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Because planet's support large amounts of people, for the imperium at least which are needed for ships, production and land forces. Things like Orks just want to fight your security forces, and dark Eldar will enslave everyone if there is no resistanceso defencivly you already need ground forces.

My question here is why Tyrannids don't just seed the planet with toxic spores from space if they only want to nom the inhabitants.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean toxic spores are much more insidious than ground forces. Also when it comes down to your warriors going planet side, well the atmosphere is toxic to your enemy, so all you have to do is wound them, or damage their NBC protection and they're dead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is by far the most suiting type of exterminartus for any faction.

 AuntHerbert wrote:

 Overread wrote:
You might as well have invested into an abandoned moon or asteroid field

Exactly this!

If stuff would be so easy to replace, why bother conquering it in the first place. Unless the universe in 40k is very very different from our own, there is no shortage of barren rocks to build on, and wasting resources just to create one more is just stupid.

Jingoism.

You act like wars haven't been fought over metaphorical barren rocks on our own planet. It isn't about whether the barren rock is valuable, it is about you wanting that barren rock because other people would like it too and by gum you're not going to let anyone else have that useless piece of rock.

For a real life example, see the Falklands War. The Falklands are not valuable from any strategic viewpoint. So why did Argentina invade them and start a war? Because they wanted to use jingoism to increase support for their unpopular military junta among the Argentine populace.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 AuntHerbert wrote:

 Overread wrote:
You might as well have invested into an abandoned moon or asteroid field

Exactly this!

If stuff would be so easy to replace, why bother conquering it in the first place. Unless the universe in 40k is very very different from our own, there is no shortage of barren rocks to build on, and wasting resources just to create one more is just stupid.

Jingoism.

You act like wars haven't been fought over metaphorical barren rocks on our own planet. It isn't about whether the barren rock is valuable, it is about you wanting that barren rock because other people would like it too and by gum you're not going to let anyone else have that useless piece of rock.

For a real life example, see the Falklands War. The Falklands are not valuable from any strategic viewpoint. So why did Argentina invade them and start a war? Because they wanted to use jingoism to increase support for their unpopular military junta among the Argentine populace.

and the british responded with military force to KEEP that Barren rock. I mean I suspect neither side, if you looked at a purely logical "gains worth the means" spread sheet, should have been willing to fight for the Falklands, but it was a matter of national pride on both sides

I understand most battles being fought by the imperium to be defensive, so you'd not nuke your own planet while it's filled with loyalists becasue every other planet in the sector see what the reward for dedication and loyalty are.

You also have to consider snowball effects. If you don't squash a local military taking minor victories here and there, they might build momentum and support enough to attack somewhere important. Worst if they've gained support and funding the might actually win.

Suddenly you've got to devote way more resources to squash a serious uprising, whereas if you'd squashed the smaller ones you'd still have invested serious resources, but just not as many.

BrianDavion wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 AuntHerbert wrote:

 Overread wrote:
You might as well have invested into an abandoned moon or asteroid field

Exactly this!

If stuff would be so easy to replace, why bother conquering it in the first place. Unless the universe in 40k is very very different from our own, there is no shortage of barren rocks to build on, and wasting resources just to create one more is just stupid.

Jingoism.

You act like wars haven't been fought over metaphorical barren rocks on our own planet. It isn't about whether the barren rock is valuable, it is about you wanting that barren rock because other people would like it too and by gum you're not going to let anyone else have that useless piece of rock.

For a real life example, see the Falklands War. The Falklands are not valuable from any strategic viewpoint. So why did Argentina invade them and start a war? Because they wanted to use jingoism to increase support for their unpopular military junta among the Argentine populace.

and the british responded with military force to KEEP that Barren rock. I mean I suspect neither side, if you looked at a purely logical "gains worth the means" spread sheet, should have been willing to fight for the Falklands, but it was a matter of national pride on both sides

I mean there was also probably a strategic calculation, that the UK would likely not actually fight to retain sovereignty over said barren piece of rock so far from their home soil.

 agurus1 wrote:

I mean there was also probably a strategic calculation, that the UK would likely not actually fight to retain sovereignty over said barren piece of rock so far from their home soil.

