Warhammer 40K Armies of the Imperium VS Advanced Species of Various Sci-fi Series

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**Exergy**

Ynneadwraith wrote:

So the Federation's out. How big are the Borg?

The Borg are much bigger than the federation. They still dont take up a quadrant of the galaxy, but they are close.
They also have a population density far in excess of any other humanoid race. Being 'efficient' or not caring about open space they pack in 4-5 times the number of people into the same planet.

Their ships and forces also don't degrade in combat effectiveness. Everything is distributed and they have no morale. A human force of 1000 men takes 10% casualties and fights at half strength. 30% casualties all at once and the force might not be able to fight at all. A human ship is easily crippled if a important system or subsystem is incapacitated. Borg are scary because like zombies or something, they dont lose combat effectiveness. Their ships and technology dont have any centralized systems.

**Grey Templar**

Star Wars gets rofl-stoped every time.

Star Destroyers are barely as long as a typical 40k Escort class vessel, and are seriously undergunned relative to even those. 40k ships also have an advantage in range, Star Wars space battles happen within a few dozen kilometers of the various capital ships involved. 40k battles happen with up to several hundred thousand kilometers between combatants. Meaning that any Star Wars vessels get shot down long before they get into effective range. Any small Star Wars ships barely qualify as warships by 40k standards. Many of the smaller Star Wars capital ships are similar in size to 40k bombers and transport shuttles.

Furthermore, the Star Wars universe just wouldn't be psychologically prepared to fight opponents like the Imperium. The Imperium doesn't care about losses, or inflicting atrocities upon their foes. The Empire's forces would quickly become demoralized by the sheer scale and horror of the foe they are fighting.

This same thing applies to Star Trek. They're both undergunned and lack the mental fortitude to fight someone like the Imperium. They're so unused to the scale of violence that the Imperium would unleash that they'd just get shocked into surrender. Nobody in Star Trek really compares to any of the foes that the Imperium fights on a daily basis.

No, not even the Borg.

**Mr Morden**

Species 8472 shows the Borg can not always adapt - they have limits and were loosing that war very very badly with no ability to adapt to their aliens weapons or technology

Babylon 5 ships are quite large compared to say Star Trek - Abbai and a few others have shields. The Thirdspace Aliens definately do.

The Culture are pretty high up on the scale of ultra powerful sci-fi races only matched or exceeded by races in their own universe, Anima races, Lensmen type races and races that simply don't obey any rules of space and Time like the Q Continuum, Stargate's Ori, etc

**RedCommander**

lliu wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Imperium of Man VS the Dune Allied Galaxy

Dune is a very interesting state in the sci-fi world. They have the greatest FTL travel, with the ability to appear anywhere in the galaxy at will. However, the Dune novels give away little information to the military state of the duneiverse, with various books spanning millennia in passing. However, we can assume they had advance technology, as a force was able to conquer their known galaxy in the span of 50 years. We for the purposes of this comparison will again draw upon the Guilliman and aforementioned fleet stumbling upon the Dune Universe. We will assume that this dune is the dune that is in the middle of the great Jihad of Paul Atreides, when the military was at its strongest. The Imperium's battlefleet winked into existence in the early hours of the morning on Giedi Prime. The former Harkonnen home world still sported many defensive features, and claxons and sirens wailed to wake the populace up to the impending danger. The Jihad's generals, fevered with devotion for the great Emperor Paul Atreides attack immediately, Heighliners winking into existence all over the foreign force, deploying their deadly weaponry. Fighters swarm over the Imperial force, impacts doing nothing to the warp shielding thrown up throughout the imperium's fleet. What's worth noting here, however, is that the ships in Dune's universe lack shielding. They are vulnerable particularly to the large explosions and plasma detonations that the Imperium is fond of. This is one situation, however, where the Imperium does not have advantage of numbers. Billions of fighters fight for Paul's Jihad, and the Guild and CHOAM are both in complete support of the throne. As the Imperium's cannons begin to severely damage several Heighliners, the fighting thickens. Shock troops are landed in boarding parties onto Imperial Vessels, and Terminators begin to shred through Heighliner security. A this point, we can take a step back and look at a force summary overall.

