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Ruckdog wrote:

Canadian 5th wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:If people are to make any comparison you have to start with the assumption that basic rules of physics, chemistry and mathematics are the same in the SF universes to be examined and the modern day, except where needed to allow science fictiony things such as FTL travel.

Yup, you also need to treat what you see on screen or in text as a real account of what happened unless given reason to do otherwise.

This will be an interesting exercise! I think the calculations will be chiefly interesting from the perspective of showing how crazy the tech shown in 40k is.

However, I should warn you not to get too disappointed if someone refuses to agree with an assertion despite mathematical "proof." The problem is, many assumptions have to be made with regards to missing details, and even relying on "official" sources such as what appears in movies, etc isn't necessarily a sure-fire method thanks to the dramatic license that is often taken in such scenes. I think the issue is compounded in 40k, with its rule of cool and all.

Dramatic license means nothing when looking at what we actually see. Example: The DS blew up the planet with energy to spare. You can't argue that the movie's designers didn't intend for it to be that powerful and try to low ball it, that's not how this works.

Can someone please just close this thread?

DeadlySquirrel wrote:Can someone please just close this thread?

Why, because you don't like it?

Canadian 5th wrote:

DeadlySquirrel wrote:Can someone please just close this thread?

Why, because you don't like it?

Hey, whats with the attitude dude? You're just verbally attacking everyone on this thread. Just chill kid. Chill.

DeadlySquirrel wrote:

Canadian 5th wrote:

DeadlySquirrel wrote:Can someone please just close this thread?

Why, because you don't like it?

Hey, whats with the attitude dude? You're just verbally attacking everyone on this thread. Just chill kid. Chill.

You walked into a thread and demanded it be closed without giving so much as a reason. The thread has been mostly civil and given that a mod is participating your input into it staying open or not isn't required. Go post one line spam elsewhere.

Canadian 5th wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Yes, and what happens if the description conflicts with reality.

For example, it takes a certain amount of energy for the human body to maintain itself, move around and do work. There is no way around this because the energy contained in molecules is a factor of chemical laws.

Therefore the idea of a food pill is nonsense. Even if you found a way to compress a day's rations into a pill-sized table, it would still weight the same as a day's rations.

Not entirely true actually, we can, today, pack enough energy and vitamins into a pill and a shake to keep you alive and well. Not to mention that an MRE already gives you more vitamins and calories than a meal you would cook at home.

For other really out there stuff, like FTL travel, you just have to accept that it works as advertised and go from there. We don't need to understand exactly how a ship passes the speed of light, we just need to know how fast, for how long, and with what risks.

A pill and a shake, not a pill. If the shake comes dehydrated you need water too. Vitamins in pills don't absorb as well as vitamins taken in food as some of them need cofactors to help the stomach absorb them.

MRE's don't provide a healthy diet, they are intended for short term use only. And they aren't pills, and they weigh about as much as real food.

I already accept the point about FTL so there's no argument there. I'm also prepared to accept arguments about wormholes and other such SF ideas. I'm not prepared to believe that in the year 40,000 it would take less energy to boil water than it does today.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

DeadlySquirrel wrote:Can someone please just close this thread?

Please don't spam threads with pointless posts.

If you don't like the thread, don't read it.

Thank you.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Canadian 5th wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Yes, and what happens if the description conflicts with reality.

For example, it takes a certain amount of energy for the human body to maintain itself, move around and do work. There is no way around this because the energy contained in molecules is a factor of chemical laws.

Therefore the idea of a food pill is nonsense. Even if you found a way to compress a day's rations into a pill-sized table, it would still weight the same as a day's rations.

Not entirely true actually, we can, today, pack enough energy and vitamins into a pill and a shake to keep you alive and well. Not to mention that an MRE already gives you more vitamins and calories than a meal you would cook at home.

For other really out there stuff, like FTL travel, you just have to accept that it works as advertised and go from there. We don't need to understand exactly how a ship passes the speed of light, we just need to know how fast, for how long, and with what risks.

A pill and a shake, not a pill. If the shake comes dehydrated you need water too. Vitamins in pills don't absorb as well as vitamins taken in food as some of them need cofactors to help the stomach absorb them.

MRE's don't provide a healthy diet, they are intended for short term use only. And they aren't pills, and they weigh about as much as real food.

