Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extractor

[gamer]

Do you not see how circular you are? They can't be wind farms because that means my massively inflated numbers and broken, stupid idea of how things work would be wrong!

You're basically simply discarding everything you don't like or that doesn't support your absurd numbers just so you can say 'TA NOVEL POWER LEVELS LOL'... But using game numbers to make absurd statements about power levels. It's useless.

Harp on about THE NINETIES all you want, huge explosions don't cost anything on a computer, especially when they're fucking bitmaps. TA is a typical RTS and does nothing to show high power levels. Deal with it.

If they were real wind farms there wouldn't be any numbers TBH, definitely no D-gun which is described as being able to essentially kill anything that has matter. Look at how much energy it takes to power a real-life laser that can actually hurt something let alone a modern day tank do you think a windmill can provide that level of power?

As for TA powerlevels gigatons of energy is canon, the megatons figure just came from my energy conversion and unit damage calcs from gameplay, hell in the Core Contingency game the most powerful weapon they ever built the Galactic Implosion Device which you guessed it has the ability to destroy an entire galaxy (not going to be used in this vs debate). Even if we use visuals peewees can take on 40k Space Marine Dreadnoughts and tanks and can be produced like Tyranid gaunts so TA isn't weak in any fashion.

[gamer]

Also how is a normal windmill going to provide the energy to convert energy into mass (just imagine creating an entire aircraft carrier using energy to mass converters (metal makers as they are called in game) in seconds)? And a wind farm can provide more power than the Commander's antimatter backpack, and according to the manual we got basic units slugging anti-matter and plasma around so don't tell me everything they have is weak because the energy to build their and maintain their stuff is provided by windmills.

[Stark]

Hint: maybe this all means you're wrong.

And seriously do you think things are 'powerful' just because they have antimatter and plasma in the fucking name?

In I-War they used antimatter as a stable emergency power system. Clearly this means everything in the universe is eleventy megaquatloos!

[gamer]

Hint: maybe this all means you're wrong.

And seriously do you think things are 'powerful' just because they have antimatter and plasma in the fucking name?

In I-War they used antimatter as a stable emergency power system. Clearly this means everything in the universe is eleventy megaquatloos!

Canon aside, how? Maybe this all means this is a videogame, seriously look at Warhammer 40k nothing there should work add realism and suddenly Necrons can't travel at FTL speeds or do anything they do, Orks can no longer rape basic logic and the laws of physics and just become savage barbarians, all space marines die due to their retarded augments (seriously two hearts? how is that going to help anyone?). But we instead go with what the fluff says even if it sounds retarded like Orks painting tanks red to make them fast or spacemarines surviving being stepped on by Titans or Kharn sidestepping bullets.

Tell me if those were normal wind mills how are they powering energy to matter conversion facilities? Just imagine the amount of energy required to create 1 ton of steel let alone creating an entire naval fleet.

And yes if something is firing anti-matter artillery obviously it is powerful or at least far more powerful than conventional artillery. If I told you a Naval ship bombarded a city with nuclear fusion shells you normally wouldn't think nuclear shells are the equivalent of bombarding a city with 18th century cannon fire would you?

[Xess]

gamer, your problem is that you keep assuming that windmills can't be windmills since they can't power energy to matter converters. You don't ever allow for the possibility that the windmills ARE windmills because they what they power AREN'T energy to matter converters but something far more energy efficient.

In other words, you are keep using circular reasoning. I have calcs that give TA huge yields, they use windmills, windmills can't give me the huge yields, therefore they aren't windmills. I've never played TA but maybe you should actually listen to the other side of the argument rather than just endlessly repeating your own stance.

EDIT:

And yes if something is firing anti-matter artillery obviously it is powerful or at least far more powerful than conventional artillery.

That depends entirely on how much anti-matter actually reacts with matter in the warhead. You could get conventional scale anti-matter warheads using small enough masses, but that's just me being pedantic.

[gamer]

gamer, your problem is that you keep assuming that windmills can't be windmills since they can't power energy to matter converters. You don't ever allow for the possibility that the windmills ARE windmills because they what they power AREN'T energy to matter converters but something far more energy efficient.

In other words, you are keep using circular reasoning. I have calcs that give TA huge yields, they use windmills, windmills can't give me the huge yields, therefore they aren't windmills. I've never played TA but maybe you should actually listen to the other side of the argument rather than just endlessly repeating your own stance.

