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I know about the Manta tactic, but are there any others? Having a discussion with some other people who are making the claim that Titans larger than the Warhound are pretty much invincible to anything not a titan or a spaceship.
Also, do void shields protect against momentum so that something that weights multiple times the titan smashing into it at high speed can knock the titan down even if it doesn't penetrate the sheild.

-STS

The Ta'unar exists specifically to knock out Titans, and Battlesuit teams can board them when Void Shields are taken down.

Massed fire from artillery such as Sky Rays, Hammerheads, Broadsides, or Riptides would also work.

Well the answer must be that no you can't knock them down because they don't look like they could ever stand up again, and if they could be knocked down everyone would do so and they wouldn't win any battles.

First, let’s understand how a Void Shield works.

Rather than a simple physical barrier bleeding off, spreading out or deflecting the energy of an attack, it shunts and diverts the energy of attacks into the warp, until its generator overheats. The more powerful the blow, the hotter the generator gets. Typically, when a Void Shield collapses, it’s a failsafe on the generator tripping, rather than the generator being destroyed (though that can happen). At no point is the shield’s integrity worn down. It’s either up, or it’s down.

This is why small arms fire is all but useless, they just don’t and can’t stress the generator enough to cause it to shut down.

Singular powerful blows can knock a shield down. And the same can be achieved with rapid fire or massed weapons of sufficient strength, essentially wearing the generator down by providing constant effort. So a single Lascannon probably won’t do the job, but 20 to 30 absolutely can, when fired in concert with one another.

Then we have some rare examples which can collapse multiple shields in one go. The Squat Cyclops is one example, using a sustained energy beam. And Orks can do the same with a Klanger shell from a Gargant’s Belly Gun, essentially a cannonball of ridiculous size, which keeps ploughing through shields until its own energy is expended.

Standard Railguns do hit hard, but not necessarily hard enough to collapse a shield. This is due to only a small area of the shield being struck, and a low rate of fire. So you need a coordinated battery of such fire.

The Titan Scaled Railgun seems to fire a larger projectile, at a higher speed. And those shots can be powerful enough to force a generator into overheat, thus collapsing the resulting shield.

Where the bugger comes in for everyone is trying to keep the shields down long enough to do meaningful damage to the Titan’s superstructure. This is hampered that the Shields are one after the other, rather than all the generators providing a combined effort. So any firepower used to drop the first shield will have had no effect on the remaining ones.

It’s also possible for Titan Maniples to interlock their shields, so in a pinch, even a lowly Warhound (at some cost to its own generators) can provide vital shield support to a Warlord, whilst the Warlord gets some or all of its own shield back online.

It’s also why it’s super rare to see Titans unsupported on the field. The greater the maelstrom of battle, the less likely it is your foe will have many openings to takedown the Titan. The longer you can spread out the opponent’s firepower, the more time you have to keep your shields up. The ideal being you’re never down by a shield or two, with a constant cycling as generators cool down and come back online,

One does assume that in a combat situation though, a given generator may not have the time to fully cooldown, meaning it may well become progressively easier to knock shields offline, and potentially take even longer on each occasion to raise them again.

The Tau were likely at an initial disadvantage, as they’d lack the knowledge and experience of how a Void Shield actually worked, and so how to best overcome them. They are clever buggers of course, and once even a single Titan is recovered, capable of learning a whole bunch about them, and putting that new knowledge to better use. But, until they got hands on a VSG or a turncoat Tech Priest? The mechanics would be unknown to them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, on the last point? Void Shields shunt all the energy away. So whilst shielded, and the foe remains outside the shield bubble*, anything intercepted by the shield, whether or not it collapses as a result, won’t stagger the Titan, unless you’re impacting the ground it’s standing on (ref Quake Cannon).

*This is another reason Titans are deployed with infantry support. They’re tough, but struggle when swarmed by tiddly peeps with meltabombs and that. And Void Shields don’t appear to affect slow moving stuff.

Still on this weird Titan kick...
Mines vs titans. I assume they are the same as Meltas (or at the least Krak grenades), not affected by shields and basically are auto-hits since the Titan has those gargantuan feet, so even a well spaced out minefield is going to get some hits.

Also, could a bunch of slow moving drones (under 100kmh or whatnot) go through the void shields and damage the Titan?

