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 Bobthehero wrote:
And the Imperium is the pinnacle when it comes to be smart and interacting with unknown tech, yup. Oh obviously while the SM magically hack into unknown tech, the comms art does nothing and leaves all its critical airbases undefended. A single drop pod would get annuhilated before it reaches the airbase.

The one critical advantage the SM have is the orbital support, which can be denied in 40k but not on Earth.

Techarines can miu link into databases, shown in multiple sources, they can then shunt the info either into a storage device in there cranium or the ships computers (cogitators), Techarines have also been shown to be able to force their way into devices through the ability to out think computers.

The tech is not "unknown" It's out of date by 40k standards, basic at best, Marines are very intelligent, adaptive and can learn quickly, the Internet is not secure, anyone can access it and find almost any information they need, such as where the us president lives, doesn't take a genius.

We lack the technology to shoot down a meteor, as we can't cover the entire sky, by the time we detect the pod (assuming we even can), it's too late, it's landed, bye bye air base.

That's not even factoring psykers, or any of the future tech they could bring to bare

Can't shoot a meteor if it flies where there is defense, no gak, but there going to be AA systems around an airbase and radar, pods are large un subtle things that falls in a certains direction, it will be easy to detect. If we can lock a missile on a plane, the pod should be no issue. It happened in 40k where a renegade planet was able to pour enough AA fire to deny the opportunity for Marines to pod in, in this case if they go where the guns are, they won't reach the ground either.

 Formosa wrote:


Marines cannot come to earth, see our primitive satellite technology and broadcast a message

"welcome from the imperium of Man, join or die"

While waiting for a response the techmarine aboard the battlebarge connects to the www, downloads all of our collective knowledge and, while getting key information regarding our leadership, military and infrastructure, it's all online and easily accessed by a techmarine.
....
.

I don;t expect a standard 40k tech ship to be able to download anything of out web, this would require too much flexibility for most tech priests.
But they dont need to, nor do they need to land on the ground.

This is how to do it.
Drop in system out in real space, use your near light speed drive to get to earth and stay in orbit.
This will get earths attention and might even trigger anti doomsday meteorite scenario's. Blast those primitive nukes and shuttles out of the sky.
Start with scanning the planet for energy sources, life signs and tectonic activity resources and all the other usual scans your ship is capable of.
Now power up your Broadband Hymn-Casters to flood all radio wavelengths with your favorite surrender to the might of the emperor or die message.Switch it off periodically and wait for a response, while continue scanning for one day. Lock on to all interesting targets such as major cities, powerful nuclear readings,unstable volcano's, dam's, ice caps, the highest mountains etc. Start lancing them to enforce your ultimatum after that day. Continue until they surrender. Total panic will arise on earth, and no world leader would dare to resist after seeing the first few lance impacts. If some do send defying messages slug them from orbit until it stops.

The whole operation should take no longer than a few days. If you don't agree with me ask yourself how many Hiroshima like events it would take for your government to comply. My guess would be far less than 5. The only boots on the ground that you would need would be an ambassador there to collect the taxes and send a come back and lance some more message if they revolt in your absence. But whatever you do do not send any high tech stuff down. You would not want them to learn anything from you.

The language barrier would be an issue, we may not understand their messages of surrender, and they may not understand our surrender after they blast parts of the planet.

Logistically the idea is pretty laughable unless you're speaking about a very small planet with a tiny population.

Could a Space Marine chapter either obliterate a planet from orbit or eliminate key command and control assets? Sure. Could they do something to convince a planet to surrender? Sure.

But attacking a planet with any population over a billion and a reasonable PDF you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Assuming they didn't surrender, it'd be impossible short of nuking/laying waste to the planet from orbit.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Can't shoot a meteor if it flies where there is defense, no gak, but there going to be AA systems around an airbase and radar, pods are large un subtle things that falls in a certains direction, it will be easy to detect. If we can lock a missile on a plane, the pod should be no issue. It happened in 40k where a renegade planet was able to pour enough AA fire to deny the opportunity for Marines to pod in, in this case if they go where the guns are, they won't reach the ground either.