I already accept the point about FTL so there's no argument there. I'm also prepared to accept arguments about wormholes and other such SF ideas. I'm not prepared to believe that in the year 40,000 it would take less energy to boil water than it does today.

I didn't ask that you assume anything of the sort, all calculations will assume that basic physics are in place except where the universe specifically violates them. Such as if they made a food pill that weighed nothing and needed no water to work. We would just have to assume they found a way and assume that it works unless the source gives a reason to doubt that it does.

I wouldn't accept that unless it was internally logically consistent.

Show me an example of weapons power varying by that many orders of magnitude in 40k?

A melta.

Psienesis wrote:

Show me an example of weapons power varying by that many orders of magnitude in 40k?

A melta.

Can you elaborate, please?

According to fluff, melta is generally regarded as being rather powerful all the time.

It is vastly more powerful at short range than long

I guess I don't equate having an effective range as wildly varying power. By that standard every weapon varies wildly.

Mainly because while a melta can (and does) turn a battle-tank into a molten pile of slag, it can also, while not missing, fail to kill an infantry unit.

Just one of those oddities of dice-based systems.

Ah. I was under the impression that the vagaries of tabletop rules were outside the scope of the discussion.

Heh, if we cut out all the table-top stuff, we've just removed the "canon" from the WH40K aspect of the equation, since the video games, books, and single movie in the rest of it is... not really canon.

Canadian 5th! You're our only hope please for the love of the Nine! Close shut the jaws of Oblivion.

Canadian 5th wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:You ignored this. And you also ignored my comment on the quintillions of droids.

I was talking to like 3 people, I missed it.

No problem.

Emperors Faithful wrote:Enlighten me. Onus is on you here, after all.

You can do some of your own work, it's not on me to do everything here.

How am I supposed to prove a negative? You've put this forward. Now back it up.

So you can cite a source where it says that the asteroid field was unusually active, and that the ships had been out there for days. Becuase right now it looks like these excuses are your own personal speculations.

Most asteroid fields don't contain rocks bashing into each other nor with that level of density. From wikipedia on our own asteroid field:

The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle. The asteroid material is so thinly distributed that multiple unmanned spacecraft have traversed it without incident. Nonetheless, collisions between large asteroids do occur, and these can form an asteroid family whose members have similar orbital characteristics and compositions.

The Hoth field was clearly dense enough that an unmanned probe that is unable to do much course correction would have been destroyed.

On the field's density and activity:

wookiepedia wrote:The Hoth asteroid field, also known as the Anoat Asteroid Belt, was an extensive, wildly erratic asteroid belt occupying the farthest orbit of the Hoth system in the Outer Rim Territories. Forged as the resulting effect of a collision between two rocky planets eons prior to the Galactic Civil War, the belt was a favored sanctuary for smugglers and pirates alike hoping to elude legal authority. The field was rich in untapped mineral resources such as metal ore, a magnet for mining prospectors hoping to make a fortune. The chaotic nature of the asteroid field sent a constant bombardment of meteorites to the surface of Hoth, the system's sixth planet.

So where does wookiepedia get this information from? It's own interpretation of the movies?

On the time spent in the field:

wookiepedia wrote:The Millennium Falcon spent several days hiding within the massive asteroid while Solo and his passengers worked to repair the ship's faulty hyperdrive.[1] Solo cleverly shut down the ship's primary systems in order to avoid detection by the probing Imperial ships the group could hear overhead trying to chase them out. It was while cooped up within the close confines of the Millennium Falcon for several days that the longstanding romantic tensions between Solo and Organa first began to blossom. The princess finally warmed to Solo's roguish charms as they shared one of their first kisses within the deep innards of the asteroid.

However, it was not the might of the Imperial Navy that eventually flushed the Millennium Falcon out of its hiding place. The group soon discovered that mynocks living inside of the cavern had attached themselves to the ship's power cables, leeching the ship of its energy. While clearing the ship of the parasites, Solo and Chewbacca unwittingly discovered the true nature of their hiding spot. Stray blaster bolts fired into the walls of the cave had strangely caused the grotto to shake violently. It was not a simple cave that Solo had hidden his ship in, but the nesting area of a giant exogorth. Solo was able to pilot his ship out of the closing jaws of the massive space slug with only seconds to spare, but at the expense of knowing they would once again be engaged by the Imperial fleet.[2] The existence of an enormous space slug within the asteroid field had been written off as spacer legend until Solo's run-in with the creature. However, some continued to disbelieve the story, based on Solo's reputation for exaggeration.

