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Canadian 5th wrote:
Gravity is still the same, water still boils the same, people are made of more or less the same stuff. The only laws of physics that we can assume change are the ones we see directly.

It is the same because we see it that way, it may be totally different thing there than here. And maybe that is some other force than the gravity affecting people there, maybe it's dark matter, we just don't know and because of that can't make assumptions.

Why are you hung up on exact numbers that we won't find. This thread is about doing the best we can with what we're give, so I can say that most worlds have a PDF and contribute to the guard in some way, we get exact numbers for some conflicts and less data on others.

Just to show how math and Sci-Fi don't get along. I give you numbers and that alone should point how hard it is to combine those two. And there are so much things in sci-fi that are not possible here, like Star Wars FTL drive or Azagard FTL drive. Then we have more ridiculous thing like one guy holding an ENTIRE PLANET all by himself, on ground, against countless enemies. And the worst part is it really happened there, it's not like Chuck Norris here...

And this thread is turned to another Star Wars vs. Warhammer 40000 numbers and bulletins...

Aside from a bit at the beginning, I don't think this thread has really been too much into the Star Wars vs. 40K theme. The Star Wars is more here because it's a convenient example.

As far as the math with 40k goes, pure numbers aren't the only things that can be used for calculations. If you can find fluff examples of weapons destroying or failing to destroy every day objects, that'd be a great start.

Anyway, Canadian 5th, I've enjoyed the discussion so far. I'm not versed enough in the non-game 40k material to contribute much, but it's got the engineer side of me intrigued, at least.

Grey Templar wrote:Why is how they dump waste heat an important thing?(aside from just wanting to know)

.

Because no process of energy transfer is 100% efficient. Therefore any ship using very large amounts of energy to power its weapons must produce large amounts of waste heat. This had to be got rid of somehow to avoid the ship vapourising itself. Discharging the waste heat, of course, is an energy transfer process, so it produces waste heat, which requires another layer of heat trapping and exhaust.

You can easily see how the problem multiplies as the amount of energy used increases. At some point, the minute amount of waste heat that cannot be got rid of will be enough to vapourise the ship. This puts a physical limit on the size of weapons that can be employed.

If you're basing the ship-to-ship combat on Rogue Trader, which (I assume) is based on BFG, then each ship's "turn" in the course of combat is 30 standard minutes in length.

This is important when it comes down to figuring out firing rates, as a ship can only fire each one of its weapon systems once per turn at maximum (some few are every-other-turn)... which means that even their energy weapons require half an hour to recharge.

This is not the case in SW, where the capital ships will fire barrages of their turbo-lasers and what-not in the space of seconds, and the DS2 fired its main cannon several times in a very short period of time.

I think Rogue Trader isn't going to be a good source of material because it is primarly a role playing game and it would be bad if you could just vaporize characters in one blast. so the space weapons are likely massivly toned down. they also aren't Imperial Navy, and would likely have poorer quality weaponry that doesn't charge up as fast.


I should also clarify that my numbers arn't complete because they don't take into account any shaping of the rounds for maximum penetration capabilities. this will increase the penetrating power with changing its KE amount so the rounds could, and probably do, much more damage then the math would indicate.

and as to heat dissapation. yeah, its important, but not so much in a direct confrontational discussion. we can assume they have something super efficient(maybe they disappate the energy into the Warp. its rumored this is how their plasma generators are able to provide such massive amounts of power, by drawing on the Warp)

Grey Templar wrote:Why is how they dump waste heat an important thing?(aside from just wanting to know)

Lets figure out how powerful the weapons are and how strong their armor is.

Dealing with waste heat is hard in space actually, so it's an important question. It's why you can stay underwater for longer than you can space walk. Underwater you can use a rebreather to recycle the air, in space you vent air slowly to keep cool.

I belive i did use Kilometers/sec.

