Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Brother Coa wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Canadian 5th wrote:Sad that people aren't willing to actually bother with numbers and threads like this are mostly filled with people posting either complete pulled from thin air opinion without doing any research. Then, when you present an argument and point out a lack of research people claim you're flaming them.

There should be standards for research and evidence if you want to conduct a good debate. Of course the signal to noise ratio on this site is like watching TV with rabbit ears in a faraday cage. If this wasn't the biggest site for wargaming I wouldn't even bother. I'm still tempted to not bother given that FoW, the system I care more about has its own active forum that has players who know the game better than this site's player base seems to.

Its not a debate society. Its a board about toy soldiers. If you want to have a serious, carefully detailed and authenticated debate about who's sci fi epeen is better: Star Wars or 40K I respectfully suggest you need to reexamine your life choices.

This quote hurt even me...

For the Greater Good!

I don't think Canadian 5th is really being all that rude, personally.

He's making his arguments on the subject matter (such as it is) succinctly and citing sources. I can understand that this being refuted by "TYRANDIS FTW LOL1111111ON3!111" would be frustrating.

The key here, Canadian 5th, is to not get upset. If you make an argument on any topic, backed up by an unimpeachable source and people still disagree with it, don't get annoyed. Just let them be wrong and get on with your day. You'll have a much happier forum experience, and possible life in general.

^Agree. I commend you for citing sources, regardless of peoples frustration at not having any of their own.

wait..."Tyranids go NOM NOM NOM NOM" is not an arguement...i give up

OT but is it just me or does the SW universe bore you? Everything seems to be jedi did this or jedi did that. For guys who would be up &$^% if someone ever came at them with a mere shotgun they seem to be the epicenter of that universe.

Yawn.

Its kinda of tough to cite sources for Nid ships or numbers.


the Numbers given amount to "Endless swarms" and "Bigger then the largest Battleships the Imperium has"


the size of ships can be estimated as we have numbers for Imperial ships. BFG game stats are consistant with Fluff descriptions and can be assumed to be accurate to each other.


looking at the picture of Hive Ships, they appear to be a bit longer then Imperial Battleships.

Merzo puts Imperial Battleships at around 7.5 kilometers long. So i think 8 Kilometers is a fair estimation.

BFG stats put the armor plates for Imperial Battleships and Hive ships to be equal.



Ship Hulls are composed of Ceramite and Plasteel, both of which are said to be far stronger/sturdier then Steel or Steel Alloys. this puts the bar above 63,000 PSI for impact resistance. I would put a conservitive estimate at 80,000 PSI.

the Hulls are repeatedly said to be incredibly thick, many meters, but no specific number is given. I estimate thickness to be at around 5 meters for standard thickness, armored prows could be anywhere between 7-10 meters.

I don't know how thick Star Wars hulls are, but considering Republic era Ships of the Line top out at abut 3 kilometers long(Federation battleship) I wouldn't think it would even come close to this thickness.



Weapon Batteries. These weapons are described as being either massive Plasma or solid slug weapons using magnetic acceleration. the Slugs are described as being the size of Landraiders.

Landraiders are 10 meters long by 6 meters wide by 4 meters tall. so 240 cubic meters.

assuming the slug was simply made of iron, it would weigh 188,976 kilograms(if i did my math right. someone double check)

Modern Railgun prototypes throw slugs at 2.4 kilometers/sec so I will assume the same velocity.

this gives a Kinetic Energy estimation of 453,542,400 J

Grey Templar wrote:

Weapon Batteries. These weapons are described as being either massive Plasma or solid slug weapons using magnetic acceleration. the Slugs are described as being the size of Landraiders.

Landraiders are 10 meters long by 6 meters wide by 4 meters tall. so 240 cubic meters.

assuming the slug was simply made of iron, it would weigh 188,976 kilograms(if i did my math right. someone double check)

Modern Railgun prototypes throw slugs at 2.4 kilometers/sec so I will assume the same velocity.

this gives a Kinetic Energy estimation of 453,542,400 J

Light turbolasers destroy asteroids far larger than that with low power shots.

