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So I know the scale weaponry of 40k is often beyond imagination, but it seems like everything after a Volcano cannon is "Capable of destroying entire Cities or Titans in a single shot". Which leads me to believe they are all similairly powerful, that is to say around the same "potential power".

Nova Cannons, Lance Batteries, Plasma Annihilators, Laser Destroyers, Hellstorm Cannons, Plasma Destructors, Vengeance Cannon. Rank them in order of power because I am lose here as in which is most powerful. I guess I should include Volcano Cannons and Quake Cannons, as those are supposed to be "Anti-titan" weapons.

But there is also non-titan weaponry, Atomics and Leviathan/Ordinatus based weapons.

Interesting to me at least...

Hellstorm Cannons, and Vengeance Cannons are scary but not massively more powerful than a Bellicosa-grade volcano cannon.

They're 'arm mounts' on an emperor-class titan, so...yeah. scary. But hardly city-destroying.

The last time they had official stats was epic Armageddon, where the Vengeance was basically a paired side-by-side Warlord volcano cannon, and most other arm mounts were similarly double the lethality of their warlord-size equivalents.

Plasma Destructors and Annihalators.....there's a degree of crossed wires there, because the old epic warlords called their big plasma guns Destructors, but the new 40k one uses the word Annihalator (Which is what the imperator's big plasma gun was).

Regardless, all of these are detectably less powerful than ordinatus weapons, which are essentially a titan-scale unit built around one gun. Note the 'minor ordinatus' carry warlord-grade armaments.

The lance is....not massively more powerful. In epic, a pinpoint lance strike had stats about the same as a warlords volcano cannon - but note that (1) that's from orbit through the atmosphere, not from a kilometre or so away, and (2) voidships carry batteries of turrets of the things. The same is true of macrocannons - a cruiser's individual macrocannons might not be massively bigger than fortification macrocannons in 40k, but a broadside will be firing them by the dozen.

Nova cannons are the single biggest imperial gun useable in any game rules. They sit on the prow of a cruiser or occupy an entire ordinatus, and a fully shielded battle titan gets wrecked in a single hit....

A Nova Cannon is clearly the most powerful.

Warriors of Ultramar describing part of the battle for Tarsis Ultra describes a nova cannon shell as moving at 5,000 km per second which is 18,000,000 km per hour. That is about 1.6% lightspeed. Even though the Nova Cannon shell does not do damage by direct impact, it gives an idea of the amount of energy being thrown around.

So the Helstorm Cannon is basically a rapid fire Volcano cannon....so yeah, it's pretty powerful.

"Able to fire in quick succession, the Hellstorm Cannon gave an Imperator Titan unparalleled firepower against other enemy Titans.

The Hellstorm Cannon is so powerful that it has been known to strip the Void Shields from a Warlord-class Titan in one volley."

And the Plasma Annihilators are literally described as hitting the enemy with the power of an" exploding miniature sun". Granted 40k is all about hyperbole, but I think even a mini sun is more powerful than how a Nova Cannon is described...Fires an explosive projectile at close to the speed of light.

Someone want to do the math on this and find out which has more potential energy behind it? An exploding sun or an object a NTLS?

Plasma pistols have the effect of a miniature exploding sun... it's just a smaller miniature than the annihilator...

Right, forgot about that. So does the weapon's own description matter? Because it states that it is capable of leveling entire cities, where as the Nova cannon is just used to destroy other capitol ships? Obviously I'm going off the weakest argument of fluff here.

"Just used to destroy capital ships"... which are somewhere between 6 and 8km in length and armoured and shielded. A single hit from any of the titan scale weapons could never have any hope of wiping out a city. While a nova.cannon may not level a city in one hit, a nova cannon hit would, I think, be much more.damaging.

I'm pretty sure a nova canon shell measures in the many megatons range of power. The things have a blast radius/area of effect the size of small moons, it would have no problem leveling most of a city. Look what just Fat Man was capable of.

Iracundus wrote:A Nova Cannon is clearly the most powerful.

Warriors of Ultramar describing part of the battle for Tarsis Ultra describes a nova cannon shell as moving at 5,000 km per second which is 18,000,000 km per hour. That is about 1.6% lightspeed. Even though the Nova Cannon shell does not do damage by direct impact, it gives an idea of the amount of energy being thrown around.

the sheer kinetic energy transfer alone is insane. firstly, the energy to get it moving in the first place and secondly the mass involved. which is then moving really frickin fast.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I'm pretty sure a nova canon shell measures in the many megatons range of power. The things have a blast radius/area of effect the size of small moons, it would have no problem leveling most of a city. Look what just Fat Man was capable of.

