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Vaktathi wrote: To add to my previous comment, planets in general make really very little sense to fight over when you have technology that every faction in 40k has access to (fusion reactors, engines that can accelerate ships to meaningfully high fractions of C, etc, much less truly fantasy stuff like FTL and artificial gravity).
To be fair to this idea though, only the Imperium and Tau really fight for territory in this sense. Orks kinda do, but mostly they take territory to get in more fights.
True, though the Eldar seemingly do to from time to time, and the Necrons seem to have chosen planets for some reason to mostly secret themselves on, as opposed to deep space objects that would make far more sense, etc. Admittedly not hold great stellar empires of planets for the most part however. The Craftworld Eldar live probably what is one of the most realistic versions of far future life, at least in that respect. Planets are more trouble than they're worth once you can get yourself off one
The Tyranids seem be drawn to planets, but nothing about them makes sense either really
But fusion reactors and ships don't really provide solutions to most of the basic food/fire/shelter problems. Warmth, yeah, but that's about it.
If you have fusion reactors, you have the the technology base and all the energy you need to more than take care of all that other stuff. Find a ball of ice and rock a few kilometers wide, carve out the inside, stick a fusion reactor in it, and you've got a home that will last millenia and can hold millions of people and doesn't need to expend obscene amounts of energy fighting a gravity well to interact with its neighbors. Though this is also the same setting that thinks Thunderhawks (bricks with decidedly non-aerodynamically shaped wings) make effective atmospheric dropships...
Grey Templar wrote: If for nothing else, planets would have value for food production even if you can get everything else from asteroids and other celestial objects. You CAN hydroponically grow food, but that needs water. If a planet already has water on it you might as well, plus people would prefer to live in a more natural environment.
Water is an incredibly abundant resource in space however, or can be manufactured from abundant sources of hydrogen and oxygen, and you don't need oceans of it to grow food, especially food that's been chosen and adapted for growing in space. Even if it weren't, the expense of hauling food out of a gravity well would generally defeat any other advantages.
That said, plenty of humans in 40k do live completely in space. In the old RPG, there was a specific racial option for Voidborn humans who are people who have lived for generations in space.
Aye, it's just not portrayed all that much with tabletop 40k unfortunately. That would definitely be a cool avenue to explore more in 40k however.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Aircraft and space bombardments cannot hold territory or assets. They can help you take it, but to HOLD it, you need boots and asses on the ground.
Nuking from orbit is fine if you want to deny assets to the enemy, but if you want to keep it intact, you need to send the meatboys in.
Neutron bomb?
It's a good idea, but from what I understand they don't cover a very big area and hardened structures still offer reasonable protection. Like you'd have to carpet bomb a whole area, and even then that might not do it, and the are might still be contaminated with radiation.
And maybe they're more expensive than Guardsmen, who knows. I like the idea that they are occasionally deployed though.
Nerak wrote: If you've ever played something like Stellaris then the answer should be apparent. You can't really capture a planet without winning the war on the ground. Space combat is a extremly important factor but those spaceships are produced by the people on the planets. Or at the very least planetary production is part of a production chain of ultimate military superiority. Capturing the production chain, not just annihalating it, requires ground forces.
I do play stellaris. As an exterminator gestalt robot race I do armageddon bombardment until everything on the planet is dead and then I send a single ground troop to claim the annihilated world. Stellaris is part of the reason why I came up with the question.
Ah well that makes the question easy to answer then. Imagine Stellaris endgame. You’ve already conquered the galaxy and every world is under your command. Some worlds rebel though. Some Xenos come and enslave part of your population. Some Xenos keep spawning to raid and destroy planetary buildings. Of course you’d bombard the defenders first but inscriminate bombardment would remove your own pops. Would you delete your own pop and infrastructure or save time by sending armies in these cases?
His pattern of returning alive after being declared dead occurred often enough during Cain's career that the Munitorum made a special ruling that Ciaphas Cain is to never be considered dead, despite evidence to the contrary.
Aircraft and space bombardments cannot hold territory or assets. They can help you take it, but to HOLD it, you need boots and asses on the ground.
Nuking from orbit is fine if you want to deny assets to the enemy, but if you want to keep it intact, you need to send the meatboys in.
