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This will be a thread where I will compile data on the advanced races, and stack them up against various 40K races, starting with the Imperium. I plan on doing Necrons, Eldar, Tyranids, Chaos, and Orks next, as well as all of 40K vs all of other universes.

The universes I will be developing are: Star Wars, Dune, and Halo. Any others you want me to do, I will gladly do with a little more research.

Firstly:

Imperium of Man VS Star Wars (Galactic Empire Time)

For this battle, we will be presuming that the Space Marines, Guard, Solar Auxilia, and the rest of the forces were leading a sphere of expansion lead by Roboute Guilliman himself. After a warp mishap, they fall out of warpspace into the Empire's territory, relatively close to Coruscant, in the Inner Rim. Guilliman, through his psychic prowess, can find a way back, but decides to explore and possibly conquer what he presumes is a Chaos-Infested group of planets. They immediately receive transmissions from the Empire, and can understand what they are saying. The Empire's Battlefleet is suddenly met by a group of 3 Star destroyers, who begin their transmission. The Empire attempt to negotiate, with acknowledgement to the sheer size of the Imperium's fleet. Guilliman is willing to parlay, and waits as more and more Imperial ships jump into their area. At this point, the fleet is composed of a mobile Chapter Fortress housing a space marine chapter, 8 Battle Barges (2 Companies of Space Marines in each), 15 Emperor-Class Battleships, 5 Oberon-Class Battleships, 30 various Cruisers holding dozens of Imperial Guard Regiments, as well as fighters, Frigates, and other smaller ships that can be held in the holds of the larger ships. The Empire musters 7 Star Destroyers, as well as around 20 Cruisers and Battleships. The Emperor himself arrives, and proceeds to contact Guilliman. Guilliman, seeing the Emperor's visage as a clue to the Chaotic corruption and therefore the damnation of this people, commands his ships to burn the heretics. The Imperial vessels turn to broadside, and open fire. Swarms of TIE fighters swarm out of the holds of the Imperial Cruisers and Star Destroyers, performing strafing runs on the Imperium's warfleet, but the warp shielding, bossted by Guilliman's sheer psychic might holds. The newly reactivated Xiphon Interceptors, and other weapons of war drop, their lascannons being absorbed by the heavy shielding the Imperial Ships possess.

At this point, we can evaluate the forces of the Astartes and Guard versus the Imperials.

The Imperium has superhuman gunners on its battle barges, with Kharybdis and Anvilus Assault Claws for boarding sessions. Warp shielding is less reliable but more effective at absorbing damage than standard imperial shields, and overall, the Imperium has strength in numbers, with the Battlefleet coming in well over 10 times as many vessels as the Empire. The Imperium has Guilliman, a strategic Genius, as well as a potent psyker. With more than one chapter of space marines, the Imperium also has the advantage of numbers, with the holds of the Cruisers carrying hundreds of thousands of Imperial Guard to attack.

The Empire, on the other hand, has more consistent shielding, more agile aircraft, and more capable FTL travel. The Emperor is on board a star destroyer, and he himself can battle meditate, turning the battle in favour of the small Imperial Fleet. The Empire also has the ability to call in reinforcements, with Super Star Destroyers clocking in at just over twice as long as a battle barge, and with greater firepower as well. The Empire has the noted advantage of being on home turf, with soldiers aplenty and overall better moral.

In the end, in this type of engagement, the Empire would call in reinforcements. They would go into full-scale retreat, only returning with a similar sized force and then engaging in combat. When comparing the units of the Imperium, it becomes clear that the Empire would be on the losing end of this war. The Imperium has a Primarch to lead it the advantage of numbers, and superior firepower overall. The Empire may be able to slow the advance down, but unless all of Guilliman's troops mishap a second time, the Empire will just be another addition to the vast lands of the Imperium. I am aware that the STar Wars and Imperium Galaxies are of similar size, but the constant grind of the Imperium's war machine will in the end overwhelm the Empire.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Imperium of Man VS the Dune Allied Galaxy

Dune is a very interesting state in the sci-fi world. They have the greatest FTL travel, with the ability to appear anywhere in the galaxy at will. However, the Dune novels give away little information to the military state of the duneiverse, with various books spanning millennia in passing. However, we can assume they had advance technology, as a force was able to conquer their known galaxy in the span of 50 years. We for the purposes of this comparison will again draw upon the Guilliman and aforementioned fleet stumbling upon the Dune Universe. We will assume that this dune is the dune that is in the middle of the great Jihad of Paul Atreides, when the military was at its strongest. The Imperium's battlefleet winked into existence in the early hours of the morning on Giedi Prime. The former Harkonnen home world still sported many defensive features, and claxons and sirens wailed to wake the populace up to the impending danger. The Jihad's generals, fevered with devotion for the great Emperor Paul Atreides attack immediately, Heighliners winking into existence all over the foreign force, deploying their deadly weaponry. Fighters swarm over the Imperial force, impacts doing nothing to the warp shielding thrown up throughout the imperium's fleet. What's worth noting here, however, is that the ships in Dune's universe lack shielding. They are vulnerable particularly to the large explosions and plasma detonations that the Imperium is fond of. This is one situation, however, where the Imperium does not have advantage of numbers. Billions of fighters fight for Paul's Jihad, and the Guild and CHOAM are both in complete support of the throne. As the Imperium's cannons begin to severely damage several Heighliners, the fighting thickens. Shock troops are landed in boarding parties onto Imperial Vessels, and Terminators begin to shred through Heighliner security. A this point, we can take a step back and look at a force summary overall.

