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DUH-DUH-DUH-DOUBLE POST

Don't forget to burn the Heretic!

Cheh, of course.

CrazyThang wrote:Remember: safety is the Imperium's number 2037 concern, so please, stay safe. Oh but do those other 2036 things first (most of which involve venerating the Emperor in some form).

Most of the 2036 things that come before safety(and aren't Venerating the Emperor, well even some of those) Will actually get you killed

Yeah, what Brian Blessed said.

That and I think the OP is VASTLY over-estimating the capabilities of the imperial navy. In order to be able to stop invasions on the landing zones from space you need to have lots and lots of ships that are very, very fast. Instead, the imperium has all but forgotten how to make ships, and the few which survive are very, very slow. Honestly, if I were an imperial higher-up, I'd always assume that the forces I'd send would arrive after the planet had already been taken, and the point would be to kill a bunch of stuff so as to hurt it before it attacked somewhere else.

And, as mentioned, artillery loses effectiveness with regard to the dispersion of intended targets. If they didn't hit the landing zone as the enemy was landing, they'd get a chance to spread out and populate, making ship-bourne artillery less and less useful.

In any case, I think it's telling that you barely hear stories of ship battles, or that the codecies never really tell of things that are designed to counter the imperial navy anywhere in their fluff. I'm under the impression that this is because nobody needs to worry about the imperial navy, as it's not an effective enough force to stop a landing before its too late. As such, orks can just pile into asteroids and let the fleet be darned.

When I said nukes, I was really refering to any powerful balistic missile that could take it out. Deathstrikes would do fine.

Also, don't planets have orbital defence stations, like Luna except smaller?

I think its a question of scale. Very rarely would you get a single landing point on which to concentrate your artillery fire. Instead, multiple landing points across an entire world in strategic locations will spread your artillery thinly.

I dare say they do bombard the heck out of any invader, but the PDF will not have the resources that several Guard Regiments will- meaning that some drop sites will inevitably survive. A canny invader, (and Orks are canny) will locate his drop sites to seize strategically vital locations, such as manufacturing areas, resources, or population centres. Additionally, he/she make sure the forces are both mutually supporting, and capable of managing should several dropsites be completely annihilated.

This results in your artillery fire being less effective than it could be.

felixthecat345 wrote:For example....

"Ork Rok has landed."
"Fire nukes"
"Yes sir. Launching 500 nuclear warheads......."
"Problem solved"

Why can't the Imperium just bombard ork roks when they land on a planet? In the time it takes to get the entire thing set up, surely the Imperium could just bombard it from orbit or from missiles launched nearby? Or when a nid fleet lands, couldn't they just keep launching missiles at the landing site until they gave up and left? Sorry if it's a stupid question, I havn't got an ork dex so I don't know about some of the defences they may have. But wouldn't a force field just be destroyed by artillery if they had one? I use nids and orks as examples since they're the ones who have fewer landing points and the biggest targets.

They do.

Keep in mind that a game of 40K might represent a zoomed in view of a much large battle spanning whole continents or planets, and that involves millions of combatants and thousands of ships, vehicles, etc., etc.

So yes planetary defenses and space fleets do indeed do exactly what you describe, but the games of epic/40k represent the elemenst that survive this or that have not been hit yet...

Ailaros wrote:Yeah, what Brian Blessed said.

That and I think the OP is VASTLY over-estimating the capabilities of the imperial navy. In order to be able to stop invasions on the landing zones from space you need to have lots and lots of ships that are very, very fast. Instead, the imperium has all but forgotten how to make ships, and the few which survive are very, very slow. Honestly, if I were an imperial higher-up, I'd always assume that the forces I'd send would arrive after the planet had already been taken, and the point would be to kill a bunch of stuff so as to hurt it before it attacked somewhere else.

And, as mentioned, artillery loses effectiveness with regard to the dispersion of intended targets. If they didn't hit the landing zone as the enemy was landing, they'd get a chance to spread out and populate, making ship-bourne artillery less and less useful.

In any case, I think it's telling that you barely hear stories of ship battles, or that the codecies never really tell of things that are designed to counter the imperial navy anywhere in their fluff. I'm under the impression that this is because nobody needs to worry about the imperial navy, as it's not an effective enough force to stop a landing before its too late. As such, orks can just pile into asteroids and let the fleet be darned.

The Imperium has a lot of ships, which are very, very slow. And the Imperial navy is a very big threat, it's just in warhammer 40k all they care about is the land forces. BFG deals more into the whole "navy" thing.

Well, pretty sure they realize nukes ruin planets, granted if its a hive world it wouldnt be such an issue since those are made for massive populations to survive on long toxic worlds ruined by their own industry.

But what about6 defending a fertile agri world that supplies food to previously mentioned hive world? you nuke that the world becomes sterile and the hives starve riot and die ... Nukes are almost never the answer.

Ailaros wrote:Yeah, what Brian Blessed said.

