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Before anyone posts another 40k vs Anything, I figured it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to post the benchmark of what they are up against. It will save huge amounts of rehashing the same crap over and over in different posts. A quick caveat here. There are no quantifiable statistics in the 40k universe other than general size guidelines for their vehicles. Most people taking the side of GW's writers point to the Black Library as a source and back calculate power levels from these. Unfortunately, the Black Library books are horribly inconsistent in this respect... I'll address this in a few of the below sections:

I'll start with a quick summary of why the Imperium of Man (IoM) is pretty much out of the league of most sci-fi universes... starting with the most obvious problems that contenders have to face:

Manpower
The IoM is pretty much accepted to have unlimited manpower, because millions of worlds equals unlimited manpower. Ergo, the Imperial Guard is capable of drawing on this unlimited manpower making their numbers unlimited as well. Thanks to the Forgeworld System, agri-worlds and Warp Travel, the Imperial Guard's unlimited recruits are also supplied with equipment and food. While one might argue that this is ridiculous and that the logistics of such a system are unworkable - but rest assured - while I agree that this assumption is stupid, taking this line is ultimately futile. Just treat something as mundane as logistics as being no match for the technology of the 41st millennium, unreliability of Warp travel be damned! (Pun intended).

Firepower
Ship output is in the TT range. (That's 10^6 Megatons). Lance output has been calculated at 0.1 SOL/s output based on descriptions of planetary scarification from the Black Library books. (That's 10% of the Sun's entire output.) Arguing that fusion based plasma reactors can't reach that level of output is futile... In the grim darkness of the far future, apparently the laws of conservation of energy don't apply to super high technology. To win vs. the Imperial navy, equal or greater numbers are required and the challengers have to at least be on parity with their firepower or outright outgun them. I'm going to ignore the 1 000 000 SOL number for void shields though... this one has to be a mistake, as smashing a ship with a million sun shield with piddly 0.1SOL shots is never going to destroy the ship. I'll just say that void shields can absorb a finite number of ordinance hits before being overloaded. Going with the Battlefleet Gothic ruleset, I'm expecting this to be in the neighborhood in the low-mid 10's (20-30). Needless to say, fighting them with any weapons rated less than 0.01SOL would be pointless. Also, despite the well recorded unreliability of warp travel, be assured that you WILL be fighting a significant portion of navy if you do pick a fight with them - anywhere from thousands of ships to a few dozen, if taken by surprise!

On the ground, you have the Titan Legions to contend with. These guys are packing escort cruiser sized weapons on a huge walker frame. They are also equipped with void shields. Even if these blokes aren't allowed in the fictional match-up, the Imperial Guard has pretty much limitless numbers, and superheavies, which are just those same giant guns on an unshielded tank chassis.

Space Marines
Even if having unlimited numbers of guys, tanks, supertanks, giant robots and SOL rated capital ships, the IoM has space marines. Thanks to the Black Library and other GW publications, these guys are genetically engineered, supremely trained one man armies, wearing an armored suit made of tank plating and armed with a miniaturized rocket cannon. Thanks to the writers, unless you are able to one-shot a Marine, you are going to die against his counter-attack, as their enhancements allow them to ignore anything but a fatal wound. That's if you get past his armor. As a spec-ops type outfit, expect that they'll rapid response any incursion against the IoM.

So, weapons at the upper scale of most fictional sci-fi worlds, with defenses to match - albeit with levels backed up by rubbish writing. Many sci-fi universes have stepped up... Star Fleet, the Stargate Universe, the Zentraedi (Macross). All have been found wanting. To sum up: If you can't win the space war, don't step up. To win the space war, you have to out gun them. (Outnumbering helps too, but not if you can't damage the IoM.)

-Aside- Please no Chuck Norris or Goku replies please. I'm aware that either could solo a Systems Fleet, if not more.

Nothing, but that's the point of 40k, no?

I honestly can't think of anything. Go Imperium.

yeah cant think of anything.

i keep trying but cant, novels may be better to think of then any game system.

The Culture.

The other thing that needs to be taken into account is the IoM's willingness to simply destroy an entire planet if it considered lost.

Possibly a general such as Ender, commanding a fleet armed with the DR Device could do a fethton of damage (assuming Void Shields didnt negate the Little Doctors), but ultimately the IoM would survive, and either Ender would burn out catastrophically trying to general the whole war single handedly, or the IoM's counter attack would utterly destroy the attackers.

