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40K has always seemed blown out of proportion with everything from infantry to starship size. There seems to be an exception to this, though, which ironically is the Titans.

Here's the example that made me think of this. The Imperator is the Imperium's biggest Titan and is really big and scary. In comparison, lets look at Mass Effect. The Reaper Destroyer is the smallest type of Reaper used as a super-heavy walker by the faction with the same name, and this is in a setting that is comparatively 'low' sci-fi (That is, there's not a lot of space magic, and the space magic at least tries to keep a scientific explanation; not to mention it takes place less than 200 years in the future). As far as I know, the Imperator is ~70m tall, yes? That is, unless it's outdated, but I have never seen anything else be stated so we'll go with that for now. Now, a Reaper Destroyer is 160m. Slightly above twice the height. It's significant, but it might not sound like a lot until we actually compare them. Especially when you consider the Destroyer is the smallest class of Reaper. The Sovereign-class Reaper is also capable of landing, walking around and participating in land battles, and it's 2 km tall.




Rough estimate. Apologies for colossal pic, and for the rather simple comparison (Had to put two Imperators on top of each other to ensure I got roughly the right Destroyer size of Imperator x 2 + 20m). It may be slightly inaccurate but the picture is not the argument, the difference should be clear.


Now, I do not have a problem with all this. Titans are fine the way they are and while 1 km tall Titans stomping around would be cool, 70m is ok. But isn't it a bit strange that if 40K has an area where it is not oversized, it is the GIANT ROBOTS OF STOMPY SHOOTY DEATH?

Just checking if anyone has thought of this before. Don't take it too seriously, just my musings on how 40K stands next to other sci-fis (Or well... Science fantasy/fantasy with high tech/stuff like that)

Well... The GW design team likes to be realistic. However, the Phalanx Battle-Barge is unreal at almost twice the size of a normal Battle-Barge.

Umm... The Phalanx isn't a battle barge. It's a star fort. The two are completely different things.

Well I remember a lengthy debate about Titans on Warseer where one poster was fine with alien Titans, fine with daemonically possessed Titans but his suspension of disbelief ended and his apoplexy started because Imperial Titans 'use pistons'. Apparently the idea of giant pistons was just too much. However, that's often just something novel writers have harped on about because the models have piston like structures on them because they look cool but Titan locomotion is achieved using muscle-fibre bundles, the same technology in powered armour.

I don't have a problem with giant robots, this isn't a hard sci-fi universe where everything must be 100% realistic. I have even less problem with giant space ships, afterall they are supposed to be like cities in space and home to millions of people.

I think the main problem is not with the size of things but in how it is portrayed. They write about these things as if they are small (space ships for example) or as if they are walking mountains (Titans) when the reality is quite different. Hives are another thing that aren't portrayed very well. They are supposed to be so big you can wander for days without seeing another soul and yet, look at the size of Hive Primus, it's only about eight miles across at its widest part, it wouldn't take days to walk anywhere, especially with giant empty domes. I had the idea for a hive on my DIY Chapter's homeworld that was hundreds if not a thousand or more miles across, a literal man-made mountain range. Same thing with spaceships really, you see them get boarded and within a short span of time the invaders have reached the engines, the ship et cetera when it should take hours and hours, maybe even days to get to these places; accurate boarding torpedoes not-withstanding but for expediency within a novel these things are often overlooked.

If the Imperium can pack the firepower of an entire army into a smaller machine then good on them.

(The Imperator would kick that Reaper's ass. )

 TheCustomLime wrote:
If the Imperium can pack the firepower of an entire army into a smaller machine then good on them.

(The Imperator would kick that Reaper's ass. )

Yes... I have been thinking on how that's possible, actually.

Reapers are walking around with beam weapons that have a yield in the hundreds of kilotons of TNT. Their weapons, notably, have a surprisingly tiny area of effect but deals extreme damage to the targets that it does hit, reliably capable of oneshotting enemy capital ships.

Conversely, Titan weaponry is described as being on a megaton level, which makes me wonder a bit. Look at the image above. Now image a Reaper that is 12 times as tall as the one shown. The Titan supposedly outguns this Reaper.

...How?

Well, for one, size is not a perfect correlation to power. After all, a pistol is far more lethal than say, a bow and arrow despite the latter being bigger and using far bigger ammunition.

