Warhammer 40K vs. Star Wars Thread 3: Did We Lose Someone Along The Way? [Archive]

Lamech

2011-06-02, 09:00 PM

High travel time is the understatement of the century.

I did the math, and at Warp 7 it takes 33 years to reach the outer fringes of the closest empire.

That is a full 2 warp factors faster than the top of the line military exploration ship (enterprise) had before TOS. (Which in TOS became a Warp 10 Engine, which is a plot point that at any speed lower than Warp 10 it takes in the excess of hundreds of years to fully cross the galaxy.)Umm... first warp factors got redefined several times. In the one with warp ten being max, as you get closer and closer you spike up towards infinity, and infinity at ten and time travel past ten. Also the TOS enterprise had a top speed (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor) of 765,000 c. Voyager could somehow get too 21,473 c.

Simply put, even the IoM has them on Maneuverability, and once they hit their unprotected research worlds and gain their weapon tech.... which is produced by the 99.99% human crews. (2 aliens to an entire ship that is supposed to be a beacon of diversity and hope.. yeah..), a Deathwatch team would be seen with Auto Targetting Phasers in their hands without much time, and we'd have phasers on a digital weapon scale in time.:smalleek:Reverse engineering their tech? Technology based on physical principles they no nothing about? Because most of the research bases won't have weapon makers. And no every random scientist won't know how. Try asking a biologist to build an assult rifle. I suppose you could attempt to find a weapon manufacturing base, but that involves, finding a weapon manufacturing base. That is gonna be a pain. And then its probably defended. And then capturing it (those zany transporters and force fields come up again) intact (those zany exploding computers and general ST tech being made out of C4 is a problem) without them firing a self-destruct.
And the imperium can't even make digital weapons (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Digital_Weapons) they have space apes do it.

SublimeShadow

2011-06-02, 09:32 PM

And the imperium can't even make digital weapons they have space apes do it.

I'm new to this discussion but I'd like to join in by saying this highlights an important bit of information about the 40k Universe. For all its shortcomings it has the resources and methods needed to get just about anything done. Trillions and trillions of guardsmen would slowly but surely grind the GE to dust. One of those several 100 year crusades the Imperium is so fond of.

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-02, 09:38 PM

To be fair, the space elves and space dwarves were equally incapable of doing it. It's an ability unique to space apes.

Nameless Ghost

2011-06-02, 10:13 PM

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-03, 12:59 AM

Maybe this came up in one of the previous threads, but the Imperium isn't particularly fond of reverse-engineering tech. They would probably consider the Empire's technology an affront to the Machine God and destroy it, rather than use it for themselves.

That is the GEoM not the Machine God I think.
And they just hate AI and frequently reverse-engineer tech, especially from Humans because they will classify it as STCs or somesuch

SublimeShadow

2011-06-03, 02:19 AM

That is the GEoM not the Machine God I think.
And they just hate AI and frequently reverse-engineer tech, especially from Humans because they will classify it as STCs or somesuch

No its the Omnissiah, which arguably could be the Emperor but still. When its Tech-Heresy its against the Machine God. However, they do have a fondness for re-purposing useful tech and adding "machine spirits". In fact I do believe there is a bit in the Necron Codex about Mechanicus testing of gauss weaponry.

Fan

2011-06-03, 06:56 AM

No its the Omnissiah, which arguably could be the Emperor but still. When its Tech-Heresy its against the Machine God. However, they do have a fondness for re-purposing useful tech and adding "machine spirits". In fact I do believe there is a bit in the Necron Codex about Mechanicus testing of gauss weaponry.

Necron tech is SPECIFICALLY an affront to all things living and holy though.

It's their entire point.

Same with Chaos tech.

They use Tau and Eldar (but not Dark Eldar) stuff all the time, check out anything involving the CONCEPT of Deathwatch, more often than not, Inquisition.

They can, and will, use non Satanic / IA, IA, THE FABLED DECIEVER RESTS IN THE WORLD LABYRINTH UNDER MARS, AND WILL RISE WHEN THE STARS ARE RIGHT, technology.

Hyperdrives can, and WILL be taken upon the first teleport attack'd Star Destroyer, and progress will be made once they found that the GE is operating off a "Stolen Standard Tech Construct" for their engines.

From there, they scale it up, add some gothic imagery, and proceed to their equal mobility to take care of whatever Industrial centers falls to Chaos as to secure new manufacturing techniques.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 09:56 AM

Hyperdrives can, and WILL be taken upon the first teleport attack'd Star Destroyer, and progress will be made once they found that the GE is operating off a "Stolen Standard Tech Construct" for their engines.

From there, they scale it up, add some gothic imagery, and proceed to their equal mobility to take care of whatever Industrial centers falls to Chaos as to secure new manufacturing techniques.

On the other hand, remember that new tech - even "STCs" - which would be a blatant fabrication on the part of whoever was in charge*, in the progress of winning the war - takes a long time to be accepted, and more importantly, implemented. It'd be decades or more before hyperdrives were mounted on anything except Rogue Trader, Inquisitorial, and Deathwatch vessels (in that order) - depending on how the war goes, it's entirely possible that the fighting would be over before then.

*an STC isn't just a set of blueprints - strictly, it's a giant self-contained supercomputer/autonomous factory with countless sets of plans and blueprints stored inside it, some of which are printed out. The latter is incredibly valuable to the AdMech, the former literally priceless. For them to honestly believe hyperdrives were losttech, they'd have to find the STC storing the plans for it (impossible) or a technical readout/printout for a hyperdrive that happened to be in the exact format of a true STC printout. 99.99% more likely that some ambitious and powerful Lord Magos will get his mechadendrites on the 'heretech', see the possibilities and potential, and use his influence to claim it is actually losttech from a forgotten pre-Crusade STC.

Tiki Snakes

2011-06-03, 10:02 AM

Forum Explorer

2011-06-03, 11:13 AM

Replicators would solve most hunger issues on hive worlds, so that now they can't even be starved into submission.

Lamech

2011-06-03, 11:34 AM

I can't help but wonder exactly how either of the factions claiming Trek's Replicator technology would affect things.

Let's face it, It's quite likely that either of the other human factions would be able in theory at least to get much more use out of that sort of Trek-Tech than the Fed's themselves ever do...

It can do some zany things; self-replicating cloak mines spring to mind. But again reverse engineering is hard. They would need a compatible power-supply (ST doesn't seem to always use electricity). At which point they could start replicating pre-programmed things. Then they would need to be able to build them, this would take learning to operate the computer to copy the files, and then how to make all the parts to the computer, which really is probably a few stages beyond the other sides (see: universal translators logic defying computers that fit in a badge) then they would need to figure out the materials behind the parts and what not to build it; not easy since it probably doesn't run on their science principals.
Finally they might be able to get lots of replicators making things like food and medicine. Which would be massively beneficial, and maybe doable, especially if they get a self-replicating food replicator or something nice like that.

To get any of their stuff mass-produced they will need to understand highly complex scientific principals that they don't have, which isn't going to happen. Which basically involves stealing scientists at every stage of the production line AND all the infrastructure to support every stage of the production line and... The IoM will have trouble with that since their ships have an annoying tendency to drop weeks or days of sublight travel out. And then both would have to give scientists the resources to work out all the parts when said scientists will be able to use the same tech to build say... transporters. (Or the scientists could just tell them how to build borg nano-probes, or open a gate to the mirror universe or species 8472, or anything GE/IoM wouldn't know the difference.)

But they would probably all be able to increase industrial output a good deal. The feds have something 20 ships to a world, at a minimum compared to the really high estimates for the GE being something like a millionish for 70 million worlds.

Fan

2011-06-03, 12:36 PM

It can do some zany things; self-replicating cloak mines spring to mind. But again reverse engineering is hard. They would need a compatible power-supply (ST doesn't seem to always use electricity). At which point they could start replicating pre-programmed things. Then they would need to be able to build them, this would take learning to operate the computer to copy the files, and then how to make all the parts to the computer, which really is probably a few stages beyond the other sides (see: universal translators logic defying computers that fit in a badge) then they would need to figure out the materials behind the parts and what not to build it; not easy since it probably doesn't run on their science principals.
Finally they might be able to get lots of replicators making things like food and medicine. Which would be massively beneficial, and maybe doable, especially if they get a self-replicating food replicator or something nice like that.

To get any of their stuff mass-produced they will need to understand highly complex scientific principals that they don't have, which isn't going to happen. Which basically involves stealing scientists at every stage of the production line AND all the infrastructure to support every stage of the production line and... The IoM will have trouble with that since their ships have an annoying tendency to drop weeks or days of sublight travel out. And then both would have to give scientists the resources to work out all the parts when said scientists will be able to use the same tech to build say... transporters. (Or the scientists could just tell them how to build borg nano-probes, or open a gate to the mirror universe or species 8472, or anything GE/IoM wouldn't know the difference.)

But they would probably all be able to increase industrial output a good deal. The feds have something 20 ships to a world, at a minimum compared to the really high estimates for the GE being something like a millionish for 70 million worlds.

Simple enough for the IoM, they simply turn Trek engineers into Servitors and command them to build it.

Done.

And anything with AI, or anything that would transport would be OBVIOUSLY different from phasers, and as Servitors.. not much of an option when you've been literally brain raped into being unable to rebel.

Urist

2011-06-03, 01:45 PM

Phasers themselves are irrevocably tainted with the alien, and thus won't be mass produced for many years, until the Tech-Adepts decide heresy is less important than success(which doesn't happen often, or else the IoM would issue shuriken cannons as standard). Beyond that, the IoM is not known for capture, and why would they even bother to do so considering the Federation is, from the IoM point of view, a massive corruption risk? They're more likely to summarily execute them and anyone who comes into contact with them.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 02:23 PM

Simple enough for the IoM, they simply turn Trek engineers into Servitors and command them to build it.

Done.

And anything with AI, or anything that would transport would be OBVIOUSLY different from phasers, and as Servitors.. not much of an option when you've been literally brain raped into being unable to rebel.

Servitor creation involves lobotomization and mind-wiping; those captured engineers aren't going to be much good for their technical knowledge. Giving them to the Inquisition would have a better success rate, though also a much shorter lifespan.

Fan

2011-06-03, 03:48 PM

Servitor creation involves lobotomization and mind-wiping; those captured engineers aren't going to be much good for their technical knowledge. Giving them to the Inquisition would have a better success rate, though also a much shorter lifespan.

True nuff'.

Lamech

2011-06-03, 07:30 PM

Simple enough for the IoM, they simply turn Trek engineers into Servitors and command them to build it.

Done.

And anything with AI, or anything that would transport would be OBVIOUSLY different from phasers, and as Servitors.. not much of an option when you've been literally brain raped into being unable to rebel.Lobotomy not gonna work for stated reasons. And if someone is building something you have no idea about based on physical principals you don't understand, how are you going to know the difference between the needed replicator to make the parts, and a transporter? Or how will you know it needs a replicator and not a bunch of nano-probes?

Fan

2011-06-03, 07:45 PM

Lobotomy not gonna work for stated reasons. And if someone is building something you have no idea about based on physical principals you don't understand, how are you going to know the difference between the needed replicator to make the parts, and a transporter? Or how will you know it needs a replicator and not a bunch of nano-probes?

Mind rape?

Physical knowledge of their thoughts at all times with an assigned psyker?

Lamech

2011-06-03, 07:46 PM

Mind rape?'Cept... they have trouble getting the space apes (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Jokaero) to build stuff and there's a distinct lack of mind rape.

Fan

2011-06-03, 07:50 PM

'Cept... they have trouble getting the space apes (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Jokaero) to build stuff and there's a distinct lack of mind rape.

Because it's a monkey thing, not a person.:smallconfused:

That, and their tech is more based on inspiration than knowledge, so you can't mind enslave them, and have it work the same way as knowledge based tech would.

Lamech

2011-06-03, 07:53 PM

Because it's a monkey thing, not a person.:smallconfused:

That, and their tech is more based on inspiration than knowledge, so you can't mind enslave them, and have it work the same way as knowledge based tech would.
So... things with a different brain structure are immune to psychic powers or something? And no not buying the inspiration. They could at least read their minds and stop them from escaping.

Fan

2011-06-03, 07:56 PM

So... things with a different brain structure are immune to psychic powers or something? And no not buying the inspiration. They could at least read their minds and stop them from escaping.

That's actually what it says in the link, that what they do is entirely based on inspiration and creativity, and varies so wildly because of it that the upgrades from having one range from "useless" to "Tide turning".

You can't mindrape that.

Lamech

2011-06-03, 08:04 PM

That's actually what it says in the link, that what they do is entirely based on inspiration and creativity, and varies so wildly because of it that the upgrades from having one range from "useless" to "Tide turning".

You can't mindrape that.Umm... it doesn't mention creativity (literally the word is not used. The only time it says "inspiration" is
The random nature of the upgrades are impossible to predict as a Jokaero is equally capable of turning a las-cannon into something formidable after a few moments of inspiration or simply add a decorative knotwork to the barrel(Bold mine) which doesn't say their tech requires inspiration. (Unless your going to tell me knotworks require space ape inspiration to make.) It DOES say that what they do is based in their genetic code, its instinctive, and innate. But if you can't get instinctive abilities working after mind control... well then the captured scientists will die after forgetting how to breathe, stand and see all at the same time.
And even for the sake of argument if the ape-tech did have some privileged position it still doesn't change the fact that they don't attempt to do things like... read their thoughts to know when they plan on escaping.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 08:05 PM

Lamech

2011-06-03, 08:13 PM

Though I wouldn't bet on human mindrape being too harmless either, especially that sort of constant intrusion. For a sanctionite, at least, it's implied by Malen in The Traitor's Hand that prolonged intrusion into someone else's mind is harmful to the psyker and much worse for the victim, even when the psyker is making an effort to avoid damage. You'd still be going through engineers on a regular basis.

Basically, the Imperium is not skilled at taking good care of its toys, even the living ones. Also while not a problem in most cases, any of the ST psychic races a) won't ping on any warp readings the imperium might try and b) are fully capable of turning things like that around. Which would be a nasty surprise.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 08:16 PM

Also while not a problem in most cases, any of the ST psychic races a) won't ping on any warp readings the imperium might try and b) are fully capable of turning things like that around. Which would be a nasty surprise.

Yeah, trying to use telepathy on a Vulcan or Betazoid could be interesting. "Turning it around" wouldn't really do a whole lot for the prisoner, but it'd mean said races' scientists would be fairly "safe" - in the sense that they'd be killed instead of taken prisoner if the chance arose.

Also, note that my prediction has come true - by removing Trek from the thread title, it has become the central focus of the new discussion.:smallbiggrin:

Fan

2011-06-03, 08:31 PM

Umm... it doesn't mention creativity (literally the word is not used. The only time it says "inspiration" is (Bold mine) which doesn't say their tech requires inspiration. (Unless your going to tell me knotworks require space ape inspiration to make.) It DOES say that what they do is based in their genetic code, its instinctive, and innate. But if you can't get instinctive abilities working after mind control... well then the captured scientists will die after forgetting how to breathe, stand and see all at the same time.
And even for the sake of argument if the ape-tech did have some privileged position it still doesn't change the fact that they don't attempt to do things like... read their thoughts to know when they plan on escaping.

Again, the Jokaero are a special case.

The intrusion as mentioned is harmful, and anything that hampers the creativity destroys the purpose of capturing them.

Humans on the other hand, can simply be made to right down everything after torture (which the engineers would give into.), and then once that's done they are mind raped to make sure it is right. They are killed if it's wrong, if not, they are made to restart provided they aren't a brain dead vegetable.

If they are, oh well, bring in prisoner A-413.

Lamech

2011-06-03, 08:35 PM

Yeah, trying to use telepathy on a Vulcan or Betazoid could be interesting. "Turning it around" wouldn't really do a whole lot for the prisoner, but it'd mean said races' scientists would be fairly "safe" - in the sense that they'd be killed instead of taken prisoner if the chance arose.
Depends on what their trying to do, how badly it back fires, and how much they angered the captured scientist. At the very least it means the scientist is free to make what ever they want and feed you false info. Worst case scenario a scientist makes borg nano-probes and gets an assimilated psyker possessed and then we have borg chaos.

Again, the Jokaero are a special case.

The intrusion as mentioned is harmful, and anything that hampers the creativity destroys the purpose of capturing them.It said instinctive. That is the exact opposite of creativity actually. If humans lose instinctive abilities they die.

Humans on the other hand, can simply be made to right down everything after torture (which the engineers would give into.), and then once that's done they are mind raped to make sure it is right. They are killed if it's wrong, if not, they are made to restart provided they aren't a brain dead vegetable.

