Imperium of Man vs Galactic Empire.

[Rama]

It is incredibly easy to repair, dissect and reassemble a piece of technology similar to your own given sufficient technical knowledge and skill on behalf of the user.

Throw in a new piece of technology that requires entirely different materials to even operate, a use of fuels that only exist in an extra-dimensional space that you've never once heard of (let alone harnessed) and a means of analysis that simply doesn't exist on any known physical spectrum you've operated within; and things become very complicated, very quickly. Both parties could prod at the opposing technological base for centuries and still not achieve any result worth a damn, however the GE are the side that are carrying the technological advantage in terms of marketable achievements that would greatly benefit the IOM more than the IOM could benefit the GE.

[Serafina]

If the Galactic Empire does my strategy and fucks the IoM, who's to say that Chaos won't use this juicy opportunity to further invade the IoM? Why won't the Tau use this opportunity to expand their influence across the Damocles Gulf, once they see that the IoM forces in the region have been pulled back or inexplicably weakened? Why won't the Orks launch a great WAAAAGH now dat dem pesky humie shippies are runnin' scaredy an' dem humie worlds are now ripes for a good fiiight?! Etc.

Tau would do just that - but Orks would happily fight against either side, and have propably the best chance of adapting Imperial technology (given that they can use IoM, Eldar and even some Necron-tech with their make-belief field that allows them to build hundred metre tall steam robots).

Chaos would be very interested in the GE because you have a whole bunch of easily corruptable yet also usefull people.

Eldar and Necrons would propably fight against the GE specifically to keep them from taking over the galaxy - both to hold back chaos and to maintain the balance of power. They won't do so out of any feeling of loyality, but due to their very own interests.
Also, as previously mentioned, if Terra or Mars are threatened, the Necrons would have a HUGE interest in preventing that (since the Dragon-stargod sleeps on Mars and the GEoM is the best bastion against chaos right now).

[Shroom Man 777]

So this means that the Chaos guys would actually work WITH the Galactic Empire, if it ensures the defeat of the IoM? Interesting!

It'd be great to see what kind of allies the Galactic Empire could come up with in the 40kverse!

[Serafina]

So this means that the Chaos guys would actually work WITH the Galactic Empire, if it ensures the defeat of the IoM? Interesting!

It'd be great to see what kind of allies the Galactic Empire could come up with in the 40kverse!

Well, if you define "we will spread our cults among your men until we can tear your forces apart from within with mutated or possessed crazies" as "working together

If the chaos incursion get's bad enough, the GE would actually be wise to ask the IoM for assistance. Which makes interesting fanfic material

This get's especially bad if the GE actually uses the (Mush)Shroom-strategy and nukes a lot of worlds - say Hello Kitty Khorne!
Eventually, chaos cults would form amongst the GEs troops, some ships would simply disappear (mutiny) while others might turn their weapons against their comrades.

That would of course not be good news for the IoM, but it would be worse for the GE.

[Ryan Thunder]

Eventually, chaos cults would form amongst the GEs troops, some ships would simply disappear (mutiny) while others might turn their weapons against their comrades.

This seems to me to be somewhat akin to trying to suggest that the Imperium would spontaneously develop thousands of Force-sensitive individuals.

[Shroom Man 777]

Wait a sec. If the Galactic Empire follows my prescribed Grand Moff Sheppard's doctrine, then how CAN there be Chaos cultists? These guys are dispassionately bombarding planets from orbit, not going bloodthirsty and killfucking people up close and stabbing them in the dick with chainswords. They're about as bloodthirsty as SAC bombers or bombardiers dropping bombs from a thousand meters up in the air, pressing buttons and looking at screens. I think these guys are the LEAST likely combatants to suffer from Khorne worship, at all.

[Raxmei]

Any thoughts on how the two universes are being brought together? Is it just the usual magic portal in space, or are the galaxies physically being brought closer together or something? A magic portal at least gives the Imperium a point in space that it can try to attack and defend, so they can force an engagement somewhere. Putting the galaxies near each other's edges seems to screw the Imperium badly because it maximizes their speed problem. Stacking the galactic discs closely on top of each other might leave the Imperium less screwed since it places all of their forces within only a few months or years of striking the other galaxy and would put parts of it within the light of the Astronomican. That at least provides the possibility of mounting an offensive.

