Moderator: NecronLord
That's forseeing their arrival in this galaxy, not what they're up to in their own galaxy.Matt Huang wrote: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.
yeah, but the arrival of a thousand or so star destroyers in the WH40k universe is still an arrival event.NecronLord wrote:That's forseeing their arrival in this galaxy, not what they're up to in their own galaxy.Matt Huang wrote: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.
Really? Ultramarines against Tyrannids is one of the few examples where the Marines pounded their opponents with gunfire before being swarmed into HTH. Armaggedeon displays Marines dropping into close quarters for example, and Captain Orsai made considerable beef about how Marines tactics were to teleport marines into close combat.JediNeophyte wrote: 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.
And close quarters is still dumb, ESPECIALLY when you have the guns of the Imperial guard and navy, air support and TANKS.Dark Hellion wrote:Painrack, don't confuse close combat with hand to hand combat. Space Marines use bolters, frag grenade launchers, and others weapons almost constantly in every novel I have read and only rarely engage in hand to hand, usually when the enemy is also in power armour, is entrenched, or the marines simply overrun the enemy so fast that they get to pull out the chainswords. The thing is, one of those three things is probably happening, otherwise you would have sent in nameless guard unit #33.
Also, the novels usually cover only the most heroic and dramatic of stories. No one really cares about the time that the Imperial Navy carefully bombarded all the enemy entrenchments and then stormtroopers supported by Valkyries and Vultures capture the capitol with minimal loses. They do care about when the Navy was half swallowed by a warp rift, a demon cult and genestealer cult engage in a turf war while the PDF has a civil war and only 500 guardsmen stand between the Imperium and the planet falling to other influences. Hand to hand will occur a lot more when you have only the ammo on you.
First: That sounds more like an ideal - it attempts to penetrate as deeply into the hull before detonating and it has the potential to pentetrate into the "core" of the ship. So its possible the ship might absorb more than 50% of the yield, but not neccesarily guaranteed. Not that this is going to do more than halve the figure in any event, at most, though.Black Admiral wrote: 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 a battleship is 6-7 km long? Tenatively speaking, we're probably talking several orders of magnitudes difference in mass/volume, so a battleship might (for example) be attacked with a low-gigaton warhead (or in other words, a single warhead rather than a cluster.)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."
Huh? Explain.That's Spacefleet stuff, pretty ancient. For one thing, most of the ships mentioned there have all undergone a fairly major redesign for BFG.
If the mass of the projectile were known, you might be able to get some figures from it. (not neccesarily weapons output, since the warhead seems to be designed to be explosive rather than kinetic.) Unless there is something that indicates it can be used to inflict kinetic damage (or is done to) or maybe some correlation can be made to the "yield" from the velocity/mass of the projectile.That said, the Dominator's primary weapon has, if anything, gotten more powerful. It's armed with a nova cannon now:
Battlefleet Gothic Rulebook, page 22 wrote: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.
I'm not sure how useful blast radius is going to be in open space anyhow except maybe in terms of radiation intensity absorbed at a given distance, and you would need another vessel whose resistancee is known to compare to.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.
Okay. Not necceasrily proof of anything though, since as I poitned out there's a wide disparity in figures that can be claimed there (and I've seen some people on SB take towards the far higher end as "fact".)The info on the Emperor's broadside sounds right though.
Assuming a 2 meter by 2 meter "hole" (which is probably generous) we're probably talking about a hundredfold increase to the energy calculation.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.
Was he totally blown apart, or were, for example, the limbs still attached to the torso. (explosion might also imply less than total vaporization.)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.
Okay, but i'm only speaking in general terms. Its not a specific or linear indication, but it does suggest a fairly substantial level of achievement (I couldn't think of many modern materials or structures that would last millenia, I think.) At the same time though, it only reinforces what I said earlier - the durability of said technology argues against it having suffered any great degree degrradation. And even despite the apparent decline, it seems unlikely that Imperium technology is totally to the poitn of utterly chancy and unreliable performance.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
Willpower, howver, is a very nebulous thing and hard to quantify (unlike say, vaporization.) Moreover, when you lack hard and fast limits (whether we're talking about Chaos, the Force, or the Emperor of Mankind) all that's really possible is what "might" or "might not" be possible.
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.
That might be a problem.. I don't recall offhand just how tall corridors are on starships (Chewbacca and Vader, both 2 meters tall, could walk upright in them..) Might be a kind of tight fit though, in any case. And I doubt that more than a couple of Space Marines are going to fit side-by-side into a corridor (which becomes a problem in terms of concentration of firepower.)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.
How fast a moving target? 10,000 km under what conditions? Its conceivable the Empire could engage outside of this range, though.For the first, around 10,000km against a moving target (BFG scaling).
Well, how larrge an area (in meters squared) does a teleport field cover? Do we know?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.
Well as I said, its not an upper limit, but it serves as a 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.
