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 Ratius wrote:
Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?

You mean CSM rather than C:SM? Chaos unleashed on Earth would simply be hell on earth, literally. The Imperial Guard as it is struggles to fight them, and we would be pressed to fight the Guard either.

 Ratius wrote:
Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?

Well, the Necrons depends on the Dynasty.

If they're like the Maynarkhs and open up by juicing up the sun to make a solar storm that instantly fries everyone on the day side of the planet while crashing all our technology with a memetic signal; then yeah we're boned. Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating. Trazyn's dynasty wouldn't even cause that much damage;
he'd just teleport in with an army and just nab some loot and disappear before any resistance can be mounted.

Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.

 Kain wrote:
Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating.

I wonder who would go up against a necron for a one-on-one duel... Chuck norris?

 Enigwolf wrote:

 Kain wrote:
Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating.

I wonder who would go up against a necron for a one-on-one duel... Chuck norris?

Arnold Schwarzenegger maybe... or Jackie Chan

 Da Stormlord wrote:
Arnold Schwarzenegger maybe... or Jackie Chan

Meiko Kaji?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kain wrote:
Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.

Basically, fells like another Christianity or Islam, but except this time the miracles are true and we are in for even more horrors.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kain wrote:
By the way, Jesus comes back to life after being crucified

Silly story anyway, nobody cares. That was one hell of a Deus Ex.

 Kain wrote:
Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach

Not a spoiler, this happens at the very beginning of the game.

 Kain wrote:

Spoiler:

and Darth Vader is Luke's father.

Damn! Spoiler, please edit!

 Kain wrote:
Zeus can't keep it in his pants and Hera gets jealous

Which story among the dozens for which this description is applicable are you spoiling?

 Kain wrote:

Spoiler:

the protagonist goes crazy at the end of Call of Cthulhu

Spoiler alert! Again!

 Kain wrote:
, and the Trix Rabbit doesn't get the Yoghurt.

No idea who that is.

 Psienesis wrote:
One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...

... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?

You start with a caste that's bred to be diplomats for thousands of years that has made it its job, for the last 6,000 years, to quickly learn new languages.

The Water Caste going with the third sphere expansion probably know 15-20 variants of low Gothic each. Picking up a new one wouldn't be that hard at that point.

I'm sorry I don't understand the question. Shouldn't the answer beyond a doubt be that they "want" to fight none of them? If you meant "want" as in the easiest to defeat for them / least difficult to defeat then I'd say maybe Dark Eldar. a couple of RPG's and a good old fashioned machine gun could kill some space rapists and blow up their pirate ships/rape van.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 godardc wrote:
I really think that our best chance is fighting Tau.
I mean, orks do HUGE scale invasion, throwing rocks into the surface of the planet, reproducing by spore quickly, have nuclear and psy capacity, and above all, love to fight and won't withdraw.
Tau Empire, on the other hand, don't like to take casualities and fight almost like our armies, no huge scale invasion, no psyker, no indestructible Titan... In 40k, they win because of their tactics, which are basically modern warfare. I'm not saying they are easy o fight for our current Earth (battlesuit, technologies...) but I think it's the best scenario.
If we kill enough of them, they will withdraw, and as their main advantages are gone against us (tactics and innovation, as we aren't Imperium and we are still innovating new weapons), we have our chances.

You forgot one thing aside from the insane power of their weapons they do have a ton of ways to IGNORE COVER. Any strategy we use wouldn't be too useful with the combined power, accuracy, and ability to ignore cover thanks to their more advanced tech. You say we are the same in that we rely on tactics. Well then even with the same exact tactics and ability to innovate, better more advanced equipment would win every time. Movies are dramatizations and often assume that the aliens aren't tactically savvy and often underestimate their foes. The Tau wouldn't have this issue since they have dealt with Orks and their flying rodent gak insane "tactics" and "strategy" for generations. As a side note have you heard of the Barracuda tau fighter craft? Our planes would never win so air superiority is out as well plus their tanks can fly so we done screwed.

PS
Tau are always advancing and researching new tech too so under the generous assumption that we both "innovate" at the same rate that still gives us a net gain of zero.

PS
If bolter shells which are literally miniature grenades can't easily penetrate the armor of their basic infantry, why would a modern day gun be able to? Even if us humans shifted to a completely war driven production globally we couldn't compete. The entire Imperium is not unlike WW2 era America in terms of its production directed mainly towards war. The main difference being that the Imperium has the production of multiple star systems of planets.
Also read about the outset of the Third Sphere expansion. A hive city is considerably more difficult to overtake in both population and output than our planet and this one was fortified and waiting for the Tau to arrive. We would literally stand zero chance if the Tau brought even a slightly respectable army.

