Scenario: SW Galactic Empire vs. WH:40K Imperium of Man

[Connor MacLeod]

That's more the realm of Necron stuff than Imperium hardware.

Frankly from what I'm hearing of the Necrons, I'm inclined to wonder if most of its simply hearsay or legend or myth... "physics defying" weapons? I don't think thats even remotely compatible with SoD (sort of like the complications Species 8472 and fluidic space present.. how can the physics of our reality interact with something that operates on completely different scientific principles? They aren't remotely the same.)

Checking the descriptions from Cmdr. Astelan, that sounds like what happened to Caliban. Astelan mentions Caliban's seas boiling and the planet itself being cracked open.

which would probably put it in the e25-e26 range, or thereabouts. Any idea how long it took?

The Night Lord's attack on Nostromo blew the planet apart (from Index Astartes: Night Lords):

The Night Lords' ships orbited Nostramo, hundreds of weapons trained on the shrouded planet, the rays of the system's dying sun glinting from barrels too numerous to count. As the fabric of space buckled and twisted, disgorging the few craft able to keep pace, the lances and mass drivers of Night Haunter's flagship opened fire upon the planet.

Beam after beam of incandescent light joined the fusillade, all concentrating upon the same point, a weak spot in Nostramo's adamantium crust theorised to be left by the Primarch's initial landing. The lasers of the Night Lords' ships focused a blinding lance of pure energy into the planet's core, and with a cataclysmic explosion, the dark planet burst apart.

Well, this one is iffier. From the context of the passage, it seems the planet only blows up when the weapons fire strikes the core - so it sort of puts doubt on the idea we're talking DET-style planet destruction.

On the other hand "breaking aparrt" the planet might simply indicate the planet's mass was NOT acceclerated to escape velocity, but rather it was just cracked and shattered, yet not to the extent it would not eventually recoalesce.

The question becomes one of side effects (or lack thereof) if this is an earthlike planet (or even one with an atmosphere.) - persistant fireballs brighter than the sun, global firestorms, ejecta and dust loading, etc.

One possibility is that, if we know the diameter of the beam (or how large an area it might melt/vaporize) you might do a calculation based on penetrating to the core of the planet - the context seems to suggest a singel shot.

The star-sword was nasty as well. A star-core fragment forged into a sword, white-hot hot to anyone but Veq.

not sure about that. I'm not an expert on stellar physics, but I don't think stellar cores are all that special (the densest matter you get from a star IIRC is iron.) So I'm betting on some hyperbole (maybe the sword generates stellar-scale intensity or something..)

Well then, here we are:

Gunfire erupted again from below. Veq swatted away a score of bullets from the Obiliterator and caught three more with his free hand, throwing them back down to the floor of the bridge with a curse. The young one, the most dangerous, fired a well-aimed shot, but Veq flicked his head to the side and the silenced bolt flittered past him.

Depends on whether its a matter of prediction (seeing where the gun is pointing and reacting before it fires) or if its reactive... the source isnt really cleaer insofar as I can tell.

Also, before measuring reactions/acceeleration, I need to knwo the distance frfom the weapon to target, and the velocity of the bullet, if possible.

On a similar note, Ravenor mentions certain materials in 40K that either amplify or dampen psi impulses, though not to the degree that the objects/places you mentioned can amplify the user's abilities.

Well I sort of gathered that, since I believe you have mentioned psychically enhanced weaponry (or was that daemonically enhanced?)

There's lots of that available to Palpatine too, that might conceivably make him more of a match for the Chaos gods - the Valley of the Jedi should certtainly augment his capabilities to the point of near-godhood, considering what he's already capable of. But I can think of other ways and tricks that might benefit him as well. (Normally I wouldn't propose such outlandish ideas in the discussion, but since we're talking about some fairly nebulous psychic/supernatural elements, it does seem somewhat appropriate, and it helps to "balance" it out, I think.)

Mainly I was thinking in terms of telepathy/mind influencing.. since we know he can already influence the minds of enough people to mask the concealment of the Lusankya (both in terms of scale and duration.. billions or trllions of people for hours, days, or maybe even weeks?) - boosting that by say, several or more orders of magnitude might definitely allow him to "shield" a fairly substantial fighting force against any short term corruption by Chaos.

Yeah, that's the most serious difficulty. The armour could be burned through, with the right equipment, but that takes time, and time isn't something that's on the SM's side. Not to mention that some of that equipment is cumbersome, and really fucking difficult to use in an enclosed space without frying yourself (multimeltas for instance).

True. Although if they do locate such things, I suspect some might damage it anyways (since ruprturing a TL power line probably is detrimental to the ship as well as to the marines)

SMs prefer the bolter as their weapon of choice, mainly because it's a lot more destructive than a lasgun (Boreas takes out the wall of a 3-4 storey tall ferrocrete building with three shots in Angels of Darkness (pg. 52)).

Depends on how thick the wall is and what its made of I think.