First: That sounds more like an ideal - it attempts to penetrate as deeply into the hull before detonating and it has the potential to pentetrate into the "core" of the ship. So its possible the ship might absorb more than 50% of the yield, but not neccesarily guaranteed. Not that this is going to do more than halve the figure in any event, at most, though.Black Admiral wrote: 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 a battleship is 6-7 km long? Tenatively speaking, we're probably talking several orders of magnitudes difference in mass/volume, so a battleship might (for example) be attacked with a low-gigaton warhead (or in other words, a single warhead rather than a cluster.)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."
Huh? Explain.That's Spacefleet stuff, pretty ancient. For one thing, most of the ships mentioned there have all undergone a fairly major redesign for BFG.
If the mass of the projectile were known, you might be able to get some figures from it. (not neccesarily weapons output, since the warhead seems to be designed to be explosive rather than kinetic.) Unless there is something that indicates it can be used to inflict kinetic damage (or is done to) or maybe some correlation can be made to the "yield" from the velocity/mass of the projectile.That said, the Dominator's primary weapon has, if anything, gotten more powerful. It's armed with a nova cannon now:
Battlefleet Gothic Rulebook, page 22 wrote: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.
I'm not sure how useful blast radius is going to be in open space anyhow except maybe in terms of radiation intensity absorbed at a given distance, and you would need another vessel whose resistancee is known to compare to.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.
Okay. Not necceasrily proof of anything though, since as I poitned out there's a wide disparity in figures that can be claimed there (and I've seen some people on SB take towards the far higher end as "fact".)The info on the Emperor's broadside sounds right though.
Assuming a 2 meter by 2 meter "hole" (which is probably generous) we're probably talking about a hundredfold increase to the energy calculation.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.
Was he totally blown apart, or were, for example, the limbs still attached to the torso. (explosion might also imply less than total vaporization.)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.
Okay, but i'm only speaking in general terms. Its not a specific or linear indication, but it does suggest a fairly substantial level of achievement (I couldn't think of many modern materials or structures that would last millenia, I think.) At the same time though, it only reinforces what I said earlier - the durability of said technology argues against it having suffered any great degree degrradation. And even despite the apparent decline, it seems unlikely that Imperium technology is totally to the poitn of utterly chancy and unreliable performance.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
Willpower, howver, is a very nebulous thing and hard to quantify (unlike say, vaporization.) Moreover, when you lack hard and fast limits (whether we're talking about Chaos, the Force, or the Emperor of Mankind) all that's really possible is what "might" or "might not" be possible.
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.
That might be a problem.. I don't recall offhand just how tall corridors are on starships (Chewbacca and Vader, both 2 meters tall, could walk upright in them..) Might be a kind of tight fit though, in any case. And I doubt that more than a couple of Space Marines are going to fit side-by-side into a corridor (which becomes a problem in terms of concentration of firepower.)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.
How fast a moving target? 10,000 km under what conditions? Its conceivable the Empire could engage outside of this range, though.For the first, around 10,000km against a moving target (BFG scaling).
Well, how larrge an area (in meters squared) does a teleport field cover? Do we know?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.
Well as I said, its not an upper limit, but it serves as a 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.
You mean this quote?JediNeophyte wrote: 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.
Disregarding the obvious fact that this Eisenhorn is in the middle of combat (ie not in an entirely 'rational' mind) there are several otehr obvious considerations:My fallen hell-gun was out of reach, and I doubted it would have made a dent in the monster anyway. His baying face, its sutured-on skin stretching around the gaping jaws of his skull, was all I could see.
Pity, since there isn't anything that seems even remotely useful in terms of answering my question as of yet.IIRC there are some good quantifiable quotes in Angels of Darkness, but unfortunately I don't have it on hand.
Penetrating small starships (like the Falcon), yes. And if its a choice between inflicting some minor damage on the interior of the ship and having it fall into enemy hands? Yeah, they are. SAme with Thermal detonators. If worse comes to worse, the Captain will quite probably self-destrruct the ship. And I'm willing to bet that even if the Space Marines regualrly managed to board ships, the Empire would be willing to blow up any number of vessels if it meant taking the marines with them (and I suspect losing the Marines would harm the Imperium more than losing the ships would the Empire.)You mention E-Webs as capable of penetrating starship hulls; they are going to fire these inside of one?
Depending on what kind of orbit (low, mid, geostationary, or high orbit) it could be anywhere from a few hundred kilometers to tens of thousands of kilometers, maybe a bit higher. Odds are though that unless the teleportation range reaches into the hundreds of thousands of kilometers or light seconds, the Empire still has a chance to engage with its weapons while staying out of teleporter range (accuracy might suffer, though.)More than enough to board enemy ships at long range, transfer cargo to and from orbit, and deploy troops behind enemy lines from orbit.
Doesn't really tell me much in terms of "teleporting" numbers, though.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.
So if they use what I presume are "special" forces, they can board anywhere from 100-1000 individuals onto a ship.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.
And yet, we see this happen in AOTC and TESB.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.
That depends on the kinds of weapons you use. The Empire has access to a wide variety of weapons - from hypersonic projectile rifles (which can exist even on backwaters), to particle-beam blasters that have far higher than hypersonic velocities (they have perfectly flat trajectories over multi-km ranges), to massless beam guns that travel at lightspeed. Any, but most especially the latter two, would ensure high accuracy at even multi-kilometer ranges since the bolt is going to hit long before the target can move any appreciable distance (and wind and gravity will have little to no impact on the bolt's trajectory - there's a reason they're called "line of sight" weapons.)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.