Possibly whatever the "visitors" were in Roadside Picnic? Though not enough is know about them to properly decide, assuming the Picnic theory is correct, (All the stuff they left was just rubbish they dropped) their technology is possibly on a level with stuff from 40k

del'Vhar wrote:The other thing that needs to be taken into account is the IoM's willingness to simply destroy an entire planet if it considered lost.

Possibly a general such as Ender, commanding a fleet armed with the DR Device could do a fethton of damage (assuming Void Shields didnt negate the Little Doctors), but ultimately the IoM would survive, and either Ender would burn out catastrophically trying to general the whole war single handedly, or the IoM's counter attack would utterly destroy the attackers.

Possibly whatever the "visitors" were in Roadside Picnic? Though not enough is know about them to properly decide, assuming the Picnic theory is correct, (All the stuff they left was just rubbish they dropped) their technology is possibly on a level with stuff from 40k

I dunno, assuming the Little Doctors ignore void shields, they're still only able to kill a single ship at a time. Ships in 40k typically remain thousands of kilometers apart making the chance of a fleet-killing chain reaction pretty unlikely. Furthermore, the Enderverse ships seem to need to get in pretty close to be able to use the weapon and it's not likely they'd survive long enough to get in range.

My Ender knowledge is a bit rusty, haven't read it in years, so that might not be the case.

I was thinking in terms of planet kill for the Little Doctors as well.

But yes, the fighters that used them in Ender's Game did seem short range, so losses would be extreme, even with Ender in command.

I wonder how the Daleks would do, assuming they were at the height of their power (ability to teleport planets across the galaxy/time travel etc.)

And if Replicators existed in the 40k universe they would likely be nigh unstoppable, if they ever managed to assimilate Tau tech or Titans it would probably be game over for the IoM

del'Vhar wrote:I was thinking in terms of planet kill for the Little Doctors as well.

But yes, the fighters that used them in Ender's Game did seem short range, so losses would be extreme, even with Ender in command.

Meh, the planet obliterating aspect of the Little Doctors wouldn't be all that bad, considering the Imperium is already willing to sacrifice planets to combat threats. Of course, they wouldn't be happy about losing planets, but it's not like they'd capitulate in fear of this particular brand of doomsday weapon. Plus the losses getting those ships into range is going to be pretty high, considering most imperial planets have defense fleets and defensive installations.

del'Vhar wrote:
And if Replicators existed in the 40k universe they would likely be nigh unstoppable, if they ever managed to assimilate Tau tech or Titans it would probably be game over for the IoM

I'm assuming these are the stargate replicators. If so, owned. There are plenty of weapons in 40k that would completely destroy any replicator through brute force.

For Dr Device, since the very small size of the vessels in the Enderverse would make them mostly invisible, they would feasably be able to 'stealth kill' a lot of IoM stuff... that said, with there being only 1 actual world fighting in ender's verse, they would never have enough ships to do the job, and warp travel is much faster than ender travel.

You need an equally big universe to compete with the very large IoM universe... Star Wars with the fully unified empire has the size, but lacks shear killing power since the turbolaser is pathetic by IoM lance standard. Though, if ramming at lightspeed was feasable then small frigates with clone soldiers would WTFPWN the IoM.

You need an equally big universe to compete with the very large IoM universe... Star Wars with the fully unified empire has the size, but lacks shear killing power since the turbolaser is pathetic by IoM lance standard. Though, if ramming at lightspeed was feasable then small frigates with clone soldiers would WTFPWN the IoM.

You know, I would love to see a jedi vs librarian match.

Jedi: You don't look tough, i'm going to force crush your face.

Librarian: Go ahead.

Jedi: What?

Librarian: Do it! Or are you chicken?

Jedi: No, it's just that most people don't....

Librarian: Bawk bawk bawk bawket! (chicken noises)

Jedi: Fine then, eat this!

*Librarian rolls on the floor laughing as the jedi suffers a perils of the warp attack and subsequently explodes*
Librarian: Dumb ass.

Golden Sabres wrote:

You need an equally big universe to compete with the very large IoM universe... Star Wars with the fully unified empire has the size, but lacks shear killing power since the turbolaser is pathetic by IoM lance standard. Though, if ramming at lightspeed was feasable then small frigates with clone soldiers would WTFPWN the IoM.

