[40k] Relative Strengths

[white_rabbit]

On a side-note, in the fluff have there been any examples of creatures surviving a blow from a force weapon? In Grey Knights a nemesis force sword slays a skyscraper-sized daemon, so it seems like surviving a hit would be somewhat difficult.

I'm not sure it counts a surviving a "blow", but Angron could deflect GK force weapons with his bare hands.

Couldn't the varying sizes be attributed to differing variants on the same models? The titans could all have different sizes depending on where they were forged. The AM get a hard-on for standardization, but I'm sure they make an exception for their walking statues of the Emperor.

Absolutely, there are IIRC at least five extremely different designs of Warhound with different sizes.

unfortunately, the most extreme examples of different sizes between classes are on the order of 20-40 meters from some examples.

The worst one for me personally is the size difference twixt the Dies Irae in Horus Rising, which at 140 meters is THREE TIMES THE SIZE of the Dies Irae in False Gods.

[Feil]

Couldn't the varying sizes be attributed to differing variants on the same models? The titans could all have different sizes depending on where they were forged. The AM get a hard-on for standardization, but I'm sure they make an exception for their walking statues of the Emperor.

No. You start running into Attack of the Fifty Foot Women problems pretty quickly. Take a machine that was supposed to be a hundred feet tall, misread the scale figure on the blueprint, and scale everything up to five hundred feet, and it would collapse under its own weight. Conversely, if the Emperor class is supposed to be a kilometer tall, and you scaled it down to two hundred meters, it would be too heavy to move under its own power.

[Feil]

Couldn't the varying sizes be attributed to differing variants on the same models? The titans could all have different sizes depending on where they were forged. The AM get a hard-on for standardization, but I'm sure they make an exception for their walking statues of the Emperor.

No. You start running into Attack of the Fifty Foot Women problems pretty quickly. Take a machine that was supposed to be a hundred feet tall, misread the scale figure on the blueprint, and scale everything up to five hundred feet, and it would collapse under its own weight. Conversely, if the Emperor class is supposed to be a kilometer tall, and you scaled it down to two hundred meters, it would be too heavy to move under its own power.

[Feil]

Couldn't the varying sizes be attributed to differing variants on the same models? The titans could all have different sizes depending on where they were forged. The AM get a hard-on for standardization, but I'm sure they make an exception for their walking statues of the Emperor.

No. You start running into Attack of the Fifty Foot Women problems pretty quickly. Take a machine that was supposed to be a hundred feet tall, misread the scale figure on the blueprint, and scale everything up to five hundred feet, and it would collapse under its own weight. Conversely, if the Emperor class is supposed to be a kilometer tall, and you scaled it down to two hundred meters, it would be too heavy to move under its own power.

[Cykeisme]

That's a great thread on Titan sizes you had there, Azazel, I should have done a search first. Still reading it, it's full of stuff.

As for the Force weapon slaying a skyscraper-sized demon, isn't it more about the wielder's psyker energy banishing the warp-spawned demon's grasp on reality, rather than physically dealing enough kinetic energy to it?
Who was servant of the Emperor who did this, and what was the demon's name? And where exactly did he hit the thing?!
I know very little of the fluff..

[Lord Revan]

besides aren't Nemesis Force Weapons stronger then the regular Force Weapons?

As the Daemon slaying, don't Grey Knights have all kinds of items/gear/powers that make it harder for daemons to maintain their form in this world thus making it easier for them to "kill" Daemons with their Force Weapons then Brother-librarian Noname with his.

It says in Codex:Daemonhunters (in description for the scecial rule "Rights of Exorcism") that the very precence of the Grey Knight is nigh intolerable to daemons.

[Lone_Prodigy]

No. You start running into Attack of the Fifty Foot Women problems pretty quickly. Take a machine that was supposed to be a hundred feet tall, misread the scale figure on the blueprint, and scale everything up to five hundred feet, and it would collapse under its own weight. Conversely, if the Emperor class is supposed to be a kilometer tall, and you scaled it down to two hundred meters, it would be too heavy to move under its own power.

I don't mean blueprint mix-ups, I mean that the various Forge-worlds would've developed larger or smaller variants on the same general designs, which is canon IIRC since Titans have different weapons configurations depending on which Forgeworld they came from, so it's not such a stretch to imagine that some Forgeworld makes Warlords that are larger than the Mars-Standard™ Warlords.