P.S. As real life interrogators will tell you torture isn't actually an effective method of getting info.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 08:40 PM

It said instinctive. That is the exact opposite of creativity actually. If humans lose instinctive abilities they die.

Autonomous functions and instinctive abilities aren't necessarily identical. The "fight-or-flight" reaction is an instinctive ability, as are things like throwing out your hands to stop yourself from falling or pulling your hand away from something that burned you. All of those can be lost from various disorders or simple brain damage without killing the person directly.

Lamech

2011-06-03, 08:46 PM

Autonomous functions and instinctive abilities aren't necessarily identical. The "fight-or-flight" reaction is an instinctive ability, as are things like throwing out your hands to stop yourself from falling or pulling your hand away from something that burned you. All of those can be lost from various disorders or simple brain damage without killing the person directly.The fight or flight is fairly directly tied to things like digestion and waste processing, the reaction of moving your hand away doesn't even involve the brain. Yes you could potentially lose one of those things with out killing you, but if you lose a significant portion of those lower brain and spinal functions? You're in trouble. We're talking about the space-apes when subjected to this treatment always (or a fairly large portion of the time) losing an instinctive ability...

Fan

2011-06-03, 08:48 PM

Depends on what their trying to do, how badly it back fires, and how much they angered the captured scientist. At the very least it means the scientist is free to make what ever they want and feed you false info. Worst case scenario a scientist makes borg nano-probes and gets an assimilated psyker possessed and then we have borg chaos.
It said instinctive. That is the exact opposite of creativity actually. If humans lose instinctive abilities they die.

P.S. As real life interrogators will tell you torture isn't actually an effective method of getting info.

Apparently they don't have access to mind probes, and Truth Sereum's that work.

Alternatively we can give them the 1984 treatment, and tell them that their comrades have already sold them out, show them doctored video of their confessions with pre recorded voice samples, and say that they can get the same deal their friends did if they just fess up what they know so the IoM can have it for accuracy's sake.

As to the above.. No.. Just no.. Please. Go take a psychology / physiology course. Just.. go..

Urist

2011-06-03, 08:54 PM

Do they even know how to build things without using the replicators? Beyond that, do they even have any of the useful tech knowledge at all? Not every engineer knows how to build a phaser, and the ones that do might not know how to build the intermediate machinery needed to make the parts. Once the tech is obtained, the IoM also has to worry about restructuring infrastructure to even take advantage of the new tech. Knowing the Imperium, this could take decades, or even centuries.

Also, psyker mindrape is not tremendously effective at detecting more than surface thoughts for the average psyker. Going deeper is likely to fry your target, making information acquired rather useless.

As for torture, I think YOU, Fan, need to go take a psychology course/physiology(what does physiology even have to do with it:smallconfused:). Torture is known to be remarkably prone to the acquisition of false information, and the victim will confess to anything to stop the pain. When torturing a scientist, the IoM will be lucky to obtain anything even approaching coherency, let alone usable scientific data.
Link to a study, in case you want some reading. (http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf)

Lamech

2011-06-03, 09:01 PM

As to the above.. No.. Just no.. Please. Go take a psychology / physiology course. Just.. go..
No to what? The reaction (specifically the burnt hand) not involving the brain? Happens at the level of the spine. No to fight or flight being involved in digestion and waste processing? It turns off the not overly urgent urine production and digestion to not waste energy. No to dieing if humans lose instinctive abilities (including ones that function at the level of a spinal cord)? Lets look at some instinctive functions and functions of the spinal cord. Breathing. Want me to go on?

Also what Urist said.

Fan

2011-06-03, 09:32 PM

Selrahc

2011-06-04, 02:18 AM

Also, psyker mindrape is not tremendously effective at detecting more than surface thoughts for the average psyker. Going deeper is likely to fry your target, making information acquired rather useless.

You're overstating it.

Not every psyker will be able to mind probe somebody effectively, but there will be more than enough specialists to aid interrogation.

Burning somebody out with a psychic mindprobe is something that happens far beyond the level of surface scans, or even conscious memory. You have to delve deep into their consciousness into the deepest core of their personality. At that stage, you can get any information from them that you want.

Torture is known to be remarkably prone to the acquisition of false information, and the victim will confess to anything to stop the pain.

Which is something that having a psychic lie detector could be handy in weeding out.

Lamech

2011-06-04, 02:31 AM

You're overstating it.

Not every psyker will be able to mind probe somebody effectively, but there will be more than enough specialists to aid interrogation.

Burning somebody out with a psychic mindprobe is something that happens far beyond the level of surface scans, or even conscious memory. You have to delve deep into their consciousness into the deepest core of their personality. At that stage, you can get any information from them that you want.

Which is something that having a psychic lie detector could be handy in weeding out.Then why don't they use it on the space apes? If they could get anything they wanted, and read the mind, why not use it on the space apes? More to the point, we know the Imperium's operating procedure for dealing with alien races with cool tech, and there is a distinct lack of mind reading. At least they could figure out when the damn things are going to make something to escape.
(Any even this is assuming that they can get all the scientists engineers and whatnot needed to rebuild all the steps going into whatever piece of tech they want. Which would be a fairly major problem in and of itself.)

Forum Explorer

2011-06-04, 02:36 AM

Then why don't they use it on the space apes? If they could get anything they wanted, and read the mind, why not use it on the space apes? More to the point, we know the Imperium's operating procedure for dealing with alien races with cool tech, and there is a distinct lack of mind reading.

There is something about the Jokero which makes them impossible to do this to. I would hazard a guess that it is that the Jokero don't know how they are doing it, so mindraping them doesn't tell you anything.

Selrahc

2011-06-04, 02:53 AM

If they could get anything they wanted, and read the mind, why not use it on the space apes?

The Jokaero build on instinct, not from anything approaching rational behaviour. A mind scan wouldn't reveal anything.

Urist

2011-06-04, 09:10 AM

A Psychic lie detector doesn't help you if the victim doesn't even know themselves what's true anymore(a serious danger with the level of psychological torment we're talking about here),and also doesn't help improve the clarity of the data recovered under torture. Once you break someone like that, their brain functioning and data recovered is highly suspect at best, even for simple things like names or dates, let alone a blueprint for an exceedingly complicated production chain for a massively above your tech level weapon.

Assuming that psykers don't burn out the engineer or themselves(which is inconstant in the fluff), can they even interpret the data they recieve? Bits so far above the average psykers comprehension level(unless they're also a tech-priest) that it mind as well remain unusable. Think about it: an engineer under torture won't have organized thoughts on how to build a phaser that looks like this: 1. Get raw materials. 2. Mumbo jumbo. ... X. Done, profit from your phaser. Instead, their thoughts will be a jumble of useless information, with a few nuggets, and the IoM has no way to separate the usable from the chaff.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 10:05 AM

Forum Explorer

2011-06-04, 10:08 AM

Lamech

2011-06-04, 11:57 AM

They can grab specific memories relatily easily. At least thats what it showed in Eisenhorn booksEpisodic memories? (At least that is the term I think...) The ones where you have a memory of some event: slamming your hand into a door or "the orders the demon gave us"? Because that will be not overly useful. To understand a lecture on phaser mechanics, you would need to understand the classes, before it, and the memories before it, and somewhere along the lime the memories will start getting garbled and useless.

But regardless, what glyphstone said effective, organized stealing of technology, and technical knowledge is not part of the IoM strategy. Unless we want the federation to suddenly start replicating the most powerful psychics they have, equipping everyone with borg tech and in general hand it over to section 31?

Misery Esquire

2011-06-04, 12:06 PM

Unless we want the federation to suddenly start replicating the most powerful psychics they have, equipping everyone with borg tech and in general hand it over to section 31?

And they still have no real effect due to needing over a century to even get near the other two. >_>

Lamech

2011-06-04, 12:31 PM

And they still have no real effect due to needing over a century to even get near the other two. >_>

Okay assuming that earth has its same distance away from the galactic core, and the fed empire is the same size and whatnot they are 24k away from the galactic core. Its 20k from earth to the edge of the enemy target. Finally federation space is 8k across so edge to edge is 16k. So... something between a decade and a few months (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor), for the out of date voyager. More importantly they can disregard the temporal prime directive... (and they presumably still have their precious Bajoran wormhole for long range expeditions.)

Misery Esquire

2011-06-04, 12:41 PM

Okay assuming that earth has its same distance away from the galactic core, and the fed empire is the same size and whatnot they are 24k away from the galactic core. Its 20k from earth to the edge of the enemy target. Finally federation space is 8k across so edge to edge is 16k. So... something between a decade and a few months (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor), for the out of date voyager. More importantly they can disregard the temporal prime directive... (and they presumably still have their precious Bajoran wormhole for long range expeditions.)

The problem being is that it wouldn't be the same distance, this would have to be some sort of hilarious super-triple galaxy. Or at least a double-, seeing as both the Galatic Empire and IoM take up the majority of thier own galaxies. Voyager was looking at a travel time that would see the original crew dead before they covered one quarter of thier own galaxy, if they hadn't hit the Speed of Plot. (75 years for 70,000 light years)

The wormhole doesn't seem to go anywhere but to the other end, but I never enjoyed DS7, so I never watched the entire season and don't know too much about it.

Fan

2011-06-04, 12:50 PM

Not to mention that, as people have said, the 'capture and interrogate for tech' is a complete 180 on the IoM's entire modus operandi and operational mindset. As a whole, they're not interested in reverse-engineering and incorporating captured enemy technology; anything not born of the Adeptus Mechanicus is tech-heresy and should be destroyed, not worked to acquire - even if it's noticably and obviously superior to anything they have, it's still heretical. The exceptions will be Rogue Traders and Radical Inquisitors, not the bulk of the Imperial forces.

Basically, if we're allow the Imperium to start capturing engineers and mindraping them for phaser and replicator schematics, we might as well have Palpatine suddenly declare free and open elections across the Empire after a broadcast laying out every detail of the Yuzhan Vong and his master plan, or have the Federation hand over unilateral control of their war machine to the utterly ruthless Section 13, since all of those would be equally in-character for their respective factions.

Deathwatch.. Inquisition...

It just requires someone with the right motives to get to it first, and with the Fed's engineers near it's homeworld being easily mostly human the Inquisition burns everything not useful, and some things useful because it looks funny (I'll give that they even burn Replicators because cloning **** is heresy.), but weapons and such are stolen ALL THE TIME, the earlier mentioned Jokareo are a perfect example.

If it's got fire power, and an alien made it, even the Imperial Guard wont turn their nose up at it.

Really all it takes is them claiming that the central Library on Fed Earth is in fact a lost STC (something not TOO far of a stretch), and is in fact, the first perfect record of a lost type of weapon from the Dark Age of Technology, and they can begin whipping, mind raping, and complete control of their history.

Within 2 or so generations, the Feds who are alive wont even remember what they came from, they will always have been a part of the IoM, and there will never have been anything different as far as they are allowed to know.

When it's humans, and there is SO MUCH GAIN (More gain in fact, that ANY other case of Tech pilfering in All of IoM history, and all of the Chaos Tainted Space Hulks they regularly loot put together), an Inquisitor from Ordos Xenos even would be happy to add this to their name to curry the political favor this kind of thing would get them.

Hell, the Inquisitor that did this would probably get a seat among The High Lords of Terra.

Urist

2011-06-04, 12:53 PM

Fan

2011-06-04, 12:59 PM

So the IG will use shuriken cannons, pulse rifles, and gauss flayers with no problem? Somehow, that seems a wee bit suspect, or else the IG would do so standard issue. Jokaero are the only example that I can come up with, and they are used to make special order digital weapons for a very few Inquisitors, not for standard issue.

Guardsman pick up Shooters, Shuriken Cannons, and anything else they can get their hands on in a fight.

It's very much "If you're gun runs out of ammo, use whatever's around you, and if there's nothing around you. Pull out your knife. If your knife breaks, punch them in the teeth. If they tie your hands. Spit in their eyes."

Though I see Gauss Flayers as being too large for them to realistically carry alone, those things are like, 3 times the size of Heavy Bolters, and it requires a team of guardsmen to use that.

Also, if there were ENOUGH Jokareo that were willing to just work doing that, I have no doubt that they'd be allowed to.

Urist

2011-06-04, 01:28 PM

Fan

2011-06-04, 01:44 PM

The tech-priests of Mars would LOVE that, wouldn't they. Someone claiming something is a complete STC when it isn't is likely to set off civil war, honestly. Its pure blasphemy, and any tech-priest would know that.

Because Inquisitor's don't do this normally?

And well, the Tech Priests already TRIED a civil war.

It ended poorly for them.

I'm not saying every guardsman will have one, I'm saying Inquisition, and the Adeptus Astartes will likely have them in specialized kill teams.

Urist

2011-06-04, 01:46 PM

Fan

2011-06-04, 02:26 PM

Actually, you have been kind of impying that guardsmen would have them standard issue. But if you concede that they wouldn't, then that point was already made many posts ago by Glyphstone, and we're all in agreement!

Even if it was put into immediate mass production, the Guardsmen wouldn't get it, Bolters are in mass production, and every guardsman doesn't get one.:smalltongue:

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 02:38 PM

Even if it was put into immediate mass production, the Guardsmen wouldn't get it, Bolters are in mass production, and every guardsman doesn't get one.:smalltongue:

this is the Imperium of Man, there's mass production and then there's MASS PRODUCTION.:smallbiggrin:

Mx.Silver

2011-06-04, 02:40 PM

Links to the previous threads can be found here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195298) and here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196876) The current discussion is what would happen if both sides were thrown into a galaxy with all their enemies intact.

I've noticed that most of the discussion seems to be on the Imperium versus The Empire. Thing is though, The Imperium is not going to be what The Empire needs to worry about. Its biggest threat by far is the Imperium's enemies.

(this may have been dealt with in earlier threads, so appologies in advance if I'm bringing-up old stuff)

The reason for this is that pretty much all of the enemies of The Imperium in 40k are typically agressive and pro-active. Sure maybe not the Eldar races so much, but the Tau, Orks, Tyranids etc. are going to start expanding into Empire space. It'll also not be long before the necrons and chaos follow suit.
The thing is, regardless of how The Empire stacks-up against the Imperium it is going to present a softer target to the aforementioned races due to one very simple fact: experience. The Imperium has been fighting a defensive war on all fronts for the last 10 millenia. The Empire? Not so much, and the only way they are going to learn about how the 40k Alien races operate is the hard way. And they're going to have to do this with all said races at once and develop counter-measures as they go.
That is really not a good position to be in. At all.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 02:41 PM

I've noticed that most of the discussion seems to be on the Imperium versus The Empire. Thing is though, The Imperium is not going to be what The Empire needs to worry about. Its biggest threat by far is the Imperium's enemies.

(this may have been dealt with in earlier threads, so appologies in advance if I'm bringing-up old stuff)

The reason for this is that pretty much all of the enemies of The Imperium in 40k are typically agressive and pro-active. Sure maybe not the Eldar races so much, but the Tau, Orks, Tyranids etc. are going to start expanding into Empire space. It'll also not be long before the necrons and chaos follow suit.
The thing is, regardless of how The Empire stacks-up against the Imperium it is going to present a softer target to the aforementioned races due to one very simple fact: experience. The Imperium has been fighting a defensive war on all fronts for the last 10 millenia. The Empire? Not so much, and the only way they are going to learn about how the 40k Alien races operate is the hard way. And they're going to have to do this with all said races at once and develop counter-measures as they go.
That is really not a good position to be in. At all.

Well, thread 1 had them going at it in isolation, without any of their respective enemies. It's only been recently that we branched out.

Tiki Snakes

2011-06-04, 02:54 PM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 03:07 PM

I'd kind of enjoy seeing Wookies trying to deal with an Ork infestation on their home planet.

It does seem that a possible, if not the most likely, result of a sudden three way universe share/super-galaxy, would be a very very shakey mexican standoff between the three human factions with the non-human 40k factions spreading out to cause trouble...

I'd imagine it would most likely be some kind of limited non-agression pact or cold war situation, likely brokered by the Federation. Assuming of course that the respective settings and factions survive the initial cataclysmic merging.

I'd kind of enjoy seeking Orks try to deal with an Ork infestation on the Wookie home planet. Remember how badass wookies are, then remember they live in the very top levels of the trees because that's the only place they're safe from the things that live on the surface.:smallconfused:

Fan

2011-06-04, 03:11 PM

I'd kind of enjoy seeking Orks try to deal with an Ork infestation on the Wookie home planet. Remember how badass wookies are, then remember they live in the very top levels of the trees because that's the only place they're safe from the things that live on the surface.:smallconfused:

"Hey Grotsnik! Do yah think dis ere' tree would make for a right good boss bannah?"

"Sure yah stupid nob, but yah bettah ask the Boss Arsonist first!"

