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This one is an old classic. While Andy Chambers is on the record for stating that Terran Marines, though of surprisingly comparable tech, are no match for Space Marines proper, no real such baseline exists for how the Protoss would fare in the 41st Millenium.

Plot Armorium aside, let us run through some assumptions/tweaks to determine how Starcraft Laws can adapt to 40k Laws. The main questions are whether they are psychic without actually being Psykers, able to teleport without using the Warp, etc. Other questions like whether Purifiers have a Machine Spirit, Archons are Daemons, etc. are another can of worms altogether.

So assuming Protoss were transplanted to 40k or even adapted to operate off 40k "physics," how would they fare, assuming a unified force of Khalai, Nerazim, Purifiers and remnant Taldarim? Would they succeed in carving out their own mini-Empire, get swept aside by the Tyranids (And they thought the Overmind was dangerous), or become a legitimate threat/anti-Imperium?

At any rate, the prospect of a race of highly martial Psykers with no qualms about integrating it into Silica Animae would definitely be enough to give the Ordo Xenos fits.
   
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The answer is yes no maybe plot armor writer

no way to be objective about it and there will never be a consensus.

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 Scott-S6 wrote:
And yet another thread is hijacked for Unit to ask for the same advice, receive the same answers and make the same excuses.

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Just going off whats presented in your post OP, if the Marines that make up the forces of the Dominion are no match for the Astartes and the Dominion is capable of fighting back and winning against the Protoss. Would that not mean that the Astartes would have little problem in beating them as well?
   
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Scale is a big issue in this discussion. The Protoss civilization is too small to make an impact in the 40k universe. I feel like they would probably be about as strong as an eldar craftworld (by design).

If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
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 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Just going off whats presented in your post OP, if the Marines that make up the forces of the Dominion are no match for the Astartes and the Dominion is capable of fighting back and winning against the Protoss. Would that not mean that the Astartes would have little problem in beating them as well?


Terrans have Siege Tanks. IIRC the interview (its a long one) was:



Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Xenomancers wrote:
Scale is a big issue in this discussion. The Protoss civilization is too small to make an impact in the 40k universe. I feel like they would probably be about as strong as an eldar craftworld (by design).


Strategically the Craftworld analogy makes sense. Tactically is where things get interesting. A lot of it is "sci fi authors have no sense of scale," and such crossovers also do require some assumptions/kajiggering to work (is there Vespene Gas in the 41st Millenium?).

And of course, Gameplay vs Story Segregation is another thing. Just because a Dark Archon can Mind Control a Battlecruiser doesn't mean the Protoss can suddenly co-opt the Imperial Navy...ahem.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/02/09 19:58:30


 
   
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Well still, going off what was stated, the Protoss would lose. Siege Tanks alone dont make Dominion win against the Protoss.

In a one on one I think an Astartes vs a Zealot would be fairly even, but then you bring in squads vs Zealots running in and over time like Xenomancers mentioned Scale starts to take over.

Plus, I'd assume as Psychics they would be connected to the Warp and that in itself could be used against them. Sisters of Silence, Celexus Asssassins and the like.
   
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I think it boils downto the brutality of the 40k universe.

When all is said and done, the Protoss just are not brutal enough to last long here. Their tech is good yeah. And their guys can fight yeah. But their hesitant to ever do something like an exterminatus. Killing the world mind was something it took them thousands of years of conflict just to be a part of and they were not even the ones to actually do it.

The protoss just don't have the backbone to go to the lengths needed to survive for long in the 40k universe.


These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
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 Lance845 wrote:
I think it boils downto the brutality of the 40k universe.

When all is said and done, the Protoss just are not brutal enough to last long here. Their tech is good yeah. And their guys can fight yeah. But their hesitant to ever do something like an exterminatus. Killing the world mind was something it took them thousands of years of conflict just to be a part of and they were not even the ones to actually do it.

The protoss just don't have the backbone to go to the lengths needed to survive for long in the 40k universe.


The very first cutscene of Starcraft was a Protoss fleet incinerating Chau Sara. If anything, Tassadar trying to spare the humans on Tarsonis (and his departure to Char) were enough to get the Conclave going all "heresy!"

If there's any main weakness they have, its the legacy of their tribalism, be it the Khalai having a restrictive caste system, the Tal'darim having Klingon Promotion, etc.

(Incidentally, I imagine Haywire weapons would mess up Protoss shielding considerably).
   
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Well when you consider that Marines in Starcraft fire bullets and Marines in 40K fire rocket bullets I suspect that Protoss would fare badly.

They could hack an existence on the edge of the galaxy if they only encountered the odd small ork group or Imperial army. They might even do half decently against a few Tyranids - but they'd need a huge updscale in their technology and war weapons to really survive against the Imperium of Man and the Marines or any serious attention from any major faction.