The thing is, I doubt SM weapons have a recoil beyond a couple hundred kg*m/s if even that - and you can only generate so much momentum/KE for a given mass or velocity of the bullets (you'd need like a 100 gram bullet at like 5 km/s or more to really get into the MJ range for KE.. and that would be like 500 kg*m/s worth of momentum right there.)

Also, stormy armor is REALLY good against projectile weapons (Mike does a pretty good analysis on his site.. something like resisting 1000 kg*m/s woth of momentum impartted to a tiny area - a spear-point in fact..) so unless SM weapons generate thousands of kg*m/s worth of mometum or they hit the stormy's head, a projectile weapon is not going to be the most efficient way to kill them - but energy weapons definitely will be.

Unfortunately there's minimal data on SM armour's gravitic nullifiers, just that they use them (in concert with their armour's strength augmentations) to move around as if unencumbered.

you mean like walk at a normal pace? Well, if you know how much the SM masses unencumbered and how fast he walks, and then compare it to how fast he walks when he's heavily encumbered (or whatever), you probably can get an idea.

The Vipers might be vulnerable to the KE weapons that SMs carry around (IIRC that fancy armour they've got isn't that effective against KE).

High momentum, yeah. But as I said to Jedineophyte, the momentum they're designed to hold off on is probably fairly high (more than conventional marine weapons.. probably need tank weapons or arrtillery to take em out.)

They've got inertial dampeners built into the Leman Russ pattern MBTs, including the Conqueror, to help keep the gun on target (amongst other things, but they're mentioned when comparing Conquerors' targetting gear to that of pre-Imperial tech MBTs).

That probably would fix it... (although inerrtial dampers by the definition I usually go by - like in that last Stargate discussion) are what I call tractor/repulsor beams or whatnot. ) So long as it anchors/braces the turret/tank, it probably would work.

[Connor MacLeod]

Connor, in a nutshell: Bolter rounds use kinetic energy to punch through armor then explode. It's an APHE round.

-Gunhead

That seems to be how most projectiles/warheads work, so I'm not su rprised. However, the point is with the "reactive' bit. The only sort of reaction that is equally affective against any kind of matter is going to be some sort of matter-antimatter reaction.

[Connor MacLeod]

That's a usage rate for powering the Astronomicon, in addition to whatever other things he does.

Well, how much of his effort is pumped into that Astronomicon thingamajig? Its still a benchmark.

There are several problems with attempting to quantify this, though. First of all, psykers come in various grades of power, from virtually ineffectual to able to control hundreds or even thousands of minds at a time. We don't know what power levels of psykers are being used to maintain him, but we'll go ahead use the weakest variety for the purposes of establishing our lower limit.

Use the weakest to establish a lower limit. The strongest an upper limit. When you cant figure anything with precision, go for a range of values.

As for how many he consumes, the opening descriptive text for every Warhammer novel has a line that says "He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die." Anybody have a hard figure that contradicts this?

okay, so a thousand.

Next problem. We have no idea of how much of the energy that is fed to him simply goes to sustaining his life force, and how much is used for powering the Astronomicon, making long-range telepathic interventions on behalf of his followers and so on. I have no idea of any sources that even come close to quantifying this.

I thought that Golden Throne thingy was life support sustaining his physical shell? Why would he need to psychically sustain himself (IIRC the physical body is what is tying him to this realm and preventing him from returning to the warp and/or being reincarnated.)

Speaking of which, do we have any proof in the novels that his interventions in long-range affairs are anything more than telepathic projections, folks? Because otherwise we bump into issues like what came up with the Q thread that's raging in the HOS.

Also, because (though don't quote me on this) I'm pretty sure Palpy can not only do mind tricks at a grerat distance (C'baoth could do it across light years), but also telekinetic ones (at least against individuals).. to say nothing of the Force storm....

[Petrosjko]

There's lots of that available to Palpatine too, that might conceivably make him more of a match for the Chaos gods - the Valley of the Jedi should certtainly augment his capabilities to the point of near-godhood, considering what he's already capable of. But I can think of other ways and tricks that might benefit him as well. (Normally I wouldn't propose such outlandish ideas in the discussion, but since we're talking about some fairly nebulous psychic/supernatural elements, it does seem somewhat appropriate, and it helps to "balance" it out, I think.)

Mainly I was thinking in terms of telepathy/mind influencing.. since we know he can already influence the minds of enough people to mask the concealment of the Lusankya (both in terms of scale and duration.. billions or trllions of people for hours, days, or maybe even weeks?) - boosting that by say, several or more orders of magnitude might definitely allow him to "shield" a fairly substantial fighting force against any short term corruption by Chaos.

My objection to this would be the question of how far Palpatine can project his powers. Since this particular OP specifies him sending Vader off to do the dirty work, Palps won't be physically present to shield the fleet against any sort of outside influence.

Do we have any canon evidence on the range of Palpatine's abilities, and if they diminish over distance?

[Imperial Overlord]

I believe the "reactive" bit about bolters is that the rounds normaly don't explode until after they've penetrate armour and hit soft tissue.

