Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

[Black Admiral]

Just tossing this in here, reading Imperial Glory and the author implies lasguns are slow single shot rifles that have a recharge time. This is for a Brimlock regiment which has lots of Armoured Fist companies because they came from a high population and industrial world. So depends on if you compare them to the author's world war fetish Imperial Guard.

The particular pattern (I can't recall offhand what it is) the Brimlock regiments are equipped with is a single-fire only model, yes. They're not the only ones - both the Elysian Drop Troops (according to Forge World; IIRC Dark Apostle might imply full-auto capability for their lasrifles) (Accatran-pattern) and Idiot Korps of Krieg (Lucius-pattern no. 96) use ones that have the same limitation. Most patterns of lasrifle have semi- and full-auto firing modes, though.

[Connor MacLeod]

Idly, I wonder just how many troops they sent in those lead waves. If you land 100 million troops to occupy a planet of billions, and 93% of them are massacred by inferior technology, you're doing it wrong, yeah. But if you land ten thousand to take symbolic possession of key landmarks after "demonstrating the futility of resistance" in space and expecting them to fold up and collapse, then the idea of a massacre becomes more plausible.

So it would be interesting to know the numbers involved. I doubt they're available, though.

If we go by the whole Traviss-era discussion was "you need tons of troops to invade/occupy a planet" so we're probably talking hundreds of thousands if not millions of troops. Some of it arguably could be done by tanks and stuff, but unless they're willing to just totally demolish the place (and if that were the case why bother landing troops at all) you have to get in close to clear people out of buildings and such.

Not that I think this is neccesarily the apex of SW fighting capability, but it probably is the standard for them. They probably could learn to fight better if they had the right trainers (I'm sure on some local planet in the galaxy there ARE competent soldiers and such) it's just that there has never been a significant threat to challenge the Empire. The Separatists were the closest and that wasn't really a "serious" conflict in any sense of the word. The Rebels weren't either. They've never had the motivation or desire to learn to fight competently, and they've only ever really needed a "peacekeeping" force, which has different standards from fighting a war IMHO. Throw in politics, corruption and bureacracy, corporate interests (EG proliferation of AT-ATs and other walkers as primary combat vehicles, especially aboard starships instead of tanks) and a myriad of other factors and the way Star Wars fights makes sense.

Very true. I think the Guard is at least a little more prepared to fight on those terms, because it does so more often and has a wider panoply of equipment to deal with the job, but that's about it.

I'm not sure the Guard is any better prepared really. The Imperium fights in a purely decentralized, reactive, and its tailored pretty much to the threats they face and the political/economic situation they have in their own universe (they fight lots of little wars across the scope of the galaxy, coupled with potentially unreliable/inconsistent communications at any time, inconsistnet/unreliable warp travel, their own brand of bureacracy, corruption, and politics interfereing with things, and a general lack of cohesion in doctrine or logistics.). The Imperium is certainly more militarized and used to dealing with larger scale threats, but as of yet there's never been an enemy that really threatens them on purely equal terms. The Necrons, the Tyranids, and the Orks could potentially do that. The closest you ever get is the civil wars like the Heresy.

I've gone from one extreme to the other in Sw vs 40K debates, but I think that the actual answer is "Both sides will be hilariously unprepared and fuck up until they settle upon the best way to fight" which basiclaly makes it a toss up - who will adopt the winning approach first? And by winning approach I mean the entire thing - tactics and doctrine, logistics, economic changes, etc. The whole "DS logistics" issue Falkenhayn mentioned is only a reflection of that fact - one has to wonder how all that material is NORMALLY employed in the galaxy, what was given up to enable the DS's to be built to begin with, etc. Or how using extensive automated construction would affect economic matters (and the ability to PAY for a war), how they expand the logistics to take on those fleets, etc. I've sometimes wondered that if the Empire did decide to mass produce entire droid armies/fleets massing the DS1 or DS2 and they would crush any potential enemy... and then prompty fall apart once the war is ended because it introduced major changes that were needed to win said war, but also needed said war to sustain them because the society as a whole hadn't adjusted to them.

It's really a situation that neither side has had to face before, which makes it a matter of pure prediction - and that is a problem because we generally don't have enough info to make those sorts of predictions.

[Connor MacLeod]

Just tossing this in here, reading Imperial Glory and the author implies lasguns are slow single shot rifles that have a recharge time. This is for a Brimlock regiment which has lots of Armoured Fist companies because they came from a high population and industrial world. So depends on if you compare them to the author's world war fetish Imperial Guard.