Basically yes they could be another Tau if they wanted.

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Interesting Thought Experiment. It doesn't look good

Codex Marines: Librarian's deny the witch is going to wreck hell with their communication and various psychic technologies. The fact that protoss focus on energy defense over kinetic is going to make things worse. The final nail on the coffin in the deepstriking. Drop pods are going to land right in their most vital points. Given their defense tech tends to rely on a lot of support, that's going to end badly.

Astra Miliatrum: Fluff wise psykers are somewhat less common, but the ability to blanket screw with Protoss communication is going to hurt. Lasguns are not going to be great versus their shields and the protoss will probably live long enough to dominate in melee. Those massive artillery formations might give them an edge, but the teleportation probably negates that.

Inquisition/Minostorum: Instant Protoss Masscare. They won't even be able to hear each other's screams and the inevitable mix of psyker, null field and psychoactive weaponry tear into them. Ordo Xenos is going to make bank selling protoss skulls for marine cod pieces.

Ad-Mech: Probably equal. Admech isn't big on psykers and use a surprising amount of energy weapons. They also tend to be explode when stabbed. On the plus side, I don't know what the protoss could do against the various super heavy vehicles/knight they can pump out.

Space Wolves: Hell, the wolves would probably see if as a giant gift - a pschoactive xenos race that prefers melee. They'll have such a big killing party that Russ himself will be summoned from the warp.

Blood Angels: Deepstrike and Hardcore Librarians. Not looking good for Protoss.

Dark Angels: Slightly less than a codex chapter because of all the plasma, but still holding an edge.

Tyranids: Shadow in the warp is literally a massive chittering that occurs on the psychic level. The protoss will likely all be mad long before the gaunts start chewing on them.

Necrons: The closest faction to the protoss, with a ton of energy weapons and shiedling they can toss at each other. It'll be a genocide war that the protoss will lose over time. Protoss don't come back

Tau: Hmm..They use energy weapons, so Protoss shields will help and they have no anti-psyker. The protoss are also teleporting melee fighters. Protoss might actually replace Tau as the Greater Good faction.

Orks: Dear Lord. Can you imagine the carnage? The protoss will each kill dozens of Orks, but there will be hundred of Orks that will follow up. Like the Necrons, I think the protoss will win initially, but eventually be overwhelmed.

Chaos (any of the factions): So the most psychically active group, with everything having claws and all kinds of movement shenanigans. Chaos will probably set up a dining counter on their side of whatever wormhole the protoss come out of an serve them on plates as they come through. They'll probably breed the survivors as livestock.

Holy crap! I forgot Eldar somehow. The only fleshed out Xenos faction model-wise:

Edlar: This would be interesting since the Protoss are so clearly modeled on the space elves. It's be remarkably even, but I think eventually the Eldar's access to Super Heavies like their various giant walkers would give them the edge. A bigger question would if they would even bother to get into conflict in the first place - both races seem to be conflict neutral provided you are some kind of lowborn human.

Dark Eldar: I think this one would decided on a simple fluff matter. Is Protoss biology similar enough that the various DE pain tech would work on them? In Starcraft, the Protoss seem to have an almost stupid level of pain resistance. Moreover, their version of dreadnaught technology doesn't even have pain receptors, leaving only psyhic as an open avenue. That being said, the DE have centuries of experience in fighting with a physically powerful race (their own) and the Protoss couldn't even get around to properly fighting their own Dark Protoss. I'm thinking a terribly ugly guerrilla war in which the DE slowly refine their methods of terrorizing Protoss. If the Protoss decide to lead an all out attack from the beginning, then I think they could pull it off.

Not going to bother with Harlequins since they would likely be caught up in the Eldar scenario.

As powerful as the Protoss are they have some serious problems:

1) They rely on those Pylons. Being tied down to base infrastructure is just not a concept the 40k universe has. Not in a world where the imperium is more than capable to drop-podding a defense fortress or two on command only to be matched by whatever scary hell-crap they are fighting that week

2) Protss communicate via psyhic channels - you know, the most dangerous and malleable part of the 40k universe

3) The entire Protoss race is only a couple billion individuals. Or as the Astra Militarum calls it, 'light causalities'. Even the Eldar outbreed them.

They do get some bonus for having truly impressive firepower and the whole teleportation thing on their side, at least.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/12 15:37:18


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How would the Protoss deal with the Eldar, of either Craftworld or Commoragh variant?