The Imperium has better troops, and the troops in Dune are very similar to Chaos Cultists, and Space Marine scould tear through them. However, there are billions if not trillions of them, and that is an overwhelming force to say the least. The Imperium has more devestating weaponry, shields, and overall the advantage.

However, the Duneiverse has numbers. Numbers and numbers. Hundreds of Heighliners, each one at least the size of a Battle Barge. These are filled with shock troops, eager to charge into their deaths for Paul Atreides and the Jihad. Overall, the Jihad has numbers. They will die thousands of times over, but they will still have more, and more, and more.

In the end, I'm going to have to give it to the Dune franchises' military. It is the Imperial Guard on Steroids. They may not be able to handle space marines, but one space marine cannot beat ten thousand cultists. They will overwhelm you with numbers, upon numbers upon numbers, and nothing else. No tactics can prevail when they will throw millions of troops against you, and outnumber you in ships a hundred to one.

Unless I'm really missing something Guilliman isn't psychic


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also lasers in Dune react shall we say adversely when contacted by shields. When one contacts the other both explode in a near atomic reaction or worse. That's something to take into account. Honestly I don't think an Imperial crusade would survive being hotdropped into the middle of another sci-fi Universe simply because the current imperial method of warfare relies so much on the interdependence of its armed forces and constant supply lines. If a crusade host was dropped into a Unified Star War or Dune universe, they would be overwhelmed in either unless they managed to play off discontented factions against the powers that be.

Damnit. Made the assumption all primarchs were psychic. I only didn't mention atomic explosions cause i don't know if the shields of the warp still react.

Hmmm, I think to get a fair comparison you'd have to have a less biased first contact scenario. Lets say that some Q-like trans-IP being decided to see which hard-case was the biggest hard-case and jammed each universe directly adjacent to the other and said to each of them that the leader of the opposition had insulted their respective sainted mothers.

In that situation for a true galactic war it'd really be starships, logistics and scale that matter.

The Imperium's starships actually stack up rather well. Both powerful and resilient with heavy shielding and devastating weapons (although I've always thought that torpedos would be thoroughly ineffective in voidship battles as they're laughably easy to shoot down en-route). However, I don't rate their targeting systems (being basically organised by people rather than machines). It depends on how much of that is sorted by coded servitor-brains dedicated solely to targeting and how much is sorted by old-fashion people-doing-mathematics.

The Imperium certainly has scale on their side. In the linked (eminently sensible) discussion they estimate that the IoM has perhaps one million warp-capable warships. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/size-of-the-iom-navy-warhammer-40k.129121/

I don't think much of the Imperium's logistics mind you. Horrendous bureaucracy and general lack of technological knowledge makes resupply difficult. Their faster than light travel is interesting. It's dangerous and unreliable, but it also allows them to travel freely without restriction (no set co-ordinates they have to travel to as with jump nodes or warp-gates and suchlike). It's actually one of the major advantages they have over the webway, but it is hazardous and unreliable.

So, how about other universes?

Star Wars
The Empire's starships stack up rather well too. Heavily shielded with powerful weapons. Star Destroyers are roughly comparable to the larger 40k craft such as Battle Barges, and Super Star Destroyers are in excess of pretty much any single ship the Imperium can bring to bear. It would make sense really, given that the Empire is a naval power first and foremost, enforcing its will by the force of its fleet.

Their logistics are also far better than the Imperium's with widespread use of computing technology (although that could be moot if the Imperium's servitor-brains are equivalent). The main advantage here is fast, reliable and flexible as to the destination. Provided the speeds are roughly comparable, the Empire should be able to outmanoeuvre the Imperium and will take fewer losses during transit.

Where Star Wars comes unstuck would be scale. Although they can likely match the Imperium ship-to-ship, and outmanoeuvre them, they simply don't have the numbers to make it a fair fight. The only hard number I can find is 25,000 Star Destroyers as a ship-of-the-line. We'll likely be unable to compare numbers directly but with Fermi-estimation we can tell that they're probably outnumbered by at least one order of magnitude which is pretty much insurmountable. If that proves to be an unreliable measure then it would be genuinely interesting.

Dune
Don't know enough about Dune to my shame. Shall go do some reading!

Halo
UNSC would get wiped without the Imperium really drawing breath. The state of the UNSC in Halo isn't a galactic power really. They're roughly equivalent to the Tau Empire in scale against the far larger galaxy-spanning Covenant (although in actuality they're even smaller than the Tau). Although their warp travel is fast, reliable and flexible, their ships I can't see standing up to Imperial vessels and their fleet numbered a couple of thousand at its height.

