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

[Lost Soal]

-waves hands- the iom emperor survives no matter what. original post, I have the technobabble to keep him alive. fear the technobabble.

starving him and killing the astro is just bonus.

that said, no one cares if a few dozen star destroyers vanish. its cost of doing business, and can be replaced in a week or two. the empire has resources just like iom, and has no problem with attrition. the warp storm of the week does not concern us, admiral. I want that throne.

that said, Im not a weapons class expert - the numbers Ive heard tossed around are in the hundreds of megatons for iom ships, and teratons/petatons for imp ships - most posters in this thread have conceded imps have the space, and your dodging whether you even get that precog which you seem so reliant on

and matt, no one is going to notice if a few thousand star destroyers missing if they go on a pleasure cruise. say it with me: death star built in secret. there, see? any resources I need can be used in secret. Very Happy

You have the technology to keep him alive when hes in your possession, at which point you can starve him all you want.
Until you capture him he is still subject to the standard requirements of the Golden Throne. Cut off his supply before you capture him and you have to hope he can survive long enough for you to break through.

These "precog" warning are quite common when a major threat is at hand, 13th Black Crusade, The escape of Lord Botchulaz. Theres a strong possibility of it occuring.

Weapons figures. The only ones specifically quantified are the 610GT per torpedoe. Nothing else has been given an official figure as far as I know.
Shields/Armour. I've seen no mention of the amount of energy a void shield can absorb, and without weapons figures its difficult to calculate. Only armour values I've found is that of a marine Predator tank which I posted earlier, 55mm equivalent to 200mm base steel plate. How closely related that is to ship armour is unknown.
Resources. The IoM is capable of fielding fleets of thousands, and as I mentioned, Battlefleet Solar is based at Earth, so they probably have a fair number of ships to begin with. I don't believe the rate of construction for ships has even been hinted at (except hexathedrals) so this is another unknown quantity.

Quote:

Meltas are flamethrowers, of a sort, however they seem to be closer to energy weapons than flamers. They can BTW be set to wide-beam (Eye of Terror).


IIRC, the quote suggested a "detonation" of sorts.. suggesting that there is some delay (which in turn suggests a projectile)

Meltas are microwave energy weapons, the complete description is:

The melta-gun is also known as a melta, cooker or vape gun. It works by sub-malecular thermal agitation in a manner comparable to microwave irradiation. The target gets very hot and eventually cooks, melts or just evaporates. A meltagun can melt plasteel or plascrete, and its effects upon living tissue are impressive to say the least. The weapon has only a short range, so it is used mostly for close assault and support.
The melta-gun makes no noise when fired, but the super-heating of the air produces a distinctive hiss which becomes a roaring blast as living targets are hit and their bodies' moisture vaporises explosively.

I once saw some old rules regarding Titan grade meltas, whether this weapon is till considered to exist I don't know. Anyone got the Imperial Armour books?

quote tags fixed, but damn, man, turn on BBCode in your posts! I've got better things to do than fix every one of your posts. ~fg

[White Haven]

Dude...please, PLEASE check your quote tags before posting.

[PainRack]

A quick 'n' dirty Inquisitorial cleansing:

Two hours before sunrise the next day, five hundred Imperial Guard from the Fifty-First Thracian moved in towards Ferell Sidor - Site A - from covert forward assembly points in the surrounding hills where they had been dropped by troop ships the day before. They advanced, silently, in three prongs, the first securing the single trackway that gave land-vehicle access to the table mountain. When all three were in position, we woke Ferell Sidor up.
The frigates Zhikov and Fury of Spatian bombarded the mountain for six minutes, raising a ball of fire that lit the landscape as if the sun had come up early. In its afterglow, thirty Marauder bombers overflew Site A at low level and delivered thirty thousand kilos of high explosives.
Another false dawn.
Despite this punishing overture, when the ground troops went in eight minutes after the last bomb, resistance was furious. Madorthene had feared that the best part of Quixos's strength lay underground, wormed inside the mountain, resistant to the worst aerial assaults.
In the blazing ruins of the excavation township, the Thracian troops found themselves engaging fanatical and well-armed cultists. Most wore the insignia and colours of the Mystic Path. Many were mutants. Initial reports estimated over eight hundred enemy warriors. Madorthene committed the taskforce reserve: another seven hundred Thracian assault soldiers.

There's a similar assault in the first book of the series, Xenos, but it's not the greatest example for a lot of reasons. I can dig it up if you want, though.

I hate to say this without much proof, but everytime, it just seems that capability wise, the Empire is superior to the Imperium on the ground. The battle of Hoth had no noticeable delay. The Imps appeared in space, dropped their troops on the ground and a task force appeared and tranversed the tens of kilometers through the shield. No delay of a day to assemble the forces, no time dissipated rounding out troops and so forth. Once the shields was down, within minutes, the Empire dropped, assembled and assaulted the base with further stormtroopers from Executor and other starships.