-STS

Mines? Yes. Those would be within the bubble of the shield, which doesn’t extend directly under the feet.

However, they’d have to be pretty special mines to overly worry a Titan. As in, you’d need to expect Titans, have the necessary mines on hand, and have time to sow an effective minefield. Ideally I think such a minefield would need to be a real mix, otherwise you’re only slowing the Titan’s down whilst their inevitable infantry support scan for and make safe the mines. Chuck a bunch of anti-personnel mines into the mix and it may be quicker for the Titans to find a new line of advance.

Whilst slow moving things can get through the shields (otherwise a Titan with its shields raised wouldn’t be able to traverse rough or dense terrain at all). But how slow we don’t really know.

It’s been a long time since I did physics in school, but there’s something at the back of my head about relative velocity that’s almost certainly wrong. That yes, a Titan can get a good turn of speed, but is of such mass and length of stride its velocity is lesser than a smaller machine covering the same ground at the same rate?

Fully prepared to be completely wrong on that one!

But regardless of how fast/slow, yes things can bypass Void Shields by necessity, and that’s long be represented in-game by anyone engaging it in HTH doesn’t then have to get past the shields, as they’re already within them.

Don’t have to damage the titan really. Just need to destabilize the surface they are walking on and go for a mobility kill. Caves of Ice did that to a gargant. I did a bunch of outline calcs ages ago on ground pressures for titans. While you can really bring them down if you make the feet big enough, there must be enough vibro weapons available to do bad things for their footing.

I guess you can hand wave them away by having the sensor suite on titans able to find such booby traps’and either avoid them or destroy them before they get triggered most of the time.

 Gert wrote:
The Ta'unar exists specifically to knock out Titans, and Battlesuit teams can board them when Void Shields are taken down.

Massed fire from artillery such as Sky Rays, Hammerheads, Broadsides, or Riptides would also work.

Void shields extend out and you can walk through them, they offer no protection in Mele so boarding is always an issue.



As for the momentum, unless a shield's effect is directly attached to the vehicle pushing on one shouldn't have an impact on the other. The field either teleports the shot into the warp or not. The amount of energy applied to the field by an attack seems to directly correlate to the amount of energy required to warp shunt it, hence their overloading.

I’m now wondering if there are perhaps settings on them, specifically with relation to slower moving objects and what can simply walk/trundle through a Void Shield.

As I noted above, there is presumably a minimum velocity required here. Otherwise a shielded Titan would be preventing itself from moving over anything except the smoothest, most featureless terrain, the shields themselves blocking movement.

But perhaps there are settings to that. So when the Titan is moving, the necessary minimum velocity goes up, allowing the Titan to move around without its shields interfering its traversal. But, when stationery, perhaps the tolerance can be lowered?

I appreciate this is heading solely into the land of headcanon, but it’s one which olds some appeal.

slade the sniper wrote:
I know about the Manta tactic, but are there any others? Having a discussion with some other people who are making the claim that Titans larger than the Warhound are pretty much invincible to anything not a titan or a spaceship.
Also, do void shields protect against momentum so that something that weights multiple times the titan smashing into it at high speed can knock the titan down even if it doesn't penetrate the sheild.

-STS

Concentratrd fire from non-titan sized units can definitely hurt Titans and knock out Void shields. The problem is typically the amount of units that wind up being sacrificed to that cause, since titans tend to be very good at engaging tanks and such. Most of the time the safest method of attack might be indirect artillery, but still it could take a long thime to get through the shields.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m now wondering if there are perhaps settings on them, specifically with relation to slower moving objects and what can simply walk/trundle through a Void Shield.

As I noted above, there is presumably a minimum velocity required here. Otherwise a shielded Titan would be preventing itself from moving over anything except the smoothest, most featureless terrain, the shields themselves blocking movement.

But perhaps there are settings to that. So when the Titan is moving, the necessary minimum velocity goes up, allowing the Titan to move around without its shields interfering its traversal. But, when stationery, perhaps the tolerance can be lowered?

I appreciate this is heading solely into the land of headcanon, but it’s one which olds some appeal.

There is also wind. The last thing you want is your void shields being drained by wind of all things, so you keep the minimum velocity above your titan speed + plus the local average high wind.

^If it's a mass*velocity thing, then maybe wind doesn't matter because the mass is so little.

