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Go look at the galaxy maps in the Harlequin, Craftworld, and Dark Eldar codices. The Eldar sites are literally scattered all over the galaxy.

"But we know that neither side has aggressively sought the destruction of the other before the warpstorms. So why not?"

Looking at it as human, especially reflecting it across human history, it might seem like it's because neither side could safely defeat the other. But only one side was human.

Eldar saw themselves as the caretaker of the garden. Lesser races were just growths. Some outgrew their place and had to be pruned. Others did not. Random 'sea slime' that did not outgrow their place, there was no cause to erradicate them. And the 'sea slime' that did outgrow their place, they would put back in their place. So the fact that Eldar have not erradicated Mankind doesn't mean they never got into scrapes with them. Or that they were unable to do so.

A human faction will avoid a conflict with a foe if it'd be more costly to actually fight them. We don't know that the Eldar Empire was the same. They fought the *Necrons* at the height of the *War in Heaven*. So they didn't shy away from a fight.

If the Eldar *did* have the upper hand, there's no reason they'd crush such a young species.

If the Eldar *did not* have the upper hand, then there was something that challenged the Eldar. If there was a challenge, they had something to do. Look at the Space Race or Star Wars (not the movies) - having a competitor, even if you're not at war with them, provides numerous challenges, not all of them military. And, if challenged, no Slanesh.

Non-action on the part of humanity is most likely explained by not having a clear upper hand. But non-action on the part of the Eldar Empire is only explainable by them *having* a clear upper hand. Anything short of that (or at least that being the perception) delays Slanesh until it's fixed.

Wizard,
It was an Eldar Cruiser. Not a Battleship. Not in the same class. Further, it was shot at by a Dreadnaught. That'd be like a battle tank shooting someone's motorcycle. A battleship outclasses a Cruiser. A Dreadnaught outclasses a Battleship by a *very wide margin*. And it disabled the cloak and caused other damage, but didn't destroy the heavily-outclassed Cruiser. Which means the story at best says DAoT highest-end Dreadnaughts can at least detect and hurt much-lighter fleets produced by ragtag civilians ten thousand years after the fall of the Eldar Empire. Provided it engages first. It really doesn't say much.

Flinty,
Slanesh's birth killed most Eldar both within and outside the Eye. Further, after the Fall, Slanesh now eats all Eldar somewhat rapidly. Anyone who didn't invent Soulstones, World Circuits, have Cegorath's direct protection, learn the joys of torture. So most Eldar worlds, even ones that survived immediately after the Fall, may still have been devoured entirely.

Iracundus wrote:
If the DAoT humans were an actual threat to the Eldar, then that completely overturns that core concept. It is a problem of power creep on the part of writers who resort to some DAoT gimmick/McGuffin to solve their plot problems, and/or some inability to have humans be inferior to an alien race.

You aren't listening to what I am saying. The DAoT humans probably weren't a threat to the eldar empire at it's height, the same way the Tau empire is not a threat to the IOM. That does not mean that the DAoT humans were technologically inferior in all regards to the eldar, in the same way that it does not mean the Tau are technologically inferior to the Imperium.

You have this idea in your head that the Eldar were the exclusive owners of reality warping technologies, and that they vigilantly watched the galaxy for upstart races and either "guided" them or exterminated them ala the Vorlons from Babylon 5. But, the newer lore about DAoT humans contradicts this. It is very clear that the DAoT humans had at least some amount of technological parity with pre-fall eldar.

The eldar were also decadant and isolationist as hell. It's entirely possible that the eldar didn't even really notice humanity's rise and fall, as it only took place over a period of roughly 20,000 years... a mere eyeblink to a race that has been masters of the galaxy for almost 40 million years.

Bharring wrote:
Wizard,
It was an Eldar Cruiser. Not a Battleship. Not in the same class. Further, it was shot at by a Dreadnaught. That'd be like a battle tank shooting someone's motorcycle. A battleship outclasses a Cruiser. A Dreadnaught outclasses a Battleship by a *very wide margin*. And it disabled the cloak and caused other damage, but didn't destroy the heavily-outclassed Cruiser. Which means the story at best says DAoT highest-end Dreadnaughts can at least detect and hurt much-lighter fleets produced by ragtag civilians ten thousand years after the fall of the Eldar Empire. Provided it engages first. It really doesn't say much.

For the eldar to send a single ship against this "dreadnaught" (which is funny because the size of the Speranza is never specified, and most other Ark Mechanicus ships are in the 5-7KM range which makes it more akin to a large cruiser or small battleship rather than a "dreadnought" as you say) means this eldar vessel must have had at least a decent chance of winning. The eldar don't waste ships on suicide missions. The impression I got from the story was that the eldar vessel was a strike cruiser, aka a "battle ship" (not the same as a battleship as in class of vessel).

