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 Furyou Miko wrote:
It doesn't outright say they suck. But the Maynarkh have FTL drives and the Solemnace can teleport across the galaxy

Where is that ever said?

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The only thing we have saying that the Sautekh are the 'most powerful' is a statement directly to that effect with no corroborating evidence, that is presented as the Sautekh themselves claiming it to be true!

The Codex says it by way of the omniscient narrator, it is not presented as the Sautekh saying it at all.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
In any case, I don't believe that the Dolmen Gates were meant to replace the Inertialess Drive at all.

But they were, they are the replacement form of speedy interstellar travel, I think he rightly recognized that reliable near instantaneous travel with no peril was a setting breaker.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
After all, the dolmen gate above Sanctuary 101 was stated to be one of only four that the Necrons had access to at the current time, and the fourth one wasn't Sautekh in the golden age of the Necron empire! That means that the "third most powerful Necron dynasty", without FTL, would have had the ability to control three systems with just their own dolmen gates, which is nothing. Either the Sautekh are talking a load of gak, or they had Inertialess Drive to travel to systems nearby their Dolmen Gate 'transit hubs'.

Where did you get the four number? Hammer and Anvil says that the Necron Ships can travel at "near-light velocities" in chapter 10, so no Inertialess Drive there.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
It was something new, something that no other faction had. It was a unique selling point that made the Necrons a credible threat.

New and unique does not mean good. it made them a very incredible threat, because no one would be able to oppose a coordinated Necron attack and any sort of logistics become a thing of the past.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
By forcing them to use the Webway, even without the points mentioned above, you're basically saying that the awesome, massive Necron empire only came into existence in the what, hundred years between meeting the Eldar and entering the Long Sleep?

Just that it formed very slowly.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Dolmen Gates force Necrons to play second fiddle to the Eldar, which means they can't be seen as a credible threat to them - despite the fact that they were.

How? Being able to tread on the Eldar's "safe place" makes them a very credible threat indeed. Much more credible actually, since Oldcrons, lacking the ability to breach the webway, would be unable to remove the Eldar or the Old Ones should they just decide to bunker up within the webway and raid out.

After reading the thread, here is the easiest way to introduce Oldcron fluff back into the background:

You have a Phaeron who detests being this immortal being more than others and wants to eradicate all life just out of shear spite and jealousy..

Its what I would do if I wanted to build a Necron force..

What have I done? Oh God in Heaven! What have I done?

Animus wrote:

Where is that ever said?

Maynarkh - IA12. I posted the references with bigchunks of text a little while back in another thread, so go look it up. Solemnace - The aftermath of Fall of Damnos in white dwarf has Trazyn teleport into the middle of the Ultramarine camp, mouth off to Sicarius, then teleport home.

Animus wrote:

The Codex says it by way of the omniscient narrator, it is not presented as the Sautekh saying it at all.

Oh, honey, there are no omniscient narrators in 40k codex writing. They're all written in a primarily in-universe style, as wikipedia would say.

Animus wrote:
But they were, they are the replacement form of speedy interstellar travel, I think he rightly recognized that reliable near instantaneous travel with no peril was a setting breaker.

Well, that's your opinion. I disagree with it, but since neither of us can read minds, we can't really resolve this. Since both have been stated to exist, I'm going to go with "Inertialess Drive isn't suitable for journeys of more than a thousand lightyears or so" and that the dolmen gates are needed to get between further distances than that.

Animus wrote:
Where did you get the four number? Hammer and Anvil says that the Necron Ships can travel at "near-light velocities" in chapter 10, so no Inertialess Drive there.

Well, no. It is an inertialess drive. That doesn't mean its FTL, but it is an inertialess drive, because nothing has stated that the Necrons do not use them, and IA12 pg67 states that the Necron rules for Battlefleet Gothic are still appropriate, which means that the Battlefleet Gothic fluff is also appropriate.

So, again, IA12 states that they have them. And the background text definitely has examples of them moving at FTL speeds in combat, which is the signature of the FTL-capable inertialess drive.

As for the four gates comment, I'll just leave the burden of proof on your shoulders, because my girlfriend will be angry if I start hunting through books again.