Hull thickness is kind of irrelevant when you have really good shields though, isn't it?

Frazzled wrote:OT but is it just me or does the SW universe bore you? Everything seems to be jedi did this or jedi did that. For guys who would be up &$^% if someone ever came at them with a mere shotgun they seem to be the epicenter of that universe.

Yawn.

May want to check out those Ysalamiri I posted about earlier, Frazz. They "shut off" a Force user's ability to use the Force, meaning they can't block shots. Whenever they pop up, Force users die to a well placed shot the same as everyone else. The negation bubble also increases exponentially the more Ysalamiri there are in an area. There's a reason Grand Admiral Thrawn kept them around at all times.

So in the end it's the Nids who will eat everything...
This kinda make IoM grater since they destroyed 2 Hive fleets already...

Nerivant wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:

Weapon Batteries. These weapons are described as being either massive Plasma or solid slug weapons using magnetic acceleration. the Slugs are described as being the size of Landraiders.

Landraiders are 10 meters long by 6 meters wide by 4 meters tall. so 240 cubic meters.

assuming the slug was simply made of iron, it would weigh 188,976 kilograms(if i did my math right. someone double check)

Modern Railgun prototypes throw slugs at 2.4 kilometers/sec so I will assume the same velocity.

this gives a Kinetic Energy estimation of 453,542,400 J

Light turbolasers destroy asteroids far larger than that with low power shots.

so?

you going to shoot hundreds of these down while they are flying towards you at 2.4 kilometers/sec?

the inquisition believes that the current hive fleets are just a vanguard force as well...so if IoM had a hard time with the vanguard force, imagine how pwned Star Wars would be if it faced ALL of the nids and IoM

the threads about the Republic and CIS against the Nids.

IoM is used simply so we can get estimations on Nid ships(as IoM ships are the only ones with numbers)


we take IoM ship numbers, translate into BFG stats, nids are cross translated into real numbers.

Monster Rain wrote:Hull thickness is kind of irrelevant when you have really good shields though, isn't it?

True dat.

Grey Templar wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:

Weapon Batteries. These weapons are described as being either massive Plasma or solid slug weapons using magnetic acceleration. the Slugs are described as being the size of Landraiders.

Landraiders are 10 meters long by 6 meters wide by 4 meters tall. so 240 cubic meters.

assuming the slug was simply made of iron, it would weigh 188,976 kilograms(if i did my math right. someone double check)

Modern Railgun prototypes throw slugs at 2.4 kilometers/sec so I will assume the same velocity.

this gives a Kinetic Energy estimation of 453,542,400 J

Light turbolasers destroy asteroids far larger than that with low power shots.

so?

you going to shoot hundreds of these down while they are flying towards you at 2.4 kilometers/sec?

Why not? The heavy turbolasers are the ones that will kill the nid ships, anyway. Might as well use the lights for shooting those pesky projectiles apart.

Frazzled wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Hull thickness is kind of irrelevant when you have really good shields though, isn't it?

True dat.

That's why Star Trek would own all of these fools.

Monster Rain wrote:
That's why Star Trek would own all of these fools.

Wrong again...

Nerivant wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:

Weapon Batteries. These weapons are described as being either massive Plasma or solid slug weapons using magnetic acceleration. the Slugs are described as being the size of Landraiders.

Landraiders are 10 meters long by 6 meters wide by 4 meters tall. so 240 cubic meters.

assuming the slug was simply made of iron, it would weigh 188,976 kilograms(if i did my math right. someone double check)

Modern Railgun prototypes throw slugs at 2.4 kilometers/sec so I will assume the same velocity.

this gives a Kinetic Energy estimation of 453,542,400 J

Light turbolasers destroy asteroids far larger than that with low power shots.

so?

you going to shoot hundreds of these down while they are flying towards you at 2.4 kilometers/sec?

