W40K Imperium of Man vs. Star Trek United Federation of Planets

[Composeure]

As the title says. Assume the Imperium of Man somehow encounters the United Federation of Planets and decides to declare war upon them. What happens?

Assume the Warp is in a relatively "quiescent" state, to the point where it cannot be relied on to cause any incredible advantage or disadvantage to either side. For the purposes of this scenario, ""Holy Terra"" is not the Star Trek Earth and never was.

Assume in these situations that the W40K side basically replaces the delta quadrant species.

Round 1: IoM at "normal" state vs. Star Trek UFP as of TNG. The IoM and UFP still must deal with the other threats to them at this time.

Round 2: IoM at "normal" state vs. Star Trek UFP as of TNG. Neither needs to deal with any other threats.

[NecronLord]

In either case the Imperium wins any military conflict handily, by dint of sheer scale of resources as well as speed provided by warp travel.

[Composeure]

Those are factors to consider. However, I posted this thread since I think both sides have differences that could maybe preclude assured victory. Emphasis on maybe.

For example, I have heard claims that the UFP is generally more "developed" than the IoM in terms of technology. Also, BTW, how fast is W40k Warp travel generally? It seems massively inconsistent in lore. I vaguely recall the consensus was average transits in relatively stable circumstances take weeks to months and spike up rapidly from there, not counting needing to resupply, drop out of Warp, etc. etc.

[Batman]

"Developed" doesn't mean anything quantifiable. Travel times are meaningless without knowing the distance.

[Composeure]

Well if you're asking about W40K, Warp travel is one of the things it seems no one can really decide on. I vaguely recall crossing a sector or parts of it is months at the least, and crossing all IoM space is years.

Well I heard people claiming that Star Trek's UFP seems more "shiny" and "future-y". More to the point it seems they actually have working theories of science unlike the IoM.

[Batman]

How big is a 'sector'? How big is 'All IoM space'? Remember Voyager expected to need 70 years to get back home from the Delta quadrant. Granted. that was a ship at the ass end of nowhere with no support but it tells you something about how fast (or not) UFP ships are without their supporting infrastructure.

[Composeure]

Fwiw iirc it seems by the end of TNG quantum slipstream is a more common thing, although I think the number of ships that have these are in the low double digits at most (I say this because honestly they could be in the single digits otherwise) and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. ST Prodigy's ""Protostar-class"" also exists in TNG but I don't think that's real relevant since a. It's one off plot-tech for a kid's show whose producers seem to have a shaky grasp of ST anyways and b. wtf are those scrappy alien kids going to do to an IoM captain and his cruiser, yell self righteous, passive aggressive monologues at him? . But more on topic, it seems that practically nothing else has changed about ST.

What I could find on W40K "sectors" tells me that they are cubes of space 200 light years on a side. Note that the articles I noted suggests that it seems to take at least months to cross this. To cross "sub sectors" that are in the neighborhood of a 10 light year radius it seems weeks are the norm, maybe more or less depending on specifics. A segmentum is an arbitrary designation of space that's more political than anything. ""All IoM space"" is technically the whole galaxy but vast portions of that are not even owned by the Imperium of Man. Note that even inside the IoM there are large sections of "wilderness space". Also note that ""arriving off target"" is apparently a serious issue with Warp travel, although such issues are minimized in this scenario.

[Batman]

How the hell is quantum slipstream common by the end of TNG when it didn't even EXIST prior to VOY?
But thanks for actually quantifying something.

[Composeure]

Fwiw most of this ST info is secondhand from Mr. NecronLord. But more on point I said ""more common"" not "common" which constitutes a notable difference. I also stated that the amount is still extremely small.

You're welcome. Fwiw I believe W40K is one of the most overestimated things in scifi.

[Rogue 9]

Warp travel in 40k is inconsistent because the Warp itself is Chaos made manifest and inconsistent by nature. There are cases of ships arriving before they left, and also cases of ships being lost for centuries (with time passing differently inside the Immaterium so to the crew it seemed like a few days). In normal, non-Warp storm conditions, crossing the galaxy (which is our Milky Way) is a matter of months to a few years, so faster than the USS Voyager by a considerable margin.