The real competitor in the Halo universe would be the Covenant. All the benefits of safe warp travel and ships that are likely equivalent enough to Imperial vessels to be competitive. Again though, they fall down to the issue of scale. Most people seem to estimate the Covenant fleet to be 100,000+. Still an order of magnitude below the Imperial fleet. This could well be a case of 'sci-fi fans don't understand scale' though as both the Covenant and the Empire are galaxy-spanning powers similar to the Imperium (the Empire for instance contains 69 million worlds). Could be that they're less militarised though.

Mass Effect
The ships of the Citadel races (and their affiliates) are probably a match for Imperial vessels, if not slightly superior in the case of larger vessels like dreadnoughts. Their use of long-range mass-accelerated rounds is a much more viable tactic than torpedos meaning they could probably defeat an Imperial fleet at long range before the Imperium's torpedos had closed the distance (precisely why torpedos are a terrible idea). That probably stems from the fact that the Mass Effect creators put a lot of thought into what technologies would be genuinely viable in battles between starships.

Their logistics are interesting. Their FTL travel is safe and fast, but it is restricted by the use of mass relays to instigate long-distance jumps making them easy to plan against and easily outmanoeuvred. The fact that this is by design is one of the plot points (although I won't spoil any more than that).

They also fall down on scale. Their fleets combined number in the low thousands. Barely a speed bump to the Imperium.

The Reapers on the other hand. That would be an interesting conflict as they suffer none of the logistical issues of the Citadel races, their numbers are far larger than the Citadel races, and their ships are in all likelihood much more capable than an Imperial vessel.

Another interesting (and probably quite separate) comparison would be between the ground forces of each respective universe in a battle for a particular planet...

I also like your take of giving what's a rather dry comparison of statistics a bit of a narrative twist by actually playing it out. For instance, I absolutely agree that the Empire of Star Wars would probably seek a diplomatic solution. They're a galactic empire, but they've got there largely through (relatively forceful) diplomacy. The Imperium is either relatively similar or a bunch of fanatical xenophobes, depending on where you stand on 40k realpolitik...

Borg, they would win the long game, and quite easily infact, The first battle would likely go all the Imperiums way, Borg would adapt, find some backwater worlds and Assimilate them, build numbers, eventually get a hold of some mechanicum adepts, god forbid an archmagos, then the imperiums tech would become useless in space as the weapons would be useless.

The Imperiums only chance would be to stop the snow ball before it begins, once you assimilate them, the rest fall in short order.

 Formosa wrote:
Borg, they would win the long game, and quite easily infact, The first battle would likely go all the Imperiums way, Borg would adapt, find some backwater worlds and Assimilate them, build numbers, eventually get a hold of some mechanicum adepts, god forbid an archmagos, then the imperiums tech would become useless in space as the weapons would be useless.

The Imperiums only chance would be to stop the snow ball before it begins, once you assimilate them, the rest fall in short order.

I always wonder how the Borg manage that adaptation. Specifically how they interact with projectile weapons. Even with beam weapons like phasers. Is it something like shield modulation to the frequency of the beam. I'd expect that projectile weapons would have a much better effect (i.e. it would take a lot longer for an individual Borg drone to adapt its physiology to be resistant to a Bolter round than it would to modulate its shields to become resistant to a particular frequency of beam as appears to happen on Trek.

Open to be educated on the Borg's capabilities oh, and what precisely 'photon torpedos' are to see if they're comparable to 40k torpedos...

Yeah. As for ground forces, I believe that the Imperium would have a pretty clear advantage. Elites, numbers, weaponry, tanks, massive wheeled fortresses (Mastodon), it stacks up in favour to them.

Overall the IoM is going to shape up to be pretty weak.
Compared to other scifi armies or races, they have some of the worst FTL imaginable and that is going to make their fleet inherently inferior to other scifi fleets. It's not just slow, but it is unreliable.

The IoM does have scale on it's side. Many scifi universes just dont scale up as large as the IoM. The tech level is on the lower end, but it still is fairly high.

For example the Humans in Babylon 5 do not have a tech level much above what can be imagined today. There are only a handful of planets and perhaps 100 cruiser level ships. But those cruisers are probably more on par with IoM escorts. Even the most advanced races in Babylon 5 do not posses shields.

But while the IoM does have thousands of ships, it also needs those thousands of ships to maintain the empire. Even in the greatest battle to save earth during the horus heresy, only a few hundred ships could be pulled away from various places to protect earth. Those ships being slow means they cannot control as much ground or concentrate like other scifi armies. In star trek and star wars it is not uncommon to concetrate 1/10 or even 1/10th of the fleet in one place at one time. The IoM has likely never had 1/10 of it's fleet in one system ever.

Agreed that one of the main issues for the IoM in this scenario is that any force would be just another enemy on top of countless others. They're barely holding things together now despite their might. I doubt they could take anyone additional (except maybe the Halo UNSC).

