Yuuzhun Vong Vs. Imperium

[General Mung Beans]

Suppose the Yuuzhun Vong invaded the Warhammer 40,000 Galaxy with the same-sized fleet as they invaded the Star Wars Galaxy invading in the direction of the Helicon Subsector. Assuming the Yuuzhun Vong can be corrupted by Chaos how would this fare?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

The Vong get obliterated. Nay, exterminated like the filthy xenos they are.

The Vong's main strengths were shock against an unprepared, fragmented New Republic, exploitation of political instability therein, and particular strengths specifically against the Jedi. None of those are particularly applicable to an invasion against the Imperium -- to them, they're just another aggressive xeno species that needs a bit of attention from the Imperial Guard while some nearby Space Marines ruin their shit.

Although the Imperium has its issues, it generally presents a pretty unified front against any upstart xenos trying to get a foothold. They deal with orks and 'nids every day, as well as all manner of minor xenos not unlike the Vong themselves, with similarly alien mannerisms, technology, and tactics. There's nothing shocking about a Vong invasion to the Imperium, nor is it unprepared for yet another catastrophically bloody war if need be.

Political instability and Vong infiltration is a minor issue. Again, the Imperium deals with far worse on a regular basis, and it is the sole reason the Ordo Xenos exists. I'm sure some outlying governors and bureaucrats would be swayed by the Vong, much like in the New Republic, but troublesome bureaucrats are routinely exterminated by the Inquisition and Officio Assassinorum. The Inquisition will then follow the trail to the Vong in short order, making future infiltration increasingly difficult as Inquisitors begin specializing in anti-Vong operations.

Obviously, the Jedi bit is a non-issue -- even if they are psychically neutral or null (like Tau) similar to their resistance to the Force, this only prevents certain direct psychic attacks such as telepathy. Most combat psykers do not rely on that kind of direct manipulation of their enemies and instead obliterate things with brute force.

Their basic troops all being armed with the equivalent of power weapons is something of an issue in a small-scale, tactical sense, but the greater strategic situation makes it of little relevance. Dug-in Guard formations and heavy armor (as in, tanks) will make short work of most attempted hand-to-hand combat, while Space Marines will just eat them alive whether they have bio-tech staff-things or not.

The Yuuzhan Vong become a footnote in the recorded history of the 41st millenium.

[Kuroji]

At best, the Vong can expect to be invisible in the Warp, meaning that things like the Emperor's Tarot and psyker abilities can't see them or predict them. However, they'd only be able to carve a rather small piece out of the Imperium before humanity goes 'XENOS?! EXTERMINATE!' and collectively stomps them into the pavement. And that's just the Imperial Guard, let alone the Space Marines.

Like Gaius said, the Ordo Xenos is already in place to ferret out infiltration, the Inquisition can undertake small operations against them that doesn't require military deployment. Essentially... the Vong would just be considered another random xeno species deciding to be idiots. They're ideal for use against Jedi, the New Republic was fractured enough for them to sneak in and out with infiltrators, but the Imperium is not a thing the Vong is prepared to take on.

In short, I disagree with Gaius in only one thing -- they won't even end up being a footnote.

[Dark Hellion]

Since this topic is a pretty big bust I am going to sum it up simply by paraphrasing Raul Julia.

"The day the Vong came to the New Republic was the most important day in their history. But for the Imperium... it was Tuesday."

[Simon_Jester]

Interesting.

The general consensus on this site seems to be that the Galactic Empire could kick the Tyranids' butts (superior strategic mobility and, arguably, firepower). And here people are saying that the Imperium would kick the Vong's butts.

So it sounds like either empire would handle the other universe's biowank army better than it handles its own. Strange.

[Shroom Man 777]

The general consensus on this site is also that the Galactic Empire would kick the Vong's butts. But in the EU, it wasn't the GE that took the Vong but the shittier New Republic full of stupid hippies and Jedoos rather than omnicidal Grand Moff Shepnamaras.

