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@gpfunk. The Abrams has a speed of 33 mph off road. A hammerhead is not effected by surface friction so will be A LOT faster. An Abrams direct hit would likely penetrate and destroy Tau armour, but a Hammerhead is better in every way.

@ Snogs. The IG do have better guns and armour than us.

In terms of aiming ability, a Fire Warrior would be no better than your average modern day soldier. The Pulse Rifle however is a plasma weapon so is largely unaffected by wind speed or any other factor that effects kinetic rounds (except Gravity)

The Tau are generally not lacking in heavy support weaponry. It's provided by Crisis Suits. In this particular engagement they are not allowed, hence Tau are lacking in support that modern day infantry carry normally.

If I was commanding 100 human troops and trying to defeat 100 fire warriors, here is how I would do it. First thing I would do is have it take place in a jungle or other place with a lot of cover and concealment.

My troops would work light and avoid getting into shooting matches with tau squads. Rather I would have them laying laying foot traps (Tau don't wear shoes ) and claymores. Hopefully they take out some squads and steal their weapons before the tau get wise to the traps.

Melee would be a good plan. The tau are actually bigger then humans, but they lack training and that is more important.

Treat everything like a trap. It's one of the tau's core tactics to lure people into a trap. That lone tau unit is not an opportunity, it's bate.

Psienesis wrote:

Eh... the M249 fires a 5.56mm round, the M60 a 7.62mm round... neither of which is all that in the realm of 40k weapons. Again, unless the Tau are instantly killed by a boltgun with no hope of an armor save, then our main LMGs and GPMGs are not going to bring anything new to the field the Tau haven't faced before. Sure, a round might go through an eye-lens or other weak point of the armor, but in reality, these will be "lucky shots" rather than an expression of the weapon's power.

I'm simply trying to bring the 40k universe and ours into a realm where they can actually exist together for a fair comparison. An M60, at least in my view, has the profile of a heavy bolter, maybe slightly less. In all likelyhood the .50 represents a heavy bolter. This is all for the sake of comparison of course. In either case, the larger point I was trying to make is that the man portable machine guns from the US would not effect the outcome of the battle.

@Iproxtaco:

Thank you for the fact check. All I could recall about the off roading ability of the Abrams is that it was extremely fast for what it was. That being said, the Tau hammerhead would have an even greater advantage over the Abrams.

Any race that is capable of FTL travel and has colonized entire planets and visited other stars is not going to "ooo and ahhh" about ANYTHING our armed forces have to offer.
Sure the Tau are a bunch of nobodies compared to the Eldar, Orks, Nids, Necrons, Dark Eldar, IoM, but compared to us...

Tau have weapons of mass destruction. All the major races do. They just don't USE them because it destroys the planet- and generally they want the planet. Fat lot of good a smoldering rock is for expanding the 'ol empire.

Its all speculation though, as the Tau wouldn't actually engage us in armed conflict. They'd approach peacefully, demonstrate their amazing technology, open trade lines, gather supporters in our world governments... and BAM for the greater good.

akaean wrote:
Its all speculation though, as the Tau wouldn't actually engage us in armed conflict. They'd approach peacefully, demonstrate their amazing technology, open trade lines, gather supporters in our world governments... and BAM for the greater good.

That is a hilariously good point, that I do not think should be ignored. Pretty much circumvents all the small detail quibs in this thread.

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nomotog wrote:If I was commanding 100 human troops and trying to defeat 100 fire warriors, here is how I would do it. First thing I would do is have it take place in a jungle or other place with a lot of cover and concealment.

My troops would work light and avoid getting into shooting matches with tau squads. Rather I would have them laying laying foot traps (Tau don't wear shoes ) and claymores. Hopefully they take out some squads and steal their weapons before the tau get wise to the traps.

Melee would be a good plan. The tau are actually bigger then humans, but they lack training and that is more important.

Treat everything like a trap. It's one of the tau's core tactics to lure people into a trap. That lone tau unit is not an opportunity, it's bate.

