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Manchu wrote:Or, as has been explained in this thread already, Imperium wins by not allowing what I think the Ork crowd imagines to be an arm wrestling match between a guardsman and a warboss. Think of it more like this: warboss is sitting around waiting for the guardsman to get there so that they can arm wrestle. Then he dies horribly as a virus annihilates the life in every one of his rotten cells, layer by layer of organ and tissue. Whatever is left is taken care of in orbital bombardment. Rinse and repeat.

Also, the original question said nothing about eliminating infighting--which all the Boyz 'round 'ere cannot get through their tiny but thick skulls.

You cannot virus bomb every planet in the galaxy!
that would cripple the imperium beyond survival as well

Im going with Orks. I seem to remember a piece of background saying that orks vastly outnumber every other race, so assuming all the imperial forces & orks were in one place together & had a fight, Im assuming the orks would come out on top.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

corpsesarefun wrote:

Manchu wrote:Or, as has been explained in this thread already, Imperium wins by not allowing what I think the Ork crowd imagines to be an arm wrestling match between a guardsman and a warboss. Think of it more like this: warboss is sitting around waiting for the guardsman to get there so that they can arm wrestle. Then he dies horribly as a virus annihilates the life in every one of his rotten cells, layer by layer of organ and tissue. Whatever is left is taken care of in orbital bombardment. Rinse and repeat.

Also, the original question said nothing about eliminating infighting--which all the Boyz 'round 'ere cannot get through their tiny but thick skulls.

You cannot virus bomb every planet in the galaxy!
that would cripple the imperium beyond survival as well

YES YOU CAN! THE END ALWAYS JUSTIFIES THE MEANS! >:C

corpsesarefun wrote:You cannot virus bomb every planet in the galaxy!
that would cripple the imperium beyond survival as well

This would only be necessary in the case of worlds swarming with Orks past count. The Imperium is currently doing fine without them anyway. The superior training, equipment, and discipline of the Imperium would handily suffice in conventional settings. The point is that the Imperium would not allow the Orks to fight on Ork terms.

Damn straight!

Orkeosaurus wrote:
And the fluff is very clear that the orks would win if they were united...

and in the IG codex it says that the IG can crush any foe at any time. quoting codexes doesnt prove anything because they contradict one-another. the Imperium also has way more resources to draw upon than the orks do and Imperial industrial might in UNDENIABLY the best in the galaxy.

Um... no.

There's multiple pieces of fluff that state that the orks would destroy everyone if they united. "Crush all opposition" is usually hyperbole. "Crush all opposition under a set of specific and unlikely circumstances" is definitely not.

If quoting the fluff for the game isn't good enough, well, then clearly my imaginary space unicorns would destroy everyone.

The Angry Commissar wrote:
and in the IG codex it says that the IG can crush any foe at any time. quoting codexes doesnt prove anything because they contradict one-another. the Imperium also has way more resources to draw upon than the orks do and Imperial industrial might in UNDENIABLY the best in the galaxy.

I would say that sweeping the galaxy in a green tide is vastly different to crushing any foe at any time.

The difference is that IG "CAN" crush any foe, they can bring enough firepower to bear on a single enemy to crush them utterly, for example the Tau codex mentions how they were pushed back after their initial confortation with the IG and they only stopped because they were called back to deal with a greater threat. The Tau had witnessed a mere fraction of the IG's firepower.

Orks however are numerous enough to sweep the galaxy at once. But again, this is only if they unite under one flag which we all know is near impossible and in the likely event they ever did, it would be short lived an impossible to stop the infighting. IMHO the orks united is simply a huge "what if?" scenario as its unlikely to ever happen.

I will say in Angry Commissar's defence however that each codex does need to be taken with a pinch of salt, each codex is written in such a way as to make it appear that the race you are reading about is the most almighty race ever. So we can't purely rely on what each codex says. GW wouldn't make as much money selling races that didn't have a chance of winning, and also the 40K universe as it stands is specifically designed to remain a stalemate.

