Could Galatic empire build a warhammer 40K titan equivalent

[NecronLord]

Well yeah, I mean textual ones. The art is obviously much more exaggerated. But yeah I'd say an SPHA-T is quite comparable in role and power.

[Elheru Aran]

A SPHA-T elevated ~50m above the ground would have quite a bit more line of sight available for its artillery though than where it is currently... it doesn't look like it's much taller than 20 or 30m?

[Sea Skimmer]

Of course the more line of sight it has, the more enemies can shoot back at it at any given moment, while the SPHA-T still only has one main weapon to suppress said fire with. Which is the whole reason why we try to build main battle tanks with low profiles.

In this respect the numerous moderately heavy weapons on a Titan are a considerable advantage, but only to a limited point since by far heaviest guns are on the arms, located much lower then the upper body and thus unable to fire before the enemy has blown the damn head off and crippled the shoulder joints. Its a weapon concept that could not possibly be effective against a peer enemy even within its own universal context alone. But that's true of most mechs, let alone huge ones, including the absurdly badly designed AT-AT. Though at least the AT-AT is largely an infantry carrier, and devotes far more space to that role then to main armament.

[SMJB]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the general concensus is that the answer to OP's question is "Yes."

It could be the fanboy in me talking, but I'm fairly sure the Empire could kick the Imperium's ass.

[Elheru Aran]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the general concensus is that the answer to OP's question is "Yes."

It could be the fanboy in me talking, but I'm fairly sure the Empire could kick the Imperium's ass.

Mixed bag, actually. There's a rough parity in space that's skewed towards the Empire, but while Wars has a firepower advantage, the Imperium has *serious* numeric advantage. We are talking about literal millions of Imperial Guard, more tanks than you could shake a Baneblade at, real military organization, and the power-houses of the Adeptus Astartes, Sororitas, and Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii. It's been debated here before actually.

[Eternal_Freedom]

On a tactical level they're close enough in space combat that it's hard to call. But on a strategic level the Empire wins, they can move a whole lot faster and more accurately and can communicate easily, the Imperium can't.

Of course, even if the Empire did win, they then have to deal with the Eldar, Necrons, Orks, Tyranids and the delights of Chaos, so I don't think their victory celebration would last long

[Boeing 757]

Yeah, the SPHA-T is forgettable...essentially it's just a giant walker sporting a turbolaser. Dang.

[Elheru Aran]

On a tactical level they're close enough in space combat that it's hard to call. But on a strategic level the Empire wins, they can move a whole lot faster and more accurately and can communicate easily, the Imperium can't.

Of course, even if the Empire did win, they then have to deal with the Eldar, Necrons, Orks, Tyranids and the delights of Chaos, so I don't think their victory celebration would last long

Well yeah, space-wise and strategically the Empire probably wins from having the speed and hypercomm edge. If you started them off in your generic scenario though I would give the short term tactical edge to the Imperium, as they simply have stonking ridiculous numbers/sizes going for them.

Plus, combat psykers on a scale that Jedi can barely match... and the Empire doesn't have very many of those running around. And if 40K manages to bring the Warp into the SW universe? That would be *interesting*.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Like I said, in a fight between the EMpire and the Imperium, it's a close call, but in the galaxy far far away versus the 40K version of the Milky Way? Long term, SW loses, hard.

[bilateralrope]

Don't Imperium ships have to exit the warp at the edges of a system and then STL their way to the inner system ?
Aren't Imperium fleets typically a bit scattered when they emerge from the warp ?

That gives the Empire plenty of time to bring in reinforcements from quite far away. So I can see the Empire being able to prevent any Imperium forces from landing on SW planets. Though 40k ground forces are stronger than SW ground forces, so the Empire probably won't be able to capture Imperium worlds either. So a stalemate.

[Simon_Jester]

In space, you can make a good case for comparable firepower on both sides- each side has very large numbers of ships with weaponry capable of razing worlds with sustained direct fire beam bombardment, which entails firepower up in the gigatons or teratons per second. Both sides have ships that can survive sustained firepower from their own weapons, so durability is likewise comparable. The Empire does this with individually smaller ships (a star destroyer is much smaller than an Imperium battleship), but the Imperium has a lot of the relatively large ships it needs to achieve comparable combat power.

[At least, assuming that the new Star Wars canon doesn't totally rewrite this 'reality']

However, in all respects the Galactic Empire is faster.

