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 Psienesis wrote:
The Imperium doesn't even have a quarter of the galaxy. It has a million worlds out of potentially-billions (there's 100 billion stars in the Milky Way).

A million habitable worlds; the number of dead rocks is far higher. If one looks at a 2-dimensional map of the Milky Way, the Imperium appears to cover far more.

Yes, it claims that much territory, but within it are countless worlds controlled, contested, or owned outright by xenos, chaos, rebels, or those who have simply never heard of the Imperium.

Except what they claim is not what they own:

Necrons:


Orks:


Dark Eldar:


Eldar:

jwr wrote:

 MeanAss_Demasoni wrote:
A blast from a TIE fighter main gun didn't even destroy R2D2 beyond repair, he was fixed up in time for the ceremony in the first movie.

Yeah, the same TIE main gun that can blow apart an X-wing or Y-wing hitting the unshielded rear just pops a few circuits on R2D2.

Or maybe X-Wings and Y-Wings are REALLY weak.

I mean they have 1/4 of the potential sectors the galaxy could hold(a sector is a roughly standardized area of space). That doesn't mean they own all the stars in those sectors or that they all have habitable worlds. Just that 1/4 of possible sectors have an Imperial presence to warrant a battlefleet.

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah seriously, only 25000 capital ships IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY is pretty pitifully small. The galaxy is HUGE. That's not even a single capital ship per million worlds.

It's a small number, but remember that hyperspace allows a fleet to cross the galaxy in a matter of hours, days at most. And the Star Wars galaxy is largely at peace, so most of those 25,000 ships can be deployed to fight in a region with an active war while still being able to quickly respond to a crisis on the other side of the galaxy if necessary. The Empire simply doesn't need the Imperium's vast horde of ships because they don't have to put independent fleets in every corner of the galaxy to compensate for the fact that there are millions of separate wars happening and reinforcements might not arrive for centuries.

 MeanAss_Demasoni wrote:
A blast from a TIE fighter main gun didn't even destroy R2D2 beyond repair, he was fixed up in time for the ceremony in the first movie.

The obvious conclusion, outside of character shields, is that the shot was mostly stopped by the x-wing's shields and only a tiny percentage of it managed to burn through and hit R2-D2.

I believe one of Luke's lines shortly before that shot lands is to tell R2 to stabilize that rear deflector shield.

Martel732 wrote:
The marines haven't changed tactics in LITERALLY 10,000 years. I find it hard to believe that they can beat anyone. I don't care what the stupid novels say. The rule of cool does not make for effective fighting forces.

Well, they can beat Orks, Eldar, Tyranids and other groups who haven't changed tactics in 10,000 years, either.

Which is the second insurmountable problem for the IoM (cross-galaxy travel in hours versus months is the other).

The Empire built 25,000 Star Destroyers, a few SSDs and 2 Death Stars in 20 years. Not sure how long it takes a forge world to turn out a unit of, say Baneblades (by the time the techs are done praying to the machine gods over every circuit, bolt and doo-dad) and they have, quite literally, forgotten how to build actually strategic items like battlecruisers. Sure, the Astartes alone have 3-4,000 of them, but they are never getting any more. If they exchange 1 for 1 with the Empire over the course of a year, the Astartes' entire fleet has been wiped out and the Empire has replaced 1,000 of their losses. Every 10 years (on average) the Empire builds a planet-killing Death Star that can hyperspace from system to system. "Which chapter's homeworld are we going to destroy today? Oh, how about the space wolves? They have a fleet with 1,000 ships. Yeah, but only a few battlecruisers...we Admiral Ackbar'ed them a couple of times with a fleet of Star Detroyers and now they don't have any. Okay, engage the hyperdrive. <6 hours later> Okay, we're at Fenris. Fire at will. <insert sound of blowing up Fenris with one shot>. Hey, we detect life on those other planets. Should we notify General Poobah to ready his AT-AT transporters? No, the superlaser will be recharged in an hour. Hey, won't these Imperium folks find out there's dust cloud where Fenris used to be? Not for a year or so. They don't believe in talking on a daily basis. They never had a boss who could choke you to death on videoconference if you screwed up, did they? Not in their wildest dreams. Anyways, in a year we will have wiped out a third of their homeworlds, even stopping for lunch. We will have have wiped out a third of the Astartes in a year? No, more like half. We will have destroyed all their fleet based chapters by then, too. Our losses? 10%, with 30% of those reconstituted. Acceptable."