The energy to mass converters are called Metal Makers in game and are described as extremely inefficient yet windmills are capable of powering them.
In the manual it states:

This requires no metal to build, but is very expensive in terms
of energy. It creates valuable metals using vast amounts of
energy

Sounds like your standard scifi energy to mass converter. There is no way a regular windmill is going to power something like that.

Windmills also can power the D-gun as well

This is an 'ultimate' weapon: no physical matter provides
protection from it. It works by suppressing the quantum field strength of the
'gluons' that hold together atomic nuclei. The matter violently tears itself
apart, leaving hydrogen, deuterium and a burst of free neutrons. This is the
major advantage of Disintegrators: anything is destroyed and Heavy Armor
provides virtually no protection.

Then we have fluff saying their weapons can release gigatons of energy and burn an entire planet down to bedrock in a week of ground troops going at it.

As for the antimatter thing you do make a point you could scale down a nuclear artillery to do the same damage as conventional 155mm artillery but what would be the point in that?

[Xess]

The energy to mass converters are called Metal Makers in game and are described as extremely inefficient yet windmills are capable of powering them.
In the manual it states:

This requires no metal to build, but is very expensive in terms
of energy. It creates valuable metals using vast amounts of
energy

Sounds like your standard scifi energy to mass converter. There is no way a regular windmill is going to power something like that.

That's obviously speaking about game mechanics where the unit requires none of the "metal" resource to build but uses a lot of the "energy" resource to get you more of the "metal" resource. It says nothing about the mechanisms it uses, it could be an energy to matter converter or it could use nano-tech to remove trace metals out of soil and water or it could feed "energy" to leprechauns who then shit "metal" we don't actually know. I like the nano-tech option, it isn't exactly efficient but is certainly within the the realm of possibility of being powered by windmills, unlike energy to matter converters. Makes a good kind of sense.

Then we have fluff saying their weapons can release gigatons of energy and burn an entire planet down to bedrock in a week of ground troops going at it.

I would actually like to actually read this fluff rather than just take your word for it. Do you have a link or excerpts from the book where you got it or what not handy?

EDIT 2:

"gamer"Windmills also can power the D-gun as well

This is an 'ultimate' weapon: no physical matter provides
protection from it. It works by suppressing the quantum field strength of the
'gluons' that hold together atomic nuclei. The matter violently tears itself
apart, leaving hydrogen, deuterium and a burst of free neutrons. This is the
major advantage of Disintegrators: anything is destroyed and Heavy Armor
provides virtually no protection.

There is nothing about that weapon that says the effect has to be high energy in and of itself as the destructive effects come from the matter tearing itself apart. It's like phasers in this regard, it's a chain reaction weapon as opposed to one that directly deposits energy. Since windmills power it clearly the effect must not require more than a few a megwatts! Look my stance is just as supported as yours now!

[gamer]

double post

[gamer]

The energy to mass converters are called Metal Makers in game and are described as extremely inefficient yet windmills are capable of powering them.
In the manual it states:

This requires no metal to build, but is very expensive in terms
of energy. It creates valuable metals using vast amounts of
energy

Sounds like your standard scifi energy to mass converter. There is no way a regular windmill is going to power something like that.

That's obviously speaking about game mechanics where the unit requires none of the "metal" resource to build but uses a lot of the "energy" resource to get you more of the "metal" resource. It says nothing about the mechanisms it uses, it could be an energy to matter converter or it could use nano-tech to remove trace metals out of soil and water or it could feed "energy" to leprechauns who then shit "metal" we don't actually know. I like the nano-tech option, it isn't exactly efficient but is certainly within the the realm of possibility of being powered by windmills, unlike energy to matter converters. Makes a good kind of sense.

Then we have fluff saying their weapons can release gigatons of energy and burn an entire planet down to bedrock in a week of ground troops going at it.

I would actually like to actually read this fluff rather than just take your word for it. Do you have a link or excerpts from the book where you got it or what not handy?

EDIT 2:

"gamer"Windmills also can power the D-gun as well

This is an 'ultimate' weapon: no physical matter provides
protection from it. It works by suppressing the quantum field strength of the
'gluons' that hold together atomic nuclei. The matter violently tears itself
apart, leaving hydrogen, deuterium and a burst of free neutrons. This is the
major advantage of Disintegrators: anything is destroyed and Heavy Armor
provides virtually no protection.