Neutron bomb?
It's a good idea, but from what I understand they don't cover a very big area and hardened structures still offer reasonable protection. Like you'd have to carpet bomb a whole area, and even then that might not do it, and the are might still be contaminated with radiation.
And maybe they're more expensive than Guardsmen, who knows. I like the idea that they are occasionally deployed though.
And there's a central conceit of the 40k universe. Human lives are dirt cheap, and can be spent by the million.
The god emperors holy neutron warheads on the other hand are ancient priceless relics. The making of which has long been forgotten, and which must only be unsealed from their tech-vaults in the direst of circumstances.
Aircraft and space bombardments cannot hold territory or assets. They can help you take it, but to HOLD it, you need boots and asses on the ground.
Nuking from orbit is fine if you want to deny assets to the enemy, but if you want to keep it intact, you need to send the meatboys in.
Neutron bomb?
It's a good idea, but from what I understand they don't cover a very big area and hardened structures still offer reasonable protection. Like you'd have to carpet bomb a whole area, and even then that might not do it, and the are might still be contaminated with radiation.
And maybe they're more expensive than Guardsmen, who knows. I like the idea that they are occasionally deployed though.
And there's a central conceit of the 40k universe. Human lives are dirt cheap, and can be spent by the million.
The god emperors holy neutron warheads on the other hand are ancient priceless relics. The making of which has long been forgotten, and which must only be unsealed from their tech-vaults in the direst of circumstances.
Would a Neutron Bomb work on a Plague Marine? OR even an Ork? How radiation proof are Tau suits/mechs/tanks? Neutron bombs *Enhanced Radiation Weapons* work fairly well against humans because of our physiology. Are we sure that'll work on other species?
Aircraft and space bombardments cannot hold territory or assets. They can help you take it, but to HOLD it, you need boots and asses on the ground.
Nuking from orbit is fine if you want to deny assets to the enemy, but if you want to keep it intact, you need to send the meatboys in.
Neutron bomb?
It's a good idea, but from what I understand they don't cover a very big area and hardened structures still offer reasonable protection. Like you'd have to carpet bomb a whole area, and even then that might not do it, and the are might still be contaminated with radiation.
And maybe they're more expensive than Guardsmen, who knows. I like the idea that they are occasionally deployed though.
And there's a central conceit of the 40k universe. Human lives are dirt cheap, and can be spent by the million.
The god emperors holy neutron warheads on the other hand are ancient priceless relics. The making of which has long been forgotten, and which must only be unsealed from their tech-vaults in the direst of circumstances.
Would a Neutron Bomb work on a Plague Marine? OR even an Ork? How radiation proof are Tau suits/mechs/tanks? Neutron bombs *Enhanced Radiation Weapons* work fairly well against humans because of our physiology. Are we sure that'll work on other species?
All questions that matter very little, when the easier solution is to just send in the guard and drown the enemy under a mountain of corpses.
(Replace neutron bomb with any other technological solution to the problem. The point I was getting at is that in 40k, human life is always cheaper.)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/05/26 11:31:46
roboemperor sits at the helm of a mighty Imperium warship. The bridge's targeting screens flicker, displaying hazy images of the great celestial body below. His fingers tap against his baroque armrests, as he ponders another thread about what the Necrons might be able to do if they did stuff they've never done in the story before. The servitor crewmen scurry about busily, tending to the vast instrument of impossible ordinance they wield.
"Gunnery Admiral Cimex-Epsilon 835, when will the estimate for the margins of error be done on the PLANET ENDER 3 TRILLION?" "Well, my liege," the cowled figure stammered, "not for quite some time, really, we're calibrating the potential accuracy modifiers of the gravity well drop, and then factoring in any local atmospheric abnormalities. These servo-skulls just don't have the gray matter, I'm afraid, probably something in the corpse-starch on their homeworld before they were converted, not to mention-" "ENOUGH!" barked roboemperor. "Just prepare to fire the damned thing, it'll wipe out almost everything planetside anyway. Nothing bad ever happened in 40k from leaving a tiny trace of your foe unkilled, but assuming they were dead and waltzing off..." "Right you are, roboemperor, we'll begin manually loading the PLANET ENDER 3 TRILLION with our ship-slaves, the safest thing to prevent rogue AI and malevolent machine spirits from compromising this whole endeavor and killing us all-" "Just hurry up, alright?"