I imagine anti-psy only goes so far. The real oddity is the fact that Protoss tech is considered "Psychically Contained Plasma" in a lot of scenarios. Does this mean that anti-psy makes Protoss weaponry inaccurate like a Plasma Syphon or more akin to "Gets Hot?" And this still doesn"t account for void-drawn weapons, Protoss robotics, or other oddities.

As for other items, the Dark Angels are the only other faction with consistent access to stasis weaponry. Trayzn has some holophotonic doodads but it's not known if his toys are one-of-a-kind. Dimensional Recall is an "anchored" Gate of Infinity in its own way, so this leaves Hallucinations, Guardian Shields and Forcefields...in many ways the Protoss usage of forcefield technology is arguably only rivaled by Orks as a whole.

As for mass madness in the face of the Shadow of the Warp...by that logic the Eldar would have died well before Doom of Malan'tai was a thing.
   
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The problem with protoss is that Blizzard writers are terrible and the game needs to make up for their deficiencies with flashy CGI and a lot of explosions to make people stop thinking about setting. Let's see, protoss are supposed to have a galactic-scaled empire, yet fall of one planet cripples it. Their motherships dwarf IoM battleships, and ark-ships are equivalent of Eldar craftworlds, but despite having battlefleet several orders of magnitude stronger than everyone else combined they can't even squash a few bugs before they land on their capital planet. Either their ships suck despite the size, or the writer just realized they wrote the story into a corner as the protoss fleet alone should easily win the game before the first mission even started, went 'feth it' and gave terrans and zerg plotanium armour a few galaxies thick...
   
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Ibris the Zerg smashed far more than just the homeworld. It's just that the commander/character you play focuses on those key battles. You focus on the hunting of cerebrates and of the overmind rather than the countless other battles where Protoss are on the losing front.

Their political system also plays a part in dividing them and resulting in inefficient use of manpower and resources; which further weakens their position. Basically they play like a gamer on a 4X strategy game when they've basically become big enough to steam-roll over every other faction and start to play sloppy. Then the ZERG appears as the end-game event with superfleets and starts to smash through worlds easily because the Protoss player just wasn't really ready for full scale war on that level any more.

So a lot of the military power of the Protoss was basically tied up with other interests or decommissioned. They weren't ready for the Zerg to appear and significantly underestimated their power. Which was why they were able to do so much damage.


In the original story (for all its good points I will admit that the SC2 writers dropped the ball hard on sticking to the original story) the Overmind in its infancy stormed and destroyed the Xelnaga worldships - granted they were more research vessels than warships; but they still had significant defence. So the Overmind is already used to fighting against a technologically superior race.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/10 12:26:01


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They'd probably be on par with Eldar but with less population.

If you wanna do tabletop though I dunno what to tell ya.

CaptainStabby wrote:
If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.

 jy2 wrote:
BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.

 vipoid wrote:
Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?

 MarsNZ wrote:
ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
 
   
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I agree, their capabilities seem comparable to that of the Eldar. The question is how many of them there are, assuming that they have access to them same abilities and technology in the 40k universe that they do in Starcraft, through whatever means.

 
   
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They will do very well, as they take much less skill to play. AND EVERYONE AGREES ON THIS
   
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Protoss have Necron-tier technology (literal time manipulation, black hole tech, man-portable FTL tech etc), but they still somehow get gak on by the Terran and the Zerg in every storyline, so I don't lnow if I could in good conscience say they'd feth gak up in 40k.
   
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 Luciferian wrote:
I agree, their capabilities seem comparable to that of the Eldar. The question is how many of them there are, assuming that they have access to them same abilities and technology in the 40k universe that they do in Starcraft, through whatever means.


"Is the Void part of the Warp" is easily another item that could make things dicey from a crossover too. I still think it would be an interesting tabletop matchup.
   
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 BlaxicanX wrote:
Protoss have Necron-tier technology (literal time manipulation, black hole tech, man-portable FTL tech etc), but they still somehow get gak on by the Terran and the Zerg in every storyline, so I don't lnow if I could in good conscience say they'd feth gak up in 40k.

Same exact thing happens to Eldar and Necrons. Protoss would be fine.

CaptainStabby wrote:
If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.

 jy2 wrote:
BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.

 vipoid wrote:
Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?

 MarsNZ wrote:
ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
 
   
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Are we talking about Protoss as they were characterized in StarCraft 1 or StarCraft 2? I feel this is an important distinction.

   
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 MagicJuggler wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
I think it boils downto the brutality of the 40k universe.

When all is said and done, the Protoss just are not brutal enough to last long here. Their tech is good yeah. And their guys can fight yeah. But their hesitant to ever do something like an exterminatus. Killing the world mind was something it took them thousands of years of conflict just to be a part of and they were not even the ones to actually do it.

The protoss just don't have the backbone to go to the lengths needed to survive for long in the 40k universe.