You know, I would love to see a jedi vs librarian match.

Jedi: You don't look tough, i'm going to force crush your face.

Librarian: Go ahead.

Jedi: What?

Librarian: Do it! Or are you chicken?

Jedi: No, it's just that most people don't....

Librarian: Bawk bawk bawk bawket! (chicken noises)

Jedi: Fine then, eat this!

*Librarian rolls on the floor laughing as the jedi suffers a perils of the warp attack and subsequently explodes*
Librarian: Dumb ass.

Only thing that Jumps at me is Demi-Fiend from Shin Megami Tensei. The Warp would be his bitch, pretty much, what with the ability to destroy entire realities (assuming it's the True Demon Demi-fiend we're using here).

Seraph (from the same over-arching franchise as Demi-fiend) would be similar, but even more powerful, what with being God (but not really... but really... but AAAAAAAGH!) and all.

Alucard from Hellsing would be pretty interesting. He's near invulnerable, and every man that the Imperium threw at him would only make him stronger.

40k vs anything...Hm, that's not a really tough question, seeing as the IoM is already going down the drain from constant attacks from all kinds of foes, and this in their own universe...

Furthermore, all their manpower, ships and even SM's are nothing, seeing as all this stuff is rarely united in a fight, so any enemy with enough brains and capability of applying a "Divide and Conquer" strategy could be able to do the job...

del'Vhar wrote:And if Replicators existed in the 40k universe they would likely be nigh unstoppable, if they ever managed to assimilate Tau tech or Titans it would probably be game over for the IoM

Yes, if i were to give my vote to a force outside the 40k universe, it would definitely go to the replicators

Good luck "dividing and conquering" a million worlds. Each one protected by at least something. When the IoM catches wind of what anyone is doing, you will find yourself in a deep pile of .

as the IoM is already going down the drain from constant attacks from all kinds of foes, and this in their own universe...

And yet they are still hanging on pretty well. There are very few universes that could contend with the Iom.

Anywayz episode 2, jedi vs librarian.

Jedi Master: Weird guy rolling on the floor laughing, the jedi council is here to arrest you.

Librarian: What are you going to do? Force crush my head again!

Jedi Master2: Why yes we will! *raises hand* .... ahhh... my brainz... (head explodes)

Jedi Master: Thats it! Time to die!
*Jedi turns on light saber*
Jedi Master: YARGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Librarian draws out a bag of cookies* Librarian: Oh light saber machine spirit, Iz has cookies!
*Light Saber turns off* Jedi Master: OMG!!! Stupid lightsaber! You turn off at the site of cookies!!! Arghh, well stuff you, im going home!
*Librarian picks up lightsaber and feeds it the cookies.*

ph34r wrote:The Culture.

This. It wouldn't even be a contest.

Fafnir wrote:

Alucard from Hellsing would be pretty interesting. He's near invulnerable, and every man that the Imperium threw at him would only make him stronger.

That! I would love to see!

Or he might finally be able to make the BA cool!

I'm going with the Culture, if they didn't outright destroy the IoM they could easily infiltrate the highest levels of Govt without them even realising, or trick them into an impossible war that they can never win, or slowly change the Imperial Cult so it serves their needs.

The Cultures ships are Abominable Intelligences of the highest order. It would drive the IoM crazy!

Daleks would do okay in 40k i mean there fearless , and it only takes 1 dalek to create a 1000 with the right tech . Space marines would have a horrible time fighting them , no matter how many times you kill em they ALL ways come back .

Emperors Faithful wrote:I honestly can't think of anything. Go Imperium.

1 ) Zentraedi (macross) 1MM ships, including 5 KM long capital ships. On a land war the Imperium wouldn't have a chance. Hyperspace jumps that cross the galaxy in days and are safe.
Invid (robotech) See above.

2) Startrek races:
Organians. Beings of pure energy, stopped entire battlefleets in their tracks just because.
First Federation. Massive ships on a scale dwarfing the IMperium.
Any race that can fight at speeds faster than light.

3) B5
Shadows. Just because they are epic cool.

4) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Planet Krikkit.