There is nothing about that weapon that says the effect has to be high energy in and of itself as the destructive effects come from the matter tearing itself apart. It's like phasers in this regard, it's a chain reaction weapon as opposed to one that directly deposits energy. Since windmills power it clearly the effect must not require more than a few a megwatts! Look my stance is just as supported as yours now!

Here's the quote from the Galactic War Reports mentioning gigatons.

Thrown into a frenzy of rage at the scream of thousands of billions of
patternings perishing in a single blow, Coldfire's troops pressed
their final charge, overwhelming the last of Gnug's battered and
surprised troops, driving them into the ground with gigatons worth of
explosive power.

The metal maker couldn't be removing mass from the environment we already have those, they are called metal extractors they dig up dirt and turn it into something useable. The metal maker uses no mass at all and as long as you keep pumping energy into it, it will create mass from the energy, there is no mentioning of leprechauns who eat energy and poop mass.

Windmills power plasma guns which are said to fire highly focused plasma as hot as the core of the sun and somehow capable of focusing the energy into a microscopic space. Also windmills even power galactic gates which can teleport the commander across the galaxy. Either their stuff has beyond 100% efficiency or those aren't normal windmills.

[JointStrikeFighter]

No dude the metal miners are clearly mining fucking ORE DEPOSITS which you can fucking see.

[Xess]

Here's the quote from the Galactic War Reports mentioning gigatons.

Thrown into a frenzy of rage at the scream of thousands of billions of
patternings perishing in a single blow, Coldfire's troops pressed
their final charge, overwhelming the last of Gnug's battered and
surprised troops, driving them into the ground with gigatons worth of
explosive power.

Gigatons worth of explosive power could also refer to billions (giga prefix) of tons of conventional explosives being used. Since it says "gigatons of explosive power" instead of "gigatons of energy" I'd even consider that the likely interpretation. To expand, using the term that way, here on Earth we used megatons of explosive power during WW1, but that doesn't mean that the real life Big Bertha had a yield with megatons of energy like a thermonuclear weapon.

The metal maker couldn't be removing mass from the environment we already have those, they are called metal extractors they dig up dirt and turn it into something useable. The metal maker uses no mass at all and as long as you keep pumping energy into it, it will create mass from the energy, there is no mentioning of leprechauns who eat energy and poop mass.

I did a bit of research and the metal extractors need to be placed on shiny silver sites to work in the game, in other words ore veins in real life. If metal extractors could turn dirt into metal they could be placed anywhere, in fact the only way they can be placed anywhere is on planets made entirely out of metal, imagine that. From what I've seen of metal makers nothing says they don't use mass, just that they don't use "metal", that is your strategic resource. They use energy in an undefined process to make metal. A nano-tech process that uses energy to make metal out of dirt and other matter fulfills all the criteria for what we know of the Metal Maker, doesn't clash with Metal Extractors and fits with being powered by energy sources we can actually build today (which just so happens to fit reasonably well with the weapon yields we see in the opening cut scene). A direct energy to mass converter fits with Metal Extractors and Metal Makers but not with the energy sources or with the cut scene weapon effects. Logically a process that fits 4/4 is a better choice than once that fits 2/4.

Windmills power plasma guns which are said to fire highly focused plasma as hot as the core of the sun and somehow capable of focusing the energy into a microscopic space. Also windmills even power galactic gates which can teleport the commander across the galaxy.

Nah, that just means you have highly focused 10s of million degree Kelvin plasma weapons with a total output of less than a few hundred megawatts assuming they're really big windmills. It also means that the galactic gates can also be operated with a surprisingly low wattage, like the Stargate from Stargate SG-1, which can send people across the galaxy via wormhole but runs off of the US electrical grid.

Either their stuff has beyond 100% efficiency or those aren't normal windmills.

Or option 3: TA isn't as powerful as you want it to be. If TA tech can get their generators operating at near 100% efficiency they could get a lot of energy out of wind, tidal, solar and geothermal plants the size of the ones they build, especially compared to modern ones, it will not however be anywhere close gigatons worth of energy.

[gamer]

No dude the metal miners are clearly mining fucking ORE DEPOSITS which you can fucking see.

I'm not talking about metal extractors, I'm talking about the metal makers you know the energy to mass conversion things you build, seriously.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Whatever. You clearly can't even fucking read.

[gamer]

Here's the quote from the Galactic War Reports mentioning gigatons.

Thrown into a frenzy of rage at the scream of thousands of billions of
patternings perishing in a single blow, Coldfire's troops pressed
their final charge, overwhelming the last of Gnug's battered and
surprised troops, driving them into the ground with gigatons worth of
explosive power.