As for the Force weapon slaying a skyscraper-sized demon, isn't it more about the wielder's psyker energy banishing the warp-spawned demon's grasp on reality, rather than physically dealing enough kinetic energy to it?
Who was servant of the Emperor who did this, and what was the demon's name? And where exactly did he hit the thing?!
I know very little of the fluff..

IIRC dealing enough damage to a daemon disrupts its hold in reality, though this probably doesn't apply to some of the greater ones.

The servant in question is the Grey Knight Grand Master Mandulis, who led 300 Grey Knights to the surface of Khorion IX–which was described as an "ocean of daemons."

When we meet the charming daemon Ghargatuloth:
"The sky rotted and turned black. In the centre of the storm a huge, dark column shot up from the site of the tower, so tall it punched through the black clouds overhead. It was a spear of twisted flesh, something living but never alive."

The last time we see Mandulis, he grips his sword in both hands and charges, but we never find out where he hit the thing or how his strike(s) managed to kill it. Since this is a daemon that withstands minutes worth of tank bombardments while weakened to the point that huge slabs of its flesh were simply sloughing off spontaneously, we can assume that Nemesis Force Swords are quite kick-ass. I'm just not sure if a similiarly kick-ass target could survive a good slash from it, since Force weapons IIRC rip your soul out if they hit you...

[Azazal]

That's a great thread on Titan sizes you had there, Azazel, I should have done a search first. Still reading it, it's full of stuff.

I do what I can

I don't mean blueprint mix-ups, I mean that the various Forge-worlds would've developed larger or smaller variants on the same general designs, which is canon IIRC since Titans have different weapons configurations depending on which Forgeworld they came from, so it's not such a stretch to imagine that some Forgeworld makes Warlords that are larger than the Mars-Standard™ Warlords.

The problem with that is no other designs undergo size changes by forgeworld. A Leman Russ hull is a Leman Russ hull, it doesn't matter which forge produced it, they all follow the same STC - Standard Template Construction . The AM would never deviate from the STC plans, too much of a defilement of the Machine God. Titans are the "living" avatars of the MG, to change the plans and wing-it is too much of a blasphemy. What you might be thinking of is back in the days of first edition EPIC it was mentioned that there were several different classes of battle titans, ranging in size from 60 to 80 feet, the Warlord class was the most common, roughly 80-90%.

As for weapon configs, back in the old Adaptus Mechanicus days, titans were modular in nature, weapons could be swapped in and out quite quickly, allowing a titian to be outfitted with the weapons package that is best suited for a given mission. Sadly 3rd ed EPIC went with abstract weapons, overall firepower produced VS. specific weapons doing specific damage. Really killed the modular nature in a way. Luckily the unofficial, wink wink, AM2 rules bring back that flavor and feel.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

With regards to force-weapons, Eisenhorn hit "Khanjar the Bladed" several times with Barbarisater and inflicted minimal amounts of damage. Shearing some blades off of his cloak and gashing his mask was the most I can remember him doing. It was only the final execution-style strikes that managed to cut deeply into his chassis, and even that required a follow-up blow to his "brain". Then again, I'm not exactly sure how much of a soul was there to be destroyed, how effective or not the metal of his body was at warding the blows, or how much power Eisenhorn could put into the strikes in his state at the time. He was running on both physical and psychic fumes at that point if I remember correctly.

How Barbarisater compares to a Nemesis weapon, though, I have no idea.

[Feil]

You can't just "develop larger or smaller variants on the same general designs" any more than you can develop larger or smaller variants of a house on the same general designs, unless we're talking about differences in volume under 80% or so. The differences in size of Titans of the same name and presumed appearance in the fluff are of orders of magnitude.

A large machine requires completely different engineering than a small machine if it is to be at all efficient, and once you start with completely different engineering there's no reason to make it look the same or call it by the same name. There's a reason battleship cannons don't look like giant motherfucking assault rifles, and there's a very good reason why the guts of a skyscraper doesn't look anything like the guts of a 2-story house.

Isn't there an essay about the size issue on the main site somewhere? I recall reading something years ago before I signed up here.

[Lone_Prodigy]

With regards to force-weapons, Eisenhorn hit "Khanjar the Bladed" several times with Barbarisater and inflicted minimal amounts of damage. Shearing some blades off of his cloak and gashing his mask was the most I can remember him doing. It was only the final execution-style strikes that managed to cut deeply into his chassis, and even that required a follow-up blow to his "brain". Then again, I'm not exactly sure how much of a soul was there to be destroyed, how effective or not the metal of his body was at warding the blows, or how much power Eisenhorn could put into the strikes in his state at the time. He was running on both physical and psychic fumes at that point if I remember correctly.

