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Iron Hands go on about how "the flesh is weak", but it seems to me that an EMP would handily cripple them. Oops, robotic right arm no longer functioning, now this Marine over there must rely on his left arm alone. Oops, electronic eyes no longer functioning, that other Marine is now blind. They're not helpless (they're Marines after all), but one Marine is no longer the equal of a few dozen lesser men.

Come to think of it, an EMP would be devastating to ANY Space Marine army regardless of chapter, once their power armor dies on them and becomes much more cumbersome. They might even be forced to remove their armor (or parts of it), losing precious seconds. Time it correctly during a battle (assuming you had the foresight to equip your heretical troops with low-tech weapons like shotguns and machine guns), and you can quickly gain an insurmountable advantage.

I don't know if Necrons would be as vulnerable, given their highly advanced technology. Perhaps their tech operates on completely different principles.

.

Although it varies by plot armour, imperial tech shouldn't be vulnerable to traditional EMPs. They use machine spirits.. not microelectronics.

But they could well be vulnerable to powerful data Djinns and scrapcode

We have the technology, today, to defend electronic devices against EMP. There is no reason to believe Space Marines wouldn't.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Although it varies by plot armour, imperial tech shouldn't be vulnerable to traditional EMPs. They use machine spirits.. not microelectronics.

Is it canon that machine spirits exist? I've always figured they were just Imperial dogma/superstition.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
We have the technology, today, to defend electronic devices against EMP. There is no reason to believe Space Marines wouldn't.

True. Assuming this is not one of the areas where Imperial technology has regressed.

-Guardsman- wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Although it varies by plot armour, imperial tech shouldn't be vulnerable to traditional EMPs. They use machine spirits.. not microelectronics.

Is it canon that machine spirits exist? I've always figured they were just Imperial dogma/superstition.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
We have the technology, today, to defend electronic devices against EMP. There is no reason to believe Space Marines wouldn't.

True. Assuming this is not one of the areas where Imperial technology has regressed.

Machine spirits are just about three things, more or less:

1. Actual Strange machine “consciousness”/AI phenomena
2. Hand-wavy explanation for things the Mechanicus doesn’t understand
3. Proper functioning of the machine.

-Guardsman- wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Although it varies by plot armour, imperial tech shouldn't be vulnerable to traditional EMPs. They use machine spirits.. not microelectronics.

Is it canon that machine spirits exist? I've always figured they were just Imperial dogma/superstition.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
We have the technology, today, to defend electronic devices against EMP. There is no reason to believe Space Marines wouldn't.

True. Assuming this is not one of the areas where Imperial technology has regressed.

Machine spirits definitely exist it just doesn't seem clear what they actually are.

If you can increase the defence against an EMP then isn't it reasonable to assume you can also make EMP's or equivalents that bypass them?

Yeah, the Eldar kind of tried that pre-Heresy in Feat of Iron - although it might work against 40k Iron Hands.
'Normal' Marines don't need their armour to survive - in Death of Integrity several Marines take off their armour to crawl thru the vents in the space hulk.

keep in mind that if armor is resistant to EMO you might be able to brute force your way past that resistance but once you reach a certain point you're likely going to be impacting people too (bodies are operated via electircal impulses sent along our nervous system) and you'd be betetr off just using normal weaponry. EMPs are not a magical solution for a technological foe.

EMP might be a bit too low-tech to do anything on advanced cybernetics, but the Dark Mechanicum could certainly cook up some scrapcode to get the same result. And yes, heavily augmented marines like the Iron Hands would be seriously handicapped by that.

pm713 wrote:

If you can increase the defence against an EMP then isn't it reasonable to assume you can also make EMP's or equivalents that bypass them?

If they replace their limbs with cybernetic replacements, they become vulnerable to [techno-magic mumbo jumbo]. Unlike all regular marines, who are already vulnerable to [different techno-magic mumbo jumbo]. However, in exchange, the cyberneticly enhanced marines can [various improvements that aren't great enough to be reflected in the table top stats].

Or do they get to reroll 1's or something now?

One of the ubiquitous materials the Imperium uses is Ceramite and cerametals which are seemingly supposed to be a ceramic-metal mixture.

In the real world this sort of mixed material is ideal in hardening against EMP's and can be composed and applied in variety of ways. Sometimes it will take the form of ceramic bbs coated in iron or another metal that are used to fill the walls around what you're hardening; sometimes it can be a paste composed of fine particles of ceramic and metal in a binder painted or coated on and around what's being shielded. Or sometimes its a homogeneous material where the ceramic and metal particles are sintered together. The latter being most like what Cerametal sounds like.