As for Necron technology, no one understands how it manages to get the results it does. The IoM can't produce anything close to it and doesn't understand the principles of its operation.

[Petrosjko]

Well, how much of his effort is pumped into that Astronomicon thingamajig? Its still a benchmark.

I am unaware of any source that offers any form of power distribution quantifications for the Emperor, unfortunately.

Use the weakest to establish a lower limit. The strongest an upper limit. When you cant figure anything with precision, go for a range of values.

Yup, that's what I was setting up to do. But lacking the game books that offer some quantification to the powers of psykers, I was basically setting it up so one of the other 40Kers here could fill in the blanks.

I thought that Golden Throne thingy was life support sustaining his physical shell? Why would he need to psychically sustain himself (IIRC the physical body is what is tying him to this realm and preventing him from returning to the warp and/or being reincarnated.)

The material I've seen on this has been somewhat vague, but we can go back to the portion of the sacrifice quote that includes the part "for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die."

That outright states that the psyker sacrifices also serve to sustain his physical existance, in addition to fueling the Astronomicon.

Also, because (though don't quote me on this) I'm pretty sure Palpy can not only do mind tricks at a grerat distance (C'baoth could do it across light years), but also telekinetic ones (at least against individuals).. to say nothing of the Force storm....

That's the reason I asked. Long range telepathy in and of itself can be an incredibly useful ability, but I was curious if we had any canon descriptions of him being able to reach out over long distances and actually physically affect things. There's a major subplot in the Gaunt's Ghosts novels that implies he has some distant interest in the affairs of the regiment and their commander, but the actual effects that have been shown in the novels thus far can be put down to long range telepathy.

[Petrosjko]

As for Necron technology, no one understands how it manages to get the results it does. The IoM can't produce anything close to it and doesn't understand the principles of its operation.

Which means that for the purposes of the discussion, we can safely remove it from the 'violates the laws of physics' category and move it into the 'indistinguishable from magic' category.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yup, that's what I was setting up to do. But lacking the game books that offer some quantification to the powers of psykers, I was basically setting it up so one of the other 40Kers here could fill in the blanks.

Malleus provides quantifiable stuff on alpha-plus psykers, IIRC. I'll throw that stuff in when I get around to getting those Marine quotes up.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well,. how would it work with say, stormtroopers? According to the official reports, they cannot be bribed, seduced, or blackmailed - they're totally, f anatically devoted to the Empire (much in the same way the Clonetroopers were devoted to the Jedi, I imagine.)

I could probably cite examples if neccessary showing this.

As I've mentioned previously, Stormies are going to be resistant to Chaos influence. When individuality and the accompanying wants, desires, and fears are erased, Chaos has to work around it. Stormtroopers' conditioning is pretty good about it, come to think; it renders them directly immune to three Gods - their armor and fitness counters Nurgle; they're utterly rational and analytical in combat, no emotions to allow Khorne to move in; and they certainly have no hedonistic desires Slaanesh can prey upon. The one easily exploitable flaw I see is their need to serve Palpatine unfailingly, Tzeentch could make use of this - say, for example, by slowly building upon this need until they become reckless and impetuous, and therefore even more malleable.

I see. Well, as I mentioned, there are the stormtroopers (at least) - and therea re indications that there are parts of the Navy fanatically loyal to him (Remember that Grand Admiral I mentioned? When he heard about Palpatine's death, he committed suicide by plunging his ship into the heart of a sun.) There are also dark Jedi (such as the one who guarded Palpy's Yacht.) who are also fanatically loyal to him.

I suppose if worse comes to worse, Palpy just starts making stormtrooper versions of naval officers and whatnot (They should be able to do so - the clonetroopers had vehicle and fighter operators - and I think capital ship ones too.)

Loyalty to Palpatine and the Empire appears to have been a very central aspect of the New Order - indeed, indications suggest Palpatine is worshiped as something of a demigod in at least some circles according to Publius, who is perhaps one of the most authoritative sources on Palpatine and the Empire (most of the information being on his domuspublica site.)

again, if neccesary I think I can pull examples when I go dig into the essay.

These non-stormtrooper fanatics are probably going to be about the same as most of the Imperium's population, then, in terms of resistance. The sort of officers we see in the movie are going to be child's play for Tzeentch or Slaanesh, so that Stormtrooper replacement plan sounds like the best bet.

And yes, I've skimmed Publius's site.

True, but I dont think it matters much one way or another. If the empire definitely has a range advantage on the infantry scale, what good does it do them to sit in place and let the Empire pepper them from beyond their effective range? If anything that tactic seems to work more in the Empire's favor. Remember that the Space Marines are without a doubt going to be more effective the closer they get to the stormies (individual Space Marine > Individual Stormtrooper.)

We are ultimately dealing with an infantry battle here, there is only so much one can do with long-range pummelling. Eventually the Empire will have to close distance and storm the Palace corridor by corridor, which is where the real bloodbath is. The Guard can handle the exterior defense, at any rate, leaving the Marines and Custodes free to wait deeper within the Palace.