Animus wrote:

New and unique does not mean good. it made them a very incredible threat, because no one would be able to oppose a coordinated Necron attack and any sort of logistics become a thing of the past.

While without it, they are incapable of threatening so much as a single star system. Good game, GW.

Animus wrote:

Just that it formed very slowly.

But you can't have an empire without rapid communication capabilities. You can have a lot of individual planets run by the same species, but they'll no more be an empire than the eldar exodites are an empire.

Animus wrote:

How? Being able to tread on the Eldar's "safe place" makes them a very credible threat indeed. Much more credible actually, since Oldcrons, lacking the ability to breach the webway, would be unable to remove the Eldar or the Old Ones should they just decide to bunker up within the webway and raid out.

Which is why the Eldar won the war in heaven, you may note.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Maynarkh - IA12. I posted the references with bigchunks of text a little while back in another thread, so go look it up. Solemnace - The aftermath of Fall of Damnos in white dwarf has Trazyn teleport into the middle of the Ultramarine camp, mouth off to Sicarius, then teleport home.

All I've read from IA12 says that the ships can accelerate very fast, not that they are inertialess drives. Do you mean the Traitor's Gate battle report aftermath? Trazyn is not said to teleport away from that, the last we get is Trazyn, or a duplicate of his, getting his face shot off and collapsing in a heap.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Oh, honey, there are no omniscient narrators in 40k codex writing. They're all written in a primarily in-universe style, as wikipedia would say.

I disagree with that, there are points that no in-universe narrator could know. But beyond that there is no obvious Sautekh bias. Beyond even that there's the fact that if you're willing to just disregard anything that you dislike as bias or lies then there's really no point in discussing fluff online with others. Anything becomes fair game. Orks aren't green, and are peaceful society, Tyranids are intergalactic bankers and Daemons don't actually exist.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I'm going to go with "Inertialess Drive isn't suitable for journeys of more than a thousand lightyears or so" and that the dolmen gates are needed to get between further distances than that.

That's pulled from nowhere, and if they cannot perform as inertialess drives why call them inerialess drives?

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Well, no. It is an inertialess drive. That doesn't mean its FTL, but it is an inertialess drive, because nothing has stated that the Necrons do not use them, and IA12 pg67 states that the Necron rules for Battlefleet Gothic are still appropriate, which means that the Battlefleet Gothic fluff is also appropriate.

So you're just eager to keep the name then, despite the capabilities are totally different? Rules being appropriate does not mean the corresponding fluff also is as well.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
So, again, IA12 states that they have them. And the background text definitely has examples of them moving at FTL speeds in combat, which is the signature of the FTL-capable inertialess drive.

It never states it, and the background never has them moving at FTL speeds in combat, not even Oldcron fluff had that, it infact noted that they slowed down for that.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
As for the four gates comment, I'll just leave the burden of proof on your shoulders, because my girlfriend will be angry if I start hunting through books again.

Well I couldn't find anything on there being just four gates, so until you can provide evidence I'm going to assume you simply misremembered.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
While without it, they are incapable of threatening so much as a single star system. Good game, GW.

Not with Dolmen gates. GW also has little sense of scale.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
But you can't have an empire without rapid communication capabilities. You can have a lot of individual planets run by the same species, but they'll no more be an empire than the eldar exodites are an empire.

They can apparently communicate instantaneously, using quantum stuff. They just can't move that way. "Already he was beginning to understand the first principles of how the necron network operated. With the correct quantum transmitter, it could be accessed from anywhere in the universe, instantaneously communicating through the entanglement phenomena of controlled quanta."

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Which is why the Eldar won the war in heaven, you may note.

But they didn't. In the oldcron fluff they simply survived. In the new fluff the Necrons were suverly depleted after their wars with the Old ones and C'tan while the Eldar were still strong. So rather than fight the necrons retreated into their tombs to repair and wait it out.

The Imperium of Man lacks rapid communications systems. Even with Astropaths, transmissions can take weeks, months, years, or even centuries to get to their destination, if they don't just dissipate into the Warp entirely. That's why every part of the Imperium outside of the Solar System is technically an independent vassal state subordinate to the Imperium proper, there's just no way for the Imperium to directly rule the entire galaxy.