autogun on the end of page 7 would maybe fit eight rounds in that magazine and weigh like a brick.
To those unfamiliar with firearms, yes, the size of a round matters, but there's a reason why 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds are so much more powerful and destructive than 9mm rounds. It's not size that matters.
No, size does matter. 9x19mm is utterly pathetic compared to 9x57mm Mausers. Also, to my knowledge 7.62mm doesn't actually strike with enough force to literally explode a limb, but rather blow it off. There'll still be some distinctive bits left, or even a significant part of the limb left. Russian ammo tends to create one or two multiple cones, while 5.56 fragments and litters the tissue with shrapnel.
Also, Imperial Armor books state some autogun calibers to be "8.5mm long". While probably not packing the exact amount of gunpowder as a sniper round, I'd imagine it'd be comparable to Austrian 8x56mmR or 8mm Lebel. Something like a battle rifle version of the PKP.
Ah, my apologies. My point was that size wasn't all that mattered, but I couldn't resist a "It's not size that matters" joke at the end of that, but it screwed up the entire meaning of that sentence.
Ah, my apologies. My point was that size wasn't all that mattered, but I couldn't resist a "It's not size that matters" joke at the end of that, but it screwed up the entire meaning of that sentence.
To be fair, scientifically the correct sentiment would be "Area, Volume, and Mass matters".
Wyzilla wrote: 9x19mm is utterly pathetic compared to 9x57mm Mausers.
Yes, true. That's why I'm saying that if you're just looking at the "shorthand" of a weapon's caliber (i.e. 9mm versus 9x19mm) you're not fully comprehending the full capability of the round.
Also, to my knowledge 7.62mm doesn't actually strike with enough force to literally explode a limb, but rather blow it off. There'll still be some distinctive bits left, or even a significant part of the limb left. Russian ammo tends to create one or two multiple cones, while 5.56 fragments and litters the tissue with shrapnel.
It really depends on where you hit. Remember that the "explosive" force comes from the spinning of the bullet, hence why exit wounds are huge and gaping compared to entry wounds. Hit a small enough person at the end of their limb and it'll look like it explodes. The only time I can imagine a lasgun hitting and causing a limb to explode is if the laser contains enough thermal energy to super-heat the area of impact so great to the point where flesh simply explodes. But in all the fluff I've read, las-weapons have always been a precision scalpel. Presumably, hitting something smaller like a bird with a hot-shot round (much smaller body to disperse heat buildup, large heat transfer) will cause it to explode.
Also, Imperial Armor books state some autogun calibers to be "8.5mm long". While probably not packing the exact amount of gunpowder as a sniper round, I'd imagine it'd be comparable to Austrian 8x56mmR or 8mm Lebel. Something like a battle rifle version of the PKP.
"8.5mm long"? That doesn't tell us anything about the actual caliber of the round since caliber measures the diameter of the round/bore.
Ah, my apologies. My point was that size wasn't all that mattered, but I couldn't resist a "It's not size that matters" joke at the end of that, but it screwed up the entire meaning of that sentence.
To be fair, scientifically the correct sentiment would be "Area, Volume, and Mass matters".
I think you misunderstood the question. The thread's question is what our military would be most likely to WANT to fight. Tyranids would be by far one of the factions our modern militaries would hate to face given their inability to be bargained with and the havoc/horror they would wreak.
I like how most people who have been in the military or are historians all basically have said. "It is suicidal to face the imperium."
The might of the imperium would crush within seconds.
First Mobility (Literally it takes them a hour to move from place to place). Entire postions would be fortified, portable shield generators protecting areas of interest. Being able to drop fortresses on the ground.
Second technology. (Space Technology for one) Our people right now would be wiped out rather quickly. AS we really don't have an answer to titans or orbitial strikes. Percision sstrikes would be useless to an all seeing enemy from space. Satellites and various technologies we had would be destroyed meaning we would be highly inaccurate with nuclear warheads.
Meaning we would have to rely on radio and logistically that would be a nightmare. Airplanes that gather information would be shot down.
Enigwolf wrote: Since we're now at a point of comparing 2k Terran armaments to 40k Imperial armaments, if you've cited a weapon caliber for comparison (autogun, stubber, etc.), I'd like to see your citation for that.
Imperial Armour VI, part 2.
It has the profile of the Agripinaa autoguns used by the Vraks traitor militia, altough it is also noted that this pattern is unusual amongst autoguns for having an oversized round and all kinds of mechanisms to compensate recoil.
Enigwolf wrote: And for the record, a 7.62mm round strikes with enough kinetic force to blow a limb apart. Even with both hard and soft kevlar plates, the kinetic force of one round hitting your chest is enough to pulp your internal organs. Nevermind that, it has enough penetrating power to go in one side of an armored M113 and out the other side.
A .50 cal would be hitting with the power of a heavy bolter, I'd reckon. And if you've never carried a belt of .50 cal ammunition (note: not .50 Action Express, I'm talking .50 BMG) before, you're delusional to think that the standard Imperial autogun is a larger caliber than that. The autogun on the end of page 7 would maybe fit eight rounds in that magazine and weigh like a brick.
Not true, a heavy bolter would be worse, considering that it actually fires HE rounds which are noted to be 'the size of a fist'. Even a regular bolter already is .60 or .75 cal (Horus Heresy I - Betrayal)
Enigwolf wrote: And for the record, a 7.62mm round strikes with enough kinetic force to blow a limb apart. Even with both hard and soft kevlar plates, the kinetic force of one round hitting your chest is enough to pulp your internal organs. Nevermind that, it has enough penetrating power to go in one side of an armored M113 and out the other side.