Hmm, because even using (496.6 kg / 2) x 18,713,600m/s ^ 2 you get the following. 8.695x10^16 joules. It must be a unit conversion failure. You need to convert the km/s to m/s in order to use the equation correctly. Also, something as large as a land raider would mass more than a car and most cars are heavier than 496.6 kilograms, so when you convert that to tons, which if it was solid metal would make sense. Thus with a near 500 ton projectile you would get this:

469,600 / 2 x 18,713,600^2 = 8.22x10^19 joules.

However doing my own math I think that a land raider is sized solid slug is heavier than that, so here's the even higher end:

3820000 / 2 x 18,713,600^2 = 6.69x10^20 joules or around 160 gigatons per shot and 640 gigatons per 4 shot broadside

a typical ship in BFG has an armor rating of 5+. this means you need to roll a 5+ to do damage with each shot you get. otherwise the shot either bounces, is absorbed by the armor, or hits a non-vital area.

each volly of these 86,954,368.25 KJ projectiles, I think 100 rounds would be a fair estimate to represent a single Weapon battery shot in game, has a 1/3 chance to deal damage to the typical BFG ship.

we can then say that it takes 3 of these vollys to deal 1 point of damage.

Hmm, well these projectiles hurt more than you're giving them credit for for starters, but I think you're over rating the number of shots fired. We can see the number of weapons emplacements on the BFG models and the guns are rather large enough to be seen. A battery of four guns would need to fire 25 times each in a round, and could only fire 4 shots per volley. I think that they aim to score a few solid hits when they fire instead. However, the guns are absurdly large so there is a chance they fire a shotgun like spread, I just doubt that as they are described as doing so.

Also even if your math is correct those hits are each weaker than the asteroids that don't often breach shields. Even together they aren't exactly a threat when we look at petaton scale lances.

Yet, when we look at my math we see that things are a bit different when you use a correct weight and speed. When a broadside can help by adding gigaton scale impacts at a higher rate of fire than lances they certainly hold their own.

Lances are a little different. they have a flat 4+ to cause damage and completely ignore a ships armor, only being stopped by shields.

Well given that lances are petaton scale, many orders of magnitude higher than gigatons, that makes sense.

40k shields work on a different principal to Star Wars shields.

Void Shields operate by "teliporting" the incoming fire into the warp. the energy of the object being deflected is irrelevent, but only shots which would cause actual damage are teliported in this way. near misses are ignored.

Voids can only be stressed beyond their ability to keep up with the warp portal generation so volume of fire is required to get past them, but the shields are always active and can't be brought down for a period of time like Star Wars shields can.

I'm not sure that's the whole story really. We know that 40k torpedoes work by bypassing void shields and hitting the hull, and we know that void shields aren't full coverage as evidenced by lances being stopped by them and still having a 50/50 chance to hit. So if 50% of lances still hit, and they fire more powerful, yet lower ROF shots than a heavy turbolaser group, all things we know are true, then a Star Wars ship has a good chance of getting fire through a 40k ship's defenses. The saving grace will be how tough the hull is and the fact that they can hit hard per shot.

a Star Wars shield is like "We can take this much damage before the shield drops"

a Void shield is like "We can ignore this many individual shots per second. anything beyond that gets through and hits the armor"

Void shields can be disrupted by the presense of high levels of radiation(such as from explosions) and space junk. Void shields can block asteroids by Teliporting them into the warp as they would enemy fire.

Well we know that Star Wars ships fight in heavy ECM and ECCM fields all the time and love to jam enemy detection methods heavily. We also know that they have toys like Mag Pulse weapons and Ion cannons, both of which seem to work by doing damage like an idealized form of EMP. So these could be weapons that void shields dislike, they could just as easily be ignored though.


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Brother Coa wrote:

Canadian 5th wrote:
Gravity is still the same, water still boils the same, people are made of more or less the same stuff. The only laws of physics that we can assume change are the ones we see directly.

It is the same because we see it that way, it may be totally different thing there than here. And maybe that is some other force than the gravity affecting people there, maybe it's dark matter, we just don't know and because of that can't make assumptions.