Hence why this topic seems to be so popular as we have removed all the elements that made 40K a stalemate and are now left with just two races and the fluff that goes with them. Anyway, enough bantering from me hehe end of--->

Virus Bombs, aka Planent Killer Missiles like the ones Hous used.

Or bring back the primarchs and Emperor, Half of them are somewhere.

The Imperium only uses Virus bombs/Exterminatus/etc in the most dire of circumstances, each planet they use this on prevents the Imperium from usingthe resources on that world and therefore damages their abilities in the long run.

It might work short term, but later when the Imperium is able to support itself on more worlds, the lack of resources that the destroyed would have given them will only lead to stretching themselves and having fewer supplies.

Also, if a world had a huge enough force to warrant using such measures, the one must assume there would be enough ork navy vessals in the surrounding space to make such an attack very costly for the Imperium. No one in their right mind would allow such a huge force to assemble on a world that could simply be virus bombed from orbit without having sufficent defence.

Primarch's coming back would be a wonderful thing, if that ever happens though, is an entirely different matter lol

hellsguardian316 wrote:
I would say that sweeping the galaxy in a green tide is vastly different to crushing any foe at any time.

The difference is that IG "CAN" crush any foe, they can bring enough firepower to bear on a single enemy to crush them utterly, for example the Tau codex mentions how they were pushed back after their initial confortation with the IG and they only stopped because they were called back to deal with a greater threat. The Tau had witnessed a mere fraction of the IG's firepower.

Orks however are numerous enough to sweep the galaxy at once. But again, this is only if they unite under one flag which we all know is near impossible and in the likely event they ever did, it would be short lived an impossible to stop the infighting. IMHO the orks united is simply a huge "what if?" scenario as its unlikely to ever happen.

fair point. when orks get together it gets pretty ridiculous (see all 3 wars for Armageddon) i am pretty much resigned to the fact the we will loose the war for Armageddon. it sucks up too much resources. however Gaz isnt the super strategist every1 seems to take him for. twice now (or is it 3 times?) hes been chased off that planet. however when the planet falls i anticipate the withdraw of most imperial forces followed by virus bombs to kill off the rest of the orks. what i want to know is where the feth the Imperial Navy is doing in that warzone?????? where are the Emperor's fleets?

My theory is this:

Spaceships are expensive.

Men are cheap.

Lets make something clear. The Orks are a whole race, ennilation for them would be going to mutiple galaxys and destroying the Orks there. (The Old one put spores in alot of Galaxys).

The Imperium is all humans, as was said before. Is every human under Imperial rule, i dont think so.

About the Emporer killing Gork and Mork is silly and you have no fluff to back it up. It states in older fluff when Gork and Mork awoke (Probaly Created). The chaos gods and the Emporer trembled, so the emporer being half dead doesnt help either.
Whether Humans have been Orks have been before, been around since Old ones. Thats a long time we have to presume they have been to most if not all the planets in the Milky Way.

Without the Imperium the Orks have literally no fighting partners apart from themselves this means they will re-produce at a greater rate then they are now.

In a 1v1 battle Imperium vs all Orks (Counting the ones from distance Galaxys too).

Its not relevant if the Orks will ever unite to fight the Imperium properly.

As people have agreed that its not relevant about bring the other races into this too.

I don't think Gork and Mork, or the Emporer have a part in this either. And agreed, as said in my other posts, the Ork race can never truely be destroyed due to the way they procreate. You might be successful on killing every single Ork on a planet, but give it several years and you suddenly find yourself under attack again from a band of orks that grew in a hidden location from the spores of the fallen.

Xav wrote:The Orks are a whole race, ennilation for them would be going to mutiple galaxys and destroying the Orks there. (The Old one put spores in alot of Galaxys).

Do you have a source for the Old Ones/snotlings seeding them on multiple galaxies?

The old fluff (Ere we Go?) says that they go spinning off to other galaxies from their space hulks, but I didn't know they were put there originally.