In terms of military technology, while the Imperium doesn't understand its tech for the most part (higher echelons of the Mechanicus do but they aren't sharing) it still works and their firepower is many times greater than that exhibited by any Federation starship, featuring multiple methods of planetary destruction. Also, should they land troops, they wreck any ground-based warfare capabilities the Federation or any of its allies (or opponents) can field, owing to actually, y'know, having said capabilities in the first place.

[Composeure]

Fwiw I recall the numbers for Warp travel are more on the order for months for sectors and years for the whole galaxy. Not that this conflicts much with anything all things considered.

Also ""multiple methods of planetary destruction"" I think maybe this is more the fault of nebulous phrasing but afaik most things top out at specialized chain reaction weapons to destroy the surface of the planet. I know ""two stage cyclonic torpedoes"" exist but that's still basically ""just"" causing major damage to the planet.

I don't dispute a victory though in terms of ground forces. The most I could say here is that sometimes you'll see diehard Trektards who insist on wanking phasers.

[bilateralrope]

Is WH40K still operating with the Imperium having to have its ships enter and exit the warp at the outer edge of a solar system, then travel within a system at sublight ?

Because that sounds like it would complicate the Imperiums speed advantage. Though probably not in any way that matters in the long term.

[Rogue 9]

It can't be more than a few years at most to cross the galaxy, because the Ultramarines get fucking everywhere and they're based on the far eastern fringe. In point, Marneus Calgar took command at Vigilus, clear across the galaxy towards the Eye of Terror, soon after the fall of Cadia and formation of the Great Rift in the last round of story advancement. If it took decades to cross the galaxy he couldn't have gotten there.

Exterminatus methods vary, but one of them is simple orbital bombardment. A cyclonic torpedo is faster, but their naval gunnery can do it.

Yes, Imperial vessels must enter and exit the Warp at what are called the Mandeville points, though game makers tend to forget this when rendering cutscenes.

[NecronLord]

Well if you're asking about W40K, Warp travel is one of the things it seems no one can really decide on. I vaguely recall crossing a sector or parts of it is months at the least, and crossing all IoM space is years.

Well I heard people claiming that Star Trek's UFP seems more "shiny" and "future-y". More to the point it seems they actually have working theories of science unlike the IoM.

The Imperium is a post-apocalyptic society where the supermajority of the population has an unambiguously worse standard of living than our world in C21st, including many third world countries, so yes.

Fwiw most of this ST info is secondhand from Mr. NecronLord.

Your other thread said it was the Federation in the 24th Century, which includes Prodigy (2394) and season one of Picard (2399). TNG on the other hand, ends in 2371. That doesn't mean that things in the newer shows aren't relevant - the California class was around in the 2370s for instance - but generally technological progress from these later shows isn't going to be in TNG.

In terms of military technology, while the Imperium doesn't understand its tech for the most part (higher echelons of the Mechanicus do but they aren't sharing)

Though that's been a traditional example it's a little generous, as we have screeds from the few archmagi who do understand the scientific method (e.g. Cawl, Kotov) about how their peers do not understand the technology they use. Ignorant repetition is probably the norm at every level including pinnacle-archmagi. We've even seen the Fabricator General of Mars (Oud Oudia Raskian) admit his own office has lost knowledge available to its forebears (chapter 20, The Dark City, Chris Wraight). I honestly think to some degree BL has been out to clap-back at this concept, as it really does dilute the theme and identity of the faction.

Fwiw I recall the numbers for Warp travel are more on the order for months for sectors and years for the whole galaxy. Not that this conflicts much with anything all things considered.

So, to cover this in a little more depth, the sources that suggest that intra-sector travel is difficult and slow are mostly those from the popular RPGs, unsurprising as RPGs tend to give a lot more information about day-to-day activity than other narrative media. But it's worth noting that they are talking about regional chartist ships, some of which do not use navigators, instead relying on calculated jumps which have an upper limit of 4ly, it also includes things like lading and unloading at each stage of the journey. One example given in the RPGs is Dark Heresy 1e's featured Chartist Ship the Miserichord. The Miserichord takes approximately a year to travel between three planets, which is probably a circuit trip of less than 150 ly - so 150c.