Plus, a Reaper laser is just that, it's a big laser. 40k has big lasers on the squad level that gradually ramp up to larger weapons. It's been a long time since I played the ME games so I may not remember, but is there weaponized plasma in that universe? Even then, there's nothing in the ME setting that can really play at the level of vortex weapons, all of which are available on smaller titans.

 curran12 wrote:
Plus, a Reaper laser is just that, it's a big laser.

Technically it isn't a laser. One armament common with the various subtypes is a powerful "magnetohydrodynamic" weapon which ejects a stream of molten metal at a fraction of the speed of light, tearing through pretty much everything it hits. Just what its limits are is not clear since even the several kilometer long Dreadnought ships of the setting have been unable to survive a hit from the weapon, despite their shielding.

There is weaponised plasma, plenty of it. One example is the plasma shotgun, commonly used by the machine race known as geth.

As for Vortex weapons, probably true. The ME games do have rare infantry-wielded guns that fire small black holes and similar insanities but the daemonic nature of the Vortex weaponry probably makes them superior.

Hmmm yeah there is, but at the same time it is a rather scaled down version to what we might call Imperium plasma. Mass Effect plasma is far more stable and safe, but at the same time considerably less potent than Imperium plasma. Compare the damage potential of both:

In Mass Effect, the plasma weapons are, more or less analogous to existing weapons. You can swap in a plasma shotgun and it is still batting in the same league as other shotguns, and is even outclassed by some projectile ones for damages, such as the Krogan one.

In the Imperium, even a plasma pistol can punch through all but the heaviest vehicle armor and there's no personal armor that can hope to stop it. The only thing that can are things that provide an invul save, so energy shields and the like. But at the same time, the guns can overheat and/or blow up in your hand.

One thing 40K could learn from Mass Effect is the value of personal shielding. Even the comparatively lightweight kinetic barriers worn by infantry makes a huge difference with the firepower of sci-fi guns thrown around.

And a Titan's void-shield doesn't care how much molten metal you throw at it, it just sends it into the Warp...

... and then it tears the Reaper a new b-hole (several of them, in fact) with its Megabolter, which fires *massive* armor-piercing, mass-reactive explosive shells.

Or it just ends the Reaper with its Volcano Cannon, which shears through it like a hot knife through butter.

Basically, while many other sci-fi/sci-fantasy settings might be more advanced than 40K, it bears to remember that most-complex computer in the universe can be rendered useless by liberal application of the common hammer.

The Imperium often makes up for its lack of technology with sheer, unrelenting, unforgiving brutality.

You're talking about two horses of a different color, my friend. Mass Effect is a far shinier and nicer and, most importantly advacement-based science fiction setting. 40k's means of dealing with technology is way different. There is personal shielding, but the technology to make and maintain it is either lost or so far degreaded that it is treated as divine magic.

Plus the armies of 40k and Mass Effect differ greatly. Let's just look at the battle for Earth in ME3. The casualties for that on the part of the good guys was insane. To the Imperium, those kinds of losses in that scale are a drop in the ocean. Why bother spending resources more valuable than the individual infantryman when you can put in 40 more infantrymen instead? Lives are the cheap currency in 40k, whereas ME puts them higher.

Well, no, of course. The settings are opposites in bright vs dark, though I do not know the technical terms. My original question still stands, though. Titan designs are a relic from the GC/DaoT, eras where technology was ascendant. Why were Titans not bigger?

Why should they be? Per their lore, a single maniple of Titans was capable of leveling entire cities and conquering entire continents. If they were capable of that at the size they are currently, why would you make it bigger? It accomplishes its design purpose as-is.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Well, no, of course. The settings are opposites in bright vs dark, though I do not know the technical terms. My original question still stands, though. Titan designs are a relic from the GC/DaoT, eras where technology was ascendant. Why were Titans not bigger?

Why aren't computers the size of office buildings anymore?

Because miniaturization makes it unnecessary.

 gunslingerpro wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Well, no, of course. The settings are opposites in bright vs dark, though I do not know the technical terms. My original question still stands, though. Titan designs are a relic from the GC/DaoT, eras where technology was ascendant. Why were Titans not bigger?

Why aren't computers the size of office buildings anymore?

Because miniaturization makes it unnecessary.

That is not entirely equivalent, though. Size is never an outright advantage for a computer whereas it may well be for a super-heavy walker.

Still, I can agree to Psienesis' post.

Because Titans have shrunk in more recent lore.