Don't Vong have speed levels similar to SW hyperdrives? If that's the case, what stops them from just hyperspacing all over Imperium space at speeds exceeding IoM warp-travel, and enacting gigaton-yield bombardments on IoM worlds before the IoM fleets can even catch up to them?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Don't Vong have speed levels similar to SW hyperdrives? If that's the case, what stops them from just hyperspacing all over Imperium space at speeds exceeding IoM warp-travel, and enacting gigaton-yield bombardments on IoM worlds before the IoM fleets can even catch up to them?

The Vong need the planets for themselves, for one thing. That was the whole point of their invasion, to get off their dying ships and colonize the galaxy. That means they won't just blow up everything in their path, even if they could.

Their infiltration will be also significantly less effective, so they're not going to have nearly as much in the way of accurate navigational information, either. This limits their mobility.

Outlying backwaters are likely to fall due to a lack of local defenses, but this is normal for the Imperium. It's the same story all over -- some uppity xenos annoyance starts causing problems on poorly-defended fringe worlds, which don't have the capability to fend off serious attacks. News eventually reaches regional governments, who may or may not do anything about it depending on a large number of different factors. If the situation continues to deteriorate and more worlds are lost and territorial lines get steadily pushed back, then factions in the Imperium gradually escalate.

In other words, the harder the Vong push, the harder the Imperium will push back. If they take a single backwater, no one will bat an eyelash. If they rampage through a dozen systems, patrolling Space Marine strike cruisers will come annihilate the irritation. If they endanger the sector, Crusades are drawn up to counter-attack with overwhelming force and retake the lost worlds, and even push Imperial territory further with the built-up momentum.

[Simon_Jester]

The general consensus on this site is also that the Galactic Empire would kick the Vong's butts. But in the EU, it wasn't the GE that took the Vong but the shittier New Republic full of stupid hippies and Jedoos rather than omnicidal Grand Moff Shepnamaras.

I tend to wonder about this. I mean, the Empire as designed was a fratricidal mess waiting to happen. Sure, Palpatine kept things from getting too ugly as long as he could personally oversee the whole system, but if there had been a competent outside power actively screwing with the Empire with intrigue... well, I wonder.

But I guess that's a side issue.

[Teleros]

Don't Vong have speed levels similar to SW hyperdrives? If that's the case, what stops them from just hyperspacing all over Imperium space at speeds exceeding IoM warp-travel, and enacting gigaton-yield bombardments on IoM worlds before the IoM fleets can even catch up to them?

No idea about the Vong, but assuming Gaius is right about why they can't just BDZ every Imperial world they come across... isn't the consensus here that 40K ground armies tend to stomp all over most Star Wars ones?

The one advantage the Vong will have is that whilst they may not be able to do drive-by BDZs like the Galactic Empire, they can use that speed to perform large-scale invasions all over the galaxy, no? If they can invade every major world in an Imperial sector at once, with large scale forces, that's going to be a serious crisis for the local defenders, who'll likely be expecting some sort of defence in depth strategy to work.

[Serafina]

Well, as always with SW, the FTL-speed is the largest issue.

The Vong can "only" use it to concentrate their forces - neiter a drive-by BDZ nor running all over the IoM suits their strategic goals.
Furthermore, it would be a bad idea for the Vong to attack all over the galaxy. For one, they lack the strenght to actually take major imperial worlds simply due to their defenses. Second, even if they succeed with that, they would have to hold off the reinforcements coming from the surrounding sectors.

The Vong would be far better advised to concentrate on one part of the IoM, since that would make it much harder for the IoM to concentrate most of their forces against them. It would also allow them to concentrte their forces much better, enabling them to take major ioM worlds.

However, they would have to garission every world they take, which limits the amount of worlds they can take. After their initial push, they would be overrun by massive IoM reinforcements.
They could try to attack somewhere where the IoM would have difficulties to send such forces (due to other threats), but that would also expose them to other enemies.

