Warhammer 40k, why is it appealing to you?

[Ford Prefect]

I like WH40K because it's full of badass characters.

Maugan Ra. When a man runs up a giant alien death worm, leaps onto its face, shoots it in the eyes, then jumps off and guts the whole thing with his sycthe-machine gun you've got badass.

That's why I like 40k - it's so totally fucking ludicrous. I mean, the Ork language boils down to 'loud english'. It has chainsaw swords and axes! It has cathedrals flying through space! It has knives, sharp sticks ...

[2000AD]

As well as the aformentioned 'OTT' and 'fantasy in space' reasons I also like it because it isn't a typical 'good vs evil' tale.

When you look deep into it there's no real good guys, just varying degrees of bad. And in the novels the 'good guys' don't alwyas win.

[Lone_Prodigy]

Because the Orks are, at the core of their existance, British football hooligans 40,000 years in the future.

[Rye]

I liked the art when I was a kid (I played Epic very briefly and had an Imperator Titan, which appealed), I liked the descriptions and debates on here, so I bought Dawn of War and later Eisenhorn, since then I've been chewing my way through the stuff and am enjoying the setting immensely. I don't ever plan on returning to the hobby, though, not enough time or patience. I plan on learning how to paint with oils again soon, though, so I may end up painting some cool pictures.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Got into the series because of the RTS game which simply kicked ass. Then reading on and wallowing in the sheer awesomeness of all the firepower and great titanic battles which sometimes one really wishes for in the Star Wars EU.

Seriously, why is it Star Wars cannot be like that?!

[Ryan Thunder]

Hmm, firepower? They've rammed ships to cause damage, rather than shoot them.

I'd rather the Star Wars EU weren't like that. Sure, the scale's fine, but they shoot themselves in the foot on firepower and everything else by doing stupid things in the name of 'awesome'.

Like chainsaw swords, for instance.

[NecronLord]

Hmm, firepower? They've rammed ships to cause damage, rather than shoot them.

And? Their ships have been known to include neutronium ramming prows. That amount of mass hitting at anything above a crawl is going to utterly rape most anything.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Hmm, firepower? They've rammed ships to cause damage, rather than shoot them.

I'd rather the Star Wars EU weren't like that. Sure, the scale's fine, but they shoot themselves in the foot on firepower and everything else by doing stupid things in the name of 'awesome'.

Like chainsaw swords, for instance.

Jeez, you're sure a wet blanket...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Like chainsaw swords, for instance.

What's wrong with that? In 40K, you are dealing with enemies armoured and tough nuts to crack, unlike in Star Wars, the only troops with significant armour were the Dark Troopers and Mandalorians.

[Stark]

And? Their ships have been known to include neutronium ramming prows. That amount of mass hitting at anything above a crawl is going to utterly rape most anything.

It seems certain that it is once again not real neutronium - it's not an uncommon phenomenon in scifi (especially that written by idiots).

[NecronLord]

It seems certain that it is once again not real neutronium - it's not an uncommon phenomenon in scifi (especially that written by idiots).

As we know next to nothing about it, that's, while probable, not entirely certain. The only other appearance of Neturonium, in 40k, is dead on accurate. "Neutron star material" the only reason the machine existed was because the Emperor himself had fucked gravity with some sorcerous weirdness requiring him to have sacrificed thousands, to bring it into being.

[Stark]

As we know next to nothing about it, that's, while probable, not entirely certain. The only other appearance of Neturonium, in 40k, is dead on accurate. "Neutron star material" the only reason the machine existed was because the Emperor himself had made it with some sorcerous weirdness requiring him to have sacrificed thousands.

Yeah yeah, but I've seen these ramming prows and such a huge volume of actual neutron star material would indeed require the intervention of god to keep the ship in one piece. It's just sad that 'neutronium' has become such a useless buzzword.

[NecronLord]

It's not terribly implausible. You should see the necron 'aeonic orb' in Epic.

But yes. The Neutronium prow is a silly extreme example, but the point it illustrates is sound enough. Ramming is, while not exactly likely, possible. In 40K, defensive technology seems to be more powerful than offense technology (they love making you roll to hit, roll to harm, roll to save... and so on) which means it's not terribly unlikely that one ship can close on another like that. In a more sane setting, it's comparatively easy to shoot a starship up, in 40k, it's difficult to down a cruiser in one several-minute turn even when you outnumber it.

