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 Vaktathi wrote:
A Strike cruiser itself isn't capable of annihilating every major city in short order and could be struck back at

Bombardment cannons are more than capable of leveling entire cities, and we have not a single weapon that could even scratch the paint on something like a Strike Cruiser.

and history has shown that bombardment of cities typically does not force capitulation, if anything it generally stiffens resistance.

No one in history has ever had the capability or willpower to unleash devastation of the sort the Imperium is more than happy to. It's quite literally a case of "Capitulate, or we'll exterminatus your planet and come back in a few centuries to repopulate."

History has shown that almost all nations, when faced with certain and overwhelming force, will capitulate.

Methinks you're missing the history of the human race for most of the 20th century. That's been tried. It's typically failed.

The Astartes, if faced with resistance, could systematically destroy every population and manufacturing centre. There'd be no fuel, no ammunition, no communications, no spare parts, no air support, nothing. And any reports of resistance would result in everything within ten kilometers of the reported resistance being scoured to the bedrock from orbit.

It's kind of like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Except instead of sending troops in to fight the enemy, they'd simply blow up the entire country, and every neighbouring country, just to be sure.

Question: why on Earth (pun?) would anyone even argue for a second that we could fight back and wipe out the invaders? They're 38000 years in the future with super cool armor and guns and vehicles with overlarge guns!

 Decio wrote:
Question: why on Earth (pun?) would anyone even argue for a second that we could fight back and wipe out the invaders? They're 38000 years in the future with super cool armor and guns and vehicles with overlarge guns!

Well, stranded on foot they're just big, heavily armoured targets. Their weapons lack the range or capability to combat our own. Even in the 40K universe, their strength lies in their rapid deployment and evacuation abilities. They can teleport into an area, kill every bastard there, and teleport out again before anyone can do anything about it. Each and every Marine is a bad-ass, and it's their ability to get a lot of those bad-asses into a very small area, very quickly, without actually having to cross the intervening space, that makes them so kick-ass.

In terms of actual warfare, if an Imperial Guard advance is being held down by, say, a massive artillery battery that is preventing their advance across a critical area then the Marines can teleport in thirty or forty Terminators, obliterate that artillery battery, and be gone again inside of five minutes, allowing the Guardsmen to advance. But if they had to actual walk anywhere, and try to defend or attack fortified positions in the traditional sense, they'd be in a lot of trouble.

The Hellfire Torpedo was originally classed as an exterminatus weapon when Space Hulk first came out. (When did I get that old!) Of course GW being GW this may have been retconned into normal ship weaponry.

As to grenades affecting our MBTs, in one encounter within Iraq a Challenger 2 came under attack from irregular forces with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. The driver's sight was damaged and while attempting to back away under the commander's directions, the other sights were damaged and the tank threw its tracks entering a ditch. It was hit directly by fourteen rocket propelled grenades from close range and a MILAN anti-tank missile. The crew survived remaining safe within the tank until the tank was recovered for repairs, the worst damage being to the sighting system. It was back in operation six hours later after repairs. One Challenger 2 operating near Basra survived being hit by 70 RPGs in another incident. I remember that the worst injuries sustained by the crew was deafness due to all the noise. However, since all British vehicles come fitted with kettles a nice cup of tea helped pass the time.

Space Marines represent the ultimate fighting force of the Imperium. They are not invulnerable or invincible.

Cheers

Andrew

 FinalAnswer wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
A nuclear missile packing half a dozen multi-megaton warheads on MIRV launcher the size of a commuter car would be significantly more dangerous.

No it wouldn't. Hellfire missiles are stated to possess 610 gigatons of firepower each. We could not begin to hope to match 40k firepower, our nukes would be useless against 40k ships.

Hellfire missiles? I think you mean Hellfire bolts, or Hunter Killer missiles, and those are basically AT4's.

 AndrewC wrote:
all British vehicles come fitted with kettles

I really want this to be true!