A .50 cal would be hitting with the power of a heavy bolter, I'd reckon. And if you've never carried a belt of .50 cal ammunition (note: not .50 Action Express, I'm talking .50 BMG) before, you're delusional to think that the standard Imperial autogun is a larger caliber than that. The autogun on the end of page 7 would maybe fit eight rounds in that magazine and weigh like a brick.
Not true, a heavy bolter would be worse, considering that it actually fires HE rounds which are noted to be 'the size of a fist'. Even a regular bolter already is .60 or .75 cal (Horus Heresy I - Betrayal)
Yeah, I won't lie, I think I was pushing it with the heavy bolter comparison. Bolters are, for all intents and purposes, micro rocket launchers on rapid fire.
When Ghazzy was just a simple normal Boy he took a .75 caliber exploding shot to his head which obliterated a big portion of his skull and brains. He stood back up. The other Boyz took him Dok Grot. Ghazzy is now a galactic terror.
For a single planet civilization like Earth. There is no such thing as a 'small Waaaaagh' what you describe is raiderz. Waaaaagh! are described as racial planetary and in some cases multi system wide migrations. A small Waaaaagh as you put it is another planet's worth of Orks coming, big Waaaaaghs like the one hitting Armegeddon have Orks streaming in from many many systems while the same is being done with the Imperials whom have a 1000 light yr radius recruitment craze going on to fuel the attrition at Armegeddon.
Orks don't just charge in with axes. They have aircraft and know to gain air superiority first by taking out enemy interceptors before bringing out the bombers, they have artillery and antiaircraft ranging from conventional to things we couldn't possible understand, they have jump pack hordes that drop down into key locations from Kargo Kraft, they have tanks which again fires all kinds of things from convnetional to down right wtf?!?!, they have orbital kroozers space hulks for orbital bombardment of roks, some of those roks are fortresses with tellyporta arrays feeding millions of more troops and vehicles to the surface below, walkers a whole family range of them from Killa Kans to Gargants bristling with weapons that again range from conventional to holy crikey did you see that! Trukks, buggies, trakks, deffkoptas, bikes, units specializing in sneaking behind enemy lines, units specialized in routing out cover with promethium burners far more advanced then our flamethrowers, units specializing in raining a hail of support fire, Ork who stable other Orks heads back on and they jump right back into the fight, Orks that shoot green beams out of their eyes that melt metal and vomit great big clouds of green that melt infantry into pools of goo, missile launchers, bomb squigs, kustom mega blasters, grotzookas, deffguns, snazzguns, shock attack guns, and tellyport blastas.
I'm not sure if I covered enough to make the point that Orks aren't just axe wielding melee chargers. Not enough variety of weapons to convince you that they use combined arms forces? Most of these things are beyond the understanding of even advanced races like Eldar in the 41st millenium let alone Earth circa 2015AD. There's a reason for that, no one (save Yarrick it seems) can pick up the weapons of a dead Ork and figure out why it even works let alone how. For all logical reasoning none of it should work at all. All of that in the hands of a race that won't bargain, won't show mercy, has no racial understanding of fear, won't cease fire on the population even after the main defenders are defeated and finds pain curious and entertaining. Earth isn't ready for that.
Our chances with any of the races above is going to be whether we can negotiate before the fighting starts, whether we can steal, use and copy enemy tech when the fighting starts, or whether they are willing to let us surrender and join them if we are defeated. Orks don't fall into any of this. I mean seriously, they are ancient in the extreme and have been a spacefaring race long before the first species on Earth crawled out of the oceans onto land. They've been around since the Eldar were in their prime and thrived and still persist in the Milky Way as the most prolific race in the galaxy. More the just axe wielding chargers.
Orks thrive because of their biology. They literally grow their own food. They can land on a barren, almost non atmospheric asteroid and bring life to it, their tech is military only. Many orks don't know how even the somewhat logical ork tech works, with mek boyz and larger warbosses knowing. They are just told it works, and beleive it works. Ork logic is very simple. Fight, fight fight fight. They rarely do anything that doesn't including gathering scrap to fight with, planning to fight, or fighting. Most often orks "charge headlong axe in hand" along side buggies and trukks.
Orks are the only race that won't either instantly wipe us out, or out maneuver by having orbital ships hovering in our atmosphere. Our fortifications will actually be of use, as that is where the good fight is.
Its "what army does our military have the best chance against" quite simply, its orks.
Orks thrive because of their biology. They literally grow their own food. They can land on a barren, almost non atmospheric asteroid and bring life to it, their tech is military only. Many orks don't know how even the somewhat logical ork tech works, with mek boyz and larger warbosses knowing. They are just told it works, and beleive it works. Ork logic is very simple. Fight, fight fight fight. They rarely do anything that doesn't including gathering scrap to fight with, planning to fight, or fighting. Most often orks "charge headlong axe in hand" along side buggies and trukks.
Orks are the only race that won't either instantly wipe us out, or out maneuver by having orbital ships hovering in our atmosphere. Our fortifications will actually be of use, as that is where the good fight is.
Its "what army does our military have the best chance against" quite simply, its orks.
Our fortifications? Pray tell, what great fortifications do we have?
There is a good reason fortifications are outdated in present military doctrine, as they quite simply can't stand up to modern weapons. What makes you think they could stand up to the even heavier and more advanced Ork weapons?