We can because without making certain assumptions we won't know anything. Also, it's set in a different version of our galaxy so I think we can say that, outside of some warp effected regions, things work the same.

Just to show how math and Sci-Fi don't get along. I give you numbers and that alone should point how hard it is to combine those two. And there are so much things in sci-fi that are not possible here, like Star Wars FTL drive or Azagard FTL drive. Then we have more ridiculous thing like one guy holding an ENTIRE PLANET all by himself, on ground, against countless enemies. And the worst part is it really happened there, it's not like Chuck Norris here...

And this thread is turned to another Star Wars vs. Warhammer 40000 numbers and bulletins...

People seem interested in the numbers I am able to give, just because we can't tell down to the single joule how energetic something is, or down to the man how large the guard is doesn't mean this isn't worth doing.


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Zefig wrote:Aside from a bit at the beginning, I don't think this thread has really been too much into the Star Wars vs. 40K theme. The Star Wars is more here because it's a convenient example.

As far as the math with 40k goes, pure numbers aren't the only things that can be used for calculations. If you can find fluff examples of weapons destroying or failing to destroy every day objects, that'd be a great start.

Anyway, Canadian 5th, I've enjoyed the discussion so far. I'm not versed enough in the non-game 40k material to contribute much, but it's got the engineer side of me intrigued, at least.

Glad you're able to at least sit back and watch. I'll repost a link from earlier that you should enjoy.

The Grand 40k Calculation Thread


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Kilkrazy wrote:Because no process of energy transfer is 100% efficient. Therefore any ship using very large amounts of energy to power its weapons must produce large amounts of waste heat. This had to be got rid of somehow to avoid the ship vapourising itself. Discharging the waste heat, of course, is an energy transfer process, so it produces waste heat, which requires another layer of heat trapping and exhaust.

You can easily see how the problem multiplies as the amount of energy used increases. At some point, the minute amount of waste heat that cannot be got rid of will be enough to vapourise the ship. This puts a physical limit on the size of weapons that can be employed.

Spot on. Did you see my idea on the last page on how that might be avoided by 40k?


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Psienesis wrote:If you're basing the ship-to-ship combat on Rogue Trader, which (I assume) is based on BFG, then each ship's "turn" in the course of combat is 30 standard minutes in length.

This is important when it comes down to figuring out firing rates, as a ship can only fire each one of its weapon systems once per turn at maximum (some few are every-other-turn)... which means that even their energy weapons require half an hour to recharge.

This is not the case in SW, where the capital ships will fire barrages of their turbo-lasers and what-not in the space of seconds, and the DS2 fired its main cannon several times in a very short period of time.

I think you're certainly right on there being a recharge difference, but it's hard to say exactly how long it is as some sources will say 30 minutes and up, and others will show them firing more often. That said, those are for smaller ships trying to mount larger guns, so what a rouge trader struggles with an Emperor class could fire much faster.


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Grey Templar wrote:I think Rogue Trader isn't going to be a good source of material because it is primarly a role playing game and it would be bad if you could just vaporize characters in one blast. so the space weapons are likely massivly toned down. they also aren't Imperial Navy, and would likely have poorer quality weaponry that doesn't charge up as fast.

I think again, that there is some truth to this, and I'll try to find some better numbers on refire rates.

I should also clarify that my numbers arn't complete because they don't take into account any shaping of the rounds for maximum penetration capabilities. this will increase the penetrating power with changing its KE amount so the rounds could, and probably do, much more damage then the math would indicate.

The shape changes penetration, not energy.

and as to heat dissapation. yeah, its important, but not so much in a direct confrontational discussion. we can assume they have something super efficient(maybe they disappate the energy into the Warp. its rumored this is how their plasma generators are able to provide such massive amounts of power, by drawing on the Warp)

Yup, no matter what they use it's clear that whatever it is works.

thats what I meant as to the shape. magnification of the force that exists.

Void Shields would definitly stop an Ion Cannon, which is purpose built to go through SW energy shields, not Void Shields. its a farily specialized weapon against their own Shield tech.