The particular pattern (I can't recall offhand what it is) the Brimlock regiments are equipped with is a single-fire only model, yes. They're not the only ones - both the Elysian Drop Troops (according to Forge World; IIRC Dark Apostle might imply full-auto capability for their lasrifles) (Accatran-pattern) and Idiot Korps of Krieg (Lucius-pattern no. 96) use ones that have the same limitation. Most patterns of lasrifle have semi- and full-auto firing modes, though.

I didn't have a problem with that in Imperial Glory, really. It's just a variation of what was introduced with the Krieg lasguns in IA5. If you have several different lasguns of differing power outputs, and one kind of battery all use, you could get variable rates of fire simply because that single battery has a fixed rate of charging the gun up for firing. If Lasgun A has twice the firepower of Lasgun B, but both use the same powerpack, then Lasgun A will charge its capacitors (which is discharged when firing) at the same rate as Lasgun B. Because A releases more energy per shot, it takes twice as long for the lasgun to charge before firing.

This also introduces some interesting implication for "variable setting" weapons, in that rate of fire will probably change depending on power settings (EG max power shots will increase the "per shot" power, but it will also means a longer delay between shots as well as a reduction in ammo capacity.)

[Simon_Jester]

Idly, I wonder just how many troops they sent in those lead waves. If you land 100 million troops to occupy a planet of billions, and 93% of them are massacred by inferior technology, you're doing it wrong, yeah. But if you land ten thousand to take symbolic possession of key landmarks after "demonstrating the futility of resistance" in space and expecting them to fold up and collapse, then the idea of a massacre becomes more plausible.

So it would be interesting to know the numbers involved. I doubt they're available, though.

If we go by the whole Traviss-era discussion was "you need tons of troops to invade/occupy a planet" so we're probably talking hundreds of thousands if not millions of troops. Some of it arguably could be done by tanks and stuff, but unless they're willing to just totally demolish the place (and if that were the case why bother landing troops at all) you have to get in close to clear people out of buildings and such.

Half the question in my mind- no, 3/4 of it- is whether the first wave of invaders actually expected to face serious opposition and the need to clear people out of buildings.

"We're sending a battalion down to take your surrender and occupy key government buildings" is something that lends itself to massacres.

Very true. I think the Guard is at least a little more prepared to fight on those terms, because it does so more often and has a wider panoply of equipment to deal with the job, but that's about it.

I'm not sure the Guard is any better prepared really. The Imperium fights in a purely decentralized, reactive, and its tailored pretty much to the threats they face and the political/economic situation they have in their own universe (they fight lots of little wars across the scope of the galaxy, coupled with potentially unreliable/inconsistent communications at any time, inconsistnet/unreliable warp travel, their own brand of bureacracy, corruption, and politics interfereing with things, and a general lack of cohesion in doctrine or logistics.). The Imperium is certainly more militarized and used to dealing with larger scale threats, but as of yet there's never been an enemy that really threatens them on purely equal terms. The Necrons, the Tyranids, and the Orks could potentially do that. The closest you ever get is the civil wars like the Heresy.

What I mean is that the Guard, on the operational level, is better prepared for a slugging match. Strategically, it's more of a tossup.

[Connor MacLeod]

Half the question in my mind- no, 3/4 of it- is whether the first wave of invaders actually expected to face serious opposition and the need to clear people out of buildings.

"We're sending a battalion down to take your surrender and occupy key government buildings" is something that lends itself to massacres.

I suspect they didn't anticipate having problems, and they paid for lack of preparation and arrogance, which was why it was so brutal in the first wave. After that, they stopped underestimating (my reading from the quote) but they simply lacked preparation to face this. Whether that was equipment, training, numbers, etc. Who knows.

It's possible as well they were outnumbered, but that is going to be a fuckup all on its own (the "lack of preparation" thing) and its going to carry less than pleasant implications as to why they did that, as well as why they kept suffering significant casualties against an enemy they had advantages over. As I said already, I suspect this is just an extension of the problems they faced in the Clone Wars (EG Geonosis) they aren't prepared to face a serious war and they constantly fuck up as a result - it's not as if this is unprecedented in real life, I'd think.

What I mean is that the Guard, on the operational level, is better prepared for a slugging match. Strategically, it's more of a tossup.

Frankly I'm not even sure about the operational level. It just really stems from how things can vary not just from planet to planet, sector to sector, etc. both within the categories and between them. Psychologically they're prepared for fighting wars (moreso than Star Wars at least) and probably more economically suited, but there's lots more details to that where they either lacking or need improvement (or both) and there aren't any nice, neat specific (or general) examples to draw on. I mean hell you already addressed the lasgun performance issue.