Imperium strategic mobility is poor. Their FTL speeds are such that it takes decades for their typical ship to cross the galaxy. Maybe centuries, even. Their navigation is imprecise and relies heavily on what amounts to dead reckoning and steering by the big honking beacon on Terra. And they (as noted) require long in-system STL voyages both before and after traveling through the Warp over interstellar distances.

Empire strategic mobility is excellent, their typical ship can cross the galaxy in days or weeks if not in a matter of hours. Their navigation is precise enough that they routinely extract from hyperspace in close orbit over a planet, without even worrying about whether they will accidentally smack into the planet or fall into the sun or anything of that nature.

Imperium command and control systems are slow. Their communications are unreliable and require the use of telepaths who are often dubiously sane and accurate, to the extent that the Imperium even struggles just to impose a coherent chronology on events. Their decision-makers are hidebound and often indecisive, and are insulated from decisive events by numerous layers of bureaucracy. They have very few truly rational beings in command of large parts of their

Empire command and control systems are fast. They have real-time videoconferencing across galactic distances. The highest levels of their government routinely act on new information in a quick, decisive manner. While they clearly have a bureaucracy, this bureaucracy does not prevent them from making military decisions in a timely manner. And compared to the typical Imperium civilian leadership figure, the Empire's military leadership is actually pretty competent... which is frightening in my opinion.

Imperium tactical mobility is poor. Given how long it takes their ships to cross star systems in sublight, their acceleration is generally in the range of tens or a few hundreds of gravities. By contrast, Star Wars ships have accelerations in the low thousands of gravities.
____________________________

So the basic structure of the balance is set by rough technological parity- both sides can generate and defend against vast energies, and are familiar with a diverse array of weapons and tactics.

The Empire's advantages of speed, dexterity, and maneuverability are a huge advantage weighing down its pan of the balance.

To compensate, the Imperium on its side of the balance pours in a tremendous amount of sheer fighting mass, being far more heavily mobilized for war than the Star Wars galaxy ever was. They have tremendous numbers of ships, even if the individual ships are hard to replace. They have practically uncountable numbers of ground troops, and the means to transport a large proportion of them across the stars. They concentrate these forces relatively densely, and nearly every world of any real consequence has heavy fortifications that are designed to inflict serious losses and delay

To borrow TVTropes-isms, this is "Fragile Speedster" against "Mighty Glacier." And it's not because individual Star Wars ships can't take a 'punch' from the Imperium (they can). It's because once Star Wars starts taking significant casualties, or starts losing significant numbers of ships to Chaos, they really are not in a good position to recover and keep fighting effectively.

And Chaos is definitely a factor- it's not about the ships and weapons here, it's about the men. The Empire is run by very ambitious, ruthless individuals who are often corrupt or have severe personal vices. They have no spiritual patron capable of protecting them, or who would be willing to do so.

What percentage of Imperial Moffs, admirals, and especially Sith that we've seen on screen could possibly resist the temptations of Chaos? Their entire political and military structure is based around the strong doing as they please with the weak in exchange for secular and mystical power.

Just as an example, if the Empire sent Vader into the 40k Milky Way he'd probably be a Khornate daemon prince within a matter of hours or days.

[Q99]

To borrow TVTropes-isms, this is "Fragile Speedster" against "Mighty Glacier." And it's not because individual Star Wars ships can't take a 'punch' from the Imperium (they can). It's because once Star Wars starts taking significant casualties, or starts losing significant numbers of ships to Chaos, they really are not in a good position to recover and keep fighting effectively.

I'm not sure about that. Consider how quickly forces were made while they were at war, while the Imperium's ship construction is a continuous process where each ship takes many years to make. Sure, the Imperium is more militarized from the star, but the rate SW can militarize is impressive.

The Death Star took 20 years to build, which is a blink of an eye to the Imperium's strategic situation, and in the same time all the Clone Wars Venators and Acclamators were gone, replaced with Star Destroyers. The Victory class being the only CW ship still in regular service.

Clone Wars, Vong War, each only a few years long, and each had the Republic build gigantic fleets in that time frame.

If Star Wars is a 'fragile speedster,' it's one that can repair damage done to it's fragility fast.

[Solauren]

Why the hell would the Empire bother?

Quite frankly, fighting anything they'd need something that like, they'd be better off dropping a dozen Seismic Charges on the battle field and calling it a day.

Failing that, just glass the planet from orbit.