I don't know why fighters and Torpedos are able to slip through Voids. the Torpedos use simple proximity detectors to head for any ship that crosses their path(you can hit your own ships with torpedos. they don't discriminate) so i don't think they can just slip under the Voids. I suspect they have some sort of device which disables the void at that point so it can slip through. a Void shield disrupter.


Torp Specs.

they are described as being about the size of a Skyscraper. Empire State Building sized with a Fusion Warhead to match and powered by a Fusion generator which also serves to add to the destructive power.

Now, I would expect a Nuclear warhead to match a missile of that size to measure in Giga if not Tera-tons.

In space, you won't get the massive shockwave which does most of the damage in an Atmosphere. So the damage will be mostly be caused by the radiation heating up the target ships hull, potentially melting an entire section. not to mention the damage to the crew. But because 40k ships are so large, the damage will be localized and the large crew will barely notice the damage. Space Ships are also, by dint of being in space, designed to withstand radiation so once the blast is done the Radiation danger will be largely contained in the target area.

this will reduce the possable damage a Torpedo can do in space, but the damage is quite severe at the point of impact.



Weapon batteries:

the large weapons visable on the models arn't the only weapons which are firing. they also have many many smaller guns which are too small to represent on the actual model and some which are only visable on a model you have in your hands so they don't just have 4-8 guns for a broadside. its more like 4-8 guns which shoot rounds much larger then Landraiders, and then about 100 Macro-cannons(which fire the Landraider slugs and actually form the primary armament)

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Weapons_Batteries

Weapon batteries, according to Lexi, aren't just Macro-cannons but also plasma projectors, laser cannons, missile launchers, rail guns, fusion beamers and graviton pulsars.

Grey Templar wrote:Void Shields would definitly stop an Ion Cannon, which is purpose built to go through SW energy shields, not Void Shields. its a farily specialized weapon against their own Shield tech.

Not really... They're designed to cripple a ship by killing electrical systems. They don't have any special properties against shields at all really.

I don't know why fighters and Torpedos are able to slip through Voids. the Torpedos use simple proximity detectors to head for any ship that crosses their path(you can hit your own ships with torpedos. they don't discriminate) so i don't think they can just slip under the Voids. I suspect they have some sort of device which disables the void at that point so it can slip through. a Void shield disrupter.

It's never really been mentioned that they defeat shields with any technology. It's equally likely they simply dodge the void shields on the way in. Fighters could even slip under them.

Torp Specs.

they are described as being about the size of a Skyscraper. Empire State Building sized with a Fusion Warhead to match and powered by a Fusion generator which also serves to add to the destructive power.

Now, I would expect a Nuclear warhead to match a missile of that size to measure in Giga if not Tera-tons.

Makes sense that they would be gigatons at least, though we do see weaker examples.

In space, you won't get the massive shockwave which does most of the damage in an Atmosphere. So the damage will be mostly be caused by the radiation heating up the target ships hull, potentially melting an entire section. not to mention the damage to the crew. But because 40k ships are so large, the damage will be localized and the large crew will barely notice the damage. Space Ships are also, by dint of being in space, designed to withstand radiation so once the blast is done the Radiation danger will be largely contained in the target area.

this will reduce the possable damage a Torpedo can do in space, but the damage is quite severe at the point of impact.

Yup, in space things like torpedoes can deal damage via radiation. However if they actually make contact then their explosion will propagate through the ship's hull.

the large weapons visable on the models arn't the only weapons which are firing. they also have many many smaller guns which are too small to represent on the actual model and some which are only visable on a model you have in your hands so they don't just have 4-8 guns for a broadside. its more like 4-8 guns which shoot rounds much larger then Landraiders, and then about 100 Macro-cannons(which fire the Landraider slugs and actually form the primary armament)

Yeah, I should have realized that. Still, even a full battery nailing every shot is still only in the teraton range and each shot is going to be less effective against Wars style shielding than a larger shot. However against void shields mass fire that aims to slip one through makes sense.