Well, in the case of shielding, I was talking of the empire deploying shields to protect its troops against enemy artillery and cannon fire, since stormy armor isn't going to cut it on its own.

Ok.

Not sure if the Empire has any exact equivalents, but orbital bombardment probably would make short work of it (hell, we know from Rebel Stand that gunnery in such cases is good enough that they can decimate ground forces surrounding a friendly base without harming any of the friendlies within a kilometer of said base (in fact, the defenders can watch their enemies get slaughtered.)

Right.

STronger agianst energy than momentum, yeah. A bunch of massive creatures created by Sith Alchemy (the Chrysalis beasts) were unleashed to decimate them, and since they only had brute strength and no energy wepaons.. they crushed them pretty handily.)

On the other hand, considering they seem to be designed to shrug off the momentum of most conventional wepaons fire (remember that At-Ats have kiloton range firepower, which suggests some fairly hefty momentum) it might take a direct hit by say, a battleship-grrade round to do much of anything.

How large are these droids? Are they humanoid? In the closer-range firefights, a lot of troops (Marines and Guard) carry anti-tank grenades and meltabombs. If worse comes to absolute worst, the Marines can tear them apart in hand-to-hand (assuming this is a close range fight).

"Mass reactive"? I dont even knwo what would plausibly cover that.. except maybe sticking some antimatter in the shell.

That may not have been the exact wording. Basically, they just detonate when they detect they're surrounded by enough mass.

[PeZook]

The Astronomican is sustained as a separate entity, and is only "guided" (whatever that means) by the Emperor's will. Adeptus Astronomica deals with sustaining the beacon, by selecting and training psykers delivered by the black ships.

The Chamber of the Astronomican is a huge hollow sphere carved from a single mountain peak. Its outward form is a giant dome, the lower half of the sphere being buried under the rock. Ten thousand multi-tiered seats cover the entire inner surface of the sphere. Each seat faces the very centre of the sphere where a raw ball of psychic energy dances in space.

This ball of energy is created by the Chosen as they release their powers into the Astronomican. In this way their psychic power is drained into the energy-ball and then through the warp, directed by the mind of the Emperor himself. As the energy of the Chosen is drained away they slowly fade and die. The average psyker lasts for about three months - about 100 die every day and their places are taken by new Chosen.

I couldn't find a quotation for the number of psykers the Emperor eats, but I remember a number of ten thousand a day. I'm no authority on the subject, though, and can be wrong on this.

[Petrosjko]

(snippy astronomicon data)

Sweet. Good catch.

Okay, that changes the picture dramatically. We now have a thousand psykers a day going to feed the Emperor and keep him alive, and a hundred a day going to feed the Astronomicon.

So he's burning tremendous amounts of energy just to stay alive, and a large amount of energy is being fed directly to the Astronomicon to keep it up and running.

This really makes the question of how much of an active hand he takes in manipulating the affairs of the Imperium a pressing question, because from there we can derive some notion of how much power he can bring to bear beyond the minimum of what keeps him alive.

Also it indicates that shutting down the Astronomicon would not give him a big spike in power, either.

[Uraniun235]

How large are these droids? Are they humanoid? In the closer-range firefights, a lot of troops (Marines and Guard) carry anti-tank grenades and meltabombs. If worse comes to absolute worst, the Marines can tear them apart in hand-to-hand (assuming this is a close range fight).

IIRC, these droids are equipped with turbolasers.

[NecronLord]

Which means that for the purposes of the discussion, we can safely remove it from the 'violates the laws of physics' category and move it into the 'indistinguishable from magic' category.

That is the point. Clearly even "altering the laws of physics" a la the Great Warding is merely demonstrative of our invomplete understanding of the universe as compared to that of the necrontyr.

[Prozac the Robert]

Well,. how would it work with say, stormtroopers? According to the official reports, they cannot be bribed, seduced, or blackmailed - they're totally, f anatically devoted to the Empire (much in the same way the Clonetroopers were devoted to the Jedi, I imagine.)

I could probably cite examples if neccessary showing this.

As I've mentioned previously, Stormies are going to be resistant to Chaos influence. When individuality and the accompanying wants, desires, and fears are erased, Chaos has to work around it. Stormtroopers' conditioning is pretty good about it, come to think; it renders them directly immune to three Gods - their armor and fitness counters Nurgle; they're utterly rational and analytical in combat, no emotions to allow Khorne to move in; and they certainly have no hedonistic desires Slaanesh can prey upon. The one easily exploitable flaw I see is their need to serve Palpatine unfailingly, Tzeentch could make use of this - say, for example, by slowly building upon this need until they become reckless and impetuous, and therefore even more malleable.

These don't sound anything like the stormtroopers in ANH. Being weak minded enough to be mind tricked and being willing to chat about new blasters or speeders or whatever it was while they should be guarding for example.

[Currald]

Not to mention fleeing in terror from Han Solo, and then rallying when they found reenforcements.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Astronomican is sustained as a separate entity, and is only "guided" (whatever that means) by the Emperor's will. Adeptus Astronomica deals with sustaining the beacon, by selecting and training psykers delivered by the black ships.