The Imperium has better troops, and the troops in Dune are very similar to Chaos Cultists, and Space Marine scould tear through them. However, there are billions if not trillions of them, and that is an overwhelming force to say the least. The Imperium has more devestating weaponry, shields, and overall the advantage.

However, the Duneiverse has numbers. Numbers and numbers. Hundreds of Heighliners, each one at least the size of a Battle Barge. These are filled with shock troops, eager to charge into their deaths for Paul Atreides and the Jihad. Overall, the Jihad has numbers. They will die thousands of times over, but they will still have more, and more, and more.

In the end, I'm going to have to give it to the Dune franchises' military. It is the Imperial Guard on Steroids. They may not be able to handle space marines, but one space marine cannot beat ten thousand cultists. They will overwhelm you with numbers, upon numbers upon numbers, and nothing else. No tactics can prevail when they will throw millions of troops against you, and outnumber you in ships a hundred to one.

They have numbers, eh? Guess who else has numbers? The Imperial Guard.

And since it looks like these Dune-troopers would give them a run for their money, Space Marines would be also involved for precision attacks. I don't know much about Dune but I've heard that the flow of this Spice is absolutely vital for them... would be a shame if something were to happen to this flow... So, could they defend this flow against, oh, I don't know, power armored foes and their drop pods?

And can they do Exterminatus? What would they do if an Exterminatus would be used against them? This Spice thing sounds kind of like something chaos would do, right? And those Dune-troopers do look like cultists, after all... Yep. Better be safe than sorry and burn this infection of Spice or it might grow! it's the only way.

(I'm asking because like I said, I don't know much about Dune)

Edit: Wait, only one small portion of the 40k Imperium's armed forces (like Guilliman and some guys*) are dropped in a foreign universe? Of course they'd get eventually stomped. I assumed both universes have all of their resources at their beck and call.

*A few guys or a few fleets. Doesn't make much of a difference.

**Happyjew**

The problem with these discussions, is in order to make a meaningful argument you need hard numbers. Now obviously, some assumptions have to be made (for example when calculating the amount of energy in a single blast from the Death Star, you would assume that Alderaan is an Earth-like planet - similar composition, similar size, etc).

**Unit1126PLL**

Well, there's some hard numbers in Battlefleet Gothic for space ship weapons. I think the regular, not-special Imperial torpedoes were 650 gigatons iirc, and they did 1 damage. Provided we can use game mechanics for extrapolation (which is always iffy) that means other weapons that did one damage would also be right around 600-700 gigatons, meaning each battery of macrocannons or single lance weapons.

**Verviedi**

If that were true, a single lance shot, or a single torpedo, would be enough to crack a planet. One wonders why Exterminatus weaponry exists if basic weapons were that powerful.

**Unit1126PLL**

Verviedi wrote:
If that were true, a single lance shot, or a single torpedo, would be enough to crack a planet. One wonders why Exterminatus weaponry exists if basic weapons were that powerful.

I do remember there was a planetary assault scenario for BFG that had planet-cracking torpedoes, I think the difference is that they actually crack the planet (like, think Adleraan-style "vaporized") rather than just cratering it and causing a nuclear winter.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
So I plugged 650 gigatons into a calculator and got a fireball of ~150km width at ground level and a 600 kilometer blast radius, with 3rd degree burns out to 3000 kilometers. All of this is assuming optimal burst altitude.

Hardly planet cracking, and definitely inefficient if you have dedicated weapons for the task.

**AndrewC**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well, there's some hard numbers in Battlefleet Gothic for space ship weapons. I think the regular, not-special Imperial torpedoes were 650 gigatons iirc, and they did 1 damage. Provided we can use game mechanics for extrapolation (which is always iffy) that means other weapons that did one damage would also be right around 600-700 gigatons, meaning each battery of macrocannons or single lance weapons.