I guess both sides are about evenly matched in space - but the Vong would be in serious trouble on the ground.
The Imperial Guard (and the other armed forces ofh the IoM) have lot's of experience dealing with CQC-heavy enemies and are genereally quite capable of holding them off, even in confined spaces. On open terrain, the Vong would simply be flattened by tanks and artillery.

Oh, and since the Vong are purely biological, they would be insanely vulnerable to Virus bombs.
Virus bombs are normally used for Exterminatus, but they are also available as smaller weapons, down to handheld grenades. These weapons release a Virus that is able to infect every known kind of biological life (due to extremely rapid mutation) and is hardcoded to mutate into a non-lethal form after a while (different strains exist, the timeframe for that lies between seconds or minutes for handheld devices to months for orbital bombarements).
So far, the only thing that could resist virus bombs are very deep shelters and Tyranids (the latter with enormous losses and most likely by very rapid adaptation).
A world freshly counqered by the Vong would be very vulnerable to such a bombarement, and they could have limited use in space combat as well (teleporting a virus bomb onto the enemy ship or simply launching it against the hull).

[Shroom Man 777]

Hey! The Vong can conquer the Tau worlds first!

[Serafina]

Hey! The Vong can conquer the Tau worlds first!

What makes you think that would be significanlty easier than counqering parts of the IoM?

Sure, there would be no massive source of reinforements, but are you sure they even have sufficient numbers to counqer the Tau? Solid numbers for the Vong-invasion would be quite usefull right now

[Sarevok]

Why would not the vong not destroy worlds from space ? Why would they land troops and lose ?

They can pwn the Imperium with ludicrous ease by just hypering in, shooting and hypering out. Without planetary shields most of the IoM will be gone in weeks or months at most. A handful of surviving warships will be all thats left after a year. The guerilla war campaign a small number of ships can wage against a superior and much larger enemy can be dangerous. But with patience even they can be mopped up eventually.

[Teleros]

The Vong need the planets for themselves, for one thing. That was the whole point of their invasion, to get off their dying ships and colonize the galaxy. That means they won't just blow up everything in their path, even if they could.

I believe that's why Sarevok. Otherwise yes, this just ends up looking like another GE vs IoM conflict.

[Serafina]

Why would not the vong not destroy worlds from space ? Why would they land troops and lose ?

They can pwn the Imperium with ludicrous ease by just hypering in, shooting and hypering out. Without planetary shields most of the IoM will be gone in weeks or months at most. A handful of surviving warships will be all thats left after a year. The guerilla war campaign a small number of ships can wage against a superior and much larger enemy can be dangerous. But with patience even they can be mopped up eventually.

Well, leaving aside that this is totally contrary to their strategic goals, i would LOVE to see you calculating:
-that they could destroy "most" of the IoM within months
-that they have enough ships to compensate for the losses from local defenders.
-that they have the supply train to keep that up

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Why would not the vong not destroy worlds from space ? Why would they land troops and lose ?

They can pwn the Imperium with ludicrous ease by just hypering in, shooting and hypering out. Without planetary shields most of the IoM will be gone in weeks or months at most. A handful of surviving warships will be all thats left after a year. The guerilla war campaign a small number of ships can wage against a superior and much larger enemy can be dangerous. But with patience even they can be mopped up eventually.

Important planets have their own defences. Not so simple. Major hive worlds, forgeworlds likely have planetary batteries, fleets in being etc.

In any case, Vong doctrine is rather anathema towards hit and fades.

[Lord Relvenous]

Why would not the vong not destroy worlds from space ? Why would they land troops and lose ?

They can pwn the Imperium with ludicrous ease by just hypering in, shooting and hypering out. Without planetary shields most of the IoM will be gone in weeks or months at most. A handful of surviving warships will be all thats left after a year. The guerilla war campaign a small number of ships can wage against a superior and much larger enemy can be dangerous. But with patience even they can be mopped up eventually.