Suddenly, the bridge is illuminated by a brilliant flash of blinding, blue-white light. 9 Terminators crackle through the warp, onto the bridge. One is stuck in the wall, and is kept alive by his armor long enough to howl out in agony as his organs are suddenly interrupted by steel bulwark walls. The targeting screens crackle with change, as the roar of stormbolters shreads the industrious silence that had permeated the bridge before their arrival. Through the targeters, roboemperor can see all manner of horrifying things. Breacher squads engage armsmen throughout the ship, mowing down the puny Navymen with their hulking bolters. On the surface of [mining planet name goes here], drop pods screech through the sky, divulging power-armored wrath into the complex used to extract the materials to build the ship. Meanwhile, on a manufactorum world, whole legions of skitarii make planetfall, hidden by the orbit of numerous moons, until the defenders realize too late, that the adeptus mechanicus has come to punish them for their mass-producing PLANET ENDER 3 TRILLIONs, without proper imperial paperwork (they did apply, really, it just got lost in a pile of receipts somewhere 483 Terran years ago, blame the old scribe-itor, he was really lax until they augmented him with a second parasympathetic implant). After years of brutal groundwar, 2 whole regiments of guard manage to break the defensive line around the spaceports on the same world, unleashing a hail of artillery from several columns of self-propelled guns, smashing any capacity to launch further ships.
roboemperor sneers, and snarls at the terminators; "Fools, do you think I'd have only one PLANET ENDER 3 TRILLION-class megafrigate? I have-" before jumping into the warp, 4 more megafrigates are intercepted at a void defense satellite station. Two are shot to pieces, detonating harmlessly in deepspace. The remainder make the jump into the warp, sliding into unreality. "okay, I have two, but still, that's enough to kill several planets worth of-" One megafrigate makes the jump out, but on the wrong side of the planet. "okayyoufireeverythingyou'vegotfortheloveofterra" The element of surprise is lost, the frigate picked apart by ship-hunting fighters before it can even calibrate its weapons.
Three years before roboemperor is born, the fourth and final megafrigate flickers out of the warp. It's crew are all desiccated skeletons, the flesh stripped from their centuries-old bones by the mouths of ravening warp-spawn. It drifts past an ancient moon. Great metalic pylons on the moon's surface crackle into life, and a mighty gauss blast scythes through the heavens, splitting the ship asunder, as the moon is heaved off course by the immense energy burst from below the surface of its long-forgotten crust.
Like, don't get me wrong, there's a very real element to warfare (see almost every English campaign in medieval France) where rocking up, destroying everything, and then leaving, has a practical application. You can deny your enemy resources, and sap the moral of the civilian population. But without a coherent strategic purpose (Vietnam), it become expensive, and utterly futile. On top of that, if after all this time, humans still can't drop a bomb from a plane and make it go exactly where they want, regardless of the circumstances, 100% of the time? Like, doing that from space with technology from pretty much every race, from a safe enough range that the planet can't threaten you back (fortress worlds are practically ALWAYS described as brimming with anti-orbit defences)? A shot in a million. The Inquisition calls exterminatus when they lose control, not as a magic strategic tide-turner. In a setting like 40k, all the races aren't vying for some abstract videogame conquest milestone. It's a tooth and claw battle for survival. You can't survive, fundamentally, as a terrestrial race if there is no terrain to live on. And as a terrestrial species, you need terrain to support your space navy anyway. If your only way to defend your industrial/spaceport/mineral resources are to... nuke 'em from orbit like...? Virus bombing some planet can deny it to your enemy, and yes, like as Istvaan, if you pull it off right (they couldn't) potentially cripple a critical part of your enemy's war machine. But I can't think of a single war that has ever gone entirely to plan no surprises nothing goes wrong nuh-uh perfect everytime baybeeeeee. And I know a LOT of wars.