It also, I think, doesn't help that there's no real way for people to judge or analyze military tacitcs. Most of the time you get either historical examples or comparisons to real life, but that tends to be varied. I've known a few RL military people who wer also 40K fans who weren't as critical of some of the practices the Guard makes (specific cases/ideas, not in general) which tends to suggest generalizing is both bad and inaccurate.

I've toyed with the idea of opening up the idea of a military analysis thread with the hopes of getting knowledgable sorts (especially military personnel) to offer insight into how this sort of stuff should be dealt with, rather than just "RAR numbers/technology" or "RAR tactics reminisicent of a pariticular era" type analysis. Mike had been doing something like that on his website here - maybe it could be an extension of that.

[Simon_Jester]

EDIT: Heh. Remember, Connor, that the Lando Calrissian novels were written about ten years after the Vietnam War wound down; it was the US's most recent experience in fighting a major ground campaign. That may have impacted the way people envisioned the outcome of a campaign like that- where you have helicopter gunships and supersonic jets and are still losing men to punji stakes.

Half the question in my mind- no, 3/4 of it- is whether the first wave of invaders actually expected to face serious opposition and the need to clear people out of buildings.
"We're sending a battalion down to take your surrender and occupy key government buildings" is something that lends itself to massacres.

I suspect they didn't anticipate having problems, and they paid for lack of preparation and arrogance, which was why it was so brutal in the first wave. After that, they stopped underestimating (my reading from the quote) but they simply lacked preparation to face this. Whether that was equipment, training, numbers, etc. Who knows.

Probably a combination of heavy weapons and lack of sufficient manpower- they sent down guys with blaster rifles who weren't prepared to handle entrenched opposition, or artillery bombardment of their positions, and who didn't have much in the way of armor or air support.

The fleet's failure to dispatch fighters to support the ground invasion is particularly damning. But yes, all in all it gives much the same impression as what people joke about happening to Star Trek nations if they tried to invade a planet defended by serious opposition with their typical 'red shirt' ground forces.

[starfury]

Probably a combination of heavy weapons and lack of sufficient manpower- they sent down guys with blaster rifles who weren't prepared to handle entrenched opposition, or artillery bombardment of their positions, and who didn't have much in the way of armor or air support.

The fleet's failure to dispatch fighters to support the ground invasion is particularly damning. But yes, all in all it gives much the same impression as what people joke about happening to Star Trek nations if they tried to invade a planet defended by serious opposition with their typical 'red shirt' ground forces.

I actually felt both SW/40k ground and space tend to have a far too massive disparity in power of space Forces vs Ground units compared to say the Concordiat and their Fearsome Bolo Tanks, which are rather diffcult for both to face using just regular ground units or even Rifts/hammer slammers which all tended to give ground force tactical nuclear weapons, The Imperium and Empire/republic does not tend use nuclear weapons at a tactical level since both seems to let starships act as the really heavy firepower, leaving the ground forces rather weak for their tech level.

[white_rabbit]

Painfully Wracked with Memories of Past Torments wrote

God.... NO!

Its just that every fucking time you bump into a Wh40k discussion I have, your ENTIRE fucking purpose is to diss me and claim that I'm being whiny about Wh40k. Seriously.

And its frankly pissing me off because this was exactly the SAME fucking stunt you pulled years ago when we started the SW vs Warhammer 40k debate on Spacebattles, and you're ignoring that what was an actual whine about Wh40k wankery, refusal to back up facts and Lord Khorak playacting has moved on!

Mmm, so you "have" been cradling this silly shit for years then? Possibly feeding the burning flames of your rage with faggots of whiny painrack posts, bound with the threads of your discontent?

Because howling about some past events I can't even remember and screaming that I persecute you isn't exactly convincing me otherwise.

I suggest you try not to sound like a silly whiny bastard when it comes to these threads, and I probably won't comment.

Hey, how about you answer the questions I asked, instead of moaning about how mean I'm being?

I won't care so much if its a genuine mistake I made, such as the last thread in SB regarding Tyranids, although I WOULD had appreciated it if you had simply tackled the thread on its own merit instead of bringing in past history .....
But EVERY FUCKING SINGLE TIME, You BRING UP THE PAST.

Ooh, let me try responding as if I'm you!

I DON'T HAVE ANY BUILT UP ANGST ABOUT THIS TOPIC AT ALL, BUT YEARS AGO YOU HURT MY FEELINGS ABOUT SOMETHING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Hey, can you link me to this Tyranids thread, it sounds funny?

I'm not the person who's "simmering" about the past, You are. You're the person who keeps bringing up this image of me whining and delusional about Wh40k.