That doesn't exactly answer my question.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.To the same degree as the Empire?
The tags got screwy and was hard to see (my fault):As for the bit about "beefy firepower", I saw nothing in that quote that gave any useful quantitative indications of resilience, so either it was in a different set of quotes or you were mistaken.
Mandragore is not much more than Joe Average Chaos Space Marine. The only major difference between him and a normal Marine are his psychic powers, which tend to manifest after ten millenia of exposure to the Warp.Here we have Mandragore, a Chaos Space Marine. The troopers annihilated by the attack that barely scratched him wore armor comparable to Stormtrooper armor. Note that Mandragore retained full use of the attacked limb.Xenos, pg 244, 245 wrote:Two [aliens] clattered forward suddenly, towards the bewildered trooper escort. Electric-blue discharges fizzled around the saruthi's swaying heads and then spat raking beams of ice-bright energy at their attacks. Two troopers were vaporised, their constituent matter boiling away in searing flashes of light.
I caught sight of Mandragore. The brute had already killed one trooper in an attempt to curtail the mindless wildfire, but now the saruthi had fired on them, the troopers felt justified in their action and redoubled their efforts. An alien beam sliced into Mandragore's arm, and rage consumed him. He attacked the saruthi himself, wielding a massive chain-axe.
This isn't about harming the Imperium; it's about whether or not the Empire is harmed enough to protect the Emperor of Man. Marine losses are largely irrelevant.Penetrating small starships (like the Falcon), yes. And if its a choice between inflicting some minor damage on the interior of the ship and having it fall into enemy hands? Yeah, they are. SAme with Thermal detonators. If worse comes to worse, the Captain will quite probably self-destrruct the ship. And I'm willing to bet that even if the Space Marines regualrly managed to board ships, the Empire would be willing to blow up any number of vessels if it meant taking the marines with them (and I suspect losing the Marines would harm the Imperium more than losing the ships would the Empire.)
Terminator squads generally number from five to ten, the same with most Grey Knight units (though they tend to teleport en masse regardless).Doesn't really tell me much in terms of "teleporting" numbers, though.
In theory. In practice, no more than one or two squads are going to go after a single ship, save maybe something the size of an Executor.So if they use what I presume are "special" forces, they can board anywhere from 100-1000 individuals onto a ship.
Forgive me, as I've only seen AotC once. As for ESB, I don't recall any effective infantry combat taking place at that range. Yes, they were shooting, but the only casualties I saw taken on either side were from fixed emplacements and vehicles.And yet, we see this happen in AOTC and TESB.
Steadiness of the arms, hands, breath control, eyesight, and accuracy and alignment of any optical aids (be they ironsights or scopes) are factors no purdy laser gun can solve.That depends on the kinds of weapons you use. The Empire has access to a wide variety of weapons - from hypersonic projectile rifles (which can exist even on backwaters), to particle-beam blasters that have far higher than hypersonic velocities (they have perfectly flat trajectories over multi-km ranges), to massless beam guns that travel at lightspeed. Any, but most especially the latter two, would ensure high accuracy at even multi-kilometer ranges since the bolt is going to hit long before the target can move any appreciable distance (and wind and gravity will have little to no impact on the bolt's trajectory - there's a reason they're called "line of sight" weapons.)
What exactly are you looking for? There's no catch-all answer here. In theory, yes, the Imperium is perfectly capable of the same degree of coordination. In practice is another matter.That doesn't exactly answer my question.
It's described as "Each missile contained 122 warheads, each with a power of 5GT."Connor MacLeod wrote:First: That sounds more like an ideal - it attempts to penetrate as deeply into the hull before detonating and it has the potential to pentetrate into the "core" of the ship. So its possible the ship might absorb more than 50% of the yield, but not neccesarily guaranteed. Not that this is going to do more than halve the figure in any event, at most, though.
Second: there are actually two separate warheads? This actually brings another question to bear: does 5 gigatons mean "per warhead" or "collectively" (for both the cratering charge and the primary warhead.)
For that matter how is the warhead described? Something like "one hundred twenty some five-gigaton warheads" or "one hundred twenty warheads unleashing over six hundred gigatons" or is it something more ambiguous?
True. Of course, spacehulks' internal armour, compartmentalisation, etc. is going to be far less well maintained than a battleship's.And a battleship is 6-7 km long? Tenatively speaking, we're probably talking several orders of magnitudes difference in mass/volume, so a battleship might (for example) be attacked with a low-gigaton warhead (or in other words, a single warhead rather than a cluster.)
For one thing, the Gothic-class is a cruiser, and armed with eight lance turrets, not weapons batteries. The Dictator has been redesigned as a carrier (no more grabby-crushy claws). The Firestorm and Thunderbolt cruisers have been changed to the Sword and Firestorm-class frigates, respectively. The Emperor doesn't have the traditional armoured prow, but instead a large amount of sensors/comcon equipment. The Tyrant's resemblance to the Emperor is only insofar as it has the traditional armoured prow of all Imperium warships.Huh? Explain.