That and I think the OP is VASTLY over-estimating the capabilities of the imperial navy. In order to be able to stop invasions on the landing zones from space you need to have lots and lots of ships that are very, very fast. Instead, the imperium has all but forgotten how to make ships, and the few which survive are very, very slow. Honestly, if I were an imperial higher-up, I'd always assume that the forces I'd send would arrive after the planet had already been taken, and the point would be to kill a bunch of stuff so as to hurt it before it attacked somewhere else.

As for needing lots of fast ships, not so much. In BL and BFG stuff it talks about engagement ranges typically in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers as being fairly medium range. So with the amount of ships the IN has at its disposal i dont see setting a picket around a planet as being too difficult.

Well, Space Marines have the fastest ships. But they only carry small forces anyway. Admittedly, their large ships are probably much slower, but they are more for when troops need deploying to the ground and powerful space firepower is needed (or if the chapter master is in a bad mood).

IG fleets are big, full of troops, tanks and whatnot. They probably also take a long time to load all those meatshields and russmobiles.

I would also like to mention to the OP that the Imperial Guard have units called 'Master of the Fleet' and 'Master of Ordinance' and they are effective when it comes to battles on the ground.

Radiation from Fall Out isn't AS bad as people a seem to think. I've lived in a city that was part of the Manhatten Project my entire life. We have an aboveground store for the waste material that the National Guard tests every few years for leaks and or contamination less then a mile from my house. The rain in this area is acidic and there is more RADS in the air then what would be expected from the fly ash of the coal power plant (for those of you who are unaware coal ash contains trace amounts of Uranium-238). Although we've obviously never seen a detonation in this area I guarentee that the spread of the material is about the same as if we had. There are only a few areas in the world that would have a comparible level of contamination, and a few more that would surpass it, but we get on with our lives just like any one else putting one tenticle in front of the other...

tenticle.. lol..

ComputerGeek01 wrote:
Radiation from Fall Out isn't AS bad as people a seem to think. I've lived in a city that was part of the Manhatten Project my entire life.

The Manhattan Project was, on a modern scale for nukes, small potatoes. The bombs that were created in that era would certainly be a little nasty to an invading army, but the main reasons for the death tolls in the WW2 bombings were, first, the highly-packed targets (cities), and second, the fact that nobody was prepared to treat radiation burns/poisoning. If somebody managed to aim a Manhattan Project-sized nuke directly at Ghazghkull's command center, then yes it would decimate the WAAGH. But if they just shot a couple of them somewhere into the Ork camp, or at random roks... it'd do some damage, but not enough. To really do significant enough damage to the incoming force that you wouldn't have to worry much about ground forces, you'd need either much larger nukes or some excellent intel on key locations to hit.

Well wouldn't there be satalites orbiting a planet that defend against invasion and bombard people who land? And if there's so many ships couldn't they asign at least a small one with lots off space to ground weaponry to most planets?

I agree DaveL, the Atomic weapons that resulted from the Manhatten Project are so much weaker then what we define today as a Nuclear WMD. But the discussion thus far has been leaning toward the affect of Nuclear Fallout on the Agriculture and Habitablility of a region post-detonation, which is grossly overblown by popular media. Modern Thermonuclear Weapons are also more efficent and I believe they leave much less radioactive fallout because they consume more of their nuclear fuel.

I think Nuclear Weapons are a possability for the Imperium in WH40K because of the large energy output and the usefulness of the technology in otherfields would mean that it would be wide spread.

Side note: How many hits from Carnivore do you think this thread alone has gotten?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that fallout is not some magical 'lazor-ray' that exists just because a Nuclear Weapon detonated. They are physical particles of dust that in the event of a detonation outside of a planets atmosphere would be caught in the planets gravity and eventually brought back down to the ground. Even if they didn't make it to the ground the best case scenario would be alpha-emitting particles interacting with rain water for thousands of years poisoning billions of people.

Well according to the book Rynn's world the imperium does engage ork roks with planetary defense batteries, but the orks send so many that many are just bound to land.

felixthecat345 wrote:Well wouldn't there be satalites orbiting a planet that defend against invasion and bombard people who land? And if there's so many ships couldn't they asign at least a small one with lots off space to ground weaponry to most planets?

What makes you think every planet would have a need for, or the resources to build, satellites? The united states has an complex network of freeways covering it, would it be fair to assume that means ALL countries do as well?

Asking why the Imperium doesn't just defend their people successfully is sort of asking why the US didn't just stop the Perl Harbor attack, or why we didn't just not let 9-11 happen. There is no such thing as a 100% never gonna fail unbeatable defense. Ideally, you can create a situation where the required amount of effort to break your defense exceeds the resources of most of the folks you can identify that want to hurt you. Eventually though someone with the right knowledge, materials, and training is going to come along and everything you've done to defend yourself will be for naught.

drukawski wrote:

felixthecat345 wrote:Well wouldn't there be satalites orbiting a planet that defend against invasion and bombard people who land? And if there's so many ships couldn't they asign at least a small one with lots off space to ground weaponry to most planets?