Gigatons worth of explosive power could also refer to billions (giga prefix) of tons of conventional explosives being used. Since it says "gigatons of explosive power" instead of "gigatons of energy" I'd even consider that the likely interpretation. To expand, using the term that way, here on Earth we used megatons of explosive power during WW1, but that doesn't mean that the real life Big Bertha had a yield with megatons of energy like a thermonuclear weapon.

Except that quote is not talking about the entire war just a "small" battle involving 200 basic units. It's basically an explaination of what happened during an ingame battle, and gigatons of energy and gigatons of explosive power are the same thing. Then there's the other quotes suggesting in a week or so of fighting they can reduce an entire planet down to bedrock with the amount of energy exchanged. Just simple unit creation is a feat beyond a normal windmill they have to first mine out the materials needed, teleport the materials to a factory, then convert these materials into weapons and armor and even turn metal into living thinking humans to pilot the new weapons all in seconds, normal windmills can't provide that kind of power even assuming 100% efficiency the power requirements are going to astronomical.

Also, yes they have to convert matter I highly doubt they are mining out the things their armor is made out of.


Even without that level of firepower they still have insane build speeds making them like machine versions of Tyranids except with super intelligent (game engine has pathfinding problems so not really seen in gameplay but if IIRC its stated that every new unit built has the combined experience of every unit that has ever been built), permanently cloaked gaunts protected with heavy amounts of ECM that have enough firepower to take on most 40k tanks and it only gets worse, and with more mind controlling, matter eating, builder units that can construct heavy fortifications in seconds.

[Stark]

If they are teleporting stuff they're converting mass to energy all the time. Why does it require huge amounts of energy (beyond your dumbass 'calcs')? Why do they have to be using more energy than everything else they do ever just to 'make' metal when there are other explanations beyond 'ignore all the small numbers because you're a wanker'?

PS explain the targeting complex being a late-game object in terms of 'cloaking'.

[Lord Revan]

Gamer your main problem is that you're doing things the wrong way, instead of trying to find the evidence that fits your theory and ignoring/dismissing everything else, you should looking for a theory that fits most of the evidence (and also try to find out what overrules what when it comes to conflicts).


I've asked you this once already, but it seems I must do it again, is there a set canon hierarchy for TA you're following, or are you making it up as you go along.

also Stark I'm starting to think that calling this guy a wanker is an insult to men who masturbate alot.

[evilsoup]

I did a bit of research and the metal extractors need to be placed on shiny silver sites to work in the game, in other words ore veins in real life. If metal extractors could turn dirt into metal they could be placed anywhere, in fact the only way they can be placed anywhere is on planets made entirely out of metal, imagine that.

The metal extractors can be placed anywhere, but if you don't put them on the metal deposits they are much less efficient (they produce less than 1/10th of the metal). Which either means that the factories aren't using elemental transmutation, and the nanolathe works like a 3D printer; or that metals are somehow more able to be transformed with their nanomagic, which would imply they are using a 'trick' to do it rather than brute force.

I prefer the second option, because it fits in with the game's theme of them having exhausted most of the resources - they are forced to husband what they have very carefully, using lower-powered stuff than they once had access to.

[Iracundus]

Ahem, having watched this debate go on for some time, I thought I might chime in.

Archives of the weekly news reports (but alas not the daily ones) is listed on:
http://web.archive.org/web/199911030500 ... chive.html

I did play on the old Cavedog Boneyards service during these Galactic Wars and in the latter stages actually was a Newsbot (i.e. I wrote some of those daily news reports). The writers were player volunteers, but given an official "Newsbot" account by Cavedog in order to actually post the news, so I suppose that is as official as it gets as Cavedog owned the IP.

In terms of canon, there really isn't much as there isn't much story aside from the manual, and then the Galactic War news reports.

One critical thing however to note is that the chronology of the Galactic Wars actually takes place after the main game and expansion set, as there are units that did not appear until the expansion there. It means that somehow both sides have been able to rebuild their populations somewhat despite the apparent defeat of the Core (and second subsequent defeat in the Galactic War initial stages as Core bounced back to defeat the Arm).

There are almost no hard numbers to go with and the use of gigatons certainly sounds hyperbolic given the behavior of the plasma shells in Week 14 news report:

The walls of Glynholm castle blistered and cracked under the force of the Core siege machines. Smoke poured out the windows of the northeast wing, flames licking at the ancient stone, stood for generations, like the orange tongue of serpents of old.