Also, it is a stupid mistake to think that most Orks simply charge without thinking. Ork tactics are usually quite simple, but usually also rather effective, and at times completely brilliant. The fluff is full of Imperial and even Eldar commanders being outmanoeuvred and outsmarted by Orks.
The Orks will outnumber our military by a vast margin, and with their superior manoeuvrability they will be everywhere at once. Their first strike will come as a complete surprise to us and wipe out our military before it can get organised (being the best chance for a good fight means they will be targeted first) and afterwards the Orks will proceed to kill everyone else on the planet just for fun. The more of a defense the remaining humans will put up, the more Orks will come, therefore making resistance pointless. In fact, our best bet would be to not resist at all and hope the Orks get bored and leave before killing the entire world population.
Orks thrive because of their biology. They literally grow their own food. They can land on a barren, almost non atmospheric asteroid and bring life to it, their tech is military only. Many orks don't know how even the somewhat logical ork tech works, with mek boyz and larger warbosses knowing. They are just told it works, and beleive it works. Ork logic is very simple. Fight, fight fight fight. They rarely do anything that doesn't including gathering scrap to fight with, planning to fight, or fighting. Most often orks "charge headlong axe in hand" along side buggies and trukks.
Orks are the only race that won't either instantly wipe us out, or out maneuver by having orbital ships hovering in our atmosphere. Our fortifications will actually be of use, as that is where the good fight is.
Its "what army does our military have the best chance against" quite simply, its orks.
Our fortifications? Pray tell, what great fortifications do we have?
The Great Wall of China... It has the word "Great" in it!
As much as I enjoy threads like this, there's really no point to it. While real life measurements are quantifiable and reproducible, Warhammer fluff is completely contradictory. On a scale of 1-10, you can have the same weapon or vehicle be ANYWHERE from 1-10 depending on the author, or even the point in the novel.
People who frequent the Background section might remember all the debate about what can kill a Primarch (One guys take a Titan-level plasma shot or two, while another one is afraid of being pulped by the errant Bolter round).
This becomes even less effective when you add in physics, since the vast majority of BL writers have no idea what they're talking about. You think any Imperial, Ork, etc. vehicle can fly because "it has strong enough engines"? Throw those badboys in a wind tunnel and tell me how well that goes. Now try changing their delta or AoA. Without proper aerodynamics, those enginers are just plunging you into the ground even faster.
People try and make up for this with handwavium and the like, but it's hopeless. This is a hobby where our imaginations and pride rule. It is *required* that you fill in a plethora of gaps for things to make sense, as a player/reader, and we always want to imagine our armies, or even the universe in some grand and powerful sense. Think of the rule of cool here and how easily and readily that explains things. Lasguns are AWESOME, right? Not like those stupid M-16's!
Fact is: Half of what is in the WH40k universe wouldn't work in real life, if not more. No matter what magic-techno babble you have going on.
The other half, if IA measurements are any indication, performs worse than modern day gear.
You can almost make a legitimate case for Necron and Tau stuff since that's supposed to just plain be beyond our understanding. But the majority of Ork, Guard, Space Marine, etc. stuff just doesn't keep up.
Ork weapons aren't supposed to make sense even to the wh40k universe and their fantasy form oh physics let alone real world physics. Ork stuff just simply shouldn't work at all fantasy or not. That IS their fluff. Non one can steal from them because it's pointless useless junk. But in the hands of Orks and their gestalt psychic waaaagh they work as intended. Again it's never going to work if you try to use human logic to understand or explain Ork tek.
ProwlerPC wrote: Ork weapons aren't supposed to make sense even to the wh40k universe and their fantasy form oh physics let alone real world physics. Ork stuff just simply shouldn't work at all fantasy or not. That IS their fluff. Non one can steal from them because it's pointless useless junk. But in the hands of Orks and their gestalt psychic waaaagh they work as intended. Again it's never going to work if you try to use human logic to understand or explain Ork tek.
See, we've even had HUGE threads on the validity of that, with quite a few people arguing its just the Imperium's ignorance and that they totally DO work and we just don't understand why.
Again, Warhammer logic collapses in on itself. You simply can't argue the merits of something that can be whatever it wants to be at any given moment.
Maybe true but again you point out that a 41st millenium galactic civilization can't figure out how Ork tek works, I don't think Earth will have an easier time figuring out how Orks blindly tellyport and not end up in wrong places or in solid matter but seem to end up right where they want to go, or figure out how their Kustom Force Field works, or figure out how their mega blastas function etc.... Either way we are still facing a galactic scale army who can't be bargained with, can't be surrendered to and can't be reverse engineered. On the flip side, for some reason, not matter how compicated and advanced the tek is, the Orks figure out how to loot it and make it work sometimes in some very clever, simple, eloquent ways that would never occur to a human.
And especially so in situations where the Author specifies the stuff can't be understood even within the Author's created universe (carte-blanche creative liscence).
Tyran wrote: To be fair that problem is in practically all science-fiction, authors simply don't understand even basic science.
That is why they are authors, not scientists.
They are just there to write good, entertaining stories, not scientific treatises on on how potential future tech might function. Usually, the more technical and scientifically accurate an author tries to make his work, the more boring it becomes. Let us be happy sci-fi authors don't understand science, otherwise sci-fi likely wouldn't even exist in the first place.
You're still all wrong. While our modern militaries might be able to combat (for awhile, anyway) Orks, that's not the army that they're going to *want* to fight.
They will most want to fight the Squats, because the Squats are all dead, and the risk profile of a deceased enemy is greatly diminished.