What makes you think every planet would have a need for, or the resources to build, satellites? The united states has an complex network of freeways covering it, would it be fair to assume that means ALL countries do as well?

Asking why the Imperium doesn't just defend their people successfully is sort of asking why the US didn't just stop the Perl Harbor attack, or why we didn't just not let 9-11 happen. There is no such thing as a 100% never gonna fail unbeatable defense. Ideally, you can create a situation where the required amount of effort to break your defense exceeds the resources of most of the folks you can identify that want to hurt you. Eventually though someone with the right knowledge, materials, and training is going to come along and everything you've done to defend yourself will be for naught.

This to be honest. Each subsector/sector has its own factions/governors that swear fealty to the imperium. They're also very protectionist in many ways and only the richest, most important of planets would have the resources and ability to have such orbital defenses. They just aren't that organized or have the foresight to do more. Its never as simple as placing a satellite. Infrastructure needs to be in place to maintain and arm it ( there being millions of worlds as well ). Plus the Imperial navy isn't a fast response unit. Its a slow, ponderous, lumbering behemoth tied together by chain of command and bureaucracy. Mired in tradition and rigidity. Plus it isn't just on call. Ships that aren't in reserve tend to be on patrol rotation, in drydock being maintained or upgraded or otherwise on specific missions/ in crusades and major military actions. The full force of the imperial navy is never truly all being fielded at once

Lexx wrote: The full force of the imperial navy is never truly all being fielded at once

And they wonder why the nids are still around


Anyways, it's the planets WITH the expensive defenses that get attacked most - they're the ones with the most too loose, tech, weapons, other cool gak - y'know, the kinda stuff any sort of reasonabley normal person would want.

I would imagine that most of this is covered by Planetstrike and Battlefleet Gothic. *Shrug*

Kevin949 wrote:I would imagine that most of this is covered by Planetstrike and Battlefleet Gothic. *Shrug*

Well, you just won the thread.

Darkvoidof40k wrote:

Kevin949 wrote:I would imagine that most of this is covered by Planetstrike and Battlefleet Gothic. *Shrug*

Well, you just won the thread.

Ok?

Much to learn, I see.

Ah well, it wasn't much of a win in this case, which says something :/ (not about you)

More, you answered the thread in one post. Anyway, let the discussion continue!

Darkvoidof40k wrote: Much to learn, I see.

Ah well, it wasn't much of a win in this case, which says something :/ (not about you)

More, you answered the thread in one post. Anyway, let the discussion continue!

Ah, I wasn't sure if you were being a jerk or not, honestly. Heh.

But really I was enjoying the discussion everyone was having, but I don't know much about the 40k background so I figured I would throw out what little I knew about the game(s). LoL

Oh, sorry if I gave you the "jerk" impression. Happens easily

kill dem stunties wrote:

As for needing lots of fast ships, not so much. In BL and BFG stuff it talks about engagement ranges typically in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers as being fairly medium range. So with the amount of ships the IN has at its disposal i dont see setting a picket around a planet as being too difficult.

Oh, hitting a planet is easy. It's getting the right continent that you have to worry about.

To be honest, very few armies bar Orks/Necrons are going to be landing on a planet that they haven't established air/space superiority over. If, say, the Nids wanted to get to a planet, they'll first have to sweep away any surrounding satteltites and fleets or attack areas that just don't have these kinds of defences available. Attempting to land on a planet that you haven't established orbital control over would be like the Germans attempting to invade Britain without trying to knock out the RAF. What do you think the Battle of Britain was about? (Yes, I did just manage to link the Tyranids to Nazis)

ComputerGeek01 wrote:I agree DaveL, the Atomic weapons that resulted from the Manhatten Project are so much weaker then what we define today as a Nuclear WMD. But the discussion thus far has been leaning toward the affect of Nuclear Fallout on the Agriculture and Habitablility of a region post-detonation, which is grossly overblown by popular media. Modern Thermonuclear Weapons are also more efficent and I believe they leave much less radioactive fallout because they consume more of their nuclear fuel.

It's not really so much exaggerated as based on the idea that, if one nuke was fired, a lot (or all) of them would be fired. All nukes currently in existence in the world today being fired would make our planet uninhabitable. Only one being fired would have an effect that depended on what altitude it was detonated at.

If you're going for an atmospheric detonation (shooting roks as they come down), it's going to spread nasty stuff over a large area. The "cleaner" nukes we use today use "dirty" nukes as, essentially, triggers, and the "clean" part is an overstatement anyway. If you shot them at roks that had landed, you'd have a decent chance of being okay afterwards, assuming you didn't use more than a couple of them. But again, you have the problem of what you shoot them at... a planetary invasion force is going to be large. Very, very large.

(And, yes, there's also the problem that your own space forces probably don't exist any more by that point, and it's likely that if you had ground-based nukes they'd be bombarded from orbit.)

Is it credible to target orbiting ships with nuclear payloads? (BFG scale it would be the equivalent to a single torpedoe but still)