Plasma shells rained down from afar, thudding against the hardened walls, shaving them away in showers of gray dust. A mighty Krogoth Kbot burst through the west wall with a kick of unimaginable force to those who had originally constructed this fortress.

What is referred by "weak cloaking" is actually mentioned in the game manual:

Rocket: This is a generic name for a wide variety of weapon systems. Generally they have a preprogrammed flight path to prevent an unsophisticated guidance package from being completely fooled by the ordinary "weak cloaking" and electronic spoofing that all units possess. They carry a larger payload than a smarter missile and this payload is almost invariably a small amount of antimatter.

In other words, all TA game units had some low level of ECM. The cloaking as referred to for all practical purposes by game players was that energy consuming option used by Commander units that would make it invisible even to visual optics.

As for the whole "metal" issue, from the game manual:

Nano-bots are made of metal. While non-metallic elements used to build the nano-bots are used in quantity, the rare elements which limit production are a variety of heavy metals, so the raw material need to build nano-bots has come to be known generically as "metal".

Ore: This is an economic term. If a mineral deposit worth developing it is considered ore. An ore body is a good place for a metal extractor, and looks like a rough section of shiny rocks. The more shiny rocks visible, the better the ore body.

Metal extractors could be placed elsewhere other than an ore deposit and would still produce some minimal income, but that can be explained as extraction of trace amounts. The explanation of use of non-metallic elements used to build the nano-bots explains as well how some units are primarily "energy" in game costs, such as the aircraft. They were using lots of non-metallic composites or other materials compared to the hulking tanks that use lots of the heavy metals. It also means that a "metal maker", which in game terms converted energy units to metal units, may not necessarily be taking pure energy and making matter from it, but rather be engaged in elemental transmutation of non-strategic elements into strategic "metal". Certainly that is my own explanation for how the resources of a galaxy can be depleted because if you can do pure energy to matter, then as long as there is a sun, then you could be making more "metal".

As for energy, we have no idea what units are being used. The use of blades in wind generators and their variable output depending on wind speed certainly strongly imply wind turbines. How they are rationalized as producing enough to power the stuff in TA is not explored. However neither is how Necrons in 40K manage to power their Gauss weapons explored. In the old Necron Codex, humans in 40K had claimed to have "disproven" Gauss weaponry as impossible due to the impossibly high levels of energy required and/or the need for impossibly precise low loss transfer of energy within the weapon mechanisms. Yet somehow the Necrons did it, but we as readers don't know how. The same goes for TA. In both cases the technology used might as well be magic hand waving.

[Connor MacLeod]

1.) The 'heavy armour' needs some sort of generators to maintain it, which suggests its more in common with magic sci fi shields than actual armour (it even mentions artificially compressing/strengthening the matter) so you have some weird ass compromise between sci fi 'neutronium' type armour (or a General products hull if I remember them correctly) and a structural integrity field. Of course it also claims that the armour is 'denser' yet 'lighter' than equivalent armour, so I'd love to know how they work that out. Mass lightening as well?

2.) Xess covered the basic points of 'gigatons' - basically its not much use uless you can quantify the parameters (single units or multiple units and if so how many, over what duration, etc.) Same applies to 'week or so of fighting' - parameters need to be applied.

I mean if we were going to use that logic, I could take this quote:

During the 91st's recent acitvity on Cadia, the regiment consumed 400,000 lasgun power packs, 120,000 ration packs, over 3 million gallons of fuel, 13,500 pints of Type O negative and fired enough ordnance to level a continent (estimated.)

And claim that your average IG artillery force (not even an entire regiment, maybe a company or so) can level a continent! OMG GIGATONS OR TERATONS IRRESPECTIVE OF WHAT THE PARAMETERS SAY!

[Xess]

The metal extractors can be placed anywhere, but if you don't put them on the metal deposits they are much less efficient (they produce less than 1/10th of the metal). Which either means that the factories aren't using elemental transmutation, and the nanolathe works like a 3D printer; or that metals are somehow more able to be transformed with their nanomagic, which would imply they are using a 'trick' to do it rather than brute force.

I prefer the second option, because it fits in with the game's theme of them having exhausted most of the resources - they are forced to husband what they have very carefully, using lower-powered stuff than they once had access to.

Well alright then, thanks for letting me know. The nanomagic option works well for me, my point has been that pretty much anything makes more sense than just running E=mc2 in reverse.