David Weber wrote a series of three books that fell under the Dahak series. They tell the story of the 3rd Empire trasnitioning into the 4th Imperium. In that Universe their capitiol ships are the size of moons, and they launch Battleships. Each memeber of the imperium is augmented and they have some funny ass weapons, such as hyper granades, and hyper beams.

@Frazzled - Dude. I love the Zentraedi as much as anyone else - and on the surface seem to have lots of advantages - huge size, immense combined fleet of over 1B warships, automated satelite factories, cloned troops etc. Unfortunately these guys were calculated to have weapons magnitudes weaker than the IoM (IIRC, their gun destroyers were rated at 50GT and the flagships at 60GT. This is problematic as the flagship's 60GT is generated by a barrage of smaller blasts. IoM ships are designed to withstand weapons in the high GT/TT range, so at best, the Zentraedi guns are 10x too weak, or at worst, 100-500x too weak.) They needed a full battlefleet to sanitize the Earth. The IoM can perform Exterminatus with significantly less ships. The ground war is immaterial if you can't land troops.

The first ones from B5 are races in decline - as such, I don't think they'd have the numbers to fight a protracted war with the slowed Black Library quantity of ships. It's debatable if the Shadow cruiser's cutting beam is more, or less powerful than a Zentraedi gun destroyer. Evidence would point to the latter, as the Macross is a remodelled Supervision Army gun destroyer and is shown oblitterating Zentraedi destroyer / tanker / cruiser class vessels, where as the Shadows/Vorlons are reduced to cutting. Consideirng that gun destroyers aren't up to the task, the Shadows are even less up to the task, as I doubt they could scrape together more than a few hundred ships.

I conceede that the Star Trek super doods (you forgot Q and the Dowd) are super though. Dowd FTW. "So I destroyed the Imperium". "You mean you destroyed their ship?" "No. I destroyed the Imperium EVERYWHERE."

=============

I'd submit the STMC from Gunbuster and/or the Humans who killed them as being worthy foes to the Imperium.

STMC pros:

Organic ships - confirmed at least 20 billion. Normal swarm size numbers into the low millions.
FTL capable.
Cruiser class 10km, Mothership class 1000km size.
Gestate inside stars. Hulls can withstand stellar pressure.
Standard weapon yield unknown - as shown in Gunbuster - probably in the low GT range. In Diebuster, in the low TT range. Also known to use kamikaze attacks if standard weapons are ineffective.
Able to enter and fight in hyperspace. Fight at sublight speed in normal space.
Evolved STMC at the end of Diebuster had appropriated a black hole for its own use and was able to return weapons fire by adjusting the gravitational output of the black hole. Survived a 1.2×10^38J physical attack with minor surface damage.

Human pros:

FTL capable.
Final incursion into STMC territory had fleet in the 100 000's IIRC. Survived kamikaze attack wave of 8B STMC.
Planetary bodies were destroyed as collateral damage.
Humans use degeneracy reactors powered by singularities.
Buster Machine 3 is Jupiter compressed into a black hole bomb. Destroyed galactic center.
Mass Produced Sizzler type Machine Weapon reactor rated at 1SOL. Their weapons can one shot STMC up to cruiser class. Able to fight at sublight speed.

what about superman, he could fly right to holy terra and punch it in half and watch as the Imperium falls to chaos...superman wins and it only took one punch lol, but that only the Imperium and on that note I dont get it why when 40k vs come up its always the Imperium vs...there are other races in 40k that are just as strong if not stronger.

In defense of the Boys:

keezus wrote:@Frazzled - Dude. I love the Zentraedi as much as anyone else - and on the surface seem to have lots of advantages - huge size, immense combined fleet of over 1B warships, automated satelite factories, cloned troops etc. Unfortunately these guys were calculated to have weapons magnitudes weaker than the IoM (IIRC, their gun destroyers were rated at 50GT and the flagships at 60GT. This is problematic as the flagship's 60GT is generated by a barrage of smaller blasts. IoM ships are designed to withstand weapons in the high GT/TT range, so at best, the Zentraedi guns are 10x too weak, or at worst, 100-500x too weak.) They needed a full battlefleet to sanitize the Earth. The IoM can perform Exterminatus with significantly less ships. The ground war is immaterial if you can't land troops.
****
1. The Zentraedi could instantly wipe out a planet. The IoM can't.
2. Shields don't stop torpedoes. Zentraedi typically attack with a mix of pods fighters. IoM would be in creek.