The Chamber of the Astronomican is a huge hollow sphere carved from a single mountain peak. Its outward form is a giant dome, the lower half of the sphere being buried under the rock. Ten thousand multi-tiered seats cover the entire inner surface of the sphere. Each seat faces the very centre of the sphere where a raw ball of psychic energy dances in space.

This ball of energy is created by the Chosen as they release their powers into the Astronomican. In this way their psychic power is drained into the energy-ball and then through the warp, directed by the mind of the Emperor himself. As the energy of the Chosen is drained away they slowly fade and die. The average psyker lasts for about three months - about 100 die every day and their places are taken by new Chosen.

I couldn't find a quotation for the number of psykers the Emperor eats, but I remember a number of ten thousand a day. I'm no authority on the subject, though, and can be wrong on this.

Okay,. good but you really need to reread the entire quote.. especially the part I bolded and italicized... they're not just sacrificing 100 or more each day.. the way it sounds is as if the psykers are serving as living batteries or capacitors taht the Emperor himself draws upon and directs. These batteries last for about three months (on average.. so we can assume an "average" psyker, if quantification on such is possible.) before wearing out. The attrition rate is 100 "batteries" wearing out each day (ie at the end of their "lifespan")

so clearly, these psykers are acting for months on end before dying, contributing that power to the Emperor's purposes. The Emperor himself can direct the combined power of all these people, so yes, this still gives us an idea of the powers he can "control" or direct. HE may not (at least not in his debilitated state) be able to generate that energy himself however, and thus needs to tap it from other sources in order to do what he does.

In a way that actually makese sense.. he was born frrom the sacrifice/death of a bunch of "psykers" more or less.. so to sustain him or exercise his abilities (in his current state) needs the further sacrifice of others..

[Connor MacLeod]

This might also give us a possible way of establishing benchmarks on the Emperor's abilities. If we know how many psykers *total* are sacrificed to the Emperor (for various tasks.. so far it seems at least 1100), then we can figure out how much power he's generally using/capable of directing.

[Black Admiral]

which would probably put it in the e25-e26 range, or thereabouts. Any idea how long it took?

No. Astelan doesn't say, and IIRC Index Astartes: Dark Angels doesn't either.

Well, this one is iffier. From the context of the passage, it seems the planet only blows up when the weapons fire strikes the core - so it sort of puts doubt on the idea we're talking DET-style planet destruction.

On the other hand "breaking aparrt" the planet might simply indicate the planet's mass was NOT acceclerated to escape velocity, but rather it was just cracked and shattered, yet not to the extent it would not eventually recoalesce.

I can't find a map that includes Nostromo, so no idea if it ever reformed.

The question becomes one of side effects (or lack thereof) if this is an earthlike planet (or even one with an atmosphere.) - persistant fireballs brighter than the sun, global firestorms, ejecta and dust loading, etc.

Only description I know of is the one I posted. Lord of the Night might mention more, but I don't know, and don't have the book to look it up.

One possibility is that, if we know the diameter of the beam (or how large an area it might melt/vaporize) you might do a calculation based on penetrating to the core of the planet - the context seems to suggest a singel shot.

not sure about that. I'm not an expert on stellar physics, but I don't think stellar cores are all that special (the densest matter you get from a star IIRC is iron.) So I'm betting on some hyperbole (maybe the sword generates stellar-scale intensity or something..)

Probably. It was slicing right through Space Marine power armour with minimal resistance.

Depends on whether its a matter of prediction (seeing where the gun is pointing and reacting before it fires) or if its reactive... the source isnt really cleaer insofar as I can tell.

It's reactive

Also, before measuring reactions/acceeleration, I need to knwo the distance frfom the weapon to target, and the velocity of the bullet, if possible.

Well I sort of gathered that, since I believe you have mentioned psychically enhanced weaponry (or was that daemonically enhanced?)

Both. Force weapons are psi-enhanced by virtue of being made of or cored with psychically resonant material. Daemon weapons are easier to make, in theory - you just need a weapon and a daemon to bond to it.

There's lots of that available to Palpatine too, that might conceivably make him more of a match for the Chaos gods - the Valley of the Jedi should certtainly augment his capabilities to the point of near-godhood, considering what he's already capable of. But I can think of other ways and tricks that might benefit him as well. (Normally I wouldn't propose such outlandish ideas in the discussion, but since we're talking about some fairly nebulous psychic/supernatural elements, it does seem somewhat appropriate, and it helps to "balance" it out, I think.)

Fair's fair. We've mainly got vague stuff to work on for the GEoM and Chaos Gods though, just to be clear on this.

Mainly I was thinking in terms of telepathy/mind influencing.. since we know he can already influence the minds of enough people to mask the concealment of the Lusankya (both in terms of scale and duration.. billions or trllions of people for hours, days, or maybe even weeks?) - boosting that by say, several or more orders of magnitude might definitely allow him to "shield" a fairly substantial fighting force against any short term corruption by Chaos.