No, that particular quote came from the first editions of Space Hulk I think it was. However it was referring to a ship armed with exterminatus weapons, it was a mirv containing around 120 warheads each with a 5gt warhead. It was also mentioned that it was not sufficient to destroy the space hulk infront of it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey Templar wrote:
Star Wars gets rofl-stoped every time.

Star Destroyers are barely as long as a typical 40k Escort class vessel, and are seriously undergunned relative to even those. 40k ships also have an advantage in range, Star Wars space battles happen within a few dozen kilometers of the various capital ships involved. 40k battles happen with up to several hundred thousand kilometers between combatants. Meaning that any Star Wars vessels get shot down long before they get into effective range. Any small Star Wars ships barely qualify as warships by 40k standards. Many of the smaller Star Wars capital ships are similar in size to 40k bombers and transport shuttles.

Furthermore, the Star Wars universe just wouldn't be psychologically prepared to fight opponents like the Imperium. The Imperium doesn't care about losses, or inflicting atrocities upon their foes. The Empire's forces would quickly become demoralized by the sheer scale and horror of the foe they are fighting.

This same thing applies to Star Trek. They're both undergunned and lack the mental fortitude to fight someone like the Imperium. They're so unused to the scale of violence that the Imperium would unleash that they'd just get shocked into surrender. Nobody in Star Trek really compares to any of the foes that the Imperium fights on a daily basis.

No, not even the Borg.

Citation please? for every situation that you show about the greatness of the IoM there is a similar story about the substandards of the IoM. Space battles are listed as being in both the 100,000s and the 100s of kilometres of the accurate ranges of weapons. For every shot that vaporises its target there's another one about it doing nothing.

So please provide us with a single quantifiable example of how powerful the weapons are?

Cheers

Andrew

**Formosa**

Mr Morden wrote:
Species 8472 shows the Borg can not always adapt - they have limits and were loosing that war very very badly with no ability to adapt to their aliens weapons or technology

Babylon 5 ships are quite large compared to say Star Trek - Abbai and a few others have shields. The Thirdspace Aliens definately do.

The Culture are pretty high up on the scale of ultra powerful sci-fi races only matched or exceeded by races in their own universe, Anima races, Lensmen type races and races that simply don't obey any rules of space and Time like the Q Continuum, Stargate's Ori, etc

Not true per se, the Borg were able to assimilate the Undeen eventually, just took them time.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Formosa wrote:
Mr Morden wrote:
Species 8472 shows the Borg can not always adapt - they have limits and were loosing that war very very badly with no ability to adapt to their aliens weapons or technology

Babylon 5 ships are quite large compared to say Star Trek - Abbai and a few others have shields. The Thirdspace Aliens definately do.

The Culture are pretty high up on the scale of ultra powerful sci-fi races only matched or exceeded by races in their own universe, Anima races, Lensmen type races and races that simply don't obey any rules of space and Time like the Q Continuum, Stargate's Ori, etc

Not true per se, the Borg were able to assimilate the Undeen eventually, just took them time.

Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

**Niiai**

I would think the borgs would have a hard time handleing chaos. They would probably try to avoid it after a while.

it is also not clear to me what the relationship between humans and chaos are in the 40K. Is the emperor or faith in the emperor what keeps humans from going all chaos? All renegades seem to turn to chaos after a while.

The other races does not seem to have the same problem. Necron, even Necrotyn, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, Tau, old ones. None of these seem to be corupted by chaos. Heck, even Eldat shaped chaos in their image.

The 40K setting also seem to have some elements that have been disuqlefied as pseudo science here on earth. Jungs idea about a collective unconsiusness for instance is pressent in 40K as the Nightbringer is responsible for peoples fear of death.

With such elements as the collective unconsiusness and coruption of chaos it is very unclear how outside sci-fi universes would handle these things. Perhaps the Dune universe could do OK. The 'Golden Path' put eldar seers to shame.

**Formosa**

Niiai wrote:
I would think the borgs would have a hard time handleing chaos. They would probably try to avoid it after a while.

it is also not clear to me what the relationship between humans and chaos are in the 40K. Is the emperor or faith in the emperor what keeps humans from going all chaos? All renegades seem to turn to chaos after a while.