Geonosis is an even more stunning display of their speed, precision and firepower. 12 Accalamators jumped in, precision striked multiple defensive platforms and airbases, sent in a task force to secure and rescue the senator and Jedi and cut back to the LZ........ where we see clonetroopers getting of the ships ready to go into combat immediately. LAAT also provided immediate air offensive capability, and roll on roll off appears to be an underestimate of the speed they can translate vehicles to fighting ability. Within hours, the clonetrooper army was probably fighting across the entire hemisphere, hindering the droid army ability to form up and resist them.

The EU likes to bias against the Empire ground troops unneccesarily, often placing the Rebel forces in a much more favourable light, even when their displayed capabilities are shown to be weaker. But even then, typical stereotypes like the Empire being able to crack communications easily and having sensor superority all adds up to their ground forces ability.

[Ghost Rider]

This has nothing to do with the discussion, but Lost Soal...apply you BBCode tags, because it's getting damn annoying to go back and turn it on so OTHERS can read what the hell you wrote.

It's standard operating procedure here to have it on, so go into your profile and turn it on or just simply turn it on in every one of your posts because otherwise you are posting one giant mess that no one can barely understand without sifting.

[Ghost Rider]

It doesn't state that the Rebels are crushed either, but it is assumed in the thread anyway.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

And thus the question what do either of these things matter to the fact of the original post.

Yes, people have introduced these things and should been pounded upon it. But as to the point...the Alliance was a small pittance that was only taken note because of one Luke Skywalker and his lucky shot.

The Lords of Chaos, and Tyranids are a bit more then an annoyance to the IoM.

But disregarding that...saying where the RA...and?

The OP states this is between these two groups...that's it. It does state this is the Empire vs the IoM for one goal...can Vader with the resources of the New Order capture the Emperor.

Well, technically, the Rebellion brougt down the Empire, killed the Emperor, etc. The Imperium's enemies have failed to acheive that.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Heh, I will have my day when I drink your ass under the table Russian, I shall have my day !!!

[fgalkin]

This has nothing to do with the discussion, but Lost Soal...apply you BBCode tags, because it's getting damn annoying to go back and turn it on so OTHERS can read what the hell you wrote.

It's standard operating procedure here to have it on, so go into your profile and turn it on or just simply turn it on in every one of your posts because otherwise you are posting one giant mess that no one can barely understand without sifting.

oh, so that's what was wrong with his posts? I tried fixing them but nothing worked.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Connor MacLeod]

All it would take is some portable shield generators (like from Tyrants test) and a couple E-webs to help counter the threat of boarders (assuming they don't start using things like gravity traps, and whatnot) even if standard blasters proved useless) And failing all that, there are always thermal detonators. Its not as if ISDs don't have secondary bridges.

And their going to have this equipment on hand and ready because boarders materialising on the bridge or engine room is a common occurence in the Star Wars universe, When?

No, but after the first couple of times they'll start preparing for that.

Besides which, I think you're greatly overestimating their ability to find the bridge (the actual Bridge is only a tiny section of the ISD's tower - as demonstrated in the ITW:SWT book.) Even assuming they can beam through shields.

[Connor MacLeod]

And as has been mentioned, an ISD's bridge is hardly a difficult target.

As I just poitned out, ITW:SWT suggests otherwise.

And what is the range on this teleportation ability, anyhow? How many people can be teleported per "teleport"?

As an added point in boarding, how tall/wide is a marine in battle armor? Its conceivable that they might very well be too large to move around effectively in some of the corridors (depending on how large they are) or elevators and such. At the very least it would put limits on coverage and the amount of firepower they can bring to bear in a given direction.

[Connor MacLeod]

I mean in-universe anti-tank; Marine power-armor is more than capable of shrugging off said low MJ firepower (see the quotes I posted earlier in this thread).

Which quotes? And how many MJ can they withstand? Depending on the type of blaster model and the rate of fire used, a blaster could sustain an output of at least several hundred megajoules, up to a few gigajoules or more for a more powerful rifle (light repeating blaster.) E-webs are powerful enough to pierce starship hulls (IE MF in TESB.)

(EX: From Tattooine Ghost, we know a stormtrrooper blaster rifle can pump out aat least 50 megajoules per shot. From Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, we know a blaster pistol can shoot at least six times in a second. Combining the two, suggests a stormtrooper blaster rifle should be capable of delivering at least 300 megawatts against a target on sustained fire (sustainable for 15-16 seconds or so)

What's the yield on a thermal detonator?