Again your assuming we can detect said craft, we'd get a radar blip, not know what it is, by the time we have the slightest clue it could be hostile, it's already landed, also, 40k have the same defences you are talking about, pods are specifically designed to land through heavy fire, and again, your assuming our weapons can even pop a drop pod, sadly we don't know just how strong a pods armour is, something that can handle multiple atmospheric landings and impact on the ground, then be used again, that's pretty damn tough.

And yet they were able to shoot down the pods aThere's absolutely no indicatiosn we can't spot the pod, I never saw any mentions of pods having stealth systems, and they're rather large and obvious things.

It might have a reinforced prow and what have you, missiles and AA defenses can pop and ours are pretty good.

 Bobthehero wrote:
And the Imperium is the pinnacle when it comes to be smart and interacting with unknown tech, yup. Oh obviously while the SM magically hack into unknown tech, the comms art does nothing and leaves all its critical airbases undefended. A single drop pod would get annuhilated before it reaches the airbase.

The one critical advantage the SM have is the orbital support, which can be denied in 40k but not on Earth.

Tech Marines would not need to hack anything, just do a Leloo from 5th Element.

I am curious about a few things myself, but how quickly does a Drop Pod drop?

Also what sort of Electro-Magnetic weapons do Space Marines have? I imagine a simple EMP blast would disable the air defences capable of taking down a Drop Pod before it hits the ground. Drop Pods are EMP proof right? I am really not up to date with the more specific fluff.

Regardless, I believe, the dust clouds (and Tsunamis/Earthquakes) caused by an orbital bombardment would remove any argument to surrender very quickly.

Never seems the Marines use an EMP, read a part where one SM armor was disabled by some sort of Ork EMP-Speargun kinda thing.

WHat's that Leloo, just instant learn everything... of course someone would give them that ability.

Realistically

NO.

Sans Exterminatus there are too many stubborn donkey-caves on a planet would would never surrender and who would resort to guerrila warfare for 1000 men no matter how elite they are to hold an ENTIRE planet.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Never seems the Marines use an EMP, read a part where one SM armor was disabled by some sort of Ork EMP-Speargun kinda thing.

WHat's that Leloo, just instant learn everything... of course someone would give them that ability.

The Tau wona war against space marines by short cirtuiting their armor with a EMP.

godking wrote:
Realistically

NO.

Sans Exterminatus there are too many stubborn donkey-caves on a planet would would never surrender and who would resort to guerrila warfare for 1000 men no matter how elite they are to hold an ENTIRE planet.

The Space Marines would not need to control the whole population though, only the ruling class. Plus when the alternative is to live in caves with the previously ruled class, I think the ruling class would happily surrender to any Space faring civilisation willing to bomb their planet from orbit.

Just think about what the British Empire managed to accomplished with a limited pool of manpower and a high level of organisation.

 Bobthehero wrote:
And yet they were able to shoot down the pods aThere's absolutely no indicatiosn we can't spot the pod, I never saw any mentions of pods having stealth systems, and they're rather large and obvious things.

It might have a reinforced prow and what have you, missiles and AA defenses can pop and ours are pretty good.

very few if any pods get shot down during a planetary invasion, reaching a speed of 7456.4543mph (FW speed is 12000kph), our fastest jet built is 4,520 mph, so cannot intercept, and our fastest missile is 6,200 mph, so that wont be able to catch up either, then we have an assumed orbit for the marines of 1,240 miles from earth, so if my maths is correct (I'm not great at this) we would have 9 : 58 seconds, so not fast enough to intercept, add to this we don't know what it is, if its multiple pods, we would assume a meteor shower, if just the one, we just wouldn't know, then we have the assumption that our radar can actually pick up the object falling from space onto the location, and again an assumption our level of tech can destroy the pod, lets say for arguments sake it can, so we have an unknown object heading towards an airbase, at a speed that we cannot intercept with aircraft, that we can possibly or possibly not detect, a lot of uncertainty to what the object is, permissions needed to actually fire upon it if it is deemed hostile somehow, and we have to hope that any AA around the airbase (never ever seen any in any of the airbases I have been on over the years... which is odd now I think of it) can get the right angle to try to intercept (pod is faster, but can still be done) with a missile.

all that in under 10 min, from orbit, highly unlikely.