BFG Rulebook, page 20 wrote:Weapons batteries form the main armament for most warships, ensuring that much of their hull is pock-marked by gun ports and weapon housings. Each battery consists of rank upon rank of weapons: plasma projectors, laser cannons, missile launchers, railguns, fusion beamers and graviton pulsers.
It might be possible to estimate it. The Nova Cannon itself is 300 meters long, and the breech is fifty meters wide, for whatever that's worth.If the mass of the projectile were known, you might be able to get some figures from it. (not neccesarily weapons output, since the warhead seems to be designed to be explosive rather than kinetic.) Unless there is something that indicates it can be used to inflict kinetic damage (or is done to) or maybe some correlation can be made to the "yield" from the velocity/mass of the projectile.
If nothing else, one might be able to establish power generation figures if the mass and accecleration of the ship can be estimated, and that might provide indirect firepower figures.
Well, it is possible to get higher figures from the Night Lord's destruction of their homeworld, but there are problems with that.I'm not sure how useful blast radius is going to be in open space anyhow except maybe in terms of radiation intensity absorbed at a given distance, and you would need another vessel whose resistancee is known to compare to.
Okay. Not necceasrily proof of anything though, since as I poitned out there's a wide disparity in figures that can be claimed there (and I've seen some people on SB take towards the far higher end as "fact".)
The quote:Assuming a 2 meter by 2 meter "hole" (which is probably generous) we're probably talking about a hundredfold increase to the energy calculation.
Was he totally blown apart, or were, for example, the limbs still attached to the torso. (explosion might also imply less than total vaporization.)
Of course, armor being in the calculation can make it rather conservative.
That sounds to me like Brochuss's torso wasn't totally blown apart.First And Only, page 275 wrote:His armoured torso pulverised by Zogat's marksmanship, Brochuss toppled into the mica flecked sand of the valley floor
Maybe ships from the Dark Age of Technology era, like the Slaughtersong, but those have a lot of ubertech in them as well.Okay, but i'm only speaking in general terms. Its not a specific or linear indication, but it does suggest a fairly substantial level of achievement (I couldn't think of many modern materials or structures that would last millenia, I think.) At the same time though, it only reinforces what I said earlier - the durability of said technology argues against it having suffered any great degree degrradation. And even despite the apparent decline, it seems unlikely that Imperium technology is totally to the poitn of utterly chancy and unreliable performance.
Another consideration is that the apparent fact that offensive and defensive systems seem to be roughly "parallel" also suggests that their abilities have not substantially degraded over time. At the very least, I don't believe their armor (on tanks, ships, or whatnot) is substantially impervious to "modern" weapons fire.
This quote from Grey Knights summarises the mental resistance of a Grey Knight:Willpower, howver, is a very nebulous thing and hard to quantify (unlike say, vaporization.) Moreover, when you lack hard and fast limits (whether we're talking about Chaos, the Force, or the Emperor of Mankind) all that's really possible is what "might" or "might not" be possible.
If I wanted to be absurd, for example, I could argue that if the Imperium/Emperor managed to represent a substantial threat, that somehow the Force would spontaneously manifest hundreds or thousands of Anakin-level "Chosen Ones" - each of whom (at least accoridng to GL) has the potential to be twice as powerful as Palpatine at his height. (incidentally suggesting that these Uber-chosen co uld do Palpatine-level Force Storms..) But I think you get the idea.
(Hell, I wouldn't even need to cite the Force to be absurd.. How about thousands or tens of thousands of Spaarti-cloned Anakins? Now that's absurd wanking, even though its eminently plausible...)
Grey Knights are mindscrubbed from the start of their training, so that they only remember faith and duty. It works too, since not one of them's fallen to Chaos over the ten thousand years since their creation.Grey Knights, pages 21-22 wrote:He could hear voices whispering and screaming inside his skull, a babble of madness that would have swamped a lesser man's mind. But the mind of a Grey Knight was built around a hard core of pure, depthless faith. Where other men had fear, the Grey Knights had resolve. Where others had doubt, Mandulis had faith. An Imperial guardsman, no matter how courageous or pious, still had that unprotected hollow of despair, greed, and terror at the heart of his soul. A Grey Knight did not. Ghargatuloth's mind tricks broke against Mandulis's mind like waves against rocks.
That was why it had to be the Grey Knights assaulting Khorion IX. The Lords Militant could assemble armies hundreds of millions strong, but not one of those Guardsmen would have kept his mind for a minute under the gaze of Ghargatuloth. So it was up to the Grey Knights, and now it was up to Mandulis.
True. Of course, they're used to that. Most boarding actions don't give them room to fight openly, and SM units are trained to work in fireteam pairs.That might be a problem.. I don't recall offhand just how tall corridors are on starships (Chewbacca and Vader, both 2 meters tall, could walk upright in them..) Might be a kind of tight fit though, in any case. And I doubt that more than a couple of Space Marines are going to fit side-by-side into a corridor (which becomes a problem in terms of concentration of firepower.)