Depends on the model. At least in the GJ range.,Powerful ones could be hundreds of GJ to a few terajoules (One TD was used in Shadows of the Empire to topple Xizor's palace.)

Are there any examples of using firepower greater than that of small arms onboard a starship? Seems rather dangerous to me.

Not neccsearily. Thermal detonators (or at least some models) have a very precise "radius" of destrtuction - they can destroy anything and everything within the sphere and leave anything outside it untouched.

As for teleportation, it's commonly used by a Chapter's Terminators, and it's a long-standing specialization of the Grey Knights Chapter as a whole, who are in-system.

As I said before: Whats the range of teleportation? How many people can be transported er "teleport" How many times in a minute or hour can it be done? How many people are available to execute such teleportations?

How is an infantryman supposed to fight effectively beyond 500m? Without aided optics of some sort, even 300m is difficult.

Stormtrooper weapons (And their helmets) have those sorts of systems built in. According to the AOTC: ICS clonetrooper rifles had a max range of 10 km or so. In "Hard Contact", Republic Commandos had rifles that could hit targets from 30 kilometers away . And as we saw in the movies (TESB and AOTC both), multi kilometer rifle ranges were demonstrated (up to 17.6 km or greater in TESB, I might add.)
[/quote]

The Imperium employs combined-arms tactics as well. Perhaps not as integrated among lesser Guard and PDF units, but those aren't in the picture here at the heart of the Imperium. Well-off Chapters such as the Imperial Fists (who are present - and come to think, also specialize in teleport attacks, for what it's worth) have their own spacecraft, air support, and vehicles.

To the same degree as the Empire?

I'll concede that the Guard is probably beat out in terms of command and control, communications, logistics, etc., but the Marines have no trouble in that department.

As I said before, its unlikely that a stormtrooper is quanttatively equal to a Space Marine - probably because the Empire generally doesn't go for the "uber-soldier" concept (they probably have the ability to do so - there are comparable examples in Star Wars - there is just no reason to.) but thats also because stormtroopers (and their other military troopers) are designed to operate in conjunction with other vehicles and orbital support (especially the latter.) Which makes a huge difference (paritcularily given the greater technological advantage the Empire enjoys.)

[Connor MacLeod]

The frigates Zhikov and Fury of Spatian bombarded the mountain for six minutes, raising a ball of fire that lit the landscape as if the sun had come up early. In its afterglow, thirty Marauder bombers overflew Site A at low level and delivered thirty thousand kilos of high explosives.
Another false dawn.

Interesting quote since this seems to imply that a six-minute bombardment by a pair of frigates is comparable to 30 tons of high explosive (about 4e7-4e8 joules per kg for a FAE I think) for 1.2e12-1.2e13 joules over six minutes - 1e10-1e11 GW sustained.)

This is not, strictly speaking, an upper limit neccesarily (they could be using reduced firepower to prevent collateral damage to their own people, for example) but it is a reasonably valid lower limit.

[Connor MacLeod]

The armour of a Predator is a composite structure of Reinforcing thermoplas layer featuring sub-dermal energy dissipation fibre mesh and bonded ceremite/adamantium alloy armour. The highlighted section is side armour which is 55mm thick and equivalent to 200mm base steel plate.

The words don't really mean much. The 55 mm thickness comparison IS somewhat interesting, though. If we assume "steel" as in real life modern steel in comparison to properties, we can assume about a 3-4x "improvement" in capabilities. This would be well within the "order of magnitude" conclusion I described above.

[Connor MacLeod]

You wana play that game? Fine then. The Emperor can simply make a frontal assault with a dozen Super Class Stardestroyers in close formation. The first Turbolaser salvo from them....well....

No, I'm simply placing forces where the Empire would be most vulnerable. What I'm suggesting could be a viable tactic since their coming out of a bottle neck. I'm hardly going over the top since from the number of ships it has been suggested the Empire has, 1 milion I think, and the revised OP conditions, you could simply shift every single ship through the wormhole and destroy the defences of Earth by simply ramming everything in space and, since droids seem to be the popular suggestion now, flood the Palace with 20 billion droids and overcome the Custodes through shear weight of numbers.

the duchess has argued there are many millions of ships, and wong has pointed out reproducingthem is childs play. if the empire is allowed to concentrate a galaxy's force on one system (which is the op), they win.

"millions" may in fact be a drastic underestimate. There could be easily tens or even hundreds of millions of ships.. including hundreds of thousands or millions of ISDs, thousands/tens of thousands of "dreadnought" grade warships (including Executor-class).

[Connor MacLeod]

That's because the IoM is not even at it full even in 40K. It's pure extrapolation what it truly would be.

We can at least go "No rebels harrassing the Empire". With the IoM...what would it be?