That is a very good point. Also.add in the kinetic impact and a single.hit probably could level.entire.cities.and leave geological.problems for the surrounding tectonic plate...

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So the Helstorm Cannon is basically a rapid fire Volcano cannon....so yeah, it's pretty powerful.

"Able to fire in quick succession, the Hellstorm Cannon gave an Imperator Titan unparalleled firepower against other enemy Titans.

The Hellstorm Cannon is so powerful that it has been known to strip the Void Shields from a Warlord-class Titan in one volley."

No. The Vengeance cannon is a multibarral volcano cannon. The Hellstorm is basically an assault cannon upscaled to the point that it's firing something akin to snub baneblade cannon rounds. Individual shells aren't that much scarier than an a basilisk or russ' main armament but where a knight's rapid-fire battle cannon can out out a shell every few seconds in a kathumpakathumpa, and a Reaver or warlords gatling goes dakkadakka, a hellstorm just goes brrrrrrrrrrr.


The novel Imperator actually shows it in action on the Cassie Belli, and it's literally 'walking' tracer fire through a fortification line.
The fact that each round is sufficient to destroy a bunker or armoured vehicle makes the carnage every bit as bad as you think.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Nova Cannons, Lance Batteries, Plasma Annihilators, Laser Destroyers, Hellstorm Cannons, Plasma Destructors, Vengeance Cannon. Rank them in order of power because I am lose here as in which is most powerful. I guess I should include Volcano Cannons and Quake Cannons, as those are supposed to be "Anti-titan" weapons.

(Most Powerful)
----
Nova Cannons - city killers. Typically vast railguns firing various exotic warheads and described with destructive wakes thousands of kilometres across in space.
Lance Batteries - varies depending on the size of the starship they are fitted to, but at their smallest would be comparable to banks of volcano cannons with much greater power reserves than a titan could provide.
----
Plasma Annihilators - names have been mixed up over the years. The original annihilator was the emperor class titans 'big gun'. Big lances arguably have more single power hit but the plasma weapon fire a hail/stream of plasma. Larger starships would carry broadsides of these types of weapons among others under the general category of 'macrocannon' (which also includes quake cannons, missile launchers, grav culverns, smaller laser weaponry and anything else)
Vengeance Cannon - effectively an up-sized volcano cannon type weapon
----
Plasma Destructor - see annihilator, but this was the smaller warlords big gun. In the original epic it drew so much power that you couldn't move or shoot anything else.
Hellstorm Cannon - rapid fire laser weapon, originally solid projectiles. Difficult to gauge against the plasma destructor, potentially falls below the volcano cannon.
----
Volcano Cannon
Laser Destroyer
Quake Cannon - depends on context. In old epic laser destroyers were the smaller grade of weapon fitted things like warhounds while volcano cannons were used by the warlords. Quake cannons were used against buildings and fortifications for greater collateral damage. There are the larger volcano cannons from the warbringer and ordinatus vehicles at the higher end, smaller quake cannons on baneblade chassis at the low end, and the warbringer quake cannon somewhere in there.
----
(Least Powerful)

One must recall as well that what is now known as the Volcano Cannon was once known as the Defense Laser in the early days of 40K and Titanicus. The Titans of the day then were carrying essentially the same weapon that ground batteries used to defend worlds from ships in orbit.

What about vortex missiles? There's something pretty terrifying about a small rouge blackhole floating around and simply displacing things to the warp.

cody.d. wrote:
What about vortex missiles? There's something pretty terrifying about a small rouge blackhole floating around and simply displacing things to the warp.

Those are just smaller versions of a vortex torpedo. Those did in BFG terms an automatic critical if they hit (in addition to the normal 1 point of damage for a hit). A single one therefore could destroy an Imperial light cruiser (HIts of 6) with luck, or almost a standard cruiser (8 hits): 1 hit, then rolling critical hit result of bulkhead collapse causing D6 damage.

Didn't Titans also used to be able to mount a big Warp missile?

And there was psyker variants. And let's not forget the xenos types. D weapons from Eldar are pretty destructive.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Didn't Titans also used to be able to mount a big Warp missile?

The Warp missile was different from a Vortex missile. The Warp missile's main selling point was its ability to bypass void/power shields and armor since it was basically trying to do a micro-warp jump into the enemy's internal structure. Its actual destructive power was limited, though it might destroy the location it hit (and if it were critical for an enemy Titan cause it to be destroyed). However the Warp missile was rare and inaccurate (rolled the Titan hit location dice two times, raising the likelihood of scattering off completely and missing).

The phantom distortion cannon is supposed to be one of if not THE best anti Titan weapon as it just opens warp portals and makes things disappear.

Like a refireable warp missile.