[Adam Reynolds]

One option a Star Wars faction has in such a scenario is to send a droid army. that would normally have the problem that it would be politically problematic in the aftermath of the Clone Wars, but in a fight like this it wouldn't matter. This would be a solution to the manpower limitations that seem to plague Star Wars militaries(hence why the Clone Wars were fought solely between hastily created and expendable armies as well as why the Empire built a Death Star). Droids might not be as effective man for man, but they could be created based on resources gathered in the target galaxy and using prefab facilities. That would make the reinforcement problem even easier.

Freshly produced droids that die in droves would actually be even more effective than those from the Clone Wars that lived long enough to develop self preservation instincts and personalities that made them less effective in combat. If you really needed to attack planets directly you could throw a few million battle droids at it. So what if nearly all of them die.

As to the inevitable question of why the CIS was unable to win if they would have been able to replicate this feat, one must remember that they were only a small portion of the entire galaxy. The Republic had a rather significant industrial advantage. In this case we are talking about the entire galaxy unified under the Empire against an enemy powerful enough that even those who normally oppose the Empire would get out of the way.

Not to mention the possibility of sending a Death Star or two. If copies of the first smaller version were used it would be relatively easy to build, given that Empire was able to build the larger version in only a couple of years at most. Given the mobility advantage of hyperdrive, even if the Imperium was able to mass a large enough fleet to do anything to it, a Death Star could just escape to hyperspace.

As for the Chaos, how do we know it would affect a Dark Sider? They are already corrupted by one thing, how would that make them more likely to be corrupted by an entirely different force(of sorts). I don't really have any particular knowledge of how Chaos works, how exactly does it corrupt people?

The next fundamental problem is one of why would the Empire ever decide to carry out such an attack? I could understand the GE attacking the Star Trek galaxy because it is a relatively easy target, but why would they attack an enemy that is potentially stronger than them? What I would see in such a scenario is the Empire using the Death Star to blast the wormhole connecting the two galaxies. Not sure of W40K could do anything to prevent this.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oddly enough, droids would probably be the best choice for fighting in the 40K universe, for the reasons you stated and one major one: being machines, they have no souls and thus don't feed Chaos through their actions (massive wars feed Khorne, rot and decay feeds Nurgle etc). Plus Thy would probably be more resistant to some psyker attacks, not having souls and all that. You'd basically have a easily-built version of Necrons without the infighting, political intrigue and envy of the living that their various Dynasties engage in.

[NecronLord]

People saying the Galactic Empire has less men, need to present calcs to back up that claim. The Imperium has a million worlds, the Galactic Empire has charted the entire galaxy and unified it, I'm not sure what stats there are in nu-canon, but it used to be rated at 50 million worlds. The Imperium's terra is ungoverned below the top layers, while the Empire has Coruscant, which in nu-canon, seems to go deep into the core of the planet. The Galactic Empire built the death stars in secret. Confronted with a witch-burning theocracy and tyranids, they would have no need for secrecy, and could build them faster.

[Elheru Aran]

I think the issue is that there's a distinction between population and actual armed troops. If you want a few numbers, there's always the heinous 3 million clones, or you can play with Wookieepedia, which does claim that there are 'millions' of ships and 'trillions' of troops. If the Star Wars galaxy was densely populated, that would work... but I'm not sure it is. Accurate estimates of both IoM and GE are difficult if not impossible given a paucity of hard numbers (both tend to go in broad strokes) and a tendency to focus upon individual heroics rather than strategic actions.

[NecronLord]

Three million clones has been struck from canon now.

[Adam Reynolds]

People saying the Galactic Empire has less men, need to present calcs to back up that claim. The Imperium has a million worlds, the Galactic Empire has charted the entire galaxy and unified it, I'm not sure what stats there are in nu-canon, but it used to be rated at 50 million worlds. The Imperium's terra is ungoverned below the top layers, while the Empire has Coruscant, which in nu-canon, seems to go deep into the core of the planet. The Galactic Empire built the death stars in secret. Confronted with a witch-burning theocracy and tyranids, they would have no need for secrecy, and could build them faster.

The impression I have with the Star Wars galaxy is that it is relatively sparsely populated. Even Coruscant was generally stated to have a population in the low trillions, giving it a population density roughly on par with Hong Kong or Macau rather than something one would expect of an ecumenopolis. Naboo couldn't have had more than a couple billion people with what we saw of its numbers. And yet it had massive political power in the Senate. Not to mention the fact that most people in the galaxy were somewhat familiar with random worlds and star systems, which indicates that there can't have been very many of them that were populated. This is in addition to the fact that we just don't see very large numbers of anything in Clone Wars. It is actually quite minimalist in that respect.