On top of that, if this were possible, it'd be hella boring. Gimme chainsaw dudes fighting big green football hooligans on a desert, gimme terrified human conscripts surrounded by undying metal horrors, gimmie a fallen race of fancy elf boys trying to decide between dying with honor, but losing their souls to save their descendants, or being turned into nightmarish walking ghost machines bound to fight forever-or-at-least-until-they-try-to-steal-my-soul-again. Space is cool, but it's the drama in space that makes it fun.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/05/26 11:40:00
posermcbogus wrote: Like, don't get me wrong, there's a very real element to warfare (see almost every English campaign in medieval France) where rocking up, destroying everything, and then leaving, has a practical application. You can deny your enemy resources, and sap the moral of the civilian population. But without a coherent strategic purpose (Vietnam), it become expensive, and utterly futile.
You guys gotta stop using conventional warfare as examples.
1. Vietnam was lost because of political bs. The vietkong used every single country surrounding vietnam as a sanctuary and safe refuge where they can stockpile soldiers and weaponry without building up any defenses while the americans were forced to stay inside south vietnam exclusively. This political dumbassery is what cost us the war. Can't invade the attackers, can't attack their bases, all they could do was sit there like sitting ducks while they're completely surrounded and incapable of retaliating. The one time US left the south vietnam borders they seized so much stockpiled weaponry yet they still decided to abide by the political dumbassery and lose the war.
2. Compare Battleships pounding the enemy with artillery shells v.s. submarines launching nukes. One strategy is considered ineffective and does more harm than good because it gives the defenders cover in the form of craters. There's lots of academic papers regarding the subject matter. And the other ends the entire war within the first few hours to the point mutually assured destruction had to be achieved to keep the peace.
The only real argument in this thread is that guardsman are cheaper than all WMDs. I heard somewhere that a lasgun was more expensive than a guardsman and that damaging a lasgun resulted in execution.
Still doesn't change the fact that Necrons, who did war to kill the old ones entirely would use conventional warfare. I understand their epic doomsday weapons are all offline or damaged from the hibernation, but day to day their weapons should've been saturated with WMDs like anti-matter because their day-to-day during war in heaven was exterminatus of every planet.
No? Their day-to-day in the War in Heaven was to fight the Old Ones to build a galaxy-spanning empire, teleporting masses of troops from pocket dimensions as Monoliths, Nights Scythes and the like made planetfall, and the C'Tan brought forth the destructive elements of reality to match the psychic might of the adverseries.
Now yes, there were definitely times where they did destroy the odd planets, sun or even system (especially with hungry star gods in tow). But that definitely wasn't the norm as they'd have nothing left to rule over, which would be pretty dumb since the whole reason to start the war was to unify their people against a common enemy.
1. Vietnam was lost because of political bs. The vietkong used every single country surrounding vietnam as a sanctuary and safe refuge where they can stockpile soldiers and weaponry without building up any defenses while the americans were forced to stay inside south vietnam exclusively. This political dumbassery is what cost us the war. Can't invade the attackers, can't attack their bases, all they could do was sit there like sitting ducks while they're completely surrounded and incapable of retaliating. The one time US left the south vietnam borders they seized so much stockpiled weaponry yet they still decided to abide by the political dumbassery and lose the war.
You say that like the US didn't drop over 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/05/26 12:25:35
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Exterminatus is supposed to be a last resort, not the first thing in your list of options you reach for. Because usually, planets have tons of resources so they are better conquered rather than smashed into oblivion from space.
Planets with bases like Cadia usually are heavily defended. So even a fleet may not be able to kill off the defenders by simply bombarding it from space.
posermcbogus wrote: Like, don't get me wrong, there's a very real element to warfare (see almost every English campaign in medieval France) where rocking up, destroying everything, and then leaving, has a practical application. You can deny your enemy resources, and sap the moral of the civilian population. But without a coherent strategic purpose (Vietnam), it become expensive, and utterly futile.
You guys gotta stop using conventional warfare as examples.
1. Vietnam was lost because of political bs. The vietkong used every single country surrounding vietnam as a sanctuary and safe refuge where they can stockpile soldiers and weaponry without building up any defenses while the americans were forced to stay inside south vietnam exclusively. This political dumbassery is what cost us the war. Can't invade the attackers, can't attack their bases, all they could do was sit there like sitting ducks while they're completely surrounded and incapable of retaliating. The one time US left the south vietnam borders they seized so much stockpiled weaponry yet they still decided to abide by the political dumbassery and lose the war.