I know its cheating but im thinking the Q continuum.
The Q are a unique race, and they possess many extraordinary, "God-like" powers including the ability to manipulate time, space, matter, and energy. They have an almost omnipotent ability to perceive and know events in the past, present, and future. They are invulnerable and immortal except when faced with weapons designed by others of their kind: in sufficient numbers, Q can strip other Q of their powers and make them mortal or make them any lifeform they wish.

The Dizzler wrote:

del'Vhar wrote:The other thing that needs to be taken into account is the IoM's willingness to simply destroy an entire planet if it considered lost.

Possibly a general such as Ender, commanding a fleet armed with the DR Device could do a fethton of damage (assuming Void Shields didnt negate the Little Doctors), but ultimately the IoM would survive, and either Ender would burn out catastrophically trying to general the whole war single handedly, or the IoM's counter attack would utterly destroy the attackers.

Possibly whatever the "visitors" were in Roadside Picnic? Though not enough is know about them to properly decide, assuming the Picnic theory is correct, (All the stuff they left was just rubbish they dropped) their technology is possibly on a level with stuff from 40k

I dunno, assuming the Little Doctors ignore void shields, they're still only able to kill a single ship at a time. Ships in 40k typically remain thousands of kilometers apart making the chance of a fleet-killing chain reaction pretty unlikely. Furthermore, the Enderverse ships seem to need to get in pretty close to be able to use the weapon and it's not likely they'd survive long enough to get in range.

My Ender knowledge is a bit rusty, haven't read it in years, so that might not be the case.

'

I was thinking of Ender but thought that they had so much trouble with the buggers which don't seem to be nearly as powerful as the IoM that it wouldnt be much of a battle. def since Star Wars and Star Trek I believe failed in these vs. forums.

Golden Sabres wrote:

del'Vhar wrote:
And if Replicators existed in the 40k universe they would likely be nigh unstoppable, if they ever managed to assimilate Tau tech or Titans it would probably be game over for the IoM

I'm assuming these are the stargate replicators. If so, owned. There are plenty of weapons in 40k that would completely destroy any replicator through brute force.

Yeah, for a while, then the replicators would become practically immune to said weapons.

Given that they are basically doubleplusgood robot tyranids (and yes, I just used newspeak) I think that the IoM would ultimately lose.

Maybe the reapers from Mass Effect, presuming they have untold numbers as is indicated.
The Indoctrination ability would feasibly work on standard guard, essentially stealing the IoM's strength.

del'Vhar wrote:

Golden Sabres wrote:

del'Vhar wrote:
And if Replicators existed in the 40k universe they would likely be nigh unstoppable, if they ever managed to assimilate Tau tech or Titans it would probably be game over for the IoM

I'm assuming these are the stargate replicators. If so, owned. There are plenty of weapons in 40k that would completely destroy any replicator through brute force.

Yeah, for a while, then the replicators would become practically immune to said weapons.

Given that they are basically doubleplusgood robot tyranids (and yes, I just used newspeak) I think that the IoM would ultimately lose.

Oh not this crap again... they can't become immune to weaponry which completely vaporises their cells (also, which version are these? I remember that the ancients wiped the first version out with normal heat weaponry). I have seen arguments in similar nature about borg cubes. You CANNOT become immune to weaponry that does not have a frequency! Hence why normal SGC weaponry stuns them. The only reason they don't die is because they instantly replicate and heal their wound. If you were to get a weapon that ELIMINATES every cell, they won't be able to heal, and thus cease to exist.

On a united Galaxy Vs. Galaxy scale I'd say that the Star Wars universe has a much better shot as it has a Much wider variety of ships, the ability to have an unlimited army of both organic creatures (cloning facilities from either the Sparaati or Kaminoen) or robotic droids (Trade Federation, Techno Union, or Intergalactic Banking Clan), in addition to the superior travel system of hyper-space and the force vs. the Warp.

What Would really pose a threat, imo, would be the Necrons who simply refuse to die and the Eldar who would be able to use the warp without fear. The solutions to either would be Death Star-esque Turbo laser used to destroy the entire Tomb Worlds/World Engines or Craftworlds. Assuming, however, that the Eldar can just zip out before the Death Star was able to fire off the laser then the Eldar would have a much better fighting chance but I believe that the lack of numbers would soon come back to bite them.