The Shroom strategy works in that it satisfies the only objective given, defeat the Imperium. Getting most of one's planets destroyed and the rest slowly starving while utterly failing to harm the opposing force would be a defeat. Choosing not to take territory can be sound since it denies the Imperium's favored strategy and it isn't strictly necessary to take ground. Taking ground gives the Imperium something to attack, forcing an engagement. Why would the Empire want to destroy the Imperium instead of conquering it? Easy, they want to neutralize the threat of a hostile neighbor with a minimum of fuss. What does letting people live gain the Empire?

If the Imperium can't find something within striking distance that the Empire is compelled to defend then they're pretty much screwed before we even start. If the scenario allows the Imperium to attack then the defeat of the Imperial Navy becomes a higher priority. In my opinion that affects the strategy. If an engagement is going to happen anyway it is better to take the initiative and actively seek out sector fleet bases and other locations that the Imperium is compelled to defend. That does expose the Empire to casualties but allows them to set the pace of the campaign. It still isn't fundamentally necessary to take ground but you can try it if you feel like it. A nice side benefit of destroying the navy is that counterattacks are less of a concern.

[Serafina]

Wait a sec. If the Galactic Empire follows my prescribed Grand Moff Sheppard's doctrine, then how CAN there be Chaos cultists? These guys are dispassionately bombarding planets from orbit, not going bloodthirsty and killfucking people up close and stabbing them in the dick with chainswords. They're about as bloodthirsty as SAC bombers or bombardiers dropping bombs from a thousand meters up in the air, pressing buttons and looking at screens. I think these guys are the LEAST likely combatants to suffer from Khorne worship, at all.

Which works, too - Khorne is not only about screaming CQ-combat, you know?

Incindentally, exposure to chaos is pretty much inevitable if you slaughter people at such a scale. Eventually, some people will start to enjoy the slaugher of billions and the smell of burning worlds in the morning.
These people can then spread that behaviour to others, which will eventually lead to chaos cults.

You could counter that by maintaining rigorous discipline against such things (which the IoM does), but do you honestly think that the GE will do that?

Of course, Khorne is not the only danger - the "destroyer of worlds" attitude might just as well attract Nurgle, and some of the higher-ups might be suspectible to Tzeentch. Everyone has ambitions and wishes, and chaos works with them.

Again, it's all counterable to a degree (some will always be corrupted, but if you purge them soon enough it won't spread far enough), but even if the GE tries to do that, they have no experience with it.


Not related to the actual discussion:
I wonder why fundies don't enjoy 40K - after all that talk about corruption and purging fits right into their worldview

[Shroom Man 777]

Which works, too - Khorne is not only about screaming CQ-combat, you know?

Not really. Aren't the Chaos gods all for passion and shit? Yes, I can see Khornate influences in murder-death-killers and ground troops engaged in killing and fucking Mandalorians and Siths and even in lotsa Jedi (like Anakin!) and even Rebels. But in guys whose job it is is just to bomb the crap out of a tiny blip on a radar screen by pressing a button? Naaaah.

Incindentally, exposure to chaos is pretty much inevitable if you slaughter people at such a scale. Eventually, some people will start to enjoy the slaugher of billions and the smell of burning worlds in the morning.
These people can then spread that behaviour to others, which will eventually lead to chaos cults.

You could counter that by maintaining rigorous discipline against such things (which the IoM does), but do you honestly think that the GE will do that?

The SW galaxy is full of quintillions. Yet the emotions of quintillion billion minimacromanillions hasn't formed anything like the warp, at all. The best is the Force, but that's NOT warp/chaos/whatever since it's influenced by midichloriantichondrians or whatever, which is not a characteristic of Warp whatevers. I think the SW galaxy humans are about as Warpy as the Tau.

Of course, Khorne is not the only danger - the "destroyer of worlds" attitude might just as well attract Nurgle, and some of the higher-ups might be suspectible to Tzeentch. Everyone has ambitions and wishes, and chaos works with them.