To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.

 Psienesis wrote:
One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...

... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?

A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.

RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?

High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.

Thanks for precisions!

 Enigwolf wrote:
To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.

Assuming we keep the FFG cannon out concerning sterilization.

Honestly will probably cause lots of issues with the powers at Be, Religion will be a hella mess for a while. But for the most part i though Tau usually left most planets alone.

 Desubot wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.

Assuming we keep the FFG cannon out concerning sterilization.

Honestly will probably cause lots of issues with the powers at Be, Religion will be a hella mess for a while. But for the most part i though Tau usually left most planets alone.

They do, but typically they like their planets to be peaceful, not at war with each other. So expect pacification of some sort.

Vetril wrote:

 2BlackJack1 wrote:
Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.

A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.

Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.

When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.

Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.

 Enigwolf wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
To be honest, being part of the Greater Good might actually save the human race at the rate we're tearing ourselves apart in the real world with religious, racial, political conflicts, etc.

Assuming we keep the FFG cannon out concerning sterilization.

Honestly will probably cause lots of issues with the powers at Be, Religion will be a hella mess for a while. But for the most part i though Tau usually left most planets alone.

They do, but typically they like their planets to be peaceful, not at war with each other. So expect pacification of some sort.

Would be super cool if they finally wrote more fluff on that. maybe more grimdark to pacify all the tau fluff haters

 Peregrine wrote:
Tyranids, because as soon as they enter the real world their laughably bad science no longer works and they probably can't even survive long enough to have a battle.

Well, your contributions to these threads are always fun.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...

... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?

A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.

RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?

High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.

But Low Gothic is not a universal language, not even close. We're told that it's not in several sources. In-universe, it is known that Low Gothic is so diverse, so dialectical, so debased, evolved, modified and mutated that people from one planet might be entirely incapable of speaking to people from another planet, even though they both, technically, speak "Low Gothic". It's like the banker from Boston trying to talk with the farmer from south Alabama turned way up past 11. Their individual accents make them entirely unintelligible to one another.

 curran12 wrote:
It's not a matter of who modern Earth could possibly beat, it is a matter of who modern Earth will get obliterated by in the longest time.

Every faction would crush Earth, really without that much effort.

Just in the spirit of the game we lose.
Take tyranids. I think wed all agree earth would lose.
Now being game developers and narrative writers, the playable races all need to have some chance against each other in the narrative to make the game enjoyable (cough cough) and there for we would lose vs basically every race.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
[/spoiler]

Carefull haha that could push some peoples buttons...

 Psienesis wrote:

Vetril wrote:

 2BlackJack1 wrote:
Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.

A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.

Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.

When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.

Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.

Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.

Vetril wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

Vetril wrote:

 2BlackJack1 wrote:
Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.

A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.

Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.

When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.

Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.

Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.

Eldar aspect warriors are incredibly specialized and are deployed only to deal with things that suit their specialization unless something has gone horribly wrong. Earth doesn't even have any suitable targets for Banshees (who are specialized for killing armored infantry at close range when Dark Reapers won't be enough) so I'd think a warhost would leave them at home. Scorpions are said to be able to cloak themselves and in my experience in the Russian army we don't have any contingencies for chameleonic enemies sneaking in and killing us at camp.

Wyches; like virtually all Dark Eldar units, are 100% hit and run. The Dark Eldar appear out of nowhere via webway gate, strike hard and fast and then leave before any more serious resistance can be mustered. A Dark Eldar campaign would involve a lot of teleporting right into populated cities to kidnap huge numbers of largely defenceless civilians and then drop back into the webway long before any assets are mobilized. Most modern armies are small and not concentrated near major cities and few modern cities are built with the assumption that they'll be facing military attack without prior notice (or that they'll be facing military attack at all).

A foe who drops in and completely bypasses military assets, attacks civilians, and leaves without warning within an hour is not the kind of enemy that modern society is built to face. Our civilians are very easy targets. Armed civilians, as I've been trained to learn, are no serious match for a military force. They're going to be (ineffective without training in guerilla warfare) partisans at best, and will get slaughtered with ease if ever forced into pitched battle. What Partisans do is be a resource drain on occupiers, and Dark Eldar are simply not interested in occupation. Taking and holding ground is like; the very antithesis of the Dark Eldar way.