All the Primarchs?

The Emperor at full power and no Dark Age?

No Chaos or Warp problems?

Little harder to even extrapolate let alone quantify.

depends. I haven't seen enough to make a positive guess, but the only real problems might be in terms of industrial capability of various kinds, and that's due to the quasi-religious attitude towards technological stuff. The actual equipment that remains, though, gives us a pretty good idea of what they're capable of, since alot of this IIRC does come from the height of their power.

And yes, there could be some issue with "degradation", but the quality can't have degraded too substantially, or stuff simply wouldn't work, ,espeically since I have doubts that they could make any sort of "modifications" or adaptations that might "compensate" for failures.

On the other hand, the durability of those ships also speaks a bit for the quality of the technology - many vessels are still functional after centuries or millenia of service (if not more?) - which is quite impressive.

[Connor MacLeod]

If you don't have to worry about outside influences, then yes, the Empire can win this one quite easily. It will be horrifically bloody for both sides, but the empire has the manufacturing and manpower to put Terra down for good.

I think this depends on how Patient the Empire chooses to be. If they wnated ot take their time, they could use their superior weapons and tactical FTL to great advantage, especially in "divide and conquer" tactics. This sort of caution, though, would require alot of time and planning to execute. Basically, there would be an inverse relationship between time and casualties - the quicker they try to win, the more casualties they take.

If you allow outside influence you open a whole bag of bad Ju-Ju. The Empire will be stalemated for some time in the Segmentum Solar, simply because of the sheer amount of forces if nothing else. During this time they are facing constant threat of chaos influence. The empire has never dealt with so pervasive and subtle of supernatural forces and it would be a hard adjustment. If portions of a fleet fell to Chaos, the results would be quite bad for the rest of the fleet. This could turn into a much longer battle then a simple planetary siege, and if it does, every extra day is more and more threatening to the Empires troops.

Depends on the Forces. If you talk about other factions, the Empire simply becomes one more opponent in the melee among many. Is there any conceivable reason why everyone would suddenly drop all their grievancees and suddenly cooperate against the GE? I doubt it. And really, since they're coming from another galaxy entirely, the GE has a *huge* tactical advantage defensively against most if not all the other factons.

Vague references to supernatural forces or influences (IE the Emperor's "godlike" nature or the supposedly all-pervasive corruption of Chaos) without any useful quantification is mostly pointless. I could just as easily argue in favor of the "godlike" nature of the Force or its pervasive influence as a possible counter (we know its sentient, we know the Force as a whole would be obscenely powerful, etc.) I could also devise all sorts of wacky and larggely speculative "miracles" too (thousands of Anakin-like beings popping up in the GE.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Telepathy and telekinesis have effects on the enviroment aside from their target. For instance, when Commodus Voke was using his TK to jam the mechanism of Eisenhorn's boltpistol in Malleus the gun froze over, and later on, when Voke's holding back Prophaniti with TK, his robes are described as "stiffening with psychic ice."

Ok.

Omnidirectional, with the torpedo designed to penetrate inside the target's hull before exploding (standard torps).

How far into the hull? Penetration implies at least 50% of the energy hitting the hull, but its not liekly to be 100% (if nothing else, there's going to be the hole the missile burrowed in.) If it doesn't penetrate very deep, it might not absorb substantially more than 50-60%.

And there's still the intensity issue (IE the energy that is absorbed is spread over a much larger area whan with an energy weapon.)

Contact detonation AFAIK.

Well, if they penetrate the hull, this obviously means they are contact

The other incidents of MIRV-style warhead usage I can think of seemed to be to strip off defensive turrets and weapons. And that particular model of torpedo's for destroying spacehulks, which are large and rather easy to destabilise and cause to break apart.

That makes sense. Individual warheads would be designed to "hit" specific weak points on the target to help induce breakup, hence the MIRV-like effect. Stripping weaponry is another possible use (although technically, a sufficiently powerful "single" warhead could do this too, especially if the detonation is close to or in contact with the huull.)

Out of curiosity, what are the dimensions/mass of a spacehulk relative to other warships (like battleships and the like?) That might provide a clue in terms of durabilitiy, as an upper limit if nothing else.

Probably multiple smaller craters, since weapons batteries are just that - ~40 or so heavy guns in the broadsides of most cruisers.

Found the "crater" reference and the moutain range one here

For the Dominator battleship:

When the shell detonates it releases a ball of radioactive fire that forms a sphere of destruction kilometres across. Not only the cannon's target, but any ship close to it receives a deadly blast of intense heat, energised particles and huge jagged shards of shrapnel larger than most sub-stellar spaceships.