Again, it's all counterable to a degree (some will always be corrupted, but if you purge them soon enough it won't spread far enough), but even if the GE tries to do that, they have no experience with it.

I think that it'll be as big an issue to them as it is to the Tau.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Not really. Aren't the Chaos gods all for passion and shit? Yes, I can see Khornate influences in murder-death-killers and ground troops engaged in killing and fucking Mandalorians and Siths and even in lotsa Jedi (like Anakin!) and even Rebels. But in guys whose job it is is just to bomb the crap out of a tiny blip on a radar screen by pressing a button? Naaaah.

The Iron Warriors are pretty strong devotees of Khorne, but they are different from the World Eaters in how they worship and honor Khorne. For the Iron Warriors, Khornate demons empower their siege weapons etc. Not every Khornate worshiper is a screaming maniac. During the Sabbat Crusade, there were plenty of Khornate soldiers such as the Blood Pact, but they exhibit discipline and good tactics.

[Serafina]

I think that it'll be as big an issue to them as it is to the Tau.

Well, that is an reasonable assumption (them being less influencable than 40K-humans).
As long as you don't proclaim that they are immune just because.
Basically, if it has a human-like consciousness, it's a target for chaos. Resistance can be trained and some species have been altered for greater resistance (Orks, Eldar) but the GE has neither.
And heck, the warp can even taint non-living things.

But Tau have been corrupted, too - and Tau have their Etherals, which is great for stopping the spread of chaos corruption.
The GE has no such thing.

And you can't just handwave chaos corruption away, since it is an intrisic part of the 40K-galaxy. That's about as smart as the no-laser argument.

[Uraniun235]

You know, normally I'm not a fan of the whole "chaos inevitably corrupts and is the utter antithesis of a lib'rul society" concept, but I'm intrigued. Why would Chaos rip apart the Galactic Empire forces when they've just been given the perfect platform to launch a fresh and even-more-destructive campaign against the Imperium everyone else? Going to the wank-extreme, what's the outcome of Chaos basically seizing nearly the entire GE fleet? Seems to me like that would pretty severely upset the balance of things in the galaxy... both galaxies.

[Serafina]

You know, normally I'm not a fan of the whole "chaos inevitably corrupts and is the utter antithesis of a lib'rul society" concept, but I'm intrigued. Why would Chaos rip apart the Galactic Empire forces when they've just been given the perfect platform to launch a fresh and even-more-destructive campaign against the Imperium everyone else? Going to the wank-extreme, what's the outcome of Chaos basically seizing nearly the entire GE fleet? Seems to me like that would pretty severely upset the balance of things in the galaxy... both galaxies.

Well, it's not exactly like Chaos has a choice.

Really, while the chaos gods can influence people towards chaos worship, you can start to worship them without that.
Specific deeds just create specific resonances in the warp, and there is nothing the chaos gods can do about that.

But it is most likely simply against the nature of the chaos gods to deny worshippers and to, well, cause chaos. While they could propably influence them to wait until the right time to strike etc., it would eventually happen - also because, being chaos, their plans don't always go as planned.

Chaos seizing the entire fleet is therefore extremely unlikely. If the whole fleet get's into a warp storm, the survivors would pretty much be guaranteed to be corrupted, but warp storms are so violent that they tend to destroy most ships trapped in them (nevermind ships without gellar fields), so that won't get them the entire fleet either.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, if you define "we will spread our cults among your men until we can tear your forces apart from within with mutated or possessed crazies" as "working together

If the chaos incursion get's bad enough, the GE would actually be wise to ask the IoM for assistance. Which makes interesting fanfic material

Eleventh Century Remnant is already writing it.

Now IOM WORLD Z at THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GALAXY is also fucked. The IoM's ships are too slow to catch the GE ships.

FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!!!

Image:
Emperor: "Hey, Admiral, could you catch me those ships?"
Admiral: "Naw, we're too slow. FOR YOU!!!!"

Because R2D2 isn't a time wasting idiot who believes in bullshit Machine God Spirit Souls while burning incense and spinning prayer wheels, while 40k tech priests are?