The Dark Eldar could probably get away with huge numbers of slaves without even once engaging any military force. Similarly, infrastructure at the moment is generally not built with the assumption that it will come under attack. Things like power plants, factories, stock exchanges, and other lynchpins of modern society aren't going to stop a raid or even appreciably slow it down. You could just keep on popping in and out of the webway and level places of importance to our economy and you'd greatly increase the amount of distress to the fabric of society already being caused by huge numbers of people being abducted and taken out of labor pools.

If they really wanted us all dead; it's canonical that the Dark Eldar have the means to destroy planets fairly trivially, it's just counter-productive. Just give the planet a black hole in a box and we're dead within an hour.

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
Carefull haha that could push some peoples buttons...

Meiko Kaji you mean? Nah, everyone that knows who she is loves her! So awesome!

 Kain wrote:

 Ratius wrote:
Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?

Well, the Necrons depends on the Dynasty.

If they're like the Maynarkhs and open up by juicing up the sun to make a solar storm that instantly fries everyone on the day side of the planet while crashing all our technology with a memetic signal; then yeah we're boned. Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating. Trazyn's dynasty wouldn't even cause that much damage;
he'd just teleport in with an army and just nab some loot and disappear before any resistance can be mounted.

Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.

Necrons may be mean, but to compared to Chaos they are fun-loving guys. I'd take being roasted by the sun over an eternity of being tortured by deamons any day.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...

... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?

A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.

RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?

High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.

But Low Gothic is not a universal language, not even close. We're told that it's not in several sources. In-universe, it is known that Low Gothic is so diverse, so dialectical, so debased, evolved, modified and mutated that people from one planet might be entirely incapable of speaking to people from another planet, even though they both, technically, speak "Low Gothic". It's like the banker from Boston trying to talk with the farmer from south Alabama turned way up past 11. Their individual accents make them entirely unintelligible to one another.

It depends on the source you read. Some sources have the entire Imperium speak only variants of Low Gothic, others have different languages with Low Gothic as a form of lingua franca. Logically, the first idea is absolutely absurd if you know even the slightest bit about linguistics. Even if all humans spoke Low Gothic during the Dark Age of Technology (which already is impossible), the Age of Strife lasted so long that Low Gothic should not exist anymore, not even in a very slightly recognisable form. It would be like calling English a debased form of Proto-Indo-European.
Even if Low Gothic is just a name for the billions of different human languages, there should be a common language that allows two humans from different sides of the Imperium to actually communicate with each other,


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vetril wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

Vetril wrote:

 2BlackJack1 wrote:
Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.

A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.

Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.

When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.

Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.

Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.

Until we realise our guns are completely ineffective against their armour, that is.

 Kain wrote:
Eldar aspect warriors are incredibly specialized and are deployed only to deal with things that suit their specialization unless something has gone horribly wrong. Earth doesn't even have any suitable targets for Banshees (who are specialized for killing armored infantry at close range when Dark Reapers won't be enough) so I'd think a warhost would leave them at home. Scorpions are said to be able to cloak themselves and in my experience in the Russian army we don't have any contingencies for chameleonic enemies sneaking in and killing us at camp.

Wyches; like virtually all Dark Eldar units, are 100% hit and run. The Dark Eldar appear out of nowhere via webway gate, strike hard and fast and then leave before any more serious resistance can be mustered. A Dark Eldar campaign would involve a lot of teleporting right into populated cities to kidnap huge numbers of largely defenceless civilians and then drop back into the webway long before any assets are mobilized. Most modern armies are small and not concentrated near major cities and few modern cities are built with the assumption that they'll be facing military attack without prior notice (or that they'll be facing military attack at all).

A foe who drops in and completely bypasses military assets, attacks civilians, and leaves without warning within an hour is not the kind of enemy that modern society is built to face. Our civilians are very easy targets. Armed civilians, as I've been trained to learn, are no serious match for a military force. They're going to be (ineffective without training in guerilla warfare) partisans at best, and will get slaughtered with ease if ever forced into pitched battle. What Partisans do is be a resource drain on occupiers, and Dark Eldar are simply not interested in occupation. Taking and holding ground is like; the very antithesis of the Dark Eldar way.

The Dark Eldar could probably get away with huge numbers of slaves without even once engaging any military force. Similarly, infrastructure at the moment is generally not built with the assumption that it will come under attack. Things like power plants, factories, stock exchanges, and other lynchpins of modern society aren't going to stop a raid or even appreciably slow it down. You could just keep on popping in and out of the webway and level places of importance to our economy and you'd greatly increase the amount of distress to the fabric of society already being caused by huge numbers of people being abducted and taken out of labor pools.