[Lone_Prodigy]

As we know next to nothing about it, that's, while probable, not entirely certain. The only other appearance of Neturonium, in 40k, is dead on accurate. "Neutron star material" the only reason the machine existed was because the Emperor himself had fucked gravity with some sorcerous weirdness requiring him to have sacrificed thousands, to bring it into being.

What machine is this? The Golden Throne? The Astronomicon?

It's not terribly implausible. You should see the necron 'aeonic orb' in Epic.

That's the one that's a chunk of a star held in place with electromagnetic fields, right? The one that uses solar flares as weapons? I never understood how any titan could stand against that monstrosity...

[NecronLord]

That's the one that's a chunk of a star held in place with electromagnetic fields, right? The one that uses solar flares as weapons? I never understood how any titan could stand against that monstrosity...

Well. The heart of a destroyed star, supposedly. Given the new fluff about the necrons having 'worlds within worlds' and 'numerous alternate dimensions' at their disposal, I'd think it's some kind of funky feat of weird spatial engineering.

[EDIT: The idea's silly of course. But the whole setting's silly.]

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Personally my intro was the Grey Knights novel. The second book dark adeptus. I like how it's a much smaller tight knit group of 'rines than some of the other books. Though it sort of pissed me off that they chose a weaker than average Grey Knight when most are on part with the average chapter librarian psyker wise.

[Ford Prefect]

Hmm, firepower? They've rammed ships to cause damage, rather than shoot them.

And? Even the smaller ones must mass several hundred thousand tons, and can easily hit thousands and thousands of kilometres a second. That's going to leave a mark.

[PeZook]

For me? The Warp.

I don't care about the novels, codexes or the tabletop game. I sometimes use 40K as a game or story setting, and the Warp makes for such an incredibly diverse and potent storytelling material that it beggars the mind. I also find it quite original, but that may be due to the fact that I don't really read that much sci-fi or fantasy

[Shinova]

All the awesome stuff people already mentioned, and 40k is the first fairly popular sci-fi universe I've seen---probably the first fictional universe period---that does away with the clean, and moralistic settings like Star Wars, Babylon 5, and especially Star Trek. Instead, it's simply a hell-filled battle of survival, and the Imperium and all the other factions reflect that; bitter, dark, and unmerciful. It's also a living hell that breeds awesome heroes. No verse has heroes quite like 40k's heroes.

It also has a lot of armor. Most sci-fi verses have ships that rely on fancy shields to stand up to damage, but 40k has fancy shields and super-thick armor. Many sci-fi verses pull off the massive space-faring warship look, but no one does the massive and extremely armed and armored space-faring warship look like 40k does. Imperium warships actually look like their function.

I don't even have to touch on their fantastic ground forces.

Another thing I love about 40k is that it deals with a central human civilization that is old and experienced, rather than fresh, naive, and new like the Federation from Trek or Earth Alliance from Babylon 5. For once Humans aren't the new upstart kids on the block, and I appreciate that. And on the flipside, I don't think there's a universe that has done the ancient, terrible, and dormant race like 40k did with the Necrons. The Shadows of Babylon 5 come nowhere close to the sheer dread and cold malice of the Necrons and the C'Tan.

It's also interesting for me that the Imperium's tech seems like the polar opposite of Star Trek's. The Federation's tech is clean, more form-based, and breaks down often. The Imperium's on the other hand is very pragmatically-oriented, functional in general, and can last thousands of years. That longevity is kinda cool to see warships and such that can fight for thousands of years and still go strong.

[Shinova]

And an important one for me that I missed. It's the visual theme, especially for their ships. What I mean is basically imagine that every race has a certain visual theme attributable to it. For example, the Minbari have that blue, curved, fish-like theme that is present in all of their vessels and is also somewhat shared in everything else they use.

There are many visual themes and styles humanity has been seen using in all of sci-fi, but I personally feel that if there was one definitive "look" to human spacecraft and technology, one visual theme that would be the most definitive of humanity, it would be the Imperium's.