[1] Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, Second Edition
[2] Star Wars Episode V

So it was only a few days, not "days at the very least" as you suggested (which implied the time spend there could stretch further into weeks or months).

Yeah, as would most ships in the Imperial Navy with shields down (unless you rolled like an absolute champion on the Critical Damage table).

So the IoM has lost ships to asteroid fields then.

Well, yes. If the ship is travelling through an asteroid field. Without any shields. Whatsoever. How well would an ISD fare if they tried that?

In fact, the larger Imperial Ships (larger than escorts) would still survive such treatment.

Anyway, the Avenger, the ship struck, survived with 'damage' we don't hear how much damage.

wookiepedia wrote:The Avenger was the only ship attached to Death Squadron that managed to stay with the Falcon through the entirety of the asteroid field, earning the warship a reputation for persistence among the Imperial Navy. Needa had sent his Star Destroyer headfirst into the asteroids as Vader had commanded, sustaining substantial damage in the process. It was all his gunnery crews could do to try and keep up with the endless task of trying to shoot down the rocky debris in the Star Destroyer's path. So, when Solo suddenly and unexpectedly banked the Millennium Falcon on an attack course straight for the pursuing Avenger, Needa and his crew were ill-prepared and lost the Rebel ship for good.[1]

[1] Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, Second Edition

"Substantial damage", so it was hardly a minor scrape. Then again, I can't recall obvious signs of damage from the movie (unless the trail of refuse was actually part-wreckage).

And how does this measure up to Imperial Navy ship's shields just brushing aside asteroids?

Well, a 40 metre wide asteroid such as in the Hoth field striking with a relative speed of between 40m/s and 200m/s would impart an energy of between 0.05 kilotons and 1.2 kilotons. So they clearly weren't the primary threat to the ISD. However the lone ISD that is noted to be damaged was the same ship that was also hit by an ion cannon right before starting the chase. Thus it was likely that it was still recovering from battle damage and that Needa did the same thing as an 40k captain and pushed in with a ship that should have seen a repair dock.

A source for it having been disabled is here:

wookiepedia wrote:The Avenger was later reassigned to Death Squadron and served as the lead attack ship at Hoth. During the course of the battle, the Avenger was disabled. [3]

[3]A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Third Edition

We know that damage from such weapons can be repaired, but we don't know to what extent they had time to fix things before taking multiple asteroid impacts. Also, being forced to fire her weapons for days on end to keep asteroids away would have placed a strain on the ships power systems, so that is another factor. A damaged ship was forced right into a hostile situation where it was fighting for days without proper repair and refit. Thus it's not really the best representation of how much punishment a ship can take.

You still haven't answered my point, we know that the Avenger had suffered damage beforehand, but how does this compare to Imperial Navy shields simply brushing asteroids aside in all cases? Here we have an ISD with weakened shields suffering damage, but even the weakest Imperial Ship has shields capable of ignoring such detrius. Only when their shields are down completely do Imperial Navy ships run the risk of damage. If anything an Imperial Navy shield looks to be a lot better, since their shields recharge rapidly if one or two are knocked down.

"Now would we see ship capable..."?

I'm not saying an ISD couldn't go toe-to-toe with a Cobra Class Escort (in fact it would probably come off better as energy weapons have greater accuracy than ordnance). All I've done is show how you can compare the difference in shield strength.

You're going to need to show that bigger equals more powerful if you think the best an ISD can take is a Cobra.

Well that's relatively easy. If the shield on a Cobra Sword Class Frigate is capable of roughly the same protection, if not better, as an ISD, then a larger Imperial Navy ship, with shields usually quadruple the strength of a Sword Class Firgate would fare a lot better.

On reflection, a Sword or Firestorm Class Frigate is a better example, seeing as I can't recall the specifics of cobra class escorts.

Firstly, what more can I do? What I've told you is simply from the BFG rules for moving through Asteroid fields. If you don't believe me, GW still has the BFG rules sheet on it's website I think, and you can check for yourself.

Great, and in Star Wars games a lone fighter beats an ISD and Marines can be killed by a lone grot at least some of the time. Game mechanics aren't evidence for a debate or I could prove that any Star Wars fighter can bring down a ship many times larger than itself, that people in the Star Wars universe can heal by picking up health kits, and that no matter how many weapons you carry you never get encumbered. I could also show that lascannons have a range of under a hundred meters.