Psienesis wrote: You're still all wrong. While our modern militaries might be able to combat (for awhile, anyway) Orks, that's not the army that they're going to *want* to fight.
They will most want to fight the Squats, because the Squats are all dead, and the risk profile of a deceased enemy is greatly diminished.
Not the Squats... If we get dead Squats here on Earth, that will mean that which killed them is here as well...
Psienesis wrote: You're still all wrong. While our modern militaries might be able to combat (for awhile, anyway) Orks, that's not the army that they're going to *want* to fight.
They will most want to fight the Squats, because the Squats are all dead, and the risk profile of a deceased enemy is greatly diminished.
Psienesis wrote: One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...
... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?
Tau have psyker xenos allies capable of ripping information from somebody's head. They can simply send one down to basically download the contents of somebody's brain and work with that information from there.
They also have auto-translators, and with the tau's technology, I'm sure they could get a general understanding of what people are saying.
I don't 'think void shields of anything short of battleships are capable of withstanding a direct hit with a nuclear initiation (especially including the EMP effect), but I could be wrong.
Melissia wrote: I don't 'think void shields of anything short of battleships are capable of withstanding a direct hit with a nuclear initiation (especially including the EMP effect), but I could be wrong.
The larger Titans are throwing around multi megaton city-busting shots. Yeah they could take a nuke. A Warhound or Reaver though would be obliterated.
Melissia wrote: I don't 'think void shields of anything short of battleships are capable of withstanding a direct hit with a nuclear initiation (especially including the EMP effect), but I could be wrong.
The larger Titans are throwing around multi megaton city-busting shots. Yeah they could take a nuke. A Warhound or Reaver though would be obliterated.
Fair enough. Those larger titans are bigger than some navy ships themselves.
The Dies Irae had to completely shut down and button down the hatches during the orbital strikes on Istvaan III. That's an Emperor-class titan. A Warlord would likely be crippled, and a Warhound and a Reaver would probably disappear.
While the destructive power of titan weapons can range in the multi-megaton range (particularly if you're looking at something like a Hellstorm Cannon, Plasma Annihilator (not the destructor) or other Imperator primary weapons), they tend to be focused on a small area rather than indiscriminate like a nuclear warhead.
Enigwolf wrote: The Dies Irae had to completely shut down and button down the hatches during the orbital strikes on Istvaan III. That's an Emperor-class titan. A Warlord would likely be crippled, and a Warhound and a Reaver would probably disappear.
While the destructive power of titan weapons can range in the multi-megaton range (particularly if you're looking at something like a Hellstorm Cannon, Plasma Annihilator (not the destructor) or other Imperator primary weapons), they tend to be focused on a small area rather than indiscriminate like a nuclear warhead.
Orbital weaponry is usually far stronger than any nuclear warhead we possess.
Also a focused weapon is far better against hardened targets (like other Titans) that an indiscriminate weapon like a nuke as most of the energy of the nuke isn't going to hit the Titan.
Not to mention the Disirae survived and was completely sealed off during the life eater virus and then basically the firestorm that it caused after all the organic matter was left. Which is probably if it was planet wide around several GIGATONS of power. Which was less and more focused in certain spots with a lance strike and then the planet is engulfed in fire.
Enigwolf wrote: The Dies Irae had to completely shut down and button down the hatches during the orbital strikes on Istvaan III. That's an Emperor-class titan. A Warlord would likely be crippled, and a Warhound and a Reaver would probably disappear.
While the destructive power of titan weapons can range in the multi-megaton range (particularly if you're looking at something like a Hellstorm Cannon, Plasma Annihilator (not the destructor) or other Imperator primary weapons), they tend to be focused on a small area rather than indiscriminate like a nuclear warhead.
Orbital weaponry is usually far stronger than any nuclear warhead we possess.
Also a focused weapon is far better against hardened targets (like other Titans) that an indiscriminate weapon like a nuke as most of the energy of the nuke isn't going to hit the Titan.
Well, hard to say, really, given that an orbital barrage from a capship usually saturates a huge area much like sailing galleons of ye' olde Terran dayz. There was a handy-dandy "orbital object strike" calculator from some astrophysicist in the early days of the internet that I remember, you could plug in things like the size and density of the incoming object, plus angle of impact, density of atmosphere, density of ground, etc. to determine the force of an impact of an object from space. I do remember creating theoretical scenarios of an orbital strike with my brother, and each shell would hit with the force of a small tactical nuclear detonation. One could theorize that a few macrocannon shells hitting from orbit would strike with the kinetic force of a strategic nuclear weapon, minus the EMP shockwave.
It could go either way. Some battery weapons are kinetic guns (most of them are, really), meaning that they gain kinetic force as they enter a planet's atmosphere. Depending on the class of the warship, other battery weapons can also consist of turbolasers or plasma projectors instead - these would lose destructive energy due to dissipation from atmospheric particles.
Enigwolf wrote: The Dies Irae had to completely shut down and button down the hatches during the orbital strikes on Istvaan III. That's an Emperor-class titan. A Warlord would likely be crippled, and a Warhound and a Reaver would probably disappear.
While the destructive power of titan weapons can range in the multi-megaton range (particularly if you're looking at something like a Hellstorm Cannon, Plasma Annihilator (not the destructor) or other Imperator primary weapons), they tend to be focused on a small area rather than indiscriminate like a nuclear warhead.
Orbital weaponry is usually far stronger than any nuclear warhead we possess.