They never go into specifics of the eldar vessel, but I would guess that it was a http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Shadow which is roughly 5KM long and the most common model of eldar cruiser in common use. This seems to match up with the assumption that the Speranza was in the 5-7KM range, as it doesn't make any sense to send a 5KM cruiser against a 20+KM dreadnought regardless of tech superiority. The speranza destroyed the cruiser in one shot. Yes, crippling to the point that it can no longer be a combatant counts as "destroyed" in naval warfare. Here is the official description of the Speranza:

Speranza - The Speranza is an Ark Mechanicus that served as part of Magos Lexell Kotov's Explorator Fleet into the region of space known as the Halo Zone. The Speranza was equipped with powerful ancient graviton beam weapons that could create miniature black holes and chrono-weapons that were capable of shifting their target nanoseconds into the past.

Certainly sounds like crazy DAoT gak to me... like maybe something the necrons might use.

tneva82 wrote:
Stats looked decidedly underwhelming for what supposedly nearly wiped out humanity...With DAOT human technology...This had to be like lowest of the low of man of irons or there was lot more than just fighting ability going around

Not necessarily. It had to go into hiding, so it may have copied its AI over to a typical imperial robot to blend it. It might have its original body hidden somewhere, if it still has one after all those centuries.

Wizard,
It is possible Mankind had tech on par with Eldar at their height. But there's no fluff that says they do.

The Eldar clearly were *not* vigilant. The fluff makes it very obvious they turned inward. And that they didn't run the galaxy with an iron fist or anything. My problem is statements like this:
" But, the newer lore about DAoT humans contradicts this. It is very clear that the DAoT humans had at least some amount of technological parity with pre-fall eldar. "
There is no lore that states DAoT had some amount of tech parity. There is lore that shows Eldar were not challenged by Mankind. Between that, the relative individual ability, and the difference in timescales, it seems very unlikely that DAoT had any tech parity with Eldar. But the lore isn't specific either way.

"(which is funny because the size of the Speranza is never specified, and most other Ark Mechanicus ships are in the 5-7KM range which makes it more akin to a large cruiser or small battleship rather than a "dreadnought" as you say"
The Speranza was unimaginably large even in relation to other Arks. And some Arks had space for Titan battlegroups to perform realistic wargames. Because 40k fluff is that over-the-top. Speranza's liftoff charcoled continents, didn't it? We aren't talking 5-7km. Reread some of the depictions of it's size. Exact numbers weren't given, though.

The 'Speranza' wasn't built as an 'Ark Mechanicus'. And 'Ark Mechanicus' isn't a class of ship in the traditional sense.

"as it doesn't make any sense to send a 5KM cruiser against a 20+KM dreadnought regardless of tech superiority."
I'd take a modern PT craft against a 1st century Galley any day.

The description of the Speranza is crazy OP tech, yes. You can show that DAoT is mindblowingly powerful all day. But without retconning the whole 'Eldar Empire' storyline - including it's most pivitol point - it just means the Eldar Empire was even more powerful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Conversely, 'cruiser' is a class that differentiates it from heavier vessels. So we can be fairly confident on that thing's size.)

Bharring wrote:
There is no lore that states DAoT had some amount of tech parity. There is lore that shows Eldar were not challenged by Mankind. Between that, the relative individual ability, and the difference in timescales, it seems very unlikely that DAoT had any tech parity with Eldar. But the lore isn't specific either way.

I mean if you don't think black hole guns, timespace based weapons, creating true AI, or snuffing out suns isn't tech parity or at least "close enough" I don't know what to tell you.

Bharring wrote:
The Speranza was unimaginably large even in relation to other Arks. And some Arks had space for Titan battlegroups to perform realistic wargames. Because 40k fluff is that over-the-top. Speranza's liftoff charcoled continents, didn't it? We aren't talking 5-7km. Reread some of the depictions of it's size. Exact numbers weren't given, though.

I don't remember reading anything about it's liftoff "charcoaling" a continent. And everything described as within the Speranza's hull is perfectly capable of fitting within the hull of a 5-7KM vessel. Many people don't understand how enormously huge a 7KM vessel is, nor how much internal space it has.

Bharring wrote:
The 'Speranza' wasn't built as an 'Ark Mechanicus'. And 'Ark Mechanicus' isn't a class of ship in the traditional sense.

Yes it is. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Ark_Mechanicus although I will grant you that weapons loadouts and internal layouts seem to differ between individual ships, most likely due to the whims of the presiding arch-magos. But there is most likely a standard template.