I bet you dislike your own rules now don't you?

Seeing as two out of three of the original Star Wars movies involve fighters destroying Super Weapons, isn't this pot calling kettle black?

And yes, a grot can kill a space marine. It's extremely unlikely, but still plausible. Why wouldn't it be?
Furthermore, I think game mechanics can be used to some extent. For example, we can use game mechanics to show that flak armour doesn't offer any real protection from bolter rounds, while carapace armour does. When it comes to range though you can dismiss ridiculous things, like how 38 millenia now the range of all weapons is less than a stones throw, becuase it contradicts other sources that offer a more logical explanation.

Asking you to do your own work is being a dick?

No, but failing to be civil about it usually is.

Okay, there's obviously some official high-end source that not only says that the Space Battles in the Clone Wars Cartoons and movies (I can't recall anywhere where it said that they were engaging underneath the planetary shields) are incorrect, but it replaces these incorrect sources with a definite example that SW naval engagements ussually occur hundreds thousands of kilometres apart. I'd still like to see it.

Why would sources list effective range for a ship as being 10 light minutes if it was never used? I'll need to dosome poking to find exact examples for longer range engagements, but they certainly do exist.

Psienesis wrote:Heh, if we cut out all the table-top stuff, we've just removed the "canon" from the WH40K aspect of the equation, since the video games, books, and single movie in the rest of it is... not really canon.

Not really, the tabletop isn't accurate to the way the game is shown in every other source for 40k information including the non-gameplay related sections of every codex. The novels and codex's are more alike to each other than things on the table top are. Unless you're trying to say that a space marine can't rapid fire a bolter further than the length of a baneblade, or fire accurately past that same distance if he's moved. It's for this reason, reasons of scale often being off, ie. compare the height of marine to a guardsman, compare the size of some vehicles to the passengers they claim to carry.

How am I supposed to prove a negative? You've put this forward. Now back it up.

I didn't actually ask you to prove a negative. You asked me to provide a slew of numbers for 40k. I'm asking you to find a specific thing and we can try to work through how to do the math for it.

So it was only a few days, not "days at the very least" as you suggested (which implied the time spend there could stretch further into weeks or months).

It was at least days, days being anything over a single day. If it was more than 7 days I would have said a week at least, more than 14 days I would have said weeks, and more than a month a month at least, and so on.

Well, yes. If the ship is travelling through an asteroid field. Without any shields. Whatsoever. How well would an ISD fare if they tried that?

In fact, the larger Imperial Ships (larger than escorts) would still survive such treatment.

We've seen them do it with at the least much reduced shields and it was at best damaged. That would likely be akin to taking a few of the more minor critical hits in BFG.

"Substantial damage", so it was hardly a minor scrape. Then again, I can't recall obvious signs of damage from the movie (unless the trail of refuse was actually part-wreckage).

Substantial can actually be used a few ways, if you're not used to fighting your definition of substantial is going to be lower than a UFC fighter for example. Thus the damage likely was substantial, at least for what they expected from asteroids. Thinks like gun barrels likely needed changing and they were still suffering from that ion cannon earlier.

You still haven't answered my point, we know that the Avenger had suffered damage beforehand, but how does this compare to Imperial Navy shields simply brushing asteroids aside in all cases? Here we have an ISD with weakened shields suffering damage, but even the weakest Imperial Ship has shields capable of ignoring such detrius. Only when their shields are down completely do Imperial Navy ships run the risk of damage. If anything an Imperial Navy shield looks to be a lot better, since their shields recharge rapidly if one or two are knocked down.

Well, both universes would have their ships would shrug of asteroids with ease if they were in good shape and become damage if they weren't. 40k ships tend to have a heavy prow so that may help them in that regard, but the spires and other smaller sections of the ship may also be in danger from hits if the shields drop. Especially those large open stained glass chapel windows. Over all though, I think we should expect both sides to come through okay with shields up or down as their hulls are designed to take larger than kiloton impacts.

On shielding coming back, that's hard to say. We know that void shields do tend to get knocked out and come back quickly. We also know that Star Wars shields do the same and that projectors can shift focus to cover fallen sections and ships roll to expose fresh sections while weakened ones recharge. In this case I don't think it was that the shields were knocked out, it's that there was significant damage down to the main power grid of the Avenger and that was hampering them.