Interesting, are there any other cases where force weapons performed in a less than amazing fashion?

You can't just "develop larger or smaller variants on the same general designs" any more than you can develop larger or smaller variants of a house on the same general designs, unless we're talking about differences in volume under 80% or so. The differences in size of Titans of the same name and presumed appearance in the fluff are of orders of magnitude.

A large machine requires completely different engineering than a small machine if it is to be at all efficient, and once you start with completely different engineering there's no reason to make it look the same or call it by the same name. There's a reason battleship cannons don't look like giant motherfucking assault rifles, and there's a very good reason why the guts of a skyscraper doesn't look anything like the guts of a 2-story house.

Isn't there an essay about the size issue on the main site somewhere? I recall reading something years ago before I signed up here.

Please explain yourself. I've read the main site and the forums extensively too, and I can tell you that the 41st-millenium equivalent to a cross probably comes in multiple sizes. I didn't mean "exact schematics" when I said design, I meant something along the lines of "gigantic walking killing machine made to resemble the God Emperor of Man." Larger titans require better material science: of course, but I don't think that's much of a problem for a society that builds starship armor to resist multi-gigaton bombardments without failing. And finally, don't try to go "it doesn't make sense!" with regards to different size titans having similar designs (read: walking killing machines). This is 40k, the Mechanicus builds flying fucking space cathedrals, I'm sure efficiency is not their number-one priority.

[Shadowtraveler]

With regards to force-weapons, Eisenhorn hit "Khanjar the Bladed" several times with Barbarisater and inflicted minimal amounts of damage. Shearing some blades off of his cloak and gashing his mask was the most I can remember him doing. It was only the final execution-style strikes that managed to cut deeply into his chassis, and even that required a follow-up blow to his "brain". Then again, I'm not exactly sure how much of a soul was there to be destroyed, how effective or not the metal of his body was at warding the blows, or how much power Eisenhorn could put into the strikes in his state at the time. He was running on both physical and psychic fumes at that point if I remember correctly.

Wasn't "Khanjar's" body essentially a robotic chasis designed by a very talented Magos with a fair amount of knowledge concerning psychic powers? He's not exactly a normal opponent.

[Lord Revan]

Please explain yourself. I've read the main site and the forums extensively too, and I can tell you that the 41st-millenium equivalent to a cross probably comes in multiple sizes. I didn't mean "exact schematics" when I said design, I meant something along the lines of "gigantic walking killing machine made to resemble the God Emperor of Man." Larger titans require better material science: of course, but I don't think that's much of a problem for a society that builds starship armor to resist multi-gigaton bombardments without failing. And finally, don't try to go "it doesn't make sense!" with regards to different size titans having similar designs (read: walking killing machines). This is 40k, the Mechanicus builds flying fucking space cathedrals, I'm sure efficiency is not their number-one priority.

do realize how difficult (especially when consider the nature of Adeptus Mechanicus) it would to design anything with that level of tolerance (otherwise the larger version would break like cheap glass). when start building stuff with that level of Scale tolerance efficiency is the least of problems (or didn't you read the "Size Matters" essey in the main site, it explains this alot better then I ever could, but the main thing is that that you cannot build to thing (be it Titans, Starships or whatever) with identical design with 2 totally different scales.

[Feil]

Take a tree. A tree three meters tall has a diameter of three centimeters. A tree six meters tall must have a diameter of ((6m/3m)^3/2)3cm = 8.5cm, because load-bearing strength increases with cross sectional area, but mass increases with volume; and volume increases with the cube of height while cross sectional area increases with the square of diameter. D^2/H^3 must be constant or the tree will fall over and die in the next storm. In the case of my example, this constant is 3.3E-5.

If you want a tree made of the same wood to be 12 meters tall, the diameter must be ((12m/3m)^3/2)3cm = 24cm, as opposed to what you get with direct scaling up of all measurements, which gives you (12m/3m)3cm = 18cm. An 18 cm tree made out of the same wood will fall over and die if it is 12 meters tall! This is why you can estimate the height of a tree by its thickness, if you know the type of tree. Evolution has removed all the trees that grow at a ratio that doesn't give them a constant D^2/H^3!