The inferno cannon is affectionately known as the Planet Buster by a Dominator's crew because it is often used in planetary assaults to rain fire down on enemy cities. A single shell is powerful enough to destroy all but the largest cities, leaving only flattened ruins around a crater many hundreds of metres deep. When an enemy planet learns that a Dominator has entered the star system, it is rare for a complete and unconditional surrender not to follow swiftly.

Emphasis mine. The first part would be of some use if it were referring to the fireball of an explosion (though not very, since it doesnt seem to describe an atmospheric detonation) - equivalent to a nuke in the tens or hundreds of megatons range.

the "crater' depends largely on if the primary damage mechanism is the impact or the explosive effect (if there is one - the "ball of radioactive fire" seems to suggest so.). A crater hundreds of meters deep could be high kiloton-low megaton if the explosion is the primary damage mechnaism. If the impact is the primary mechanism (making it more comparable to an asteroid impact) We're probably talking 50-100 megatons or so (for a multi-km crater)

This one (same link) For the Emperor-class broadside:

The firepower of these vast ships is terrifying indeed. From orbit a single broadside can incinerate a whole city or reduce a mountain range to rubble - moons can be atomised - enemy spaceships seared with pious fire.

The above describes three separate incidents:

- "incinerate a whole city" - depending on the size of the city (say 50-60 km radius) - we're probably talking a megaton range event, though a gigaton-range event might not be outlandish either.

- Mountain range to rubble. Assuming for conservatism's sake that an individual peak was hemispherical, and an average radius of about 1-2 km yields a fragmentation energy of around 8-64 megatons per "mountain". Now a mountain "range" can extend for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, so you could arguably inflate the figure by two or three magnitudes to arrive at a firepower estimate. If the mountains are particularily large (3-4 km radius) you might expect hundreds of megatons.

Of course, its possible that each "blast" might make much more massive craters. 40 lasers divided by, say... 100 km "range" yields a crater diameter of 2.5 km - at least 15 megatons per "mounain" a 25 km crater would require 15.6 gigatons.

- "moons can be atomized" - Depends on the size of the moon really as well as how you define "atomize". Logically moons could be as small (or smaller) as Deimos (the smallest moon in our Solar system) at about 12 km in diameter and bout 1e15kg in mass - or large as the Earth's moon (or larger) - at 3500 km diameter and 7.4e22 kilograms in mass. As for the definition, "atomize" can refer to something as simple as fragmentation (By britannica's definitions) to vaporization or even to "reducing it to atoms' (encarta).

Fragmenting Deimos can require around 300 megatons to 8 gigatons at least. Vaporizing Deimos totally could require 660-1300 gigatons. Fragmenting the "moon" could require 4e7 gigatons, while vaporization could require firepower in the e11 gigaton range. Its possible I'm underestimating the energy though - it could be well into the e29 joule range (if we're talking "scattering the mass" of the planet.)

These are the "bricks" of the bunker? Or is this a different scene?

Different scene.

Assuming a "brick" were a fairly bog standard red brick-type (30 cm long, 10 cm tall/wide, say) and total vaporization.. a couple of kg per brick.. say tens of megajoules per brick. Total enerrgy maybe in the hundreds of megajoules range, maybe.

It's an energy beam, a shot from a Volpone Blueblood's hellgun.

Okay. I wasn't sure which it might be. It might be slightly less if the entire "torso" isn't blown out (say only a crater blown out of the front), but its roughly that. (megajoule range.)

Not very useful I think.. since it gives no idea of the size of the wound.

Damn.

Yeah, cutting attacks generally aren't useful like that - you could technically do alot of damage for very little energy (against a living being) by using a sufficiently concentrated/narrow beam to "cut" them up.

I'm thinking that that example might be similar to the "pulerising" of an armoured Jantine Patrician's torso by a full-power las round at close round in First And Only (now if I could only remember which bloody page it's on).

Well in general (with the other "chest blown out/vaporized" reference from before) we're talking megajoule range in all likelihood for an energy weapon (and whateve rI said for the projectile before.) Whether or not it penetrates the "back" of the person will also affect the calc.

[Imperial Overlord]

40K ships and ship weaponry is quite powerful, although inferior to that of Star Wars. Star Wars, of course, has superior numbers.

There are multiple different types of torpedoes. The standard anti-ship torpedo punches through the massive armour on a 40K ship and explodes inside of it.

A space hulk is an object, almost always a conglomeration of ships, that has been lost in the warp and then is dropped into normal space. Due to their makeshift nature, specifications other than they are usually multiple kilometers in length and width, are hard to come up with. The stereotypical hulk is larger than a battleship, which is 6 or 7 kilometers in length. Gigaton level cluster munitions are a better choice to sterilize them than standard torpedoes, which are designed to penetrate a lot of massively tough warship armour and slip through void shields.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Which quotes? And how many MJ can they withstand? Depending on the type of blaster model and the rate of fire used, a blaster could sustain an output of at least several hundred megajoules, up to a few gigajoules or more for a more powerful rifle (light repeating blaster.) E-webs are powerful enough to pierce starship hulls (IE MF in TESB.)