Now, now, be fair. R2D2 might be praying to machine spirits... we really don't know what all those beeping noises mean.

Well, I never said "we will killfuck them all EASILY with our STRATEGIC MOBILITY!". I just said, basically, "we will killfuck them with our STRATEGIC MOBILITY!". It can both mean "we will killfuck them all EASILY with our STRATEGIC MOBILITY!" OR it can also mean "we will killfuck them all DIFFICULTLY with our STRATEGIC MOBILITY!"

Fair enough. See, I think that the Empire, given unlimited political will (likely) and a free hand to devote a large fraction of its resources to the task (not so likely) could killfuck the Imperium with its strategic mobility. But that it would be difficult. It would not be a cheap war, even if they fought it in the cheapest way possible (total destruction with no effort made to profit from conquest).

As you can see, there's not a great disparity between Imperial era hyperdrives and those exceptional speeds depicted in the prequels.

If I knew how those drive ratings correlated to actual performance, I would probably see that. I don't. It's like "warp factor" ratings; useless if you don't know the relationship between real speeds and the numbers slapped on the engine specifications.

The DS1 was a prototype and the fact that a ships could slip in past the shields, moving slowly with shields set to double front, was likely not considered a weakness. We do know that such shields can be made and that such a shield can cover the DS, we don't know if it's practical or not.

Ahem. Precisely.

By navigational problem you mean something that probes will find and mark, and that fleets will avoid? After a time such phenomena could be mapped by the GE much as the IoM has done.

Oh, come on. Hazards to navigation are not a trivial concern that gets brushed aside in the first week. If you're only worried about a sector-sized area (as is the case in Star Trek), then you can do the survey fairly quickly, I believe that. But when it's a whole galaxy... How long did it take the Republic to fully survey its own galaxy again?

It's not a "ha you can't move and you all get eaten by demons!" thing. But it's definitely a problem, especially for highly mobile hit and run campaigns, because the ships aren't free to move in all directions as much as they'd like.

So you concede that the IoM loses in a straight up fight, but want to see us say 'Hey, at least your guys managed to bloody our nose once or twice with fluky warp powers and ancient tech that we've now lost forever because while it hurt you guys nuked it.' I guess we can give that much.

Actually, I think you're grossly overstating the relative gap in capability. I think the Empire will take significant casualties among its conventional ship force, though it might be able to avoid losses to the strategic forces like the Death Star simply by being unusually careful with them. I think this will be a fairly expensive war by Imperial standards even if we adopt the Shroom-channeling-Shep doctrine of razing every Imperium planet in sight and not bothering to occupy or conquer anything.

Frankly, they'd be better off not coming at all than fighting that kind of war; it's cheaper to defend than to obliterate a galactic civilization in this case.

They may have been large, but in Brotherhood of the Snake a single small ship of DE Raiders was enough to threaten a world. Sure only one plot shielded wank marine was needed to save them but if the foes came in force that call never would have been made.

On the other hand, that was a world that lacked any worth to the Imperium. It had no meaningful defenses precisely because it was a useless backwater that contributed so little. Hitting that planet with a Base Delta Zero would have pretty much no impact at all on the long term prosperity of the Imperium. You're going to need to go after bigger, tougher targets if you want your strategic campaign to have an effect.

[Kuroji]

This is funny. The Tech priest attached to the Imperial Guard in Titanicus seemed to know technology welll enough to examine, diagnose, fix equipment, so I'm curious as to how they don't know the basic principles of how the technology works....

...probably because it's technology from a different universe, using different materials and likely different ways of putting things together entirely. Basically, neither group is going to be able to just take apart the other group's stuff and make copies like nothing. I didn't say they're not familiar with their own stuff though.

It's like taking a Mayan to Egypt and expecting them to be able to tell you on the spot how their pyramids were built.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

...probably because it's technology from a different universe, using different materials and likely different ways of putting things together entirely. Basically, neither group is going to be able to just take apart the other group's stuff and make copies like nothing. I didn't say they're not familiar with their own stuff though.

It's like taking a Mayan to Egypt and expecting them to be able to tell you on the spot how their pyramids were built.