Warboss arch Arsonist (this is a real warboss): "BURN IT TO TAH GROUND BOYZ, GET YAH BURNAZ, AND WE CAN START DAH STOMPIN. WAAAAAAAAGH."

Nob: "But I thought it wuz gonna be a boss bannah."

Mad Mek Dok Grotsnik: "Course it wuz, till dah Boss wanted it burnt down, now shut up, and grab yah burna, we'z gots us a propah fight on our hands, and we'z gonna burn it all!"

and then the wookies were made of fire.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 03:21 PM

"Hey Grotsnik! Do yah think dis ere' tree would make for a right good boss bannah?"

"Sure yah stupid nob, but yah bettah ask the Boss Arsonist first!"

Warboss arch Arsonist (this is a real warboss): "BURN IT TO TAH GROUND BOYZ, GET YAH BURNAZ, AND WE CAN START DAH STOMPIN. WAAAAAAAAGH."

Nob: "But I thought it wuz gonna be a boss bannah."

Mad Mek Dok Grotsnik: "Course it wuz, till dah Boss wanted it burnt down, now shut up, and grab yah burna, we'z gots us a propah fight on our hands, and we'z gonna burn it all!"

and then the wookies were made of fire.

Nah, more like:
---
Boy: "Oy, 'ow we gonna get dem furry gits wot live up in the treetops?"

Nob: "Burn 'em down, ya git!"

Boy: "Okey, lemee get my burnaaa-AAAARGHRAGH*choke*"

Nob: "Oy, lookit da size of da ting dat just ate Grubzak (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Terentatek)! You see da size of dose teef! Sumbuddy tell da Boss ta forget dose furries, we'z gots da real fightin' down here!"

Fan

2011-06-04, 03:41 PM

Nah, more like:
---
Boy: "Oy, 'ow we gonna get dem furry gits wot live up in the treetops?"

Nob: "Burn 'em down, ya git!"

Boy: "Okey, lemee get my burnaaa-AAAARGHRAGH*choke*"

Nob: "Oy, lookit da size of da ting dat just ate Grubzak (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Terentatek)! You see da size of dose teef! Sumbuddy tell da Boss ta forget dose furries, we'z gots da real fightin' down here!"

But you see, Orks tame Squiggoths.

So.. :smalleek:

Tiki Snakes

2011-06-04, 03:42 PM

I'm not great with Ork stuff, but isn't 'stumbling into horrendously destructive uber-beast' where the average ork army obtains it's bigger 'siege units'?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--roYzX595c4/TaiHZXTBZ0I/AAAAAAAAAu4/LjwJTZJV5nU/s1600/squiggoth.jpg

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 03:52 PM

But you see, Orks tame Squiggoths.

So.. :smalleek:

Squiggoths aren't really tamed in the traditional sense - they're Orkoids like everything else in da WAAAAUGH, so it's a bit easier for Orks to handle them than anyone else. And even then, it's more a case of 'keep it fed and sleepy until a battle, then point it at the enemy and say 'food dat way'.

But basically, the Orks would love Kashyyk - either a farming ground for Squiggoth substitutes, or the greatest training arena ever. They might not ever even notice the Wookies.

Fan

2011-06-04, 04:04 PM

Squiggoths aren't really tamed in the traditional sense - they're Orkoids like everything else in da WAAAAUGH, so it's a bit easier for Orks to handle them than anyone else. And even then, it's more a case of 'keep it fed and sleepy until a battle, then point it at the enemy and say 'food dat way'.

But basically, the Orks would love Kashyyk - either a farming ground for Squiggoth substitutes, or the greatest training arena ever. They might not ever even notice the Wookies.

I unno, I'd rate some of the beasties on Catachan above Most (if not all) things on Kashyyk.

Though the Wookies are also less likely to notice the orks until they DO appear up in the trees.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 04:11 PM

I unno, I'd rate some of the beasties on Catachan above Most (if not all) things on Kashyyk.

Though the Wookies are also less likely to notice the orks until they DO appear up in the trees.

The Orks don't go to Catachan. They know better.:smallbiggrin:

Lamech

2011-06-04, 04:22 PM

The problem being is that it wouldn't be the same distance, this would have to be some sort of hilarious super-triple galaxy. Or at least a double-, seeing as both the Galatic Empire and IoM take up the majority of thier own galaxies. Voyager was looking at a travel time that would see the original crew dead before they covered one quarter of thier own galaxy, if they hadn't hit the Speed of Plot. (75 years for 70,000 light years)

The wormhole doesn't seem to go anywhere but to the other end, but I never enjoyed DS7, so I never watched the entire season and don't know too much about it.
Yeah, but to the other end should shave significant distance off any travel time. And on the super-galaxy, way early on it was decided their would be massive compression by the OP as opposed to a super-galaxy. We could do a super-galaxy, but the astronomicon doesn't even reach the whole 40K galaxy, this would of course mean the only hope for reaching the other sides for both the IoM and the Feds* are capturing SW ships (or buying ones from smugglers), putting their ships inside and figuring out how to fly the SW ships. (I for one think its a little unfair to compress the galaxies, which gives SW a need to re-map hyperlanes and lets the astronomicon reach all, and its a little unfair to place the feds withing the astronomicon, but far away from the enemy. I would say "compressed universe, SW gets new maps and the DS9 wormhole exit is close to both borders")

*Actually traveling across a whole galaxy for the feds would probably take longer than researching better engines, and then launching. If they're lucky they can scan a hyper-drive, replicate it and attach it too trek ships; although actually jumping it correctly would involve a lot of trial and error. (And possibly attaching it to the fed ship if they are not quite as lucky, or impossible if they aren't lucky at all.)

The respective enemies I would give the win too these guys (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Krenim_weapon_ship). Immune to attack, and overpowering weapon.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 04:28 PM

The respective enemies I would give the win too these guys (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Krenim_weapon_ship). Immune to attack, and overpowering weapon.

Conventional weapons, natch - they'd wreak utter havoc with that thing, but there's the possibility of psychic counterattack, or Force-based attacks.

Misery Esquire

2011-06-04, 04:38 PM

Yeah, but to the other end should shave significant distance off any travel time. And on the super-galaxy, way early on it was decided their would be massive compression by the OP as opposed to a super-galaxy. We could do a super-galaxy, but the astronomicon doesn't even reach the whole 40K galaxy, this would of course mean the only hope for reaching the other sides for both the IoM and the Feds* are capturing SW ships (or buying ones from smugglers), putting their ships inside and figuring out how to fly the SW ships. (I for one think its a little unfair to compress the galaxies, which gives SW a need to re-map hyperlanes and lets the astronomicon reach all, and its a little unfair to place the feds withing the astronomicon, but far away from the enemy. I would say "compressed universe, SW gets new maps and the DS9 wormhole exit is close to both borders")

The Astronomicon covers the entire 40K galaxy, and probably beyond, seeing as it drew the Tyranids?

Conventional weapons, natch - they'd wreak utter havoc with that thing, but there's the possibility of psychic counterattack, or Force-based attacks.

Not to mention firing on Daemons would make them giggle hysterically, firing on the Necrons is equally a joke, and hitting Orks or Eldar would mean that the Necrons probably won the original War of the Heavans. The Imperium of Man would be vunerable. ...If they manage to hit Terra, somehow.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-04, 06:11 PM

It does seem that a possible, if not the most likely, result of a sudden three way universe share/super-galaxy, would be a very very shakey mexican standoff between the three human factions with the non-human 40k factions spreading out to cause trouble...

I think 'cause trouble' is a bit of an understatement there. The Empire is going to be suffering some really nasty lossess, at least to start with. The Star Trek races I'm not that sure about, but the only one I know that could probably go toe-to-toe in a straight fight would be The Borg, depending on how their assimilation works against Psykers, Nids, and Orks. I'm leaving Necrons out of that last sentence because I think we take it as read that they're well beyond any point where assimilation is possible. Overall I still don't see the Star Trek lot coming out of it too well either, although on the plus side they're the most likely to try and form a defensive alliance with people.

I'd imagine it would most likely be some kind of limited non-agression pact or cold war situation, likely brokered by the Federation. Assuming of course that the respective settings and factions survive the initial cataclysmic merging.

It's possible, but I doubt it would occur to start with. I mean, while the Feds are really fond of the diplomacy angle the Imperium really really isn't. I mean, they might sign temporary truce agreements with the Tau or an Eldar faction if they're both up against a much bigger mutual threat but even that's not all that common. I mean they might eventually come around to the idea but it would take a while (and probably the lives of a lot of diplomatic missions) before it got to the point.
In fact they'd probably have better luck with getting the Tau on board, although they'd probably need to offer some expansion rights. They might even be able to get some of Eldar Craftworlds to agree to some non-aggression treaties. With The Empire it would be less of a problem, although I can see Federation sympathies lying with The Rebellion, which would put a fair bit of stress on negotiations with Palpatine's lot.

Conventional weapons, natch - they'd wreak utter havoc with that thing, but there's the possibility of psychic counterattack, or Force-based attacks.
Lest we forget, said ship's protection field can be switched-off from the inside whereupon it could be defeated by 6 fairly mid-range star trek warships. Given that most 40k races have access to psychic attacks, I do not give said ship good odds of surviving any prolonged confrontation.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 06:19 PM

Lest we forget, said ship's protection field can be switched-off from the inside whereupon it could be defeated by 6 fairly mid-range star trek warships. Given that most 40k races have access to psychic attacks, I do not give said ship good odds of surviving any prolonged confrontation.

Was it? The Memory Alpha article heavily implied that even without its shield, it still managed to handily crush those six warships - only Janeway's suicide ram attack directly into its shield generator was decisive.

Fan

2011-06-04, 06:52 PM

Teleport attacks.

Lamech

2011-06-04, 06:55 PM

Conventional weapons, natch - they'd wreak utter havoc with that thing, but there's the possibility of psychic counterattack, or Force-based attacks.

Don't most psychic and force attacks have a range limit? Like a few feet, someone on my ship, 70,000 light years? And they can only hit things within that range limit? And since its outside of space and time... Regardless its shots appear to everyone to do nothing. They don't even appear to hit. In fact since you probably lost the first ship that attacked it you don't even know its invincible. So you repeat your standard tactics... I suppose the crew will develop suicidal tendencies after erasing enough species, but still at that point...

Not to mention firing on Daemons would make them giggle hysterically, firing on the Necrons is equally a joke, and hitting Orks or Eldar would mean that the Necrons probably won the original War of the Heavans. The Imperium of Man would be vunerable. ...If they manage to hit Terra, somehowI fail to see how being erased from existence could be survived.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 07:00 PM

Don't most psychic and force attacks have a range limit? Like a few feet, someone on my ship, 70,000 light years? And they can only hit things within that range limit? And since its outside of space and time... Regardless its shots appear to everyone to do nothing. They don't even appear to hit. In fact since you probably lost the first ship that attacked it you don't even know its invincible. So you repeat your standard tactics... I suppose the crew will develop suicidal tendencies after erasing enough species, but still at that point...
I fail to see how being erased from existence could be survived.

For Daemons? It's more like they don't really care, since they don't 'exist' by conventional definitions to begin with. Their flesh is also basically condensed psychic energy, so they might be able to just walk up to the ship and start ripping lumps off it.

And in the end - all anyone has to do is destroy the ship somehow, since then it will retroactively erase itself and undo all the damage.

Lamech

2011-06-04, 07:38 PM

For Daemons? It's more like they don't really care, since they don't 'exist' by conventional definitions to begin with. Their flesh is also basically condensed psychic energy, so they might be able to just walk up to the ship and start ripping lumps off it.

And in the end - all anyone has to do is destroy the ship somehow, since then it will retroactively erase itself and undo all the damage.

That was by specifically hitting its precious temporal core, hitting it elsewhere might not cause it to fire on itself. And again I don't see why psychic energy will be something special, sure an essential part of the demon might be beyond the reach of the weapon, and the demon could just reform* but again unless demons don't care about space/time don't think they would be able to affect the ship.

*Well not really reform, in fact nothing even close to reforming, but I can't think of a better word.

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-04, 07:41 PM

That was by specifically hitting its precious temporal core, hitting it elsewhere might not cause it to fire on itself. And again I don't see why psychic energy will be something special, sure an essential part of the demon might be beyond the reach of the weapon, and the demon could just reform* but again unless demons don't care about space/time don't think they would be able to affect the ship.

*Well not really reform, in fact nothing even close to reforming, but I can't think of a better word.

They DON'T care about space-time.
Demons mess with it frequently, to the point where a ship traveling in the Warp (Demon-Home) can end up thousands of years in the Future/Past or even the exact moment they left.

Fan

2011-06-04, 07:42 PM

That was by specifically hitting its precious temporal core, hitting it elsewhere might not cause it to fire on itself. And again I don't see why psychic energy will be something special, sure an essential part of the demon might be beyond the reach of the weapon, and the demon could just reform* but again unless demons don't care about space/time don't think they would be able to affect the ship.

*Well not really reform, in fact nothing even close to reforming, but I can't think of a better word.

Guess what? They don't!

Yep, Daemons don't give three Ryl'ehs for your laws of physics, and such. They are manifestations of your deepest fears made out of pure MAGIC.

Lamech

2011-06-04, 07:55 PM

They DON'T care about space-time.
Demons mess with it frequently, to the point where a ship traveling in the Warp (Demon-Home) can end up thousands of years in the Future/Past or even the exact moment they left.

Guess what? They don't!

Yep, Daemons don't give three Ryl'ehs for your laws of physics, and such. They are manifestations of your deepest fears made out of pure MAGIC.

So your telling me that a demon capable of killing humans could kill any human anywhere, any when? With out actually needing any time to do it? A demon could simply stab anyone who attempts to get rid of it when said person is three?

Misery Esquire

2011-06-04, 08:08 PM

So your telling me that a demon capable of killing humans could kill any human anywhere, any when? With out actually needing any time to do it? A demon could simply stab anyone who attempts to get rid of it when said person is three?

Sort of. The Daemon needs time to do it, but the actual when doesn't matter so much. They can retroactively have setup entire event chains, though not actually have killed them if they hadn't died before in the timeline, because obviously then they would've been dead already. The point they were going for is that daemons can simply ignore the fact that you're trying to alter it's history, due to the fact that it never really had a Material history. And Warp history has the end of the universe yesterday, and the birth of the same one tomorrow.

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-04, 08:10 PM

Sort of. The Daemon needs time to do it, but the actual when doesn't matter so much. They can retroactively have setup entire event chains, though not actually have killed them if they hadn't died before in the timeline, because obviously then they would've been dead already. The point they were going for is that daemons can simply ignore the fact that you're trying to alter it's history, due to the fact that it never really had a Material history. And Warp history has the end of the universe yesterday, and the birth of the same one tomorrow.

Actually the end of the universe is tomorrow, Slaneesh put it off to hold an End-Of-The-Universe party/orgy, you don't want to know what the Birth party will be like.

Fan

2011-06-04, 08:22 PM

Sort of. The Daemon needs time to do it, but the actual when doesn't matter so much. They can retroactively have setup entire event chains, though not actually have killed them if they hadn't died before in the timeline, because obviously then they would've been dead already. The point they were going for is that daemons can simply ignore the fact that you're trying to alter it's history, due to the fact that it never really had a Material history. And Warp history has the end of the universe yesterday, and the birth of the same one tomorrow.

How the warp works. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs)

Lamech

2011-06-04, 08:29 PM

Sort of. The Daemon needs time to do it, but the actual when doesn't matter so much. They can retroactively have setup entire event chains, though not actually have killed them if they hadn't died before in the timeline, because obviously then they would've been dead already.Bold mine
They can't even alter history? And they actually do care about time if they need it to do stuff. They may very well be beyond the reach of the weapon itself if they exist in the warp, or maybe it can't lock psychic energy, but if you want to say they don't care about time, then they better be able to pull off at least what the weapon can. Edit: Well similar things like history alteration obviously not the exact same things that would be silly.
(Also aren't demons born of the warp which is born of emotion or something? Simply erasing everything should do the trick.)

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-04, 08:35 PM

Since the only way to destroy a Demon fully is to wipe out the Sapients fueling it...
Hitting a Demon wipes out Humans! and Space Elves! :smalleek:

Misery Esquire

2011-06-04, 08:39 PM

Bold mine
They can't even alter history? And they actually do care about time if they need it to do stuff. They may very well be beyond the reach of the weapon itself if they exist in the warp, or maybe it can't lock psychic energy, but if you want to say they don't care about time, then they better be able to pull off at least what the weapon can.

They don't care about time. Warhammer just happens to have a Required Continuity going on. Fate and whatnot. Whatever happens is because it had to happen that way, they can have had previously killed people to when they exsisted, but they don't go back in time to kill people, successfully anyway. Not caring about time isn't the same as not being able to erase previous history, especially with Tzeentch writing everything down.