Hm, makes sense.

True. Although if they do locate such things, I suspect some might damage it anyways (since ruprturing a TL power line probably is detrimental to the ship as well as to the marines)

The more psychotic chapters certainly, and probably the saner ones if they were in danger of being overwhelmed.

Depends on how thick the wall is and what its made of I think.

Ferrocrete, and the thickness AFAIK isn't stated. I'll check.

The thing is, I doubt SM weapons have a recoil beyond a couple hundred kg*m/s if even that - and you can only generate so much momentum/KE for a given mass or velocity of the bullets (you'd need like a 100 gram bullet at like 5 km/s or more to really get into the MJ range for KE.. and that would be like 500 kg*m/s worth of momentum right there.)

Recoil isn't really that telling with a bolter, since the bolt gains most of its velocity after firing, when the rocket motor ignites. Neat way of sidestepping the recoil difficulties.

Also, stormy armor is REALLY good against projectile weapons (Mike does a pretty good analysis on his site.. something like resisting 1000 kg*m/s woth of momentum impartted to a tiny area - a spear-point in fact..) so unless SM weapons generate thousands of kg*m/s worth of mometum or they hit the stormy's head, a projectile weapon is not going to be the most efficient way to kill them - but energy weapons definitely will be.

Space Wolf has the following description of a boltpistol's impact effects:

Even as he tumbled down, another shell blazed towards the nightganger mage, temporarily averting his downward progess with shear force of impact. The bolt round entered one eye and exited the back of his head in a fountain of brains and blood.

Nightgangers are human-mass (or thereabouts).

you mean like walk at a normal pace? Well, if you know how much the SM masses unencumbered and how fast he walks, and then compare it to how fast he walks when he's heavily encumbered (or whatever), you probably can get an idea.

Well, the armour masses at least 250lbs, and Kill Team gives their stride length as three meters. That's all I can find offhand.

High momentum, yeah. But as I said to Jedineophyte, the momentum they're designed to hold off on is probably fairly high (more than conventional marine weapons.. probably need tank weapons or arrtillery to take em out.)

That's problematic, since tanks and arty aren't brought along in boarding actions. Too little room to use them effectively for one thing.

That probably would fix it... (although inerrtial dampers by the definition I usually go by - like in that last Stargate discussion) are what I call tractor/repulsor beams or whatnot. ) So long as it anchors/braces the turret/tank, it probably would work.

It seems to do something like that. Certainly, in the opinion of the Pardus armour officers, the inertial dampeners help keep the gun locked on target.

[Mutant Headcrab]

Okay,. good but you really need to reread the entire quote.. especially the part I bolded and italicized... they're not just sacrificing 100 or more each day.. the way it sounds is as if the psykers are serving as living batteries or capacitors taht the Emperor himself draws upon and directs. These batteries last for about three months (on average.. so we can assume an "average" psyker, if quantification on such is possible.) before wearing out. The attrition rate is 100 "batteries" wearing out each day (ie at the end of their "lifespan")

so clearly, these psykers are acting for months on end before dying, contributing that power to the Emperor's purposes. The Emperor himself can direct the combined power of all these people, so yes, this still gives us an idea of the powers he can "control" or direct. HE may not (at least not in his debilitated state) be able to generate that energy himself however, and thus needs to tap it from other sources in order to do what he does.

In a way that actually makese sense.. he was born frrom the sacrifice/death of a bunch of "psykers" more or less.. so to sustain him or exercise his abilities (in his current state) needs the further sacrifice of others..

The quote refers to the astronomicon though. It's a seperate system from what feeds the Emporer. It gives us a quantifier for the astronomicon, but we are still somewhat clueless as to what feeds him.

[Connor MacLeod]

My objection to this would be the question of how far Palpatine can project his powers. Since this particular OP specifies him sending Vader off to do the dirty work, Palps won't be physically present to shield the fleet against any sort of outside influence.

At least thousands/tens of thousands of kilometers (orbital distances) for both telepathy/mind control and Force Storms strong enough to swallow fleets.

He is suggestedd to be able to kill others at "great distances" - and he did generate a powerful force storm (powerful enough to consume debris on the planet and kill anyone in its path) on Coruscant all the way from Byss (hundreds or thousands of light years.) C'baoth in the Thrawn Trilogy was able to use his Force powers to enhance the abilities of Naval soldiers in multiple task forces over many light years (maybe 15-20 ISDs, and dozens/scores of smaller ships simultaneously.)

Sensing is also in the light-years range.

Do we have any canon evidence on the range of Palpatine's abilities, and if they diminish over distance?

Do they diminish? i dont know, but I would imagine so in some fashion.

[Connor MacLeod]

I am unaware of any source that offers any form of power distribution quantifications for the Emperor, unfortunately.

From the quote, he's controlling power generated by others, so it is an indication of his abilities, since he is the one controlling the energy, if not precisely generating it.

Yup, that's what I was setting up to do. But lacking the game books that offer some quantification to the powers of psykers, I was basically setting it up so one of the other 40Kers here could fill in the blanks.