Well that's relatively easy. If the shield on a Cobra Sword Class Frigate is capable of roughly the same protection, if not better, as an ISD, then a larger Imperial Navy ship, with shields usually quadruple the strength of a Sword Class Firgate would fare a lot better.

On reflection, a Sword or Firestorm Class Frigate is a better example, seeing as I can't recall the specifics of cobra class escorts.

Asteroids are the lowest end things we ever see hit an ISD, so shrugging them off isn't exactly impressive. Even the falcon took a few hits it couldn't evade in the field and took several hist from TIE's in the previous movie. We know that fighters have low kilotons to tens of kilotons of laser power so that's rather impressive. We also know that it can't take many though, and that she wasn't in peak shape at Hoth.

Seeing as two out of three of the original Star Wars movies involve fighters destroying Super Weapons, isn't this pot calling kettle black?

And yes, a grot can kill a space marine. It's extremely unlikely, but still plausible. Why wouldn't it be?
Furthermore, I think game mechanics can be used to some extent. For example, we can use game mechanics to show that flak armour doesn't offer any real protection from bolter rounds, while carapace armour does. When it comes to range though you can dismiss ridiculous things, like how 38 millenia now the range of all weapons is less than a stones throw, becuase it contradicts other sources that offer a more logical explanation.

That involved fighters killing a ship that had a weakness to their main weapons and a crew that didn't want to send fighters out. Even so it took a Jedi to make the shot and had he failed they would have been done for. Few others in that or any other galaxy could make the shot and even less have technology able to follow his guidance while being small enough to go down the shaft.

Things like an ISD don't have these glaring flaws and thus should hold up better, especially because unlike the Death Star they're shields weren't the weakest thing about them.

Flak armor will tend to not stop a bolter round in the books as well.

What exactly would a weapon with 10 light minutes range be shooting at?

But yes, a source that shows that such range is standard, rather than the exception, would be useful.

Space stations, cities on a planet, ships in a known orbit and the like. It won't be much use against anything maneuvering, but it does show that they have exceptionally fine turret control to even make such a shot.

I'm still trying to find data on star ship combat, it's not one of the more commonly cited things so it's taking time.

Not really, the tabletop isn't accurate to the way the game is shown in every other source for 40k information including the non-gameplay related sections of every codex. The novels and codex's are more alike to each other than things on the table top are. Unless you're trying to say that a space marine can't rapid fire a bolter further than the length of a baneblade, or fire accurately past that same distance if he's moved. It's for this reason, reasons of scale often being off, ie. compare the height of marine to a guardsman, compare the size of some vehicles to the passengers they claim to carry

The fluff isn't internally consistent, however, which is where the problems arise, because it runs counter to other fluff, and sometimes runs counter to fluff from the very same author.

One case in point... in the few places where Eisenhorn meets a Space Marine (or a Chaos Space Marine), Abnett goes to great pains to describe the Marine's size, mentioning at one point, "that the finger was the size and shape of an Arbite's truncheon was utterly besides the point."

One of these very same Marines later gives Eisenhorn his boltpistol, which the Inquisitor then carries for many years until its loss pursuing an alpha-class renegade psyker and an unfettered daemonhost. Eisenhorn, though tall, is not Astartes-sized, by any stretch of the imagination... and, yet, uses this pistol on several occasions, even though it should not, by any means, fit in his hand.

Given that the fluff is open to artistic license and interpretation, we're left with the table-top game as the only GW-codified source of information... and then, of course, we run into the problem that its written for a specific format of wargame, and not a representation of reality.

Psienesis wrote:

Not really, the tabletop isn't accurate to the way the game is shown in every other source for 40k information including the non-gameplay related sections of every codex. The novels and codex's are more alike to each other than things on the table top are. Unless you're trying to say that a space marine can't rapid fire a bolter further than the length of a baneblade, or fire accurately past that same distance if he's moved. It's for this reason, reasons of scale often being off, ie. compare the height of marine to a guardsman, compare the size of some vehicles to the passengers they claim to carry

The fluff isn't internally consistent, however, which is where the problems arise, because it runs counter to other fluff, and sometimes runs counter to fluff from the very same author.

One case in point... in the few places where Eisenhorn meets a Space Marine (or a Chaos Space Marine), Abnett goes to great pains to describe the Marine's size, mentioning at one point, "that the finger was the size and shape of an Arbite's truncheon was utterly besides the point."