"Well, they can beat Orks, Eldar, Tyranids and other groups who haven't changed tactics in 10,000 years, either.
"

If that's true, then those groups couldn't beat anyone, either.

 Psienesis wrote:
I believe one of Luke's lines shortly before that shot lands is to tell R2 to stabilize that rear deflector shield.

I thought it was a rear stabilizer. The overall attack leader (can't remember if it was Red or Gold) directed the group to set shields double front, (pulling shield power from the rear) as they would need the shielding against tubolasers on their approach. Gold somebody (one of the Y-wing pilots) told them to stabilize rear deflectors when the turbolaser fire stopped (knew TIEs were inbound). So, after pulling shield power back to the rear, they would have less overall shielding after facing some turbolaser fire. I would presume the Y-wings would have all their power distributed to shields and engines (mostly to engines), while the X-wings would have to split it three ways, mostly to their engines and guns.

So, I would presume Luke didn't have much, if any rear shielding by the time Vader popped him. Hence, my view that the midichlorians intervened to save Luke (as that shot would have normally gone right through R2's dome and into the back of Luke's canopy) so he could become a Jedi and redeem Anakin/Vader.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
"Well, they can beat Orks, Eldar, Tyranids and other groups who haven't changed tactics in 10,000 years, either.
"

If that's true, then those groups couldn't beat anyone, either.

Concur, which is why they'll be locked in a 6-way stalemate until the last Loyalist, Ork, Heretic, Eldar, Necron and Dark Eldar kill each other using a 10,000+ year old piece of gear. Leaving everything to the Tau, who will have probably developed Str D disintegrator rifles and WS6 targeting as standard infantry gear in the next hundred years. Or 8th edition.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I mean they have 1/4 of the potential sectors the galaxy could hold(a sector is a roughly standardized area of space). That doesn't mean they own all the stars in those sectors or that they all have habitable worlds. Just that 1/4 of possible sectors have an Imperial presence to warrant a battlefleet.

It doesn't matter that the Imperium has more ships. The issue here is that they are WAY more spread out than the Empire, meaning that reaction times are terrible, as the sub-sector sized areas are stated as being "maximum size that they can reasonably patrol". Ergo, once you smash the forces in a single sub-sector - if they can do it fast enough, the Imperium will never be able to mass forces fast enough to counter-attack. In 40k the IoM has always had enough durability in its forces to drag the fight out long enough for reinforcements to arrive. In the cases where it can't, the enemy always manages to blitzkrieg deep into IoM territory until it hits a fortress world, or is intercepted by a specially formed battlefleet task-force.

Regarding unchanged tactics: Unsure that tactics need to be changed, if they are clearly working as intended: Three of the factions listed as not-changing-tactics are:

Eldar: These guys are a dying race, and subscribe to a doctrine of indirect, asymetric / information warfare. I'd say its working pretty good considering that they are immeasurably outnumbered by EVERYTHING that wants to kill them. The fact that they're not extinct after 10k years of war would suggest they are doing something right.

Tyranids: These guys haven't even begun to properly invade the IoM. Considering their home galaxy came out second best against their unchanging tactics, and the fact that their regular tactics, employed by their scouting and reconnaissance forces are pretty much giving the IoM all it can handle... I'd say these guys are probably playing to their strengths as well.