Compared to that, the Empire is largely unmolested. The Covenant the same. Citadel Races again the same, provided they're not beset by Reapers. Unless all of their other foes are paused at this point then the IoM's not looking particularly healthy..

Another interesting thought. How big is the Federation? Individually their ships are much smaller, but i wonder if they got the scale of the galaxy right and there's tons of them...

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Borg, they would win the long game, and quite easily infact, The first battle would likely go all the Imperiums way, Borg would adapt, find some backwater worlds and Assimilate them, build numbers, eventually get a hold of some mechanicum adepts, god forbid an archmagos, then the imperiums tech would become useless in space as the weapons would be useless.

The Imperiums only chance would be to stop the snow ball before it begins, once you assimilate them, the rest fall in short order.

I always wonder how the Borg manage that adaptation. Specifically how they interact with projectile weapons. Even with beam weapons like phasers. Is it something like shield modulation to the frequency of the beam. I'd expect that projectile weapons would have a much better effect (i.e. it would take a lot longer for an individual Borg drone to adapt its physiology to be resistant to a Bolter round than it would to modulate its shields to become resistant to a particular frequency of beam as appears to happen on Trek.

Open to be educated on the Borg's capabilities oh, and what precisely 'photon torpedos' are to see if they're comparable to 40k torpedos...

A bolt round at its most basic is still energy based, kinetic energy, so the shield would just need to adapt to counter that, A photon torpedo is a lot smaller relatively to the torpedoes used by the Imperium but its a matter anti matter explosive, its also shielded to penetrate armour, kinda like the energy field around power weapons.

How they do it is more complicated, every drone is a walking computer of sorts, so if they are killed its quite likely that the Borg as a whole would know down to the molecular level how it died and adapt the shielding to stop this from happening again, but with infinate variations to go through it takes time, this is why Borg are like a snow ball, once they get access to anyone that knows anything about the technology being used against them, this time goes down exponentially.

So I would see the Imperium winning the first bout of battles through sheer strength of arms, this would make the Borg adapt, they have an utterly safe method of travel that is both accurate and faster than anything in the 40k universe, sensors that can detect ships from multiple sectors away in real time, as well as command and control in real time from possibly any distance.

I'm not sure any Borg adaptation could stop Force weapons or Psykers in general though. Due to the fact they are drawing upon the chaotic nature of the Warp I'm not sure the Borg's cold, mechanical science could understand and immunize.

Audustum wrote:
I'm not sure any Borg adaptation could stop Force weapons or Psykers in general though. Due to the fact they are drawing upon the chaotic nature of the Warp I'm not sure the Borg's cold, mechanical science could understand and immunize.

They do in fact have psi dampening technology, they also have psychics of there own, nothing on the scale of 40k of course, but they do have them.

Also psy powers are mega rare in 40k, force weapons even rarer, so force weapons are not a factor, psy powers would of course be a slight issue.

 Formosa wrote:

Audustum wrote:
I'm not sure any Borg adaptation could stop Force weapons or Psykers in general though. Due to the fact they are drawing upon the chaotic nature of the Warp I'm not sure the Borg's cold, mechanical science could understand and immunize.

They do in fact have psi dampening technology, they also have psychics of there own, nothing on the scale of 40k of course, but they do have them.

Also psy powers are mega rare in 40k, force weapons even rarer, so force weapons are not a factor, psy powers would of course be a slight issue.

I mean, being able to deploy a Grey Knight company and destroy a Cube reliably would be a huge boon.

I'm not sure Borg Psy stuff would work. As I understand it, Psy power in Star Trek actually comes from peoples' brains. In 40k, it's more that you're a conduit for the Warp than your own actual power. Borg would need to make blanks or something like localized Webway tech to stop it. An Alpha Psyker could wreck tremendous damage otherwise.

Sorry, but the whole "Borg adaptation" thing is just plain stupid. They couldn't adapt to being stabbed with a knife, as basic a weapon as you can possibly get. The obvious interpretation here is that the Borg can adapt to most of the weapons and shields in Star Trek, which all seem to have some kind of operating frequency technobabble that can be matched (negating it) or reversed (going right through shields). The same would not be true of Worf stabbing them with a knife, which is just brute force matching of impact strength vs. damage resistance, no frequency matching gimmicks allowed. Nor would it work against bolters, chemical weapons, etc, that the 40k side would bring. It would be a one-sided massacre.

And of course we also have indisputable canon evidence of Borg shields failing to stop concentrated fire, hours (IIRC) into a major fleet battle. So even with the ability to adapt to a particular weapon it isn't a magic limitless "you can't touch me" shield. Hit it with enough power and even with perfect adaptation the Borg thing is going to die.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

The Imperium certainly has scale on their side. In the linked (eminently sensible) discussion they estimate that the IoM has perhaps one million warp-capable warships. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/size-of-the-iom-navy-warhammer-40k.129121/

Well they said a minimum of about one million warp capable combat ships, with an estimated maximum of two million.
So probably some where in between.