Bharring wrote:
I'd take a modern PT craft against a 1st century Galley any day.

A more accurate analogy would be a modern PT craft vs a 1950s oil tanker. The oil tanker has no guns but it would still win on sheer size alone by just ramming the PT boat. And the Speranza was DEFINITELY armed.

Bharring wrote:
...But without retconning the whole 'Eldar Empire' storyline - including it's most pivitol point - it just means the Eldar Empire was even more powerful.

I don't see how DAoT humans having comparable technology to the pre-fall eldar "invalidates" the eldar empire "storyline". I am going to re-iterate:

The DAoT humans probably weren't a threat to the eldar empire at it's height, the same way the Tau empire is not a threat to the IOM. That does not mean that the DAoT humans were technologically inferior in all regards to the eldar, in the same way that it does not mean the Tau are technologically inferior to the Imperium.

You have this idea in your head that the Eldar were the exclusive owners of reality warping technologies, and that they vigilantly watched the galaxy for upstart races and either "guided" them or exterminated them ala the Vorlons from Babylon 5. But, the newer lore about DAoT humans contradicts this. It is very clear that the DAoT humans had at least some amount of technological parity with pre-fall eldar.

The eldar were also decadant and isolationist as hell. It's entirely possible that the eldar didn't even really notice humanity's rise and fall, as it only took place over a period of roughly 20,000 years... a mere eyeblink to a race that has been masters of the galaxy for almost 40 million years.

There is no possible.way that an oil tanker could deliberately.ram a PT boat that it was in deliberate conflict with...

 Flinty wrote:
There is no possible.way that an oil tanker could deliberately.ram a PT boat that it was in deliberate conflict with...

Granted, the analogy is flawed, big ships in space can actually sometimes move faster than smaller ships, and things like lateral thrust makes tactics like ramming much easier than on an ocean where you are limited to two dimensions of movement and forward/reverse thrust.

Still, the idea that they would send a 5KM eldar cruiser up against a 20+KM imperial dreadnought is pretty ludicrous. The eldar are arrogant, but they aren't stupid, and Imperial technology is not THAT far behind post-fall eldar. Things make much more sense if we consider that the Speranza is the same size as the other Ark Mechanicus ships at 5-7KM. Even this "small" size would give it a profile roughly 2/3 the size of Manhattan island. The story makes more sense this way, as the eldar would expect their ship to come out on top in a 1 on 1 vs an Imperial vessel of comparable size.

The primary sources aren't at hand right now, so here's a secondary source, some of which has citation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/9e277c/the_speranza_is_not_a_normal_ark_class_ship/

It's called an Ark Mechanicus, because Ark Mechanicus are the giant ships the Mechancius uses to persue STCs. It's not in the 'class' of Ark Mechanicus in the sense of having that level of capability or size.

"I mean if you don't think black hole guns, timespace based weapons, creating true AI, or snuffing out suns isn't tech parity or at least "close enough" I don't know what to tell you."
We don't have nearly the same volume of lore about pre-fall Eldar as we do of pre-DAoT Mankind. So we don't know where Eldar were. So how can it be 'close enough'?

"We can snuff out a sun" isn't as scary for a race that cut it's teeth fighting foes that had weapons like the Celestial Orratory.

All we really know about the tech is that it wasn't as advanced as WiH Necrons, and that DAoT didn't threaten them.

"And everything described as within the Speranza's hull is perfectly capable of fitting within the hull of a 5-7KM vessel."
It's hard to casually fit several 4km-long ships inside a 5-7KM vessel. It'd be downright odd if the "walkway" to the bridge were ~20% of the entire length of the ship. It'd be hard to be such a unique vessel if it were "just another" Ark Mechanicus. It wouldn't dwarf other such vessels if it were just the same size, or maybe 50% bigger.

"A more accurate analogy would be a modern PT craft vs a 1950s oil tanker."
The point is that there *is* a point of technical advantage at which you expect a lighter class of ship to be enough to handle a heavier class of ship. To show that point, I went to extremes. However, I don't think the characterization of just a 50-year difference in tech between "modern" Eldar, and what they perceive "modern" (y40k, not DAoT) IoM. Especially in the eyes of the Eldar.


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"Granted, the analogy is flawed, big ships in space can actually sometimes move faster than smaller ships"
Speed and maneuverability are different. Of the same technical level, a bigger ship might have faster top speed, but the smaller ship should almost always be more maneuverable.

I think you're underestimating Eldar arrogance.

Bharring wrote:
*snip*

I would take everything in that thread with a grain of salt. I read the book too and I never remembered reading anything about the ship being 20+KM long, nor about it leaving a "continent sized hole" in the planet it was recovered from... as if 20+KM is even remotely big enough to do such a thing. Nor do I remember reading anything about the ship having its own gravitational pull or anything silly like that. Nor anything about having 4KM long parasite ships.