If so, it was a catastrophic misreading of the situation vis a vis Cold War readiness at the time. That said, I'm sure that I read somewhere that part of the problem was time; Argentina had originally timetabled a later attack to coincide with the onset of the South Atlantic winter, where military ops would be a lot harder to conduct and so they'd gain extra time to bolster the defences. Instead something I can't recall led them to accelerate their plans.

Oh well.

OldMate wrote:My question here is why Tyrannids don't just seed the planet with toxic spores from space if they only want to nom the inhabitants.

It's a laboratory experiment. See which gene sequences work (they survived), which don't (they didn't) and analyse whatever the Hivemind equivalent of an After Action Report is to decide whether or not there are any particularly tasty/interesting new possibilities from what you've just eaten and what tweaks you need to make. To continue the videogame theme from earlier, it's the difference between clicking 'autoresolve' and taking heavyier casualties than you expected, and actually playing the battle out, so you can see that your faithful old Cavalry regiment from the start just doesn't cut it any more, no matter how much XP it's earned.

I've gotta say I like the idea that the hivemind is actually perfecting it's units and tactics as part of a kind of hobby rather than to just to consume everything.

 OldMate wrote:
I've gotta say I like the idea that the hivemind is actually perfecting it's units and tactics as part of a kind of hobby rather than to just to consume everything.

The horrifying truth - Tyranids are just gamers who are into efficiency.

Pilum wrote:

 agurus1 wrote:

I mean there was also probably a strategic calculation, that the UK would likely not actually fight to retain sovereignty over said barren piece of rock so far from their home soil.

If so, it was a catastrophic misreading of the situation vis a vis Cold War readiness at the time. That said, I'm sure that I read somewhere that part of the problem was time; Argentina had originally timetabled a later attack to coincide with the onset of the South Atlantic winter, where military ops would be a lot harder to conduct and so they'd gain extra time to bolster the defences. Instead something I can't recall led them to accelerate their plans.

Oh well.

The most ironic thing about that conflict (which rather reinforces the point here) is that the UK wasn’t particularly interested in hanging on to said barren rocks so far from home and had rather been trying to work out how to divest itself of them.

One invasion later and that is now a complete political impossibility...

I am presently reading the novel The Fall of Damnos. In it, the planet had an imperial navy battleship (can't remember its class) that targeted Necrons positions and bombed them with melta toperdoes. However, the necrons stroke back and with one shot of compressed energy, obliterated the ship.

In the novel The World Engine , the battleship fleet of several space marines chapters were unable to fight against the Necron mobile planet and suffered several major loss. The Chapter Master of the Astral Knights concluded that the only way to effectively fight it was to crash one of the ship at full speed, evading its attacks and mobile fighters. Once on its surface, they waged war on the necrons.

So, in short, land battle is mostly used when battleships just can't survive an encounter with an anti-battleship defense system.

Of course, there are other reasons : capturing a vital ressource or infrastructure, saving key individuals, retrieving something, etc.,

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

You act like wars haven't been fought over metaphorical barren rocks on our own planet.

I hear your argument, and it would be a valid argument if the discussion was about "What's the point of nuking stuff from orbit?". Sure, not every military decision directly aims at immediate economical advantage.
But, the main thesis of this thread is, that every military operation in 40k should be solvable by nuking stuff from orbit, so land combat no longer makes sense.
That's like saying car theft makes no sense, if you don't agree with someone else having a car, you can just blow it up and buy yourself a brand new car.

 Overread wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

I think the capture stuff objective is overblown. In most cases, it would be easiest to mass driver from orbit and just rebuild. Kills the game theme, I know, but the game theme is already incredibly stupid.

Why is it easier to rebuild?
It's far easier and cheaper to drop cheap troops and cheap munitions - of which the Imperium has copious amounts - onto the land and recapture installations as intact as possible. Some facilities are going to be hard to rebuild, the plans for how to build them might even be within the facility so if you bomb it to the stone age you don't even know how to rebuild it. There are unique technologies out there which are beyond the Imperiums ability to re-create to say nothing of captured Xenotech.