But by the same token, the very same book that gives us that tells us implicitly an upper limit of how long it takes a black ship to get a psyker to Terra, as you add to your player character's age if you are a sanctioned psyker in Dark Heresy to account for being taken to Terra, sanctioned and then deployed. That's 3d10 years - anything between three and thirty years, trending toward the midpoint.

But that's also schooling, sitting in jail waiting for a black ship to arrive, and more.

On the other hand, trans-galactic journeys aren't too uncommon for the military elite. And we can say how that happens quite easily, let's take an example from Imperium Maledictum, the new RPG which is a few weeks old:

House Enebayar: A nomadic house famous for the speed and relative reliability with which they navigate the warp, the Enebayar regularly serve various Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, several Knight houses, and the Navis Imperialis with distinction. Many mercantile factions have desperately tried to acquire the services of an Enebayar Navigator, to no avail.

One of the Navigator houses of the Macharius Sector, unavailable to civilians, and also a cut above.

For comparison, let's have ten 41st Millennium faster journeys:

1. Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade - 12 years in length, took him to multiple destinations across the galactic disc.
2. Amadeus' ship in Spears of the Emperor - Crosses the Great Rift and goes from one side of the galaxy to the other within a few months.
3. Rites of Passage - Navigator ship (obviously they're good at it themselves) travels from Necromunda to Vorlese, the inhabited planet closest to sol, in days or weeks at most, crossing ~10% of the galaxy's disc to do so.
3. Belisarius Cawl, the Great Work - Cawl travels from Mars to Sotha, across the galaxy, in less than a year.
4. Gods of Mars etc - The Kotov expedition crosses the galaxy in seemingly months.
5. Sons of the Hydra - The Alpha Legion warband of occam the untrue (using a navigator though, not sorcery) travel from the Maelstrom to the Galactic Core in weeks.

There's a lot more examples than these, notably I haven't gone to get any of the Imperium's fastest ships - officially those of the Grey Knights. I'm also keeping away from the Horus Heresy, but obviously they fought a galactic war in 7 years.

In short there are three rough tiers; ships without access to navigators, ships with workaday navigators, and ships with elite navigators, which are usually military in nature.

Also ""multiple methods of planetary destruction"" I think maybe this is more the fault of nebulous phrasing but afaik most things top out at specialized chain reaction weapons to destroy the surface of the planet. I know ""two stage cyclonic torpedoes"" exist but that's still basically ""just"" causing major damage to the planet.

Those ones actually do scatter a planet as asteroids, but they're also from an obscure and possibly retconned White Dwarf article from near 20 years ago. Fans wank off to it a lot, but it's essentially a one-appearance bit of lostech.

We have actually seen IoM ships mass-scatter planets with volley firepower from their main guns, in the form of Caliban and Nostramo during the Heresy, though in both cases there seems to have been extenuating circumstances.

But really this doesn't matter, the Imperium can get to the UFP and in the 2360s planetary shields seem quite rare, so there's not much that will stop them landing on federation planets.

[Composeure]

To be a bit pedantic when I specified TNG it was more meant to refer to that ""era"" so to speak since it seems to me most people assume it refers to that entire time period anyways (and because specifying a different show that covers such a relatively short period of time might have been confusing). Just assume it refers to that.

Yeah months to years on average for uninterrupted journeys with access to their ""best resources"" seems right. Not going to really argue this. Note that there are quite a few other disadvantages to Warp travel in the form of arriving off target, as well as possibly needing to reorient by dropping out of Warp, refueling, etc. etc. (not counting dependence on scarce resources and services to get better performance) but in any case this specific scenario makes most of the biggest innate problems minimized.

Fwiw "two stage cyclonic torpedoes"" function off of basically specialized chain reactions that, incredibly, include using the planet itself as aid. My impression was that they would have ""merely"" caused major damage to the point that the planet splintered apart or at the very least would have done so in a matter of days. But this is moot anyways.

Seems nothing's changed on the ignorance front.

Yeah fleet actions and continued orbital bombardment can eventually surface wipe. This is pretty obvious. Incidentally, I checked the other examples given and it definitely seems both were because of irregular events. I just wanted to point this out because IoM (and W40K) ship firepower gets a tremendous amount of wank.