As to the first, unknown. Imperium ships can hit upwards of .75-cee, but I don't know about teleportation at that speed. As for conditions, they include some sensor jamming (Angels of Darkness, Necropolis, Execution Hour) but how much isn't gone into much detail on.How fast a moving target? 10,000 km under what conditions? Its conceivable the Empire could engage outside of this range, though.
The largest teleport (as white_rabbit mentioned) was in Daemonblood, with three squads of Sisters of Battle (15-30 in total). It's never stated exactly how much space a teleport field covers though, at least AFAIK.Well, how larrge an area (in meters squared) does a teleport field cover? Do we know?
Five to ten, depending.how manyn in a squad?
Obviously. I was simply clarifying the likely situation.Well as I said, its not an upper limit, but it serves as a lower limit.
The shooter, Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas, is using a boltpistol here.Angels of Darkness, page 196 wrote:Thumbing the fire selector to semi-automatic, he [Boreas] emptied the magazine in five short bursts, the explosive bolts tearing through a knot of enemy three hundred meters in front of him.
Angels of Darkness, pages 151-151 wrote:A ball of flickering blue plasma erupted from Hephaestus's pistol to his [Boreas's] left, punching through a stanchion and incinerating the man cowering behind it, his steaming arm and head flung messily to the deck.
Well, that answers my question, doesn' t it?JediNeophyte wrote:Stormtrooper armor is highly proof against kinetic attacks, but it only has modest energy-damping properties (low MJ range tops since its designed to make blaster wounds survivable)Here we have Mandragore, a Chaos Space Marine. The troopers annihilated by the attack that barely scratched him wore armor comparable to Stormtrooper armor. Note that Mandragore retained full use of the attacked limb.Xenos, pg 244, 245 wrote:Two [aliens] clattered forward suddenly, towards the bewildered trooper escort. Electric-blue discharges fizzled around the saruthi's swaying heads and then spat raking beams of ice-bright energy at their attacks. Two troopers were vaporised, their constituent matter boiling away in searing flashes of light.
I caught sight of Mandragore. The brute had already killed one trooper in an attempt to curtail the mindless wildfire, but now the saruthi had fired on them, the troopers felt justified in their action and redoubled their efforts. An alien beam sliced into Mandragore's arm, and rage consumed him. He attacked the saruthi himself, wielding a massive chain-axe.
That said, while the quote is more quantifiable, but the earlier qualifications I mentioned still stand.
Actually since its been mentioned/established that if psychics and others can generate a certain amount of energy (lightning, telekinetic feats, etc.) they must also be able to control/dissipate/manipulate at least that much energy.Mandragore is not much more than Joe Average Chaos Space Marine. The only major difference between him and a normal Marine are his psychic powers, which tend to manifest after ten millenia of exposure to the Warp.
Not as far as I can tell. Production rates and numerical superiority do factor in (especially if other factions like the Necrons or whatnot get involved)This isn't about harming the Imperium; it's about whether or not the Empire is harmed enough to protect the Emperor of Man. Marine losses are largely irrelevant.
I see.. so we're talking dozens max, spread throughout the ship maybe in groups of less than a dozen, tops. Might be managable, if they can establish containment early on, and assuming they just don't teleport around randomly.Terminator squads generally number from five to ten, the same with most Grey Knight units (though they tend to teleport en masse regardless).
In theory. In practice, no more than one or two squads are going to go after a single ship, save maybe something the size of an Executor.
IIRC, the other sources tend to suggest multi-km combat took place (the novelizations, the radio draamas for TESB, and the DK books and such for both examples.)Forgive me, as I've only seen AotC once. As for ESB, I don't recall any effective infantry combat taking place at that range. Yes, they were shooting, but the only casualties I saw taken on either side were from fixed emplacements and vehicles.
And yes, the fact its "trench" warfare could make a difference.. but if the Stormies can set up a fixed emplacement (even a temporary one) that gives them the range advantage doesnt it?
Actually blasters can be synchronized to sighting systems (even helmet mounted ones). The other factors are indeed more iffy, but thats why you have automatic fire.Steadiness of the arms, hands, breath control, eyesight, and accuracy and alignment of any optical aids (be they ironsights or scopes) are factors no purdy laser gun can solve.
And worse comes to worse.. you end up using a bipod or tripod from a fixed position? Which doesnt matter, since it would still take time for the Marines to close (unless they can duel at long range too)
What exactly are you looking for? There's no catch-all answer here. In theory, yes, the Imperium is perfectly capable of the same degree of coordination. In practice is another matter.
So in theory, the 122 "warheads" might include the breaching charge.Black Admiral wrote: It's described as "Each missile contained 122 warheads, each with a power of 5GT."
Well, thats why you target the weak points.True. Of course, spacehulks' internal armour, compartmentalisation, etc. is going to be far less well maintained than a battleship's.