Okay.

The material I've seen on this has been somewhat vague, but we can go back to the portion of the sacrifice quote that includes the part "for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die."

That would suggest his "immortality" was linked to his access to the Warp. As I have been speculating (in my head at least) I think that the Emperor himself can no longer safely tap the Warp directly to perform at least certain feats - hence he has to rely on others (these "sacrifices") to do so. But since they are not as powerful as him or immortal like him, generating the sort of energy levels he needs/uses is detrimental and ultimately fatal to them.

I suspect that prior to being wounded by Horus, he probably COULD have tapped the sorts of energies himself that he does through these sacrifices. But in his current state his body could not stand doing so (I believe Black Admiral pointed out that psychic abilities tend to manifest noticable side effects, and thus probably do inflict a sort of toll or strain on the body of an individual.)

That outright states that the psyker sacrifices also serve to sustain his physical existance, in addition to fueling the Astronomicon.

Yeah, sort of like a vampire is what I figure. He's no longer truly "immorttal" - he can't draw on the powers of the warp to sustain himself, so he has to do it through others.. but those he does it through are not meant to channel the sorts of energies he deals iwth or requires. Hence they eventually die.

That's the reason I asked. Long range telepathy in and of itself can be an incredibly useful ability, but I was curious if we had any canon descriptions of him being able to reach out over long distances and actually physically affect things. There's a major subplot in the Gaunt's Ghosts novels that implies he has some distant interest in the affairs of the regiment and their commander, but the actual effects that have been shown in the novels thus far can be put down to long range telepathy.

Well palpy can definitely act at long range.. (light years. across the entire galaxy). If he cannot do it directly, there are other ways he can do it (through his minions, ,using his own powers to enhancee their own, which he can do and is a form of "meld" ability demonstrated in the EU.) - or he can rely on certain methods or nexuses of power or even objects to boost his abilities (and thus allowing him to do more at greater ranges.) Any self-respecting Sith should have access to those means.

[Connor MacLeod]

As I've mentioned previously, Stormies are going to be resistant to Chaos influence. When individuality and the accompanying wants, desires, and fears are erased, Chaos has to work around it. Stormtroopers' conditioning is pretty good about it, come to think; it renders them directly immune to three Gods - their armor and fitness counters Nurgle; they're utterly rational and analytical in combat, no emotions to allow Khorne to move in; and they certainly have no hedonistic desires Slaanesh can prey upon. The one easily exploitable flaw I see is their need to serve Palpatine unfailingly, Tzeentch could make use of this - say, for example, by slowly building upon this need until they become reckless and impetuous, and therefore even more malleable.

However, would a "reckless and impetuous" stormtrooper stand out, and therefore betray his corruption? It might very well do so.

These non-stormtrooper fanatics are probably going to be about the same as most of the Imperium's population, then, in terms of resistance. The sort of officers we see in the movie are going to be child's play for Tzeentch or Slaanesh, so that Stormtrooper replacement plan sounds like the best bet.

And yes, I've skimmed Publius's site.

YEah.. I suspect that if and when the "Weak willed" officers become a problem, he will simply eliminate or replace them. In the meantime, he should have enough "fanatics" under his command to fend off most of what the 40K universe could throw at him, especially if he's bolstering their abilities with the Force. And if worse comes to worse, there are still battle droids.

And as I pointed out, the Chaos Gods might be wary of overtly attempting to corrupt the Empire because it might bring said Empire's wrath down upon their own worlds and such - I imagine that the Chaos forcecs are not going to ber much better at defeating the Empire's warships than the Imperium would be. Hundreds or thousands of Star Destroyers dispatched to BDZ Chaos worlds would definitely hurt Chaos, I imagine.

We are ultimately dealing with an infantry battle here, there is only so much one can do with long-range pummelling. Eventually the Empire will have to close distance and storm the Palace corridor by corridor, which is where the real bloodbath is. The Guard can handle the exterior defense, at any rate, leaving the Marines and Custodes free to wait deeper within the Palace.

To an extent, yeah. But they can afford to be methodical and use overkill in their search for him. They could blast apart the palace section by section looking for him, using sensors, probes, possibly even Dark jedi to help scout things out before making a move.

Sort of like with Space marines on an ISD, actually.

How large are these droids? Are they humanoid? In the closer-range firefights, a lot of troops (Marines and Guard) carry anti-tank grenades and meltabombs. If worse comes to absolute worst, the Marines can tear them apart in hand-to-hand (assuming this is a close range fight).

OTOH they're about 5-10 meters tall and maybe 8-15 meters long.. not humanoid in shape.. more buglike really.. they do have pincer arms (powerful enough to grapple and down repulsorlift vehicles, IIRC) in addition to their guns.

Melee might be better for the SM, but besides blasting them as they approach, the pincers mean the Vipers aren't exactly ill-equipped for close-range combat either.

That may not have been the exact wording. Basically, they just detonate when they detect they're surrounded by enough mass.