Overall I think the ST UFP would offer some sort of fight, but depending on how much the IoM wants to take them down they would lose, mostly due to their pitiful size, lack of combat experience, and industry/logistics that has somehow managed to be even worse than most W40K factions.

[NecronLord]

To be a bit pedantic when I specified TNG it was more meant to refer to that ""era"" so to speak since it seems to me most people assume it refers to that entire time period anyways (and because specifying a different show that covers such a relatively short period of time might have been confusing). Just assume it refers to that.

In that case yes, if you mean to the end of ST Prodigy the Federation has at least one slipstream ship deployed and has built at least two Protostar-classes.

Yeah months to years on average for uninterrupted journeys with access to their ""best resources"" seems right. Not going to really argue this. Note that there are quite a few other disadvantages to Warp travel in the form of arriving off target, as well as possibly needing to reorient by dropping out of Warp, refueling, etc. etc. (not counting dependence on scarce resources and services to get better performance) but in any case this specific scenario makes most of the biggest innate problems minimized.

Fwiw "two stage cyclonic torpedoes"" function off of basically specialized chain reactions that, incredibly, include using the planet itself as aid. My impression was that they would have ""merely"" caused major damage to the point that the planet splintered apart or at the very least would have done so in a matter of days. But this is moot anyways.

Having actually got a copy of Last Stand of the Firebrands, no, they mass-scatter the planet and take very little time to do so, the Inquisitor in the story calls them down as a strike as he's being overrun by necrons and the planet's blown apart before they are all dead. They are however, irreplaceable and the sector in that story only had six. They're not really standard for the Imperium.

Mind this site's traditional contempt for chain reaction weapons is not really too relevant when netiher side has reliable planetary shields - it doesn't matter if a UFP ship firing trilithium resin at your planet is unable to get through a planetary shield when you're on an IoM planet that has no such animal.

Seems nothing's changed on the ignorance front.

Yeah fleet actions and continued orbital bombardment can eventually surface wipe. This is pretty obvious. Incidentally, I checked the other examples given and it definitely seems both were because of irregular events. I just wanted to point this out because IoM (and W40K) ship firepower gets a tremendous amount of wank.

Ultimately these and the other examples of the Imperium blowing up planets through masse battery fire are examples of what you might call the Space Opera planets-fall-apart trend. Of course, Star Trek planetary bodies aren't necessarily proof against such antics, they're known to explode for no apparent reason even, in the most famous and best Star Trek movies. In fact Georgio's plan to destroy Qu'onos from ST Discovery season 1 was almost completely duplicated in 40k for Lion El Johnson's destruction of Chemos in 2022's lore of the Horus Heresy. Star Trek planets are fragile too.

Overall I think the ST UFP would offer some sort of fight, but depending on how much the IoM wants to take them down they would lose, mostly due to their pitiful size, lack of combat experience, and industry/logistics that has somehow managed to be even worse than most W40K factions.

I'm not sure their industry is worse, their size is simply smaller.

[Composeure]

Answering in order--

Not going to argue much about this other than it has been already addressed further up.

Yeah but it's still a relevant point, which plays into a number of different factors. Which, granted, are not overly relevant in this specific scenario. Fwiw you yourself point out that such weapons are vanishingly rare anyhow and fall into the W40K category of "one shot wonders" that possibly have been retconned totally.

Lol at the "fragile planets" trend. But fwiw in both those specific circumstances there were significant external factors, and one of them was not even totally destroyed.

Well one could argue that size arguably does play a role in "measuring industry". But this can be inconsistent and/or hindered by other things-- I can drag out a book where a major IoM mining planet is using medieval tools to fulfill its""tithes"".

[NecronLord]

Well one could argue that size arguably does play a role in "measuring industry". But this can be inconsistent and/or hindered by other things-- I can drag out a book where a major IoM mining planet is using medieval tools to fulfill its""tithes"".

I should hope you can too, it's the same DH rulebook mentioned above. Of course as mentioned before, the RPGs are disproportionately represented in online debate because you don't need to extract lore about industry out of an ongoing narrative.

