Honorverse Marines vs. Stormtroopers

[Renewed_Valour1]

How would an equal force of Manticore Marines and Stormtroopers stack up to one another in infantry combat? Then how do they do when both sides have air support in equal numbers?

[Soulman]

Hovorverse marines (especially if in power armour ) would beat stormtroopers with all things even. With air support it gets worse, a single pinnace would easily take out the force seen at Hoth and could kill lots pf TIEs before going down. Furthermore TIEs would be very vunerable to impellor missiles fired by ground troops.

[Stormbringer]

How would an equal force of Manticore Marines and Stormtroopers stack up to one another in infantry combat? Then how do they do when both sides have air support in equal numbers?

Stomped into the ground. Pulsers more than likely pack enough punch to kill a stormy. Tribarrels and plasma carbines and rifles for sure. I'd prefer to send in troopers in unpowered armor, power armor isn't going to be an advantage against stormies and will make them stand out badly.

Throw in air support and it's a major honorverse victory. An assualt shuttle or pinnance would tear through TIEs. Impeller wedge missles are more than manuverable enough to catch a TIE bomber in atmosphere. Snowflake clusters (AP) or Dragon's Teeth (AA) would smash stormy trooper concentration. And a strafing run would hop up virtually anything short of heavy armor. Missles or Dragon's Teeth would be enough to take out most IMp armor.

[The Dark]

The truly scary thing would be if the RMMC used their gravitic missiles in a ground-ground role as direct fire weapons. Let's see, 500 (or so) g's pulling at a stormtrooper? May not be the most cost-efficient weapon, but I think even a stormie could be a little unnerved by that. Given that a combat shuttle can take down a (small) capital ship (as seen in Echoes of Honor), and I believe that a Manticoran pinnace is superior to a Peep shuttle, a Manticoran air support squadron could very well be able to take on a small Imp cap ship (Neb-B or Lancer, MAYBE a VSD on a good day), let alone stormies.

[consequences]

A dispatch boat is not a capital ship, its like an LAC without the weapons, and would have little to no armor.
If you throw in air-space support, then the Imperials can deliver multigigaton detonations from their bombers, with the same acceleration rate as a Manty cap ship missile, going from the calcs of the performance of Luke's proton torpedo in ANH.
On the ground, the Stormies would die horribly against power armor, and lose against Manty Marines in skinsuits, but I'm not sure the Manties have anything that can affect an AT-AT

[Silver Jedi]

On the ground, the Stormies would die horribly against power armor, and lose against Manty Marines in skinsuits, but I'm not sure the Manties have anything that can affect an AT-AT

I think an impellor Missile would do the job pretty well. The phrase "like a hot knife through butter" comes to mind.

[consequences]

The phrases "ray shielding" and "inertial compensators that don't have problems within spitting distance of Neutron Stars" and " stonger gravity fields overload impeller drives" and "Neutronium imbedded armor" all spring to mind, along with the fact that the Millenium Falcon is supposed to have megaton range weapons, and the AT-ATs it destroyed in Dark Empire 2 weren't completely blown apart.

[Soulman]

The phrases "ray shielding" and "inertial compensators that don't have problems within spitting distance of Neutron Stars" and " stonger gravity fields overload impeller drives" and "Neutronium imbedded armor" all spring to mind, along with the fact that the Millenium Falcon is supposed to have megaton range weapons, and the AT-ATs it destroyed in Dark Empire 2 weren't completely blown apart.

Armour is irrelevent, neutronium imbedded or not. Anyway why would an AT-AT have internal compensators anyway? Oh, and what exactly would ray-shielding do against gravity, gravity which goes from 0-300,000g in centimetres?

Stormtroopers could do jack-shit against power-armoured infantry running around at 60kph, they would merely be cannon-fodder, against troops in unpowered armour it would be different, the stormies would do a lot better although they would still lose assuming all things are equal.

[greenmm]

The phrases "ray shielding" and "inertial compensators that don't have problems within spitting distance of Neutron Stars" and " stonger gravity fields overload impeller drives" and "Neutronium imbedded armor" all spring to mind, along with the fact that the Millenium Falcon is supposed to have megaton range weapons, and the AT-ATs it destroyed in Dark Empire 2 weren't completely blown apart.

Ray shielding wouldn't do squat against impeller missiles, needle rifles, or any other physical projectile-based weaponry -- if it did, then Luke's proton torpedoes wouldn't have penetrated the exhaust shaft (which was ray shielded).