And it pisses me off because you STILL ignored that the whole stunt pulled off then was a deliberate tack, combined with genuine frustration at Wh40k wankery and refusal to play by vs rules back on SB.

I don't keep bringing up any image, I keep on having to witness it in your threads. Or are you seriously daft enough to think that I'm somehow the only guy who doesn't respect your special snowflake interpretation of things in these threads?

Also, I'm really lost now, are you claiming that you deliberately pretended to be a moron, and repeatedly posted stupid shit as part of a cunning plan?

What, were you supposed to come back with a load of insightful, intelligent threads and prove us all wrong, or are still on the "whiny brat" phase of the Secret Plan to Defeat the 40kers?

Also, I have no idea what you are talking about, but thanks for screaming about people "not playing by the rules" randomly like that, its kinda like the cherry on top of your post.

I think that's a pretty good sampling of fan opinion out there.

Thats because you're thick.

You can find any number of threads on any number of topics and carefully select opinions that appropriately support your chosen conclusion.

Simon-Jester

The fleet's failure to dispatch fighters to support the ground invasion is particularly damning. But yes, all in all it gives much the same impression as what people joke about happening to Star Trek nations if they tried to invade a planet defended by serious opposition with their typical 'red shirt' ground forces.

People often talk about how SW and 40k have ground forces from XYZ era so they suck, WW1 comes up a lot for 40k. I think one thing that is true about both settings is that powerful individuals can be in control of military forces, and their control and position are sufficient to allow for decisions that are particularly "smart", like endless waves of troops into the teeth of massive fortifications, simply to prove a point.

[Forgothrax]

I know this has already probably been hashed over, but isn't the difficulty for the IG in that they won't be fighting XYZ Imperial Army troopers, they'll be fighting every soldier the GE can pack up and hurl at them? Because, with the disparity in FTL speeds (what, it takes a year for a warp-drive ship to cross the galaxy vs. 24-48 hours for an ISD?) while the GE may not be able to attain overall superiority, they can achieve crushing local superiority at any point of contact they care to make with the IoM.

[Simon_Jester]

Another thought: maybe the reason the casualties were so high among the troops landing on that planet was the limited amount of spacelift. The first "wave" might consist of a million men dropped in spacecraft all in one go. When they run into trouble, a second wave is sent in on the same ships that landed the first- but in the hours of fighting before the second wave can arrive, they take 10-20% casualties. The second wave reinforces the first, but it's still not enough to break out from the landing zones, and the troops still fighting take 10-20% casualties again before a third wave shows up, and the same thing happens...

...So you get troops who were fighting continuously from the time they landed to the time the planet was subdued, and naturally their casualty rate would go through the roof. They took 15% losses before the second wave showed up, then took 15% losses again before the third wave shows up, then again and again... by the time the eighth wave shows up and the enemy is decisively on the run, most of the troops who started out in the first wave are dead or (more likely) wounded. And the units that landed have taken 90% casualties, even though the casualties during any one phase of the battle weren't especially heavy, because the combat just never stopped.

That is not unusual for the Imperial Guard, either... or for the US Army. US Infantry units in Europe during World War Two often had a casualty rate of 200 or 300%. This was mostly because the US had a shitty replacement policy at the time- if one man in a squad got killed, a replacement from headquarters (typically with no combat experience) would be sent up within a few days. Since he didn't have time to integrate into the unit and was directly on the front line, the replacement didn't last long either.

Also, many of those units spent a total period of months in close contact with the enemy- that kind of fighting eats men, no matter whose army is doing it.

Simon-Jester

The fleet's failure to dispatch fighters to support the ground invasion is particularly damning. But yes, all in all it gives much the same impression as what people joke about happening to Star Trek nations if they tried to invade a planet defended by serious opposition with their typical 'red shirt' ground forces.

People often talk about how SW and 40k have ground forces from XYZ era so they suck, WW1 comes up a lot for 40k. I think one thing that is true about both settings is that powerful individuals can be in control of military forces, and their control and position are sufficient to allow for decisions that are particularly "smart", like endless waves of troops into the teeth of massive fortifications, simply to prove a point.

That's probably true. You get a lot of cases equivalent to Hitler and Stalin's "not one step back!" orders.

Throw in, for the Star Wars late Republic and early Empire, indifference to the death toll among clonetroopers. The tactics we see in the Clone Wars practically scream this- Jedi lead clonetroopers straight into gauntlets of enemy fire, when they're the only one in the unit who can deflect bullets.

In the early Empire, a lot of the troops would probably still be clones, and much of the doctrine would be based on when the army was even more predominantly clones. Expendability would be the order of the day.