I still maintain that on a theoretical sense, if all other races were removed from the equation so you were left with Orks and Imperium, the Imperium would win the War and in a loose term "destroy their race", however, the orks as a species will never be removed from the galaxy and little bands of orks will be forever popping up on all manner of worlds and the Imperium will spend the rest of eternity playing a game of "clean up" everytime it comes to their attention.

If this belief of "all technology we don't agree with is heresy" is lifted, then genetics could be used to alter the orks and create a means of destroying them forever.
But ... ... I don't think this idea would be beneficial for the topic as it currently stands or be a factor of something that would actually happen in the 40K universe, they aren't going to become enlightened over night after all, hehe


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Orkeosaurus wrote:

Xav wrote:The Orks are a whole race, ennilation for them would be going to mutiple galaxys and destroying the Orks there. (The Old one put spores in alot of Galaxys).

Do you have a source for the Old Ones/snotlings seeding them on multiple galaxies?

I've read this too and I'm positive its in the New Ork codex, I'm currently moving the house around so can't get access to my codex though.

Can we establish a rough number for the amount of guard, marines and battle ships for the Imperium.

We'll do Orks later.

Orks would get iced there lack of reliable space transports would leave them lacking as the Imperial navy grounds them. Then we declare Exterminatus on all there home planets and all those infested to deeply with them. Once they are crippled a large scale clean up is done of small pockets of resistance virtually wiping orks to nothing but feral tribes that would never come into contact with bigger mobs to understand guns or any larger consept we win.

Orks have sept trillion troops you cant bomb them all, and an imperial ship has to get into low orbit to use virus bombs., the orks would destroy the ships while there vulnerable.

The orks probaly have a lot more ship then the imperial but there just not as good.

Course you can bomb them all! Nonsense poopy pants! Orks by nature gather together in large groups which make them extremely easy targets. Exspecially on the planetary scale. And the Orks don't have a huge navy they just don't you vastly under estimate the imperiums ability to blow the gak out of whatever they want.

You cant comprehend the amount of Orks there are like one human for every thousand Orks, and Orks are bred for war and most of the humans cant fight.

Cajun, i think you vasty underestimate the quantity of orks and their ships compared to the Imperial guard. And if was a simple matter of bombarding the enemy each time, then why don't they do it?

Answer, bombarding a location damages the surrounding area's, so if done in Imperial cities or agriculture area's the result means that productivity of either food or manufacture is reduced or destroyed which hinders the ability for the Imperium to gain its resources

Add to that, the fact that in most cases, Imperial forces and civilians are already in the area's fighting. Do you really think the Imperium will bombard its own people just to destroy the orks.

If there was simply no choice or possibility of retaking a planet then exterminatus might be used, but this has always been in VERY RARE circumstances as general the Imperium is able to throw enough manpower to hold off or remove the threat of orks ... ... "mumbles" or to give enough time for the astartes to arrive and take all the credit, lol

hellsguardian316 wrote:Do you really think the Imperium will bombard its own people just to destroy the orks.

i would say 100% they would... very few generals give a damn about the men under their command.with this tactic in mind whats the loss of a thousand or so dog-soldiers/conscripts if it causes all the orks within a given radius to cluster in one location and have the poop blown out of them from orbit. im pretty sure the big mech's KFF doesnt give them a save against bombs that crack continents and ignite a planets atmosphere...

on another note, wouldnt virus bombs destroy ALL biological life INCLUDING spores?

Not having any reallifebackground with regards to military tactics I can't really comment with a firm understanding. Common sense of a civilian would say "no, they'd never do that", but a soldier in the army will have more knowledge.

I imagine in your example above then yes, it would make sense, a few thousand lives to save billions. But what if there were 1,000,000 IG down there, and Space Marines and SOB?, would the same still apply? Just asking for the sake of discussion rather than trying to be argumentative.

In regards to virus bombs I imagine it depends on the virus. A virus will effect a human differently from how it would affect an Ork. Our virus that causes flu, may not even cause an affect on an Ork, wheras the human form of common cold might be terminal for orks.