There's also a cost factor; its not just the cost of rebuilding, its rebuilding on a nuclear wasteland where you have to factor in additional costs for protective equipment for your operators and machines so that they don't break down in the environment. Ontop of that you've got to pay for all that ordinance that you've just bombarded the world with - that's a huge amount of weaponary and specialist firepower you've just thrown away to recapture a world that you've got to then spend a fortune rebuilding. With the fact that local food and water is likely gone/contaminated so now you've got to import everything. No functional mines, no functional production, no functional life support. You might as well have invested into an abandoned moon or asteroid field because you're going to spend the same resources and you've got thousands upon thousands of years (or extreme high cost cleaning gear) until the world is "clean" of nuclear fallout.

Quit using gak you don't understand or reverse engineer it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OldMate wrote:
I understand most battles being fought by the imperium to be defensive, so you'd not nuke your own planet while it's filled with loyalists becasue every other planet in the sector see what the reward for dedication and loyalty are.

Sure you would. Their lives mean nothing.

Martel732 wrote:
Quit using gak you don't understand or reverse engineer it.

And lo and behold, humanity never progressed past stone tools.

Because never in the history of humanity have people ever bettered themselves by stealing schematics and developing technology from opposing militaries.

 OldMate wrote:
I understand most battles being fought by the imperium to be defensive, so you'd not nuke your own planet while it's filled with loyalists becasue every other planet in the sector see what the reward for dedication and loyalty are.

Sure you would. Their lives mean nothing.

And how do you think that would go, telling all those neighbouring systems that at the slightest hint of trouble, you'd rather wipe them and their families out, instead of sending the Emperor's Divine Armies to assist you?

The Imperium is only strong because it's made of millions of planets, once you break that contract of obligation you're only weakening yourself. Whoever carries out an action like this is well out of line and would likely be made example of. Because the administration knows it's a breach of obligation.

. Hive fleet Leviathan was different circumstances and those people are probably seen as martyrs.

 OldMate wrote:
The Imperium is only strong because it's made of millions of planets, once you break that contract of obligation you're only weakening yourself. Whoever carries out an action like this is well out of line and would likely be made example of. Because the administration knows it's a breach of obligation.

. Hive fleet Leviathan was different circumstances and those people are probably seen as martyrs.

and IIRC Kyptman burnt a LOT of bridges with that action

And not just politically...

BrianDavion wrote:

 OldMate wrote:
The Imperium is only strong because it's made of millions of planets, once you break that contract of obligation you're only weakening yourself. Whoever carries out an action like this is well out of line and would likely be made example of. Because the administration knows it's a breach of obligation.

. Hive fleet Leviathan was different circumstances and those people are probably seen as martyrs.

and IIRC Kyptman burnt a LOT of bridges with that action

He didn't burn bridges, he got declared a traitor and has a death warrant on him.

Martel732 wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

I think the capture stuff objective is overblown. In most cases, it would be easiest to mass driver from orbit and just rebuild. Kills the game theme, I know, but the game theme is already incredibly stupid.

Why is it easier to rebuild?
It's far easier and cheaper to drop cheap troops and cheap munitions - of which the Imperium has copious amounts - onto the land and recapture installations as intact as possible. Some facilities are going to be hard to rebuild, the plans for how to build them might even be within the facility so if you bomb it to the stone age you don't even know how to rebuild it. There are unique technologies out there which are beyond the Imperiums ability to re-create to say nothing of captured Xenotech.

There's also a cost factor; its not just the cost of rebuilding, its rebuilding on a nuclear wasteland where you have to factor in additional costs for protective equipment for your operators and machines so that they don't break down in the environment. Ontop of that you've got to pay for all that ordinance that you've just bombarded the world with - that's a huge amount of weaponary and specialist firepower you've just thrown away to recapture a world that you've got to then spend a fortune rebuilding. With the fact that local food and water is likely gone/contaminated so now you've got to import everything. No functional mines, no functional production, no functional life support. You might as well have invested into an abandoned moon or asteroid field because you're going to spend the same resources and you've got thousands upon thousands of years (or extreme high cost cleaning gear) until the world is "clean" of nuclear fallout.