They would have no reason to attack earth, if I recall correctly Earth is pre-holy terra.
And even if they did invade, when they attack Norwich and walked into the GW the space marines would realize that we are there creators. Therefore believe that the warhammer community was the collective consciousness of the immortal Emperor and practically worship us. More specifically the owners of GW.

Or they would realize that they are a work of fiction and pop out of reality.

"POP goes the space marine"


Sir Bushwookie

 Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
A Strike cruiser itself isn't capable of annihilating every major city in short order and could be struck back at

Bombardment cannons are more than capable of leveling entire cities, and we have not a single weapon that could even scratch the paint on something like a Strike Cruiser.

Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can, and a strike cruiser isn't going to be able to level every major city on earth in any quick amount of time. I didn't say they couldn't level a city, just that doing so to every major city on earth would take...a very long time given that there are over a thousand cities in the world with populations in excess of half a million people.

No one in history has ever had the capability or willpower to unleash devastation of the sort the Imperium is more than happy to. It's quite literally a case of "Capitulate, or we'll exterminatus your planet and come back in a few centuries to repopulate."

And a single strike cruiser isn't capable of that, and actually humans have pretty much done that to each other multiple times over the course of history. Not on planetwide scale, but on a scale enough to wipe out civilizations (which, to those being wiped out, is basically the same thing). Hell, the US threatened to do it to the Japanese. The Romans did it to Carthage. The Mongols destroyed several ancient city states, with unique civilzations that were thousands of years old, to the point where they were almost forgotten entirely from human memory and almost every inhabitant slain to the last.

History has shown that almost all nations, when faced with certain and overwhelming force, will capitulate.

Typically such has to be exerted and they must be exhausted and unable to fight on in any meaningful way. For example, in WW2, the Japanese only surrendered after not only being threatened with nuclear annihilation, but having their best remaining reserves overrun and destroyed by the Red Army in mere days, with less petrol and coal left in their entire national reserves than what a US naval battlegroup went through in a couple of weeks, along with having an air force that was reduced to almost complete obliteration and building aircraft out of wood for suicide attacks and almost no ships and absolutely no fuel to fight with. The Germans only surrendered at the end of WW2 after having their capitol and almost all major cities overrun, no more than a few dozen flight capable aircraft, practically no fuel, all their industrial capacity destroyed, almost all of their armor lost, having to recruit 12 year olds and retirees directly onto the front lines, and taking (and inflicting) almost as many casualties in the last year of the war as the preceding 4 years combined.

The Astartes, if faced with resistance, could systematically destroy every population and manufacturing centre.

Only through massive orbital bombardment, certainly not through a ground campaign. And without a massive fleet simultaneously engaging thousands of major population centers, there'd be plenty of opportunity for escape.

There'd be no fuel, no ammunition, no communications, no spare parts, no air support, nothing. And any reports of resistance would result in everything within ten kilometers of the reported resistance being scoured to the bedrock from orbit.

That assumes they have any idea where all these facilities, warehouses, communications centers, command bunkers, production facilities, military bases, etc are. Leveling cities is one thing, gathering the intelligence and acting on it to identify all these other facilities and the time to engage them would be substantial. And it's not like the Astartes exactly have a wealth of recon assets. A few dozen scouts for ground insertion and orbital surveillance of a planet you're completely unfamiliar with wouldn't likely yield impressive intelligence results for quite some time. It's another reason Marines work as Space Fantasy and not as Science Fiction.

It's kind of like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Except instead of sending troops in to fight the enemy, they'd simply blow up the entire country, and every neighbouring country, just to be sure.

They tried that in Vietnam in many areas, it didn't work. We dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than was dropped on both Germany and Japan in WW2 combined. Hell, they tried it in world war one, dropping such tremendous amounts of ordnance on battlefield as to physically change the geography, yet when it came time to go over the top, lo and behold there the enemy was to fight back. The Germans tried it in Warsaw and still had to send in ground forces. Completely annihilating large numbers of people/machines/emplacements/etc through bombardment alone is almost impossible short of nuclear carpet bombing.