[Gunhead]

As far as 40K is concerned, I think it has a serious "eating their cake and keeping it too" syndrome. On one hand we are told how warp travel is dangerous and slow. On the other they can still waste away men and material and "grind the enemy down in years long sieges" and so forth. Sure IoM has a nearly limitless supply of men and material to do shit with, but problem is getting it there. So it's really stupid to lug all that equipment half away across the galaxy then waste it away doing the "GRAA! Massed infantry assault" song and dance an somehow this is a viable way of doing things. It's far more plausible when you're defending a planet against invasion, this way you can supply your troops with resources that are already there limiting the need to haul shit from other planets. But if you're attacking a planet, you cannot really trust on local supply and in most cases you'd be outnumbered if the whole planet is in revolt. This makes the idea of fighting a war of attrition fundamentally stupid.

SW is in fact far better suited to fighting wars of attrition on hostile worlds since they have FTL that's both reliable and fast, in addition to having FTL communication that is reliable and even faster.


-Gunhead

[Darth Hoth]

I'm a bit busy right now to really get involved in things, but to show an example of SW army military competence I present to you the Battle of Renatasia

Was Renatasia an operation by the Imperial military? I thought it was the Centrality at work there, and they are basically South Vietnam to the Empire's US, to adapt Simon's analogy. Or maybe something like Nazi Croatia to Nazi Germany in WWII. It might be unfair to the Empire to judge their performance on that of a backwards ally . . . though it still reflects poorly on them, of course.

Clone Wars tactics are generally atrocious, but the Empire in the EU seems to have improved somewhat after that. While still having severe issues, the Stormtroopers will tend not to line up in phalanx or pseudo-Napoleonic square like the clones often would, or at least that is so as far as I know to tell.

Otherwise, I would pretty much echo Gunhead. Neither universe is very consistently written in that respect. Or a number of others, for that matter.

[Darth Hoth]

Ghetto edit to the above: I managed to dig out my Lando Calrissian omnibus copy to look this stuff up, and it seems that while the Empire sanctioned the operation, as far as I can tell, the actual intelligence and military legwork was carried out by Centrality forces. I just skimmed the one major passage on Renatasia, though, and there might be other stuff on it elsewhere in the trilogy.

Probably a combination of heavy weapons and lack of sufficient manpower- they sent down guys with blaster rifles who weren't prepared to handle entrenched opposition, or artillery bombardment of their positions, and who didn't have much in the way of armor or air support.

The fleet's failure to dispatch fighters to support the ground invasion is particularly damning. But yes, all in all it gives much the same impression as what people joke about happening to Star Trek nations if they tried to invade a planet defended by serious opposition with their typical 'red shirt' ground forces.

It might factor in also that the Renatasians were apparently total fanatics who refused to surrender, no matter how outclassed they were. Their casualties went far beyond what the "limited war" Centrality (Imperial?) aims called for, or at least did initially:

At long last they joined a force, a remnant of the third wave, which helped them get aboard a shuttle and into the safety of a Centrality battlewagon. But not before the ugly, merciless extermination of two-thirds of the Renatasian population was an evil, personally experienced nightmare they would live with - and sleep with - for the rest of their lives.

The bit Connor already quoted about civilians fighting with clubs and meat cleavers after the regular military was trashed indicates the same. If you are facing that kind of opposition while your own mission objectives specifically include limiting collateral damage, that should drive your own casualty numbers up. Even if not, you would need quite a major commitment of force to quickly kill off two thirds of the population of the kind of society Renatasia was. And most especially if weapons of mass destruction were still not allowed.

Further, Renatasia was apparently somewhat advanced also; they were a multi-planet civilisation within their star system that was somewhat close to redeveloping hyperdrive and had at least some kind of working deep space defences. It was also implied that they were rather heavily militarised:

Renatasia III and IV were the jewels in their cozy and conveniently isolated diadem. From space they appeared warm, lush, green and inhabited by a people who used steel, titanium, and simple organoplastics, were capable of wringing useful amounts of energy from the core of the atom, and who had not only reached but profitably colonized every one of the remaining six bodies in their system, from freeze-dried outermost, to charcoal flambéed innermost - albeit under domes and in burrows, rather than through the total climatic transformation that even the Empire often found too expensive to pursue.

They had not quite reinvented faster-than-light spacedrives, although they were fiddling with its theoretical underpinnings. Nor had they yet made the basic discoveries that would inevitably lead them to such mechanisms as deflector shields, tractor-pressor beams, disruptors, and disintegrators - a fact for which the Centrality navy was later to be rather embarrassedly grateful. For they could also fight, it developed, like the very devil. They'd been doing it for millennia.