Oh, game revisions. Wouldn't that also potentially gover the "122 5-gigaton warheads" though? Or are the Revisions known to be explicitly selective (IE stuff that is not explicitly corrected revised or contradicted is still valid?)For one thing, the Gothic-class is a cruiser, and armed with eight lance turrets, not weapons batteries. The Dictator has been redesigned as a carrier (no more grabby-crushy claws). The Firestorm and Thunderbolt cruisers have been changed to the Sword and Firestorm-class frigates, respectively. The Emperor doesn't have the traditional armoured prow, but instead a large amount of sensors/comcon equipment. The Tyrant's resemblance to the Emperor is only insofar as it has the traditional armoured prow of all Imperium warships.
I see.BFG Rulebook, page 20 wrote:Weapons batteries form the main armament for most warships, ensuring that much of their hull is pock-marked by gun ports and weapon housings. Each battery consists of rank upon rank of weapons: plasma projectors, laser cannons, missile launchers, railguns, fusion beamers and graviton pulsers.
Well, assuming a cylinder 100 meters long and 50 meters in diameter, made of iron, and with no empty space... the projectile might mass 1.55e9 kilograms. Assuming "near-c" means 90% of the speed of light, we're talking about 1.8e26 joules of KE and 9.6e17 kg*m/s worth of momentum. at .99c its 8.5e26 joules and 3.263e18 kg*m/s.It might be possible to estimate it. The Nova Cannon itself is 300 meters long, and the breech is fifty meters wide, for whatever that's worth.
Such as?Well, it is possible to get higher figures from the Night Lord's destruction of their homeworld, but there are problems with that.
Yeah... pulverizing is definitely not the same as total vaporization or cremation.. Sot he enerrgy porbably would be less.. how much though, I'm not entirely sure OTOH.That sounds to me like Brochuss's torso wasn't totally blown apart.First And Only, page 275 wrote:His armoured torso pulverised by Zogat's marksmanship, Brochuss toppled into the mica flecked sand of the valley floor
Sorry, I'm not quite sure i'm following here.Maybe ships from the Dark Age of Technology era, like the Slaughtersong, but those have a lot of ubertech in them as well.
Okay.. incomplete incineration At least one arm and a head remaining - mid to high MJ range, probably, disregarding armor and differencecs in mass.)This quote from Grey Knights summarises the mental resistance of a Grey Knight:Okay.. this is definitely more usable.. 1 Grey Knight = hundreds of millions of "normal" minds.Grey Knights, pages 21-22 wrote:He could hear voices whispering and screaming inside his skull, a babble of madness that would have swamped a lesser man's mind. But the mind of a Grey Knight was built around a hard core of pure, depthless faith. Where other men had fear, the Grey Knights had resolve. Where others had doubt, Mandulis had faith. An Imperial guardsman, no matter how courageous or pious, still had that unprotected hollow of despair, greed, and terror at the heart of his soul. A Grey Knight did not. Ghargatuloth's mind tricks broke against Mandulis's mind like waves against rocks.
That was why it had to be the Grey Knights assaulting Khorion IX. The Lords Militant could assemble armies hundreds of millions strong, but not one of those Guardsmen would have kept his mind for a minute under the gaze of Ghargatuloth. So it was up to the Grey Knights, and now it was up to Mandulis.
So how do others compare to the Greys?Grey Knights are mindscrubbed from the start of their training, so that they only remember faith and duty. It works too, since not one of them's fallen to Chaos over the ten thousand years since their creation.
Well true, and it shouldn't be a problem if the Empire can't bring sufficiently heavy firepower to bear (however much that is, and how much damage the Empire is willing to inflict on its hallways) However, if they start mowing down Spacemarines, there's going to start being problems, especially if the bodies start piling up.True. Of course, they're used to that. Most boarding actions don't give them room to fight openly, and SM units are trained to work in fireteam pairs.
Okay.As to the first, unknown. Imperium ships can hit upwards of .75-cee, but I don't know about teleportation at that speed. As for conditions, they include some sensor jamming (Angels of Darkness, Necropolis, Execution Hour) but how much isn't gone into much detail on.
OKay.The largest teleport (as white_rabbit mentioned) was in Daemonblood, with three squads of Sisters of Battle (15-30 in total). It's never stated exactly how much space a teleport field covers though, at least AFAIK.
Depending on?Five to ten, depending.
Okay.
Obviously. I was simply clarifying the likely situation.
IIRC I don't recall exactly how powerful hellguns were compared to lasguns (I suppose that depends on the specific lasgun, since I can recall as litlte as 19 mw to hundreds of mw or even several gigawatts.)As for the hellgun issue, in the short story Hunter/Prey it took thrity hellguns at point blank range to penetrate a Chaos Space Marine's armour, and in Storm Of Iron, Honsou dismisses lasguns as mere "annoyances."
OTOH though, they're not substantially more powerful than a heavy blaster rifle (at full auto). Might take a couple of seconds or so (or more than one trooper conceentrating on a single trooper) but they might be able to do it, especially since they could conceivably cram more people into a corridor than a Space Marine could.
Not sure.. "tearing through" is kinda vague.. I can't see much of a point of referncec her efor calcs.Some possibly useful quotes from Angels of Darkness:
Angels of Darkness, page 196 wrote:Thumbing the fire selector to semi-automatic, he [Boreas] emptied the magazine in five short bursts, the explosive bolts tearing through a knot of enemy three hundred meters in front of him.