(Also aren't demons born of the warp which is born of emotion or something? Simply erasing everything should do the trick.)

The Warp is an alternate dimension, and the daemons are the emotions and thoughts of everything alive, and even a number of objects. The only way to kill Chaos is to annihlate all life in the entire universe, and even then you'd be making Tzeentch cackle happily, because that's what he wanted all along.

Selrahc

2011-06-05, 03:37 AM

A powerful and pure enough god-like Entity could go into the warp and start busting up Daemons. The Daemonic side of the warp is not "Natural", it's an abnormality that arose from the Old Ones. Get enough power to fight extremely powerful gods? Then you could potentially walk right into the warp and start sorting out the situation.

Daemons are little knots of malevolence and personality. Someone powerful enough can unravel that knot. Someone powerful enough could even unravel Tzeentch or Khorne.

I don't think there is much in fiction that could do the job though. A time gun wouldn't do the job. They'd have to go the "easy" route of cleansing all life from the 40K galaxy.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-05, 05:20 AM

Was it? The Memory Alpha article heavily implied that even without its shield, it still managed to handily crush those six warships - only Janeway's suicide ram attack directly into its shield generator was decisive.

Yes, I'm still pretty sure that counts as a defeat. The thing to be bear in mind that is that your typical 40k warship is a lot more dangerous than any of the ships going up against it in that situation.

Don't most psychic and force attacks have a range limit? Like a few feet, someone on my ship, 70,000 light years? And they can only hit things within that range limit? And since its outside of space and time...
Most communications arrays have limited range capablities too, and yet the ship can happily engage in two-way conversations while its shield is up so I don't think that's going to be enough. On top of this, The Warp (which is the source of 40k psychic powers) also exists outside the normal flow of space time. Note that Daemons pretty much live there, so that doesn't bode well for the shield being able to stop getting on board the ship.

Regardless its shots appear to everyone to do nothing. They don't even appear to hit. In fact since you probably lost the first ship that attacked it you don't even know its invincible. So you repeat your standard tactics... I suppose the crew will develop suicidal tendencies after erasing enough species, but still at that point...
Yes, which was exactly why it was able to ignore voyager and carry-on unimpeded by the aforemention small fleet that ended-up destroying it. Oh wait....

Look, I'm not disputing that it's a powerful ship but it's not a win-button. Even assuming the Krenim were going to go after the 40k races (which isn't guaranteed) I really can't think of a reason why Chaos, The Eldar or (god forbid) The Necrons wouldn't be able to stop them when Voyager managed it.

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-05, 05:43 AM

Urist

2011-06-05, 08:38 AM

1 Baneblade Vs entire Federation's Combat-trained personnel on a blank planet of nothing but plains and no ships in orbit to mess with it.

Even Baneblades need ammo, and there are enough Feds that, once the Baneblade stopped firing, they could mob it. However, while its still firing, I would agree, nothing in the Federation arsenal is capable of harming it significantly enough to impair functionality.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-05, 11:52 AM

Baneblades also have a blind spot directly behind them, if you discount the turret (which would have a reload time and a limited blast radius) - if all the Fed swarmed it from a 360-degree circle, enough might get close enough to start boarding...and I will bet on Federation Marines over Imperial Guard tank crewmen.

Second battle - Horus's battle barge would do serious damage, but I'd give this to the Feds out of simple numbers...they do have a significant fleet. Their limited range isn't as much a factor when their tactical engagement speed it so much higher, letting them rush the barge and engage it at close range until someone got a lucky shot on something vital.

Lamech

2011-06-05, 12:49 PM

What about:
1 Baneblade Vs entire Federation's Combat-trained personnel on a blank planet of nothing but plains and no ships in orbit to mess with it.

The Vengeful Spirit (Horus's flagship Pre-Heresy) Vs the entire Fed fleet in empty space

I'd say the Baneblade and Vengeful Spirit for the win simply due to Fed's lack of combat ability
Federation personal weapons are really powerful. Like exploding half a building. And then they got even more powerful weapons. I truly doubt the bane blade would hold up very long against a concentrated bombardment.

On the space battle feds ships have really high tactical maneuverability. And fairly high range. They can fire photon torpedoes from warp. These guys carry around planet wrecking power. They can move chunks of neutron stars.

Most communications arrays have limited range capablities too, and yet the ship can happily engage in two-way conversations while its shield is up so I don't think that's going to be enough. On top of this, The Warp (which is the source of 40k psychic powers) also exists outside the normal flow of space time. Note that Daemons pretty much live there, so that doesn't bode well for the shield being able to stop getting on board the ship.
Demons can't even re-write history! I truly doubt they would be able to overcome the time manipulation of something that could. And yeah the ships defenses don't block it from getting information. The ship can interact how it wants, that doesn't mean it works the other way around. A cloaked ship can see but can't be seen.

Look, I'm not disputing that it's a powerful ship but it's not a win-button. Even assuming the Krenim were going to go after the 40k races (which isn't guaranteed) I really can't think of a reason why Chaos, The Eldar or (god forbid) The Necrons wouldn't be able to stop them when Voyager managed it.It was sabotaged from the inside. If someone conveniently drops its main defense for you it might be a win. Also important to note it voyager had shields that kept it from being re-written. Nothing in 40K has any defense against that. They wouldn't realize that the ship had hit any targets. Voyager did know that about the ships power, and voyager had someone take out its defenses.
If the 40K-verse got allies within the ship and knew about the ship then they might get a repeat.

The_Final_Stand

2011-06-05, 01:29 PM

I am amused that this thread has gotten to the point where an inability to rewrite history is a weakness.

On Daemons: They warp reality simply by existing. Once a breach in space has allowed one Daemon through, then that point will remain a weak point for more Daemons to come through. If enough Daemons get together, or a few Greater Daemons, then the world itself may be warped into a playground where physics is a fun joke you tell your friends.

Attempting to "kill" a Daemon simply banishes it back to the warp. It will be back, and when it is, this time it will be angry.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-05, 01:56 PM

Demons can't even re-write history! I truly doubt they would be able to overcome the time manipulation of something that could.
The shield can't re-write history, the cannon does. All the shield does is create a space-time distortion that prevents it from being hit by conventional weapons fire. The warp also exists outside of time so anything that lives there is probably going to have a fair chance of countering something which does exactly the same thing, but not as well as they do.

And yeah the ships defenses don't block it from getting information. The ship can interact how it wants, that doesn't mean it works the other way around. A cloaked ship can see but can't be seen.
For communications they have to be able to recieve information which is going to be travelling from the other ship to them. If that kind of stuff can get through fine then why exactly is it impossible for a psychic attack to get through? Especially when you consider that said ship is, unlike a cloaked vessel, able to be detected by other ships even while that shield is up, which strengthens the hypothesis that it's time distortion shield is primarily there to protect it from weapons fire, as it's clearly not doing a whole lot against scans.

Note also that a cloaked ship can't engage in communications without immediately giving itself away. So even if under normal circumstance you want to claim that psychic attacks are impossible, this is going to change very quickly if they ever open up a hailing frequency.

It was sabotaged from the inside. If someone conveniently drops its main defense for you it might be a win.
Not going to be a problem if you have psychics on board, or gate in daemons.

Also important to note it voyager had shields that kept it from being re-written. Nothing in 40K has any defense against that.
Actually that's not entirely certain. Eldar shielding is ridicuously advanced, probably significantly moreso than The Federation, so again it's possible they could pull the same thing off. Plus they have a lot of really strong psychics.

Plus 40k ships have speed (the time gun thing can and has been dodged) and enough range and firepower that if the shield drops the Krenim ship is going to have a much harder time staying in the fight than it did against Voyager.

They wouldn't realize that the ship had hit any targets. Voyager did know that about the ships power, and voyager had someone take out its defenses.
And how did Voyager know? They weren't told by anyone, they were able to work it out. That's also how they were able to shield themselves in the first place. Given the ranges 40k space battles are fought at (much greater ones than in Star Trek) they aren't going to be lacking scanning equipment and given relience on warp travel said systems will probably notice disruptions in space-time. Again, I don't see how you can arbitrarily declare that no one would be able to work it out. I'm not even getting into the amount of pre-cogs and clairvoyants 40k has.

Ok yes, maybe if Annorax was deliberately going after the 40k races with the sole intent of wiping them out this might work, but he won't be. Odds are, at the time of this convergeance he'll still be sitting around in the sectors he was in Voyager still attempting the futile task of trying to bring back his wife by punching holes in space-time. The only way contact will start is if any of the 40k races happen to walk in on him.

If the 40K-verse got allies within the ship

Again: psychics. Gated Daemons. Eldar Warp Spiders. A ship can only function with a working crew and if said crew are killed or mind-raped into gibbering wrecks then the super-weapon is essentially so much mass of junk. A mass of junk that's immune to conventional weapons granted, but still a mass of junk.

I repeat: yes, this ship is powerful but it's simply not going to be a win button. There is only one such ship and it's being piloted by a guy whose own obsessions aren't going to allow it to be used to just go and wipe out the 40k races, even if it could definitely pull that feat off (which I don't think it could).

The Glyphstone

2011-06-05, 02:04 PM

Ok yes, maybe if Annorax was deliberately going after the 40k races with the sole intent of wiping them out this might work, but he won't be. Odds are, at the time of this convergeance he'll still be sitting around in the sectors he was in Voyager still attempting the futile task of trying to bring back his wife by punching holes in space-time. The only way contact will start is if any of the 40k races happen to walk in on him.

And on that note, most of the major 40K races couldn't be entirely erased in one shot, since they don't have a homeworld. Off the top of my head, only the Kroot (Pech), Tau (t-something), and Humans have defined homeworlds...the Eldar's crone worlds are deep within the Eye of Terror, the Orks don't have a home planet to begin with, the Tyranids' home planet (if they have one) is in another galaxy, and the Necrons' home planet probably doesn't exist anymore.

Lamech

2011-06-05, 02:26 PM

The shield can't re-write history, the cannon does.... Shield=Cannon. Its one temporal core.

For communications they have to be able to recieve information which is going to be travelling from the other ship to them. If that kind of stuff can get through fine then why exactly is it impossible for a psychic attack to get through? Especially when you consider that said ship is, unlike a cloaked vessel, able to be detected by other ships even while that shield is up, which strengthens the hypothesis that it's time distortion shield is primarily there to protect it from weapons fire, as it's clearly not doing a whole lot against scans.

Note also that a cloaked ship can't engage in communications without immediately giving itself away. So even if under normal circumstance you want to claim that psychic attacks are impossible, this is going to change very quickly if they ever open up a hailing frequency.Psychic attack=!star trek communications and light.

The only reason a cloaked ship is given away by communications is because communications transmit information, and normally the only methods of information transmission available are ones that an be traced. If the cloaked ship used an untraceable method it would not be given away. A cloaked ship interacts with light only in the ways it chooses. Its detects light, but the light goes straight on through it.

Saying its immune to weapons and saying we could attack it with "X" makes little sense anyway. In ST their are psychic weapons, weapons that affect space, or tear space, energy weapons of every kind, matter based weapons of every kind, transporters used as weapons ect. A weapon is anything that can be used to do damage. If it is immune to weapons its immune to attack.

Actually that's not entirely certain. Eldar shielding is ridicuously advanced, probably significantly moreso than The Federation, so again it's possible they could pull the same thing off. Plus they have a lot of really strong psychics.

Plus 40k ships have speed (the time gun thing can and has been dodged) and enough range and firepower that if the shield drops the Krenim ship is going to have a much harder time staying in the fight than it did against Voyager.And they've developed shields that protect against history being changed? That prevent time travel? (And those still weren't enough to survive a direct hit, only when something else was targeted.)

And how did Voyager know?Because someone rewrote history, and they didn't get rewritten. Its fairly obvious at that point. They didn't notice any of the earlier changes.

Ok yes, maybe if Annorax was deliberately going after the 40k races with the sole intent of wiping them out this might work, but he won't be. Odds are, at the time of this convergeance he'll still be sitting around in the sectors he was in Voyager still attempting the futile task of trying to bring back his wife by punching holes in space-time. The only way contact will start is if any of the 40k races happen to walk in on him.This time he'll be attempting to undo the rewrite of the whole galaxy probably. He has serious megalomania issues. Or orcs or something will attack part of his beloved Kremin empire.

I am amused that this thread has gotten to the point where an inability to rewrite history is a weakness.
Demons: Weaknesses: Inability to rewrite history. Strengths: Main weakness is inability to rewrite history.

Misery Esquire

2011-06-05, 02:48 PM

... Shield=Cannon. Its one temporal core.

That was never, shown to work that way. Therefore it doesn't.

Psychic attack=!star trek communications and light.

The only reason a cloaked ship is given away by communications is because communications transmit information, and normally the only methods of information transmission available are ones that an be traced. If the cloaked ship used an untraceable method it would not be given away. A cloaked ship interacts with light only in the ways it chooses. Its detects light, but the light goes straight on through it.

Saying its immune to weapons and saying we could attack it with "X" makes little sense anyway. In ST their are psychic weapons, weapons that affect space, or tear space, energy weapons of every kind, matter based weapons of every kind, transporters used as weapons ect. A weapon is anything that can be used to do damage. If it is immune to weapons its immune to attack.

Any Psykers use an alternate dimension to pinpoint the fact that there's someone alive. It has nothing to do with light, or subspace, or any kind of particle wave. And then they explode the alive thing's brain. Or fire a Vortex missle at the position. Or a dozen other things. Immune to Trek weapons does not mean it's immune to what Warhammer or the GE can dream or fire up.

And they've developed shields that protect against history being changed? That prevent time travel? (And those still weren't enough to survive a direct hit, only when something else was targeted.)

The Eldar? They'd probably just predict where the ship will fire, and not be there. And make it appear that they were hit, while actually tearing the Time Ship a new one. Fields that bend light and all Auspex and psychic detection and a race of high-powered psykers. The only reason the Imperium of Man can do things to the Eldar is due to sheer bloody minded aggressiveness, and thousands of weapon batteries to coat areas of space in explosions until one of them damage the Eldar ship's holofield.

Because someone rewrote history, and they didn't get rewritten. Its fairly obvious at that point. They didn't notice any of the earlier changes.

So... If history was actually rewritten, wouldn't it be impossible to tell, no matter what? Why would they be protected against something they never knew exsisted?

This time he'll be attempting to undo the rewrite of the whole galaxy probably. He has serious megalomania issues. Or orcs or something will attack part of his beloved Kremin empire.

And Voyager along with a few friends managed to blow it up. If the Federation doesn't manage it again, the other horrifyingly more powerful factions will.

If the 40K-verse got allies within the ship and knew about the ship then they might get a repeat

*coughteleportterminatorscough*

The_Final_Stand

2011-06-05, 02:56 PM

One of the things about Eldar is the fact that their Psykers do in fact see the future. That's why they are called "Farseers". Perhaps one of them saw that this temporal genocide gun would be built and took appropriate countermeasures?

I'm not entirely convinced that anything with "temporal" in the name is automatically granted fiat to annihilate everything. The Warp is an alternate dimension, where time and space are not particularly certain. I think it reasonable that some of the anti-daemon countermeasures would be effective against the temporal genocide gun.

Incidentally, what, pray tell, would an "untraceable" communications method be? It generally has to be recievable, else there's no point to sending such a communication.

Lamech

2011-06-05, 03:16 PM

That was never, shown to work that way. Therefore it doesn't.Umm... yes it was. Its the temporal core (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Krenim_weapon_ship) that keeps it out of phase and erases timelines.

The ship obtained its power to affect time from its temporal core. When in operation, the core also kept the ship, and everything and everyone on it, outside of normal space-time.

Any Psykers use an alternate dimension to pinpoint the fact that there's someone alive.And star trek weapons can use alternate dimensions and psychic powers.

It has nothing to do with light, or subspace, or any kind of particle wave. Right, which is exactly why being able to scan it or see it means nothing when you bring up psychic attacks.

And then they explode the alive thing's brain. Or fire a Vortex missle at the position. Or a dozen other things. Immune to Trek weapons does not mean it's immune to what Warhammer or the GE can dream or fire up.So just because a void shield and 40K armor blocks everything from 40K, it won't block things from ST? Because there is no way you actually mean that.

So... If history was actually rewritten, wouldn't it be impossible to tell, no matter what? Why would they be protected against something they never knew exsisted? Not if you weren't included in the rewrite. They built shields to protect against weapons that had similar same out of phase crap going for them. Is their anything at all like that the Eldar might have wanted to defend against?

*coughteleportterminatorscough*... Yeah trek ships have transporters too. Its immune.

