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.

Bromsy wrote:I still maintain that the Solar Deliberative could beat the IOM... they can travel dimensions with impunity - the IOM has at best 2. They can make entire populations betray everything they've ever loved with a smile, wink and an essence expenditure. They can parry lance strikes with a sword, and rape destiny to give them whatever result they want, and throwing space marines at them would be like dumping buckets of hamsters into an incinerator.

BURN

I don't even know what the Solar Deliberative is but the bit in bold sounds awesome so I'm going to use it as my sig.

Commissar Agro wrote:

Bromsy wrote:I still maintain that the Solar Deliberative could beat the IOM... they can travel dimensions with impunity - the IOM has at best 2. They can make entire populations betray everything they've ever loved with a smile, wink and an essence expenditure. They can parry lance strikes with a sword, and rape destiny to give them whatever result they want, and throwing space marines at them would be like dumping buckets of hamsters into an incinerator.

BURN

I don't even know what the Solar Deliberative is but the bit in bold sounds awesome so I'm going to use it as my sig.

LOL

Have we discussed the Combine yet, or am I late to the party?
Regardless, I like to imagine the Combine waging a sort of "guerilla" war on the Imperium. Popping in from another dimension, providing a more friendly enviroment for Imperial citizens to live in, and stealing all the water before buggering off to another dimension.
In open combat, I can safely say that the Combine would lose. What has been seen of their weapons have been a few laser weapons and some shell throwers. That said, whatching a strider go toe-to-toe with a wraithlord would be awesome.

alexwars1 wrote:Have we discussed the Combine yet, or am I late to the party?
Regardless, I like to imagine the Combine waging a sort of "guerilla" war on the Imperium. Popping in from another dimension, providing a more friendly enviroment for Imperial citizens to live in, and stealing all the water before buggering off to another dimension.
In open combat, I can safely say that the Combine would lose. What has been seen of their weapons have been a few laser weapons and some shell throwers. That said, whatching a strider go toe-to-toe with a wraithlord would be awesome.

That wouldn't work you see we have Inquisitors,then we have psykers who will notice what's wrong.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey Templar wrote:Since when has the number of Stormtroopers been put at Trillions?


The Star Wars empire was beat by a handfull of rebels and teddy bears.


the Star Wars empire collapsed into many factions upon the death of the emperor.

the IoM lost the emperor, kicked the traitors butts back to the EoT and have kept them there for 10,000 years.

Read Expanded Universe books then read Incredible Cross Sections:Attack of the Clones.

The Stormtrooper syndrome

The Stormtrooper, the elite shock troopers of the Galactic Empire, the right hand of the Emperor himself; trained in a gravity well that could crush the average human, these bad boys of the Empire are the toughest, meanest and most zealously loyal troops in the Imperial military. Numbering in the trillions and carrying the deadliest weapons into battle, the Stormtrooper Corps is the furled fist of the Empire, coiled and ready to sucker punch the Galaxy in her Ovaries.

Yet despite their unit-for-unit reliability, detractors continue to lambaste the performance of the overall Corps for one distinct reason known by all as the Teddy Bear incident™. The Battle of Endor proved to be a disaster for the Empire, which despite only a limited loss in material and manpower sparked an internal power struggle that came close to toppling the regime only until recently. Yet despite her continued perseverance, despite the countless successful engagements and occupations; the storming of Hoth, the capture of the Tantive IV and the occupation of a Galaxy over 120,000 light years in diameter, the Stormtrooper Corps will never live down the single blemish known colloquially by cynics and fans alike as “That bit with the Teddy Bears”. In fact the overall incident came to be known as the Stormtrooper effect, also called Stormtrooper syndrome, an expression used to describe the cliché phenomenon in works of fiction of minor cannon fodder characters being completely ineffective in combat against characters important to the plot (protagonists). This ineffectiveness is typically visible as an inability to successfully strike the target with ranged weapons, even at close range. Though obviously unrealistic, the effect is common in many stories and movies.
Ultimately this leads us to narrow down the phenomenon to only a few select properties:

A) Are Stormtroopers incompetent? No, they’ve repeatedly demonstrated their title as elite shock troopers.

B) Are Stormtroopers well equipped/trained? Of course, they receive the best possible training/equipment available to a military unit several trillion strong.

C) Are Stormtroopers human? Mostly, thus the mistakes that they make are dependent on naturally occurring flaws, despite their intensive training.