2. Compare Battleships pounding the enemy with artillery shells v.s. submarines launching nukes. One strategy is considered ineffective and does more harm than good because it gives the defenders cover in the form of craters. There's lots of academic papers regarding the subject matter. And the other ends the entire war within the first few hours to the point mutually assured destruction had to be achieved to keep the peace.
The only real argument in this thread is that guardsman are cheaper than all WMDs. I heard somewhere that a lasgun was more expensive than a guardsman and that damaging a lasgun resulted in execution.
Still doesn't change the fact that Necrons, who did war to kill the old ones entirely would use conventional warfare. I understand their epic doomsday weapons are all offline or damaged from the hibernation, but day to day their weapons should've been saturated with WMDs like anti-matter because their day-to-day during war in heaven was exterminatus of every planet.
Why do you struggle so much with the concept that blowing up planets left right and centre is a dumb plan?
tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam
The problem with this thread is that the OP is stuck in their preconceived notion of big armaments winning wars and the utter disconnect with why such conflicts are fought in the first place.
posermcbogus wrote: Like, don't get me wrong, there's a very real element to warfare (see almost every English campaign in medieval France) where rocking up, destroying everything, and then leaving, has a practical application. You can deny your enemy resources, and sap the moral of the civilian population. But without a coherent strategic purpose (Vietnam), it become expensive, and utterly futile.
You guys gotta stop using conventional warfare as examples.
1. Vietnam was lost because of political bs. The vietkong used every single country surrounding vietnam as a sanctuary and safe refuge where they can stockpile soldiers and weaponry without building up any defenses while the americans were forced to stay inside south vietnam exclusively. This political dumbassery is what cost us the war. Can't invade the attackers, can't attack their bases, all they could do was sit there like sitting ducks while they're completely surrounded and incapable of retaliating. The one time US left the south vietnam borders they seized so much stockpiled weaponry yet they still decided to abide by the political dumbassery and lose the war.
South Vietnam received substantially more outside materiel and financial support than North Vietnam did (and that was wasn't being actively attacked and destroyed at the same rate as outside support to North Vietnam was), and couldn't make it work, and the North got hit with more ordnance than both Germany and Japan combined did during WW2 and suffered 650k-million military dead, while the US dropped literally megatons worth of ordnance on North Vietnam's neighbors. Chalking the outcome up to "political BS" is to profoundly misunderstand that conflict.
2. Compare Battleships pounding the enemy with artillery shells v.s. submarines launching nukes. One strategy is considered ineffective and does more harm than good because it gives the defenders cover in the form of craters. There's lots of academic papers regarding the subject matter. And the other ends the entire war within the first few hours to the point mutually assured destruction had to be achieved to keep the peace.
O_o Heavy artillery and naval support has been considered extremely effective and was one of the reasons (actually the biggest one) why the Iowa's were kept in service decades after their value as surface naval combatants had waned, and why such bombardments were used extensively in every operation near a coastline where it was possible even into the Gulf War in the 1990's. Just because it wasn't the right tool applied in the right way every time doesn't make such bombardments worthless. Likewise, your assumption that a nuclear war would end in hours is, well, just that, and mostly based on what sounds like Fallout lore, particularly when both the US and the Soviet Union/Russia had extensive plans and means for continuing nuclear wars for significant lengths of time.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/05/26 14:05:45
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Because despite bombing Iraq back nearly to the dark ages with the most precision aerial bombardment in the history of the world for weeks on end, Iraq did not fall until the ground troops went in.
You can destroy from afar, but you can only conquer on the ground. So if you want anything other than destruction, you must have land combat.
alextroy wrote: Because despite bombing Iraq back nearly to the dark ages with the most precision aerial bombardment in the history of the world for weeks on end, Iraq did not fall until the ground troops went in.
You can destroy from afar, but you can only conquer on the ground. So if you want anything other than destruction, you must have land combat.