What I do remember is the ship being described as "large" without specific measurements given. A 7KM long ship IS "large" even by the standards of the setting (although not the largest). If you could quote me sources from the book itself that has specific measurements I would be happy to discuss those, but to me that thread is mostly imaginative hyperbole rather than a discussion about what actually happened in the book.

All other Ark Mechanicus ships were within the range of 5-7KM long. Barring evidence to the contrary, it is more reasonable to assume the Speranza was in this size range than not, and it seems to match up more with the speculated size of the Eldar cruiser with which the Speranza fought.

"Roboute had heard of the vessels known as Ark Mechanicus, but had dismissed tales of their continent-sized cityscapes and planetoid bulk as exaggerations, embellished legends or outright lies.

Now he knew better.

A passing battleship that Roboute recognised as a Dominator-class vessel sailed below the Speranza, and its length was more than eclipsed by the beam of the Ark Mechanicus.

Where the Navy’s ships tended towards wedge-shaped prows and giant cathedrals of stone carved into the craggy structure of their hulls, the Mechanicus favoured a less ostentatious approach to the design of their ships. Function, not form or glorification, was the guiding light of the ancient Mechanicus shipwrights. The colossal vessel had little symmetry, no gilded arches of lofty architecture, no processional cloisters of statuary, no vaulted, geodesic domes and no great eagle-wings or sweeping crenellations.

The Speranza was all infrastructure and industry, a hive’s worth of manufactories, refineries, crackling power plants and kilometre upon kilometre of laboratories, testing ranges, chemical vats and gene-bays arranged in as efficient a way as the ancient plans for its construction had allowed. Its engines were larger than most starships’ full mass, its individual void generators and Geller arrays large enough to shroud a frigate by themselves.

Roboute had seen his fair share of space-faring leviathans, some Imperial, some not, but he had yet to see anything to match the sheer bloody-mindedness and ambition of the Mechanicus to have built such a damnably impressive vessel."

The bow is just a part of the ship. If it's bow alone eclipsed a 4-6km ship, it is clearly larger than 7km long itself.

What rule or regulation requires the Mechancius to mothball any ship they find over 7km long? Ark Mechanicuses tend to be between 5km and 7km, sure. But there's no fluff that says none are larger than that.

And back to the 1950s oil tanker taking on a modern PT craft: you do realize the PT craft would outmaneuver a modern oil tanker to a rediculous degree?

Further, what size vessels are sent to sink Aircraft Carriers? F4s, F18s, Zeros. Ships much smaller than their target. A single F18 would easily sink a 1950s carrier, for example. The days of sending the larger ship to sink the smaller ship ended in WWII, where the Bismark and Yammamato did so poorly, and the Aircraft Carrier dominated the theatre.

How big is a continent sized cityscape? Even if we took our Earth's Madagascar as a smallest possible "continent" it is 570km wide at its small dimension....

Would an Ark Mechanicus be 570 kilometers long?

I am finding online opinions of its size like:

The Speranza is 20Km Wide, with a length of aproximately 120-130Km, possibly more as the quotes throw vastly larger estimates. The hallway....the HALLWAY and it's dedicated as such, to the bridge is 1.2km long. it's a freaking single hallway. Titans walk freely in the Speranza, i'm talking WARLORD titans.

LightKing wrote:



could this be our first look of a Man of Iron, the Artificial machines that terrified humanity during the Age of Technology

from the Warhammer Quest Black Fortress

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. No it is not a man of iron lol If it was it would be an A.I. and the Imperium would have destroyed it.

pm713 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Bharring wrote:
... And their adversary was a species that is dependent on said factories for everything. Defense. Shelter. Food. Oxygen.

Said species also had power to destroy stars etc. Thing is human tech then was ridiculously high(to the level that humans then vs Imperium during height of great crusade bye bye Imperium. It would have been steam roll)

When did humans ever have that in 40k?

Not during the Age of the Imperium, but they did during the Dark Age of Technology.

Mankind's tech level then was rather ridiculous. Only surpassed by the Necrontyr. They could make and unmake stars at a whim, make cannons that shoot small black holes at enemy targets, make it so a star will never die(Sol has had this process done to it), turn barren rocks into paradise worlds, etc...

The thing is that that technology led to their downfall. Mankind became lazy and had the technology do everything for them, such that they no longer understood the technology. Combine that with the Men of Iron rebellion and the whole thing collapsed.