Do you usually talk out of your ass, or is this post a new direction for you?

Weeks or months for the whole Imperium to be destroyed? Seriously? First of all, a problem of logistics: there are over 1 million worlds, maybe upwards of ten million worlds in the Imperium. That's a lot of worlds to scour, and even with SW FTL, travel time will start to add up.

Oh, and then there's the fact that many systems are continually protected by large fleets and extensive planetary defense networks with detection capabilities that are actually pretty good. Enough to give them warning at least. So the Yuuzhan Vong are gonna have to try to fight through that in ships large enough to be targeted by virus bombs. *Chuckle* Looks like the bio-wank is gonna be a bad thing in this one. When your worldship dissolves around you, it's kind of hard to bomb a planet.

Hey, wait. The Yuuzhan Vong have to find the worlds too. So they'll be searching for the Imperium's worlds and running into Tyranid splinter fleets, Chaos strongholds, and Eldar exodite worlds that'll all be a little displeased with their appearance. Hell the Tyranids would be hilarious. The Yuuzhan Vong encounter another society of bio-wankers and unfortunately they just want to eat them.

Yeah sounds like a few weeks job to me.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hell, I admit that Grand Moff Shepnamara's plan to have the Galactic Empire do intergalactic strategic bombardment on the IoM would take months at best, and probably years realistically to pull off some kind of result.

[Ghost Rider]

Ah, a scenario dumber then even the usual 40K versus GE.

1. The Vong do not have the fleet the GE has by any means. Their initial fleet is less of a threat then a Tau scouting party and something idiots forget...their fleet was in a state of dire need of repair. They succeeded because the NR let them build said larger fleet without interference like morons. In reality it was because writer's couldn't come up with shit.

2. The Vong's writer wank allowed it to exploit holes that made no sense. None of this shit is tailored against the 40K forces.

So this ends up being who gets to them first. Do they attack a Necron Tomb World, encounter Tyranid fleet #5, run straight into the Tau, fly close enough to a Craftworld, fall into a warp storm, smack into a Space Hulk or fight the Ultramarines. Either way, they die fucking horribly because the only advantage that have even slightly is speed. They do not have resources for a prolonged campaign, have the firepower to overwhelm any of the major factions except Feral/Agri worlds, nor have the advantages the NJO gave them.

[Dark Hellion]

I think the main thing is that the speed of hyperspace travel was never the decider of a GE vs. IoM slugging match, it was the clincher. Even if we assumed a parity of FTL speed the result was inevitable. The GE is a truly galaxy dominating civilization with tens of thousands of years of relative stability and the industrial and logistical base that that implies. The IoM is of galactic scope but is territorially limited and has had twenty-thousand years of near constant warfare draining it. The GE can easily afford to produce and crew a Star Destroyer for every world the Imperium controls and only be flexing its true industrial muscle. If it decides to throw out its cultural taboos and go WWII Soviets on the IoM's ass we would see billions of capital ships and quintillions of battle droids. It is the simple economics of what a galaxy controlling civilization can produce. Especially when one considers that the simple scale of the conflict means it will take years to decades to play out to completion.

The Vong on the other hand only have the FTL. They lose by simple attrition. If they attempt to set up a base they give up this strategic advantage and give the IoM a target to hammer. If they attempt to stay on the move they are reliant upon the good fortune not to stumble across an IoM fleet by happenstance. Their ships are simply less replaceable than the IoM's and the Imperium's Navy is very stubborn about making their opponents bleed.

We also have seen evidence that the IoM possess theater shields and other defensive fortifications that are capable of withstanding long term orbital bombardment. Since there is a general parity between SW and 40K firepower this should translate well. Major IoM worlds also possess ground emplacements that can ward off 40K vessels, which again translates over. This makes attacking any important IoM worlds an ever increasing risk. It also makes attacking certain IoM worlds a suicidal endeavor. The Sol and Ultramar systems, Fenris, Cadia, or any planet currently within short term warp travel of Ciaphas Cain all would possess deadly and in the last ones hilarious consequences.