Incidentally, what, pray tell, would an "untraceable" communications method be? It generally has to be recievable, else there's no point to sending such a communication. It would be annoyingly hard to do with real world physics, against someone who has decent tech. But lets suppose I have a weapon that makes a brain explode and it can't be traced back to me. So my friend gets a bunch of brains. He puts assigns each brain a character. (A, B C, $, ., ect.) I explode brains in an order that spells out a message.

Misery Esquire

2011-06-05, 03:23 PM

Umm... yes it was. Its the temporal core (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Krenim_weapon_ship) that keeps it out of phase and erases timelines.

Right. But that doesn't mean it's shielding is a TIME SHIELD, it merely keeps the ship out of phase with the normal universe and...

And star trek weapons can use alternate dimensions and psychic powers. Right, which is exactly why being able to scan it or see it means nothing when you bring up psychic attacks.

It means EVERYTHING when using psychic attacks. The psychic attacks don't care that you're seperate from normal space-time, they're travelling through the Warp to do damage. The Warp treats "space time" as something to turn into cheetos and murder rhinos with.

So just because a void shield and 40K armor blocks everything from 40K, it won't block things from ST? Because there is no way you actually mean that.

Star Trek shields are shown to block various energy beams, projectile weapons, radiation, and assorted blast-y things. The betazoids can always "feel" thier way through shields. Therefore a psyker can blast a skull through shields. Void shields are shown to block various energies, projectiles, radiation, and psychic abilities.

... Yeah trek ships have transporters too. Its immune.

Except Trek shields are proof against Trek teleports, which are an entirely different matter than Warhammer's Jump-Through-Hell-Teleport.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-05, 03:25 PM

... Shield=Cannon. Its one temporal core.
The temporal core is what powers them both, it doesn't make them the same thing. The shield itself doesn't re-write history, from what I can make out, it just uses time warps to block weapons fire.

Psychic attack=!star trek communications and light.
No, in 40k terms it's essentially magic. In either case though, it bears very little similarity to the conventional armaments that are standard for ST ship combat because it doesn't work in anything resembling the same fashion. Hence the scepticism about the shield's capabilities to stop it.

Saying its immune to weapons and saying we could attack it with "X" makes little sense anyway. In ST their are psychic weapons, weapons that affect space, or tear space, energy weapons of every kind, matter based weapons of every kind, transporters used as weapons ect. A weapon is anything that can be used to do damage. If it is immune to weapons its immune to attack.
It's immune to conventional weapons. Psychic attacks and magic are not conventional weapons (especially not in Star Trek). That is all that is said about the shield in the source material, and at no point is it ever targetted with psychic attacks, reality warping or any other similarly unconventional attack that the 40k races have access to. As such, there needs to be a reason given why it counts as a defense against these, considering that it clearly doesn't block out everything due to communications and the fact that it's visible. Twisting around semantics is not going to be enough to declare that it has de facto immunity to everything I'm afraid.

And they've developed shields that protect against history being changed? That prevent time travel? (And those still weren't enough to survive a direct hit, only when something else was targeted.)
No. However, neither have the Federation. If you read the episode recap you will notice that Voyager had not previously developed shields that could resist time-warping weapons either. They just modified their existing ones. If the Federation can do that then I'm not seeing why a race like the Eldar (whose shield technology is probably a lot more advanced than The Federation) would be incapable of this.

Because someone rewrote history, and they didn't get rewritten. Its fairly obvious at that point. They didn't notice any of the earlier changes.
And again: why can't this happen with a 40k race vessel?

This time he'll be attempting to undo the rewrite of the whole galaxy probably. He has serious megalomania issues.
Why would he? His obsession is specifically with getting his wife back. Unless the convergeance of these galaxies caused her destruction (which it didn't) I don't see why that would be his first goal.

Or orcs or something will attack part of his beloved Kremin empire.
Which gives him reason to go after the Orks, and even then the wife thing is likely to come first. On top of this, he now has to find where the homeworlds are, which means scouting 40k space (drastically reducing his chances of retaining the element of surprise, especially if he stops to ask questions). To make matters worse, as Glyphstone has noted about half the 40k races don't even have a targettable homeworld.

Lamech

2011-06-05, 04:01 PM

It means EVERYTHING when using psychic attacks. The psychic attacks don't care that you're seperate from normal space-time, they're travelling through the Warp to do damage. The Warp treats "space time" as something to turn into cheetos and murder rhinos with.So distance is meaningless in the warp? And time too? So if I'm sending something through the warp the location and time I entered is meaningless? Except that isn't the case. Ships have jump ranges, normally when ships come out correlates to when they entered (and being a thousand years off is a really strong correlation when time exists for billions of years).

Except Trek shields are proof against Trek teleports, which are an entirely different matter than Warhammer's Jump-Through-Hell-Teleport.The transporter goes through the ever magical subspace. Yes that is a difference, but its still fairly not normal space time.

It's immune to conventional weapons. Psychic attacks and magic are not conventional weapons (especially not in Star Trek). That is all that is said about the shield in the source material, and at no point is it ever targetted with psychic attacks, reality warping or any other similarly unconventional attack that the 40k races have access to. As such, there needs to be a reason given why it counts as a defense against these, considering that it clearly doesn't block out everything due to communications and the fact that it's visible. Twisting around semantics is not going to be enough to declare that it has de facto immunity to everything I'm afraid.The captain was pretty confident of it being immune to attacks, when Janeway and co. came at him; not some attacks. He thought he was invincible (right until the core was dropped); even after the ST dude he had with him said Janeway definitely has some method of attack. The ship can use its transporters on whats outside, but whats outside can't do the same. What affects it is selective. If it couldn't selectively interact with light it wouldn't be very immune to weapons.

Which gives him reason to go after the Orks, and even then the wife thing is likely to come first. On top of this, he now has to find where the homeworlds are, which means scouting 40k space (drastically reducing his chances of retaining the element of surprise, especially if he stops to ask questions). To make matters worse, as Glyphstone has noted about half the 40k races don't even have a targettable homeworld.
Most of the 40K races are fairly aggressive, orks, tryn, humans, ect. They will in all likelihood run afoul of him eventually. Besides the guy goes around erasing planets and crap. He'll be a fairly nasty danger whenever he is encountered.

No. However, neither have the Federation. If you read the episode recap you will notice that Voyager had not previously developed shields that could resist time-warping weapons either. They just modified their existing ones. If the Federation can do that then I'm not seeing why a race like the Eldar (whose shield technology is probably a lot more advanced than The Federation) would be incapable of this.ST shields are mutli-tools for starters. How many times are 40K ship shields used to open portals to alternate dimensions, blow up asteroids, or do any of the other things the shield generators pull off? Two, how often does 40K do research on its combat ships? Do they attempt to scan for data as the enemies attack? Three they would actually need to get into a fight with the krenim to figure it out. Which seeing as the standard 40K doctrine is kill-kill-kill the wrath of that ship will probably be invoked, remember he can't bring back his wife if the whole empire gets destroyed. (I truly doubt the kremin torps will do well against 40K or GE., yes they will probably waltz right past the shields, but several hits doesn't even destroy a ST ship and those things are made of tin foil anything with armor will do fine.)

Mx.Silver

2011-06-05, 05:42 PM

The captain was pretty confident of it being immune to attacks, when Janeway and co. came at him; not some attacks. He thought he was invincible (right until the core was dropped); even after the ST dude he had with him said Janeway definitely has some method of attack.
Yeah, because he was probably not expecting to be facing a host of mind-raping telepaths or magical daemons because neither of those things are exactly common in Star Trek and even if anything like them does exist it probably won't be found on a small-ish fed warship.

The ship can use its transporters on whats outside, but whats outside can't do the same. What affects it is selective. If it couldn't selectively interact with light it wouldn't be very immune to weapons.

We know it can't selectively interact with light because it never turns invisible. It can block Photon torpedos, but those are more direct energy explosives than actual light-based attacks.

Most of the 40K races are fairly aggressive, orks, tryn, humans, ect. They will in all likelihood run afoul of him eventually. Besides the guy goes around erasing planets and crap. He'll be a fairly nasty danger whenever he is encountered.
I'm not disputing he's dangerous, I'm disputing the danger he poses is significant on enough of a scale to counter the threat posed by the 40k races. Becuase I really don't think he is.

ST shields are mutli-tools for starters. How many times are 40K ship shields used to open portals to alternate dimensions, blow up asteroids, or do any of the other things the shield generators pull off?
They don't need to. The upgrade to Voyager's shields only modified their defensive capabilities, and since the Eldar shields have to deal with at least as varied an amount of attacks as the Feds (and are effective against pretty much everything that isn't Necron-level tech). Again, I do not think it all that unlikely that a quick-think eldar captain would be able to do similar.
Incidentally: exactly how often are Fed shields used for that? Because I don't think those are anything like standard procedure for star fleet.

Two, how often does 40K do research on its combat ships? Do they attempt to scan for data as the enemies attack?
Depends on the species. Eldar are more than capable of it, Tau probably do, Necrons sure as hell do and their tech for that is so far advanced it's not even funny. Imperials and Chaos don't generally have the need, but I don't think they'd be incapable of it especially with psykers and sorcerers. Tyranids I have no idea, and Orks probably can't (but then Ork tech is odd anyway).

Three they would actually need to get into a fight with the krenim to figure it out.
Or they'd need to observe one. Hell, Eldar may not even need that depending on pre-cog. Necron tech is at a level where they can potentially get all the needed information with a scanning run, if needs be.

Which seeing as the standard 40K doctrine is kill-kill-kill the wrath of that ship will probably be invoked, remember he can't bring back his wife if the whole empire gets destroyed.
Again, the actual doctrine depends on the race in question. Orks and Tyranids certainly, Imperials and Chaos will do so if they know they're up against an enemy. The other races though are much more likely to be subtler about it.

Craftworld

2011-06-06, 09:35 PM

And they've developed shields that protect against history being changed? That prevent time travel? (And those still weren't enough to survive a direct hit, only when something else was targeted.)
Because someone rewrote history, and they didn't get rewritten. Its fairly obvious at that point. They didn't notice any of the earlier changes.
This time he'll be attempting to undo the rewrite of the whole galaxy probably. He has serious megalomania issues. Or orcs or something will attack part of his beloved Kremin empire.

Eldar can predict the future and if they deemed that destroying this ship was key to Eldar survival they would attack it. From the Webway. A single Eldar Craftworld (a small one I believe) destroyed an entire Imperial Navy Armada and at least one Space Marine Battle Barge. They are also incredibly fast. They are probably just as fast as the Federation's ships and they are more powerful in armor and armament. Also Mindwar=Federation Captain's head exploded.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 10:31 PM

A single Eldar Craftworld (a small one I believe) destroyed an entire Imperial Navy Armada and at least one Space Marine Battle Barge.

A craftworld is basically the Death Star minus its superlaser, plus a lot more anti-small craft defenses, and with a constantly present support fleet, so this really shouldn't come as a surprise, you know.

Eldar would definitely be the ones most likely to take down the timeship if it started running amok, though. Messing with time is their turf (though they work with the future, not the past) and they don't like to share.:smallwink:

Lamech

2011-06-06, 11:25 PM

Yeah, because he was probably not expecting to be facing a host of mind-raping telepaths or magical daemons because neither of those things are exactly common in Star Trek and even if anything like them does exist it probably won't be found on a small-ish fed warship.Well to get a telepath (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Telepathic_species) you would need a Vulcan, Reman, Ocampan, Betazoid, or a lucky human. And when was the last time a Vulcan, Betazoid or human showed up on a federation ship? Besides always. An magical creature (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Non-corporeal_species) would be significantly rarer, but still they have quite a few: we have Ocampans, Medusans, and Organians. (A of that list is living clouds.) I suppose the Traveller (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Traveller) might qualify... (also note Weasly has the same freaking powers.) And then a host of things from different dimensions...

We know it can't selectively interact with light because it never turns invisible. It can block Photon torpedos, but those are more direct energy explosives than actual light-based attacks.The things immune to at least conventional weapons, one of which in ST is a laser.

They don't need to. The upgrade to Voyager's shields only modified their defensive capabilities, and since the Eldar shields have to deal with at least as varied an amount of attacks as the Feds (and are effective against pretty much everything that isn't Necron-level tech). Again, I do not think it all that unlikely that a quick-think eldar captain would be able to do similar.
Incidentally: exactly how often are Fed shields used for that? Because I don't think those are anything like standard procedure for star fleet.The feds do it quite a lot. To get to species 8472 land? Deflector. Disarm replicator mines? Shield generator. One shot a borg cube? (It had pre-adapted) shield generator.
Although would they even bother? If they have good armor they won't need to the torpedoes seriously suck except for the whole go through shields. ST ships crumple when hit normally and voyager took beating after beating. If their armor is anywhere near as strong as voyager's shields they'll won't need to change a thing.

Depends on the species. Eldar are more than capable of it, Tau probably do, Necrons sure as hell do and their tech for that is so far advanced it's not even funny. Imperials and Chaos don't generally have the need, but I don't think they'd be incapable of it especially with psykers and sorcerers. Tyranids I have no idea, and Orks probably can't (but then Ork tech is odd anyway).Tyranids "super-evolve" right? Although they don't normally evolve shields, but have armor right? The torpedoes aren't specially effective against armor.

Eldar can predict the future and if they deemed that destroying this ship was key to Eldar survival they would attack it. From the Webway. A single Eldar Craftworld (a small one I believe) destroyed an entire Imperial Navy Armada and at least one Space Marine Battle Barge. They are also incredibly fast. They are probably just as fast as the Federation's ships and they are more powerful in armor and armament. Also Mindwar=Federation Captain's head exploded. ST ships are stuipidly fast. Like .25c is a starting point. And warp can be used tactically...

Craftworld

2011-06-06, 11:29 PM

ST ships are stuipidly fast. Like .25c is a starting point. And warp can be used tactically...

Eldar don't use the Warp. They use the Webway. Imagine the Material world as Day. The Warp as Night. The Webway is the twilight and the dawn between the two.
Eldar are also stupidly fast because before our ancestors crawled from the sea, they were using starships. That is a long time to modify and advance.

Lamech

2011-06-06, 11:43 PM

Eldar don't use the Warp. They use the Webway. Imagine the Material world as Day. The Warp as Night. The Webway is the twilight and the dawn between the two.
Eldar are also stupidly fast because before our ancestors crawled from the sea, they were using starships. That is a long time to modify and advance.So they have a speed of? Compared to 40K "a turn is 30 minutes" battle barges, SW ships are stupidly fast, and they might as well be sitting ducks compared to ST ships. And if your kind of part of the normal world your going to have trouble with the not in the world ship.

P.S. If Eldar see the future can they change it? Isn't 40K a one fate/set-time universe? If what they see is set they would have some trouble. They see the universe being rewritten? Then they can't do anything about it since the future is set. Now in the rewritten future? Well in the past now matches up with the new future and they don't know someone is screwing with them! Or they might figure out how to make time shields eventually, especially after bumping into the time torpedoes guys, but the first option is funnier.

Craftworld

2011-06-06, 11:57 PM

So they have a speed of? Compared to 40K "a turn is 30 minutes" battle barges, SW ships are stupidly fast, and they might as well be sitting ducks compared to ST ships. And if your kind of part of the normal world your going to have trouble with the not in the world ship.

P.S. If Eldar see the future can they change it? Isn't 40K a one fate/set-time universe? If what they see is set they would have some trouble. They see the universe being rewritten? Then they can't do anything about it since the future is set. Now in the rewritten future? Well in the past now matches up with the new future and they don't know someone is screwing with them! Or they might figure out how to make time shields eventually, especially after bumping into the time torpedoes guys, but the first option is funnier.

Eldar ships turn pretty much like ST ships and they have similar fire power to ships several times their size.
They see the different skeins of time, like rivulets in the mud. All possible but some seem more likely and if they believe that this "Star Trek time messing with ship thing" (this sounds mocking but I don't mean it to be, I'm not an avid ST fan) they will act on it. 40k has many different time rivers...but this also depends on the craftworld...if it is Ulthwe...that ship is either gone...or not messing with the Eldar much...if it is others...well the line is a little less clear cut..."I'M LOOKING AT YOU LYANDEN!"

This is how I see the battle going.
*Time Ship is out in space in X position*
*Eldar appear within one kilometer of the Time Ship, start blasting, and board the ship with Aspect Warriors, Guardians, Wraithguard/Wraithlords, and Psykers*
*After a long fight through the corridors and on the decks of the time ship the crew is dead and the Eldar begin to destroy and distmantle the ship with weapons like D Cannons (they open a temporary hole to the warp and shred the target between two dimmensions)*
*Eldar do die but they deem the losses acceptable to keep their race alive*

Mx.Silver

2011-06-07, 04:52 AM

Well to get a telepath (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Telepathic_species) you would need a Vulcan, Reman, Ocampan, Betazoid, or a lucky human. And when was the last time a Vulcan, Betazoid or human showed up on a federation ship? Besides always.
And how many of those telepaths are capable of killing someone with telepathy at range? Or mind-raping them at range?