While they have indeed tamed the galaxy, it has likely led them to stop expanding their population. This also could be related to the fact that we see a great deal of empowerment of women and high technology, two factors that tend to lead to extremely low birthrates. While there was undoubtedly massive expansion in the past, the population had probably stagnated by the time of the films. It might even be in a very slow decline. Though that is doubtful given the timescales involves in the Republic.

This is not to say that it has similar limitations on industrial capacity. As I stated, massive no holds barred droid armies would be the best bet. Especially if backed up by multiple Death Stars(the same size as the first one, though hopefully without the same flaw). Though even if said Death Star had the exhaust port flaw, could anything from 40K actually hit something that small while under turbolaser fire? Another option, depending on how it turns out to work, is whatever weapon Starkiller Base uses in TFA. Because it is presumably built with a fraction of the resources of the full Empire, it would likely be easier to build in quantity than the Death Star.

Another question is whether 40K has anything to easily penetrate planetary shields?

[NecronLord]

The flaw would not matter. The Imperium of Man, the Eldar and Necrons possesses no missile capable of a multi-tens-of-thousands of degree turn on a dime like the Rebellion has.

Necron shipmounted gauss whips sometimes bypass shields entirely, or at least they did in Battlefleet Gothic.

[Adam Reynolds]

The flaw would not matter. The Imperium of Man, the Eldar and Necrons possesses no missile capable of a multi-tens-of-thousands of degree turn on a dime like the Rebellion has.

Necron shipmounted gauss whips sometimes bypass shields entirely, or at least they did in Battlefleet Gothic.

Is there any indication of how shields work in that continuity?

[Jub]

Is there any indication of how shields work in that continuity?

From what I can recall they're projections that suck in energy and matter on contact, but they're projected as literal shields. Like you have to position them and certain shots can slip through the cracks between shields.

[Q99]

Portrayals vary some for 40k shields. Void shields are *most often* spherical bubbles that block a wide variety of stuff- though slow-moving physical objects can sometimes get through (one comic had Space Marines get past a Gargant shield by driving a bike up to it, stopping, letting it's movement carry them within, then - and when they're hit with at least X amount of energy, they'll get knocked down, but then will recharged and eventually go back up (on ships, quite rapidly, on Titans, fairly slowly). They'll usually be used in redundant layers. And, notably, when I say 'at least,' if you put in a lot more than the minimum needed, the shield will still eat it before going down. I.e. If I fire a laser with 3x energy at a Titan with two shields, it'll knock down 1 shield. If I fire three lasers with x energy, it'll knock down two shields and do some damage.

So it's better to hit them repeatedly than go for a single overkill attack (there is an upper limit, but it's not normally worth going for). Though attacks below the threshold just get ignored, and it's also important to not give them time to recover / hit them hard during recharge gaps.


Star Wars, they surrounded the ship- generally quite closely- with a generic sci-fi energy shield. They come in two flavors, ray and particle, but most stuff has both so the difference doesn't come up too much. Saturating them with fire is the way to take them down. In order to fire out, they need to make holes, so there's the occasionally crack, but they're also sectional, so pounding on a specific area is often a way to go- though shields can be redirected from one section to another, this is more easily done on smaller ships. Fighters are good for hitting the weak points of shields.

[Boeing 757]

The flaw would not matter. The Imperium of Man, the Eldar and Necrons possesses no missile capable of a multi-tens-of-thousands of degree turn on a dime like the Rebellion has.

Necron shipmounted gauss whips sometimes bypass shields entirely, or at least they did in Battlefleet Gothic.

What if the Imperium were to teleport high-yield warheads into the Death Star's reactor?

And wouldn't that be a rather effective way of countering any planetary shielding that Imperium/Eldar/Necron forces could encounter?

Also let's say hypothetically that the Adeptus Mechanicus could conjure up enough vortex missiles..what kind of damage could they inflict on the Death Star? The Empire has nothing that could possibly stop those AFAIK.

[Jub]

What if the Imperium were to teleport high-yield warheads into the Death Star's reactor?

You'd have to show that IoM teleporters are able to bypass Star Wars shielding. You'd also probably want to show that the targeting system for said teleporters would be able to cut through the heavy ECM that Star Wars is known for.

Also let's say hypothetically that the Adeptus Mechanicus could conjure up enough vortex missiles..what kind of damage could they inflict on the Death Star? The Empire has nothing that could possibly stop those AFAIK.

You'd once again have to show that a vortex missile could pass through a shield. Vortex missiles are powerful, but they do have limits, limits which include void shields.