I like this direction though. A big object moving slow doesn't trigger it. Likewise a small object moving fast, but still under a certain threshold, doesn't trigger it. Maybe even normal bullets would pass through, but just do nothing to the titan anyways because of its boring old ceramite plate and steel/adamantine construction.

There is something definitely about void shields that allows them to set a threshold for velocity or mass, or momentum. In BFG, fighters and bombers pass through ship void shields and conduct their attacks from within the ship's shields. Their damage is inflicted directly to the ship, not on shields (something GW in its BL fiction often gets wrong). I

We need orks to answer this question by using a tractor kannon to lob various things at a titan. Or just drop a rok on them to see what happens. But a lobbed projectile may be slow enough to pass through the void shield like a walking person does.

Insectum wrote: If it's a mass*velocity thing, then maybe wind doesn't matter because the mass is so little.

Depends if it interacts like a sail, I guess? Huge might-as-well-be-solid bubble, plus wind = notable wind resistance.

Of course, another solution there may be an option to shape the shield. Whichever direction the wind is blowing from, force the facing shield into more of an oval than a sphere?

 Insectum7 wrote:
^If it's a mass*velocity thing, then maybe wind doesn't matter because the mass is so little.

I like this direction though. A big object moving slow doesn't trigger it. Likewise a small object moving fast, but still under a certain threshold, doesn't trigger it. Maybe even normal bullets would pass through, but just do nothing to the titan anyways because of its boring old ceramite plate and steel/adamantine construction.

Wind can move large ships and topple buildings.

Wind is surprisingly heavy when moving fast enough.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^If it's a mass*velocity thing, then maybe wind doesn't matter because the mass is so little.

I like this direction though. A big object moving slow doesn't trigger it. Likewise a small object moving fast, but still under a certain threshold, doesn't trigger it. Maybe even normal bullets would pass through, but just do nothing to the titan anyways because of its boring old ceramite plate and steel/adamantine construction.

Wind can move large ships and topple buildings.

Wind is surprisingly heavy when moving fast enough.

That's why I mentioned the "threshold" and bullet example. Like, below a certain limit the void shields don't waste any energy on the incoming energy. So the wind strikes the titan itself (which has smaller surface area than the field) and the titan typically doesn't care about the wind.

For toppling buildings (at least big ones) I think any toppling is typically a resonant frequency thing. Steel and concrete be strong.

I dunno if "heavy" is the right term for wind. Cue vague memories from physics class, like "impulse", "force", "inertia", etc.

 Insectum7 wrote:
That's why I mentioned the "threshold" and bullet example. Like, below a certain limit the void shields don't waste any energy on the incoming energy. So the wind strikes the titan itself (which has smaller surface area than the field) and the titan typically doesn't care about the wind.

For toppling buildings (at least big ones) I think any toppling is typically a resonant frequency thing. Steel and concrete be strong.

I dunno if "heavy" is the right term for wind. Cue vague memories from physics class, like "impulse", "force", "inertia", etc.

I see, I misunderstood your argument.

"Heavy" is ultimately a force, and wind can put a lot of force on large surfaces like buildings. But also in this particular case I also meant that a void shield being triggered by wind means it is being forced to dump several tons of air per second, which is why I believe whatever minimum velocity threshold must be above wind speed (+titan speed if walking into the wind).

Which would mean that on particularly windy weather (e.g hurricane) it is easier to walk under a void shield as its velocity threshold is increased to ignore wind.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
That's why I mentioned the "threshold" and bullet example. Like, below a certain limit the void shields don't waste any energy on the incoming energy. So the wind strikes the titan itself (which has smaller surface area than the field) and the titan typically doesn't care about the wind.

For toppling buildings (at least big ones) I think any toppling is typically a resonant frequency thing. Steel and concrete be strong.

I dunno if "heavy" is the right term for wind. Cue vague memories from physics class, like "impulse", "force", "inertia", etc.

I see, I misunderstood your argument.

"Heavy" is ultimately a force, and wind can put a lot of force on large surfaces like buildings. But also in this particular case I also meant that a void shield being triggered by wind means it is being forced to dump several tons of air per second, which is why I believe whatever minimum velocity threshold must be above wind speed (+titan speed if walking into the wind).