An magical creature (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Non-corporeal_species) would be significantly rarer, but still they have quite a few: we have Ocampans, Medusans, and Organians. (A of that list is living clouds.) I suppose the Traveller (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Traveller) might qualify... (also note Weasly has the same freaking powers.) And then a host of things from different dimensions...
Was he expecting any of those to be present on Voyager? Because unless those are dime a dozen for the feds then my original point still stands and his confidence means nothing in terms of whether his shields would work.

The things immune to at least conventional weapons, one of which in ST is a laser.

Normal Fed shielding is also able to stop lasers without any real difficulty. In fact, unless I'm very much mistaken the feds view weponised lasers as being obsolete. Being able to stop one is clearly not enough to assume that the ship in question is able to manipulated light (especially since, once again, it can still be seen).

The feds do it quite a lot. To get to species 8472 land? Deflector.
I fail to see how deflecting something with a shield qualifies as being outside the capabilities of a shield.

Disarm replicator mines? Shield generator. One shot a borg cube? (It had pre-adapted) shield generator.
Fair enough.

Tyranids "super-evolve" right? Although they don't normally evolve shields, but have armor right? The torpedoes aren't specially effective against armor.

Yes, nids have armour.

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-07, 06:51 AM

And how many of those telepaths are capable of killing someone with telepathy at range? Or mind-raping them at range?

To be fair, as far as I can tell, the extent of Troi's psychic powers is saying "Something is WRONG here..." and then rolling on the floor screaming and crying with pain.

Parra

2011-06-07, 08:30 AM

To be fair, as far as I can tell, the extent of Troi's psychic powers is saying "Something is WRONG here..." and then rolling on the floor screaming and crying with pain.

In fairness she is only part-psychic and basicly limited to empathic and minor telepathic abilities.
Her mother (a full Betazoid) did accidently send a whole station (DS9) around the twist accidently when she lost control of her abilities due to so some plot related reason.

ST Magic is definatly very different to WH40k Magic and is much more in keeping with the subtle side of SW Magic.

However there is one big different between WH40k Magic and the ST/SW Magics and thats that the 40k Magic accesses something tangible. That is to say that the Warp is a phsyical (term used lightly) place that you can actually go to, that you use to fuel your magic, that you can raise void-shields/geller-fields to protect yourself from.

Given the scientific know-how of the ST races (feds in particular), could they employ, after a few encounters, some of that technobable and essentially attune there shields to the 'frequencies used by the warp'.

Essentially Science! in the WH40K verse has evolved to protect against magic, no reason the other 2 can't as well. Feds would probably do it quite quickly really.

Selrahc

2011-06-07, 09:44 AM

If Eldar see the future can they change it? Isn't 40K a one fate/set-time universe?

The future in 40k can be changed. Prophecies are normally either warnings or guides...

The Imperium and Chaos also have future scrying abilities, although a lot less advanced than those of the Eldar.

The Imperium will have a hazy idea of what is to come and some idea of how to avoid it. Good to give them some warning to prepare, or potentially avoid an event. The Eldar will have the dozen most likely probable futures mapped out, with plans to shift events into the most favourable course. The Imperium tries to avert disasters, the Eldar try to find the best possible future.

did accidently send a whole station (DS9)

Well. Not really. It was people she was in close, prolonged contact with. It affected around half a dozen people. And it was an involuntary effect caused by an illness.

She was better than Troi though. Some of her appearances on TNG showed her generally getting close to mind reading in her emaphetic abilities.

No ship exploding powers though. The only psychic race that had that kind of power was the boosted Ocampans.

Essentially Science! in the WH40K verse has evolved to protect against magic, no reason the other 2 can't as well. Feds would probably do it quite quickly really.

Hm. The Gellar fields are in part powered by spiritual energies. Blessed wards and the like. I'm not sure how you create a scientific counterfeit of a blessed ward.

Parra

2011-06-07, 10:00 AM

Hummm, maybe I remebered the episode wrong, but I thought it effected most of the station and in true TV style we only saw the effect on the actors paid to talk. Could well be wrong though.

Essentially Science! in the WH40K verse has evolved to protect against magic, no reason the other 2 can't as well. Feds would probably do it quite quickly really
Hm. The Gellar fields are in part powered by spiritual energies. Blessed wards and the like. I'm not sure how you create a scientific counterfeit of a blessed ward.

Spiritual Energies being some sort of manifestation of the Warp?
Seems like its just another power source to me, though with some admitadly exotic effects

Misery Esquire

2011-06-07, 10:48 AM

Spiritual Energies being some sort of manifestation of the Warp?

Well, the Warp is a torrent of beliefs and emotions... And Trek is aethist. Unfortunately being aethist doesn't help in relation to the Warp. Belief in things is like a placebo effect, sure the Geller Field is technology and it does repel daemons, but the belief of the crew, and the might of the Emperor creating the Astronomicon is what keeps the field up and ships from being gnawed.

Like Picard always liked to discover every other episode, science can't explain everything.

Lamech

2011-06-07, 11:32 AM

Well, the Warp is a torrent of beliefs and emotions... And Trek is aethist. Unfortunately being aethist doesn't help in relation to the Warp. Belief in things is like a placebo effect, sure the Geller Field is technology and it does repel daemons, but the belief of the crew, and the might of the Emperor creating the Astronomicon is what keeps the field up and ships from being gnawed.

Like Picard always liked to discover every other episode, science can't explain everything.I'm pretty sure their not all atheists space religions pop up every so many episodes. More to the point they wouldn't have any trouble believing in psychic energy whatsits, or believing that their technology could save them. If they had to I bet they could start a religion worshiping the god-placebo of sentient-kind.

And how many of those telepaths are capable of killing someone with telepathy at range? Or mind-raping them at range? The Reman does for sure. Troi (half-betazoid) managed to reverse the process on said Reman. The vulcan (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Vulcan#The_brain) powers include mind control and even possession and some of them can hit interstellar ranges, although not sure specifically on the combination of those thing. Humans exposed to the galactic barrier sometimes get cool powers which then keep on increasing with out limit. (Although they sometimes develop psychopathy as a side effect...) so they could do it. A powerful enough Ocampan would have more than enough juice to simply destroy the offending ship if the ship could be harmed at all.

Was he expecting any of those to be present on Voyager? Because unless those are dime a dozen for the feds then my original point still stands and his confidence means nothing in terms of whether his shields would work.Kes was on voyager until she turned into 7 of 9 an energy being, Weasely had the same (or similar) powers as the Traveler. But the captain didn't know what the feds had access too, and the only thing we see Chakotay tell him is Janeway can in fact hurt him.

The future in 40k can be changed. Prophecies are normally either warnings or guides...Aww... that would have been funny if it was pre-set...

Selrahc

2011-06-07, 11:38 AM

Hummm, maybe I remebered the episode wrong, but I thought it effected most of the station and in true TV style we only saw the effect on the actors paid to talk. Could well be wrong though.

It may have had some more victims beyond those we saw, but all of the victims were talking to Lwaxana for a while. It wasn't something that promptly enveloped the station. That was why Sisko was unaffected. He never had a drawn out conversation with Lwaxana.

and the might of the Emperor creating the Astronomicon is what keeps the field up and ships from being gnawed.

The Astronomicon is nothing to do with a Gellar field.

Misery Esquire

2011-06-07, 12:52 PM

The Astronomicon is nothing to do with a Gellar field.

Indirectly, it does. For example, Blood Reaver is from the perspective of the Night Lords, and thier Navigator is unable to avoid the harsher warp tides due to not following the Astronomicon, though to be fair appearntly more Chaotic Navigators who have practise at it manage fine with the Astronomicon, causing additional damage to the ship and the Gellar Field.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-07, 02:18 PM

General question: I'm curious as to how The Galactic Empire and the various factions from ST would be able to cope with some of the 40k races, if they even could.
I'm thinking primarily of Orks and Tyranids here, as in terms of agressiveness, they're probably going to be the biggest threats. There's also the fact that of all the 40k factions these two are the ones that are really geared towards a ground war.

In regards to the others the Tau empire is very expansionistic, although not at a terribly fast rate. Even so, for a 40k race they're pretty cosmopolitan so it's not impossible that they could be reasoned with. Eldar aren't as reasonable, but their expansion attempts aren't likely to be all that big. In the case of Dark Eldar and Necrons all you can really do is hope they don't target anywhere your defenses aren't strong enough to fight their raids off. Which they will and, given that SW and ST factions aren't that great on ground way in comparison, they are going to have a lot of targets.

Spiritual Energies being some sort of manifestation of the Warp?
Seems like its just another power source to me
Not really... I mean, yeah, it's kind of a power source but it's coming from something that isn't technically part of the physical universe. It's magic, and as such I don't really think you could make a complete defence against it without using it yourself. Not even the Necrons have successfully pulled that one off yet.
I'd agree though that you could adapt shields to protect against most 40k teleporting (although probably not Necrons) and possibly some of the more overt telekinetic/pyrokinetic/etc. damaging psychic attacks.

byaku rai

2011-06-07, 03:29 PM

Doesn't the time-cannon ship fall into the category of superweapon/plot device? You know, like all the other similar things which we decided were banned for the sake of sanity?

... So if anyone gets that thing, BLACKSTONE FORTRESSES EXIST, and everyone dies.

Forum Explorer

2011-06-07, 04:15 PM

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-07, 04:26 PM

You can also count out Picard, Kirk and the Enterprise, they are Plot Devices (and worthless in any real engagement without Paradoxing thousands of them and even then) :smallamused:

Urist

2011-06-07, 04:34 PM

Tyranids were discusses in the last thread, and the GE is likely to deal with them in the same way the IoM does, but a little more efficiently due to faster communications and travel, and the easier abiltity to limit their access to biomass. Orks are really just pests, unless they mass for WAAAGHS,which could pose a problem, but the GE is capable of soaking the losses. I think there was also discussion of Orks on Kasshyk earlier in the thread.

As to spiritual energy powering Gellar fields, weren't they around before the Imperium started worshipping the God-Emperor as a god?

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 04:38 PM

Yeah - Gellar Fields by themselves aremechanical in nature, though the freaky psuedomystic tech-barbarism of the IoM makes things confusing.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-07, 06:26 PM

Tyranids were discusses in the last thread, and the GE is likely to deal with them in the same way the IoM does, but a little more efficiently due to faster communications and travel, and the easier abiltity to limit their access to biomass.
I'm not entirely sure I buy this, given that the GE doesn't seem to have much history of scorched earth tactics. The speed is particularly questionable, given that while commonications and travel are faster than the IoM they don't know anything about Tyranids nor have they faced anything similar. I don't see them resorting to the scorched earth policies necessary to counter a Tyranid assault without severe provocation. Certainly not until they've suffered lossess. I'm also curious about how they'd stop Tyranids accessing biomass short of moving planets around, which I don't think they can do.
Once they do then yeah, they should be able to adapt to it (certainly better than The Federation would) but I don't see that happening until after they've taken a fair beating. Will they be able to still stand after the losses? Probably, but everytime the nids threaten to make planetfall they're going to have to risk burning more worlds as I don't think their ground defences are going to be strong enough in most cases. Then there's the fact that said lossess will not be happening in isolation.

Orks are really just pests, unless they mass for WAAAGHS,which could pose a problem, but the GE is capable of soaking the losses.
But is it capable of soaking these lossess while having to deal with the Tyranids? And Tau expansionism? And Dark Eldar raids? And any ST factions that might be joining in? There's also the fact that GE losses to Orks in surface combat are likely to be higher than IoMs due to the general inferiority of ground forces (e.g. Storm Troopers vs. Ewoks). Still better than The Feds, obviously, but a WAAAGH is still going to be very problematic.

Lamech

2011-06-07, 07:53 PM

Once they do then yeah, they should be able to adapt to it (certainly better than The Federation would) but I don't see that happening until after they've taken a fair beating. Will they be able to still stand after the losses? Probably, but everytime the nids threaten to make planetfall they're going to have to risk burning more worlds as I don't think their ground defences are going to be strong enough in most cases. Then there's the fact that said lossess will not be happening in isolation.The feds would deal from orbit and with beaming the morons into nothingness. Or you know beaming out a chunk of the prime whatsit, making a bio-weapon and beaming it back it. Or just scan it for DNA and bioweapon.

Which they will and, given that SW and ST factions aren't that great on ground way in comparison, they are going to have a lot of targets.Orbital bombardment. Or for ST beaming. Holoemiters are pretty lethal too. Look any race that uses ground based tactics is doing it wrong.

Weezer

2011-06-07, 08:00 PM

Misery Esquire

2011-06-07, 08:05 PM

The feds would deal from orbit and with beaming the morons into nothingness. Or you know beaming out a chunk of the prime whatsit, making a bio-weapon and beaming it back it. Or just scan it for DNA and bioweapon.

Transport : "Sir, we transported some of them into space, but the majority is under some sort of shield, *coughwarpdisturbance*" And even with success on the transport, the entire planet is now Tyrani-zied. The grass will try and kill you.

Scanning : "Twelve trillion different DNA forms and counting. Which one are we looking for again?"

Orbital bombardment. Or for ST beaming. Holoemiters are pretty lethal too. Look any race that uses ground based tactics is doing it wrong.

Orbital bombardment would require the Trek ships the ability to get into range with a Hive Fleet wandering around above the planet. And holoemitters will crash along with the power, when plants start tearing up your buildings.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 08:08 PM

The feds would deal from orbit and with beaming the morons into nothingness. Or you know beaming out a chunk of the prime whatsit, making a bio-weapon and beaming it back it. Or just scan it for DNA and bioweapon.
Orbital bombardment. Or for ST beaming. Holoemiters are pretty lethal too. Look any race that uses ground based tactics is doing it wrong.

Which is again missing the point, to a degree, since this was discussed to death in the previous threads. If ground combat is occurring at all, that means one side or the other has already achieved orbital superiority. If it's the Feds, then the tyranids never made planetfall (unless the Feds are utterly incompetent), and if it's the Nids, then Feds don't have enough transporters to keep the Nids at bay with the numbers they can put out. You'd need thousands of transporters to even keep them at bay on the ground.

Regarding trying to beam out a sample of a Norn Queen - transporters have never been shown to just say 'okay, bring this person object' - they have to "lock on" to their target first. For collecting a DNA sample...the point of needing the Queen/Prime sample is that they're the only organism with stable DNA. Nids evolve and mutate new strains in hours or less; by the time you've cooked up a DNA-based bioweapon, it's already been invalidated.

The federation would probably do more damage to a Hive Fleet than the GE, primarily because their standard weapons vaporize with no ability to reclaim biomass, but they'd by no means have an easy victory, if they won at all.

@Kinslayer: Tyranids mutate existing lifeforms? I've never seen that in any source...they're not Zerg; they import warrior-form breeds, kill everyone, then eat all the biomass. If the plants are attacking your base, I'm pretty sure you're dead and the only living things left on the planet are Tyranid bioforms anyways, so the point is moot.

Misery Esquire

2011-06-07, 08:17 PM

@Kinslayer: Tyranids mutate existing lifeforms? I've never seen that in any source...they're not Zerg; they import warrior-form breeds, kill everyone, then eat all the biomass. If the plants are attacking your base, I'm pretty sure you're dead and the only living things left on the planet are Tyranid bioforms anyways, so the point is moot.

There was a White Dwarf issue that showed a planet in a picture-slideshow go from normal to overrun. It started with a nice Imperial outpost, a little woods and some grass. By the time the Gaunts were actually hording out of the trees, after the Lictors already took a gander, the trees were a horrible jungle of spikes, and the grass looked like masses of vines. And then the defenders lost, and the Tyranids ate everything. Including the air. I'm hunting down the issue right now.

Edit -- WD307 is the number I was looking for

Urist

2011-06-07, 08:17 PM

The GE would be able to achieve orbital superiority against the 'nids by virtue of having warning before they get there(they get slower as they get closer to the planet) and not having an issue with the Warp disturbances causing travel and comm blackouts. Essentially, the IoM, when dealing with 'nids, is in a constant "last stand, no reinforcements" kinda deal, whereas the GE can bring the brunt of its war machine to bear and continue to adapt to the situation as need be.

As for them denying biomass to the Tyranids, it comes down to the ability to evacuate and transport people away from inhabited worlds(the whole "warning" thing again) and the ability of planetary defense shields to intercept a lot of the spores that would otherwise land planetside(on the worlds that have them, anyway). In a stand-up ground engagement, the GE wouldn't survive long, but the GE also won't keep its population on the ground needing defense, and thus will just Base Delta Zero the planet once the Tyranid ships in orbit are dealt with.