Inquisitor Eisenhorn notes the futility of firing a hellgun at the Chaos Marine going after him, should be around page 5ish of this thread, and also shows the same Marine taking negligible damage from some beefy firepower. IIRC there are some good quantifiable quotes in Angels of Darkness, but unfortunately I don't have it on hand.

Depends on the model. At least in the GJ range.,Powerful ones could be hundreds of GJ to a few terajoules (One TD was used in Shadows of the Empire to topple Xizor's palace.)

That could be painful.

Not neccsearily. Thermal detonators (or at least some models) have a very precise "radius" of destrtuction - they can destroy anything and everything within the sphere and leave anything outside it untouched.

You mention E-Webs as capable of penetrating starship hulls; they are going to fire these inside of one?

As I said before: Whats the range of teleportation? How many people can be transported er "teleport" How many times in a minute or hour can it be done? How many people are available to execute such teleportations?

More than enough to board enemy ships at long range, transfer cargo to and from orbit, and deploy troops behind enemy lines from orbit. The site you linked to in your other post states that most ships have onboard teleporters for use with normal boarding troops (storm troopers, comparable in virtually every respect to the whiteys of the same name). Not enough to transport the entire ship's complement of troops, as conventional boarding means are still used, however. A Chapter's Terminators (generally the first company, so about 100 per Chapter) have built-in teleporters in their armor. The entire Grey Knights Chapter (at least 1000, probably more) uses teleports.

Stormtrooper weapons (And their helmets) have those sorts of systems built in. According to the AOTC: ICS clonetrooper rifles had a max range of 10 km or so. In "Hard Contact", Republic Commandos had rifles that could hit targets from 30 kilometers away . And as we saw in the movies (TESB and AOTC both), multi kilometer rifle ranges were demonstrated (up to 17.6 km or greater in TESB, I might add.)

The weapon has the range and accuracy, yes. Fighting beyond a kilometer effectively, however, is beyond even the realm of marksmen and their specialized kit. It's an impossibility for even a marginally human infantryman to fight beyond that range. Too many variables enter play, even with energy weapons that ignore factors like windspeed and weather conditions. Any fire thrown around at that range would be nothing more than potshots and supression fire.

To the same degree as the Empire?

The Imperium is vast and varied. Most Astartes and Inquisitorial embarkings will enjoy a very high level of coordination and efficiency. On the flip side of the coin, Ecclesiarchy crusades and the like usually consist of "batter x unit of fanatics into wall until dust; repeat with unit y," tactics.

As I said before, its unlikely that a stormtrooper is quanttatively equal to a Space Marine - probably because the Empire generally doesn't go for the "uber-soldier" concept (they probably have the ability to do so - there are comparable examples in Star Wars - there is just no reason to.) but thats also because stormtroopers (and their other military troopers) are designed to operate in conjunction with other vehicles and orbital support (especially the latter.) Which makes a huge difference (paritcularily given the greater technological advantage the Empire enjoys.)

Right. No argument here.

[PainRack]

The weapon has the range and accuracy, yes. Fighting beyond a kilometer effectively, however, is beyond even the realm of marksmen and their specialized kit. It's an impossibility for even a marginally human infantryman to fight beyond that range. Too many variables enter play, even with energy weapons that ignore factors like windspeed and weather conditions. Any fire thrown around at that range would be nothing more than potshots and supression fire.

It may be possible for snipers to engage in that kind of engagements, especially if using a true direct fire weapon that doesn't get dragged down by gravity........ but we should direct that to Rob Wilson I guess.

The Imperium is vast and varied. Most Astartes and Inquisitorial embarkings will enjoy a very high level of coordination and efficiency. On the flip side of the coin, Ecclesiarchy crusades and the like usually consist of "batter x unit of fanatics into wall until dust; repeat with unit y," tactics.

Why? The SM tendency appears to be to charge/teleport/drop into close quarters, rivalled only by Goff Orks in their urge to close to close quarters. On one hand, their superior abilities, as well as the fact that one closes to finish off the enemy is understandable.... but not when the Imperium has on hand tanks, artillery and loads of bombad firepower to unload on the enemy. I mean, seriously. We have thunderbirds, we have Leman Russ and Titans, we have all kinds of big guns, so, lets not subject the enemy to that kinda firepower first and teleport into close quarters first.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Why? The SM tendency appears to be to charge/teleport/drop into close quarters, rivalled only by Goff Orks in their urge to close to close quarters. On one hand, their superior abilities, as well as the fact that one closes to finish off the enemy is understandable.... but not when the Imperium has on hand tanks, artillery and loads of bombad firepower to unload on the enemy. I mean, seriously. We have thunderbirds, we have Leman Russ and Titans, we have all kinds of big guns, so, lets not subject the enemy to that kinda firepower first and teleport into close quarters first.