If they really wanted us all dead; it's canonical that the Dark Eldar have the means to destroy planets fairly trivially, it's just counter-productive. Just give the planet a black hole in a box and we're dead within an hour.

Exactly. Eldar are the master of asymmetric warfare; they avoid pitched conventional battles and deploy their units to maximize their short-term effect against enemies. Fighting against Eldar would be like fighting against a guerilla/terrorist force, but one that is better trained, insanely mobile, has superior tech and guaranteed air superiority, and can literally see the future and warp reality to their will.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

 Kain wrote:
Eldar aspect warriors are incredibly specialized and are deployed only to deal with things that suit their specialization unless something has gone horribly wrong. Earth doesn't even have any suitable targets for Banshees (who are specialized for killing armored infantry at close range when Dark Reapers won't be enough) so I'd think a warhost would leave them at home. Scorpions are said to be able to cloak themselves and in my experience in the Russian army we don't have any contingencies for chameleonic enemies sneaking in and killing us at camp.

Wyches; like virtually all Dark Eldar units, are 100% hit and run. The Dark Eldar appear out of nowhere via webway gate, strike hard and fast and then leave before any more serious resistance can be mustered. A Dark Eldar campaign would involve a lot of teleporting right into populated cities to kidnap huge numbers of largely defenceless civilians and then drop back into the webway long before any assets are mobilized. Most modern armies are small and not concentrated near major cities and few modern cities are built with the assumption that they'll be facing military attack without prior notice (or that they'll be facing military attack at all).

A foe who drops in and completely bypasses military assets, attacks civilians, and leaves without warning within an hour is not the kind of enemy that modern society is built to face. Our civilians are very easy targets. Armed civilians, as I've been trained to learn, are no serious match for a military force. They're going to be (ineffective without training in guerilla warfare) partisans at best, and will get slaughtered with ease if ever forced into pitched battle. What Partisans do is be a resource drain on occupiers, and Dark Eldar are simply not interested in occupation. Taking and holding ground is like; the very antithesis of the Dark Eldar way.

The Dark Eldar could probably get away with huge numbers of slaves without even once engaging any military force. Similarly, infrastructure at the moment is generally not built with the assumption that it will come under attack. Things like power plants, factories, stock exchanges, and other lynchpins of modern society aren't going to stop a raid or even appreciably slow it down. You could just keep on popping in and out of the webway and level places of importance to our economy and you'd greatly increase the amount of distress to the fabric of society already being caused by huge numbers of people being abducted and taken out of labor pools.

If they really wanted us all dead; it's canonical that the Dark Eldar have the means to destroy planets fairly trivially, it's just counter-productive. Just give the planet a black hole in a box and we're dead within an hour.

Exactly. Eldar are the master of asymmetric warfare; they avoid pitched conventional battles and deploy their units to maximize their short-term effect against enemies. Fighting against Eldar would be like fighting against a guerilla/terrorist force, but one that is better trained, insanely mobile, has superior tech and guaranteed air superiority, and can literally see the future and warp reality to their will.

Except they are eldar

They are always destined to lose. Even in there own book they lose

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Ratius wrote:
Eldar and C:SM havent a single vote each.
Do we feel it would be that much of a Curbstomp? Surely Crons would be a more fearsome force to face than C:SM based purely on their tech levels, transport/regen capabilities and gauss weaponry?

Well, the Necrons depends on the Dynasty.

If they're like the Maynarkhs and open up by juicing up the sun to make a solar storm that instantly fries everyone on the day side of the planet while crashing all our technology with a memetic signal; then yeah we're boned. Dynasties that insist on honorable combat and one on one duels would be not quite as devastating. Trazyn's dynasty wouldn't even cause that much damage;
he'd just teleport in with an army and just nab some loot and disappear before any resistance can be mounted.

Chaos destroys tolerant societies. Chaos cults; like Genestealer cults, can disguise themselves as something innocuous, rapidly expanding through the world as people flock to a religion that can offer actual miracles that defy our understanding of the laws of physics; abandoning existing faiths en masse. And then suddenly half of the planet is devoted to Tzeentch and Aetaeos'Ra'Keres leads a horde of demons, cultists, traitor guard, mutants, traitor military, and thousand sons that razes the other half into a land of ash, cinders, and unspeakable mutations.

Necrons may be mean, but to compared to Chaos they are fun-loving guys. I'd take being roasted by the sun over an eternity of being tortured by deamons any day.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...

... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?