Which would mean that on particularly windy weather (e.g hurricane) it is easier to walk under a void shield as its velocity threshold is increased to ignore wind.

Might be momentum (or even kinetic energy) rather than velocity though. So the individual air molecules that make up wind don’t get blocked because momentum is generally low (as they’re very low mass) unless they’re going exceptionally fast.
Similarly heavy things don’t get blocked if they’re going slowly.

But things going very fast above a certain mass or heavy things going fairly fast all get blocked.

Y’know, it’d probably help my thinks if I understood what Wind actually is!

I mean, I’m not some crackpot doubting its existence. And I’m pretty sure it’s a result of high and low pressure and that.

But what I’m singularly clueless about is what high and low pressure actually are and therefore the basis of wind.

I’m off to YouTube, and hope to return with at least a rudimentary understanding.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
First, let’s understand how a Void Shield works.

Rather than a simple physical barrier bleeding off, spreading out or deflecting the energy of an attack, it shunts and diverts the energy of attacks into the warp, until its generator overheats. The more powerful the blow, the hotter the generator gets. Typically, when a Void Shield collapses, it’s a failsafe on the generator tripping, rather than the generator being destroyed (though that can happen). At no point is the shield’s integrity worn down. It’s either up, or it’s down.

This is why small arms fire is all but useless, they just don’t and can’t stress the generator enough to cause it to shut down.

Singular powerful blows can knock a shield down. And the same can be achieved with rapid fire or massed weapons of sufficient strength, essentially wearing the generator down by providing constant effort. So a single Lascannon probably won’t do the job, but 20 to 30 absolutely can, when fired in concert with one another.

Then we have some rare examples which can collapse multiple shields in one go. The Squat Cyclops is one example, using a sustained energy beam. And Orks can do the same with a Klanger shell from a Gargant’s Belly Gun, essentially a cannonball of ridiculous size, which keeps ploughing through shields until its own energy is expended.

Standard Railguns do hit hard, but not necessarily hard enough to collapse a shield. This is due to only a small area of the shield being struck, and a low rate of fire. So you need a coordinated battery of such fire.

The Titan Scaled Railgun seems to fire a larger projectile, at a higher speed. And those shots can be powerful enough to force a generator into overheat, thus collapsing the resulting shield.

Where the bugger comes in for everyone is trying to keep the shields down long enough to do meaningful damage to the Titan’s superstructure. This is hampered that the Shields are one after the other, rather than all the generators providing a combined effort. So any firepower used to drop the first shield will have had no effect on the remaining ones.

It’s also possible for Titan Maniples to interlock their shields, so in a pinch, even a lowly Warhound (at some cost to its own generators) can provide vital shield support to a Warlord, whilst the Warlord gets some or all of its own shield back online.

It’s also why it’s super rare to see Titans unsupported on the field. The greater the maelstrom of battle, the less likely it is your foe will have many openings to takedown the Titan. The longer you can spread out the opponent’s firepower, the more time you have to keep your shields up. The ideal being you’re never down by a shield or two, with a constant cycling as generators cool down and come back online,

One does assume that in a combat situation though, a given generator may not have the time to fully cooldown, meaning it may well become progressively easier to knock shields offline, and potentially take even longer on each occasion to raise them again.

The Tau were likely at an initial disadvantage, as they’d lack the knowledge and experience of how a Void Shield actually worked, and so how to best overcome them. They are clever buggers of course, and once even a single Titan is recovered, capable of learning a whole bunch about them, and putting that new knowledge to better use. But, until they got hands on a VSG or a turncoat Tech Priest? The mechanics would be unknown to them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, on the last point? Void Shields shunt all the energy away. So whilst shielded, and the foe remains outside the shield bubble*, anything intercepted by the shield, whether or not it collapses as a result, won’t stagger the Titan, unless you’re impacting the ground it’s standing on (ref Quake Cannon).

*This is another reason Titans are deployed with infantry support. They’re tough, but struggle when swarmed by tiddly peeps with meltabombs and that. And Void Shields don’t appear to affect slow moving stuff.

This is a brilliant post, 10/10, would read again

My own headcanon is that the void shield dumps the energy into the warp, including kinetic energy, and it is this sudden deceleration that causes solid projectiles to detonate or shatter from this sudden deceleration, while some energy is also bled off as heat and light (which is what is seen with the shield impact).