 Kaldor wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:
all British vehicles come fitted with kettles

I really want this to be true!

Yep. Part of the specifics of any new armoured vehicle is that they contain BVs (Boiling Vessels) or Bivvies designed specifically to heat water seperately for consumption. IIRC this was because in WW2 the british forces kept causing breakdowns on their vehicles by misusing them to brew tea. Authorities bowed their heads to the inevitable and made it part of their design specifics.

Cheers

Andrew

 Vaktathi wrote:
Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can.

Macrocannons have been calculated to possess 475.2 teratons of kinetic energy per salvo, assuming all the shells hit.

As I said, we can do absolutely nothing to a strike-cruiser if it parks itself in orbit.

 FinalAnswer wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can.

Macrocannons have been calculated to possess 475.2 teratons of kinetic energy per salvo, assuming all the shells hit.

As I said, we can do absolutely nothing to a strike-cruiser if it parks itself in orbit.

Please do not use those calculations as they are so... wrong as to make any use of them irrelevant.

What you have written states that a macrocannon does app 2000 time more damage than the stated hellstrike missile, yet the hellstrike is an exterminatus weapon. Also one shot would be sufficent to not only flatten anything hit, but sufficent to knock chunks off the planet itself. Since these weapons are required to fire in batteries just to damage, not destroy, eg a rok, magnitudes smaller than a planet, this means that the figures are wildly inaccurate.

Or GW fiction writers simply dont care. I'll let you make that decision.

Cheers

Andrew

The question is Space Marines yes?

So let's throw out the space ships because that makes everything moot.

Earth is not defenseless.

Going against us:
1. Small caliber projectile infantry rifles/carbines
2. Fragile troops by comparison (IG)
3. Power Armor. The armor is a given. I am talking about all the integrated systems; Night Vision, Thermal, Bio-Chem filters, waste management, medical aid
4. Bolters. Bolters are like 20mm cannons. They negate most cover/barriers and light vehicles.

For us:
2. Tanks. Our modern tanks would outmatch Predators.
2. Air Superiority.
3. A Navy.
4. Engagement Range. SM and a lot of their weapons are for close in fighting. Most modern day weapons that don't fit into a grunts hands, have very long engagement ranges.
5. Armed Populace. The staggering number of firearms available to the masses.


I know a mere Company couldn't take earth (no space ships). But I don't know how many or how long.

Even with space ships, I don't think Earth is probably as defenseless as most of us would believe.

 AndrewC wrote:

 FinalAnswer wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Multi-megaton nuclear warheads would do the trick if mere Macrocannons can.

Macrocannons have been calculated to possess 475.2 teratons of kinetic energy per salvo, assuming all the shells hit.

As I said, we can do absolutely nothing to a strike-cruiser if it parks itself in orbit.

Please do not use those calculations as they are so... wrong as to make any use of them irrelevant.

What you have written states that a macrocannon does app 2000 time more damage than the stated hellstrike missile, yet the hellstrike is an exterminatus weapon. Also one shot would be sufficent to not only flatten anything hit, but sufficent to knock chunks off the planet itself. Since these weapons are required to fire in batteries just to damage, not destroy, eg a rok, magnitudes smaller than a planet, this means that the figures are wildly inaccurate.

Or GW fiction writers simply dont care. I'll let you make that decision.

Cheers

Andrew

Sci-fi weapon calcs generally are ranged in ridiculous amounts, but they generally coincide with 40k fluff, what with the conventional weapons on starships being capable of razing continents, and completely obliterating planets under sustained bombardment. That said, a lower revised calc in the thread I found the first one puts a macrocannon salvo at about 1 teraton, if all the shells hit, so meh.

 AndrewC wrote:
in WW2 the british forces kept causing breakdowns on their vehicles by misusing them to brew tea.

Oh, that's brilliant!

 Kaldor wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:
in WW2 the british forces kept causing breakdowns on their vehicles by misusing them to brew tea.

Oh, that's brilliant!

Its a neccesity of life