In my source pods get '' swiftly countered '' by Firestorm Nexuses. Basically AA lascannon, so I suppose we would have to break out the old 120mm + AA guns made in the past. I suppose missiles would be a poor weapon to shoot out pods, we would have to settle for an air strike at the pod landing zone. Once again, even if its faaaaaaast, I don't see how our radars would not pick up the pods, and with their pretty straightforward tajectory, it would be pretty easy to figure out where they land and get people going, maybe not in a minute, but way before everyone gets killed unprepared.

If there was a threat you would think people would move AA defenses where they matter the most and an airbase is pretty important, fairly sure someone would order defenses to be set.

Although props to FW for pumping the numbers this time, between the Land Raider that has armor about four times less efficient than an Abrams and the Thunderhawk that flies about the same speed as the previous jet generation, you'd think someone would bother looking up modern numbers and go higher.

 Formosa wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
And yet they were able to shoot down the pods aThere's absolutely no indicatiosn we can't spot the pod, I never saw any mentions of pods having stealth systems, and they're rather large and obvious things.

It might have a reinforced prow and what have you, missiles and AA defenses can pop and ours are pretty good.

very few if any pods get shot down during a planetary invasion, reaching a speed of 7456.4543mph (FW speed is 12000kph), our fastest jet built is 4,520 mph, so cannot intercept, and our fastest missile is 6,200 mph, so that wont be able to catch up either, then we have an assumed orbit for the marines of 1,240 miles from earth, so if my maths is correct (I'm not great at this) we would have 9 : 58 seconds, so not fast enough to intercept, add to this we don't know what it is, if its multiple pods, we would assume a meteor shower, if just the one, we just wouldn't know, then we have the assumption that our radar can actually pick up the object falling from space onto the location, and again an assumption our level of tech can destroy the pod, lets say for arguments sake it can, so we have an unknown object heading towards an airbase, at a speed that we cannot intercept with aircraft, that we can possibly or possibly not detect, a lot of uncertainty to what the object is, permissions needed to actually fire upon it if it is deemed hostile somehow, and we have to hope that any AA around the airbase (never ever seen any in any of the airbases I have been on over the years... which is odd now I think of it) can get the right angle to try to intercept (pod is faster, but can still be done) with a missile.

all that in under 10 min, from orbit, highly unlikely.

Surface to Air missiles come from the ground.

Drop Pods come from the sky.

"catching" wouldn't be the issue.

Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

One must imagine drop pods have some kind of countermeasures to foil SAM missiles. Perhaps some kind of electronic warfare suite to jam the guidance systems?

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
One must imagine drop pods have some kind of countermeasures to foil SAM missiles. Perhaps some kind of electronic warfare suite to jam the guidance systems?

Missiles that operate on an IR band, would be pretty hard to fool those. An object burning through the atmo at 7k MPH is going to leave a hell of a heat signature.

And don't forget rail guns. A 25lb Tungsten bullet travelling at 4500mph... There isn't an object on earth that it wouldn't carve in half.

Are there any math whizzes here who could figure out the momentum that would have?


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 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

Yeah, cause GW's fluff is impeccable. Remember, these are the guys who said a Land Raiders armor was 3/4 that of a modern day Leopard tank.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

They always work in my games.

The whole point is that they make it past ground defenses, so that's what they do. Sure, maybe some get lost here and there, but the point is that they deliver the goods.

The marines can also launch pods without marines in them. If equipped with Homers, all that needs to happen is one Pod makes it to the target and then Terminators can teleport in. Or the SM can launch empty pods just to find out where the effective AA is, then bombard the AA from space. Having the superior orbital position gives lots of options.


Ultimately "conquer" is an unspecific goal for the SM though, and the end result depends a lot on the SM objective and the "personality" of the Chapter/commander.

That's my point, sometimes, the drop pods fail, like in my example, Vraks is another example, while there was no direct podding, the fact that it was so thick with AA defences meant that drop poding wasn't a viable option.

 Bobthehero wrote:
That's my point, sometimes, the drop pods fail, like in my example, Vraks is another example, while there was no direct podding, the fact that it was so thick with AA defences meant that drop poding wasn't a viable option.

I don't know what you're first example is, but a brief lookup tells me that Vraks is an Armory World, and thus one of the most heavily defended types of worlds the Imperium has to offer. I think it's a safe assumption that our modern earth doesn't posses a fraction of the defensive capability.