Why not? The heavy turbolasers are the ones that will kill the nid ships, anyway. Might as well use the lights for shooting those pesky projectiles apart.

I don't think you could hit them.

Light turbolasers have trouble tracking a starfighter which has a massive electronic signiture. You are not going to hit any more then a couple out of hundreds of iron lumps coming at you at 2.4 kilometers/sec???

Light turbo-lasers arn't going to do anything against a salvo of these.

Lets get the ST out quickly. Nids have no chance.

Picard ST: Nids are bored into hibernation by all the PC talky talky.

Kirk ST: Kirk and a Norn Princess discover a new form of love...

Grey Templar wrote:
I don't think you could hit them.

Light turbolasers have trouble tracking a starfighter which has a massive electronic signiture. You are not going to hit any more then a couple out of hundreds of iron lumps coming at you at 2.4 kilometers/sec???

Light turbo-lasers arn't going to do anything against a salvo of these.

They are fast, but your forgetting that space battles are fought at a distance of thousands of kilometres, it would take about 6.9 minutes for that projectile to travel 1000 kilometers, plenty of time to reinforce shields or engage with defence lasers/missiles

Grey Templar wrote:
I don't think you could hit them.

Light turbolasers have trouble tracking a starfighter which has a massive electronic signiture. You are not going to hit any more then a couple out of hundreds of iron lumps coming at you at 2.4 kilometers/sec???

Light turbo-lasers arn't going to do anything against a salvo of these.

Why are you comparing a piloted vessel capable of evasion and taking advantage of the weapon's tracking speed, against an inanimate object flying at you in a straight line? They're completely different. Saying that because you can't hit one doesn't mean they can't hit the other.

If a squad of starfighters flew at a capitol ship head on, without ever deviating from their course, they'd all die.

The turbolasers would destroy enough of the slugs that the shields would be able to handle the rest.

Toastedandy wrote:
They are fast, but your forgetting that space battles are fought at a distance of thousands of kilometres, it would take about 6.9 minutes for that projectile to travel 1000 kilometers, plenty of time to reinforce shields or engage with defence lasers/missiles

Or move. SW has a huge range advantage. They could just... shift out of the way.

Nerivant wrote:
Or move. SW has a huge range advantage. They could just... shift out of the way.

Ha yeah, forgot they could do that. If only I could find that family guy clip from that star wars episode.

How much damage would a lump of Iron do to a ship with shields anyway? Sounds like a glorified catapult

Toastedandy wrote:

Nerivant wrote:
Or move. SW has a huge range advantage. They could just... shift out of the way.

Ha yeah, forgot they could do that. If only I could find that family guy clip from that star wars episode.

How much damage would a lump of Iron do to a ship with shields anyway? Sounds like a glorified catapult

Well, Grey Templar listed the energy imparted by the projectile to be 453,542,400 J. 453 MJ.

Your typical turbolaser puts out thousands of terajoules of energy with each shot.

The shields probably wouldn't even notice, now that I think about it. The tyranids would have to sling slugs for a day to match what the shield blocks from a single turbolaser shot.

Pretty much limitless supply monsters vs. some armies prone to fighting each other. Tyranids all the way.

pobble9 wrote:Pretty much limitless supply monsters vs. some armies prone to fighting each other. Tyranids all the way.

How are they prone to fighting each other?

Nerivant wrote:

pobble9 wrote:Pretty much limitless supply monsters vs. some armies prone to fighting each other. Tyranids all the way.

How are they prone to fighting each other?

And how is that any different from the Tyranids actual source universe? At least in SW it's only 2 factions, not 6+ like 40K.

Nerivant wrote:

Toastedandy wrote:

Nerivant wrote:
Or move. SW has a huge range advantage. They could just... shift out of the way.