On an unrelated note, when comparing SW and 40k, unless I am mistaken, the shields used in SW cannot stop physical projectiles, an 40k ships are armed with macro-cannons, which are projectile weapons.

True else all those x-wings and tie fighters would have a hard time flying so close to those ships. However the shield around DS2 did affect fighters (with one exploded on collision with it I believe), and so did the planetary shield in Rogue One.

So maybe ship based shields don't but the empire does exhibit technology on a planetary basis that can stop solid objects cold, even though it must be rare since it only seems to be used to defend key installations.

I was also under the impression that Borg shielding would not stop projectile Weaponary. Picard demonstrated this by disabling the safety protocols in the holodec and gunning down Borg with Tommy Guns. We also see Evidence of a (1 generation earlier) Federation vessel failing to stop projectiles in Beyond, when the Enterprise's shields could not stop fighters and they subsequently broke the Enterprise into 4 separate pieces.

There is one race we definitely know of that could stop ALL projectiles including nuclear weaponary (and EMP), and that was the invaders in Independence Day. Now admittedly they were stopped by a 1990's tech world, but that was only down to the plot armour of a virus, and the Imperium does not have the advantage of a captured fighter. We also do not know how large their total fleet is though so it would be difficult to compare. As well as not knowing their FTL capabilities and any ship aside from the saucers and fighters. On anything bigger than a fighter, aside from Lance Weaponary though (that *might* work), the Imperium's fleets would literally have nothing to harm them - even exterminatus Weaponary would be ineffective. The Imperiums fighters would be massively outmanouvered by the invaders fighters as well, so those Lascannons that could potentially plink away at the motherships would never reach them.

If the goal is just to find a universe that beats 40k then that's pretty easy. A single Culture civilian transport would effortlessly slaughter the entire 40k universe, if it was compelled by plot device to slog through such a tedious exercise in crushing the helpless instead of manipulating the 40k setting into a proper utopia. And god help 40k if they have to deal with a Culture warship. Once the civilian transport unpacks its factory systems and builds a warship the combined fleets of the entire 40k setting would die in less time than it took to write this sentence.

 NL_Cirrus wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

The Imperium certainly has scale on their side. In the linked (eminently sensible) discussion they estimate that the IoM has perhaps one million warp-capable warships. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/size-of-the-iom-navy-warhammer-40k.129121/

Well they said a minimum of about one million warp capable combat ships, with an estimated maximum of two million.
So probably some where in between.

On an unrelated note, when comparing SW and 40k, unless I am mistaken, the shields used in SW cannot stop physical projectiles, an 40k ships are armed with macro-cannons, which are projectile weapons.

agurus1 wrote:
True else all those x-wings and tie fighters would have a hard time flying so close to those ships. However the shield around DS2 did affect fighters (with one exploded on collision with it I believe), and so did the planetary shield in Rogue One.

So maybe ship based shields don't but the empire does exhibit technology on a planetary basis that can stop solid objects cold, even though it must be rare since it only seems to be used to defend key installations.

Interesting. Seems there's inconsistency in that. If it is the case that SW starship shields don't stop solid projectiles then they're at quite the disadvantage. One of the things I was thinking is doing a ship-by-ship comparison between universes to see which might have a tactical advantage.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sorry, but the whole "Borg adaptation" thing is just plain stupid. They couldn't adapt to being stabbed with a knife, as basic a weapon as you can possibly get. The obvious interpretation here is that the Borg can adapt to most of the weapons and shields in Star Trek, which all seem to have some kind of operating frequency technobabble that can be matched (negating it) or reversed (going right through shields). The same would not be true of Worf stabbing them with a knife, which is just brute force matching of impact strength vs. damage resistance, no frequency matching gimmicks allowed. Nor would it work against bolters, chemical weapons, etc, that the 40k side would bring. It would be a one-sided massacre.

And of course we also have indisputable canon evidence of Borg shields failing to stop concentrated fire, hours (IIRC) into a major fleet battle. So even with the ability to adapt to a particular weapon it isn't a magic limitless "you can't touch me" shield. Hit it with enough power and even with perfect adaptation the Borg thing is going to die.

That was my thinking. Weapons in Trek seem to be generally some sort of frequency technobabble which you can modulate shields against. I'd still expect Borg to adapt to being clobbered by a Choppa, but more in the case of augmenting further drones to be beefier with organ redundancy and suchlike. Less 'first shot works but the second doesn't'.

Depends on how shields work in Trek I suppose. It could be conceivable that they somehow modulate them to the frequency of whatever the projectile is heading towards them so it disintegrates before it hits them. Sort of like a power sword field, but defensive. Pass I don't know. All of it is a bit technobabbley from 40k and from Trek at this point.

I was impressed by Photon Torpedos though. They're basically low-warp capable matter-antimatter bombs with a disruption field (again, like a power sword) to aid armour piercing before detonation. That's a hell of an impressive weapon. Much nastier than the relatively crude rockets the Imperium uses, although they might lose out in sheer power if the IoM can land a hit.