Melee would be the only place in which a human could defeat a Tau as humans are BIGGER and STRONGER than every Caste, even the Fire Caste who are the biggest and strongest of them all.

gpfunk wrote:I'm simply trying to bring the 40k universe and ours into a realm where they can actually exist together for a fair comparison. An M60, at least in my view, has the profile of a heavy bolter, maybe slightly less. In all likelyhood the .50 represents a heavy bolter. This is all for the sake of comparison of course. In either case, the larger point I was trying to make is that the man portable machine guns from the US would not effect the outcome of the battle.

Wow, you think an M60 has the same power as a heavy bolter?

You would be best off just leaving this discussion at this point. The idea that an M60=heavy bolter is so horribly off base that I can't imagine any of your other reality vs 40k comparisons having any merit.

Unless you mean to say that a HB is to a bolter as an M60 is to an m16? That would be much more within the realm of sanity.

Frazzled wrote:
Except for speed and ability to shoot at distance you are 100% correct. I'll give on G forces as we have no data on imperial craft and whether they have that incredibly high tech thing called a G suit.

Take Lightning for example - it shots LASERS at other aircraft, we shot bullets....
And Lightning can be drooped from orbit, it is after all Imperial Navy dog-fighter. None of our aircraft can go into space ( actual space ) and then re-enter Earth with that kind of speed.
And Lightning can go into space without a problem, so they are faster than any our aircraft. I think that only Aurora can match it's speed, but I never heard about one going into space.

4M2A wrote:Melissia-It is over exagerated but it still happens.

It happens to the Tau too, or it will eventually once they become big enough.

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Earth fighters are orders of magnitude faster.

No, they aren't.

I've given real world stats from aircraft made decades ago and compared them against the datacards presented to me from lexicanum. You've refuted with...nothing. You lose.

Except that aircraft cannot operate on 8000km witch is the operating range of Lightning ( Su-35 max is 3500km, F-22 Raptor is much less 2,960km ).
And max speed for both of them is 2.24 Machs - Lightning speed is 2.40 Mach.
Both planes have max of 6 air to air rockets, Lightning have LASSCANNONS for dogfight and autocannon for ground attack ( like Specter Gunship ).
Operational Ceiling of Lightning is 36.000m ( so Lightning can go into space and refuel ), while our aircraft is not that advance enough.
The only advantage we have over it is electronics, but overall Lightning have a great performance and it can beat every aircraft we throw today at it.
Plus, to build one Raptor it takes how much? 150 million dollars? IoM build Lightning like we build light-balls...


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Melissia wrote:
The Thunderbolt, which would indeed be outperformed in terms of speed, has an even more impressive armament for anti-air purposes, having four of these autocannons as well as two lascannons and its missile complement.

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Frazzled wrote:
Please quote your source, else you're just - again-blowing smoke out your ass.

She is right. Thunderbolt has 39,000m Operational Ceiling, Range of 12,000km in atmosphere ( Lightning had only 8,000 ). AS for armament it has 4x Autocanons and 2x Lascannons.
Still better than any our planes...


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Frazzled wrote:
What Tau vehicles have void shields?

Imperium of Man has Void Shield. Tau has primitive shielding equipment, and only troops and ships have them ( shiled drone ). Tau vehicles don't have shields.



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Frazzled wrote:
The Soviet jet noted at the beginning the entire generation is Mach 2+

The old US aircraft had noted speeds nearly comparable to Mach 2. Is it reasonable to assume that they have blown past that 50 years later? To most people yea.
F-15 mach 2.5

There are some faster plains, but only in High altitude. And that speed has it's downfall - operational range is soften a lot ( In comparison to F-22, Mig-25 has grater speed but much lower operational range ). And it's a bad choice to quote Soviet and Russian aircraft, because Russians have always going to speed instead of operational range ( just see Mig-21, it's an engine with build up cabin ). Imperial fighters don't go for speed as they would refuel like wild ( every 10-20 minutes ), they go to operational range ( our aircraft are design for countries, Imperial for whole planet ) and power ( Lascannons still beat bullets and rockets ).


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4M2A wrote: They won't needlessly waste their resources like the IoM.

