Single Emperor Titan vs. US Army

[ChosenOne54]

Emperor Titans are seemingly one of the largest, and most powerful war-machines in Sci-Fi, carrying absolutely devastating weaponry. This scenario has a single Emperor Titan teleported directly to Earth in the 21st Century in the middle of some random desert. The US army immediately detects it, and seeks to completely destroy it. The Emperor Titan's goal is to annihilate anything and everything it sees, and it has all of its known weaponry. What will it take to destroy it? Assume no nukes at first, thought if they are the only option then use it. US Forces gets it's entire army, navy, and airforce. Can they do it?

[Stark]

You really betray a stunning ignorance of science fiction in this, your eighty-seventh repost of 'amazingly one-sided scifi vs about something I like'.

Seriously, if you think a 40m robot is 'big', you need to re-examine your penchant for lame wank, because you've clearly missed HEAPS.

Do you think a titan has hitpoints? What do you think all the sub-voidshield weapons are going to do? Will 500 mavericks be less useless than 1?

[Batman]

Emperor Titans are seemingly one of the largest and most powerful war-machines in Sci-Fi, carrying absolutely devastating weaponry.

Um-no they're not? You know, the Death Stars, Star Destroyers, LEXX etc are war machines. If you want to say they're probably the most powerful Mecha in Sci-Fi you're likely still wrong. Oh, and the original TARA 3UH. Roughly Dalek sized and shaped combat robot. Main weaponry? 100GT transform cannon

[Srelex]

Emperor Titans are seemingly one of the largest and most powerful war-machines in Sci-Fi, carrying absolutely devastating weaponry.

Um-no they're not? You know, the Death Stars, Star Destroyers, LEXX etc are war machines. If you want to say they're probably the most powerful Mecha in Sci-Fi you're likely still wrong. Oh, and the original TARA 3UH. Roughly Dalek sized and shaped combat robot. Main weaponry? 100GT transform cannon

I hoped you were going to mention the Bolo.

[Stark]

You don't have to go to the lengths of lameness not-robots; even 30 year old shows have giant robots bigger than this. Some of them even have guided weapons and aren't a walking World War One metaphor!

[Batman]

I hoped you were going to mention the Bolo.

Sorry, never read those books. But feel free to mention them yourself?

[Shroom Man 777]

You really betray a stunning ignorance of science fiction in this, your eighty-seventh repost of 'amazingly one-sided scifi vs about something I like'.

Are we counting reposts from SB, and not confusing his shit-threads with Earth001's and ThePerson's shit threads?

[weemadando]

The original fluff for the Emperor Titan on its initial release was better. People mistaking then for cities, which suddenly moved and started shooting at them. Holding whole companies of dismounts in each leg in addition to the gunners and anti boarding action folks.

Scaling it back yo 40m is a bitch move.

[Stark]

Honestly I'm a bit surprised about that diagram; I remember the old fluff too, where each leg was basically a fortress. Now it just looks like something a mobile armour would one-shot.

What's up with the titan in Space Marine, then? It looks waaaaay more bland (basically like any of dozens of lifeless Mechwarrior designs) but seemed larger than that diagram says the Imperator is. I think it was a Warlord titan?

[Lonestar]

Yup, it's a Warlord Titan.

I suspect they just looked at the art for the Abnett books that had them and said "that'll be the model."

[Black Admiral]

What's up with the titan in Space Marine, then? It looks waaaaay more bland (basically like any of dozens of lifeless Mechwarrior designs) but seemed larger than that diagram says the Imperator is. I think it was a Warlord titan?

Yes, the Invictus is a Warlord-class Titan, and like all sub-Imperator classes (especially since the Invictus is new and, as far as I can tell unassigned to any of the Titan Legions as yet) is a lot less elaborately decorated.

As for the size of Imperator Titans, there are - as ever - varying figures, depending on where you look. Those range from ~40 metres tall to 60, 70, 140, or the results from scaling off the several hundred-metre tall Warlord in Savage Scars.

[Stark]

Even without the decoration, the Warlord is the most generic robot design imaginable. It's literally a rectangle with some guns glued on (in really stupid places). How is it 'supposed' to compare to the Imperator in size? I guess it's supposed to be smaller, since the Imperator is the 'biggest', and the guns had less ridiculous names which suggests they're supposed to be less powerful (in 40k logic anyway ).

This is a bit of a sidetrack, but the Imperator from the WD mags in the 90s was supposed to have a pretty big crew (including dedicated troops etc), more like a battleship than a robot. In SM I think they say it takes 200 guys to get a Warlord going. Is that the sort of ballpark for the crew for these things, or is that more likely to include all the ground crew etc required to start it up and shit?

[Connor MacLeod]

Anyways, to get back to the thread. The US drops a shit ton of artillery, FAEs, etc. on it, until they can deploy nukes to fuck the thing over (a megaton range nuke ought to take it out on contact, thats conisdered one of the Strategies by the Imperium anyhow) Or they trip it. Or they just wait til it runs out of ammo and logistics. Or they just fucking board it and take it over like others have done.