Except that quote is not talking about the entire war just a "small" battle involving 200 basic units. It's basically an explaination of what happened during an ingame battle, and gigatons of energy and gigatons of explosive power are the same thing. Then there's the other quotes suggesting in a week or so of fighting they can reduce an entire planet down to bedrock with the amount of energy exchanged. Just simple unit creation is a feat beyond a normal windmill they have to first mine out the materials needed, teleport the materials to a factory, then convert these materials into weapons and armor and even turn metal into living thinking humans to pilot the new weapons all in seconds, normal windmills can't provide that kind of power even assuming 100% efficiency the power requirements are going to astronomical.

Gigatons could also simply be hyperbole, along with reducing a planet down to bedrock. There's also the option that 200 units can actually throw out billions of tons of ordnance, which means that in a week it's possible you could turn a whole planet into a moon scape, though I don't consider that likely.

Connor covered the armor aspect better than I could, although I would like to add that it could also be covered under TAs nanomagic construction and not energy to matter conversion.

[Stark]

I think it's clear that the 'metal' is indeed some kind of specific metal or finished nanobots, in order to take both 'elemental transmutation' and 'heaps of stuff lying around everywhere' at the same time. It seems a bit strange that it'd be in puddles, but I guess the devs found 'ore' in the dictionary and misunderstood it.

What I'm curious about is if the fluff rubbish ever covered limitations of things like the commander. I mean it's probable most of the output of his very special backpack is going to constantly replenish his supply of nano machines, but I'm not clear how long he could operate at a typical TA game level without outstripping his ability to wank nano machines. It's not impossible the backpack builds nanos fast enough to eat unlimited trees, I guess.

[gamer]

The metal extractors can be placed anywhere, but if you don't put them on the metal deposits they are much less efficient (they produce less than 1/10th of the metal). Which either means that the factories aren't using elemental transmutation, and the nanolathe works like a 3D printer; or that metals are somehow more able to be transformed with their nanomagic, which would imply they are using a 'trick' to do it rather than brute force.

I prefer the second option, because it fits in with the game's theme of them having exhausted most of the resources - they are forced to husband what they have very carefully, using lower-powered stuff than they once had access to.

Well alright then, thanks for letting me know. The nanomagic option works well for me, my point has been that pretty much anything makes more sense than just running E=mc2 in reverse.

Except that quote is not talking about the entire war just a "small" battle involving 200 basic units. It's basically an explaination of what happened during an ingame battle, and gigatons of energy and gigatons of explosive power are the same thing. Then there's the other quotes suggesting in a week or so of fighting they can reduce an entire planet down to bedrock with the amount of energy exchanged. Just simple unit creation is a feat beyond a normal windmill they have to first mine out the materials needed, teleport the materials to a factory, then convert these materials into weapons and armor and even turn metal into living thinking humans to pilot the new weapons all in seconds, normal windmills can't provide that kind of power even assuming 100% efficiency the power requirements are going to astronomical.

Gigatons could also simply be hyperbole, along with reducing a planet down to bedrock. There's also the option that 200 units can actually throw out billions of tons of ordnance, which means that in a week it's possible you could turn a whole planet into a moon scape, though I don't consider that likely.

Connor covered the armor aspect better than I could, although I would like to add that it could also be covered under TAs nanomagic construction and not energy to matter conversion.

Nanomagic still requires enormous amounts of power just saying nanomachines won't cut it. Besides look at all their other tech and the fact "windmills" can out produce antimatter power supplies (Commander's backpack) it's pretty silly to assume they are using normal everyday windmills.

And again just going on visuals the ARM can produce units just as fast if not far faster than the Tyranids and their equivalent of a gaunt is a 30 foot tall machine that fires bullets made out of compressed light that somehow focuses all of its energy into a microscopic space on enemy armor and this machine is allegedly a combat genius and cloaked, Peewees are going to wreck main battle tanks.

[gamer]

Then there's the ARM's ability to mind control units and steal tech combine that with mass manufactoring and you got a big, big problem on your hands.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Then there's the ARM's ability to mind control units and steal tech combine that with mass manufactoring and you got a big, big problem on your hands.

Big problem? Nope. One word:

Exterminatus

[evilsoup]

The CORE and the ARM have been fighting their total war for millennia, by now they likely know the intricacies of their enemy's systems. There method of capturing might not work on the 40K races, or might be less effective, or it might require for them to experiment and learn.