During the Endor battle, the most likely reason for their loss is simple overconfidence. Outside the bunker, they were felled by simple plain old Jane overconfidence, no tricks or techno babble, they were simply destroyed by their underestimation of enemy strength. Their light armament reveals deplorable overconfidence (The scout troopers had handguns, the Stormtroopers had carbines, and they didn’t bother carrying any of the heavy weapons we saw in previous films), so it’s really no surprise that they were so easily ambushed and overwhelmed when a third of their military forces were armed with nothing more than Pistols.

But before we leap to the conclusion that such foolishness is impossible in the Emperor’s “finest troops”, I would urge readers to study the example of the US Army’s elite Rangers, S.E.A.L., and Delta Force commandos in Somalia. Think back to 1993, the 1980’s was long gone, Jurassic Park had just been released and the Berlin wall saw some new and interesting renovations; the world was a better place for it. Yet during a disastrous mission in which two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down, U.S. Special Forces units demonstrated exactly the kind of overconfidence that bought disaster to Endor. They arrogantly performed what should have been a night operation in broad daylight, and they didn’t bother bringing any “unnecessary” dead weight, such as water canteens, bayonets, or night-sight equipment. Some of them even removed the armour plates from their flak jackets, so they would be more comfortable in the heat. Worse yet, mission security was horrendous; Somali staff at the U.S. Embassy easily discovered the time and place of the mission, and forwarded this information to Somali militia. The entire mission was a mess long before Delta Force could pick the Camel turds from their boots.

Unfortunately for those men lost in the fray of poor military planning, the problems didn’t even stop there; they had no heavy reinforcements or armour in case of serious resistance, and they only had one rescue team, which became a huge problem when not one, but two choppers went down. They couldn’t even co-ordinate their activities; the Rangers and Delta Force commandos continuously butted heads over tactics and chain of command, and an Orion spy plane wasn’t permitted to give direct instructions to the men on the ground even though it was the only platform with a clear view of what was happening. The litany of mistakes continued with the rescue convoys, which literally got lost and ambushed en route to the crash site because of unfamiliarity with the city streets and poor direction from the helicopters above. In the confusion, the Americans fired on anyone with a gun, and then anyone who was around someone with a gun, and eventually, at anything that moved, thus causing thousands of civilian casualties. A simple mission to kidnap two men turned into a chaotic twelve hour firefight, in which nearly a hundred American soldiers were killed or wounded. If this were a fictional war story, it would have been lambasted for being hopelessly unrealistic. People would say “no real soldiers would be so incompetent”. But these men were not incompetent; they were overconfident and inadequately prepared. They demonstrated to the world (At least, the part of the world that reads books instead of getting all their information from action movies) that even the best trained, best equipped soldiers can still can be stymied by poor preparation and the inherent difficulties of combat in difficult and unfamiliar terrain.

Likewise the forces at Endor were deployed in an effort to ambush Rebel forces attempting to seize the bunker facility. They did not anticipate that the native inhabitants (Who up until that point appeared to be Neolithic mammals of little intelligence) could possibly deploy traps ahead of time, they could not even fathom that Rebel Commandos would work in conjunction with said primitives and at no point would it have been practical to employ planetary suppression forces for a relatively simple ambush. Thus they were greatly outnumbered, underequipped, unprepared and were being ensnared by an enemy who knew the terrain intimately, utilized this knowledge to great effect and garnered assistance from heavily armed Commando units. In retrospect we should be even more impressed by the fact that the heavily outnumbered and surrounded Imperial forces managed to go on the offensive and rout the enemy until one of their support vehicles was hijacked by a famous Wookie veteran.

Callously, history only ever recalls our greatest failures, but should we chastise the entire Roman Military for their losses at Teutoburg? Should U.S. Special Forces be held accountable for time immemorial for the failure in Somalia? Likewise should the reputation of the Stormtrooper Corps, an organization composed of billions of men, be tarnished due to the overconfidence of a vastly small minority?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Golden Sabres wrote:We need to remember though, a 13 megajoule laser is ap - in the 40k universe...

What about 19 Megathule range?It seems like a corrupted version of Megajoule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey Templar wrote:you can't pit the entire ST universe vs the IoM.