The difference is that IoM have a s*** ton of recourses ( just see 13'th Black Crusade - how many Guard Regiments where on Cadia? ). And Imperium is not using 10% of it's war recourse. And what recourses do the Orks or Tyranids have to waste?

Let's all go back to OP shall we....( after all, there is no IoM here for a change )....

NuggzTheNinja wrote:21C MBT technology is WAY ahead of that in the 41st millennium. Don't believe me? How fast can a Russ move and still fire its main weapon AT ALL? An Abrams can fire its cannon accurately while moving at top speed. It doesn't need to roll a few D6 just to see if it can see you at night on the first turn of Dawn of War. It sees you from several miles away, at night, through smoke.

Most Western militaries issue night vision at *least* at the squad level. In IDF line units, DMs, fireteam leaders, nearly everybody has night vision, and the IDF is very poorly equipped compared to the US. Roll a few D6 to engage at night? Please...24" range? LOL, we're hitting 10/10 headshots with a 4x ACOG and an M4 at 300m after running 390m and crawling 10m as part of training.

You can't apply things in 40k to the real world. 40k was designed by people who know nothing at all about how modern wars are fought.

Just a sec there, friend. Back in 2ed, things pretty much worked as you described; most everybody had access to sensors etc that cut clear through smoke, with only sci-fi Blind Grenades offering any way to disrupt sight lines. Vehicles could open up with every weapon whilst moving at breakneck speed (except Demolishers). Missile launchers could fire pretty much the length of the table. Any unit leader could carry a scanner many orders of magnitude above the things seen in Aliens.

Thing is, this didn't make for a particularly good wargame. Especially not at the skirmish-battalion level of game that was largely the norm. The 40k designers from 3ed onwards aren't ignorant of modern technology, rather they put exaggerated archetypes above realism to create an entertaining dicefest of chainsaw-wielding nutcases running at gunlines of fanatics who shoot anybody who develops any new technology, and space elves with ultratech against which absolutely no armour composite is proof trying to shoot up creatures made of actual magic.

Right. Machinse like the Auspex are pretty common-- some guard regiments have them at the squad level, and certainly almost all military-grade vehicles have them. Auspices scan for energy emissions, motion, and biological life signs, and is able to detect a damned lot of things not detectable by the human eye (for example, radiation, invisible gases, etc). These things are more complex than what is in an Astartes' helmet, but they're pretty common in the Imperium-- about as common as a demolition charge or voxcaster.

100 on 100, it depends on the soldiers in question. Firewarriors are inferior to Guardsmen man for man, and Guardsmen are roughly equivalent to modern Spec Ops in training. Throw snipers into the mix, and the Tau are easily overmatched.

Bump it up to a full scale conflict, on the level that Tau would (at least initially) actually commit to taking a world, and my money's still on modern forces. Battlesuits wouldn't stand up to anti-material rifles, firewarriors wouldn't stand up to more conventional rifles and infantry portable explosives, and hammerheads would come out barely better armored than an Abrams and grossly outnumbered by things capable of shooting one down.

A Space Marine chapter would fail for the same reason battlesuits would: an anti-material rifle would turn the Marine inside into a messy pulp, and I'd hazard a guess there are more anti-material rifles in service throughout the world than there would Marines in a chapter, to ignore that a single one could bring down several Marines in short order...

Your love for antimateriel rifles is obvious, but it takes something along the lines of an ATGM to completely cut through power armor reliably. Basically a hellfire or equivalent.

A 100 Soldiers trained to invade planets who have experienced war in the 41st are going to wipe the floor with 100 of anything we have.

For all we know the worst world war we have ever experienced doesn't rank as a planetary squabble by their standards.

If 100 of any troops from 40K dropped on in I'd imagine we would shatner ourselves.

Oh no, 100 troops from ANY group isn't gonna do a good job actually conquering our planet. Just too few bodies, too much terrain to cover.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:A 100 Soldiers trained to invade planets who have experienced war in the 41st are going to wipe the floor with 100 of anything we have.

For all we know the worst world war we have ever experienced doesn't rank as a planetary squabble by their standards.