Ha yeah, forgot they could do that. If only I could find that family guy clip from that star wars episode.

How much damage would a lump of Iron do to a ship with shields anyway? Sounds like a glorified catapult

Well, Grey Templar listed the energy imparted by the projectile to be 453,542,400 J. 453 MJ.

Your typical turbolaser puts out thousands of terajoules of energy with each shot.

The shields probably wouldn't even notice, now that I think about it. The tyranids would have to sling slugs for a day to match what the shield blocks from a single turbolaser shot.

Particle or Deflector Shields?

EDIT: Meh, not really important.

Kasrkai wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

Toastedandy wrote:

Nerivant wrote:
Or move. SW has a huge range advantage. They could just... shift out of the way.

Ha yeah, forgot they could do that. If only I could find that family guy clip from that star wars episode.

How much damage would a lump of Iron do to a ship with shields anyway? Sounds like a glorified catapult

Well, Grey Templar listed the energy imparted by the projectile to be 453,542,400 J. 453 MJ.

Your typical turbolaser puts out thousands of terajoules of energy with each shot.

The shields probably wouldn't even notice, now that I think about it. The tyranids would have to sling slugs for a day to match what the shield blocks from a single turbolaser shot.

Particle or Deflector Shields?

EDIT: Meh, not really important.

It would be important, but I haven't heard of a warship that didn't have both.

Toastedandy wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:
I don't think you could hit them.

Light turbolasers have trouble tracking a starfighter which has a massive electronic signiture. You are not going to hit any more then a couple out of hundreds of iron lumps coming at you at 2.4 kilometers/sec???

Light turbo-lasers arn't going to do anything against a salvo of these.

They are fast, but your forgetting that space battles are fought at a distance of thousands of kilometres, it would take about 6.9 minutes for that projectile to travel 1000 kilometers, plenty of time to reinforce shields or engage with defence lasers/missiles

You should try more like millions of kilometers given that an ISD can engage targets at ten light minute range. That's longer than the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

Pretty much limitless supply monsters vs. some armies prone to fighting each other. Tyranids all the way.

You know both armies had the same leader right? Palpatine was the CiC for both forces and he could have forced them to set aside the war and fight the real threat. It would actually be even better for him to have negotiated a peace and then turned to face a new threat united.

Nerivant wrote:

Toastedandy wrote:

Nerivant wrote:
Or move. SW has a huge range advantage. They could just... shift out of the way.

Ha yeah, forgot they could do that. If only I could find that family guy clip from that star wars episode.

How much damage would a lump of Iron do to a ship with shields anyway? Sounds like a glorified catapult

Well, Grey Templar listed the energy imparted by the projectile to be 453,542,400 J. 453 MJ.

Your typical turbolaser puts out thousands of terajoules of energy with each shot.

The shields probably wouldn't even notice, now that I think about it. The tyranids would have to sling slugs for a day to match what the shield blocks from a single turbolaser shot.

thats just the solid slugs.

I can't calculate the energy output for Bioplasma and Acid-weapon batteries.


at least 40k authors don't pull numbers out of their like extended universe authors do.

Terajoules??? I really can't even fathom such a number. 40k simply doesn't give us any numbers to work with other then descriptions and i can't do that math.




So, Star Wars wins, but only because they have numbers their authors made up on the spot because they needed to sound cool.

I want a 40k book which gives actual weapon outputs like Star Wars has. then it would be clear that 40k wins every time.

but untill then, we have to concede to the BS numbers because we have nothing else to deal with.



and I assumed the slugs are made of iron. they could be made of some super dense material like Uranium or an as now unknown element many times denser then Iron.

and it isn't that you couldn't hit these slugs with Turbo-lasers, its that you couldn't target them because your sensors wouldn't be able to track them. the Empire lost the Millenium Falcon because it shut all its systems down. a solid lump of metal isn't emmiting anything either.