One of these very same Marines later gives Eisenhorn his boltpistol, which the Inquisitor then carries for many years until its loss pursuing an alpha-class renegade psyker and an unfettered daemonhost. Eisenhorn, though tall, is not Astartes-sized, by any stretch of the imagination... and, yet, uses this pistol on several occasions, even though it should not, by any means, fit in his hand.

Given that the fluff is open to artistic license and interpretation, we're left with the table-top game as the only GW-codified source of information... and then, of course, we run into the problem that its written for a specific format of wargame, and not a representation of reality.

So descriptive hyperbole is never allowed now? Abnett shows that marines are larger than other men and makes sure that we know that Eisenhorn sees them as these hulking things. The description of their size tends to fall towards the high end of what is normal for a 40k human, but they are, outside of rare cases, still only roughly the same size as a man like Bragg. We also know that men have used marine bolt pistols and that marines have used things as small as guardsman lasguns before so the vast majority of our information shows that while marines are large, they aren't as large as described in that particular scene.

Unless something has changed recently, an unarmored Space Marine is nine feet tall. This is, in every sense, super-human.

Bragg is big... but he's not Space Marine big. Eisenhorn is six-feet-plus... but that's not Space Marine big.

Psienesis wrote:Unless something has changed recently, an unarmored Space Marine is nine feet tall. This is, in every sense, super-human.

Bragg is big... but he's not Space Marine big. Eisenhorn is six-feet-plus... but that's not Space Marine big.

Actually it's not uncommon for regular feral world humans to reach huge sizes and many people in 40k are 2 or more meters tall. Bragg was himself 8 feet tall and hardly abnormal. Also being 9 feet tall won't make your fingers hugely thicker than normal so your point is still a poor one.

Space Marines are described as having different proportions from a human. this includes a broader chest, a square set face, and larger thicker boned hands.


as for Calculations,

In BFG, a single Lance or Weapon battery hit is capable of completely annhilating a Escort sized vessel. roughly the same tonnage and size of a Star Destroyer.

a single lance hit actually represents a single energy beam. I assume a weapon battery would actually represent several dozen Plasma and solid slug rounds fired together in a single salvo.

I don't know what math can be reverse engineered from that, but there it is.



distance comparason:

Here is some math i can do.

an Earth sized planet in BFG is 15cm accross or around 6" and this actually represents not only the planet, but also "near orbit" which I would asssume to be several thousand kilometers above the suface.

a Teliport attacks range in BFG is 10cm.

diameter of the earth is 12,713.6 kilometers. add in 6000 kilometers to account for the near-orbit distance and we have 18,713.6 kilometers=15cm.


this gives us a range for Teliport attacks to be 12,475.73 kilometers.


so a single cm is equal to 1,247.57 kilometers.


a typical Imperial Warships weapon range is 45cm, so around 56,140.8 km.

from BL books, I belive it doesn't take more then a few seconds for weapons fire to cross these distances. assuming 3 seconds for contact with the target, that gives an estimated weapons velocity of 18,713.6 km/sec.

if we assume a Landraider sized projectile(as is said to be an example) made out of 260 cubic meters of Uranium(a dense material suitable for an armor piercing warhead)

this gives us a weight of 496.6 kilograms.

(1/2)496.6 Kilograms times 18,713.6 km/sec squared gives us a kinetic energy value of 8.9654x10^10 joules.

that gives us 86,954,368.25 KJ of force for a single slug fired in their hundreds by IoM ships.

Grey Templar wrote:Space Marines are described as having different proportions from a human. this includes a broader chest, a square set face, and larger thicker boned hands.

That makes sense, it would also just mean that the grip might a bit awkward for a normal human.

In BFG, a single Lance or Weapon battery hit is capable of completely annhilating a Escort sized vessel. roughly the same tonnage and size of a Star Destroyer.

a single lance hit actually represents a single energy beam. I assume a weapon battery would actually represent several dozen Plasma and solid slug rounds fired together in a single salvo.

I don't know what math can be reverse engineered from that, but there it is.