The next few days were bedlam, exactly as Whett had expected. The Navy appeared at the fringes of the system, close enough to be fully detectable by Renatasian defense sensors. They even let the local military lob a few primitive thermonuclear weapons at them to demonstrate the utter futility of resistance.

All told, Renatasia seems like it might actually have been better defended than many other polities in the same 'verse. While that does not absolve the attackers of incompetence (primarily critical intelligence failure in the first place, not being able to model the Renatasian response anywhere near accurately and prepare adequately for it), it does make the picture a bit more nuanced.

[Falkenhayn]

.
I think there are hidden variables at work here that make it somehow challenging for the Empire to build a lot more ships than it already does. If it's not a question of the tax burden or industrial output required to make the ships (which conflicts with the size and ease of building the Death Stars had)... Well, at a guess, maybe it's political*. Maybe the problem is finding the handful of beings in the galaxy you can actually trust to command a Base Delta Zero-capable starship, and the enforcement mechanisms to keep those beings in line.
*tip of the hat to ECR.

Seems reasonable. Also leads me to believe that the Imperial Navy is as much a gendarmerie as a Navy, and mobilizing resources for military operations subtracts directly from the resources available for coercion. A force designed to wield terror doesn't have to be that large, and the Death Star neatly solved the problem of planetary shielding. But a force designed to wield terror also doesn't have dedicated organs for mobilizing, organizing and controlling massed military power according to some kind of plan, or organs for creating those plans if you catch my drift. So the limiting factors seem to be institutional-political.

[Falkenhayn]

.
I think there are hidden variables at work here that make it somehow challenging for the Empire to build a lot more ships than it already does. If it's not a question of the tax burden or industrial output required to make the ships (which conflicts with the size and ease of building the Death Stars had)... Well, at a guess, maybe it's political*. Maybe the problem is finding the handful of beings in the galaxy you can actually trust to command a Base Delta Zero-capable starship, and the enforcement mechanisms to keep those beings in line.
*tip of the hat to ECR.

Seems reasonable. Also leads me to believe that the Imperial Navy is as much a gendarmerie as a Navy, and mobilizing resources for military operations subtracts directly from the resources available for coercion. A force designed to wield terror doesn't have to be that large, and the Death Star neatly solved the problem of planetary shielding. But a force designed to wield terror also doesn't have dedicated organs for mobilizing, organizing and controlling massed military power according to some kind of plan, or organs for creating those plans if you catch my drift. So the limiting factors seem to be institutional-political.

[Falkenhayn]

Also, without automation, the GE is still liable for the time necessary to convert manpower into trained manpower. And to my knowledge, Star Wars doesn't have a cadre or reserve system in place to facilitate the rapid expansion of its Naval Officer corps (and if Simon Jester is correct, this is a politically undesirable system anyway, as crash expansion dosen't lend itself to the careful screening of officers for desirable traits, as peacetime does). Of course this relieves the quantative, rather than qualitative or time question.

Unless the GE can mass-clone politically reliable officers.

Can a Mod delete my doublepost?

[Simon_Jester]

I think there are hidden variables at work here that make it somehow challenging for the Empire to build a lot more ships than it already does. If it's not a question of the tax burden or industrial output required to make the ships (which conflicts with the size and ease of building the Death Stars had)... Well, at a guess, maybe it's political*. Maybe the problem is finding the handful of beings in the galaxy you can actually trust to command a Base Delta Zero-capable starship, and the enforcement mechanisms to keep those beings in line.
*tip of the hat to ECR.

Seems reasonable. Also leads me to believe that the Imperial Navy is as much a gendarmerie as a Navy, and mobilizing resources for military operations subtracts directly from the resources available for coercion. A force designed to wield terror doesn't have to be that large, and the Death Star neatly solved the problem of planetary shielding. But a force designed to wield terror also doesn't have dedicated organs for mobilizing, organizing and controlling massed military power according to some kind of plan, or organs for creating those plans if you catch my drift. So the limiting factors seem to be institutional-political.

I'm not sure I'd say that- the Imperial Navy doesn't seem to be especially incompetent in a warfighting role.

If anything, they'd be more effective as a gendarmerie if they had more hulls- because if you look at the numbers, there are supposed to be around, what, fifty million settled worlds in the Star Wars galaxy? And only on the order of fifty thousand destroyer-sized ships to patrol it all. Probably a good deal more than that if you count smaller craft- frigates, corvettes, patrol vessels of various types- but it's still a very small force, numerically, to keep an eye on a big galaxy.

A larger number of individually weaker ships (i.e. not so utterly deadly in Base Delta Zero operations) coupled with a small amount of heavy metal to land on dissenters with a sickening thud would probably be more effective.