The trouble really is that engineering solutions are more often than not, not unique. There's always a path of least action that everyone will inevitably follow.

And it's not like the technology of the IoM is vastly inferior to the Empire's. The key really is a indepth understanding of the related concepts, and to perceive how they are applied in a different setting that has a different set of requirements and parameters.

[Shroom Man 777]

Thank goodness the Empire's scientists will be much faster in the uptake because they lack any weirdo religious hangups, and implementing any technological innovation will be easier for them because things like the scientific method and actual-factual science isn't shrouded in any weirdo mythological religious bullshit that the AdMech uses to centralize science and technology to themselves while leaving everyone else in the galaxy, including their lesser acolytes, as illiterate superstitious dumb fucks to the point of attributing proper technological function to gods and deities.

[Serafina]

Now that i think about it, figuring out how to use GE-technology should not be that hard - and likewise how to sabotage it.
After all, you can figure out how to operate a computer without knowing anything about it's operating principles, too.
And it's not like the user-interface design principles of both sides are that radically different.

Now i would love to go and use the AMs excellent ability of reverse engineering, but even if they can duplicate hyperdrives etc, they simply won't be able to put that into use in time - refitting enough spaceships to make a difference would take much too long.

Thank goodness the Empire's scientists will be much faster in the uptake because they lack any weirdo religious hangups, and implementing any technological innovation will be easier for them because things like the scientific method and actual-factual science isn't shrouded in any weirdo mythological religious bullshit that the AdMech uses to centralize science and technology to themselves while leaving everyone else in the galaxy, including their lesser acolytes, as illiterate superstitious dumb fucks to the point of attributing proper technological function to gods and deities.

Shroomy....buy a clue.
The AM is figuring out new technology all the time. They were regulary able to jury-rig new, functional tank design on the field (e.g. making an AA-tank out of an MLRS-system). They are able to replicate Jokaero-technology, which even the Eldar do not understand.
In fact, their doctrine is all about figuring out existing technology. They might be shitty about actual inventions, but they are great at taking something already existing and building more of it.

Besides, i already told you that the machine spirits obviously exist in 40K, so it's no more superstition than force abilities.

[Kuroji]

Now that i think about it, figuring out how to use GE-technology should not be that hard - and likewise how to sabotage it.
After all, you can figure out how to operate a computer without knowing anything about it's operating principles, too.
And it's not like the user-interface design principles of both sides are that radically different.

Now i would love to go and use the AMs excellent ability of reverse engineering, but even if they can duplicate hyperdrives etc, they simply won't be able to put that into use in time - refitting enough spaceships to make a difference would take much too long.

Thank goodness the Empire's scientists will be much faster in the uptake because they lack any weirdo religious hangups, and implementing any technological innovation will be easier for them because things like the scientific method and actual-factual science isn't shrouded in any weirdo mythological religious bullshit that the AdMech uses to centralize science and technology to themselves while leaving everyone else in the galaxy, including their lesser acolytes, as illiterate superstitious dumb fucks to the point of attributing proper technological function to gods and deities.

Shroomy....buy a clue.
The AM is figuring out new technology all the time. They were regulary able to jury-rig new, functional tank design on the field (e.g. making an AA-tank out of an MLRS-system). They are able to replicate Jokaero-technology, which even the Eldar do not understand.
In fact, their doctrine is all about figuring out existing technology. They might be shitty about actual inventions, but they are great at taking something already existing and building more of it.

Besides, i already told you that the machine spirits obviously exist in 40K, so it's no more superstition than force abilities.

Bullshit. The Adeptus Mechanicus will, at the very least, label the GE as hereteks. That is coincidentally why you won't see Eldar pulse lasers mounted on Warlord titans. And machine spirits are not literal spirits, they're on-board AIs. Perhaps dumb AIs by some standards, but AIs nonetheless.