The other races does not seem to have the same problem. Necron, even Necrotyn, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, Tau, old ones. None of these seem to be corupted by chaos. Heck, even Eldat shaped chaos in their image.

The 40K setting also seem to have some elements that have been disuqlefied as pseudo science here on earth. Jungs idea about a collective unconsiusness for instance is pressent in 40K as the Nightbringer is responsible for peoples fear of death.

With such elements as the collective unconsiusness and coruption of chaos it is very unclear how outside sci-fi universes would handle these things. Perhaps the Dune universe could do OK. The 'Golden Path' put eldar seers to shame.

Nah Borg would handle Chaos very easily, they would lose, its the downside of the Hive mind, and all chaos needs is a way in, they could handle near any race in 40k with a few notable exceptions.

Orks, like marines most likely cannot be assimilated, the immune systems both use are crazy, if orks can be assimilated, then the genetic information possibly could be gained, thats bad for everyone.

Tyranids, who would assimilate who, and if Nanites can assimilate the Nids, will the Hive mind combine for the most horrific race imaginable, hyper evolution combined with hyper adaptability and technology.

Chaos, already said.

Eldar, nom nom, easy.

Tau, Nom Nom easy.

Necrons, not a chance in hell, Crons win.

This is why I have been talking specifically about the Imperium.

**Happyjew**

Formosa wrote:
Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

You're right. It's not always about size and power. There are numerous other factors involved.
For example.

Industrial Capacity and Territorial Holdings
How fast can the Imperium of Man build ships? We know that within the 3 year gap between A New Hope and Jedi, the Death Star II (≈900 km diameter) was at least 60% finished.
How many worlds does the Imperium of Man control? From the novelization of A New Hope (which is still canon) the Empire controlled at least 1,000,000 star systems.

Propulsion - Here is where the Imperium is screwed. Either they arrive on time, they arrive too late, they arrive too early, or they never arrive at all.
We know that the Imperium can travel via the Warp from Point A to Point B. However, as I pointed out it is completely inconsistent. Hyperdrive allows SW ships to cross their galaxy (which at last canonicity was 3x the size of the Milky Way) within hours or days

**Peregrine**

Grey Templar wrote:
Star Destroyers are barely as long as a typical 40k Escort class vessel, and are seriously undergunned relative to even those. 40k ships also have an advantage in range, Star Wars space battles happen within a few dozen kilometers of the various capital ships involved. 40k battles happen with up to several hundred thousand kilometers between combatants. Meaning that any Star Wars vessels get shot down long before they get into effective range. Any small Star Wars ships barely qualify as warships by 40k standards. Many of the smaller Star Wars capital ships are similar in size to 40k bombers and transport shuttles.

Size isn't everything. For example, a Culture warship is smaller than a 40k capital ship, but will annihilate the combined fleets of 40k (if they were generous enough to arrange themselves into a single unit) in a few seconds at most. You need to quote firepower and defense numbers, not mere ship lengths.

**AndrewC**

Come on, Peregrine play fair, a single special circumstances drone can annihilate a 40K capital ship in a one on one fight.

**pm713**

Happyjew wrote:
Formosa wrote:
Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

Propulsion - Here is where the Imperium is screwed. Either they arrive on time, they arrive too late, they arrive too early, or they never arrive at all.
We know that the Imperium can travel via the Warp from Point A to Point B. However, as I pointed out it is completely inconsistent. Hyperdrive allows SW ships to cross their galaxy (which at last canonicity was 3x the size of the Milky Way) within hours or days

That wildly varies on where you are. Dump Star Wars militaries into the 40k galaxy and they have no FTL because they need maps for hyperspace travel.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Niiai wrote:
I would think the borgs would have a hard time handleing chaos. They would probably try to avoid it after a while.

it is also not clear to me what the relationship between humans and chaos are in the 40K. Is the emperor or faith in the emperor what keeps humans from going all chaos? All renegades seem to turn to chaos after a while.