Also a focused weapon is far better against hardened targets (like other Titans) that an indiscriminate weapon like a nuke as most of the energy of the nuke isn't going to hit the Titan.
Well, hard to say, really, given that an orbital barrage from a capship usually saturates a huge area much like sailing galleons of ye' olde Terran dayz. There was a handy-dandy "orbital object strike" calculator from some astrophysicist in the early days of the internet that I remember, you could plug in things like the size and density of the incoming object, plus angle of impact, density of atmosphere, density of ground, etc. to determine the force of an impact of an object from space. I do remember creating theoretical scenarios of an orbital strike with my brother, and each shell would hit with the force of a small tactical nuclear detonation. One could theorize that a few macrocannon shells hitting from orbit would strike with the kinetic force of a strategic nuclear weapon, minus the EMP shockwave.
It could go either way. Some battery weapons are kinetic guns (most of them are, really), meaning that they gain kinetic force as they enter a planet's atmosphere. Depending on the class of the warship, other battery weapons can also consist of turbolasers or plasma projectors instead - these would lose destructive energy due to dissipation from atmospheric particles.
Enigwolf wrote: The Dies Irae had to completely shut down and button down the hatches during the orbital strikes on Istvaan III. That's an Emperor-class titan. A Warlord would likely be crippled, and a Warhound and a Reaver would probably disappear.
While the destructive power of titan weapons can range in the multi-megaton range (particularly if you're looking at something like a Hellstorm Cannon, Plasma Annihilator (not the destructor) or other Imperator primary weapons), they tend to be focused on a small area rather than indiscriminate like a nuclear warhead.
Orbital weaponry is usually far stronger than any nuclear warhead we possess.
Also a focused weapon is far better against hardened targets (like other Titans) that an indiscriminate weapon like a nuke as most of the energy of the nuke isn't going to hit the Titan.
Well, hard to say, really, given that an orbital barrage from a capship usually saturates a huge area much like sailing galleons of ye' olde Terran dayz. There was a handy-dandy "orbital object strike" calculator from some astrophysicist in the early days of the internet that I remember, you could plug in things like the size and density of the incoming object, plus angle of impact, density of atmosphere, density of ground, etc. to determine the force of an impact of an object from space. I do remember creating theoretical scenarios of an orbital strike with my brother, and each shell would hit with the force of a small tactical nuclear detonation. One could theorize that a few macrocannon shells hitting from orbit would strike with the kinetic force of a strategic nuclear weapon, minus the EMP shockwave.
It could go either way. Some battery weapons are kinetic guns (most of them are, really), meaning that they gain kinetic force as they enter a planet's atmosphere. Depending on the class of the warship, other battery weapons can also consist of turbolasers or plasma projectors instead - these would lose destructive energy due to dissipation from atmospheric particles.
Enigwolf wrote: The Dies Irae had to completely shut down and button down the hatches during the orbital strikes on Istvaan III. That's an Emperor-class titan. A Warlord would likely be crippled, and a Warhound and a Reaver would probably disappear.
While the destructive power of titan weapons can range in the multi-megaton range (particularly if you're looking at something like a Hellstorm Cannon, Plasma Annihilator (not the destructor) or other Imperator primary weapons), they tend to be focused on a small area rather than indiscriminate like a nuclear warhead.
Orbital weaponry is usually far stronger than any nuclear warhead we possess. Also a focused weapon is far better against hardened targets (like other Titans) that an indiscriminate weapon like a nuke as most of the energy of the nuke isn't going to hit the Titan.
Well, hard to say, really, given that an orbital barrage from a capship usually saturates a huge area much like sailing galleons of ye' olde Terran dayz. There was a handy-dandy "orbital object strike" calculator from some astrophysicist in the early days of the internet that I remember, you could plug in things like the size and density of the incoming object, plus angle of impact, density of atmosphere, density of ground, etc. to determine the force of an impact of an object from space. I do remember creating theoretical scenarios of an orbital strike with my brother, and each shell would hit with the force of a small tactical nuclear detonation. One could theorize that a few macrocannon shells hitting from orbit would strike with the kinetic force of a strategic nuclear weapon, minus the EMP shockwave.
It could go either way. Some battery weapons are kinetic guns (most of them are, really), meaning that they gain kinetic force as they enter a planet's atmosphere. Depending on the class of the warship, other battery weapons can also consist of turbolasers or plasma projectors instead - these would lose destructive energy due to dissipation from atmospheric particles.
Someone stated above that it was a virus bomb, which essentially turns the atmosphere into a gigantic fireball and is far above our nuclear arsenal could ever hope to accomplish. Of course, determining how much energy of that firestorm is dumped on the Titan is probably impossible to determine.
Melissia wrote: I don't 'think void shields of anything short of battleships are capable of withstanding a direct hit with a nuclear initiation (especially including the EMP effect), but I could be wrong.
The larger Titans are throwing around multi megaton city-busting shots. Yeah they could take a nuke. A Warhound or Reaver though would be obliterated.
Fair enough. Those larger titans are bigger than some navy ships themselves.
Hell the larger titans HAVE killed escort ships if my memory isn't failing me. Something like an Imperator sniping a small escort in-atmo with a turbolaser.
Bobthehero wrote: Wasn't a million of ton, for sure, I am sure a nuke would be more than enough to bring it down.
There is a difference between a building falling on a single object and a Titan. A titan probably has heat resistance and ceramite to protect it. I am pretty sure the Militaries of the world don't want to keep firing nukes and risk entire operations. I also don't think nukes nowadays would do great against targets that move and are mobile. Would the military really be truly able to nuke new york just because the enemy is there?