What's Culture? Not too familiar with it...

lliu wrote:
What's Culture? Not too familiar with it...

It's a faction in Iain M. Banks' book series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

They are uh... Pretty OP, to say the least.

Borg vs Tyranids!

It's difficult to judge this stuff. The Imperium is an enormous warmachine so usually have infinite manpower in comparisson to other universes. I'd wager in many a war enemies would run out of bullets before the Imperium runs out of soldiers. OP races like those dune gods are of course always going to win any war simply because their purpose in the stories are to be unbeatable. However, if manpower matters in any way then the Imperium will come out on top more often then not. It is very difficult to meassure though.

Yup. Tyranids would ignore the Borg unless the borg tried to assimilate them, then... Circuitry doesn't react well to acids does it?

 Ashiraya wrote:

lliu wrote:
What's Culture? Not too familiar with it...

It's a faction in Iain M. Banks' book series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

They are uh... Pretty OP, to say the least.

Yeah just a little bit, but it's written in such a brilliant way and they're put in situations where they're either up against stuff that either equal's their capabilities, baffles them or where they can't use brute force to solve a problem. It quite neatly shows how having superintelligent (and refreshingly rather benevolent) AIs, weapons beyond the scope of the 40k galaxy and ships that can build more ships within them creating a cycle of ships building ships...can count for diddly squat in some circumstances.

Great collection of books

Audustum wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

Audustum wrote:
I'm not sure any Borg adaptation could stop Force weapons or Psykers in general though. Due to the fact they are drawing upon the chaotic nature of the Warp I'm not sure the Borg's cold, mechanical science could understand and immunize.

They do in fact have psi dampening technology, they also have psychics of there own, nothing on the scale of 40k of course, but they do have them.

Also psy powers are mega rare in 40k, force weapons even rarer, so force weapons are not a factor, psy powers would of course be a slight issue.

I mean, being able to deploy a Grey Knight company and destroy a Cube reliably would be a huge boon.

I'm not sure Borg Psy stuff would work. As I understand it, Psy power in Star Trek actually comes from peoples' brains. In 40k, it's more that you're a conduit for the Warp than your own actual power. Borg would need to make blanks or something like localized Webway tech to stop it. An Alpha Psyker could wreck tremendous damage otherwise.

See this is my point, once the snow ball gets rolling, grey knights are not even a realistic threat, you have literally trillions of drones to overwhelm them, every imperial ship that you capture through assimilation, you have turned the imperials greatest strength against them, numbers. Add to that better technology, sensors, speed, armament, which will be further enhanced once they start taking imperial worlds and tech.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Sorry, but the whole "Borg adaptation" thing is just plain stupid. They couldn't adapt to being stabbed with a knife, as basic a weapon as you can possibly get. The obvious interpretation here is that the Borg can adapt to most of the weapons and shields in Star Trek, which all seem to have some kind of operating frequency technobabble that can be matched (negating it) or reversed (going right through shields). The same would not be true of Worf stabbing them with a knife, which is just brute force matching of impact strength vs. damage resistance, no frequency matching gimmicks allowed. Nor would it work against bolters, chemical weapons, etc, that the 40k side would bring. It would be a one-sided massacre.

And of course we also have indisputable canon evidence of Borg shields failing to stop concentrated fire, hours (IIRC) into a major fleet battle. So even with the ability to adapt to a particular weapon it isn't a magic limitless "you can't touch me" shield. Hit it with enough power and even with perfect adaptation the Borg thing is going to die.

Just as stupid as space magic that 40k relies on, but thats not the point, we are saying that it all works in universe.

The Borg can and have adapted to close combat, kinetic energy can still be stopped by shielding, its about the amount of force put in, a bullet uses more, a knife uses less, they would take loses, adapt and come again, like the Tyranids.

Just to be clear, Energy shielding works against kinetic energy, as shown in star trek and 40k respectively.

Bolters are kinetic charges that produce an explosion once it has penetrated, deflector shielding moves particles and larger material out of a ships way when moving at FTL, adapt the Borg personal shields to use a similar method and bolt rounds no longer work.

Chemical weapons, are totally inefective to a race that operates in a vacuum without space suits, biological weapons that attack the organic parts of the Borg would work, but not if they have to be inhaled.

To your last point, you dont seem to understand how the Borg seem to operate, they wouldnt sit in a battle where your weapons would destroy them, they would leave using the superior mobility and speed they have, I have already said they would be steam rolled if they are caught early enough, but once they have your tech and have enhanced it, adapted to it, its game over, the imperiums biggest strength is its biggest weakness, size, before they have realised the Borg are a threat, its too late.


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Poly Ranger wrote:
I was also under the impression that Borg shielding would not stop projectile Weaponary. Picard demonstrated this by disabling the safety protocols in the holodec and gunning down Borg with Tommy Guns. We also see Evidence of a (1 generation earlier) Federation vessel failing to stop projectiles in Beyond, when the Enterprise's shields could not stop fighters and they subsequently broke the Enterprise into 4 separate pieces.