The other races does not seem to have the same problem. Necron, even Necrotyn, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, Tau, old ones. None of these seem to be corupted by chaos. Heck, even Eldat shaped chaos in their image.

Necrontyr, Old Ones and Necrons are unaffected by Chaos because they either died out before it existed or have no souls. Tyranids don't have enough individuality, Orks can't really be bribed by Chaos in a corrupting sense, Tau don't exist in the Warp significantly enough to be worth the time, Eldar dedicate their entire society to avoiding Chaos in various ways.

**AndrewC**

pm713 wrote:
Happyjew wrote:
Formosa wrote:
Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

Propulsion - Here is where the Imperium is screwed. Either they arrive on time, they arrive too late, they arrive too early, or they never arrive at all.
We know that the Imperium can travel via the Warp from Point A to Point B. However, as I pointed out it is completely inconsistent. Hyperdrive allows SW ships to cross their galaxy (which at last canonicity was 3x the size of the Milky Way) within hours or days

That wildly varies on where you are. Dump Star Wars militaries into the 40k galaxy and they have no FTL because they need maps for hyperspace travel.

And just reverse that for a minute, 40K goes nowhere because there is no astronomicon to guide them.

**pm713**

AndrewC wrote:
pm713 wrote:
Happyjew wrote:
Formosa wrote:
Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

Propulsion - Here is where the Imperium is screwed. Either they arrive on time, they arrive too late, they arrive too early, or they never arrive at all.
We know that the Imperium can travel via the Warp from Point A to Point B. However, as I pointed out it is completely inconsistent. Hyperdrive allows SW ships to cross their galaxy (which at last canonicity was 3x the size of the Milky Way) within hours or days

That wildly varies on where you are. Dump Star Wars militaries into the 40k galaxy and they have no FTL because they need maps for hyperspace travel.

And just reverse that for a minute, 40K goes nowhere because there is no astronomicon to guide them.

Depends which faction. Necrons are fine with their science magic, Orks just kind of hijack asteroids anyway, Tyranids follow life signs and there's no Webway so Eldar have veeeery slow wandering.

**AndrewC**

You're right about the others, I got too focused on the Imperium centric discussion.

**Formosa**

AndrewC wrote:
You're right about the others, I got too focused on the Imperium centric discussion.

Thats my fault lol

**Happyjew**

pm713 wrote:
Happyjew wrote:
Formosa wrote:
Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

Propulsion - Here is where the Imperium is screwed. Either they arrive on time, they arrive too late, they arrive too early, or they never arrive at all.
We know that the Imperium can travel via the Warp from Point A to Point B. However, as I pointed out it is completely inconsistent. Hyperdrive allows SW ships to cross their galaxy (which at last canonicity was 3x the size of the Milky Way) within hours or days

That wildly varies on where you are. Dump Star Wars militaries into the 40k galaxy and they have no FTL because they need maps for hyperspace travel.

When they first arrive, yes they would have no FTL capabilities, however, it would not be all that hard to map out the galaxy. After all, their galaxy was mapped out at least 5,000 years before the movies. IT would be a simple matter of releasing millions of hyper-space capable drones (which were shown in Episode 5 Empire Strikes Back) to easily map star locations.

**pm713**

Happyjew wrote:
pm713 wrote:
Happyjew wrote:
Formosa wrote:
Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

Propulsion - Here is where the Imperium is screwed. Either they arrive on time, they arrive too late, they arrive too early, or they never arrive at all.
We know that the Imperium can travel via the Warp from Point A to Point B. However, as I pointed out it is completely inconsistent. Hyperdrive allows SW ships to cross their galaxy (which at last canonicity was 3x the size of the Milky Way) within hours or days

That wildly varies on where you are. Dump Star Wars militaries into the 40k galaxy and they have no FTL because they need maps for hyperspace travel.

When they first arrive, yes they would have no FTL capabilities, however, it would not be all that hard to map out the galaxy. After all, their galaxy was mapped out at least 5,000 years before the movies. IT would be a simple matter of releasing millions of hyper-space capable drones (which were shown in Episode 5 Empire Strikes Back) to easily map star locations.