2 reasons

1) the different ST factions would never unite. and assuming they did they wouldn't support each other very well. little to no cordination of forces, "failing" to come to the others aid( , we had to, um, refuel the fleet. sorry the 3rd fleet and those star systems got boned )

2) the IoM is 1, very diverse, faction so no fair using multiple factions.

Not to mention that they suck on space and on ground.

very good points

i just love a intelligent discussion.
I still think that the IOM space forces still hold greater power. the smaller ship are the size of star destroyers.
I dont know how many star destroyers there would have been or how many ships the IOM had in there service but im shore that on a one on one battle, SW would lose

Commissar Agro wrote:Flack armour is terrible

Flak armor is NOT terrible by any means. It's infinitely superior to anything we have in the modern world, and extremely light to boot (an entire suit of Guard flak armor, protecting almost the entire body, weighs far less than merely the chest piece of the best modern armor available).

The problem is that tabletop is an MEQ-oriented game.

Isn't it obvious? He already beat the IoM

IvanTih wrote:
Yes,sources tell us that,but they vary.Still ST is screwed in ship to ship combat.That is the energy which impact target,what is wrong with that?

What's right with it?

This is my bugbear about discussions such as these. If someone argues that IoM has greater manpower and equipment numbers than (insert opposing factions name here) then fine. But when they argue that IoM beats X because their weapons output huge numbers of 0's in damage, I have difficulty in accepting that, because there is no way that those figures can be relied upon as being correct, not because the individual making those calculations are wrong, but because the base foundation, ie a bit of fiction, is shaky to say the least.

Lets take the lasgun. 13MJ of energy hits the target so the initial enrgy to create that shot will be higher. How many shots does a lasgun pack hold? One of the facts proffered is that such a powerpack can be recharged in a wood fire. How much energy does a fire give off? I bet you that it doesn't even reach enough to make one shot let alone recharge an entire powerpack.

IoM ship power supplies. Fusion reactor. Someone somewhere said that a ships reactor gave 1e26 joules. The equivalent to the sun. I'm going to ignore the disparity of sizes here. The sun uses 4,000,000 tons of fuel a second. What fuel does the reactor use. Because to the best knowledge/searching by me (get out clause) there is no fuel that can meet that requirement.

Breaking the laws of science/physics. Another bugbear. I'm going to use a ST photon torpedo here. The good old 64MT vs 690GT.
The photon torpedo has a stated payload of 1.5kg antimatter. It has also been stated that that payload can be amended in some way to either act as a harmless firework display or a destructive yeild of 690GT. If someone wants to argue that their universe can break, to us, unmutable laws, then they also have to allow the same laxity to their opponents.

Using the last two points, our knowledge says that fusion reactors require fuel. 4MT roughly. 40K would argue that they provide it through some unstated/unidentified process unkown to us. So ST should be able to argue that through some unstated/unidentifed process 1.5kg of antimatter can be augmented to 690GT. What is so difficult about accepting that equality?

Cheers

Andrew

Actually the burning of organic chemicals produces MUCH more energy than we harvest from said chemicals. A lot of it is lost via heat, because our methods of harvesting energy from them are inefficient.

I'm not saying laspacks are necessarily scientifically sound in their ability to recharge, only that it's not as illogical as it sounds (by the way,throwing a laspack in the fire to recharge permanently damages it and halves its ability to hold a charge).

I know of one other empires that could possibly beat the IoM

Asherian Command wrote:I know of one other empires that could possibly beat the IoM

We're on the edge of our seats here.

I think there is another empire everyone has forgetten about the Chozo .

The what?

AndrewC wrote:

IvanTih wrote:
Yes,sources tell us that,but they vary.Still ST is screwed in ship to ship combat.That is the energy which impact target,what is wrong with that?

Cheers

Andrew

Because that contradict everything we see on screen.
Here are some examples:
Die is cast-Planetary destruction: 30-ship bombardment in "The Die is Cast" (surface-level explosions create fireballs in the megaton range at most, judging from fireball duration).
Pegasus-Asteroid destruction: according to Riker, it would take the entire photon torpedo payload to destroy a single 5km wide hollow asteroid.
Then we have kiloton in event in Nemesis which is caused by Enterprise when ramming Scimitar.
Enough proof.
IOM ships have multiple plasma reactors,one cruiser has five.
We have examples from Dawn of War novel(Cyrene crust melting),Caves of Ice and other sources.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Commissar Agro wrote:The what?