There is one race we definitely know of that could stop ALL projectiles including nuclear weaponary (and EMP), and that was the invaders in Independence Day. Now admittedly they were stopped by a 1990's tech world, but that was only down to the plot armour of a virus, and the Imperium does not have the advantage of a captured fighter. We also do not know how large their total fleet is though so it would be difficult to compare. As well as not knowing their FTL capabilities and any ship aside from the saucers and fighters. On anything bigger than a fighter, aside from Lance Weaponary though (that *might* work), the Imperium's fleets would literally have nothing to harm them - even exterminatus Weaponary would be ineffective. The Imperiums fighters would be massively outmanouvered by the invaders fighters as well, so those Lascannons that could potentially plink away at the motherships would never reach them.

Thats a popular misconception, I believe stargate put it best, they simply didnt think anyone would use such weapons, especially on a starship, yes ballistics would work for a while, but not forever.

Star trek Beyond is not canon, its JJ abrams alternate universe, so ignore all the new trek films, also take into account the extended universe when dealing with trek, as it expands on the Borg.


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 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 NL_Cirrus wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

The Imperium certainly has scale on their side. In the linked (eminently sensible) discussion they estimate that the IoM has perhaps one million warp-capable warships. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/size-of-the-iom-navy-warhammer-40k.129121/

Well they said a minimum of about one million warp capable combat ships, with an estimated maximum of two million.
So probably some where in between.

On an unrelated note, when comparing SW and 40k, unless I am mistaken, the shields used in SW cannot stop physical projectiles, an 40k ships are armed with macro-cannons, which are projectile weapons.

agurus1 wrote:
True else all those x-wings and tie fighters would have a hard time flying so close to those ships. However the shield around DS2 did affect fighters (with one exploded on collision with it I believe), and so did the planetary shield in Rogue One.

So maybe ship based shields don't but the empire does exhibit technology on a planetary basis that can stop solid objects cold, even though it must be rare since it only seems to be used to defend key installations.

Interesting. Seems there's inconsistency in that. If it is the case that SW starship shields don't stop solid projectiles then they're at quite the disadvantage. One of the things I was thinking is doing a ship-by-ship comparison between universes to see which might have a tactical advantage.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sorry, but the whole "Borg adaptation" thing is just plain stupid. They couldn't adapt to being stabbed with a knife, as basic a weapon as you can possibly get. The obvious interpretation here is that the Borg can adapt to most of the weapons and shields in Star Trek, which all seem to have some kind of operating frequency technobabble that can be matched (negating it) or reversed (going right through shields). The same would not be true of Worf stabbing them with a knife, which is just brute force matching of impact strength vs. damage resistance, no frequency matching gimmicks allowed. Nor would it work against bolters, chemical weapons, etc, that the 40k side would bring. It would be a one-sided massacre.

And of course we also have indisputable canon evidence of Borg shields failing to stop concentrated fire, hours (IIRC) into a major fleet battle. So even with the ability to adapt to a particular weapon it isn't a magic limitless "you can't touch me" shield. Hit it with enough power and even with perfect adaptation the Borg thing is going to die.

That was my thinking. Weapons in Trek seem to be generally some sort of frequency technobabble which you can modulate shields against. I'd still expect Borg to adapt to being clobbered by a Choppa, but more in the case of augmenting further drones to be beefier with organ redundancy and suchlike. Less 'first shot works but the second doesn't'.

Depends on how shields work in Trek I suppose. It could be conceivable that they somehow modulate them to the frequency of whatever the projectile is heading towards them so it disintegrates before it hits them. Sort of like a power sword field, but defensive. Pass I don't know. All of it is a bit technobabbley from 40k and from Trek at this point.

I was impressed by Photon Torpedos though. They're basically low-warp capable matter-antimatter bombs with a disruption field (again, like a power sword) to aid armour piercing before detonation. That's a hell of an impressive weapon. Much nastier than the relatively crude rockets the Imperium uses, although they might lose out in sheer power if the IoM can land a hit.

As I stated before "technobabble" is a non response, and to be ignored, both trek and 40k are "technobabble" and I agree its all technobabbley (stealing that word), and yeah I agree the imperial ranges and weapons are crazy good, if they can land a hit, but those trek ships are stupidly manoeuvrable, you would have to use fighters etc. to even land a hit on a Defiant class Heavy Escort.


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 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

lliu wrote:
What's Culture? Not too familiar with it...

It's a faction in Iain M. Banks' book series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

They are uh... Pretty OP, to say the least.

Yeah just a little bit, but it's written in such a brilliant way and they're put in situations where they're either up against stuff that either equal's their capabilities, baffles them or where they can't use brute force to solve a problem. It quite neatly shows how having superintelligent (and refreshingly rather benevolent) AIs, weapons beyond the scope of the 40k galaxy and ships that can build more ships within them creating a cycle of ships building ships...can count for diddly squat in some circumstances.

Great collection of books

Jesus Christ, thats some OP stuff right there, gonna have to read those books.