Back in the original timeline, Warlord titans were a kilometre tall. Then FW made their Warhound kit and everything... shrank.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Because Titans have shrunk in more recent lore.

Back in the original timeline, Warlord titans were a kilometre tall. Then FW made their Warhound kit and everything... shrank.

Actually, Forgeworld upsized everything.

The earlier 28mm Mike Biasi Titans were made at the old 1 inch=5 ft 40K scaling and were made to be a fairly direct scaling from the Epic sizes(both model and textual, iirc).

I'm also not sure where you got that they were a kilometer tall, the original Adeptus Titanicus has them around 33-40 Meters. Even at the most extreme(say, Redemption Corps, which can't agree within itself how tall it is), they've been listed at ~200 Meters.

Titanicus, I think. The graphic novel, not the book.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 gunslingerpro wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Well, no, of course. The settings are opposites in bright vs dark, though I do not know the technical terms. My original question still stands, though. Titan designs are a relic from the GC/DaoT, eras where technology was ascendant. Why were Titans not bigger?

Why aren't computers the size of office buildings anymore?

Because miniaturization makes it unnecessary.

That is not entirely equivalent, though. Size is never an outright advantage for a computer whereas it may well be for a super-heavy walker.

Still, I can agree to Psienesis' post.

if you make it bigger it has great difficulty in hiding behind things and tends to find itself sinking into the ground... even with void shields, not being shot at is still the best way of not breaking your shiny godhead toys.

On the topic of a Reaper vs Titan I have to disagree - even before going into how real-life physics would effect either (Bolters don't work so well when you actually know what deuterium is.. )
Anyone with even a semblance of knowledge knows that firing mass - much less molten metal - at any fraction of the speed of light is far more devastating than the made-up numbers of WH40k.
If the 450KT (Grabbed from wiki) high-end estimate is true, it's more likely that's "per second" or some such thing, since trying to get the equivalent properties of a stream of mass versus an explosion are pretty damn hard.

Moreover, if Titan weapons were actually in the megaton range, they would destroy themselves with their own salvo. How do you even find an equivalence when it comes to plasma or laser weaponry - which is where I am guessing the estimate originates from? How does either faction get an estimate of a laser or molten metal stream to an explosion?

But Mass Effect is a culture where the average soldier is equipped with a railgun of varying power and all have personal shields capable of taking said railgun shots.

Having said that - I know Mass Effect vs. 40k would be a blood bath and not in ME's favor.

I personally love Titanicus and wish Titans were portrayed like that more often. Lumbering, half-feral Gods of war that truly identify with the scale of their existence to the tiny mortals on the ground.

Ferros wrote:
On the topic of a Reaper vs Titan I have to disagree - even before going into how real-life physics would effect either (Bolters don't work so well when you actually know what deuterium is.. )
Anyone with even a semblance of knowledge knows that firing mass - much less molten metal - at any fraction of the speed of light is far more devastating than the made-up numbers of WH40k.
If the 450KT (Grabbed from wiki) high-end estimate is true, it's more likely that's "per second" or some such thing, since trying to get the equivalent properties of a stream of mass versus an explosion are pretty damn hard.

Moreover, if Titan weapons were actually in the megaton range, they would destroy themselves with their own salvo. How do you even find an equivalence when it comes to plasma or laser weaponry - which is where I am guessing the estimate originates from? How does either faction get an estimate of a laser or molten metal stream to an explosion?

But Mass Effect is a culture where the average soldier is equipped with a railgun of varying power and all have personal shields capable of taking said railgun shots.

Having said that - I know Mass Effect vs. 40k would be a blood bath and not in ME's favor.

I personally love Titanicus and wish Titans were portrayed like that more often. Lumbering, half-feral Gods of war that truly identify with the scale of their existence to the tiny mortals on the ground.

Titans on some level are made of adamatanium. I'd be more worried about how W40K titans are made out of a material that should have an outlandishly shot half life and decaying at an absurd rate and poisoning everything around the vehicle.

On the topic of a Reaper vs Titan I have to disagree - even before going into how real-life physics would effect either (Bolters don't work so well when you actually know what deuterium is.. )

This is 40K. It and Realism are not exactly on speaking terms. It's not that they hate each other, it's just that they don't know each other at all well. They met at a party once, years ago, and vaguely, vaguely remember the encounter, and they might give a slight nod if they passed each other on the street, but they otherwise have no association.

Maybe they don't make Titans bigger because at some point they would be too heavy to actually get anywhere?