After all, if you have machines that just make whatever you want, fix and maintain themselves, why would you need to know how they work?

w1zard wrote:

Bharring wrote:
*snip*

I would take everything in that thread with a grain of salt. I read the book too and I never remembered reading anything about the ship being 20+KM long, nor about it leaving a "continent sized hole" in the planet it was recovered from... as if 20+KM is even remotely big enough to do such a thing. Nor do I remember reading anything about the ship having its own gravitational pull or anything silly like that. Nor anything about having 4KM long parasite ships.

What I do remember is the ship being described as "large" without specific measurements given. A 7KM long ship IS "large" even by the standards of the setting (although not the largest). If you could quote me sources from the book itself that has specific measurements I would be happy to discuss those, but to me that thread is mostly imaginative hyperbole rather than a discussion about what actually happened in the book.

All other Ark Mechanicus ships were within the range of 5-7KM long. Barring evidence to the contrary, it is more reasonable to assume the Speranza was in this size range than not, and it seems to match up more with the speculated size of the Eldar cruiser with which the Speranza fought.

Its known to be very large compared to Imperial standards so they are far larger than 5-7km long. Gloriana 's are 20 km long and the furious abyss dwarfed them so, seeing that the Mechanicum can make ships the size of the furious abyss for Legions I'm sure they can do a lot better for themselves, especially due to the fact they look for STC's. I don't know where you are getting your info from, if you actually have a source it must be old.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. No it is not a man of iron lol If it was it would be an A.I. and the Imperium would have destroyed it.

The implication is that this robot has disguised itself. It is an AI, but it has fooled everyone else into thinking its just another robot.

At this point, it is a safe bet that very very few people have any real knowledge about the Men of Iron. So even if one is standing in front of you it would be unlikely for you to realize that it was one of them. It has been nearly 15,000 years since the Men of Iron were, allegedly, wiped out. Its possible that the only place anything describing a Man of Iron is located is on Mars itself, along with anybody who might actually be familiar with that text. So as long as this dude stays away from there he can pull the wool over everybody elses eyes.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. No it is not a man of iron lol If it was it would be an A.I. and the Imperium would have destroyed it.

No, that's GW for you. If I can't keep my Blackstone Fortress fluff canon, you can imagine how much luck the regular player has keeping them from tearing up whatever you like.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. No it is not a man of iron lol If it was it would be an A.I. and the Imperium would have destroyed it.

The implication is that this robot has disguised itself. It is an AI, but it has fooled everyone else into thinking its just another robot.

At this point, it is a safe bet that very very few people have any real knowledge about the Men of Iron. So even if one is standing in front of you it would be unlikely for you to realize that it was one of them. It has been nearly 15,000 years since the Men of Iron were, allegedly, wiped out. Its possible that the only place anything describing a Man of Iron is located is on Mars itself, along with anybody who might actually be familiar with that text. So as long as this dude stays away from there he can pull the wool over everybody elses eyes.

Yea, even as an outside audience perspective with access to all the information, we don't even have a good picture of the Men of Iron. I'm also assuming as an AI he can probably transfer himself from machine to machine. That body may be Ad Mech but the mind isn't.

Bharring wrote:


Further, what size vessels are sent to sink Aircraft Carriers? F4s, F18s, Zeros. Ships much smaller than their target. A single F18 would easily sink a 1950s carrier, for example. The days of sending the larger ship to sink the smaller ship ended in WWII, where the Bismark and Yammamato did so poorly, and the Aircraft Carrier dominated the theatre.

That actually doesn't apply in space. In space combat, heat management and pure engine power are what matters most. Both of which are more efficient the larger a ship is. The smaller the ship, the higher the % of its total mass that needs to be dedicated to engines and life support. As you scale up, you end up with more capacity for weapons, heat absorption, armor, and bigger engines.

In space, a huge ship will actually be 'faster' then a smaller ship. In the sense that it will have greater acceleration/deceleration. It will have much higher inertia, so it will have slightly more ponderous mobility, but its raw speed and combat abilities will more than make up for that. A small ship will overheat very quickly, have less weaponry and thinner armor, and be slower.

Leaving an atmosphere and gravity behind radically changes the 'aerial' combat rules.

Bharring wrote:
"Roboute had heard of the vessels known as Ark Mechanicus, but had dismissed tales of their continent-sized cityscapes and planetoid bulk as exaggerations, embellished legends or outright lies.

Now he knew better.

A passing battleship that Roboute recognised as a Dominator-class vessel sailed below the Speranza, and its length was more than eclipsed by the beam of the Ark Mechanicus.