But trees aren't very efficient. How could we use cranes if they had to use solid tubes of metal many inches thick? How could we make big airplanes if they had to be as dense as little airplanes (lift varies with surface area and velocity, not volume, so our tree example should carry over and force large aircraft to have absurdly huge wingspans or fly super-fast). No, we have ways of making big things that are just as strong (or stronger) than they would be if we merely increased all relevant areas to adjust for increases in length or height. Imagine two cranes, one with the super-efficient lattice of metal designed by some clever engineer probably sometime in the seventh century or something, and one following the tree method and hoisting a huge pillar of steel around. The second one would be hundreds of times more expensive, and the cab would have to be so huge it would never fit under a highway overpass, even if you could design an engine that could move the damned thing!

But if you look at the electrical company trucks that elevate workers up six meters to work on power lines, you'll notice that they are built basically like trees. What you're suggesting is equivalent to scaling up one of these electrical company trucks to be the size of a crane and making a few adjustments - then sending it into a shooting war where its ability to behave as a crane will make the difference between whether its crew lives or dies! If you want to make it compete, you'll have to completely reengineer it. You'll need to replace the lift box and lift assembly with a steel lattice equivalent to the one a crane uses. You'll need a housing assembly that is designed to cope with that kind of an assembly, so redesign or replace that. Your chassis, if you've just scaled it up, will be many times too heavy, so get a big-machines-engineer in and work out how to redesign it with something that can take more stress. Big wheels are less efficient than many small wheels, so redesign your wheel assembly to hold 18 big wheels, not 4 absurdly huge wheels. By this time you'll need to redesign the drive train, because you can't make 18 wheels go with the drive train you used for 4, and your gear shift will be many times too big, and your electrical and fuel systems will be inefficient and prone to failure... just about every fucking thing except for the seats and the steering wheel will need to be replaced with something that fits the truck's new role as a crane. And by then you'll have spent gajillions of dollars refitting your truck as a crane, paying engineers, investing in experiments and safety tests, making prototypes, etc, in stead of just going and building a proper crane from the very beginning.

[Lone_Prodigy]

Are you serious? Really, are you serious? Okay, I'll simplify what I'm saying for you:

The fact that they're called Warhounds or Warlords doesn't mean that they all have the exact same fucking design. They even look different.

I'm not saying that the exact same design was used, I'm saying that both "small" warlords and "large" warlords fit the profile of "fucking huge killing machine called a 'Walord.'" They will obviously have different load-bearing structures, different inertial compensators, etc.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

A good example would be to compare the Forgeworld Warhound, which looks like a battletech mech with attitude, with the Epic Warhound, which looks like a football with spikes and guns on top of some robo legs. They don't look anything remotely at all alike, but are both called "warhounds". We see the same things with Cobra class escorts. Some "Cobras" are less than a kilometer long and others are almost two kilometers long. With the kind of variation found across the Imperium, the class names don't seem to indicate any kind of structural similarities: just similarities in purpose. I.E., torpedo boat escorts are called "Cobras" and scouting titans are called "Warhounds", etc.

Of course, the Dies Irae is its own kind of fucked up. 140 meters in Horus Rising and 40 meters in False Gods? Ever heard of an editor, Blacklibrary?

[Ezekyle Abaddon]

I wonder what the diffrence of the machine would make in the running of the "machine spirit" considering these things are considered sentient, so a Warhound might have a limited spirit but with a diffrent mentality governing it like giving it behavior more suited to scouting where as a Warlord would take a much wider perspective on the battle as it has more destructive power at its disposal, and on the extreme end the Warmonger whitch could be far more active the the Warhound as it only has a single pilot for the whole Machine.

[Lone_Prodigy]

While this can't change the Dies Irae's shrinking by 79%, some of the outlandish variation between titan heights could be caused by measuring from different points–to the hip joint, shoulders, top of the head, or total height (in the case of the Imperator, total height v. shoulder height is a massive difference).

I wonder what the diffrence of the machine would make in the running of the "machine spirit" considering these things are considered sentient, so a Warhound might have a limited spirit but with a diffrent mentality governing it like giving it behavior more suited to scouting where as a Warlord would take a much wider perspective on the battle as it has more destructive power at its disposal, and on the extreme end the Warmonger whitch could be far more active the the Warhound as it only has a single pilot for the whole Machine.

I'd think that most of the input would come from the neurally-connected pilot, but I suppose some specialization of the spirits could occur.

From what I've heard the Orks sometimes use their Alpha-level psykers as capital ship lance-analogs. Is this true?

[Cykeisme]

A couple more random questions..