Orks: TAKTIKS R FOR HUMIES. ORKSES KRUMP DA ENEMIES WITH KUNNING AND STRENGTH... (I always point to the IoM's inability to beat the disorganized, technologically inferior, and randomly traveling Ork warbands as the ultimate evidence that the IoM would struggle against organized threat. (I'm discounting Chaos as an organized threat, since they seem to be playing a huge joke on their followers: being perfectly OK letting Abbadon attempt the same thing over-and-over again. What... Black Crusades 1-12 didn't work? 13th time the charm!)

 keezus wrote:


Orks: TAKTIKS R FOR HUMIES. ORKSES KRUMP DA ENEMIES WITH KUNNING AND STRENGTH... (I always point to the IoM's inability to beat the disorganized, technologically inferior, and randomly traveling Ork warbands as the ultimate evidence that the IoM would struggle against organized threat. (I'm discounting Chaos as an organized threat, since they seem to be playing a huge joke on their followers: being perfectly OK letting Abbadon attempt the same thing over-and-over again. What... Black Crusades 1-12 didn't work? 13th time the charm!)

Does that mean that the Roman legion is terrible, as they eventually lost against the barbarian hordes?
What about today's conventional military against guerilla insurgent tactics? Would they suffer against an organised conventional force?

Never underestimate the effectiveness of numbers and bloodlust, and unexpected maneuvers.

13 tries is pretty laughable, but then again, Cadia is pretty well fortified.

jwr wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The marines haven't changed tactics in LITERALLY 10,000 years. I find it hard to believe that they can beat anyone. I don't care what the stupid novels say. The rule of cool does not make for effective fighting forces.

Well, they can beat Orks, Eldar, Tyranids and other groups who haven't changed tactics in 10,000 years, either.

Which is the second insurmountable problem for the IoM (cross-galaxy travel in hours versus months is the other).

The Empire built 25,000 Star Destroyers, a few SSDs and 2 Death Stars in 20 years. Not sure how long it takes a forge world to turn out a unit of, say Baneblades (by the time the techs are done praying to the machine gods over every circuit, bolt and doo-dad) and they have, quite literally, forgotten how to build actually strategic items like battlecruisers. Sure, the Astartes alone have 3-4,000 of them, but they are never getting any more. If they exchange 1 for 1 with the Empire over the course of a year, the Astartes' entire fleet has been wiped out and the Empire has replaced 1,000 of their losses. Every 10 years (on average) the Empire builds a planet-killing Death Star that can hyperspace from system to system. "Which chapter's homeworld are we going to destroy today? Oh, how about the space wolves? They have a fleet with 1,000 ships. Yeah, but only a few battlecruisers...we Admiral Ackbar'ed them a couple of times with a fleet of Star Detroyers and now they don't have any. Okay, engage the hyperdrive. <6 hours later> Okay, we're at Fenris. Fire at will. <insert sound of blowing up Fenris with one shot>. Hey, we detect life on those other planets. Should we notify General Poobah to ready his AT-AT transporters? No, the superlaser will be recharged in an hour. Hey, won't these Imperium folks find out there's dust cloud where Fenris used to be? Not for a year or so. They don't believe in talking on a daily basis. They never had a boss who could choke you to death on videoconference if you screwed up, did they? Not in their wildest dreams. Anyways, in a year we will have wiped out a third of their homeworlds, even stopping for lunch. We will have have wiped out a third of the Astartes in a year? No, more like half. We will have destroyed all their fleet based chapters by then, too. Our losses? 10%, with 30% of those reconstituted. Acceptable."

It takes a few years to build a Capital Class warship - dependant on the type and the resources - at least one feral world helped build an entire Battlecruiser in the fairly recent Gothic wars.

The Mechanicus can and do build warships - they have absolutely not forgotten how to do so - some Space Marine Chapters can do the same - so yeah they can get more. The mechanicus itself has its own powerful fleets ranging for hunter killers (frigates) to battlebarge and bigger - they also have planet destroying weapons. In fact all races do............

The entire resources of the Galactic Empire (in peacetime), managed to build one and nearly build a second Death Star whilst failing to deal with a small rebel force.

The rest of the post is quite amusing

Oh, how about the space wolves? They have a fleet with 1,000 ships. Yeah, but only a few battlecruisers

well not that many ships - about 200-300 I would say and two massive star forts.