But with sufficient bombing and airpower you can make the ground combat much less deadly as you have already wiped out the majority of the enemy force and disrupted their logistics and organisational structure.
For example, in the '90-'91 Gulf War the Coalition forces suffered 292 killed, of which 147 were killed by enemy action. Add that to ~4,200 Kuwaiti casualties and you have around 4,500 killed on the side of those opposing Iraq. Iraqi casualties are estimated at 25,000 killed at least, potentially up to 50,000 killed.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/05/26 16:38:35
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
The Imperial forces do use orbital bombardment and artillery in copious amounts - yet bunker and shield technologies and aiming countermeasures mean that they still don't win until ground troops make the big push.
Vaktathi wrote: O_o Heavy artillery and naval support has been considered extremely effective and was one of the reasons (actually the biggest one) why the Iowa's were kept in service decades after their value as surface naval combatants had waned, and why such bombardments were used extensively in every operation near a coastline where it was possible even into the Gulf War in the 1990's. Just because it wasn't the right tool applied in the right way every time doesn't make such bombardments worthless. Likewise, your assumption that a nuclear war would end in hours is, well, just that, and mostly based on what sounds like Fallout lore, particularly when both the US and the Soviet Union/Russia had extensive plans and means for continuing nuclear wars for significant lengths of time.
One of the main reason for the high losses at Omaha was the lack of naval firepower, not that too much is ineffective.
Vaktathi wrote: O_o Heavy artillery and naval support has been considered extremely effective and was one of the reasons (actually the biggest one) why the Iowa's were kept in service decades after their value as surface naval combatants had waned, and why such bombardments were used extensively in every operation near a coastline where it was possible even into the Gulf War in the 1990's. Just because it wasn't the right tool applied in the right way every time doesn't make such bombardments worthless. Likewise, your assumption that a nuclear war would end in hours is, well, just that, and mostly based on what sounds like Fallout lore, particularly when both the US and the Soviet Union/Russia had extensive plans and means for continuing nuclear wars for significant lengths of time.
One of the main reason for the high losses at Omaha was the lack of naval firepower, not that too much is ineffective.
The weather was pretty darn terrible for most of the preparatory phase for any operations there, hard to blame them. In the future, where most bombardment has to happen from low orbit, extreme planetary scifi weather could limit the possible time windows just as well.
Overread wrote: The Imperial forces do use orbital bombardment and artillery in copious amounts - yet bunker and shield technologies and aiming countermeasures mean that they still don't win until ground troops make the big push.
An enemy trapped in their bunker is an enemy who cannot manoeuvre to oppose your advance.
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Overread wrote: The Imperial forces do use orbital bombardment and artillery in copious amounts - yet bunker and shield technologies and aiming countermeasures mean that they still don't win until ground troops make the big push.
An enemy trapped in their bunker is an enemy who cannot manoeuvre to oppose your advance.
Unless they are using the underground rail network to move between bunkers and to ship huge shells to their own armoured bunkers in mountainsides with artillery guns to fire back.
But yes bombardment even against bunkers works - if you can make them keep their heads down you can draw closer before you have to stop your own bombardment to make the killing blow
posermcbogus wrote: Like, don't get me wrong, there's a very real element to warfare (see almost every English campaign in medieval France) where rocking up, destroying everything, and then leaving, has a practical application. You can deny your enemy resources, and sap the moral of the civilian population. But without a coherent strategic purpose (Vietnam), it become expensive, and utterly futile.
You guys gotta stop using conventional warfare as examples.
1. Vietnam was lost because of political bs. The vietkong used every single country surrounding vietnam as a sanctuary and safe refuge where they can stockpile soldiers and weaponry without building up any defenses while the americans were forced to stay inside south vietnam exclusively. This political dumbassery is what cost us the war. Can't invade the attackers, can't attack their bases, all they could do was sit there like sitting ducks while they're completely surrounded and incapable of retaliating. The one time US left the south vietnam borders they seized so much stockpiled weaponry yet they still decided to abide by the political dumbassery and lose the war.