You generally want to run the numbers from the beam hitting an inert object, thankfully we can get a rough estimate of firepower for Caves of Ice giving which sets the power output for a broadside at high single to low double digit petatons. So it certainly won't be one hitting a Star Destroyer, though if the entire broadside lands it could start getting concerning. For comparison an Imperial-class Star Destroyer is able to unleash roughly 2 teratons per barrel per second, broadside that means roughly two petatons a second, if they point forward and tilt the nose down that ends up being around four petatons a second. This means that while the lances have a higher output per shot, their slower refire rate makes the battleships from Caves of Ice an equal match for an ISD, though you should note that they are also larger owning to tougher, but often bulkier technology in 40k.

Here is some math i can do.

<snip>

That math fits with a ship's base, 60mm, being thousands of kilometers across.

from BL books, I belive it doesn't take more then a few seconds for weapons fire to cross these distances. assuming 3 seconds for contact with the target, that gives an estimated weapons velocity of 18,713.6 km/sec.

if we assume a Landraider sized projectile(as is said to be an example) made out of 260 cubic meters of Uranium(a dense material suitable for an armor piercing warhead)

this gives us a weight of 496.6 kilograms.

(1/2)496.6 Kilograms times 18,713.6 km/sec squared gives us a kinetic energy value of 8.9654x10^10 joules.

that gives us 86,954,368.25 KJ of force for a single slug fired in their hundreds by IoM ships.

Your math is off, you punched in kilograms and meters per second, when you surely meant tons and forgot to use kilometers per second. That punches the numbers up from sub kiloton to 2 gigatons. Not bad for a lower end weapon.

Note you can use[url=http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Relativity.html]this[/url in the future.

Thankfully, we know they have gigaton scale torpedoes (largest size), and petaton scale lances (again for larger ships), things like the nova cannons would also appear to be in the petaton range though with a higher per shot output and lower refire rates.

Canadian - from memory BFG tells you to ignore the ships base, and its pposition, when trying to work out scale. The ship is in fact the very centre, an almost invisible point.

Finally - the trouble with applying real physics to 40k is that the ships have an output of roughly 3/4 solar output, when you combine shields and lances / etc, despite using fusion power (many times plasma == fusion in canon, and was repeated very recently in a BL novel) and only having 0.01% solar mass. In other words, the figures you end up calculating for 40k show their ships cannot work....

You recall at least part of it right. The stem is the ship, the base is the close are around it where mines and the like are a danger.

On power generation, it's obvious they use something else and just call it fusion. Or they draw extra power from the warp.

Never seen any indication that they draw power from the warp - the only non-daemonic (at least, if you ignore the GK FAQ....) entities that regularly that are"imperium" and do so are Obliterators....

From descriptions of plasma vessels rupturing its also very 1980s ideas on fusion as well, e.g. marine backpacks al the way to ship sized generators.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Never seen any indication that they draw power from the warp - the only non-daemonic (at least, if you ignore the GK FAQ....) entities that regularly that are"imperium" and do so are Obliterators....

From descriptions of plasma vessels rupturing its also very 1980s ideas on fusion as well, e.g. marine backpacks al the way to ship sized generators.

Indeed, it should present a problem, but they have more than one way around it such as storing fuel in the warp and letting it slip in, meaning that they don't waste space on anything that isn't making power. If they were also closer to 100% efficient than a real star it would help a lot as well. They could also store power in batteries when they aren't in power. Meaning they are powerful in battle, but can take a long while to recharge. It would mean the long travel times actually help them be ready to fight when they get there.

How would you calculate the stopping power of a bolter?
Only references I know from the top of my head, are that they would blow a hole the size of a fist into a chest, or even rockcrete wall, but they have small explosives inside the bullets.

Also, the power levels of a plasma pistol, and why it doesn't get stronger as it gets bigger, the blast only gets bigger.

Toastedandy wrote:How would you calculate the stopping power of a bolter?
Only references I know from the top of my head, are that they would blow a hole the size of a fist into a chest, or even rockcrete wall, but they have small explosives inside the bullets.

Also, the power levels of a plasma pistol, and why it doesn't get stronger as it gets bigger, the blast only gets bigger.

Bolters have a firepower power that is shockingly close to a modern hand grenade. I've done the math before, but will need to dig it up. Connor has done his own math in the thread I linked to back on page 1.

As for the plasma weapons, first the very idea is dumb. Plasma is to air as steam is to water; how afraid would you be of a steam gun? That said they use some containment system to bind the plasma, the larger the containment the bigger the area covered, but if it's all the same temperature then you do little extra damage.