Hey, won't these Imperium folks find out there's dust cloud where Fenris used to be? Not for a year or so. They don't believe in talking on a daily basis.

Astropaths say hello. The Imperium can send very fast messages - now actually acting on it - that depends on the plot etc.............

They never had a boss who could choke you to death on videoconference if you screwed up, did they? Not in their wildest dreams.

Er They really do..............

As others have said - you really can't compare universes - they both operate in their own universes with their own rules of cool.

Then a Culture Mind merely disproves the existence of both realities and they both disappear...........

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Does that mean that the Roman legion is terrible, as they eventually lost against the barbarian hordes?
What about today's conventional military against guerilla insurgent tactics? Would they suffer against an organised conventional force.

To be fair, the Legions eventually lost more-so due to political and economic reasons than military ones, just as I'm sure the IoM is constrained by bureaucracy, superstition and logistical problems. While the IoM has the power to curbstomp, it ranges from being somewhat disadvantaged to severely limited in many non-firepower aspects.

 keezus wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Does that mean that the Roman legion is terrible, as they eventually lost against the barbarian hordes?
What about today's conventional military against guerilla insurgent tactics? Would they suffer against an organised conventional force.

To be fair, the Legions eventually lost more-so due to political and economic reasons than military ones, just as I'm sure the IoM is constrained by bureaucracy, superstition and logistical problems. While the IoM has the power to curbstomp, it ranges from being somewhat disadvantaged to severely limited in many non-firepower aspects.

There were still military engagements that the Roman Legion lost.
Teutoberg forest comes to mind.
Also, the Orks aren't as simplistic as you think. Whilst they aren't tactical geniuses, they still understand the effectiveness of ambushes.

Did a quick skim re: Teutoberg Forest. Defeat at Teutoberg Forest seems to have hinged on anti-Roman leadership having Roman education, citizenship and had infiltrated the Roman chain of command. While it was a serious defeat at the height of Rome's power, I'm not sure that its exactly illustrative of how Rome's defeats are usually authored, nor do I think that this occurred on a regular basis.

Regarding Ork Strategy and Kunnin'. There are a multitude of Orks in the galaxy. The proportion of Warbosses of exceptional ability vs. your run of the mill warband is few and far between. The Orks in general do not succumb willingly to chain of kommand - usually the biggest 'uns are the bosses. It takes an Ork of exceptional Size and Kunnin' to survive the assassination attempts of the big 'uns to become the boss of a Waaagh. Once in a while, a Warboss of exceptional ability will form a Waaaagh of note. Even Gazzgkhul, who's considered the penultimate boss abandoned his siege of Armageddon out of boredom!

The fact of the matter is that the Eldar method of redirecting the Waaaghs is much more effective than the IoM's method of facing them head-on. In fact, the best method of controlling the Orks is by redirecting the Waaaghs onto one another or assassinating the bosses of great ability.

 Mr Morden wrote:


It takes a few years to build a Capital Class warship - dependant on the type and the resources - at least one feral world helped build an entire Battlecruiser in the fairly recent Gothic wars.

The Mechanicus can and do build warships - they have absolutely not forgotten how to do so - some Space Marine Chapters can do the same - so yeah they can get more. The mechanicus itself has its own powerful fleets ranging for hunter killers (frigates) to battlebarge and bigger - they also have planet destroying weapons. In fact all races do............

The entire resources of the Galactic Empire (in peacetime), managed to build one and nearly build a second Death Star whilst failing to deal with a small rebel force.

The rest of the post is quite amusing

So, in the time it takes the mechanicus to build one battlecruiser for a Chapter, the Empire cranks out 5,000. Not sure the build time on deathstars after they got the bugs worked out on their prototypes.