There's also examples of far more sophisticated systems, the most ubiquitous form of mining is probably the one represented by the tabletop genestealer cultist army (handheldd lasers and mining vehicles) as we have seen the same equipment appear galaxy wide, from Terra to the Tau frontier. When 40k gets a tabletop item it tends to crystallize whatever it represents after all.

[NecronLord]

Oh, while we're at it.

[Composeure]

Oh sure by no means am I saying everything the IoM has is fatally antiquated.

I'm not quite sure what you are implying with the RPG line.

What does the video show, for some reason it's not showing for me?

[Eternal_Freedom]

To leave aside the tech-related issue, I think a major factor is going to be psychology - the UFP will try to be diplomatic, negotiate and so forth. The Imperium - not so much. They'll look at the UFP and see a bunch of humans consorting openly with xenos (heresy), not worshipping the God-Emperor (extra heresy), using technology unsanctioned by the Priesthood of Mars (techno-heresy) and depending on how they interpret various ST examples of telepathy, unsanctioned warp-sorcery (even more heresy).

The Imperium sees no issue with slaughtering it's own people for such crimes, so they will be willing to go full-on Purge the Heretic with flamers and other assorted goodies up to an including Exterminatus. By the time the UFP realise exactly what they're dealing with it'll be too late. Depending on where exactly in either faction's territory the wormhole/warp portal/whatever is, the first inkling the UFP might get of just what they're facing might be Vulcan being destroyed by virus bombs as they're a bunch of abhuman unsanctioned psykers.

The only way I could see the UFP pulling out a victory is maybe if they're only fighting a small portion of the Imperium's forces (which since the Warp is stated to be calm in this scenario, means Chaos isn't a threat, which means the Imperium has more forces available anyway) and does a Dominion War-style grand coalition deal.

Of course all that does is make the Imperium think "huh, ok this weird little xenos-loving civilisation is more trouble than we thought, time to really bring the hammer down."

Hell, one Gloriana-class battleship (which they still have at least one of by M41, Macragge's Honour IIRC) out-masses a good chunk of Starfleet and is built to fight similar-scale threats, same as the assorted other battleships, battlecruisers and so on.

In essence, the Imperium is quite happy to wage a war of extermination and sift through the debris for anything useful, the UFP is not. And even if the UFP could see off the first wave, they can't launch any useful counterattack because it'll take them decades to cross the Imperium's territory to any strategic targets (and those are fortified to hell and back anyway). Starfleet might win the odd battle, but I cannot see any way for them to win the war.

[Composeure]

Great, now I'm wondering about a ST Prodigy crossover episode where the plucky crew of alien kids on board the USS Protostar happen across a raging battle between an IoM Lunar class cruiser and escorts and Starfleet forces. In true ST writer fashion, such an episode would probably involve the crew sneaking on board somehow (perhaps some one off thing involving exploiting a Void shield frequency blah blah to ""beam"" themselves onboard), meeting with a few IG soldiers who reveal themselves to be members of a secret rebel group in the IoM who want to stop the wars, and then causing a ceasefire between the two forces by broadcasting a monologue about the UFP's ideals to the fleet, thus causing mass mutinies. ""Bonus points"" if they also wind up humiliating a Space Marine or a IoM admiral during all this somehow. Take all this with a grain of salt though . Strangely enough, it still stands that the ""Protostar-class"" is the only one able to make it anywhere in IoM territory in anything resembling a decent time frame. Make of this what you will, but fwiw I don't think gratuitous plot armor counts in neutral situations.

I'm frankly tempted to write a larger fanfiction on this, although it would probably need to reference my other thread about ""versus fanfics"".

[NecronLord]

I'm not quite sure what you are implying with the RPG line.

That quite often people see what's in the RPGs and take it as the norm for the Imperium - e.g. people think the Imperium's currency is thrones, when that's actually only part of the calixis sector in Dark Heresy. Serephis Secundus is a notably backward mining world by IoM standards.

What does the video show, for some reason it's not showing for me?

A federation dilithium mine using slave labour with medieval hand tools.

I'm not even joking. It's from Author Author, and one of the more demented things in Voyager. They repurpouse the older Emergency Medical Holograms to use shovels and picks to harvest Dilithium.