Which works until a Warp Storm happens and your map is useless. It also took thousands of years for them to map out the galaxy.

**Iron_Captain**

Happyjew wrote:
pm713 wrote:
Happyjew wrote:
Formosa wrote:
Somthing people also need to consider, because as a 40k, star trek and star wars fanboy, you people keep equating size with power, this is frankly stupid, at least try to consider the other tactical advantaged/disadvantages, its not all about the dakka.... dakka

Propulsion - Here is where the Imperium is screwed. Either they arrive on time, they arrive too late, they arrive too early, or they never arrive at all.
We know that the Imperium can travel via the Warp from Point A to Point B. However, as I pointed out it is completely inconsistent. Hyperdrive allows SW ships to cross their galaxy (which at last canonicity was 3x the size of the Milky Way) within hours or days

That wildly varies on where you are. Dump Star Wars militaries into the 40k galaxy and they have no FTL because they need maps for hyperspace travel.

When they first arrive, yes they would have no FTL capabilities, however, it would not be all that hard to map out the galaxy. After all, their galaxy was mapped out at least 5,000 years before the movies. IT would be a simple matter of releasing millions of hyper-space capable drones (which were shown in Episode 5 Empire Strikes Back) to easily map star locations.

Actually, the galaxy in Star Wars hasn't been fully mapped yet. As of the time of the movies, only about half of the galaxy has been explored. This is because the mapping needs to be done via probes who have to travel at sublight speeds (because no FTL without maps) making it a very slow process.

**Ynneadwraith**

We've already stated that in this example each respective universe's laws regarding space travel and suchlike apply to them, so SW gets their version of FTL for them and 40k gets their version.

Interesting point about FTL travel. Speed is massively important when it comes to engaging fleets in the void. How does 40k's average warp travel speed relate to other universes.

It's significantly slower than Star Wars by the sounds of things (months to traverse the galaxy versus days). Unsure about vs Star Trek as it seems to take them quite some time to traverse even their own quadrant. Mass Effect is pretty damn quick, but again their issue is reliance on mass relays.

This can be overcome somewhat by switching from engaging fleets to engaging planets and other immobile seats of industry/population. Force their hand so that their fleet must engage yours, rather than chase their much faster fleet around the galaxy.

It is a definite advantage to SW though.

**lliu**

I'm just not sure, but would FTL matter if at almost every planet a star destroyer goes to they'd get their ass handed to them? Even if they managed to flee from an imperator dreadnought, if there's more than one at most planets, wouldn't they still just get stomped?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of course, this is assuming that the Star Wars army invaded the imperium.

**Formosa**

Ynneadwraith wrote:
We've already stated that in this example each respective universe's laws regarding space travel and suchlike apply to them, so SW gets their version of FTL for them and 40k gets their version.

Interesting point about FTL travel. Speed is massively important when it comes to engaging fleets in the void. How does 40k's average warp travel speed relate to other universes.

It's significantly slower than Star Wars by the sounds of things (months to traverse the galaxy versus days). Unsure about vs Star Trek as it seems to take them quite some time to traverse even their own quadrant. Mass Effect is pretty damn quick, but again their issue is reliance on mass relays.

This can be overcome somewhat by switching from engaging fleets to engaging planets and other immobile seats of industry/population. Force their hand so that their fleet must engage yours, rather than chase their much faster fleet around the galaxy.

It is a definite advantage to SW though.

Trek like 40k has a large array of travel methods, some faster than others.

The most famous is warp travel, this is not 40k warp travel, its safe on the whole and very accurate, you also get slipstream, transwarp, wormhole travel (ship created not natural) I could go on.

Warp travel is massively more accurate than 40k travel, relatively faster over short distances and safer.

Transwarp is faster in every way that 40k travel, except those odd times where you arrive before you left, it can move you half a galaxy away in minutes, its safer and of course accurate.