Inertial compensators aren't what protect starships against neutron stars -- at least not the stellar flux and hard radiation being put out by said star. They might help protect against the gravity, but that would be it. And they mainly protect the crew, not the ship.

And while stronger gravity fields do nasty things to impellor fields, there's no way the gravity field of an AT-AT will bother said missile. Nor do the missiles have the 500-600g limitation of capital ships: their lower power setting is about 45,000g's, with top rating being 90,000g's. But you're thinking of counter-missiles and a few anti-vehicle type missiles (i.e. ground-launched, like the Viper SAM used in The Short Victorious War) if you think they depend on impeller bands to destroy the target. The majority of their tactical missiles are of 2 types:
-- kinetic kill weapons, where at a conservative estimate they're hitting the target at .2c. The nice thing is, at 0.2c, you only need a 2.8 kg object to generate 1.2 MT worth of kinetic energy... given that it's more likely the missiles would be a few hundred kilograms, we're talking about hundreds of megatons per impact.
-- "conventional" explosive warheads flying at significantly slower speeds. This isn't your father's Amotol or HE, though, as apparantly we're talking about an explosive material so powerful that the warhead size is more comparable to a nuke in terms of payload size and yield. As a rough comparison, imagine being able to fit enough explosive to generate a 100 kT explosion into an old AGM-69 SRAM. May not seem like that much, but the SRAM was an air-launched strategic nuke that had a 200 kT nuclear warhead...

Finally, as regarding the neutronium in the hull... the Marines aren't going after a Star Destroyer, they're going after Stormtroopers and AT-AT's, neither of which have neutronium IIRC in their armor. Besides, if the neutronium in an ISD's hull was significant enough to greatly increase the local gravity field, then an ISD's inertial compensators and artificial gravity generators would have to constantly fight to counteract the neutronium's gravitational pull.. and would mean that any time the internal gravity failed that your personnel would be pulled towards the outer hull, thus making it more difficult to make repairs.

[Moonstone Spider]

When you have to call for the armor, gravitics, and shielding of your Captital Ships to handle your opponents Marines equipped with a shuttlecraft you know you're universe is in trouble.

[The Dark]

A dispatch boat is not a capital ship, its like an LAC without the weapons, and would have little to no armor.
If you throw in air-space support, then the Imperials can deliver multigigaton detonations from their bombers, with the same acceleration rate as a Manty cap ship missile, going from the calcs of the performance of Luke's proton torpedo in ANH.
On the ground, the Stormies would die horribly against power armor, and lose against Manty Marines in skinsuits, but I'm not sure the Manties have anything that can affect an AT-AT

A Manty LAC was considered incredibly powerful because it mounted: an in-system drive, one battlecruiser power graser, and four missile tubes, with a total crew of under a dozen. The Dispatch Boat carried far more crew than that, and while it didn't have weapons, it did have the in-system drive and a very high powered sail mechanism (it was said to be faster than other ships, I believe Theta band?). It would have to be quite a bit larger than a LAC to carry the extra nodes for the sails. I believe the crew was about half that of a destroyer, and three or four times that of a LAC.

Additionally, proton torpedoes are directed-energy weapons (they use an explosive warhead rather than kinetic kill), and pull roughly 18,000g's less than a hand-fired SAM. The TIE Bombers would also have to deal with pinnaces and combat shuttles. Combat shuttles are known to tear through heavy terrestrial armor (as seen in Echoes of Honor), let alone a moderately armored barely atmosphere-capable spacecraft known for being clumsy. With dragon's teeth cluster bombs (just to ensure armor penetration), either a pinnace or a shuttle could devastate infantry ranks better than the relatively focused attacks of the proton torpedo.

The VIPER SAM would provide the Marines protection against both TIEs and AT-ATs. With 90,000g's of acceleration, and a weight which seems roughly equivalent to a modern SAM (given the description in the book), a generous weight for the missile would be 2500 grams, half that of a modern SAM. That's fairly close to the 2.8 kg mentioned earlier, and is probably rather light to include a power source capable of generating impeller bands of 90,000g acceleration. Even if an AT-AT survived the attack, the impact would most likely knock it over if it hit the side.