IoM spacecraft just evoke something like an instinctive racial pride whenever I look at them, something that just clicks with me and makes me to think, "That's awesome." Not fluffy like the Federation's curves, or hard and boxy like the Earth Alliance's, or cold and mechanical like the Galactic Empire's. Something just feels right and human about Imperium ships and stuff. At least for me.

[Teleros]

Plus Commissar Cain is hilarious.

And proof that the Emperor has a good sense of humour .

If you've played Dawn of War too, then some of the quotes in that are enough to like it IMHO. "Do you hear the voices too?!" and those very British orks... classics .

For once Humans aren't the new upstart kids on the block, and I appreciate that. And on the flipside, I don't think there's a universe that has done the ancient, terrible, and dormant race like 40k did with the Necrons. The Shadows of Babylon 5 come nowhere close to the sheer dread and cold malice of the Necrons and the C'Tan.

Indeed. The Shadows were mysterious and evil at first, but kinda went downhill after that. Compared to the Necrons though... no contest .

IoM spacecraft just evoke something like an instinctive racial pride whenever I look at them, something that just clicks with me and makes me to think, "That's awesome."

I know what you mean. You see one of those things and you just know it means business.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Warhammer 40k just has so many things for so many different kinds of people, even furries have something in the Space Wolves Wulfen.

I think what interested me in 40k was that, unlike most Sci-Fi, the combat took place on sometimes planet-wide battlefields in masses armies of billions and not on starships, though they aren't made completely useless either.

[Lord Pounder]

I played Space Crusade on my Amiga back in the day and enjoyed watching the battles in Gamesworkshop, however I never had the time nor paitience to really get into it. The Dawn Of War and it's expansions came out and I was very into the where and why of the 40K verse, to me it seeme to be the OTT trillion person battles that other sci-fi franchies wish they had. I started reasing the Horus Heracy today and while I do feel a little lost in parts I love it, the grandure and the scale are truely something special.

[Connor MacLeod]

I like it becuase it hasn't been over-analyzed to death, like Star Wars. Plenty of fertile ground for my sort of hobby

I also do enjoy reading it quite thoroughly. Stark's whine-bitching aside (as if THAT were unexpected) 40K has proven that even with its worst writing (at least with the one Goto novel I've read os far) that it can still be generally superior to anything the SW EU has put out (Goto > KJA - at least until I brave myself to read the Dawn of War novels.)

[Adrian Laguna]

Hmm, firepower? They've rammed ships to cause damage, rather than shoot them.

And? Even the smaller ones must mass several hundred thousand tons, and can easily hit thousands and thousands of kilometres a second. That's going to leave a mark.

The rule of thumb is, an object travelling at 3 km/s carries its own weight in BLAM.

I'm going to calculate the energy a smallish 40k ship travelling at 12 km/s carries with it. That's a real crawl, btw, we know 40k ships can do at the very least hundreds of gees of acceleration. For the purpose of simplicity our ship shall be a a block 1x.25x.25 km. We'll assume it's made of 5% iron and 95% air. Note that the real solid proportion is much higher, and the materials used by 40k make iron look like chalk.

The volume of the block is 62,500,000 cubic metres. Of these, 3,125,000 cubic metres are iron and 59,375,000 are air at 1 atm and 20 degrees C. Iron's density is 7870 kg per cubic m, and air's density at stated temperature and pressure is 1.2 kg per cubic m.

Thus, the mass of our starship is 24,593,750,000+71,250,000=2.4665E10 kg

The formula for kinetic energy is half the mass (in kg) multiplied by the square of the velocity (in m/s). We have the mass, and the velocity is 12 km/s = 12,000 m/s. The square of the velocity is thus 144 million metres per second. So:

KE=2.23325E10 x 144,000,000
KE=3.21588E18 Jules

So the kinetic energy is basically 3.2 exajules. Since a megaton of energy is defined as 4.184 petajoules, our ship carries with damn near one gigaton of energy.

But wait! We were using a ludicrously conservative velocity. What happens if the ship were travelling a hundred times faster? Well, that's 1200 km/s = 1,200,000 m/s, the square of which is 1.44E12 m/s. We substitute that for our old 144 million m/s and we get:

KE=3.21588E22 Jules

That's 32 exajules, in other words, our ship just hit the other with a whopping 7.7 teratons.

In short, Ryan Thunder can take his ignorance and shove it.