Yeah, I got it, astropaths can communicate instantly as well. The point was, just because the IoM can do something, doesn't mean they actually do so. That they have Crusades, companies, etc off on their own for a year plus incommunicado. Part of the grimdark thing, I guess, but when a Chapter has an entire Company out of contact for a year, nothing is thought about it...they are off doing the Emporer's Will, after all. Scale it up...the IoM has 1,000 +/- Chapters at any given time, part of the fluff is they can't keep track of all of them. Some vanish or turn to Chaos and nobody knows, because nobody bothers to check, the records detailing the Chapter's existence are destroyed, etc. I suppose using the SW as an example was a little extreme, but point is, given the IoM's whatever-we-want-to-call-it regarding commo and coordination, and warp versus hyperspace travel times, they have some serious issues.

Same with planet destroying weapons. Sure, everyone has them. Only one, though, can move them from system to system in a matter of hours versus months. So, sure. over a year-long war the Empire will lose a few planets. The IoM will lose hundreds. In a year. I grant the 40K world is dark, and worlds, chapters, etc are lost regularly, but the IoM isn't losing a significant planet (like a forge world, Chapter homeworld, etc) every day.

The whole point about the Empire not taking out the small rebellion is that the Empire never took it seriously. The Empire didn't show up to Yavin with at least a couple of frigates and a SD to provide a screen. They hit Hoth with a single fleet, figure 6 or so SDs? They had a larger fleet at the second deathstar, but not a big one. A SSD and couple dozen or so SDs? Every time they are going to "crush the rebellion", they bring a tiny fraction of their power. Which, I suppose, is the counter point to the IoM having it's own issues. I'd think the Empire would have a fleet or two get waxed before they figured things out.

jwr wrote:

Same with planet destroying weapons. Sure, everyone has them. Only one, though, can move them from system to system in a matter of hours versus months. So, sure. over a year-long war the Empire will lose a few planets. The IoM will lose hundreds. In a year. I grant the 40K world is dark, and worlds, chapters, etc are lost regularly, but the IoM isn't losing a significant planet (like a forge world, Chapter homeworld, etc) every day.

Wrong. The Death Star destroys a few worlds before a huge Imperial fleet shows up and destroys it. Its huge and cumbersome, it would get destroyed very quickly and the Empire could never recover from a loss like that.

A legion of the emperor Palpatine's best troops by his own word defeated by a village of ewoks.

The main issues really root back to politically correct/ feel good restriction when the creators of Star wars wrote the universe. The IoM doesn't seem to suffer from this because, warhammer was written with a gritty mindset.

I don't think the star wars universe stands a chance in an actual war vs many factions of the warhammer universe; SW is simply not written that way.

This holds true for star trek as well.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Wrong. The Death Star destroys a few worlds before a huge Imperial fleet shows up and destroys it. Its huge and cumbersome, it would get destroyed very quickly and the Empire could never recover from a loss like that.

The Death Star has a hyperdrive. It is as mobile as any Star Destroyer.

 Grey Templar wrote:

jwr wrote:

Same with planet destroying weapons. Sure, everyone has them. Only one, though, can move them from system to system in a matter of hours versus months. So, sure. over a year-long war the Empire will lose a few planets. The IoM will lose hundreds. In a year. I grant the 40K world is dark, and worlds, chapters, etc are lost regularly, but the IoM isn't losing a significant planet (like a forge world, Chapter homeworld, etc) every day.

Wrong. The Death Star destroys a few worlds before a huge Imperial fleet shows up and destroys it. Its huge and cumbersome, it would get destroyed very quickly and the Empire could never recover from a loss like that.

It took the loss of two Death Stars and more importantly Emperor Palpatine for the empire to splinter, but not completely fall.

Hyperdrives aren't great for in-system maneuvers.

It doesn't matter how far you travel with a hyperdrive, it always takes 1d6 days multiplied by your hyperdrive rating. The Death Star only has an x4 Hyperdrive, A Star Destroyer has a x2 Hyperdrive (so contrary to Perry's estimations, it actually takes them between two and twelve days to reach the destination, not a handful of hours).

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Hyperdrives aren't great for in-system maneuvers.

It doesn't matter how far you travel with a hyperdrive, it always takes 1d6 days multiplied by your hyperdrive rating. The Death Star only has an x4 Hyperdrive, A Star Destroyer has a x2 Hyperdrive (so contrary to Perry's estimations, it actually takes them between two and twelve days to reach the destination, not a handful of hours).