Race from Metroid.

"I don't play that game!"

Commissar Agro wrote:"I don't play that game!"

Birdmen, they gave Samus the suit.

Ordo Dakka wrote:

Commissar Agro wrote:"I don't play that game!"

They have tubes.

I was quoting arnold schwarzenegger.

Commissar Agro wrote:

Ordo Dakka wrote:

Commissar Agro wrote:"I don't play that game!"

They have tubes.

I was quoting arnold schwarzenegger.

Milk is for babies, men drink beer!

Melissia wrote:

Commissar Agro wrote:Flack armour is terrible

Flak armor is NOT terrible by any means. It's infinitely superior to anything we have in the modern world, and extremely light to boot (an entire suit of Guard flak armor, protecting almost the entire body, weighs far less than merely the chest piece of the best modern armor available).

The problem is that tabletop is an MEQ-oriented game.

And how many body armours besides kevlar from late sixties do you actually know? Not even considering several special types of ammunition which are known and were successfully used in past several years. And ask not about things which we actually do know, but about stuff we do not - as it is still kept secret.

Surprise me with your knowledge.

Amaya wrote:How the hell is SW going to deal with Space Marines?

Simple, in the grim darkness of the far future only space battles mean . Threy'd blow the marine fleet out of the sky.

Jolrael wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Commissar Agro wrote:Flack armour is terrible

Flak armor is NOT terrible by any means. It's infinitely superior to anything we have in the modern world, and extremely light to boot (an entire suit of Guard flak armor, protecting almost the entire body, weighs far less than merely the chest piece of the best modern armor available).

The problem is that tabletop is an MEQ-oriented game.

...about stuff we do not - as it is still kept secret.

This day in age? We'd know...

Frazzled wrote:

Amaya wrote:How the hell is SW going to deal with Space Marines?

Simple, in the grim darkness of the far future only space battles mean . Threy'd blow the marine fleet out of the sky.

They are fairly similar in firepower,but SW has better FTL and better industrial capacity(Starship construction).



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jolrael wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Commissar Agro wrote:Flack armour is terrible

Flak armor is NOT terrible by any means. It's infinitely superior to anything we have in the modern world, and extremely light to boot (an entire suit of Guard flak armor, protecting almost the entire body, weighs far less than merely the chest piece of the best modern armor available).

The problem is that tabletop is an MEQ-oriented game.

And how many body armours besides kevlar from late sixties do you actually know? Not even considering several special types of ammunition which are known and were successfully used in past several years. And ask not about things which we actually do know, but about stuff we do not - as it is still kept secret.

Surprise me with your knowledge.

Read the books and then say that flak armor sucks.That thing isn't made from kevlar IIRC.

Ordo Dakka wrote:

Jolrael wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Commissar Agro wrote:Flack armour is terrible

Flak armor is NOT terrible by any means. It's infinitely superior to anything we have in the modern world, and extremely light to boot (an entire suit of Guard flak armor, protecting almost the entire body, weighs far less than merely the chest piece of the best modern armor available).

The problem is that tabletop is an MEQ-oriented game.

...about stuff we do not - as it is still kept secret.

This day in age? We'd know...

Sorry but I fail to understand context, or possibly meaning, of your response.

Jolrael wrote:

Ordo Dakka wrote:

Jolrael wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Commissar Agro wrote:Flack armour is terrible

Flak armor is NOT terrible by any means. It's infinitely superior to anything we have in the modern world, and extremely light to boot (an entire suit of Guard flak armor, protecting almost the entire body, weighs far less than merely the chest piece of the best modern armor available).

The problem is that tabletop is an MEQ-oriented game.

...about stuff we do not - as it is still kept secret.

This day in age? We'd know...

Sorry but I fail to understand context, or possibly meaning, of your response.

"They" don't keep things secret is what I was saying.

Now you made my day.

You live in a world where "know how" does not exist? We all share food, clothes and accommodations for free...and this especially works for goverment budgets!

But enought of this off-topic.

Frazzled wrote:

Amaya wrote:How the hell is SW going to deal with Space Marines?

Simple, in the grim darkness of the far future only space battles mean . Threy'd blow the marine fleet out of the sky.

and Star Destroyers are between Escort and cruiser classes in size.

Tactical range of SW space battles is within visual distances of each other.



IoM ships are many times larger and yet battle each other 1,000s of kilometers apart.