Weapon batteries, according to Lexi, aren't just Macro-cannons but also plasma projectors, laser cannons, missile launchers, rail guns, fusion beamers and graviton pulsars.

Of course they would have multiple types of batteries.

well with the Ion Cannon i meant that it just happens to pass right through for some reason. the IoN particles disrupt the shields energy field.

Void shields work differently and so would stop it as normal.

Grey Templar wrote:well with the Ion Cannon i meant that it just happens to pass right through for some reason. the IoN particles disrupt the shields energy field.

Void shields work differently and so would stop it as normal.

Not really, the weapon was just powerful enough that it crushed the shields and rammed on home.

Also, didn't you say that radiation could drop void shields?

it does, but only in massive amounts capable of doing actual damage to the ship.

Grey Templar wrote:it does, but only in massive amounts capable of doing actual damage to the ship.

So a funky energy gun that clearly isn't just made of ions, that can crush an ISD's shields should cause issues then.

more like the Radiation will be stopped by the shields, allowing other more lethal rounds to get through.

The Radiation clouds are detected as a threat and are teliported to the warp by the Voids, using up their ability to do it to more dangerous threats.

Umm... if you guys haven't read it, please don't make assumptions on classes of battleships and such from Rogue Trader. It, and its supplements, covers Imperial Naval ships, all the way up to the really big Imperial cruisers.

Thirty minutes a turn, one shot per weapon per turn, regardless of the class of the ship mounting it. If you've got a really big ship? You put really big guns on it. It's the Imperial Way. Of course, a really big ship can mount more really big guns, which offers all sorts of options in combat (fire by battery, fire all guns, fire by sector, etc)

Also... well, at least in Rogue Trader, weapon emplacements are categorized by type. So, while your "macrocannon battery" might, fluff-wise, incorporate 1000 individual cannons each on your port and starboard sides, it's considered one weapon on each side (ie, port macrocannon, starboard macrocannon).

Getting a bit into the mechanics of the game, each weapon is capable of scoring multiple hits in a single shot, to represent the fact that these weapons are rarely a single tube/barrel/emitter/thingy... and also allows a much smaller ship a chance (however thin) to at least score hits against larger ships... though even then, don't take your frigate up against a battle-cruiser, unless you have tired of life.

Void shields are simplified in that they stop one successful hit per round, per shield generator. Most vessels carry 1 generator (they lack the power to field another, without sacrificing other ship functions), though most warships sport 2 or more. The bigger the ship, the more power its reactor generates... but, the bigger an area the shield generator needs to cover, the more power it draws. You don't normally see a warship sporting, say, 10 Void Shield generators and packing a Nova Cannon or anything. A ship capable of supporting that many Void Shields would barely be able to maintain life support, let alone auspex, comms and weapons were it to devote the necessary power to operate that many shield generators.

we arn't using RT.

were using BFG, which might be a little abstracted but it does have a broader spectrum. it also hasn't been toned down for balace very much(anyone who has seen a Necron fleet in action can attest to that)

Well I learned something from this thread...

If aliens ever attack Earth, I will go to Cadian 5'th and ask him about the best way to kill them, since he knows about aliens and their tech more than they themselves

they are described as being about the size of a Skyscraper. Empire State Building sized with a Fusion Warhead to match and powered by a Fusion generator which also serves to add to the destructive power.

Maybe on the absolute largest of Imperial battle-cruisers, but a torpedo of that size does not in any way fit aboard a ship that's only 1.5km in length and 800 meters wide (a fairly standard size for something like a Sword-class frigate)... unless that ship carries just 1 torpedo tube with this torpedo already loaded into it, as its only weapon, considering the Empire State Building would be about 1/3 the size of the entire ship.

The battle fleet Gothic rule book does indeed describe the torpedoes as being that size.

Psienesis wrote:

they are described as being about the size of a Skyscraper. Empire State Building sized with a Fusion Warhead to match and powered by a Fusion generator which also serves to add to the destructive power.