Bobthehero wrote: The modern militaries will just scuttle another skyscraper and swarm the thing then
How? how would they do this against the Imperium? Who have superior aircraft and ground support?
An Imperial Regiment would be protecting it along with Imperial Knights and Warhounds. They don't send one machine off by itself, they hunt down targets realitively easily. How would they know their weakpoints?
What materials are the imperial buildings made out of? Because it sure as hell isn't just concrete. Especially at Armaggedon's planet which is basically a fortress world.
How would the United States military fair against storm troopers and regiment fire? The imperium acts very similarily to the US miltiary in terms of tactics often being in small squads and moving out from key positions, not in giant lines of musket fire. the Us Military would be in a lot of trouble if the imperium of man faced them.
Also could you quote the specific passage you are talking about instead of just paraphrasing?
If it is really an Imperator Titan then there is discrepancy in the lore (no surprise there)
Wyzilla wrote: Also in Warhammer, a "building" (especially on Armageddon), can be tens of kilometers tall.
Especially in a hive city world. It was probably the tower at the heart of Helsreach. which is made with various metals and built with various generators and weapons. And to take it down would be akin to dropping the city of chicago on a single object.
Honestly (as much as it hurts to say) I think the only force we'd really stand a chance against is the Eldar. While they are highly mobile and very efficient at killing things, they are also the squishiest, An Abrams could still dent falcons and Fire Prisms, for example. A MOAB could shake wraithbone constructs like the Titans providing it hits, and the actual Eldar footsoldier is still killable with .556 or .308. But perhaps most importantly, the Eldar aren't numberless like the Guard or the Orks or the Nids. They're fast, yes. But that could be countered through streak missiles or other various targeting systems. They're melee beasts, but that's tactically avoidable by keeping your distance. The psychic power they bring would still put the fight in their favor, but at least they're not invincible like everyone else
Will1541 wrote: Honestly (as much as it hurts to say) I think the only force we'd really stand a chance against is the Eldar. While they are highly mobile and very efficient at killing things, they are also the squishiest, An Abrams could still dent falcons and Fire Prisms, for example. A MOAB could shake wraithbone constructs like the Titans providing it hits, and the actual Eldar footsoldier is still killable with .556 or .308. But perhaps most importantly, the Eldar aren't numberless like the Guard or the Orks or the Nids. They're fast, yes. But that could be countered through streak missiles or other various targeting systems. They're melee beasts, but that's tactically avoidable by keeping your distance. The psychic power they bring would still put the fight in their favor, but at least they're not invincible like everyone else
Except they will avoid an open conflict at all costs. The eldar are not good at open battlefield they will instead target their targets with finese and cause the nations of the world to bicker and fight each other over 'mysterious' deaths. The eldar would never fight any army in an open battlefield unless they had allies to support them. They are fast and use stealth at all times.
Falcons and Fire Prisms have speed and mobility that are moving at super sonic speeds. We would have to hit them, but even then they have holofields and shields that protect their crew. Plus they also have cloaking and their snipers would just whittle away at us pretty quickly. And also the Farseers will be able to predict the future and be able to see how to defeat us is by using others of race to kill us. By tricking them by manipulation of events.
Their Martial skill would be terrifying, they would never attack a military full on they would resort to massacres, sabotage, and rigging of high explosives in key positions. The problem is that they are space borne, and most of their ships even to the imperium are impossible to track and find. The Eldar would first create a webway on our planet and then from there secure an area by causing a black out or find an area devoid of human life or hiding in plain sight. Such as sneaking into a military base and killing everyone there without raising the alarm. The Striking Scorpions and Rangers would sneak in and get valuable information that they rip from the minds of their victims and the next day media starts blaring out that an entire military base was slaughtered and all its vehicles and assets sabotaged.
They would just write it as a terrorist attack. Not as an alien attack.
Bobthehero wrote: Wasn't a million of ton, for sure, I am sure a nuke would be more than enough to bring it down.
There is a difference between a building falling on a single object and a Titan. A titan probably has heat resistance and ceramite to protect it. I am pretty sure the Militaries of the world don't want to keep firing nukes and risk entire operations. I also don't think nukes nowadays would do great against targets that move and are mobile. Would the military really be truly able to nuke new york just because the enemy is there?
In the case of a planetary or national existential threat and ordered to by competent military authority? You better believe the military would cook a city to get at a military target. And whether or not the US military would be willing to do it...I'm betting other nuclear powers might be willing to do it anyway if there was a high enough threat.
Here is a map of a 5MT weapon going off to optimize 20 PSI overpressure. That is enough over pressure to completely demolish basically any modern building though 5 PSI is plenty for the vast majority of buildings. It creates winds over 500 MPH. Look at the area of devastation...not much is going to be alive in that.
Most people really have no clue just how powerful nuclear weapons are. It tends to make fiction where they are just throwing them around somewhat silly. But consider the reverence, awe, and terror that the AM treats Deathstrike missiles with. Those are probably several hundred Kiloton weapons assuming they are nuclear weapons, though they could be in the megaton class if they are relatively short-ranged.
Bobthehero wrote: Wasn't a million of ton, for sure, I am sure a nuke would be more than enough to bring it down.
There is a difference between a building falling on a single object and a Titan. A titan probably has heat resistance and ceramite to protect it. I am pretty sure the Militaries of the world don't want to keep firing nukes and risk entire operations. I also don't think nukes nowadays would do great against targets that move and are mobile. Would the military really be truly able to nuke new york just because the enemy is there?