If you want to reference things that happen in single books as things that the Adeptus Mechanicus are adapting, then go for it and show me where those inventions lasted more than a couple battles or were done for a specific purpose, or where xeno tech was rolled out with the AM's blessing. The AM is not particularly concerned with finding new tech, they want to recover lost tech. Usually in the form of an STC. Modifying an STC isn't exactly new tech and changing a missile to target things in the air instead of on the ground, while challenging, is also not new tech. It's asking the machine spirits of the missiles to change what they want to go after.

[Serafina]

Bullshit. The Adeptus Mechanicus will, at the very least, label the GE as hereteks. That is coincidentally why you won't see Eldar pulse lasers mounted on Warlord titans. And machine spirits are not literal spirits, they're on-board AIs. Perhaps dumb AIs by some standards, but AIs nonetheless.

If you want to reference things that happen in single books as things that the Adeptus Mechanicus are adapting, then go for it and show me where those inventions lasted more than a couple battles or were done for a specific purpose, or where xeno tech was rolled out with the AM's blessing. The AM is not particularly concerned with finding new tech, they want to recover lost tech. Usually in the form of an STC. Modifying an STC isn't exactly new tech and changing a missile to target things in the air instead of on the ground, while challenging, is also not new tech. It's asking the machine spirits of the missiles to change what they want to go after.

Sure thing.
The Space Marine Hunter was a severe modification of the whirlwind finding wide-spread use amongst the Astartes.
The notable thing here is that it is an anti-air-missile carrier instead of an MLRS - aside from firing missiles, the two have next to nothing in common. And yet, it was jury-rigged during the third (or second?) war of Armageddon.

Also, Jokaero-tech is repedeatly rebuild by the AM, too. They make such things as Jokaero-spiders (assassination roboters), flies (essentially hundreds of miniature spy robots) and the famous digital weapons. All of those are rebuild by the AM and even used by the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition, even tough they are xenos technology.
And as i said, even the Eldar do not know how Jokaero-tech works, so it's definately more advanced than IoM-stuff. Yet, they can still replicate them.

And you forget that nearly all GE-personell are humans. Therefore, no automatic tech-heresy here - and i showed that even that means not that much.

As i explained above, praying to the machine spirit has tangible effects, even on systems that don't have an AI.
How else do you explain that a Techpriest can unjam several heavy bolters around him with mere seconds of chanting and handwaving, without touching any of them? Bolters do not use AI of any kind.

To repeat myself:
The credo of the Adeptus Mechanicus is to understand existing technology and to seek out technology worthy of the omnissiah. The GE-tech most likely fits both categories, with the propable exception of droids.

[Ritterin Sophia]

It's been a while since Shroomy made his post, but I don't often check Sci-Fi and though it might be informative for other people.

Communications-wise, Star Wars has galaxy-spanning Holonet and even Obi-Wan Kenobi was able to communicate from the edge of the galaxy in Kamino to the central galactic capital of Coruscant in real-time.

Actually Kamino is in the Rishi Maze or Companion Aurek, one of seven dwarf Galaxies that orbit the primary one, so technically Obi-Wan was communicating from outside the Galaxy proper.

[hongi]

No. But, um, why would SM boarding tactics work on GE ships? Sure, it works as well against comparably shielded ships in 40k... but so do ramming tactics. Yet I don't think SW's ever displayed any stupid ramming speed nonsense.

Hmm. We have Obi-Wan and Anakin boarding the CIS flagship in Episode III

Didn't Palpatine plan for that to happen? Maybe not the most representative example of a boarding action...

[Uraniun235]

But it is most likely simply against the nature of the chaos gods to deny worshippers and to, well, cause chaos. While they could propably influence them to wait until the right time to strike etc., it would eventually happen - also because, being chaos, their plans don't always go as planned.

They can somehow subvert half of the Emperor's loyal finest and send them on a grand campaign against Terra and the Emperor Himself, but they can't manage to wrangle a bunch of guys who already want to go smash up the Imperium?

So, let me get this straight. The forces of Chaos will definitely corrupt Palpatine's Navy, because they're just that awesome. But then they'll completely fail to actually use their newfound source of military might, because they're conveniently retarded. Maybe I'm just new to the material, but I haven't seen anyone so doggedly work to maintain the balance of power in the 40K galaxy as you have. Do you work for Games Workshop? Or do you just have that big a hard-on for the concept of never ever ever letting the calendar hit 41K nothing ever changing in the 40K setting?