I am under no illusions that the 40k universe stomps the trek one, with a few exceptions and one of those is tech, the trek universe is much more advanced that most of the 40k one, including Eldar, Tau but not Necrons on some levels, nearly every instance of super advanced tech you see in 40k, you also see in Trek, just not as war directed, for example, Exterminatus, Meh, Genesis device, one torpedo ends a world and creates another one.

God being, the Q would easily stop the chaos gods, just delete the human race from history, star trek is stupid OP in some areas :/

**Unit1126PLL**

AndrewC wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well, there's some hard numbers in Battlefleet Gothic for space ship weapons. I think the regular, not-special Imperial torpedoes were 650 gigatons iirc, and they did 1 damage. Provided we can use game mechanics for extrapolation (which is always iffy) that means other weapons that did one damage would also be right around 600-700 gigatons, meaning each battery of macrocannons or single lance weapons.

No, that particular quote came from the first editions of Space Hulk I think it was. However it was referring to a ship armed with exterminatus weapons, it was a mirv containing around 120 warheads each with a 5gt warhead. It was also mentioned that it was not sufficient to destroy the space hulk infront of it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey Templar wrote:
Star Wars gets rofl-stoped every time.

Star Destroyers are barely as long as a typical 40k Escort class vessel, and are seriously undergunned relative to even those. 40k ships also have an advantage in range, Star Wars space battles happen within a few dozen kilometers of the various capital ships involved. 40k battles happen with up to several hundred thousand kilometers between combatants. Meaning that any Star Wars vessels get shot down long before they get into effective range. Any small Star Wars ships barely qualify as warships by 40k standards. Many of the smaller Star Wars capital ships are similar in size to 40k bombers and transport shuttles.

Furthermore, the Star Wars universe just wouldn't be psychologically prepared to fight opponents like the Imperium. The Imperium doesn't care about losses, or inflicting atrocities upon their foes. The Empire's forces would quickly become demoralized by the sheer scale and horror of the foe they are fighting.

This same thing applies to Star Trek. They're both undergunned and lack the mental fortitude to fight someone like the Imperium. They're so unused to the scale of violence that the Imperium would unleash that they'd just get shocked into surrender. Nobody in Star Trek really compares to any of the foes that the Imperium fights on a daily basis.

No, not even the Borg.

Citation please? for every situation that you show about the greatness of the IoM there is a similar story about the substandards of the IoM. Space battles are listed as being in both the 100,000s and the 100s of kilometres of the accurate ranges of weapons. For every shot that vaporises its target there's another one about it doing nothing.

So please provide us with a single quantifiable example of how powerful the weapons are?

Cheers

Andrew

I swear there was some calc derived from the BFG rulebook that ended up giving you in excess of 500 gigatons of weapon power per point of damage a ship could do, giving a nova cannon on the order of 5000 gigatons (again, extrapolating from game mechanics). But I can't remember it.

**Ynneadwraith**

lliu wrote:
I'm just not sure, but would FTL matter if at almost every planet a star destroyer goes to they'd get their ass handed to them? Even if they managed to flee from an imperator dreadnought, if there's more than one at most planets, wouldn't they still just get stomped?

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Of course, this is assuming that the Star Wars army invaded the imperium.

That's what I was trying to work out myself. Would the ability to manoeuvre your fleet orders of magnitude faster make up for the lower level of militarisation and general lack of one-on-one competitiveness of your ships-of-the-line? I honestly don't know. It'd make it a hell of a lot easier to concentrate your forces such that your less powerful ships might still be at a local advantage.

Actually, it would be a really interesting conflict to watch play out. Although the Imperium starts with a massive initial advantage in mobilisation and firepower, the Empire is of comparable size. It'll take a hell of a long time to invade a million worlds (especially at the Imperium's maximum warp speed), even if the Imperium is initially inexorable and unstoppable.