If 100 of any troops from 40K dropped on in I'd imagine we would shatner ourselves.

I think you underestimate the power of ICBMs my friend. We're not nearly as much of pushovers as you think.

Melissia wrote:Oh no, 100 troops from ANY group isn't gonna do a good job actually conquering our planet. Just too few bodies, too much terrain to cover.

Exactly my point, even 100 Space Marines (though could probably conquer a significant area) couldn't face millions of soldiers alone and survive. Granted, the world would have to work together on that one. Good luck with that.

tau kill them all

Melissia wrote:Your love for antimateriel rifles is obvious, but it takes something along the lines of an ATGM to completely cut through power armor reliably. Basically a hellfire or equivalent.

A man-portable rifle that can take out an APC at over a mile. Power armor wouldn't stand up to something that can take out an armored vehicle, and Space Marines wouldn't have any recourse against someone shooting at them from over a mile away, nor are they particularly small targets, nor do they have any conception of cover (presumably a large portion of their brains are replaced with the glands that produce the all-important acid drool, it would certainly explain a lot).

gpfunk wrote:Offensive capabilities. The Abrams, as far as my small knowledge of it goes, has between a 105 and 120mm cannon. It can fire solid shot, explosive, incendiary, and even fragmentation rounds. It can also take fitted sabot rounds that have an increased armor piercing capability. It also have various mounted weapons such as a .50 caliber machine gun. Very impressive to say the least. The Hammerhead, and forgive me I am a bit fuzzy on this, has two choices. A burst shot, similar to a frag round, and a solid shot railgun-esque round as well as a burst cannon. In this circumstance, I would rate them about equally in terms of tank killing and anti infantry capabilities.

So you're ranking a 120mm cannon as equal to a railgun in destructive potential? I'd love to know where the US Army got the Unobtainium for their new super-rounds in that case.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Melissia wrote:Your love for antimateriel rifles is obvious, but it takes something along the lines of an ATGM to completely cut through power armor reliably. Basically a hellfire or equivalent.

A man-portable rifle that can take out an APC at over a mile. Power armor wouldn't stand up to something that can take out an armored vehicle, and Space Marines wouldn't have any recourse against someone shooting at them from over a mile away, nor are they particularly small targets, nor do they have any conception of cover (presumably a large portion of their brains are replaced with the glands that produce the all-important acid drool, it would certainly explain a lot).

Would those be the .50 cal rifles that are inferior to the 1.0 cal missile cannons known as heavy bolters, which in turn don't reliably penetrate power armour?

100 Space Marines could utterly cripple our planet.

Send in a drop pod to wipe out the military command centre of each major superpower - we have nothing that could spot or stop a supersonic drop pod coming in from orbit.

And I don't care how good we think our special forces are and how good our contingency plans and bunkers are: Astartes are giant, post-human monsters who don't need doors, they can walk through walls.

The specialise in shock and awe tactics. We'd be a reeling mess before we knew we were under attack, by which time they'd be moving on towards their next targets.

And as for Tau, anyone saying that 3rd millennium solid slug shells and kevlar armour could stand up to plasma pulse weapons and super-dense nano-crystalline armour needs to have a little more imagination and do a little less flag waving and anthem humming...

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Melissia wrote:Your love for antimateriel rifles is obvious, but it takes something along the lines of an ATGM to completely cut through power armor reliably. Basically a hellfire or equivalent.

A man-portable rifle that can take out an APC at over a mile. Power armor wouldn't stand up to something that can take out an armored vehicle, and Space Marines wouldn't have any recourse against someone shooting at them from over a mile away, nor are they particularly small targets, nor do they have any conception of cover (presumably a large portion of their brains are replaced with the glands that produce the all-important acid drool, it would certainly explain a lot).

Would those be the .50 cal rifles that are inferior to the 1.0 cal missile cannons known as heavy bolters, which in turn don't reliably penetrate power armour?