[consequences]

We already know from NJO novels that gravity effects do interact with Star Wars ray shielding, so it really does matter. If the density of the matter hit doesn't matter, then the Impeller wave has to be a less than atomic width, however, we have never seen the sort of interaction that The Fourth Empire's energy weapons have when Impeller missiles have been fired in an atmosphere.
I have seen the turn speed of a proton torpedo calculated up to 72000-90000 Gs
Honorverse material technology is nowhere near the level of Star Wars, a 78 Megaton Nuclear Warhead is considered a major threat to a Battlecruiser, and Star Wars fighters have been observed to deliver megaton yields to targets.
Inertial compensators have to protect everything inside the ship, not just the crew, otherwise cups of coffee would cause more casualties than enemy fire.
.2 C, you know, at 90000G, it would take approximately 1 minute, 6 seconds to reach .2C, and I'm not sure where you got that number in the first place. This isn't The Fifth Imperium people, the rules of acceleration do apply.
Imagine being able to fit a Gigaton yield warhead into that same SAM, and you have an approximation of the capabilty of fighter carried anti-capital ship weapons in Star Wars.

[Batman]

The dispatch boat in Echoes of Honor was stated to mass 40,000 tons and carry a crew of thirty.
So, an assault shuttle of several hundred tons (anybody got a hard number?) can, using 16 high-power conventional explosive warheads,
destroy an unarmed, unarmored vessel of 40,000 tons.

So can a 200-plus ton B-52 using a dozen Harpoons. I trust you don't believe the US armed forces can stand up to the Empire.

Back to the GROPOS-assumptions of Honorverse Marines victory in this thread hinge on the ability of pulsers and heavy pulsers to defeat stormy armor, and the inability of blasters to do the same to Marine armor.

Is there any evidence for that? While pulsers are repeatedly CLAIMED to be vastly more powerful than modern firearms, I can't recall them ever doing anything an M-16 or GECAL-50 couldn't do too.

About the pinnaces eating through TIEs like they aren't there:
-TIEs can out-accelerate a pinnace six ways from sunday. Sure, it propably can't use its full potential in an atmosphere, but neither can the pinnace.
-Honorverse missiles are meant for targets accelerating at less than 1,000g's in a relatively straight line (propably less for the shoulder-fired variant). Can they even HIT a TIE?
-An impeller missile , assuming it hits, will propably kill a TIE. A TIE laser blast, assuming it hits, will damn near vaporize the pinnace.
Given that the TIE is the tiniest bit more manouvrable than the pinnace, while I can see how the kill ratio would be one-sided, I don't think its gonna be in the Honorverse's favor.

And can anybody tell me why I keep wanting to spell pinnace with one n and a double c?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Mike said that projectile weapons are useless against AT-ATs unless you're talking about projectiles the mass of modern main battle tanks.

They can shrug of weapons with yields comperable to modern strategic nukes. We're talking from several hundred kilotons to a full megaton.

[Stormbringer]

Mike said that projectile weapons are useless against AT-ATs unless you're talking about projectiles the mass of modern main battle tanks.

They can shrug of weapons with yields comperable to modern strategic nukes. We're talking from several hundred kilotons to a full megaton.

Smash an Impeller wedge missle through them. That'll take them out, now need for the mush and fuss of brute force. Just a grav shear tearing through the AT-AT.

[consequences]

once again, have to point out that armor density would matter to a grav wedge, otherwise Impeller wedges would be unusable in an atmosphere due to secondary effects

[The Dark]

once again, have to point out that armor density would matter to a grav wedge, otherwise Impeller wedges would be unusable in an atmosphere due to secondary effects

I'm not sure what I mean by your comment, could you clarify please?

The only use of an impeller missiles I can find in the literature occurs on pgs. 280-281 of the paperback version of The Short Victorious War, where a man-portable SAM tears through a "heavily armored" aircar used for transporting VIPs, struck by the impeller wedge. I personally think armor would have less effect than normal against an impeller wedge, since the increased mass would be more affected by the extra pull. Without knowing the exact mechanism, though, I will admit that it is hard to say. If you could provide clarification of what you meant by your comment, I would appreciate it.

[consequences]

What I mean, is that when Weber writes about a gravity beam that can slice through any density of armor at the atomic level, he specifically mentions the low order nuclear detonations that accompany such an attack. The Aircar was only heavily armored by the standards of the Honorverse, meaning that it could probably have less than a thousandth of the effective armor of an equivalent Imperial craft.

[Stormbringer]

What I mean, is that when Weber writes about a gravity beam that can slice through any density of armor at the atomic level, he specifically mentions the low order nuclear detonations that accompany such an attack. The Aircar was only heavily armored by the standards of the Honorverse, meaning that it could probably have less than a thousandth of the effective armor of an equivalent Imperial craft.

But there's no reason to think that Imperial armor can survive a 50,000G grav shear running throught it.