Don't talk out of your ass. Only the lunatic Chapters like the Blood Angels and their successors prefer hand-to-hand over ranged combat, and only the youngest Chapters have no vehicular support.

[Gunhead]

Well I'm not too impressed when it comes to imperial armour. Leman russ would be a nice target practice for an AT-AT but not much more. Another thing is I'd need to do some math on is the strenght of plasteel. Leman russ has frontal armor of 20cm, if the predator armour is x4 stronger than normal steel, plasteel would be around twice as strong. 40cm with no angling is not impressive. These are just guestimates but the fact that all IoM armor can be penetrated by the Vanquisher, it puts some doubt over their ability to penetrate say the AT-AT. The bit about penetrating all armour is from the Imperial armour sourcebook, and it specifically mentions Titans.

I'll do some more research into this when I have the time, until then I'll give the imperial armour benefit of the doubt.

-Gunhead

[NecronLord]

Well I'm not too impressed when it comes to imperial armour. Leman russ would be a nice target practice for an AT-AT but not much more.

Aside from the fact that it's in a vastly lower weight category (Clue. The equivalent of AT-ATs is the Titans), I will note that GE tanks are hardly jaw droppingly perfect designs.

[white_rabbit]

Well I'm not too impressed when it comes to imperial armour. Leman russ would be a nice target practice for an AT-AT but not much more.

Aside from the fact that it's in a vastly lower weight category (Clue. The equivalent of AT-ATs is the Titans), I will note that GE tanks are hardly jaw droppingly perfect designs.

Christ yes, when I saw the tank that teh uber Hells hammers/whatever are supposed to use I was almost disappointed.

armor can be penetrated by the Vanquisher, it puts some doubt over their ability to penetrate say the AT-AT. The bit about penetrating all armour is from the Imperial armour sourcebook, and it specifically mentions Titans.

I love that, Warlords have 2000mm at least of the highest grade armour materials in 40k.

Wonder how many Abrams a Vanquisher could shoot through ?

As I said before: Whats the range of teleportation? How many people can be transported er "teleport" How many times in a minute or hour can it be done? How many people are available to execute such teleportations?

Largest teleportations that I know of, " Daemonblood" 3 full squads of Adeptus Sororitas teleported onto a enemy cruiser. say 15-30 power armoured soldiers. The Grey Knights who fought Angron during Armageddon I also teleported en-masse, there were about a hundred of them.

Why? The SM tendency appears to be to charge/teleport/drop into close quarters, rivalled only by Goff Orks in their urge to close to close quarters

Not I think you will find when they have the opportunity to use their organic armour and artillery.

we have all kinds of big guns, so, lets not subject the enemy to that kinda firepower first and teleport into close quarters first.

Try to avoid gigantic generalisations in this sort of case Painrack, are the marines going to ALWAYs have support ? No.

Out of curiosity, what are the dimensions/mass of a spacehulk relative to other warships (like battleships and the like?) That might provide a clue in terms of durabilitiy, as an upper limit if nothing else.

Massive and hugely inconsistant. Spacehulks are jammed together randomly and without any pattern apart from the fact they are all stuck together.

On the other hand, the durability of those ships also speaks a bit for the quality of the technology - many vessels are still functional after centuries or millenia of service (if not more?) - which is quite impressive.

Marine armour can survive for at least ten thousand years in atmosphere and in space ( Lord of the Night and The Eye of Terror both feature hibernating space marines from the heresy era.)

The Salamanders have a rhino that dates from the heresy, they start its engine up every century as a ritual.

[Black Admiral]

Ok.

How far into the hull? Penetration implies at least 50% of the energy hitting the hull, but its not liekly to be 100% (if nothing else, there's going to be the hole the missile burrowed in.) If it doesn't penetrate very deep, it might not absorb substantially more than 50-60%.

Into the core of the ship, past the ablative armour and main hull. The typical torpedo is a multistage weapon: the initial cratering charge to weaken the armour, the tail charges to boost the main warhead forward, and the primary warhead.

And there's still the intensity issue (IE the energy that is absorbed is spread over a much larger area whan with an energy weapon.)

True.

Well, if they penetrate the hull, this obviously means they are contact

That makes sense. Individual warheads would be designed to "hit" specific weak points on the target to help induce breakup, hence the MIRV-like effect. Stripping weaponry is another possible use (although technically, a sufficiently powerful "single" warhead could do this too, especially if the detonation is close to or in contact with the huull.)