Quit using gak you don't understand or reverse engineer it.

You seem to have missed a fairly major point about the Imperium of Man in general and the AdMech specifically. That's not how they work.

pm713 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 OldMate wrote:
The Imperium is only strong because it's made of millions of planets, once you break that contract of obligation you're only weakening yourself. Whoever carries out an action like this is well out of line and would likely be made example of. Because the administration knows it's a breach of obligation.

. Hive fleet Leviathan was different circumstances and those people are probably seen as martyrs.

and IIRC Kyptman burnt a LOT of bridges with that action

He didn't burn bridges, he got declared a traitor and has a death warrant on him.

That's burning bridges. His actions were severe enough that he burnt the previously high standing he had among fellow Inquisitors. Yet even so he still seems to have retained the loyalty of a few Deathwatch who helped enact his later plan to divert the Tyranids to attack Orks. Who knows? Maybe he still has a few silent supporters within the Inquisition that don't dare speak up or who still feed him information and resources.

Whether one gets declared a heretic or not in the Imperium is often more about political connections.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Because never in the history of humanity have people ever bettered themselves by stealing schematics and developing technology from opposing militaries.

Heresy! Tau and Eldar tech is no where near as advanced as the Imperium's technology! There's nothing they have that the Imperium could possibly learn from or use in any meaningful way.

At least, that's what my Commissar tells me, so it must be true.

Slipspace wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

I think the capture stuff objective is overblown. In most cases, it would be easiest to mass driver from orbit and just rebuild. Kills the game theme, I know, but the game theme is already incredibly stupid.

Why is it easier to rebuild?
It's far easier and cheaper to drop cheap troops and cheap munitions - of which the Imperium has copious amounts - onto the land and recapture installations as intact as possible. Some facilities are going to be hard to rebuild, the plans for how to build them might even be within the facility so if you bomb it to the stone age you don't even know how to rebuild it. There are unique technologies out there which are beyond the Imperiums ability to re-create to say nothing of captured Xenotech.

There's also a cost factor; its not just the cost of rebuilding, its rebuilding on a nuclear wasteland where you have to factor in additional costs for protective equipment for your operators and machines so that they don't break down in the environment. Ontop of that you've got to pay for all that ordinance that you've just bombarded the world with - that's a huge amount of weaponary and specialist firepower you've just thrown away to recapture a world that you've got to then spend a fortune rebuilding. With the fact that local food and water is likely gone/contaminated so now you've got to import everything. No functional mines, no functional production, no functional life support. You might as well have invested into an abandoned moon or asteroid field because you're going to spend the same resources and you've got thousands upon thousands of years (or extreme high cost cleaning gear) until the world is "clean" of nuclear fallout.

Quit using gak you don't understand or reverse engineer it.

You seem to have missed a fairly major point about the Imperium of Man in general and the AdMech specifically. That's not how they work.

Trying to engage Martel in discussion about background is what's known as a lost cause.

So earlier in this thread we talked about Stellaris. I found this:

It's two years old and you need to have played Stellaris to properly understand it. OP wrote that Stellaris was part of the reason for this thread so I found it fitting.
TLDW: Planets with lots of military are an incredibly time consuming buisness to eradicate from orbit. Trying to will likely lose you the war. Having military that can surpass the planetary military is a far faster process.

Pretty much, nice vid, very relevant.

 Kcalehc wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Because never in the history of humanity have people ever bettered themselves by stealing schematics and developing technology from opposing militaries.

Heresy! Tau and Eldar tech is no where near as advanced as the Imperium's technology! There's nothing they have that the Imperium could possibly learn from or use in any meaningful way.

 Nerak wrote:
So earlier in this thread we talked about Stellaris. I found this:

Spoiler:

It's two years old and you need to have played Stellaris to properly understand it. OP wrote that Stellaris was part of the reason for this thread so I found it fitting.
TLDW: Planets with lots of military are an incredibly time consuming buisness to eradicate from orbit. Trying to will likely lose you the war. Having military that can surpass the planetary military is a far faster process.