In the case of a planetary or national existential threat and ordered to by competent military authority? You better believe the military would cook a city to get at a military target. And whether or not the US military would be willing to do it...I'm betting other nuclear powers might be willing to do it anyway if there was a high enough threat.
Here is a map of a 5MT weapon going off to optimize 20 PSI overpressure. That is enough over pressure to completely demolish basically any modern building though 5 PSI is plenty for the vast majority of buildings. It creates winds over 500 MPH. Look at the area of devastation...not much is going to be alive in that.
Most people really have no clue just how powerful nuclear weapons are. It tends to make fiction where they are just throwing them around somewhat silly. But consider the reverence, awe, and terror that the AM treats Deathstrike missiles with. Those are probably several hundred Kiloton weapons assuming they are nuclear weapons, though they could be in the megaton class if they are relatively short-ranged.
You would think that the imperium would have defenses against primitive weaponry. Because by and large all modern military weaponry is inferior to the far future's multilayered items that are apparently a mixture of the strongest materials known to man.
At the same time consider that Roman armor weighed about as much as modern body armor weighs.
The modern armor provides better protection against ballistic attacks, but the roman armor protects better against stabbing and slashing attacks. It depends heavily on what kind of weaponry you are facing that your armor is going to face.
Additionally, the answer, especially in the Guard, for how to handle things tends to be "more dakka" while modern military means tends to be "more accuracy." The 26" guns of an Iowa-class battleship are much more akin to the type of weaponry the AM would employ while advanced tracking missiles and the like which have become quite common in modern military forces are less common in 40K lore.
And, again, as I would point out, even the most impressive armor is eventually defeated by physics. Even if a Predator, or Leman Russ, or whatever, can survive the crushing force of a 20 PSI blast, you don't have to crush it to render it combat ineffective. Tip a Russ over and now it's just a big hunk of metal that has to be recovered somehow.
Lendys wrote: At the same time consider that Roman armor weighed about as much as modern body armor weighs.
The modern armor provides better protection against ballistic attacks, but the roman armor protects better against stabbing and slashing attacks. It depends heavily on what kind of weaponry you are facing that your armor is going to face.
Have you actually worn and compared both before? Kevlar hard-plate and soft-plate together is pretty damn good against slashing and stabbing attacks too, if not more effective than hardened leather/breastplates.
Lol no. Kevlar soft plate without the metal insert only supplies limited resistance against stabs. It might do something against a slash, but it will be just as, if not possibly less effective than a gambeson.
Wyzilla wrote: Lol no. Kevlar soft plate without the metal insert only supplies limited resistance against stabs. It might do something against a slash, but it will be just as, if not possibly less effective than a gambeson.
I'm just gonna leave it here that I've been stabbed once while wearing hard+soft plates, and am incredibly thankful that I had them on...
Wyzilla wrote: Lol no. Kevlar soft plate without the metal insert only supplies limited resistance against stabs. It might do something against a slash, but it will be just as, if not possibly less effective than a gambeson.
I'm just gonna leave it here that I've been stabbed once while wearing hard+soft plates, and am incredibly thankful that I had them on...
Well duh, if you're wearing hard plate that would be the reason why it failed to penn. Although even if it had you'd be A-OK so long as you received a medivac. Stab wounds are terribly inefficient at killing people if the selected weapon is a knife.
Yeah, a lot of people have this idea that you can kill people with knives really easily, I blame FPSs. It takes a while for a person to bleed out from knife wounds, even if you can get a lung punctured, they can survive, and it would be quite hard to get it that deep.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Yeah, a lot of people have this idea that you can kill people with knives really easily, I blame FPSs. It takes a while for a person to bleed out from knife wounds, even if you can get a lung punctured, they can survive, and it would be quite hard to get it that deep.
Word. People don't seem to realise that the main advantage of using your knife is that you run faster.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Yeah, a lot of people have this idea that you can kill people with knives really easily, I blame FPSs. It takes a while for a person to bleed out from knife wounds, even if you can get a lung punctured, they can survive, and it would be quite hard to get it that deep.
Which FPS use knives as weapons aside of Call of Duty?
If an Imperial chainsword doesn't one hit kill, you're swinging it wrong. Which goes to show anything that uses those would be one of the armies that engages in melee with said weapon isn't one we want to fight. Yet again, melee isn't exactly the modern day armies' first tactic, but I'm sure people understand what I'm getting at.
2BlackJack1 wrote: If an Imperial chainsword doesn't one hit kill, you're swinging it wrong. Which goes to show anything that uses those would be one of the armies that engages in melee with said weapon isn't one we want to fight. Yet again, melee isn't exactly the modern day armies' first tactic, but I'm sure people understand what I'm getting at.
I think you need to remember that sometimes in a tighter area such as a small office building you can easily get into close combat by mistake.
To quote/paraphrase Dr Evil, it's a frickin laser.
None of them.
Putting aside the idea that our modern military would most likely prefer to retire having never faced anyone,
If you were our modern military which space faring, magic wielding army that travels around with laser shooting building sized walking tanks would you like to rumble with?
Best ways to kill someone with a knife are to pierce the liver or rupture the femoral artery. Most of the other traditional hollywood 'kill strikes' involve armoured sections (the windpipe is relatively well protected, the spine is tanklike) or systems with redundacies that will keep the victim alive long enough for medical help to arrive (such as the heart).