You could easily figure that the Titan has far more advanced technology than the Reaper.

Small is still a relative term. While that Reaper may seem big, given its height its actually pretty slim. Its central body isn't much more massive than a single Warlord Titan. So for its height its not very big.

The Reaper has a problem in the realism department. Given its size, and the size of its contact points with the ground, its legs should be sinking a good 10 meters into the ground every time it shifts its weight around. On any ground with a decent topsoil it would be like a human walking in ankle deep mud. And its ankles would be under immense stress. They'd be twisting or even snapping completely off.

Not to mention that its joints are completely exposed. Comparatively, Imperial Titan joints are less exposed. And any exposure is compensated by Void Shields.

The largest Imperial Titans are still also capable of taking cover behind buildings we have currently. While that massive cockroach isn't.

Titans are big, but not outlandishly so.

 Psienesis wrote:
And a Titan's void-shield doesn't care how much molten metal you throw at it, it just sends it into the Warp...

Are void shields and the warp connected? I was unaware of this.

 Macharius. wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
And a Titan's void-shield doesn't care how much molten metal you throw at it, it just sends it into the Warp...

Are void shields and the warp connected? I was unaware of this.

Where have you been for the past several decades since BFG (or possibly earlier)? Void shields work by displacing energy into the warp. It's basically a giant wormhole.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You could easily figure that the Titan has far more advanced technology than the Reaper.

Small is still a relative term. While that Reaper may seem big, given its height its actually pretty slim. Its central body isn't much more massive than a single Warlord Titan. So for its height its not very big.

The Reaper has a problem in the realism department. Given its size, and the size of its contact points with the ground, its legs should be sinking a good 10 meters into the ground every time it shifts its weight around. On any ground with a decent topsoil it would be like a human walking in ankle deep mud. And its ankles would be under immense stress. They'd be twisting or even snapping completely off.

Not to mention that its joints are completely exposed. Comparatively, Imperial Titan joints are less exposed. And any exposure is compensated by Void Shields.

Actually, unlike 40K, Mass Effect recognises these problems exist and there's in-universe explanations for it.

For the weight, the Mass Effect setting has something called, unsurprisingly, mass effect.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_Field

To sum it up, when Reapers land on a planet, they use mass effect fields to manipulate space-time, greatly reducing their own mass. Add to the fact that Reapers are never actually shown as walking around on anything softer than stone and the 'sink through the ground' problem becomes far less pronounced. The Reapers are the only faction in ME who can land their capital ships in this way, no other faction has the technology needed.

The problem with exposed joints is simple. The metal the Destroyer is made out of is so tough so anything less than shooting it in the 'eye' won't do any real damage, unless you bring starship-grade firepower. (Or unless you're Kalros, but Kalros is Kalros, so yeah.) When it is in space, it is protected by kinetic barriers just like its larger capital ship cousin. Unfortunately these kinetic barriers can only be kept at a minimum for the Reapers to land.

The problem with exposed joints is simple. The metal the Destroyer is made out of is so tough so anything less than shooting it in the 'eye' won't do any real damage, unless you bring starship-grade firepower. (Or unless you're Kalros, but Kalros is Kalros, so yeah.) When it is in space, it is protected by kinetic barriers just like its larger capital ship cousin. Unfortunately these kinetic barriers can only be kept at a minimum for the Reapers to land.

Which is also why a Titan doesn't care for the Reaper's super-hot-metal-cannon...

It's a Titan. It's meters thick of space-metal "adamantium". What is adamantium? Who the feth knows, it's fictional!

 Psienesis wrote:

The problem with exposed joints is simple. The metal the Destroyer is made out of is so tough so anything less than shooting it in the 'eye' won't do any real damage, unless you bring starship-grade firepower. (Or unless you're Kalros, but Kalros is Kalros, so yeah.) When it is in space, it is protected by kinetic barriers just like its larger capital ship cousin. Unfortunately these kinetic barriers can only be kept at a minimum for the Reapers to land.

Which is also why a Titan doesn't care for the Reaper's super-hot-metal-cannon...

It's a Titan. It's meters thick of space-metal "adamantium". What is adamantium? Who the feth knows, it's fictional!

Void Shields won't stop melee attacks, though. Adamantium does not prevent the Destroyer from, you know, just punting the Titan and watching it fall over.

And if you're telling me nothing will survive into melee range with the Titan, then why are some Titans equipped with melee weapons?