A bit off topic, but realistically, every human planet should have hundreds of different languages. Low Gothic is likely a standardised universal language that is used by the Imperium as a lingua franca so humans from different planets can actually communicate with each other. All important people the Tau would interact with would likely be able to speak Low Gothic, so that would be the only language their diplomats have to learn.

RazgrizOne wrote:Perhaps they speak High Gothic to the Administratum representatives/Planetary governors. These guys must know high gothic to communicate with the wider Imperium don't they?

High Gothic is not a universal language, it is a sacred language and only used in rituals (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). High Gothic is unintelligable to most of the Imperium.

But Low Gothic is not a universal language, not even close. We're told that it's not in several sources. In-universe, it is known that Low Gothic is so diverse, so dialectical, so debased, evolved, modified and mutated that people from one planet might be entirely incapable of speaking to people from another planet, even though they both, technically, speak "Low Gothic". It's like the banker from Boston trying to talk with the farmer from south Alabama turned way up past 11. Their individual accents make them entirely unintelligible to one another.

It depends on the source you read. Some sources have the entire Imperium speak only variants of Low Gothic, others have different languages with Low Gothic as a form of lingua franca. Logically, the first idea is absolutely absurd if you know even the slightest bit about linguistics. Even if all humans spoke Low Gothic during the Dark Age of Technology (which already is impossible), the Age of Strife lasted so long that Low Gothic should not exist anymore, not even in a very slightly recognisable form. It would be like calling English a debased form of Proto-Indo-European.
Even if Low Gothic is just a name for the billions of different human languages, there should be a common language that allows two humans from different sides of the Imperium to actually communicate with each other,


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Vetril wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

Vetril wrote:

 2BlackJack1 wrote:
Although the orks may also crash into the Pacific and that wouldn't be too good for them, to be fair.

A rok (or a few) crashing in the Pacific Ocean is NOT good news for mankind.

Most of the scenarios presented are "flawed", in that they assume a gross imbalance in the forces fielded against each other. Of course we can't defeat a whole biofleet or the whole Imperial Guard.

When talking about roughly equivalent forces in a vacuum (so ignoring possible infestations or contagion), I'd say we have a good chance of taking on most melee-centric armies, be they eldar, orks or space marines.

Ehm... the Eldar are not a melee-centric army. They've got a handful of units that specialize in it, but that's hardly the focus.

Neither are Space Marines. Assume they are a melee centric army in the situation - ie, they attack earth with a bunch of melee units (banshees, scorpions, incubi, harlequins, avatar, wyches...). My point is, if it's melee, earthlings can deal with it reasonably well.

Until we realise our guns are completely ineffective against their armour, that is.

Bring a bigger gun. A battlecannon kills a Space Marine pretty well. Typical MBTs these days carry 105mm guns on average. Let's say a battlecannon is a 120mm gun. Eh, not too unreasonable.

The Battle Cannon looks closer to a 1200mm gun to me...

I think the thread has gone off-topic, it was about which one we'd be most willing to fight, not which one we'd stand a chance against, either way, this is a part of 40K that I loved to examine, and I'd like to present my points:
The one we'd be most willing to fight is the Tau, not because we'd have a chance, we'd probably get creamed in every battle, but because the Tau are willing to accept surrender, and actually follow some rules of war, both sides can understand this and follow it.
The one we'd probably have a chance against, assuming we're facing something equal in numbers to the combined forces of the major countries of earth. We'd have a chance against Orks, since their Ramshackle tech is terrible, and the horde charge technique opens itself to bombing and other explosives.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The Battle Cannon looks closer to a 1200mm gun to me...

120mm, and typical MBT's have 120-125mm canons

... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.

We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.

Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.

 Psienesis wrote:
... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.

We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.

Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.

True on both accounts, but any asteroid that can safely deliver troops alive, even orks, are not going to be planet ending, and the Spores would be a problem.
Ignoring the long term effects and insertion methods, if both sides were deployed on a mostly equal field, the usualy Ork horde-rush opens itself up to artillery, bombing, and whatever. Or even better, just use aircraft and victory would be easy.

 Psienesis wrote:
One thing I've always wondered about the Tau...

... how the feth do they learn to speak some new variant of Low Gothic with every new Imperial world they encounter? Low Gothic is hardly a universal tongue, the residents of one planet cannot necessarily speak with the residents of a planet two systems over, what permits the non-psychic Tau to do so?

Tau have psyker xenos allies capable of ripping information from somebody's head. They can simply send one down to basically download the contents of somebody's brain and work with that information from there.