Where the Navy’s ships tended towards wedge-shaped prows and giant cathedrals of stone carved into the craggy structure of their hulls, the Mechanicus favoured a less ostentatious approach to the design of their ships. Function, not form or glorification, was the guiding light of the ancient Mechanicus shipwrights. The colossal vessel had little symmetry, no gilded arches of lofty architecture, no processional cloisters of statuary, no vaulted, geodesic domes and no great eagle-wings or sweeping crenellations.

The Speranza was all infrastructure and industry, a hive’s worth of manufactories, refineries, crackling power plants and kilometre upon kilometre of laboratories, testing ranges, chemical vats and gene-bays arranged in as efficient a way as the ancient plans for its construction had allowed. Its engines were larger than most starships’ full mass, its individual void generators and Geller arrays large enough to shroud a frigate by themselves.

Roboute had seen his fair share of space-faring leviathans, some Imperial, some not, but he had yet to see anything to match the sheer bloody-mindedness and ambition of the Mechanicus to have built such a damnably impressive vessel."

The bow is just a part of the ship. If it's bow alone eclipsed a 4-6km ship, it is clearly larger than 7km long itself.

Well, firstly, the book is wrong because a dominator is a cruiser, not a battleship http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Dominator-class_Cruiser, unless he was referring to it as a "battle ship" as in ship-of-the-line.

Secondly, it was comparing it to the "beam" of the ship, not the bow. The beam of the ship is its width.

I tried looking up length of a dominator class cruiser and didn't find anything. It is possible that a dominator is anywhere from 3-6 KM long. If the beam of the Speranza was slightly larger than the length of a dominator, that means the Speranza can be anywhere from 6-12 KM long. Any more and it would look like a flying pencil. Still not 20KM long...

 ph34r wrote:
How big is a continent sized cityscape? Even if we took our Earth's Madagascar as a smallest possible "continent" it is 570km wide at its small dimension....

Would an Ark Mechanicus be 570 kilometers long?

I am finding online opinions of its size like:

The Speranza is 20Km Wide, with a length of aproximately 120-130Km, possibly more as the quotes throw vastly larger estimates. The hallway....the HALLWAY and it's dedicated as such, to the bridge is 1.2km long. it's a freaking single hallway. Titans walk freely in the Speranza, i'm talking WARLORD titans.

I find that had to believe, considering the largest ship in the setting is like 30KM long. So the Speranza is suddenly the largest ship in the entirety of 40k by an order of magnitude?

Yes titans walked around in the Speranza... a warlord is only 100 feet tall... considering the Speraza could have a height/beam of probably around 3-4KM that isn't saying much. Just stick it in a large cargo bay or a titan holding facility.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Its known to be very large compared to Imperial standards so they are far larger than 5-7km long. Gloriana 's are 20 km long and the furious abyss dwarfed them so, seeing that the Mechanicum can make ships the size of the furious abyss for Legions I'm sure they can do a lot better for themselves, especially due to the fact they look for STC's. I don't know where you are getting your info from, if you actually have a source it must be old.

Only a comparative handfuls of Gloriana's were ever made, and they are as rare as a dress on an ork. 20KM long ships are very much the exception to the rule, not the standard. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Emperor-class_Battleship is a "Battleship" and is 7-12 KM long according to BFG source books.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. No it is not a man of iron lol If it was it would be an A.I. and the Imperium would have destroyed it.

The implication is that this robot has disguised itself. It is an AI, but it has fooled everyone else into thinking its just another robot.

At this point, it is a safe bet that very very few people have any real knowledge about the Men of Iron. So even if one is standing in front of you it would be unlikely for you to realize that it was one of them. It has been nearly 15,000 years since the Men of Iron were, allegedly, wiped out. Its possible that the only place anything describing a Man of Iron is located is on Mars itself, along with anybody who might actually be familiar with that text. So as long as this dude stays away from there he can pull the wool over everybody elses eyes.

Wow, haven't read the blackstone lore but that is fantastically badly written lore. What the Imperium can test the robot to see if it has A.I. I mean from the hardware alone they must be able to tell, I mean the Mechanicum can make A.I. granted in secret. ----I---AM---A---ROBOT-----BEEP-----BEEP


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w1zard wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Its known to be very large compared to Imperial standards so they are far larger than 5-7km long. Gloriana 's are 20 km long and the furious abyss dwarfed them so, seeing that the Mechanicum can make ships the size of the furious abyss for Legions I'm sure they can do a lot better for themselves, especially due to the fact they look for STC's. I don't know where you are getting your info from, if you actually have a source it must be old.

Only a comparative handfuls of Gloriana's were ever made, and they are as rare as a dress on an ork. 20KM long ships are very much the exception to the rule, not the standard. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Emperor-class_Battleship is a "Battleship" and is 7-12 KM long according to BFG source books.