Maybe on the absolute largest of Imperial battle-cruisers, but a torpedo of that size does not in any way fit aboard a ship that's only 1.5km in length and 800 meters wide (a fairly standard size for something like a Sword-class frigate)... unless that ship carries just 1 torpedo tube with this torpedo already loaded into it, as its only weapon, considering the Empire State Building would be about 1/3 the size of the entire ship.

thats only about 1/4 the size of the ship and the Torpedos are stacked up inside the Hull.

you could easily fit several dozen inside the ship(yeah its cramped, but hey, its the Navy. it wouldn't be the Navy if it wasn't cramped and clostrophobic)

I'll post later guys, IRL stuff has kept me away.

Ions are radiation.

yeah, and they will be stopped by the shields just like other things.

Grey Templar wrote:we arn't using RT.

were using BFG, which might be a little abstracted but it does have a broader spectrum. it also hasn't been toned down for balace very much(anyone who has seen a Necron fleet in action can attest to that)

Both sources are as valid as any others.


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Brother Coa wrote:Well I learned something from this thread...

If aliens ever attack Earth, I will go to Cadian 5'th and ask him about the best way to kill them, since he knows about aliens and their tech more than they themselves

Haha, I doubt that a fair bit. There are surely many more qualified to plan a war, even one against aliens, than I am.


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Psienesis wrote:

they are described as being about the size of a Skyscraper. Empire State Building sized with a Fusion Warhead to match and powered by a Fusion generator which also serves to add to the destructive power.

Maybe on the absolute largest of Imperial battle-cruisers, but a torpedo of that size does not in any way fit aboard a ship that's only 1.5km in length and 800 meters wide (a fairly standard size for something like a Sword-class frigate)... unless that ship carries just 1 torpedo tube with this torpedo already loaded into it, as its only weapon, considering the Empire State Building would be about 1/3 the size of the entire ship.

I'm sure they do have both smaller ships optimized for such weapons, as well as smaller torpedoes for other classes of ship. Just because we see one large torpedo doesn't mean they don't use others. Much like we don't have only one sort of missile or bomb today.


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Grey Templar wrote:yeah, and they will be stopped by the shields just like other things.

Well, we do have sources saying that void shields do have other limitations than just number of shots. They need to be positioned and that can be exploited. They are also known to drop to a large enough attack.

yeah, they drop to large enough attacks, but they do stop the attack itself.


so an Ion Blast would drop the shield, but wouldn't get through to the ship itself. and even then, we arn't sure if Adamentium and Ceramite conducts so the Ion might not do anything. we should assume it does though.

Grey Templar wrote:yeah, they drop to large enough attacks, but they do stop the attack itself.


so an Ion Blast would drop the shield, but wouldn't get through to the ship itself. and even then, we arn't sure if Adamentium and Ceramite conducts so the Ion might not do anything. we should assume it does though.

Oh, okay. Just trying to clarify if you were saying that the attack would be absorbed with the shield staying up, or if you agreed that they can drop to large attacks. Glad we see things more or less the same.

On the Ino blast itself, I don't think it would effect an IoM ships as much as it would a Star Wars ship. The IoM tends to backup its backup systems and even if that fails they will man the winches and aim and fire by hand if need be. Much better to use such a weapon to lead a volley of turbolasers.

One point about torps in BFG; one point of strength does not necessarliy equal one torp. The Tau are a good example; their torp salvos are described as beeing many, many smaller missles fired in a single volley. In the case of the Cobra, I've always held that they fire smaller torps than the cruisers do; the model supports this, since it actually has 4 ports on its bow that are presumably torpedo tubes, and yet only fires a strength 2 torp salvo.

Quite possible, yes, and is the same philosophy that RT follows with ship weapons. A "Sunsear Laser Battery" isn't, necessarily, a single las-cannon, it might be dozens, or hundreds of smaller lasers that launch a concentrated attack when given the fire order.