Regardless of the means of making it the end result is the same, the dissimilar nature of metal and ceramics means when its subjected to an electromagnetic pulse a capacitance is induced and a disproportionate amount of electromagnetic energy is absorbed and dissipated off by discharging into the ground or environment.

If Iron Hands knew it was coming they'd probably just need to plant their feet firmly.

-Guardsman- wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Although it varies by plot armour, imperial tech shouldn't be vulnerable to traditional EMPs. They use machine spirits.. not microelectronics.

Is it canon that machine spirits exist? I've always figured they were just Imperial dogma/superstition.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
We have the technology, today, to defend electronic devices against EMP. There is no reason to believe Space Marines wouldn't.

True. Assuming this is not one of the areas where Imperial technology has regressed.

It depends on the book. I usually disregard it when I come across one in a book because I think that whole section of lore is lame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Although it varies by plot armour, imperial tech shouldn't be vulnerable to traditional EMPs. They use machine spirits.. not microelectronics.

But they could well be vulnerable to powerful data Djinns and scrapcode

Their backpacks are described as mini reactor power units.. They would definitely use electronics.

 solkan wrote:

pm713 wrote:

If you can increase the defence against an EMP then isn't it reasonable to assume you can also make EMP's or equivalents that bypass them?

If they replace their limbs with cybernetic replacements, they become vulnerable to [techno-magic mumbo jumbo]. Unlike all regular marines, who are already vulnerable to [different techno-magic mumbo jumbo]. However, in exchange, the cyberneticly enhanced marines can [various improvements that aren't great enough to be reflected in the table top stats].

Or do they get to reroll 1's or something now?

QFT

Back in the day terminator were invulnerable to.Haywire effects due to.the greater reliance of the armour on servo.assistance. but they were also more susceptible to snotlings suddenly materialising in their helmet and drowning them in pee

In one of Phil Kellys crappy Tau books, the Ultramarines end up losing because the Tau EMP'd them. It was honestly the dumbest thing.

123ply wrote:
In one of Phil Kellys crappy Tau books, the Ultramarines end up losing because the Tau EMP'd them. It was honestly the dumbest thing.

I've not read many Phil Kelly books but I know war of secrets was terribad, it read like bad Tau fan fic

123ply wrote:
In one of Phil Kellys crappy Tau books, the Ultramarines end up losing because the Tau EMP'd them. It was honestly the dumbest thing.

In fairness while you can harden a system to be resistant to EMP's like anything there is a threshold in which the protection system of a moving piece of machinery could end up overwhelmed.

As I mentioned before, generally the ceramite used in a lot astartes equipment, is in the real world the sort of material ideal for hardening systems against EMP's.

I believe it was the Horus Heresy book Fulgrim where they were on the planet murder. A few of the legionaries get struck by lightning and it does nothing to them. If marine armor is grounded/shielded enough for lightning strikes it should be fine against EMPs.

Back in the RT days they could. That's essentially what "haywire" grenades were.

ALL powered armour could be shut down by haywire.

Then you hit them with tanglefoot grenades to trip them up and make it easier for you to engage them.

Yeah. Plus if grounded, undamaged mostly and so, thr armour and framework is one giant fariday cage, armoured but thr voltage can go round outside and just shrug it off.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Although it varies by plot armour, imperial tech shouldn't be vulnerable to traditional EMPs. They use machine spirits.. not microelectronics.

But they could well be vulnerable to powerful data Djinns and scrapcode

Machine Spirits = AI's reversed engineered from the C'tan Void Dragon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Haywire is 40k's version on EMP...

-Guardsman- wrote:
Iron Hands go on about how "the flesh is weak", but it seems to me that an EMP would handily cripple them. Oops, robotic right arm no longer functioning, now this Marine over there must rely on his left arm alone. Oops, electronic eyes no longer functioning, that other Marine is now blind. They're not helpless (they're Marines after all), but one Marine is no longer the equal of a few dozen lesser men.

Come to think of it, an EMP would be devastating to ANY Space Marine army regardless of chapter, once their power armor dies on them and becomes much more cumbersome. They might even be forced to remove their armor (or parts of it), losing precious seconds. Time it correctly during a battle (assuming you had the foresight to equip your heretical troops with low-tech weapons like shotguns and machine guns), and you can quickly gain an insurmountable advantage.

I don't know if Necrons would be as vulnerable, given their highly advanced technology. Perhaps their tech operates on completely different principles.

.

Probably, but you'd need a really powerful pulse. You'd think the Imperium (and Necrons for that matter) would employ some sort of EMP protection.
I like to think Haywire represents a strong, localized pulse, that's designed to work against EMP shielded targets.