As for the building knocking a Titan over, all it says it is forced it to 'take a knee' - to enter a brace position. Does it not stand back up a moment later and carry on for some reason?
Of course, the real answer to this thread is:
"None of them. Modern militaries don't want to fight anyone if they can help it."
2BlackJack1 wrote: If an Imperial chainsword doesn't one hit kill, you're swinging it wrong. Which goes to show anything that uses those would be one of the armies that engages in melee with said weapon isn't one we want to fight. Yet again, melee isn't exactly the modern day armies' first tactic, but I'm sure people understand what I'm getting at.
Terminator armor laughs at chainsword. Actually, all armours laugh at chainsword since they don't have an AP value lmao
Co'tor Shas wrote: Yeah, a lot of people have this idea that you can kill people with knives really easily, I blame FPSs. It takes a while for a person to bleed out from knife wounds, even if you can get a lung punctured, they can survive, and it would be quite hard to get it that deep.
There are many ways to kill a person quickly with a knife. 4" of blade is all that is required for most lethal strikes.
Furyou Miko wrote: Best ways to kill someone with a knife are to pierce the liver or rupture the femoral artery. Most of the other traditional hollywood 'kill strikes' involve armoured sections (the windpipe is relatively well protected, the spine is tanklike) or systems with redundacies that will keep the victim alive long enough for medical help to arrive (such as the heart).
As for the building knocking a Titan over, all it says it is forced it to 'take a knee' - to enter a brace position. Does it not stand back up a moment later and carry on for some reason?
It takes the help of Black Templar who kill the Orks that entered the Titan, so if you coordinate the whole scuttling with sending in people to take the Titan over, its doable.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Yeah, a lot of people have this idea that you can kill people with knives really easily, I blame FPSs. It takes a while for a person to bleed out from knife wounds, even if you can get a lung punctured, they can survive, and it would be quite hard to get it that deep.
There are many ways to kill a person quickly with a knife. 4" of blade is all that is required for most lethal strikes.
No, it's not. Even strikes to the heart or arteries will not kill quickly. Humans are extremely durable, the only way to ensure a quick and efficient kill is by either severing the spinal cord, or inflicting extreme blunt trauma to the spine.
Young guy held inbetween two others in the back of a taxi with his arms held up and back behind the shoulders of his assailants he is riddled up and down his sides with stabs from both fellas holding him in the middle. They got him real good. Young man survives and gives the identities to the police and they are both in jail now. It's not like the movies. Even if you go for the liver or femoral artery there will be a feth ton of struggling, punching, kicking, biting and all kinds of frantic action with elbows and knees everywhere. Unless you can sever the spine in a single attempt you are going to put on a huge spectacle and commotion that can be noticed/heard for quite some distance.
ProwlerPC wrote: Young guy held inbetween two others in the back of a taxi with his arms held up and back behind the shoulders of his assailants he is riddled up and down his sides with stabs from both fellas holding him in the middle. They got him real good. Young man survives and gives the identities to the police and they are both in jail now. It's not like the movies. Even if you go for the liver or femoral artery there will be a feth ton of struggling, punching, kicking, biting and all kinds of frantic action with elbows and knees everywhere. Unless you can sever the spine in a single attempt you are going to put on a huge spectacle and commotion that can be noticed/heard for quite some distance.
IIRC, one incredibly lucky woman survived ninety stab wounds across her body. She survived and continues to live today.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Yeah, a lot of people have this idea that you can kill people with knives really easily, I blame FPSs. It takes a while for a person to bleed out from knife wounds, even if you can get a lung punctured, they can survive, and it would be quite hard to get it that deep.
There are many ways to kill a person quickly with a knife. 4" of blade is all that is required for most lethal strikes.
No, it's not. Even strikes to the heart or arteries will not kill quickly. Humans are extremely durable, the only way to ensure a quick and efficient kill is by either severing the spinal cord, or inflicting extreme blunt trauma to the spine.
You are wrong. You know nothing about fighting with a knife, and it shows. I never said it's easy to kill quickly, but there are certainly techniques to kill very rapidly and bleeding out is down on the list. Quit pretending to be an expert on everything. It's rather boring.
Could we move away from the fairly descriptive knife fight kill techniques at all?
Whilst vaguely interesting, its a very grim read and not particularly relevant.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Yeah, a lot of people have this idea that you can kill people with knives really easily, I blame FPSs. It takes a while for a person to bleed out from knife wounds, even if you can get a lung punctured, they can survive, and it would be quite hard to get it that deep.
There are many ways to kill a person quickly with a knife. 4" of blade is all that is required for most lethal strikes.
No, it's not. Even strikes to the heart or arteries will not kill quickly. Humans are extremely durable, the only way to ensure a quick and efficient kill is by either severing the spinal cord, or inflicting extreme blunt trauma to the spine.
You are wrong. You know nothing about fighting with a knife, and it shows. I never said it's easy to kill quickly, but there are certainly techniques to kill very rapidly and bleeding out is down on the list. Quit pretending to be an expert on everything. It's rather boring.
Which aren't useful. You need to kill instantly, as even just ten seconds of remaining conscious life is more than enough time for the victim to return the favor.
Ok bleed out is at the bottom of the list. What else other then going for the head or spine do you suggest for a quick kill that isn't bleeding them out? Bear in mind this is a knife we are talking about, not a sword or chainsaw. As Wyzilla said, people are surprisingly tough and resistant to the idea of death. I've seen plenty of violent people try all kinds of silly stuff fully unprepared to how resilient a person can be.
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happened over that week.