SW fleets would get blasted before even in effective range of their guns and once they did close they would be at point blank range of the weapons batteries on the IoM ships(which, being solid slugs, will pass right through SW energy shields)


Emperor class battleships are around 20-30% larger then Super Stardestroyers and have a crew of millions.

IvanTih wrote:
Because that contradict everything we see on screen.
Here are some examples:
Die is cast-Planetary destruction: 30-ship bombardment in "The Die is Cast" (surface-level explosions create fireballs in the megaton range at most, judging from fireball duration).
Pegasus-Asteroid destruction: according to Riker, it would take the entire photon torpedo payload to destroy a single 5km wide hollow asteroid.
Then we have kiloton in event in Nemesis which is caused by Enterprise when ramming Scimitar.
Enough proof.

Not quite
Die is cast - can we prove one way or another that explosions were MT range? No as its a matter of perspective. Was there a suppression system that may have reduced/contained the explosion? We dont know.
Pegasus, good example. Voyager dial the PT up to 50 Isotons, can destroy a small planet. Who's fact is the correct one?
Explosions in episodes. Various people had cited small explosions as proof that PT are not effective. However, beyond visual representation there is no supporting proof. For example most/all ST ships used force fields to strengthen/protect bulkheads, AM is commonly stored within forcefields to contain it. Who is to say whether or not a structual force field does not repell AM and so there is a limited amount of AM detonating. Answer we don't know.
Nemesis, can't remember that any more info?

IOM ships have multiple plasma reactors,one cruiser has five.

Which means that they require 20MT per second.

We have examples from Dawn of War novel(Cyrene crust melting),Caves of Ice and other sources.

I'm working through those links

Cheers

Andrew

And before anyone says I'm arguing for SF, I'm not, I'm arguing the level of proof required to debate.

AndrewC wrote:
Said
Cheers

Andrew

Have you ever considered that IOM has more advanced fusion tech,that doesn't require massive amount of fuel?
That thing in VOY is just a hyperbole.
First,We don't know what is isoton so we use visuals.

Second, the TM gave an upper limit of 64 (or 128?) megatons - based upon the amount of antimatter in those torpedoes. However, that assumes a reaction with perfect efficiency. Furthermore, not all the products of such a reaction would be dangerous (e.g. neutrinos, alpha-radiation) and since they are not shape-charged only half of the energy would even hit the ship.

Third,traditionally, people tend to allow information from the TNG and DS9 Technical manuals so long as it's shedding light on something that an episode doesn't make clear, and doesn't contradict information elsewhere in the Trek canon, purely because it's a better solution than just saying "No-one knows! Move along, nothing to see here."

Fourth,the TM is less cannon than movies and series.

IvanTih wrote:
Have you ever considered that IOM has more advanced fusion tech,that doesn't require massive amount of fuel?

But the basic reaction requires mass, it doesn't matter what fuel goes into it. At the end of the day it requires a set amount of mass 4,000,000 tons of mass in order to work. Which means that the IoM ship is very screwed. It uses mass reaction in order to accelerate, and it's going to take a lot of reaction mass to make it move.

That thing in VOY is just a hyperbole.

Is it? is there ever a depiction of a 50 Isoton explosion? Until there has been we have no proof to discount the statement.

First,We don't know what is isoton so we use visuals.

Second, the TM gave an upper limit of 64 (or 128?) megatons - based upon the amount of antimatter in those torpedoes. However, that assumes a reaction with perfect efficiency. Furthermore, not all the products of such a reaction would be dangerous (e.g. neutrinos, alpha-radiation) and since they are not shape-charged only half of the energy would even hit the ship.

Third,traditionally, people tend to allow information from the TNG and DS9 Technical manuals so long as it's shedding light on something that an episode doesn't make clear, and doesn't contradict information elsewhere in the Trek canon, purely because it's a better solution than just saying "No-one knows! Move along, nothing to see here."

In order of your points, yes we have no idea of what a isoton is. However there has never been a depiction of a 50 isoton explosion

The TM never gave a yield it merely gave a payload size, with a conflicting 'effect' statement. The MT range was worked out by someone else, along with the greater figure as well.

Agreed.

Fourth,the TM is less cannon than movies and series.

True but is it as acceptable as using information as canon when the authors/publishers admit that two thirds of it are lies and/or exaggerations?

Cheers

Andrew