A bolter isn't designed to penetrate anything. It's like a firecracker on a model rocket engine. It wouldn't be able to punch through the armor plating on a vehicle to destroy the engine or kill the crew inside (or, say, punch through a concrete wall at a mile to kill the three soldiers trying to set up a heavy machine gun nest behind it). A bolt pistol is, however, enough to blow a Space Marine's head off, as happened in Eisenhorn when an escaped psyker took control of Eisenhorn and had him shoot a nearby Marine.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Melissia wrote:Your love for antimateriel rifles is obvious, but it takes something along the lines of an ATGM to completely cut through power armor reliably. Basically a hellfire or equivalent.

A man-portable rifle that can take out an APC at over a mile. Power armor wouldn't stand up to something that can take out an armored vehicle, and Space Marines wouldn't have any recourse against someone shooting at them from over a mile away, nor are they particularly small targets, nor do they have any conception of cover (presumably a large portion of their brains are replaced with the glands that produce the all-important acid drool, it would certainly explain a lot).

Would those be the .50 cal rifles that are inferior to the 1.0 cal missile cannons known as heavy bolters, which in turn don't reliably penetrate power armour?

A bolter isn't designed to penetrate anything. It's like a firecracker on a model rocket engine. It wouldn't be able to punch through the armor plating on a vehicle to destroy the engine or kill the crew inside (or, say, punch through a concrete wall at a mile to kill the three soldiers trying to set up a heavy machine gun nest behind it). A bolt pistol is, however, enough to blow a Space Marine's head off, as happened in Eisenhorn when an escaped psyker took control of Eisenhorn and had him shoot a nearby Marine.

Actually, the Bolter IS designed to penetrate amour. It's fired at a target, penetrates the shell, and then it explodes INSIDE the target. A bolt pistol is weaker or equivalent in power to the standard Boltgun. A Boltgun would do exactly the same or be more effective on another Astartes. Read Horus Rising, the part where Jubal turns is a prime example of how a Boltgun can kill and Astartes.

Astartes DO have a concept of cover. When being suppressed by a weapon that can penetrate their armor, they will seek cover. They are the most elite and powerful fighting force in the galaxy, better trained by about 1000 times more than our most elite force.
On range I agree. If we had a weapon that could kill them then long range is the only way we would have a chance. Letting them get in close would be stupid. However, getting them into a position, out numbered and isolated in an area where we could pot-shot them from miles away would be difficult. They aren't used for the purpose of spearheading huge armies. Their main purpose is strategic and surgical strikes against prime targets. They would drop-pod on to our command centers and engage in close range fire-fights inside the buildings. Move out, extracted via Thunderhawk. Not to mention their heavy weapons, ouch. I guess the best weapon to take them out would be the GAU-8 on an A-10 Warthog.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:A bolter isn't designed to penetrate anything.

Yes it is. It's specifically designed to penetrate armor and explode AFTER penetrating armor and flesh for maximum damage.

Bolt pistols use the same basic ammunition as boltguns (the same pattern boltgun and bolt pistol both do the exact same damage in the lore, in all games-- including tabletop, inquisitor, dark heresy, deathwatch, etc), most likely merely using less propellant and a shorter barrel making it shorter ranged but also making it able to be wielded in one hand without hurting the user (especially for Astartes bolt pistols). All boltguns use .75cal shells, while all heavy bolters use 1.00 cal shells. The heavy bolter is also an anti-tank weapon against light armor like APCs.

iproxtaco wrote:A bolt pistol is weaker or equivalent in power to the standard Boltgun.

The point was that a tiny round from a bolt pistol is enough to blow a power armored marine's head off, meaning an anti-materiel rifle would have no problem doing the same.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:A bolt pistol is weaker or equivalent in power to the standard Boltgun.

The point was that a tiny round from a bolt pistol

Stop.

Bolt pistol ammunition is the same caliber and size as boltgun ammunition.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:A bolt pistol is weaker or equivalent in power to the standard Boltgun.

The point was that a tiny round from a bolt pistol is enough to blow a power armored marine's head off, meaning an anti-materiel rifle would have no problem doing the same.