The shooter, Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas, is using a boltpistol here.
Angels of Darkness, pages 151-151 wrote:A ball of flickering blue plasma erupted from Hephaestus's pistol to his [Boreas's] left, punching through a stanchion and incinerating the man cowering behind it, his steaming arm and head flung messily to the deck.
Ah, see provide a quote to back up your statements. I was wrong its 10,000.The Chamber of the Astronomican is a huge hollow sphere carved from a single mountain peak. Its outward form is a giant dome, the lower half of the sphere being buried under the rock. Ten thousand multi-tiered seats cover the entire inner surface of the sphere. Each seat faces the very centre of the sphere where a raw ball of psychic energy dances in space.
This ball of energy is created by the Chosen as they release their powers into the Astronomican. In this way their psychic power is drained into the energy-ball and then through the warp, directed by the mind of the Emperor himself. As the energy of the Chosen is drained away they slowly fade and die. The average psyker lasts for about three months - about 100 die every day and their places are taken by new Chosen.
Where have we heard that before...Series1Rx7 wrote: Here I have people comparing e-penis re: two sci-fi's which simply cannot be compared.
Some quantification as to their capabilities would be nice. Which, had you been paying attention, you'd notice was exactly what is being worked out here.Series1Rx7 wrote:All the people complaining about the War40k 'uberweapons' and saying they can't be mentioned because they are only ever vaguely talked about with reverence... its BS. THIS is what War40k is about. It's as simple as that. War40k is about the invincible Emperor. It is about the devestating technologies, which the Imperium keeps closed, to save the universe.
Right, they cannot be defeated. I guess that's why chapters are routinely mangled and even wiped out by things like tyranids, ork or eldar. Hell, if you wanna go by tabletop rules, the Eldar could be called marine killing machines. You're just wanking off here.Series1Rx7 wrote:It is about Space Marines that cannot be defeated, that can fight without sleep for a year, that only take 12 men to defend against an army.
Numbers, quantification. People used several arguments here, none of which I see countered in your post. Besides, it's not a full scale Imperium vs Empire war, it's an assault on Terra.Series1Rx7 wrote:Star Wars isn't. It's about more traditional good vs evil armies battling it out. I love Star Wars... but it's a wet dream for the Empire to ever be able to defeat the Imperium, let alone anything in the War40k universe.
Series1Rx7 wrote:In a universe where ORKS ARE SPORES THAT SPREAD TO PLANETS AS FUNGII and then grow into the bipeds we recognise, the Imperium is going to be some hardcore mother fucker that's not to be trifled with.
So? Orks are a non-issue here. It's an assault on Terra, not a bloody galaxy vs galaxy deathmatch.Series1Rx7 wrote:Orks make things work with the power of the MIND! They'll think red makes wartraks go faster, so the wartraks DO go faster. They think a bolter-shaped piece of metal is in the shape of a pistol, so IT WORKS LIKE A PISTOL.
Show they can do all that fast enough to save the Emperor, and you'll have a point. By all means, I'm sure everyone here will listen to some, you know, reasonable arguments.Series1Rx7 wrote:The Imperium sends holy crusades of guardsmen armies several billion strong without pause, it's perfectly normal and not even difficult for them to do. The Imperium is very tightly packed with countless populated worlds, where often they will just mobilise an entire planets population for war, without a second thought.
Their numbers are described in the White Dwarf as "thousands", which is what the GE can easily muster as an expeditionary force.Series1Rx7 wrote:It supports these with fleets of countless ships...
Numbers and sources, please. There are some transport that are really big, which means jack shit (it's necessary because their method of travel is slow, meaning one voyage from an agriworld could take years), because it's the warships that are going to make a difference, and for that we need to quantify their weapon yields.Series1Rx7 wrote:...the smaller transport types being only slighter smaller than a Star Destroyer.
And? Hyperspace is still safer and MUCH faster, plus you can easily use it in-system. And I again notice a distinct lack of even an attempt at quantifying weapon yields of Imperium battleships, just vague a "They're better"Series1Rx7 wrote:The only thing that the Empire has better is the speed of their ships. It's just a different story telling device, the War40k needs the 'Warp' (there are a few short stories here and there mentioning a time before the technological regression of the Imperium where the Warp was NOT the way they travelled quickly across space) and Star Wars needs hyperspace.
Stormtroopers can setup chokepoints in tight passages, and have some specialized armor-piercing equipment, including missile launchers firing proton warheads (capable of damaging starfighters). When they realize their standard carbines cannot penetrate, they'll bring out the heavy hittersSeries1Rx7 wrote:I can't even think of something that could stop a squad of Terminators and a squad of Assault Terminators taking over a Star Destroyer. These guys wear armour that can't even be penetrated by a bolter, let alone a lasgun. In fact, the weapon that has the least chance of killing one is a bloomin lascannon. A FRIGGIN LASCANNON. They're armour is so strong they can pick up tanks in their powerclaws and crush/split/cut them in two.
The Predator is a primary combat tank used by Space Marine chapters, and it got destroyed rather easily in the intro.Series1Rx7 wrote:Heck, even have a watch of the intro to the computer game Dawn of War. That's ONE Space Marine unit, one Walker, and one heavy support, which is the relatively weak Predator tank (as far as War40k goes, that's a recon tank).