This is not to say that the Vong could not inflict major damage on IoM holdings and be around for quite a long time but this is old news for the Imperium. They have fought half a dozen civilizations who possess that capability for 10,000 years. The Vong are just old news. Aggressive biotech xenos, check; only the Tyrannids have a few million capital ships and are seriously miffed about all the breakfasts they missed while in deep space. Exotic and quick FTL methods, check again; but the Eldar are gay space elves with ancient superweapons coming out of their fairy bums and the Necron are a nearly unstoppable force of remorseless undead metal monstrosities led by a group of insane star eating demigods who actually manage to stand out as being evil in a universe of grimdarkity darkness. Needlessly belligerent aliens meet the Orks who are also ironically the closest thing you will find to a morally good race in the universe. They strictly follow the golden rule by treating others as they wish to be treated, unfortunately they wish that others would start fights with them so they can rumble it out in Orky fashion.

In the end, the Vong just aren't that threatening to the 40K powers. In a universe where half your enemies want to kill you then skullfuck you and the other half want to skullfuck you then kill you, beating up on a bunch of space pussies, killing a walking carpet and denting the aluminum falcon is like bragging about how you banged the fat chick.

[Shroom Man 777]

Man, is that how shit incompetent the New Republic was? Jesus. I'm not at all familiar with the NJO and don't exactly know what exact circumstances made the Vong such a big threat. Damn, that totally sucks.

[Connor MacLeod]

SW (any) vs 40K (any) is pointless to debate unless people decide on or agree upon the variables, because the Imperium is too wildly variant in the involved factors to easily analyze (SW isn't much better unless you pick and choose data, given the somehwat inconsisten tnature of canon in recent years. EG "hyperspace lanes" and the Holocron.) Otherwise this just devolves again into pointless nitpicking over specifics or stupid generalizations (EG anything relating to the warp.) Every past debate has had people popping in with their own "ideas" (on both sides I should add) about 40K (nevermind adding SW to the mix) and then the debates degenerate into whether one set of assumptions is more accurate than another.

The best answer therefore is "depends on your variables". Agree on a timeframe, agree on the sort of evidence you'll use, agree on the factions in 40K that are allowed, whether or not the warp is a factor (I'd frankly suggest not. Chaos and the Warp entitites are too unpredictable to measure and 40K warp travel within a turbulent warp is even moreso - speeds can range from "milions of light years in an instant" absurd to "taking months or weeks to cross a few dozen light years tops" depending on situation and factors, and the closest generlaizations I can recall would be from 2nd edition.)

[Einzige]

Man, is that how shit incompetent the New Republic was? Jesus. I'm not at all familiar with the NJO and don't exactly know what exact circumstances made the Vong such a big threat. Damn, that totally sucks.

I believe - and bear in mind that it's been years since I've read any Star Wars-related material - that the fight against the Imperial Remnant had severely strained the capacity of the New Republic to fight any protracted wars. While the Civil War had been over for five years or so at that point, it's at least understandable that, without any immediate threats to fight in the interregnum, they wouldn't devote their full capacity to re-building their war machine.

[Commander 598]

Man, is that how shit incompetent the New Republic was? Jesus. I'm not at all familiar with the NJO and don't exactly know what exact circumstances made the Vong such a big threat. Damn, that totally sucks.

As I understand it, the Imperial Remnant had a much better k/d ratio and the whole thing helped return the Galaxy to Imperial hands, in a somewhat roundabout way.

[Darth Yoshi]

It helped that the Remnant wasn't infested with collaborators like that Kuati senator or useless turds like Fey'lya. Or at least, if the Remnant was then at least Pellaeon did something about it.