The very first cutscene of Starcraft was a Protoss fleet incinerating Chau Sara. If anything, Tassadar trying to spare the humans on Tarsonis (and his departure to Char) were enough to get the Conclave going all "heresy!"

If there's any main weakness they have, its the legacy of their tribalism, be it the Khalai having a restrictive caste system, the Tal'darim having Klingon Promotion, etc.

(Incidentally, I imagine Haywire weapons would mess up Protoss shielding considerably).

Yes - I'd have to agree here - the protoss are indeed brutal. They are guilty of all the same vanity and superiority complexes that lead to the fall of the eldar - this is by deisgn though - protoss were designed as an eldar analog for the SC universe.

If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
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 Captain Joystick wrote:
Are we talking about Protoss as they were characterized in StarCraft 1 or StarCraft 2? I feel this is an important distinction.

Is it? I thought protoss were protoss but I don't now much about Starcraft. I'm at a "Protoss are the mouthless guys, right?" kind of level.

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pm713 wrote:
 Captain Joystick wrote:
Are we talking about Protoss as they were characterized in StarCraft 1 or StarCraft 2? I feel this is an important distinction.

Is it? I thought protoss were protoss but I don't now much about Starcraft. I'm at a "Protoss are the mouthless guys, right?" kind of level.

I'm going by SC1, but I haven't played 2 so I'd like to see what's going on there.

CaptainStabby wrote:
If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.

 jy2 wrote:
BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.

 vipoid wrote:
Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?

 MarsNZ wrote:
ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
 
   
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Oh god. You guys know the Protoss are on a completely different level technologically than most of 40k right?

Let's just look at the humble Zealot first. Think Jedi Knight precognition but 10 feet tall, fully armored, fully shielded with weapons capable of cutting through literally whatever you put in front of it like it were made of paper. That includes land raiders, LR tanks, whatever. Not to mention they're such faster than space Marines as well. A Zealot would butcher a Space Marine so fast it would make your head spin.

This is a race that casually throws around antimatter weapons for infantry, utilizes time stopping tech, creates miniature black holes, and has such a solid understanding of teleportation technology to make the old ones themselves green with envy.

They'd fit in just fine in the 40k universe. Their biggest weakness, as someone else mentioned is their numbers. There's only several million left, so they likely wouldn't have a large impact on the Galaxy as a whole, but I'd sure feel sorry for whatever decided to try to feth with them.
   
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The zealot that can be killed by a couple of convicts welded.into tin suits?

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 Captain Joystick wrote:
Are we talking about Protoss as they were characterized in StarCraft 1 or StarCraft 2? I feel this is an important distinction.


I assumed SC2. If it's SC1 I assume they all died in transit - possibly from fear of conflict.

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 Flinty wrote:
The zealot that can be killed by a couple of convicts welded.into tin suits?


If by couple you mean a couple of squads then yeah. The same convicts that are armed with rifles firing 8mm armor piercing "spikes" with an effective range of several kilometers.
   
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Tanniith wrote:
 Flinty wrote:
The zealot that can be killed by a couple of convicts welded.into tin suits?


If by couple you mean a couple of squads then yeah. The same convicts that are armed with rifles firing 8mm armor piercing "spikes" with an effective range of several kilometers.


Pretty sure in the books and stuff, a couple are more than capable. Plus I mean, while they dont have the range, an Astarte is firing a 19.5mm APHE dual stage cartridge.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/12 23:20:13


 
   
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 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Tanniith wrote:
 Flinty wrote:
The zealot that can be killed by a couple of convicts welded.into tin suits?


If by couple you mean a couple of squads then yeah. The same convicts that are armed with rifles firing 8mm armor piercing "spikes" with an effective range of several kilometers.


Pretty sure in the books and stuff, a couple are more than capable. Plus I mean, while they dont have the range, an Astarte is firing a 19.5mm APHE dual stage cartridge.


And in the game it's just 2 (with proper micro). 2 Marines take a Zealot without Stim or Combat Shields.

Protoss tech is pretty great but I remember old SC fluff saying they don't actually HAVE war tech. Almost all their stuff is re-purposed exploration or agriculture equipment due to the long peace of their dominance. So this massive tech isn't weaponized like it is with the Eldar or Necrons. I'd say this largely dooms them.

Let them weaponize and they probably end up like the Tau due to their small numbers.
   
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A couple of million unprotected, unsuspecting psykers that constantly pull power from the warp to power their technology show up in a nice cluster all at once?

There'd probably be a new eye of terror due to the instant mass daemonic incursion ripping open the fabric of reality, but I highly doubt the actual protoss race would exist beyond that point in any shape or form.
   
 
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