Yes, but why wouldn't you want to support your invading forces with tactical strikes from orbit?

I have read so many novels where orbital superiority is never taken advantage of. And it makes no sense.

 Andersp90 wrote:

Yes, but why wouldn't you want to support your invading forces with tactical strikes from orbit?

I have read so many novels where orbital superiority is never taken advantage of. And it makes no sense.

I suspect the "reason" for that is the lack of tactical accuracy of an orbital strike. When your strategy is "obliterate the enemy town" it probably works but when you need to frag that well placed pillbox 300m away you don't want a lance strike coming in.

Kayback wrote:

 Andersp90 wrote:

Yes, but why wouldn't you want to support your invading forces with tactical strikes from orbit?

I have read so many novels where orbital superiority is never taken advantage of. And it makes no sense.

I suspect the "reason" for that is the lack of tactical accuracy of an orbital strike. When your strategy is "obliterate the enemy town" it probably works but when you need to frag that well placed pillbox 300m away you don't want a lance strike coming in.

So you are saying that the IoM can only - as a minimum - deploy city leveling weapons from orbit?

 Andersp90 wrote:

Kayback wrote:

 Andersp90 wrote:

Yes, but why wouldn't you want to support your invading forces with tactical strikes from orbit?

I have read so many novels where orbital superiority is never taken advantage of. And it makes no sense.

I suspect the "reason" for that is the lack of tactical accuracy of an orbital strike. When your strategy is "obliterate the enemy town" it probably works but when you need to frag that well placed pillbox 300m away you don't want a lance strike coming in.

So you are saying that the IoM can only - as a minimum - deploy city leveling weapons from orbit?

Far from it, I'm saying using what's the equivalent of a multi megaton weapon to kill something a Valkyrie or even HW squad can is overkill, and may lack the accuracy to acheive CAS.

The Cain novels has him fairly close to lance strikes IIRC.

Of course the Imperium uses orbital support. It’s been both in rules and in the fluff. Rules wise we’ve had orbital strike in the deamonhunter/witchunter codex of 4th ed as a heavy weapon choice (very inaccurate large blast with different rules depending on weapon/payload). We’ve had space marine HQ with an orbital strike ability in... I want to say 6ed? We’ve also had stratagems and apocalypse rules of huge orbital bombardment templates. On the fluff side Krieg was purged by nuclear bombs fired from orbit. During Armageddons second war virus bombs where fired from orbit. No one (I hope) is denying the use of orbital fire support. Hell, we have countless examples of orks dropping big rocks from space on theirv enemies.

That’s not what this thread is about. Apologies if my earlier post was misleading. The OP:s statement was that land battles serves no purpose since you have the option of blasting away at targets from orbit. That I’d argue is not the case. Land battles (and boarding actions for that matter) certainly fills an important purpose in galactic warfare unless the goal is simply exterminatus.

Edit: I agree that literature where space superiority doesn’t support the ground troops is silly. Sometimes it can be explained by engagements being relatively small scale and ships needing to move into the correct orbiting position. Other times by infrastructure blocking the way (as in fighting in a hive city), general incompetents, insufficient communication between the fleet and ground forces or the fleet being preoccupied by space battles/patrols. Commonly planetary invasions and space battles happen at the same time. That said I do find it silly when the fleet is simply forgotten in stories.

 Nerak wrote:


That’s not what this thread is about. Apologies if my earlier post was misleading. The OP:s statement was that land battles serves no purpose since you have the option of blasting away at targets from orbit. That I’d argue is not the case. Land battles (and boarding actions for that matter) certainly fills an important purpose in galactic warfare unless the goal is simply exterminatus.

Edit: I agree that literature where space superiority doesn’t support the ground troops is silly. Sometimes it can be explained by engagements being relatively small scale and ships needing to move into the correct orbiting position. Other times by infrastructure blocking the way (as in fighting in a hive city), general incompetents, insufficient communication between the fleet and ground forces or the fleet being preoccupied by space battles/patrols. Commonly planetary invasions and space battles happen at the same time. That said I do find it silly when the fleet is simply forgotten in stories.

I guess we are all on the same page then.