Lamech

2011-06-07, 08:17 PM

Transport : "Sir, we transported some of them into space, but the majority is under some sort of shield, *coughwarpdisturbance*" And even with success on the transport, the entire planet is now Tyrani-zied. The grass will try and kill you.A warp disturbance? Well seeing as how ST transporters work in a universe without the warp, I don't see how that would do anything.

Scanning : "Twelve trillion different DNA forms and counting. Which one are we looking for again?"If 40K can figure it out with their tencho-barbarian shtick, I'm sure ST could pull it off. Besides you simply want to target the essential one, you know the one they all share?

Orbital bombardment would require the Trek ships the ability to get into range with a Hive Fleet wandering around above the planet. And holoemitters will crash along with the power, when plants start tearing up your buildings.How fast are they again for tactical movement? .25c and faster? So unless they can cover the whole planet (in which case they could win by falling and crushing everything), I'm betting they won't be able to catch the ST ships. (How powerful is a hive fleet anyway? And what weapons?) And transporters can be ground based. And if plants attacking is a problem they can keep them away from important structures after the first strike. (And they would need to change set-ups to have holoemiters in-place anyway.)

byaku rai

2011-06-07, 08:20 PM

Part of a Tyranid invasion involves raining microscopic mutagenic spores onto the planet, causing plants to evolve rapidly into aggressive species, the better to soak all biomatter from the ground. link (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Species_of_Tyranids#Tyranid_Flora_and_Bio-Structures)

Click on a couple and you'll see that these species start usurping normal species. As for mutating them, the only source I know for that is in the Ultramarines Omnibus, the book where they fight the Tyranids. (duh :smallredface:)

Misery Esquire

2011-06-07, 08:25 PM

A warp disturbance? Well seeing as how ST transporters work in a universe without the warp, I don't see how that would do anything.

Warp Disturbances protrude into Reality in a variety of effects. Star Trek transporters are regularly stopped by electrical storms.

If 40K can figure it out with their tencho-barbarian shtick, I'm sure ST could pull it off. Besides you simply want to target the essential one, you know the one they all share?

Because it took an ingenious Inquisitor a pack of Deathwatch Marines to get at it. And while the Norn Queen is essential, they'll spawn a new one, and there's no shared genetic throughout the entire hive. She just happens to be the (current) primary gene for the Synapse control. If the Norn Queen is removed or killed, it gets replaced with a whole new set. And that's assuming they don't have varied genetics across different splinters of the fleet anyway.

How fast are they again for tactical movement? .25c and faster? So unless they can cover the whole planet (in which case they could win by falling and crushing everything), I'm betting they won't be able to catch the ST ships. (How powerful is a hive fleet anyway? And what weapons?) And transporters can be ground based. And if plants attacking is a problem they can keep them away from important structures after the first strike. (And they would need to change set-ups to have holoemiters in-place anyway.)

Slow. But they do have enough to likely coat a planet, or a good portion, not that they would bother falling on it, because getting all that biomatter back into space would take effort.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 08:31 PM

If 40K can figure it out with their tencho-barbarian shtick, I'm sure ST could pull it off. Besides you simply want to target the essential one, you know the one they all share?
)

The techno-barbarians of 40K 'figure it out' by fighting their way into the biggest Tyranid ship, punching the target monster in the face, and ripping a chunk of it off to be carried back out. Oh, and all but one of them die doing it. :smallbiggrin:

Part of a Tyranid invasion involves raining microscopic mutagenic spores onto the planet, causing plants to evolve rapidly into aggressive species, the better to soak all biomatter from the ground. link

Click on a couple and you'll see that these species start usurping normal species. As for mutating them, the only source I know for that is in the Ultramarines Omnibus, the book where they fight the Tyranids. (duh )

Apparently there are things I have not yet learned about the 40K universe. Tyranids just got even scarier, fantastic.

profitofrage

2011-06-07, 08:36 PM

Weezer

2011-06-07, 08:38 PM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 08:39 PM

People do remember the Tyranids dont just take BIOmass.
They strip the planet bare of anything useful, that includes materials like metals, technology..anything that can be easily broken down to composite parts.
The Tyranids literally suck up the atmosphere of planets, they drain the oceans. This is far beyond "eat all the biomatter" its consuming the planet.

Just a nice little fact to remind peoples who keep trying to do this whole "deny them biomatter" stuff. You cant, even if you burnt every biomaterial on the planet, they would still suck them up in the atmosphere.

If you vaporize/disintegrate/whatever the heck phasers/transporters do to their targets, you're still denying them resources - a big part of Tyranid 'ecosystem' is reclaiming their own dead and the dead of their enemies...most bioforms in combat are grown without digestive systems! Thus, even if they win, they're still at a net relative less compared to where they would have been if you had used conventional weaponry. It's a "lose less" tactic, not a "win" tactic, but it is something that has to be taken into account for a fair analysis. Depending on just how much damage a Federation force/planet could do to the Nids before being overrun, it's not unthinkable that they might actually cause a negative rate of return, even with devouring the plant down to bedrock. If they somehow do this multiple times, I wouldn't put it out of the question for the Hive Mind to say 'screw this' and go attack someone else.

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-07, 08:42 PM

If you vaporize/disintegrate/whatever the heck phasers/transporters do to their targets, you're still denying them resources - a big part of Tyranid 'ecosystem' is reclaiming their own dead and the dead of their enemies...most bioforms in combat are grown without digestive systems! Thus, even if they win, they're still at a net relative less compared to where they would have been if you had used conventional weaponry. It's a "lose less" tactic, not a "win" tactic, but it is something that has to be taken into account for a fair analysis.

I'm pretty sure Phasers don't destroy the atoms, just the molecular bonds. Thus the atoms are in the atmosphere and sucked up by the 'Nids and used.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 08:44 PM

I'm pretty sure Phasers don't destroy the atoms, just the molecular bonds. Thus the atoms are in the atmosphere and sucked up by the 'Nids and used.

...Tyranids aren't that efficient. If they could consume things at the atomic level, they wouldn't strip planets down to bedrock (the accepted canon remnant of a Tyranid-eaten world), they would erase it from existence right down to the planetary core.

And there's obviously something they need from biomaterial, otherwise they would attack uninhabited planets and asteroid fields instead of colonized planets.

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-07, 08:46 PM

...Tyranids aren't that efficient. If they could consume things at the atomic level, they wouldn't strip planets down to bedrock (the accepted canon remnant of a Tyranid-eaten world), they would erase it from existence right down to the planetary core.

They steal the atmosphere, what is in the atmosphere is sucked up. Thus disintegrating doesn't help as it is releasing things into the atmosphere.

Urist

2011-06-07, 08:46 PM

Yeah, but it takes energy to rebuild the organic molecules when they've been atomized. Its a lot more energy efficient to obtain premade glucose then to try to recreate it out of raw carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. It also takes energy to reclaim the planetary resources that are not an adequate compensation if they don't absorb the biomass of the creatures living on the rock. Also, if the 'nids can't get off-planet due to the destruction of their ships, then they will be sitting ducks while the Star Destroyers rain death down upon them. The GE will have to swarm them to ensure this happens, of course. It essentially boils down to making sure that the 'nids lose more biomass than is sustainable at every world they attack.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 08:50 PM

And if the defender (GE or Feds) can replace their losses fast enough to maintain that negative rate of resource return long enough for the hive fleet to run out of gas - if they falter and the fleet manages to recoup its losses, it's back to square one with a whole bunch of nommed planets. Both sides have a problem with this - the GE has the resources and size, but they actually have to worry about production and manufacturing time. The Federation has instaneous manufacturing, but unless they start replicating replicators and go Grey Goo on the Tyranids, their total net output is going to suffer.

Lamech

2011-06-07, 09:01 PM

The techno-barbarians of 40K 'figure it out' by fighting their way into the biggest Tyranid ship, punching the target monster in the face, and ripping a chunk of it off to be carried back out. Oh, and all but one of them die doing it.So... beam out a chunk of the biggest monster?

Warp Disturbances protrude into Reality in a variety of effects. Star Trek transporters are regularly stopped by electrical storms.These? (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Electrical_storm) Those things would kill anyone who beamed into them for starters. Regardless unless the warp disturbance that the Tryn creates is this lethal in normal space it doesn't hold up.

I'm pretty sure Phasers don't destroy the atoms, just the molecular bonds. Thus the atoms are in the atmosphere and sucked up by the 'Nids and used. Nope. They zap the matter out of existence*. If they turned it into gas there would be an explosion/pop. If they simply got rid of the molecular bonds everything would recombine spectacularly in a decent sized explosion.
*At least on some settings, those things can do way to much for having three buttons.

Craftworld

2011-06-07, 09:16 PM

So... beam out a chunk of the biggest monster?
These? (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Electrical_storm) Those things would kill anyone who beamed into them for starters. Regardless unless the warp disturbance that the Tryn creates is this lethal in normal space it doesn't hold up.

The biggest monster isn't always the leader...it tends to be but still.
Bio-Titans aren't like Hive Tyrants in the fact that Bio-Titans (to the best of my knowledge) are simply combat oriented not "this swarm go here, that swarm charge there" oriented like Hive Tyrants are.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 09:25 PM

The biggest monster isn't always the leader...it tends to be but still.
Bio-Titans aren't like Hive Tyrants in the fact that Bio-Titans (to the best of my knowledge) are simply combat oriented not "this swarm go here, that swarm charge there" oriented like Hive Tyrants are.

Indeed. Norn Queens and Primes aren't combat forms anyways, and 'target the big ones' does have a limit, as noted. It's an in-canon story (Ultramarines, I think) that when they saw a Bio-Titan, they focused all their efforts to kill it expecting the swarm to route like it does when they killed a Tyrant.

To beam out a chunk of a Queen or Prime, you would have to find it. That means getting inside the hive ship where it lives (they don't take to the battlefield), and when there are as mentioned trillions of different DNA signatures inside that living ship, the only way you can figure out which one is the Prime is to be standing in front of it with a tricorder.

Forum Explorer

2011-06-07, 11:29 PM

Lamech

2011-06-08, 12:38 AM

Also ignoring the fact that the Nid fighters could destroy a Trek ship. That the Nids have a longer range and can throw an insane amount of firepower at the Trek ships. That the Nids are fully capable of breeding a super psyker to destroy the minds of everyone aboard an enemy ship since they have no psyker defense. That the Nids type of shields makes it paticularly effective at blocking stuff like torpedos and phasers and only get stronger the more damaged the ship is. Also the fact that Nids have something like 100 hive ships for every one trek ship since they are tiny in comparision.So from what the OP linked about nid it looks like they take years after they drop from FTL to reach the planet, and go up close to spray acid, and eat ships. So am I missing something? Because close range acid spray seems to be a good bit shorter than the trek weapons.
And trek definitely knows how to deal with telepaths and their telekinetic friends...

Also what happens when the borg meat the Tryn. I can't see anyone winning that...

Fan

2011-06-08, 01:07 AM

So from what the OP linked about nid it looks like they take years after they drop from FTL to reach the planet, and go up close to spray acid, and eat ships. So am I missing something? Because close range acid spray seems to be a good bit shorter than the trek weapons.
And trek definitely knows how to deal with telepaths and their telekinetic friends...

Also what happens when the borg meat the Tryn. I can't see anyone winning that...

Don't you mean DA BORKZ? With BORK BOSS GHAZG'KULL?

Forum Explorer

2011-06-08, 01:14 AM

So from what the OP linked about nid it looks like they take years after they drop from FTL to reach the planet, and go up close to spray acid, and eat ships. So am I missing something? Because close range acid spray seems to be a good bit shorter than the trek weapons.
And trek definitely knows how to deal with telepaths and their telekinetic friends...

Also what happens when the borg meat the Tryn. I can't see anyone winning that...

The range of their weapons is equivilant in range to what the Imperium has which we decided was much longer then what Star Trek has. Nids also have km long tentatcles and teeth to eat any ships that get too close but that generally isn't their only weapon.

Parra

2011-06-08, 02:24 AM

Given the Tyranids adaptability, I could see them adapting to Transporter technology and effectivly becoming immune to it. Less advanved races than the feds have created genetically engineering soliders that can break a transporter beam, I see no problems with Tyranids doing the same.

Even if they couldnt, transporters are slow. There is no way they could transport enough organisims fast enough to be a viable defence option.

Corvus

2011-06-08, 02:56 AM

Was wading through the Lexicanum on the Tyranids and came across this;

Generally, contact with the Tyranids occurs when a Hive Fleet invades a system for the purpose of harvesting its bio-mass. A Hive Fleet contains an enormous number of Tyranids, and they are brought to bear against resistance in the most efficient manner possible. Below is a general outline of a typical Tyranid planetary assault (in particular, this data is collected from the Tyranid invasion of Dalki-Prime)1:

* Day 00: Initial mycetic spores are dropped, generally containing Lictors or Genestealers. Infiltration force led by a synapse creature of some kind; reproduction of Tyranid creatures likely begins immediately.
* Day 09: By day 9, Tyranids will have expanded to around 200 km from the drop point, and will likely present a significant threat to planetary defence forces troopers and resident Imperial Guard.
* Day 13: Tyranids will have expanded to 700 km from the drop point; may begin infesting local water sources.
* Day 37: Tyranids control area within 2000 km radius of the drop point; basolithic infestation to 5000 km radius.
* Day 48: Tyranid population growth skyrockets, with population doubling approximately every 2.5 days.
* Day 50: Main Hive Fleet arrives, craft generally numbering around 1.5 billion. Psychic contact with planet is cut off by the shadow of the Hive Mind. Any attempts to escape are quickly stopped by the Hive Fleet.
* Day 51: Primary consumption of bio-mass begins (resistance has generally been eliminated by day 51). Brood ships land, releasing Ripper swarms, which consume all remaining organic material and depositing them at the reclamation pools. Capillary towers (and the Brood ships) send the material into orbit.
* Day 80: The hive ships descend into the upper atmosphere and begin collecting it. Reduction in atmospheric pressure causes oceans to boil away, which are also collected. Lack of oceans causes plate tectonic shifts, dramatically increasing volcanic activity. Upon completion, the Hive Fleet move out of the system in search of fresh prey.
* Day 100: Imperial navy arrives in response to the distress call to find the world lifeless.

How would GE and ST manage up against 1.5 billion ships?

There was also this;
By the adaptive nature of the Hive Fleets, fierce resistance on a planet will only make the fleet stronger in the end; for this reason only a few tactics have been found to work. The first is to draw the Tyranids into a large ground battle, forcing the fleet to deploy as large a ground force as possible. Once this is achieved, the planet is evacuated, following with Exterminatus as the Tyranids strip the life of the planet. This tactic is effective as Hive Fleets are dependent on the impetus gained from absorbing each conquered planet; the Hive Fleet will also have lost the biological "energy" expended to conquer it, including all of the bio-material of the ground forces and by the nature of Exterminatus will not be able to recover any from the planet. This tactic is extreme and also damaging to the Imperium, as it destroys a valuable and habitable planet every time. It has been projected that there may not even be enough habitable planets in the galaxy to stop the Tyranid threat, especially if more Tyranid fleets arrive from outside the galaxy.

So not even scorched earth tactics are going to work.

Selrahc

2011-06-08, 02:58 AM

No guesswork is needed about Tyranid fleet ranges... We've got the Battlefleet Gothic list for them here (http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1280011_BFG_Necron_and_Tyranid_Fleets.pdf).

In general, the charge of Tyranids being up close fighters is accurate. A lot of vessels in the Tyranid fleet are up close fighters. Things like feeder tendrils and claws, as well as short range bio acid are all common. However, if long range engagement is needed then the nids will launch salvo after salvo of bio torpedoes.

Tyranid ships don't have shields, but they are surrounded by a protective envelope of mycetic spores which provide an ablative armour, and also serve to heavily damage any ship closing with the tyranids.

Some Tyranid ships have an inherent regenerative capacity that can close gaping holes in minutes. Boarding a tyranid ship should more properly be known as suicide. Their own boarding teams are some of the best in 40K.

Tyranid fleets are animalistic in behaviour. Hive ships keep them in line. Any crippled ship is a much less dangerous attacking force, devoting itself to self preservation.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-08, 05:18 AM

How fast are they again for tactical movement? .25c and faster? So unless they can cover the whole planet (in which case they could win by falling and crushing everything), I'm betting they won't be able to catch the ST ships.
This is the problem with ST though. As far as naval combat goes speed is the only thing that they have. The GE have numbers and better weapons while the 40k factions have even more powerful weaponry, an awful lot of armour and outrange everyone else by an obscene degree. Tyranids are one of the shorter ranged fleets yes, but not the extent that Fed ships could hitting them without being hit back.
Hell the speed advantage gets cut severely if they're facing Eldar, Dark Eldar or Necrons.