More like two to three mobs.Series1Rx7 wrote:AGAINST AN ORK INVASION.
No they don't. They charge out from behind cover right into melee, they get badly chopped up by the orks, then their dreadnaught gets blown up, and the Sarge is left alone in the battlefield against several orks. Some victory.Series1Rx7 wrote:The stop the attack...
Wow, they can get horribly slaughtered because of a dumb tactical decision, but their sergeant can put up a fucking flag up while wounded (in the arm, mind you. the bullet hit him under the pauldron, not in his jaw)! Yeah, that's great publicity for Space Marines right there. Shows how undefeatable they are, really.Series1Rx7 wrote:...and the sergeant still runs and grabs the flag that the unit's flag bearer drops, takes fire, a BULLET GOES THROUGH HIS JAW and he STILL sets the flag up high as a standard - to the backdrop of the rest of his Chapter droppodding in to mop up the stragglers of the Ork army.
Their hides are not comparable to space marine armour. They die in droves every time they fight someone with better tactics than "run forward, shooting wildly", even against the Guard.Series1Rx7 wrote:And orks are 3 times the size of a normal human man, and can rip men limb from limb without any trouble at all. And their natural hides are only slighter weaker than Space Marine armour. AND THEY GROW OUT OF THE FRIGGIN GROUND.
Blah blah blah, they don't bombard planets 'coz their "honor" tells them not to. What are they, Klingons?Series1Rx7 wrote:You always question the fact that the Imperium don't 'simply orbital bombard everything blah blah blah'.
You must actually read and understand the underlying history that's meant to be there... It's all honour.(...snip...)
Which means...? Are you trying to prove they will try to charge into HtH against dug-in stormtroopers, or what?Series1Rx7 wrote:(...snip more irrelevant "it's honour!" bullshit)
No, they tried to quantify the Imperium's technology somewhat, which is what you try to do in a vs. debate, not appeal to "roots" of the Imperium and then go with it. If I said Medieval knights would be slaughtered by machine-guns (to everyone: irrelevant to the thread, I know), because their armor is easily penetrated, they lack firearms themselves and they don't have the speed to close to HtH fast enough, would you start crying about the "roots" of chivalry and knighthood, as if knightly honor somehow invalidates the sheer killing power of a heavy machine gun?Series1Rx7 wrote:I'm very dissapointed with the War40k people here as well, you've forgotten the roots of the Imperium, and what it's all meant to mean. You started playing the fanboys game, when you should have been saying all that I've just said.
Carapace armor is pretty similar, though as Black Admiral posted above, it took a full-power las round to take out someone armored in it.Stormtrooper armor is highly proof against kinetic attacks, but it only has modest energy-damping properties (low MJ range tops since its designed to make blaster wounds survivable)
That said, while the quote is more quantifiable, but the earlier qualifications I mentioned still stand.
Mandragore's psychic abilities were purely telepathic/mind influencing, as befitting a servant of Slaanesh.Actually since its been mentioned/established that if psychics and others can generate a certain amount of energy (lightning, telekinetic feats, etc.) they must also be able to control/dissipate/manipulate at least that much energy.
Of course the Marines will take casualties and their overall numbers depleted accordingly, but they will keep throwing themselves in front of their Emperor to damage, delay, or annoy the Empire until the last of them is dead. There will be roughly a million rushing to Terra as soon as the call goes out. That said, a lot of these will be years away, though.Not as far as I can tell. Production rates and numerical superiority do factor in (especially if other factions like the Necrons or whatnot get involved)
If these are Imperial Fists or another 'normal' Chapter, many of these will be Terminators and far, far more heavily armored and armed than a normal Marine. Quantification is unfortunately difficult given their rarity in the novels and the like.I see.. so we're talking dozens max, spread throughout the ship maybe in groups of less than a dozen, tops. Might be managable, if they can establish containment early on, and assuming they just don't teleport around randomly.
I'll dig around and see if I can find anything.Automatic fire is less accurate, particularly at that range. It'd be suppression fire - used to keep the enemy's head down. Great against the Guard (though they have their own heavy weapons and support, too), pretty useless against Marines. As for Marines' long-range capability, they've got Devastators carrying all manner of anti-material and anti-tank weapons (heavy bolters, plasma cannons; missile launchers, lascannons respectively), Scouts who often fulfill marksman roles, and finally getting close to the vehicle level with weapons platforms like Dreadnoughts.IIRC, the other sources tend to suggest multi-km combat took place (the novelizations, the radio draamas for TESB, and the DK books and such for both examples.)
And yes, the fact its "trench" warfare could make a difference.. but if the Stormies can set up a fixed emplacement (even a temporary one) that gives them the range advantage doesnt it?
Actually blasters can be synchronized to sighting systems (even helmet mounted ones). The other factors are indeed more iffy, but thats why you have automatic fire.
And worse comes to worse.. you end up using a bipod or tripod from a fixed position? Which doesnt matter, since it would still take time for the Marines to close (unless they can duel at long range too)