I disagree that they would. A Space Marine has comparable armor to our modern tanks. An anti-material rifle cannot penetrate modern Tank armor, they are used for lighter armored personnel vehicles or stationary aircraft (Helicopter cockpits, parked planes ....) A direct hit on the head would send the Marine sprawling, or a hit on the mouth grill, between plates or on the eye piece would penetrate. Grill or eye = dead, stomach, neck or on the joints = No, severe injury at the most not likely to be fatal.

Melissia wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:A bolt pistol is weaker or equivalent in power to the standard Boltgun.

The point was that a tiny round from a bolt pistol

Stop.

Bolt pistol ammunition is the same caliber and size as boltgun ammunition.

It's still smaller than the rounds in question, in overall size if not in width. It also derives most of its velocity from fuel carried inside it, so by the time it reaches the target it's much lighter than what it expended the fuel to propel. So overall it's a short, fat round that counts its propellant as part of its mass, and has a small amount of plastic explosive instead of a metal core, meaning it's even less dense, meaning less force over a wider area, meaning drastically reduced penetrative power, meaning it explodes on the surface with less force than a hand grenade, without the shrapnel a hand grenade relies on to do its job. Sure, it would shred unprotected infantry that were close enough for a short barreled gyrojet assault rifle to hit, but it wouldn't compare to a fifty gram slug moving at twice the speed of sound* when it comes to punching through armor and turning what's inside into a mangled paste, especially when the aforementioned lighter, slower, wider slug is still capable of taking a power armored marine's head off (unless the whole "not wearing helmets" thing isn't just a picturesque aesthetic choice for dramatic artwork, but canonical fluff behavior, in which case even the (pathetic by 40K standards) modern assault rifles would make short work of them).

*Approximation, because for obvious reasons I'm not going to list out every possible weight and velocity; I'm just looking at the wikipedia article on .50 BMG cartridges for those particular numbers.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:It's still smaller than the rounds in question, in overall size if not in width.

No it isn't. They're basically interchangeable, much like the variations on the Colt Long .45, which have the same dimensions but different amounts of propellant.

And bolt rounds are not weak at close range. Never have been.

Bolt weapons are not gyrojet weapons. Gyrojets have no recoil, bolt weapons DO. A lot of recoil. Gyrojets don't leave shell casings, bolt weapons DO. Spent bolter shells are considered blessed lucky charms even. What a bolter is, is a multistage weapon. A smokeless powder (or futuristic variant thereof) speeds the bolter shell to lethal speeds, then the rocket kicks in after it leads the barrel and maintains maximum velocity until the point of impact.

Melissia wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:It's still smaller than the rounds in question, in overall size if not in width.

No it isn't. They're basically interchangeable, much like the variations on the Colt Long .45, which have the same dimensions but different amounts of propellant.

And bolt rounds are not weak at close range. Never have been.

Bolt weapons are not gyrojet weapons. Gyrojets have no recoil, bolt weapons DO. A lot of recoil. Gyrojets don't leave shell casings, bolt weapons DO. Spent bolter shells are considered blessed lucky charms even. What a bolter is, is a multistage weapon. A smokeless powder (or futuristic variant thereof) speeds the bolter shell to lethal speeds, then the rocket kicks in after it leads the barrel and maintains maximum velocity until the point of impact.

I meant "overall smaller" than the rounds an anti-material rifle would fire, despite being wider. I probably should have gone back and edited that part after bothering to look up how large the round itself is, but it's still heavier (well, I can't find anything on bolt weight after a minute of flipping through Dark Heresy, and even if it bothered to list it (it doesn't) it would be about the whole cartridge, not the bolt itself), significantly denser, and fired at much higher velocities, without having to drag its propellant along with it (and using significantly more propellant for a denser round). So it's going to punch through armor instead of exploding on the surface. As bolt weapons are depicted as being enough to kill Space Marines, an anti-material rifle would have a much easier job of it.

Of course, it's not like the whole "the Space Marine chapter would lose" thing hinges entirely on a single, relatively common weapon, since they'd be outnumbered by armored vehicles sporting armaments capable of easily bringing them down, to say nothing of other infantry portable anti-armor weapons.