Yeah but if they are talking the biggest ships then the bench mark is a Gloriana etc. they aren't going to use the norm in comparing it. The only exception is the Phalanx, Gloriana's and Emperors were actually made by the Imperium and Arks are as rare as them so I don't get your point.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. No it is not a man of iron lol If it was it would be an A.I. and the Imperium would have destroyed it.

The implication is that this robot has disguised itself. It is an AI, but it has fooled everyone else into thinking its just another robot.

At this point, it is a safe bet that very very few people have any real knowledge about the Men of Iron. So even if one is standing in front of you it would be unlikely for you to realize that it was one of them. It has been nearly 15,000 years since the Men of Iron were, allegedly, wiped out. Its possible that the only place anything describing a Man of Iron is located is on Mars itself, along with anybody who might actually be familiar with that text. So as long as this dude stays away from there he can pull the wool over everybody elses eyes.

Wow, haven't read the blackstone lore but that is fantastically badly written lore. What the Imperium can test the robot to see if it has A.I. I mean from the hardware alone they must be able to tell, I mean the Mechanicum can make A.I. granted in secret. ----I---AM---A---ROBOT-----BEEP-----BEEP

How would the Imperium test it? It would be rather difficult to test if something is X when you do not even know what the parameters for X are. This robot could easily pass itself off as part of the Legio Cybernetica's works of "Lesser and Righteous Works". http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Legio_Cybernetica. The entire Legio Cybernetica equipment would share a lot in common with the Men of Iron's hardware and software, both being considered living artificial organisms.

Given the massive variety and sheer amount of data involved, even someone who was familiar with the workings of most Cybernetica equipment could easily not be aware that this robot was something more.

Its not like the Mechanicus has some equivalent of the "Turing Test" to make sure something isn't a "Silica Animus".

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Yeah but if they are talking the biggest ships then the bench mark is a Gloriana etc. they aren't going to use the norm in comparing it. The only exception is the Phalanx, Gloriana's and Emperors were actually made by the Imperium and Arks are as rare as them so I don't get your point.

BFG source books put the size of at least one Ark Mechanicus at 5-7 KM. It is possible the Speranza is a Special snowflake that was bigger, but I doubt that it was as large as a Gloriana. Not only does it not mesh with the descriptions in the story, it makes no sense why the eldar would send a 5KM long cruiser to take it on alone and expect it to win (the farseer was shocked when it didn't... a farseer who had experience fighting the Imperium).

w1zard wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Yeah but if they are talking the biggest ships then the bench mark is a Gloriana etc. they aren't going to use the norm in comparing it. The only exception is the Phalanx, Gloriana's and Emperors were actually made by the Imperium and Arks are as rare as them so I don't get your point.

BFG source books put the size of at least one Ark Mechanicus at 5-7 KM. It is possible the Speranza is a Special snowflake that was bigger, but I doubt that it was as large as a Gloriana. Not only does it not mesh with the descriptions in the story, it makes no sense why the eldar would send a 5KM long cruiser to take it on alone and expect it to win (the farseer was shocked when it didn't... a farseer who had experience fighting the Imperium).

Well, the Speranza was a relic ship from the DAoT. Said Farseer would never have encountered something like it, and thus would be expected to underestimate it.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. No it is not a man of iron lol If it was it would be an A.I. and the Imperium would have destroyed it.

The implication is that this robot has disguised itself. It is an AI, but it has fooled everyone else into thinking its just another robot.

At this point, it is a safe bet that very very few people have any real knowledge about the Men of Iron. So even if one is standing in front of you it would be unlikely for you to realize that it was one of them. It has been nearly 15,000 years since the Men of Iron were, allegedly, wiped out. Its possible that the only place anything describing a Man of Iron is located is on Mars itself, along with anybody who might actually be familiar with that text. So as long as this dude stays away from there he can pull the wool over everybody elses eyes.

Wow, haven't read the blackstone lore but that is fantastically badly written lore. What the Imperium can test the robot to see if it has A.I. I mean from the hardware alone they must be able to tell, I mean the Mechanicum can make A.I. granted in secret. ----I---AM---A---ROBOT-----BEEP-----BEEP

How would the Imperium test it? It would be rather difficult to test if something is X when you do not even know what the parameters for X are. This robot could easily pass itself off as part of the Legio Cybernetica's works of "Lesser and Righteous Works". http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Legio_Cybernetica. The entire Legio Cybernetica equipment would share a lot in common with the Men of Iron's hardware and software, both being considered living artificial organisms.

Given the massive variety and sheer amount of data involved, even someone who was familiar with the workings of most Cybernetica equipment could easily not be aware that this robot was something more.