We know that Drop Pods work in the majority of situations. Are we really willing to bet that modern earth is somehow in the far upper tier of anti-orbital insertion technology when compared to the Imperium at large, where space-faring invaders are common? Drop Pods are in common use in an environment where worlds are routinely equipped with anti-air and anti-orbital materiel.

There's not going to be thousands of pods, let alone if the Marines want to '' send a pod per airbase '', a bunch of single pods landing on different bases would be little trouble.

Probably only a few airbases are relevant at any given time. Not many planes with weapons can fly around the world. And many of them are sloooooow.

Edit:
Also

 Bobthehero wrote:
. . . a bunch of single pods landing on different bases would be little trouble.

Based on what?

 Formosa wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Oh and obviously they magically know with 100% where all the leaders are, how the planet works and blablabla. Yeah, right, omniscient marines.

Marines cannot come to earth, see our primitive satellite technology and broadcast a message

"welcome from the imperium of Man, join or die"

While waiting for a response the techmarine aboard the battlebarge connects to the www, downloads all of our collective knowledge and, while getting key information regarding our leadership, military and infrastructure, it's all online and easily accessed by a techmarine.

Our leaders say no

With a mix of orbital info, our own broadcast info and the info on the Internet, they target all the key systems of the u.s, they wipe out Washington dc from orbit, we respond with nukes, they prove ineffective, we decide to resist.

The Marines deploy onto air bases (easily spotted) around the us, a sqaud per base, 10 Marines, they inflict massive casualties and withdraw, moral plummets as we realise the sheer terror of these super soldiers, men and woman blown into chunks, people literally torn to pieces, the us refuses to surrender, several cities are wiped out from orbit, the scale of bloodshed is so massive the us is forced to surrender, rinse and repeat across several nations around the world, through technological, biological and information superiority the Marines have crippled the most powerful threats on earth, with ease, no major battle fought.

The Marines call for imperial guard support and move on to the next world, leaving humanity crippled.

A legion would just land 10000 Marines in the us and wipe put the military wholesale.

They need not be omniscient, we have all the info needed broadcasted via the Internet and TV, anyone sufficiently intelligent would find it and exploit it.

I've seen this movie. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum beat them, no problem.

Airbases would be far more relevant once the Marine broadcast their '' Surrender or Die '' message.

Based on the fact that they're easily detectable (giant heat signature) have a pretty fixed direction, basically sending a surface-to-air missile on a collision course with the pod should be child's play.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Airbases would be far more relevant once the Marine broadcast their '' Surrender or Die '' message.

Based on the fact that they're easily detectable (giant heat signature) have a pretty fixed direction, basically sending a surface-to-air missile on a collision course with the pod should be child's play.

Quote IA 2 "a single Drop Pod is extremely difficult to detect and track, making them useful for inserting scout teams."

So not child's play. Also, see former arguments. If it were child's play Drop Pods wouldn't be as viable as they are in the combat environments they operate in. Like vs. Imperial worlds with anti air/orbital defences, or against advanced Tau tech. Maybe they have stealth tech, maybe they are just too fast, maybe they can be deployed with a bunch of chaff, maybe they jink unpredictably on the way down to dodge AA missiles. It just is what it is. Odds are that they are in your base and touching your stuff.

And yet in the Scion book a Chaos insurgency is able to blow most of the Flesh Tearers pods, as well as threaten their Thunderhawks to the point where they have to send Scions to disable the AA defences.

You have details? What were the defenses?

Maybe it's just the exception that proves the rule

Firestorm Nexuses, a bunch of Firestorm Redoubts with lascannons, they were hidden in '' bases in the hillsides ''

Our planet doesn't have anything remotely like a lascannon, so your point is almost mute.

Secondly, how many asteroids that hit our earth are shot down? And how many sensors and cameras out in space can pick up a strike cruiser whilst on it's final approach, let alone when in orbit?

We wouldn't know they are entering the atmosphere until it is far too late, and what lands is going to be an absolute pain to deal with. Lastly, pods don't need to attack a base directly through AA fire, they can drop scouts hundreds of miles out via pod and have them neutralise any anti air defences before the pods come down. There would be absolutely no rush for the marines to tackle our planet with any urgency. There is nothing on the planet barr nuclear weapons that can one shot them while on a cruiser in space and they don't have to worry about anything off world coming as reinforcements, they can literally take their time and make surgical strikes one after another till we would surrender.