South Vietnam received substantially more outside materiel and financial support than North Vietnam did (and that was wasn't being actively attacked and destroyed at the same rate as outside support to North Vietnam was), and couldn't make it work, and the North got hit with more ordnance than both Germany and Japan combined did during WW2 and suffered 650k-million military dead, while the US dropped literally megatons worth of ordnance on North Vietnam's neighbors. Chalking the outcome up to "political BS" is to profoundly misunderstand that conflict.
Arguably a very large part of the ‘political BS’ that caused Vietnam to go fubar was the focus on body count as a metric of success as opposed to actual strategic objectives. Yeah it may be easy to measure, but simply racking up the kills does not win wars if you can’t hold the ground or support your economy as multiple conflicts have demonstrated.
The Imperium glassing planets when enemies rock up is failing on both counts and is completely counterproductive to its actual strategic objectives.
Yeah it’s great from an operational perspective - but absolutely terrible strategically.
Planets are finite resources as is the infrastructure on them. Indiscriminate magma bombing of the surface is a last recourse, no matter what pithy oversimplified internet meme may say about the cavalier attitude of the Imperium to exterminatus
Planets are themselves armed like space stations and are much larger. This means their entire surface can be protected from enemy ships. So at the least you require ground war to remove the defence installations so your ships can get into firing range. Only massive flotillas would have a chance of overwhelming the defences of a planet
Contrary to oversimplification, the majority of wars the imperium fights aren't multi planet-spanning colossal battlefronts. The ability to carpet bomb a whole planet is not something the average ship squadron from the average war would have. They can certainly drop some ordnance, but not a comprehensive amount
contrary to oversimplification, the imperium doesn't fight wars of meaningless destruction. Most of the time they are defending their worlds, or trying to take back their worlds, or in the last case taking new worlds they've never owned. only that last one creates the space to indiscriminately bomb everything to oblivion assuming the enemy hasn't fortified the planet against that
TLDR, if you only see 40k through the lens of exterminatus memes, then sure, there's no point to ever fighting land wars.
Also if the imperium is taking new land it may actually want to capture infrastructure, to be used in the current campgain or for when they secure the planet, Idealy you'd aim to not have to ask the mechanicus to terraform a cratered wasteland into something inhabitable, or invest tons of resources making the planet actually productive again.
Overread wrote: The Imperial forces do use orbital bombardment and artillery in copious amounts - yet bunker and shield technologies and aiming countermeasures mean that they still don't win until ground troops make the big push.
An enemy trapped in their bunker is an enemy who cannot manoeuvre to oppose your advance.
Unless they are using the underground rail network to move between bunkers and to ship huge shells to their own armoured bunkers in mountainsides with artillery guns to fire back.
But yes bombardment even against bunkers works - if you can make them keep their heads down you can draw closer before you have to stop your own bombardment to make the killing blow
An underground rail network can be disrupted by seismic events which you can trigger with specialised weaponry and a bunker in a mountainside can be buried under tons of rock by causing a landslide over it.
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
That type of expertise might call for the mechanicus to help out, and well they would rather be left undisturbed from their pursuits by every little campaign.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/05/27 08:39:10
OldMate wrote: That type of expertise might call for the mechanicus to help out, and well they would rather be left undisturbed from their pursuits by every little campaign.
Not really, you just need some weaponry that causes a big bang, your bog standard modern day nuke will do the trick or an equivalent amount of conventional explosives, then you drop it on top of where the railway line is or on the mountainside above the bunker.
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Expertise is exactly that, don't matter if you have the biggest boom, that expertise is coming from somewhere and it seems like the field of the red hooded guys is all I'm saying.
Just remember, 99% of all knowledge has been lost, and innovation is pretty heretical.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I find it sort of silly that no-one has tried something like this through a campgian, perfected it and wrote it down somewhere for future reference of the fleet/regiment, but hey, it's the setting. People are ideologically adverse to innovation, there's tools and there's their job, you don't use them outside of that. You've lived your entire life being taught this. Unless you're a heretic in which case report to your closest Commissariat office.
Automatically Appended Next Post: On the other hand the regiment is probably carting tons and tons of this knowledge around and no-one has actually noticed yet, then some day a new commander decides to see what's in "that cupboard" and uncovers a wealth of tactical and technical info, could be an interesting narrative.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2020/05/27 09:18:11