Seriously, ONE TITAn against an entire army? That's pretty fucking silly.

[Stark]

Doesn't it have rings of supertechnology assume vaporisation guns covering the unobtainium doors?

Then again, night vision is rare in 40k. Maybe they wait till nightfall and then send in DELTA FORCE!

[Connor MacLeod]

Doesn't it have rings of supertechnology assume vaporisation guns covering the unobtainium doors?

Probably. It also has troops inside it as well, so it wouldn't be a guaranteed tactic. Of course they could just invade via the legs, take them, and then stick a bunch of explosives in them to blow them up or something. Or fuck with the leg machinery. It is a giant mecha after all.

Then again, night vision is rare in 40k. Maybe they wait till nightfall and then send in DELTA FORCE!

Actually no its not. But If they've got an entire fucking army and they need to take it at all costs, they could probably just suck up the losses and invade the damn thing. They have more troops and vehicles.

Seriously though its stupid to assume the army is going to be the first to respond to this thing, much less that they're going to mobilize and deploy THE ENTIRE US ARMY in some short period of time to meet the thing on the field of battle (The logistics of such a venture is... interesting I would bet.) But if they somehow magically did I'm willing to bet there's a shit ton of artillery there to paste it with.

What's more likely though, is that the Air force deploys planes, or the Navy shoots cruise missiles at it. Or, failing that, they just decide to plant a shit ton of explosives in its path and then blow them pu as it walks over. This has been done, IIRC, to take out titans before.

It doesn't have to happen right off the bat of course, and it probably wouldn't, and I'm not saying that the Titan is easily taken uot or won't do damage, but its grossly overmatched against a whole army without any sort of additional support (Skitarri, ground vehicles, air cover, etc.) Worst case scenario the thing gets blasted from all sides on ground, sea, and air, but it goes down sooner or later.

[Stark]

Marching up to it sounds pretty stupid, but that was YOUR suggestion. It seems pretty unlikely to me that any conventional weapon can penetrate the ELEVEN VOID SHIELDZ or whatever it has, so you're looking at saturation fire, during which it can be blowing the fuck out of everything in range.

Luckily, 'in range' is probably 2km and it's in a desert. 'Leave it alone' is probably the best response; it's ground speed is probably fucking horrible. If only it had jump jets.

[Lonestar]

This is a bit of a sidetrack, but the Imperator from the WD mags in the 90s was supposed to have a pretty big crew (including dedicated troops etc), more like a battleship than a robot. In SM I think they say it takes 200 guys to get a Warlord going. Is that the sort of ballpark for the crew for these things, or is that more likely to include all the ground crew etc required to start it up and shit?

I think it varies. In Helsreach it took a few days to get part of a Titan Legion ready to fight, with a fairly large groundcrew, although one of the Titans was a Imperator. Warhounds have like 3 crewmen, I think. I couldn't tell you how big the crew of larger titans were.

[Stark]

They warhounds were those two legged 'knight' ones, right? Do they still have those? I thought after they stopped making the titan tabletop game they ditched all the knight/baron shit.

[Lonestar]

They warhounds were those two legged 'knight' ones, right? Do they still have those? I thought after they stopped making the titan tabletop game they ditched all the knight/baron shit.

Warhounds are bigger than Knights.

[Stark]

Does that mean the knights aren't classed as 'titans'?

EIDT - Nevermind, I looked it up. Knights look like just bigger terminators as opposed to proper robots (although I can't tell from the miniatures if they're supposed to be suits or Labor-size).

[Lonestar]

I think Knights are suppose to be overlarged Dreads that you don't have to die in order to be in.

[Sharp-kun]

Emperor Titans are seemingly one of the largest, and most powerful war-machines in Sci-Fi, carrying absolutely devastating weaponry.

A Sizzler "Battlesuit" from Gunbuster is both larger (somewhere around 200M from memory) and almost certainly more powerful, given its reactor produces roughly 10^26 joules per second. There's also probably more of them than there are Titans in the Imperium.

Thats going for more "serious" giant robot shows. There's loads of super robots that would smash titans to bits through stock footage attacks.

[Vendetta]

You don't have to go to the lengths of lameness not-robots; even 30 year old shows have giant robots bigger than this. Some of them even have guided weapons and aren't a walking World War One metaphor!

But Starks, they don't have cathedrals on the back, and are therefore nowhere near as good.

Although one of them is a windmill. So that one counts I guess.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Emperor Titans are seemingly one of the largest, and most powerful war-machines in Sci-Fi, carrying absolutely devastating weaponry.

Unicron of the Transformers franchise is described as planet sized and destroys universes, as I recall.

Warhammer 40k has some showy stuff and lots of firepower by modern standards, but it isn't really top tier sci-fi in terms of power.

[wautd]

I think Knights are suppose to be overlarged Dreads that you don't have to die in order to be in.

When they were described in Horus Heresy "Mechanicum", they seemed most comparable to a typical Mechwarrior; a warmachine on legs piloted by a single pilot. (eg something like a Timberwolf with a sword-arm and a non-regenerating void shield).