Seen in that light, the Imperial Navy looks more like a warfighting force- those big star destroyers aren't the best choice for policing the galaxy, they're individually too big and expensive, but they're sure good at blowing up most other warships in the galaxy. A swarm of corvettes would be better for policing, but not as good for large shooting wars.

[Gunhead]

Here's something else to consider. Nearly all IG heavy weapons expend ammunition of some type and as far as I can tell all their vehicles run on some type of carbon based fuel. All this need to be transported to the troops if it cannot be gotten otherwise. That's an awful lot of stuff to move and for an interstellar army more stuff to haul = Bad. Here I believe SW also holds an advantage, their stuff moves and shoots using relatively few types of energy. Having fewer types of "ammunition" to deliver simplifies logistics and less waste is generated and you can even at some level shift between energy for vehicles vs. more ammo. I'm a bit fuzzy on what SW vehicles move and how are their guns powered so anyone who knows more can feel free to correct me.

-Gunhead

[Simon_Jester]

One thing I will say is that 40k ships tend to be big; the amount of ammunition you could pack in the holds of some of those beasts is staggering, even compared to multi-million man armies.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn (though it isn't necessarily true) that the Adeptus Mechanicus units attached to large Guard expeditions bring along the relatively simple and 'non-mysterious' facilities to produce ammunition for Guard weapons, either. Or that many Guard assets can be converted to run on local resources- we know their tanks can be modified to run on more or less whatever's available, and certain types of ammunition may be nearly galactic standard.

[Gunhead]

If I could be bothered I think there are some places where you could get a estimate how much stuff does a typical 40K freighter can carry. The actual effects of space logistics would depend totally where and how the war was being fought so I just put it there as something people should take into consideration. I would have far more faith in the munitorum standards about ammunition etc if the more resent fluff hadn't done so much damage to the whole STC concept that was going strong back in the day. Might be just my impression.

-Gunhead

[Connor MacLeod]

Here's something else to consider. Nearly all IG heavy weapons expend ammunition of some type and as far as I can tell all their vehicles run on some type of carbon based fuel. All this need to be transported to the troops if it cannot be gotten otherwise. That's an awful lot of stuff to move and for an interstellar army more stuff to haul = Bad. Here I believe SW also holds an advantage, their stuff moves and shoots using relatively few types of energy. Having fewer types of "ammunition" to deliver simplifies logistics and less waste is generated and you can even at some level shift between energy for vehicles vs. more ammo. I'm a bit fuzzy on what SW vehicles move and how are their guns powered so anyone who knows more can feel free to correct me.

-Gunhead

How much of an advantage are you thinking and what are you basing your logistical requirements for SW off of? Some vehicles run on reactors (AT-AT), otehrs run on power cells (AT-ST) but that does not guarantee long endurances: TIe fighters and Droid starfighters have very short combat endurances due to their fuel sources for example. Blaster weapons typically require two ammo components as well the "gas" and the power source (and this applies to all blasters) and this doesn't even include the projectile kind of blasters (some/most of which actually eject a casing of some kind, EG TESB and ROTS for handheld and vehicle mounted versions.)

Not that you're wrong about the IG that is, although that of course depends on ohw they outfit them. At sufficiently low tech you can run their vehicles off sunlight and tree bark (probably not without performance suffering, but still.)

I'm also curious to know how frequently you are assuming attrition warfare happens, against what sorts of enemies, and what sorts of ranges you are expecting IG forces to be transported/operate over. Something like "halfway across the galaxy" sounds more like something tht would happen during the Black Crusade or a Tyranid invasion, for example.

[Connor MacLeod]

Also, without automation, the GE is still liable for the time necessary to convert manpower into trained manpower. And to my knowledge, Star Wars doesn't have a cadre or reserve system in place to facilitate the rapid expansion of its Naval Officer corps (and if Simon Jester is correct, this is a politically undesirable system anyway, as crash expansion dosen't lend itself to the careful screening of officers for desirable traits, as peacetime does). Of course this relieves the quantative, rather than qualitative or time question.

Unless the GE can mass-clone politically reliable officers.

They were cross training in their merchant/trade services (RAnd Ecliptic was more like an armed merchant cruiser) to expand their officer forces. Problem is, the GE is shackled by many of the same political and bureacratic problems that plague the Imperium, including a highly competitive and decentrailized military (the Army, the Navy, which has its space and ground based elements, the storm troopers, COMPNOR, the private military forces of various client states, corporate, and aristocratic individuals, etc.) and few if any of them actually get along (the Army IIRC relies on the navy for transport, but they have a strongly fostered dislike of one another. The Navy is split along old Republican guard/New Order lines, and COMPNOR and the storm troopers are disliked by everyone.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Was Renatasia an operation by the Imperial military? I thought it was the Centrality at work there, and they are basically South Vietnam to the Empire's US, to adapt Simon's analogy. Or maybe something like Nazi Croatia to Nazi Germany in WWII. It might be unfair to the Empire to judge their performance on that of a backwards ally . . . though it still reflects poorly on them, of course.