Its not like the Mechanicus has some equivalent of the "Turing Test" to make sure something isn't a "Silica Animus".

They wouldn't share anything with the Legio cybernetica, The Mechanicum have never worked on DAOT A.I. as far as we know. They were not living organism the Mechanicum use brains and living tissue for A.I. because they can control them rather than being able to make good old machine A.I. which the men of Iron are. You are suggesting that an A.I. is going to have the same hardware and software as their own machines, they could easily read the A.I. mind as they, could just read the activity going on in its brain and could tell it was functioning at far higher levels than an automaton, we can already do that on ourselves with FMRI's granted they are massive magnets but its the 41st millennium.

I concur with the above. The only Ad Mech tech priests that are going to have any experience with AI are the ones trying/having their own already like Cawl. They would be small in number, have a lot of reasons to not speak up about their talents, and would more likely than not to not expose the AI. Even then, The Men of Iron sound way more advance than 99.9 percent of what the IOM can currently create. It could probably fool most tests.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
. You are suggesting that an A.I. is going to have the same hardware and software as their own machines, they could easily read the A.I. mind as they, could just read the activity going on in its brain and could tell it was functioning at far higher levels than an automaton, we can already do that on ourselves with FMRI's granted they are massive magnets but its the 41st millennium.

Yes, we can scan people's brains. If you manage to stay away from the MRI machines, though, this is not going to happen. I just saw a dog walk down the street. Was it actually a concealed robot? I have no idea... because I didn't scan its brain.



It also wouldn't be unreasonable for the machine from the DAOT to have some sort of ability to fool or interfere with any scans or probes, sending back expected results or bad readings. And failing that, well, it has a big gun.

 insaniak wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
. You are suggesting that an A.I. is going to have the same hardware and software as their own machines, they could easily read the A.I. mind as they, could just read the activity going on in its brain and could tell it was functioning at far higher levels than an automaton, we can already do that on ourselves with FMRI's granted they are massive magnets but its the 41st millennium.

Yes, we can scan people's brains. If you manage to stay away from the MRI machines, though, this is not going to happen. I just saw a dog walk down the street. Was it actually a concealed robot? I have no idea... because I didn't scan its brain.



It also wouldn't be unreasonable for the machine from the DAOT to have some sort of ability to fool or interfere with any scans or probes, sending back expected results or bad readings. And failing that, well, it has a big gun.

They managed to weld an aquila on it I'm sure they've looked under the hood.

Yeah I doubt it can interfere with scanners or cogitators and show a perfectly working action potentials denoting an automaton. If we are talking realism it would probably be a wave that disrupts it but I really doubt they have a wave that can perfectly replicate such precision and the Imperium would most likely have things to detect that as they inteference would have to be grounded in the laws of physics, I doubt it can use telekinesis, I mean men of Iron were probably incredibly advanced but not magic, plus there are a lot of examples of DAOT tech and the only thing that reaches that kind of tech level was the castigator titan, but that was chaos warped so not really a good example to draw from.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:


They managed to weld an aquila on it I'm sure they've looked under the hood.

Not necessarily- looking 'under the hood' is a good way to offend the machine spirit.
These are folks whose approach to fixing complex tech has literally involved incense, prayers, applying holy oil (WD-40) and striking the object three times with a (blessed) wrench.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
They managed to weld an aquila on it I'm sure they've looked under the hood.

Who is 'they'?

The mechanicus wouldn't be the only beings in the Imperium who know how to stick a thing onto another thing.

Yeah I doubt it can interfere with scanners or cogitators and show a perfectly working action potentials denoting an automaton. If we are talking realism it would probably be a wave that disrupts it but I really doubt they have a wave that can perfectly replicate such precision and the Imperium would most likely have things to detect that as they inteference would have to be grounded in the laws of physics, I doubt it can use telekinesis, I mean men of Iron were probably incredibly advanced but not magic, plus there are a lot of examples of DAOT tech and the only thing that reaches that kind of tech level was the castigator titan, but that was chaos warped so not really a good example to draw from.

Again, assuming it ever actually finds itself in a situation where it's having its head scanned.


But I'm sort of reminded here of a story from way back at the end of one of GW's global campaigns, where a dude was arguing with one of the games developers over whether or not Chaos had established a strong foothold on the ground. Dude's argument against was that 'Summoning daemons takes time!' ... to which said Games Dev responded, 'Really? How long does it take, exactly?'


The point being, it's a little pointless sitting here arguing that a robot couldn't pass undetected in the Imperium when that argument relies entirely on knowledge of completely fictional technology... If the robot's backstory is that it has managed to pass undetected, then it seems fairly safe to assume that it has the wherewithal to remain undetected.