[PainRack]

Oh, come on. Hazards to navigation are not a trivial concern that gets brushed aside in the first week. If you're only worried about a sector-sized area (as is the case in Star Trek), then you can do the survey fairly quickly, I believe that. But when it's a whole galaxy... How long did it take the Republic to fully survey its own galaxy again?

Death Squadron deploy "thousands" of probe droids alone to survey the Galaxy. The Republic exploration is significantly different. It was discovering hyperspace trade routes. Not getting to the system in particular, but rather, being able to find the quickest, safest way to get there. And even so, that's literally millenia in the past.

Actually, I think you're grossly overstating the relative gap in capability. I think the Empire will take significant casualties among its conventional ship force, though it might be able to avoid losses to the strategic forces like the Death Star simply by being unusually careful with them. I think this will be a fairly expensive war by Imperial standards even if we adopt the Shroom-channeling-Shep doctrine of razing every Imperium planet in sight and not bothering to occupy or conquer anything.

Imperium space forces are significantly heavier and more powerful than Imperial warships. Ton for Ton, the Empire can match them, however, a single IoM warship is heavier than the Imperial. By orders of magnitude usually if you compare the Carrack cruisers and stuff.

On the other hand, that was a world that lacked any worth to the Imperium. It had no meaningful defenses precisely because it was a useless backwater that contributed so little. Hitting that planet with a Base Delta Zero would have pretty much no impact at all on the long term prosperity of the Imperium. You're going to need to go after bigger, tougher targets if you want your strategic campaign to have an effect.

one word. Armaggadeon. A world so critically important that it supplied multiple sectors the munitions and arms required to hold them against Orks and other raiders. No warships. oboselete defence monitors and stuff.

We can also point Dawn of War II novelisation for other examples of literally undefended worlds. Meridian had 3 Dauntless cruisers for the entire sector and shitworth of PDF/Guard forces. In this case, I think the game is a MUCH better depiction of the world reality, but hey, Games Workshop canon policy, not mine.

Verunhive from the story necropolis suggests that the PDF forces for hiveworlds is only 2% of the population. Its better than the expected recruitment rate for a professional force, which expects to have 1% of the population willing to join as soldiers. But not worldshattering huge.

[PainRack]

Which works, too - Khorne is not only about screaming CQ-combat, you know?

Incindentally, exposure to chaos is pretty much inevitable if you slaughter people at such a scale. Eventually, some people will start to enjoy the slaugher of billions and the smell of burning worlds in the morning.
These people can then spread that behaviour to others, which will eventually lead to chaos cults.

You could counter that by maintaining rigorous discipline against such things (which the IoM does), but do you honestly think that the GE will do that?

Of course, Khorne is not the only danger - the "destroyer of worlds" attitude might just as well attract Nurgle, and some of the higher-ups might be suspectible to Tzeentch. Everyone has ambitions and wishes, and chaos works with them.

Again, it's all counterable to a degree (some will always be corrupted, but if you purge them soon enough it won't spread far enough), but even if the GE tries to do that, they have no experience with it.

Barring actual warp possession and stuff, the standard doctrination campaign along with anti-insurgency doctrines will be just as effective here as in the SW galaxy. While there are examples such as Zaarin, the Empire simply didn't lose any major warship defecting to the Rebels. Individual pilots, squads of soldiers(Crix Madine) and stuff, but no unit defection. Biggs show that the Rebel Alliance recruitment at the Imperial Academy was significant, significant enough that the Eclipse was hijacked by such recruits, but there must have been SOMETHING that stopped the erosion of other units from defection.

It will be a problem, but it won't be a major problem that will cripple the GE campaign.

If the whole fleet get's into a warp storm, the survivors would pretty much be guaranteed to be corrupted, but warp storms are so violent that they tend to destroy most ships trapped in them (nevermind ships without gellar fields), so that won't get them the entire fleet either.

Say what? We seen entire planets engulfed in a warp storm before emerge relatively intact. Mostly corrupted to Chaos, but intact.