Audustum wrote:
I'm not sure any Borg adaptation could stop Force weapons or Psykers in general though. Due to the fact they are drawing upon the chaotic nature of the Warp I'm not sure the Borg's cold, mechanical science could understand and immunize.

It would only take the borg 1 assimilation to get their own psykers.


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Poly Ranger wrote:
I was also under the impression that Borg shielding would not stop projectile Weaponary. Picard demonstrated this by disabling the safety protocols in the holodec and gunning down Borg with Tommy Guns. We also see Evidence of a (1 generation earlier) Federation vessel failing to stop projectiles in Beyond, when the Enterprise's shields could not stop fighters and they subsequently broke the Enterprise into 4 separate pieces.

Picard uses a tommy gun to success because it is the first time a borg has seen that type of weapon, or at least the first time recently. The borg in that attack were expecting phaser weaponry. If they ran into more slug throwing guns they would adapt kevlar body armor.

The borg can adapt to any type of weapon, but they cannot adapt to ALL types of weapons simultaniously. That is why in other episode they are always 'remodulating' their phasers, so each person has in essense a different weapon.




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 Ynneadwraith wrote:


Another interesting thought. How big is the Federation? Individually their ships are much smaller, but i wonder if they got the scale of the galaxy right and there's tons of them...

The federation is small, tiny in comparison to the IoM.
The federation doesnt even control a quadrant of the galaxy.

I know the OP and discussion is moving away from it but my $0.02 on most "IOM vs X" threads is:

The IoM will crush most foes. If you remove the huge number of enemies it has in Warhammer 40k and instead allow it to concentrate its entire (admittedly unwieldy) military strength against a single target, then it's probably MAD as best-case scenario. The IOM is sort of like space Soviet Union or space United States, where its industrial might is sufficient to compensate for any minor inferiority in warfighting systems.

Seriously, the two things holding back the IOM in 40k are:
1) Adherence to tradition and therefore super-outdated forms of interplanetary communication/ command & control.

2) Having to fight like 20 or 30 enemies at once.

If the IOM is allowed to gather every last battleship, carrier, destroyer, troop transport, etc. and strike at a single foe... it's gonna be awful.

That said, some forces (like the Culture) are so over-the-top that the IoM's ponderous bulk will just lose. Or the Concordiat of Man from the Bolo series, which is essentially the IoM but with sensible application of AI to industry, diplomacy, and C2.

This kind of comparison never works because we lack objective data.
We don't know how a lasgun compares to a blaster from Star Wars or what happens when you fire it at a shield from Dune or whether it can penetrate a material that exists in Star Wars but not in 40k. We don't know whether people in Star Wars have a 'soul' and can therefore be affected by 40k psychic powers or whether people in 40k have midichlorians and could use the the Force. Therefore can only make wild assumptions based on pretty much nothing but personal opinion.
To make a comparison you need something comparable. For something to be comparable it needs to be in the same environment. Two sci-fi universes are not the same environment and therefore not comparable.

 Exergy wrote:

Audustum wrote:
I'm not sure any Borg adaptation could stop Force weapons or Psykers in general though. Due to the fact they are drawing upon the chaotic nature of the Warp I'm not sure the Borg's cold, mechanical science could understand and immunize.

It would only take the borg 1 assimilation to get their own psykers.


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Poly Ranger wrote:
I was also under the impression that Borg shielding would not stop projectile Weaponary. Picard demonstrated this by disabling the safety protocols in the holodec and gunning down Borg with Tommy Guns. We also see Evidence of a (1 generation earlier) Federation vessel failing to stop projectiles in Beyond, when the Enterprise's shields could not stop fighters and they subsequently broke the Enterprise into 4 separate pieces.

Picard uses a tommy gun to success because it is the first time a borg has seen that type of weapon, or at least the first time recently. The borg in that attack were expecting phaser weaponry. If they ran into more slug throwing guns they would adapt kevlar body armor.

The borg can adapt to any type of weapon, but they cannot adapt to ALL types of weapons simultaniously. That is why in other episode they are always 'remodulating' their phasers, so each person has in essense a different weapon.




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 Ynneadwraith wrote:


Another interesting thought. How big is the Federation? Individually their ships are much smaller, but i wonder if they got the scale of the galaxy right and there's tons of them...

The federation is small, tiny in comparison to the IoM.
The federation doesnt even control a quadrant of the galaxy.

Interesting. The Borg truly are a terrifying threat. However, to have psykers i'd assume you have to play by the host universe's rules. That means psykers come with all the other stuff like requisite for souls (do Borg drones have souls?) and all of the hungering gods thing.

Given the Borg's initial susceptibility to novel attacks, susceptibility to viruses (novel ones at least) and the corruption the taint of chaos causes, i'd say that meddling with psykers would be...unwise...for the Borg.

Of course, then you'd probably just get legions of Chaos Borg so the IoM is doubly screwed but hey ho...

So the Federation's out. How big are the Borg?

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Chaos Borg

Omg. Awesome idea!