I see.

[Connor MacLeod]

These don't sound anything like the stormtroopers in ANH. Being weak minded enough to be mind tricked and being willing to chat about new blasters or speeders or whatever it was while they should be guarding for example.

See, this is the kind of vague adn rather subjective assertions I was hoping to not have to deal with.

[Connor MacLeod]

Not to mention fleeing in terror from Han Solo, and then rallying when they found reenforcements.

They didn't "flee in terror" - Han's actions trticked them into thinking that there were more than just Han and Chewbacca there and thus believing themselves outnumbered, ,retreated. The novel covered this I believe.

[Connor MacLeod]

No. Astelan doesn't say, and IIRC Index Astartes: Dark Angels doesn't either.

That could be a problem, then. Is thre any way to guess at or estimate it? Based on another similar event perhaps?

I can't find a map that includes Nostromo, so no idea if it ever reformed.

Since as I said its unlikely to be a "mass scattering" e vent, it would inevtiably reform due to the planet's own gravity. It just might take awhile if the bombardment was violent enough.

Only description I know of is the one I posted. Lord of the Night might mention more, but I don't know, and don't have the book to look it up.[/quiote]

Its not as bad a problem as with visuals (IE TDIC) - text isn't always as inclusive of detail as visuals are, so you can sometimes "ignore" such problems (unless the results shoudl be so blindingly obvious to anyone watching, which a large-scale bombardment should.)

Probably. It was slicing right through Space Marine power armour with minimal resistance.

well, as I said, that might not mean anything. Concentrate enough energy on a small enough area, and you can probably cut through it

It's reactive

Would you midn if I asked what this is based on? I didnt think the quote was that specific.

And I still need the other information (range, bullet velocity, etc.) in order to make calcs, if it can be derived or is provided.

Both. Force weapons are psi-enhanced by virtue of being made of or cored with psychically resonant material. Daemon weapons are easier to make, in theory - you just need a weapon and a daemon to bond to it.

I see. "Force enhancement" probably means surrounding it or reinforcing it with some sort of telekinesis giving it a "sharper' edge, or making it "harder" to break or damage.. or whatnot.

Fair's fair. We've mainly got vague stuff to work on for the GEoM and Chaos Gods though, just to be clear on this.

Thats okay. I'm not precisely clear on just how much of a boost Palpy (or any other Dark jedi) might derive from any sort of boosters - I generally propose it more as a way of "levelling the field" so to speak.

The one side effect he's going to have to watch in all this is that massive Dark Side usage is going to cause massive bodily deterioration, so he needs to have ready access to his cloning facilities. (Ideally it might mean there would be periodic "windows" of opportunity when Palpy would not be active.)

Ferrocrete, and the thickness AFAIK isn't stated. I'll check.

Okay.

Recoil isn't really that telling with a bolter, since the bolt gains most of its velocity after firing, when the rocket motor ignites. Neat way of sidestepping the recoil difficulties.

Well I've generally figured (due to effects and somewhat due to logical extrapolation) that most Marine projectile weapons are going to be equivalent to a heavy macvhine gun (.50 BMG grade) or an AMR.. which means momentum in the tens of kg*m/s range. Like I said, not likely to do much more against stormy armor except knock them down and maybe break or bruise some bones unless they make a head shot or something.

Seems much simpler for them to use energy weapons.

Space Wolf has the following description of a boltpistol's impact effects:

Even as he tumbled down, another shell blazed towards the nightganger mage, temporarily averting his downward progess with shear force of impact. The bolt round entered one eye and exited the back of his head in a fountain of brains and blood.

Well, the only thing I can tell otoh is that his head isn't exploding into a fountain of red mist.. (which I think is wht an AMR round to the head would do.. AMRs are designed to penetrate armored vehicles after all..)

Well, the armour masses at least 250lbs, and Kill Team gives their stride length as three meters. That's all I can find offhand.

My math wont be very precise (My brain isnt up to much math tonight,) but I suspect that the repulsors would provide at least a couple hundred to a couple thousand newtons worth of compensatory force to sustain a 3 meter/second stride (slightly better than average human running or jogging speed I think.) Lets say about half a ton of "gear" total.

That's problematic, since tanks and arty aren't brought along in boarding actions. Too little room to use them effectively for one thing.

Oh well I wasn't strictly referring to boarding actions. unless they enter a hangar, viper automadons are gonna be too big. I figured they would be used in the field.

Boarding actions woudl probably be devoted to battle droids or spacetrooper armor. (though SD-10s have heaveier blasters than conventional troops, shielding, and self-repairing armor.. The Yuuzhan-Vong killer driods the NR used in the NJO are even nastier-- they could take a single starfighter-scale shot and still survive, albiet with damage.)

It seems to do something like that. Certainly, in the opinion of the Pardus armour officers, the inertial dampeners help keep the gun locked on target.

Well thats basically what you're doing. When its braced against the recoil, you probably can't move it around. (SPHA-Ts and the heavy TL turrets on an ISD probably have similar issues.)