So the virus bomb would either be something that destroys all life regardless of species, or something that will only affect the ork species. Knowing the imperium, I'd guess the former.

EDIT: we should poll this, hehe
Three outcomes, IG win, Ork win, stalemate no one wins

Why not 4 options? Imp win / orkz think they win / stalemate ( 40k as is ) / both annihilate each other

The "life eater " has its name from erasing ALL forms of bio-matter. No resistance for any living form.

But the imperium doesnt need the bomb.
Orks still fall to their "follow the biggest ork" tactic.
One vortex missile and race/army unity is gone.

so thats where GW got their idea for Orks from ... ... lemmings

4th option for poll sounds good, Imperium and Orks do enough damage to each other to decimate either side

I would submit the planetary bombardment of Orks would not go as easily as some postulate - simply because there are so many Ork worlds (much less other races) that are a huge thorn in the side of the Imperium. If they really had access to a fleet that could sweep the skies and all the Exterminatus weaponry tey would need to cleanse even a handful of worlds then I would have to ask - why aren't they doing so currently?

The clear possible answers are that 1) Exterminatus are hard to come by. 2) It is difficult to clear air space enough to use them. 3) The repercussions of using them are bad for the Imperium.

I, personally, believe it's a combination of all three. To suggest that the Orks lack fleets that can engage the Imperium and win is to ignore Battlefleet Gothic and a handful of novels that describe the terrors of fighting Ork war ships. They win in space the same way they win on the ground, by saturation of targets and brutal cunning...or is it cunning brutality? One might as well suggest all ground engagements could be won by the Imperiums superior technology and use of Titans, because, y'know, Orks can't use technology or create items to equal mankind's brilliance.

The books are clear that when the Emperor was around, when all the Space Marine CHapters were loyal and at full strength, and when technology was in the golden age that the Imperium had slowly and bloodily managed to push the Orks out to the fringes of occupied human space.

That's not exactly managing the totality of Ork occupied space, and that was done at a time when the Imperium had so much more going for it then now.

I'd have to say with all other races out of it mankind would need to have some serious things go their way and totally redefine their capabilities to have a chance of surviving the Orks.

My thoughts,
Thor.

Thor665 wrote: why aren't they doing so currently?

The clear possible answers are that 1) Exterminatus are hard to come by. 2) It is difficult to clear air space enough to use them. 3) The repercussions of using them are bad for the Imperium.

The reason is not being done now is because the Imperial Navy has an entire galaxy's worth of OTHER enemies to fight. if the entire Navy was present + spess marienz + Ad Mech, im thinking the outcome would be much more in the Imperium's favor.

Spaceships are rare and expensive, guardsmen grow in masses under hive cities. The only way they could dominate battles with space power would be to use their ground forces very conservatively, which is probably the worse option. Naturally, the orks are in a similar situation. They're probably closer to the Imperium than any other alien race in terms of battlestyle and capabilities, actually.

Warhammer 40k wouldn't really work if they could do everything with their space capabilities.

Lets say there twenty billion guardmen, thats a very big number and its probaly lower then that, million space marines. Lets say the Imperium has 10,000 battle barges.

There is like sept-trillion Orks, thats alot of orks! Probaly about a million battle barges well close to that number.
All of them united one big waagh!
What do you think?


FYI who said that every imperial ship has virus bombs, ther rare cause there so dangirous.

Xav wrote:Lets say there twenty billion guardmen, thats a very big number and its probaly lower then that, million space marines. Lets say the Imperium has 10,000 battle barges.

There is like sept-trillion Orks, thats alot of orks! Probaly about a million battle barges well close to that number.
All of them united one big waagh!
What do you think?


FYI who said that every imperial ship has virus bombs, ther rare cause there so dangirous.

I think our ork supporters here are totally making up numbers and we will see fantastillions of orks in a few posts down this thread
coming from several universes ...or in short:

Illusionary orks don't count!

Fungi spores may change your view on things from believable to "interesting".