To leave aside the tech-related issue, I think a major factor is going to be psychology - the UFP will try to be diplomatic, negotiate and so forth. The Imperium - not so much. They'll look at the UFP and see a bunch of humans consorting openly with xenos (heresy), not worshipping the God-Emperor (extra heresy), using technology unsanctioned by the Priesthood of Mars (techno-heresy) and depending on how they interpret various ST examples of telepathy, unsanctioned warp-sorcery (even more heresy).

The Imperium sees no issue with slaughtering it's own people for such crimes, so they will be willing to go full-on Purge the Heretic with flamers and other assorted goodies up to an including Exterminatus. By the time the UFP realise exactly what they're dealing with it'll be too late. Depending on where exactly in either faction's territory the wormhole/warp portal/whatever is, the first inkling the UFP might get of just what they're facing might be Vulcan being destroyed by virus bombs as they're a bunch of abhuman unsanctioned psykers.

The only way I could see the UFP pulling out a victory is maybe if they're only fighting a small portion of the Imperium's forces (which since the Warp is stated to be calm in this scenario, means Chaos isn't a threat, which means the Imperium has more forces available anyway) and does a Dominion War-style grand coalition deal.

Well we can't really give them allies from the Trekverse, if we could we'd be discussing how hard the Metrons feel like beating the Imperium after all.

Of course all that does is make the Imperium think "huh, ok this weird little xenos-loving civilisation is more trouble than we thought, time to really bring the hammer down."

Hell, one Gloriana-class battleship (which they still have at least one of by M41, Macragge's Honour IIRC) out-masses a good chunk of Starfleet and is built to fight similar-scale threats, same as the assorted other battleships, battlecruisers and so on.

They've several, in fact. Lex Talonis, Eternal Crusader, Invincible Reason, possibly others too.

In essence, the Imperium is quite happy to wage a war of extermination and sift through the debris for anything useful, the UFP is not. And even if the UFP could see off the first wave, they can't launch any useful counterattack because it'll take them decades to cross the Imperium's territory to any strategic targets (and those are fortified to hell and back anyway). Starfleet might win the odd battle, but I cannot see any way for them to win the war.

Limited FTL speed and small scale really gives the initiative to the IoM here at every step so they're kinda fucked.

[Composeure]

Oh sure. Though fwiw I'm sure there are many more accounts of scarcity and poor logistics. Not to mention how the IoM has quite a few worlds that are really underdeveloped. Not a downplay or anything that's going to be overly relevant in this particular scenario, just a note.

Yeah that scene is just.... I don't even... I'm not going to even try to analyze that. For some reason Voyager in particular had this ridiculous assumption that spacefaring species would even need slavery as an institution. It's such a ridiculous strawman if you think about it.

Fwiw basically nobody assumes any ST matchup involves the crazy mystic races/things that would be better explained by settings like DC and Marvel. Even DS9's alliances and whatnot didn't involve them.

Yeah ST is really very underdeveloped on a number of levels if you think about it.

[NecronLord]

Oh sure. Though fwiw I'm sure there are many more accounts of scarcity and poor logistics. Not to mention how the IoM has quite a few worlds that are really underdeveloped. Not a downplay or anything that's going to be overly relevant in this particular scenario, just a note.

Yeah that scene is just.... I don't even... I'm not going to even try to analyze that. For some reason Voyager in particular had this ridiculous assumption that spacefaring species would even need slavery as an institution. It's such a ridiculous strawman if you think about it.

For what it's worth the 'we have them, we can't delete them or free them, so let's put them to work' logic is pretty on point for a lot of modern day regimes and you can read about similar things in China.

Fwiw basically nobody assumes any ST matchup involves the crazy mystic races/things that would be better explained by settings like DC and Marvel. Even DS9's alliances and whatnot didn't involve them.

Yeah ST is really very underdeveloped on a number of levels if you think about it.

The Metrons aren't mystics that we know of, they're technologicals. Same with the 10C and Iconians, the Federation just aren't anywhere near the top of their galaxy's tech tree. If that needs to be hammered home just watch STIV!

It's a recurring theme that the Federation just isn't near the top of the tree, it's the plot of last year's DIscovery and Picard season arcs!