It's also not as if the Empire doesn't have the capability to produce weapons of truly fearsome power. The Death Star vapourised a planet. Not scoured it of life, not blasted craters large enough to cause a cataclysmic extinction event. Actually blew the planet itself to smithereens. If they survive long enough to produce weapons even somewhat approaching that magnitude in a reasonable amount of numbers then they would prove a fearsome opponent one-on-one. Hell, just their continued belief in genuine R&D is a sizeable advantage.

Is it enough to overcome a galactic empire that's already close to being as militarised as possible? Not sure. Would still be really interesting to watch.

Another interesting thought I had is that starships in SW seem to have a different modus operandi, relying far more on swarms of fighters and bombers to take down enemy vessels than honking great cannons on the ships themselves. Personally, I don't quite understand why as honking great mass-accelerator cannons are probably about as nasty a ship-to-ship weapon as you can get, but I wonder if we should treat SW ships more as assault carriers than cruisers.

**Grey Templar**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
AndrewC wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well, there's some hard numbers in Battlefleet Gothic for space ship weapons. I think the regular, not-special Imperial torpedoes were 650 gigatons iirc, and they did 1 damage. Provided we can use game mechanics for extrapolation (which is always iffy) that means other weapons that did one damage would also be right around 600-700 gigatons, meaning each battery of macrocannons or single lance weapons.

No, that particular quote came from the first editions of Space Hulk I think it was. However it was referring to a ship armed with exterminatus weapons, it was a mirv containing around 120 warheads each with a 5gt warhead. It was also mentioned that it was not sufficient to destroy the space hulk infront of it.

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Grey Templar wrote:
Star Wars gets rofl-stoped every time.

Star Destroyers are barely as long as a typical 40k Escort class vessel, and are seriously undergunned relative to even those. 40k ships also have an advantage in range, Star Wars space battles happen within a few dozen kilometers of the various capital ships involved. 40k battles happen with up to several hundred thousand kilometers between combatants. Meaning that any Star Wars vessels get shot down long before they get into effective range. Any small Star Wars ships barely qualify as warships by 40k standards. Many of the smaller Star Wars capital ships are similar in size to 40k bombers and transport shuttles.

Furthermore, the Star Wars universe just wouldn't be psychologically prepared to fight opponents like the Imperium. The Imperium doesn't care about losses, or inflicting atrocities upon their foes. The Empire's forces would quickly become demoralized by the sheer scale and horror of the foe they are fighting.

This same thing applies to Star Trek. They're both undergunned and lack the mental fortitude to fight someone like the Imperium. They're so unused to the scale of violence that the Imperium would unleash that they'd just get shocked into surrender. Nobody in Star Trek really compares to any of the foes that the Imperium fights on a daily basis.

No, not even the Borg.

Citation please? for every situation that you show about the greatness of the IoM there is a similar story about the substandards of the IoM. Space battles are listed as being in both the 100,000s and the 100s of kilometres of the accurate ranges of weapons. For every shot that vaporises its target there's another one about it doing nothing.

So please provide us with a single quantifiable example of how powerful the weapons are?

Cheers

Andrew

I swear there was some calc derived from the BFG rulebook that ended up giving you in excess of 500 gigatons of weapon power per point of damage a ship could do, giving a nova cannon on the order of 5000 gigatons (again, extrapolating from game mechanics). But I can't remember it.

Yup. The BFG rulebooks had some helpful fluff blurbs, those calculations were indeed what they gave.

Which also means that each void shield can absorb ~500 gigatons of energy.

40k ships are also very fast in terms of sub-light speeds. With the 1cm = 1000 kilometers scale, and a turn being 15 minutes. The slowest BFG ships(which traveled 10-15 cm a turn) move at up to 90,000kph.

**AndrewC**

The BFG rulebook does indeed containlots of fluff but no actual hard data as to the weapons output. The one and only time they ever gave hard figures was in the first edition space hulk, which has now been removed. The calculation that you refer to, are those the ones that an individual by name of Connor made 8n another website? Because those were called into question on methodology.

Next I dont know what the rating is for a void shield but I seriously doubt a figure of 500gt. BFG works by spreading its shots across a large area in the hope of catching the ship in the blast. Not a direct hit.

Cheers

Andrew