What happens if two power weapons hit each other?
What if they're of exactly the same model of weapon, wielded by warriors of equal strength?

From what I've heard the Orks sometimes use their Alpha-level psykers as capital ship lance-analogs. Is this true?

Do Orks have acknowledged psykers?
From my limited understanding, every Ork is a psyker, but uses their power in a subconscious method that is beyond their own understanding (i.e. "Red wunz go faster").

[Imperial Overlord]

From what I've heard the Orks sometimes use their Alpha-level psykers as capital ship lance-analogs. Is this true?

Do Orks have acknowledged psykers?
From my limited understanding, every Ork is a psyker, but uses their power in a subconscious method that is beyond their own understanding (i.e. "Red wunz go faster").

I don't know about using them as capital ship weapons, but Orks do have their own psykers. They're called Wierdboyz and they can tap into the psychic field generated by other orks and use it. Of course, they have terrible control so they're dangerous to be around and if the energy they tap into is more than they can handle, they or the greenskins they are tapping have a tendency to have their heads explode.

Like everything else about them, Ork psykers are crude, dangerous, and hazardous to be around. They are also potent.

[Black Admiral]

From what I've heard the Orks sometimes use their Alpha-level psykers as capital ship lance-analogs. Is this true?

Yes, they do, and they have at least once used them as something similar to SW Interdictors.

[Lonestar]

Yes, they do, and they have at least once used them as something similar to SW Interdictors.

You referring to the "oops" that derailed the Perlian relief force in Death or Glory?

[Black Admiral]

Yes, they do, and they have at least once used them as something similar to SW Interdictors.

You referring to the "oops" that derailed the Perlian relief force in Death or Glory?

Yep, that's the one.

[Azazal]

A couple more random questions..

What happens if two power weapons hit each other?
What if they're of exactly the same model of weapon, wielded by warriors of equal strength?

Pretty much light lightsabres in SW, they stop each other and then it becomes a battle of stregth to see who can over power the other's blade.

From what I've heard the Orks sometimes use their Alpha-level psykers as capital ship lance-analogs. Is this true?

Do Orks have acknowledged psykers?
From my limited understanding, every Ork is a psyker, but uses their power in a subconscious method that is beyond their own understanding (i.e. "Red wunz go faster").

Wow that brings back memories, made a ship for BFG shortly after it first came out with rules and what not for just this. Even got a nice "that's cool" on the BFG yahoo group from Andy Chambers. Used to be up on a couple of the BFG fan sites, but alas it looks like it is no more.

[white_rabbit]

Interesting, are there any other cases where force weapons performed in a less than amazing fashion?

Its worth bearing in mind that Khanjar the Sharp was built by a Tech-Priest reknowned for his specialisation in materials science, and that what sentience /soul Khanjar had wasn't going to be present in that body.

As I posted earlier, Angron wasn't particularly bothered about manhandling the blade of one, and it should have burnt his fingers off wielded by a GK like Aurillan.

I wonder what the diffrence of the machine would make in the running of the "machine spirit" considering these things are considered sentient, so a Warhound might have a limited spirit but with a diffrent mentality governing it like giving it behavior more suited to scouting where as a Warlord would take a much wider perspective on the battle as it has more destructive power at its disposal, and on the extreme end the Warmonger whitch could be far more active the the Warhound as it only has a single pilot for the whole Machine.

The machine spirits are "imprinted" initially with animals from ancient earth, Warlords usually got Grizzly bears IIRC, Warhounds got wolves/pack hunters, it was even mentioned that possibly other aggresssive alien beasties might be used for future titan designs. (obviously a fairly early feature)

Then the titan would continue to gain experience as it bonded with various pilots.

From what I've heard the Orks sometimes use their Alpha-level psykers as capital ship lance-analogs. Is this true?

I think it was an upgrade, a Strength 1 or 3 lance battery, resulting from a Weirdboy tower being added to your ship.

So its probably not a single ork, but a bunch of Weirdboyz chained together. That appears to how they operate, the short story Liberation day features a load of Weirdboyz chained together being used as a Navigation system by an Orkish spacehulk.

What happens if two power weapons hit each other?
What if they're of exactly the same model of weapon, wielded by warriors of equal strength?

Usually its has been posted, lightsaberish clash, flash of energy and sparks flying etc.

There is one example in Crusade for Armageddon or its sequel where a power sword and power claw briefly overload after a sustained and violent clash, but they flicker back on again almost immediately.