Out of curiosity, what are the dimensions/mass of a spacehulk relative to other warships (like battleships and the like?) That might provide a clue in terms of durabilitiy, as an upper limit if nothing else.

IIRC space hulks can come up to over a hundred kilometers long, though it varies depending on age, and on whether they're on well-travelled warp "paths."

<-SNIP->

That's Spacefleet stuff, pretty ancient. For one thing, most of the ships mentioned there have all undergone a fairly major redesign for BFG.

That said, the Dominator's primary weapon has, if anything, gotten more powerful. It's armed with a nova cannon now:

A nova cannon is a huge weapon, usually mounted in the prow of a ship so that the recoil it generates can be compensated for by the vessel's engines. It fires a projectile at incredible velocity, using gravitometric impellers to accelerate it to close to light speed. The projectile implodes at a preset distance after firing, unleashing a force more potent than a dozen plasma bombs.

The blast radius of a nova cannon round, going by the BFG scale of 1cm=1000km, is 2500km. I don't think anyone's ever actually fired one at a planet.

The info on the Emperor's broadside sounds right though.

Assuming a "brick" were a fairly bog standard red brick-type (30 cm long, 10 cm tall/wide, say) and total vaporization.. a couple of kg per brick.. say tens of megajoules per brick. Total enerrgy maybe in the hundreds of megajoules range, maybe.

The hole that the guys shooting blasted through the wall was wide enough for two men to step through at once, if that's any help.

Okay. I wasn't sure which it might be. It might be slightly less if the entire "torso" isn't blown out (say only a crater blown out of the front), but its roughly that. (megajoule range.)

Yeah, cutting attacks generally aren't useful like that - you could technically do alot of damage for very little energy (against a living being) by using a sufficiently concentrated/narrow beam to "cut" them up.

Useful to know at least.

Well in general (with the other "chest blown out/vaporized" reference from before) we're talking megajoule range in all likelihood for an energy weapon (and whateve rI said for the projectile before.) Whether or not it penetrates the "back" of the person will also affect the calc.

Only description is that Major Brochuss's torso was "pulverised" by a full power lasround at short range. The reason that said lasgun was set at full power to start with is because the Jantine Patricians wear heavy armour, making it difficult to take them out with half-power lasfire.

On the other hand, the durability of those ships also speaks a bit for the quality of the technology - many vessels are still functional after centuries or millenia of service (if not more?) - which is quite impressive.

As examples:
The Imperious is over 1800 years old
The Divine Right dates back before the Emperor's Great Crusade
The Legatus Stygies is ~8000 years old
The Bloodhawk and Cardinal Boras are believed to date back to the founding of the Imperium
It's not a ship, but one of the Pardus 8th's tanks was over 2300 years old

Vague references to supernatural forces or influences (IE the Emperor's "godlike" nature or the supposedly all-pervasive corruption of Chaos) without any useful quantification is mostly pointless.

The very nature of Chaos is that it corrupts. That said, it's not all-corrupting by a long shot: willpower matters, as does faith, but even those can fail. Only the Grey Knights AFAIK have no chance of being corrupted - directly at least.

As an added point in boarding, how tall/wide is a marine in battle armor?

2 1/2 to 3 meters tall. Most SMs hit the 2.5 meter mark, but the Soul Drinkers, and some chapter's Terminator-armoured troops, hit 3.

And what is the range on this teleportation ability, anyhow? How many people can be teleported per "teleport"?

For the first, around 10,000km against a moving target (BFG scaling). And for the second, as many as can fit in the teleport field. I wouldn't recommend trying to teleport more than a squad per teleporter though: bad things happen if the teleport goes even slightly wrong.

This is not, strictly speaking, an upper limit neccesarily (they could be using reduced firepower to prevent collateral damage to their own people, for example) but it is a reasonably valid lower limit.

The Zhikov and Fury were most likely using low-yield munitions for bombardment, as described in Deus Encarmine and Ghostmaker, since A) there were friendly troops in the area, and B) using antiship weapons against a ground target will destroy whatever's there to find.

[white_rabbit]

The very nature of Chaos is that it corrupts. That said, it's not all-corrupting by a long shot: willpower matters, as does faith, but even those can fail. Only the Grey Knights AFAIK have no chance of being corrupted - directly at least.

The Adeptus Custodes are described as being able to withstand telepathic coercion from anyone short of the Emperor himself in VoH 2

[Lancer]

just a note, in the Eldar codex, a bit of fluff puts Eldrad Ultran as seeing the Tyrannid Invasion and warning the Iyanden Craftworld even as the Tyrannids were still extragalactic.