[The Dark]

What I mean, is that when Weber writes about a gravity beam that can slice through any density of armor at the atomic level, he specifically mentions the low order nuclear detonations that accompany such an attack. The Aircar was only heavily armored by the standards of the Honorverse, meaning that it could probably have less than a thousandth of the effective armor of an equivalent Imperial craft.

But there's no reason to think that Imperial armor can survive a 50,000G grav shear running throught it.

50,000 is probably a bit high, the Viper only pulled 2,000, but that's still 19,600 meters/second squared of acceleration. Given that AT-ATs were disabled by falling (at 1 Hoth gravity, which cannot be significantly higher than 1g for physiological reasons), it would not be unreasonable to think that a missile striking at 2,000g would cause severe damage to an AT-AT if not outright destroying it.

[Pu-239]

Mike said that projectile weapons are useless against AT-ATs unless you're talking about projectiles the mass of modern main battle tanks.

They can shrug of weapons with yields comperable to modern strategic nukes. We're talking from several hundred kilotons to a full megaton.

I think a 20 MT KE weapon would drive the AT-AT into the ground and or knock it over. I mean there is a weight limit to the AT-AT; too heavy and it would sink into the ground. Armor is irrelevent. Another demonstration of the stupidity of large mechs.

[Pu-239]

oops thinking of andromeda. 1 MT would be sufficient anyways.

[Stormbringer]

What I mean, is that when Weber writes about a gravity beam that can slice through any density of armor at the atomic level, he specifically mentions the low order nuclear detonations that accompany such an attack. The Aircar was only heavily armored by the standards of the Honorverse, meaning that it could probably have less than a thousandth of the effective armor of an equivalent Imperial craft.

But there's no reason to think that Imperial armor can survive a 50,000G grav shear running throught it.

50,000 is probably a bit high, the Viper only pulled 2,000, but that's still 19,600 meters/second squared of acceleration. Given that AT-ATs were disabled by falling (at 1 Hoth gravity, which cannot be significantly higher than 1g for physiological reasons), it would not be unreasonable to think that a missile striking at 2,000g would cause severe damage to an AT-AT if not outright destroying it.

My bad, I was thinking of a capship's wedge. Still a hell of a lot of power at 2000G

[The Dark]

Mike said that projectile weapons are useless against AT-ATs unless you're talking about projectiles the mass of modern main battle tanks.

They can shrug of weapons with yields comperable to modern strategic nukes. We're talking from several hundred kilotons to a full megaton.

Ahem...while I'm not presuming to know more than Mike, I believe it would be more proper to discuss the projectile's kinetic energy, not its mass. A 1 kilogram rock traveling at .9c will do more damage than a MBT traveling 1 m/s.

If we give a Viper missile .25 second to accelerate (a shot at 613 meters), it would have a kinetic energy of 115,296,020,000 joules(assuming the 2.5 kilogram missile I used earlier, which would seem light since it required a 2 man crew in the book). Given that one ton of TNT gives off 10^9, this missile would be equivalent to 115 tons of TNT.

However, if it is a 5 kilogram missile (the size of a modern-day one person SAM) that has a full second to accelerate (a shot of 9.8 kilometers), it becomes a 368.947 megaton hit. While the AT-AT would certainly survive the close range shot, whether it could survive a 300 megaton+ strike I personally doubt.[/quote]

[Stormbringer]

Mike said that projectile weapons are useless against AT-ATs unless you're talking about projectiles the mass of modern main battle tanks.

They can shrug of weapons with yields comperable to modern strategic nukes. We're talking from several hundred kilotons to a full megaton.

Ahem...while I'm not presuming to know more than Mike, I believe it would be more proper to discuss the projectile's kinetic energy, not its mass. A 1 kilogram rock traveling at .9c will do more damage than a MBT traveling 1 m/s.

If we give a Viper missile .25 second to accelerate (a shot at 613 meters), it would have a kinetic energy of 115,296,020,000 joules(assuming the 2.5 kilogram missile I used earlier, which would seem light since it required a 2 man crew in the book). Given that one ton of TNT gives off 10^9, this missile would be equivalent to 115 tons of TNT.

However, if it is a 5 kilogram missile (the size of a modern-day one person SAM) that has a full second to accelerate (a shot of 9.8 kilometers), it becomes a 368.947 megaton hit. While the AT-AT would certainly survive the close range shot, whether it could survive a 300 megaton+ strike I personally doubt.

The big thing with impeller missles is, they produce two massive grav fields. Regardless of the yeild of a kinetic impact, the wedge will slice up an AT-AT