I would rephrase that to near planetary, stupid gravity wells. And to be fair, every FTL drive goes screwy too close to a gravity well, even 40k's Warp Drives have their own complications there.

I was more referring to the fact that it takes a SW hyperdrive the same amount of time to travel between, for example, Earth and Pluto as it would for the same hyperdrive to travel between Earth and Coruscant.

This makes it singularly useless when calculating a ship's combat manoeuvrability, because if a Star Destroyer attempted a Picard Maneuver, it wouldn't reappear for at least two days even though it was only travelling 100 metres.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Hyperdrives aren't great for in-system maneuvers.

Then you don't maneuver in-system. You drop out of hyperspace, destroy a planet, and jump back into hyperspace to go destroy the next one.

It doesn't matter how far you travel with a hyperdrive, it always takes 1d6 days multiplied by your hyperdrive rating. The Death Star only has an x4 Hyperdrive, A Star Destroyer has a x2 Hyperdrive (so contrary to Perry's estimations, it actually takes them between two and twelve days to reach the destination, not a handful of hours).

Game mechanics =/= canon. Canon evidence from the films is that hyperspace travel is a matter of hours, maybe a day or so for an exceptionally long trip. And that's being really generous to 40k. If you want to take the high-end numbers a drug smuggler with a half-broken ship is able to go from a middle-of-nowhere planet to an important core world in a matter of minutes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
if a Star Destroyer attempted a Picard Maneuver, it wouldn't reappear for at least two days even though it was only travelling 100 metres.

Canon evidence disagrees with you. The rebel fleet jumps to Endor in the time it takes the rebel ground troops to hike a fairly short distance to the back door of the bunker. So please don't cite obviously incorrect game mechanics again.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I was more referring to the fact that it takes a SW hyperdrive the same amount of time to travel between, for example, Earth and Pluto as it would for the same hyperdrive to travel between Earth and Coruscant.

This makes it singularly useless when calculating a ship's combat manoeuvrability, because if a Star Destroyer attempted a Picard Maneuver, it wouldn't reappear for at least two days even though it was only travelling 100 metres.

I wouldn't rely on RPG rules as they have been notoriously wrong in the past.

Star Wars Hyperdrives are classed on speed, with 0.0 being infinite speed.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperdrive/Legends#Classes

I should note, this is all off-canon after Disney legended all the stories except for the movies, clone wars, and a few comics.

 Peregrine wrote:

Canon evidence disagrees with you. The rebel fleet jumps to Endor in the time it takes the rebel ground troops to hike a fairly short distance to the back door of the bunker. So please don't cite obviously incorrect game mechanics again.

If hyperdrives are that fast, how did Luke manage to go through enough Jedi training on Dagobah to go from "in danger of killing himself switching his saber on" to "can last ten minutes duelling the greatest swordsman since Mace Windu" in the time it took the Falcon to get from the asteroid field to Bespin?

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Canon evidence disagrees with you. The rebel fleet jumps to Endor in the time it takes the rebel ground troops to hike a fairly short distance to the back door of the bunker. So please don't cite obviously incorrect game mechanics again.

If hyperdrives are that fast, how did Luke manage to go through enough Jedi training on Dagobah to go from "in danger of killing himself switching his saber on" to "can last ten minutes duelling the greatest swordsman since Mace Windu" in the time it took the Falcon to get from the asteroid field to Bespin?

The trip most likely took a few hours (by the note they started to play Dejarik*) to at most one day as they didn't know each other that well, and the Falcon is too small not to interact with the crew.

*chess

 Furyou Miko wrote:
If hyperdrives are that fast, how did Luke manage to go through enough Jedi training on Dagobah to go from "in danger of killing himself switching his saber on" to "can last ten minutes duelling the greatest swordsman since Mace Windu" in the time it took the Falcon to get from the asteroid field to Bespin?

Remember the whole "our hyperdrive isn't working" thing? It was kind of a major plot point.