Clone Wars tactics are generally atrocious, but the Empire in the EU seems to have improved somewhat after that. While still having severe issues, the Stormtroopers will tend not to line up in phalanx or pseudo-Napoleonic square like the clones often would, or at least that is so as far as I know to tell.

Otherwise, I would pretty much echo Gunhead. Neither universe is very consistently written in that respect. Or a number of others, for that matter.

At least some if not most were Imperial - considering it was the Empire who wanted to conquer the planet its likely they were the ones doing the invasion. The Centrality is only noted to have contributed naval forces to it, but then again some sources say its also the Imperial Navy's ships in the Centrality.

Bern Nuladeg's entire family had been killed by Imperial troopers enjoying a few hours off-duty time. It had been a lark for them, and had only finished what they'd actually been guilty of. The field commander for the group had dismissed it as a prank - the same commander was found the next morning, in his own bed, with a bayonet thrust through his lower jaw into his brain. No one had ever solved the mystery of how it had been done in a heavily guarded building on the grounds of the former flight academy, nor of who had done it or why.

Just so we're clear Bern is a Renatasian survivor. Renatasia itself was mentioned here in an old thread by Murazor - note the Empire wanting it under its direct control.

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh and just on the range issue.. I checked my copies of the ICS.. the AT-TE has a fuel range of around 500 km. The Juggernaut (by contrast) as a 30,000 km fuel range. Most small vehicles fall into the range of the AT-TE (civilian and military, including custom designs.) The Saber fighter tank (repuslortank) as I recall was also around 400-500 km range or so.

[Gunhead]

How much of an advantage depends the exact nature how and where they're fighting. It's an advantage, not necessarily a war winning or even a major one. Long endurance wasn't what I was going for but how consistently can you supply your troops and what can you do to simplify it. But if you can get by with say fuel, blaster gas, artillery shells, missiles (of all types) and lets throw in some other energy pack for the blasters too. That's five types of stuff you need to haul to your troops. This is logistically better than, lasgun packs, fuel, Heavy Stubber shells, Bolt rounds (of any type), artillery shells, mortar shells, plasma canisters, autocannon rounds (of different types), tank shells, quite possibly vehicular bombard and mortar rounds, missiles (of all types). Simpler logistics = better, and SW in it's own universe can build a far more reliable logistics train because their speed is fast and above all else it's reliable which is a big point when you design logistics and they have a reliable and fast way of communicating which means they can divert their resources very quickly to where they're needed.

I'm not saying every IG army has all the above mentioned stuff in their inventory, it's just each inventory item the IG has means someone somewhere has to figure out how to supply them or swap their weapons / equipment to something else. This complicates logistics. Yes I know IG vehicles can run on variety of fuels, but basically the big issue is the drop in performance so no sane commander would plan on using anything other than munitorum approved fuel for his vehicles for his operations. The other thing would be the probable increase in breakdowns and maintenance which again would put more demands on the logistics.

How often attrition warfare happens? I don't really assume anything about the frequency, just noting that these grind matches are very often depicted in IG fluff. You just shouldn't try it against a foe that has the luxury to fight closer to his supply lines than you and can outmatch you materially and manpower wise which shouldn't really be hard for a world with a significant population base and manufacturing capability to match. Basically anytime IG invades a major population center it can be drawn into a war of attrition and this is a bad idea since your supply even from a nearby world can be disrupted by conditions beyond your control in addition to any enemy activity that can halt your supply. On planet resources in your control are closer and you can do a lot to protect those.

Now this is something I am assuming and it's IG most often fights another IG army or something very close to it. If asked I'd say you could put an army on transports and keep them going for 30 days at a time. Anything above that and I say it's stupid.

To summarize, all what I've said here means that when IG goes to war against another planet it foremost tries to haul with it a significant portion of the supplies it projects it needs to complete the job at hand which should guarantee they have enough to wait for additional supplies to arrive and aims first to occupy on planet resources that can be used to guarantee the continuation of the campaign if it gets protracted and that IG should not seek to start a war of attrition when attacking as a general rule and on defence only if they feel confident they have enough resources to make it work. Well thats what I think anyway.

-Gunhead