And trek definitely knows how to deal with telepaths and their telekinetic friends...
[citation needed]

Also what happens when the borg meat the Tryn. I can't see anyone winning that...
Well, that kind of depends on how Borg adaptation works. I mean, I know they can resist most energy weapon, but does it work against acids or physical impact weaponry/solid ammunition?

In general, the charge of Tyranids being up close fighters is accurate. A lot of vessels in the Tyranid fleet are up close fighters. Things like feeder tendrils and claws, as well as short range bio acid are all common. However, if long range engagement is needed then the nids will launch salvo after salvo of bio torpedoes.

Also worth noting that their Pryo Acid ranges are fairly good as well. As in, comparable to most imperial weapon batteries good.

Parra

2011-06-08, 05:43 AM

I always figured the short range used by both SW and ST was more of a made-for-TV limitation than anything else. I mean its not exactly "gripping" if your depicting a space combat on the big/small screen where the enemy is so far away that you cant see them in the picture.
Both SW & ST started in the visual media and when books started to be written they had to remain (mostly) true to the established cannon

WH40K being a text-only media never suffered from that problem so were able to use massive and more 'realistic' ranges.

The way I always figured it was in the ST (and SW I suppose) was that while weapons were capable of hitting targets at extreme range, the super manuverabilty of the targets prevented any real level of accuracy. So the combats happened at ranges that negated allot of that manuverabilty.

To give an example of extreme range in ST, there was a multi-episode story of Enterprise (I know, I know, shudder) where some disgruntled xenophobes took over a moon mars base with an anti-asteroid 'BFG' and it was capable of easily striking Earth. Distance to the moon is ~385,000km, its maximum range is probably quite a bit more.
A few installations like that would give the relatively slow IoM pause for thought. And pretty much every major ST planet will have a similar weapon.
If the weapon proved effective I could see allot more of them being built

Edit: mis-remembered the episode, seems it was a Mars base the BFG Array was on, giving it a minimum range of 54.6 million km (potential max of 401+million km). Screw you IoM and your '50,000km ranges':smalltongue:

Selrahc

2011-06-08, 06:27 AM

mis-remembered the episode, seems it was a Mars base the BFG Array was on, giving it a minimum range of 54.6 million km (potential max of 401+million km). Screw you IoM and your '50,000km ranges

50000km ranges are close up where almost all weapons can be brought to bear.

The longest range 40K ship board weapons like the Nova Gun will have million kilometre ranges. Torpedoes too, will have an effective range of around a million kilometres.

Stationary giant guns have had interplanetary ranges in 40K. I can't think of an example outside Dawn of War though... And that was the Tau, who normally don't have giant space guns so I'd be inclined to disregard it.

Taking isolated cases of Alien Gun Fortresses of Megadeath though doesn't really seem like a good benchmark.

Parra

2011-06-08, 06:35 AM

Taking isolated cases of Alien Gun Fortresses of Megadeath though doesn't really seem like a good benchmark.

I dunno about isolated cases, given that arrays function was to deal with incoming asteroids I could see every planet concerned with not being hit with asteroids (i.e. every planet) would have a similar facility

Fan

2011-06-08, 07:36 AM

Parra

2011-06-08, 08:17 AM

Yes, but if EVERY Major planet had them.. why not simply have sleeper agents take the Earth station? I mean, it's RIGHT THERE, and you physically cannot miss unless you try to.

Why not take.. the Venus station and the Mars Station? That way you could pincer them. It's not exactly difficult to take Venus as it's nature makes large staffings impossible.

Exactly. Why not?

In the ST tv show/movies it would make for dull viewings if every threat involved stealing control of one of those systems or was resolved by using it to blow up whatever the threat was.
just imagine First contact: Borg Cube enters system. Point, click, roll credits.

For this sort of discussion though? hells yes bring it on.

It, imo, changes IoM tactics v's Feds from "stroll in gunz a blazing, lol what an easy fight" to "humm, maybe we send in some smaller more maneuverable ships, maybe some termies, to try and take em out first".
Makes the fight a little more interesting

Fan

2011-06-08, 08:27 AM

Exactly. Why not?

In the ST tv show/movies it would make for dull viewings if every threat involved stealing control of one of those systems or was resolved by using it to blow up whatever the threat was.
just imagine First contact: Borg Cube enters system. Point, click, roll credits.

For this sort of discussion though? hells yes bring it on.

It, imo, changes IoM tactics v's Feds from "stroll in gunz a blazing, lol what an easy fight" to "humm, maybe we send in some smaller more maneuverable ships, maybe some termies, to try and take em out first".
Makes the fight a little more interesting

But you see, the Fed's aren't equipped to deal with Callidus, or really.. any of the Temple Assassinorium.

A single Callidus could get away with murdering an entire planet if it felt like it, and had an ample supply of polymorphene.

It's bad when the only thing that's needed is a team of asssassins to bring down the entire world order.

Or they could just send in a suicide diplomat who's ship is a cyclonic torpedo.

Another thing is, by Voyager canon.. there is no static defenses at Earth.. at all.. and that is the nerve center for The Fed's. They have all the leaders from all the world's there along with their most sensitive technical data.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-08, 08:42 AM

We really do need to keep in mind that we're pitting the universes/factions as presented, not taking their technology/capabilities and attaching our own, out-of-universe tactics on them. The Tyranids aren't going to breed an unstoppable war-psyker for the same reasons the Feds won't choose to engage solely at warp speed with photon torpedos, it's just not how they fight. If they didn't use the Giant Mars Doom Gun against the Borg Cube in First Contact, it's either a continuity error, the GMDG didn't exist anymore then (Enterprise being a prequel), or something kept it from doing so...maybe it wasn't capable of firing on anything smaller or maneuverable than a planet, which can't dodge. In-universe, they didn't hold fire for the sake of plot and drama.

Parra

2011-06-08, 09:02 AM

I would like to say its "cant hit small targets" that is the reason for not using them, but in the same episode it was seen firing on Enterprise. Enterprise is quite small compared to most Fed ships.
The most likely reason was that it didnt exisit in-unverise prior to that episode.

Even were it to have difficulty firing on small craft, most IoM capital ships are anything but small.

Re: the assassins. Yes an assassin on planet, unchecked would cause alot of problems. But that faces alot of issues, namely in getting the assassin there in the first place, Feds by far having the best dectection systems of the 3 factions. The second is the security itself; a forcefield or 50 would disable an assassin quite handily once revealed, granted they might lose an installation or 2 before this was implemented

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-08, 10:38 AM

Lamech

2011-06-08, 12:18 PM

[citation needed]Didn't we just go through this? Trek is crawling with psychic species. They even have a specially designed toy for telekinetics. (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Telekinetic_suppression_collar)

Well, that kind of depends on how Borg adaptation works. I mean, I know they can resist most energy weapon, but does it work against acids or physical impact weaponry/solid ammunition?The drones definitely seem to not adapt to physical impacts. At least the slow ones that they need to walk and hit people with. That would just suck if a drone went up to smack someone and their own shield stopped them. But no one has ever hit them with guns (no force-field bullets don't count). Presumably a race whose battle tactic is analyze and adapt could figure it out eventually though.

No guesswork is needed about Tyranid fleet ranges... We've got the Battlefleet Gothic list for them here.Centimeters? My god these things have short ranges. But really whats a cm supposed to represent?

Don't you mean DA BORKZ? With BORK BOSS GHAZG'KULL? I vote that these guys be declared the winners.:smallbiggrin:

I would like to say its "cant hit small targets" that is the reason for not using them, but in the same episode it was seen firing on Enterprise. Enterprise is quite small compared to most Fed ships.
The most likely reason was that it didnt exisit in-unverise prior to that episode.You can always answer time travel.

Parra

2011-06-08, 12:35 PM

You can always answer time travel.

Some time travel is ok, sillyness with time travel is not. No I dont really know where that line is either :smallbiggrin:

Misery Esquire

2011-06-08, 01:04 PM

I vote that these guys be declared the winners.:smallbiggrin:

The horror... The horror...

Thier combination becomes the scariest thing, ever. Yes, scarier than that. But the real fun is imagning when they first meet.

"Resistance is Futil-"
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH."
*Borg Cube is rammed by the Rok*

The Glyphstone

2011-06-08, 01:14 PM

From the previous Orks vs. Borg thread:

Captain's Log:
Stardate 87753.2
-A strange vessel appeared in this Sector through an as-yet un-determined phenomena in subspace.
Many unidentified lifeforms were detected on this vessel.
It accelerated directly towards the Borg Cube we had been monitoring.
After a period of exchanging weapons fire between the ships, the borg Cube pulled the vessel in with tractor beams.
Energy signatures of multiple personnel transporters were also detected at this time.
We hypothesis that a boarding action had been attempted by one or both sides.

Stardate 87753.5
-The Borg Cube approached our ship. We attempted to avoid contact but it rapidly outpaced us, moving far faster than should have been possible. Visual scanners revealed that large regions of its normally black surface had been coloured red somehow.

The Cube hailed the bridge. We all knew what was coming, or so we thought. The Borg that addressed us had an unusually... green skin tone. There were also variations in it's posture, proportions, and features that marked it as being vastly different from Borg previously encountered. It addressed the bridge, as recorded here:

"We are da Borks! Drop yer shield and gives us yur krooza. Your biological and psychological and shiny bitz distinctiveness belongs ta da Kollectuv. Youz lot will adapt to join the WAAAGH! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

Every encounter with the Borg is psychologically straining, but some special terror evoked then and there. It is one thing to hear the Borg's multitude threatening and demanding. It is another to hear it when half the voices are furiously screaming for your blood, and the other half are coolly requesting it. The curious, psychotic blend of rationality and irrationality manifested there... is something I will never forget.

That was no normal Borg Cube we encountered. Perhaps the unknown vessel could be associated with these differences, perhaps the life forms aboard had been assimilated by the Borg.

I offered this hypothesis to my Science Officer, and he so replied: "Interesting, Captain, but how are we to know it was the Borg who assimilated the unknown life forms, and not the Borg who were themselves assimilated?"

The_Final_Stand

2011-06-08, 03:26 PM

Centimeters? My god these things have short ranges. But really whats a cm supposed to represent?

I believe 1cm = 1000Km

Selrahc

2011-06-08, 03:32 PM

Didn't we just go through this? Trek is crawling with psychic species. They even have a specially designed toy for telekinetics.

A fake telekinetic collar?

Psychic species does not mean much. Betazoids and Vulcans have powers that are non lethal or require close proximity. Ocampans are not in the federation, and Kes was a special case who bloomed to power after being nourished by a godlike being.

Beings with psychic powers comparable to those used by Battle Psykers or Jedi are nearly non-existent.

Centimeters? My god these things have short ranges. But really whats a cm supposed to represent?

1cm=2000km

Corvus

2011-06-08, 04:00 PM

Lamech

2011-06-08, 05:45 PM

A fake telekinetic collar?

Psychic species does not mean much. Betazoids and Vulcans have powers that are non lethal or require close proximity. Ocampans are not in the federation, and Kes was a special case who bloomed to power after being nourished by a godlike being.

Beings with psychic powers comparable to those used by Battle Psykers or Jedi are nearly non-existent.Vulcans (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Vulcan) have mind control, possession and telekinesis and interstellar ranges. I suppose we could call them non-lethal, but... really? I prefer mind-control and possession to death. Remans have that mind-rape between ships thing going for them, and a half-betazoid could reverse that process.
Excepting the heavy duty psychics we don't see the kind of things battle psykers are credited with, but what Jedi do in battle isn't overly impressive... wide setting phaser anyone? More importantly the GE has a couple of people, Vader and Palpatine with the nastier things, and while sure maybe most Vulcans can't throw telekinesis around, and only Wesley has powers similar to the traveler, or most betazoids don't know offensive tricks? I think the feds come out ahead of the GE in the magic department.

And according to the link their are working ones, see the first paragraph... if it was just the one fake it wouldn't mention "most", or collars

1cm=2000kmAnd aren't turns measured in minutes or half hours or something? A photon torp (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Photon_torpedo) (a fairly old one) has a range of 300,000km or 150 cm on that scale. Presumably the newer ones would be longer in range.

The fed ships could engage beyond the given ranges easy. The torps could out range the weapons and the ordinance launched would be way to slow.

Fan

2011-06-08, 05:50 PM

How long does it take the Feds to even get a fleet together? 70 years? More?:smallamused:

While they are busy rallying their forces at the fringes of Imperial Space, or even Galactic Empire Space, the IoM. Being vicious war mongers, will be busy crushing the infrastructure and enslaving the people of the Federation. That's what they do, and being a traditionally peaceful people.. they wont exactly be ones to wage a thousand year war. The IoM doesn't even have to send much a fleet, just detatch 4 or so Battle Barges, and a **** ton of frigates and you have that right there. They steal some more efficient manufacturing techniques (But adding in a day long ritual just for praying to the machine spirit.), they come back with the ability to make ships faster, and this is all WHILE the Fed ships are maneuvering into position. Then, they can be back home, and be on the VERGE of implementing these techniques (assuming it takes half a century) on a galactic scale by the time the warships arrive, and can persumably have Mars pumping out warships faster than ever by the time the first battle is over.

And we do see what combat psykers are capable of all the time, even Guard Battle Psykers are capable of detecting stealthed units, tossing out Palpatine Level Force Lightning, and ripping the souls out of command units from sniper rifle distances.

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-08, 06:21 PM

The Tyranids did breed war-psykers - and one of them is nigh unstoppable - The Doom of Malan'tai. (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Doom_of_Malan%27tai) It reduced an entire Eldar Craftworld to a husk.

To be fair, that was because it fed on psychic energy and the Elves let it eat their entire box of souls. It wasn't unstoppable when it was spawned.

Forum Explorer

2011-06-08, 08:18 PM

To be fair, that was because it fed on psychic energy and the Elves let it eat their entire box of souls. It wasn't unstoppable when it was spawned.

Yes but it was desgined to do that. So they could likely due something similar.

Fan brings up a good point; the Nids would likely get to a planet and consume it before the Feds could even get a fleet there.

profitofrage

2011-06-08, 08:24 PM

OK
Ive been looking into something and heres what Ive gotten together
Orks have a powerful psychic presence when in great numbers.
The idea being that while an individual ork cannot make use of the psychic abilities, in a group the singleminded psychic presence they iminate increases and the psychic residue spills into reality.
This is the cause for the following documented phenomina
Driving vehicles that by rites..are nothing more then metal bits with wheels stuck on, a gas tank and an engine. The gas tank need not be connected for the vehicle to be powered.
Orks being able to point there fingers...shout BANG! and bullets materialize because the Ork truly believes its the bang that makes bullets...not the gun.

Ork cybernetics reacting and moving appropreitly, despite often being little more then metal joints strapped onto a nub.
Battle Titans being taken over by the psychic powers of the orks to be dominated and thus looted in order to be controlled.

Now the Borg...for all intents and purposes are just machines. They posses no psychic abilities that have been shown and thus cannot be immune to such things. Weve seen that the Ork Waaagh powers CAN override and overpower AI/biological systems to the extent of TITANS...which means one could assume the same treatment of Borg Machinery.
This lends very heavily to the idea that YES, should an Ork grab off parts of Borg tech and strap it on...it would dominate its systems and "orkefy" it.
If Enough Orks were to invade a borg cube...said psychic powers would eventually gain presedence..and overpower the cube.
It seems that BORKS..are not just a funny joke...there actually a highly likely outcome..if not an inevitability. Whats worse, is said BORKS..would not exhibit Borg like instincts (as there overriding the Borg systems) and would indeed attract other orks to share upon there discoveries.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-08, 08:53 PM

Not quite that strong - Orks can't materialize bullets out of thin air, because they do know you need a gun and bullets to make dakka. They know how to build a trukk too, so putting wheels on a piece of metal with an engine won't make a functional vehicle. Stuff like being able to shoot a gun without a firing pin, or drive a trukk with its fuel line disconnected, are canon though, and you're right on the Bioniks. I don't know of any cases where they took over Titans, though - but Gargants (Ork titans) can only function inside a WAAAAAUGH.

byaku rai

2011-06-08, 09:52 PM

Technically the whole mumbo-jumbo behind Borg being able to do what they do is due to the combined willpower of all the members of the collective, in combination with the tech-sorcery. This combined willpower is responsible for thrust, atmospherics, and the incredible self-repair exhibited by Borg vessels, and is at least on level with a WAAAAAAUGH of similar numbers.

Still, the idea of a Bork Kube is terrifying...

And the God-Emperor alone could save us if they ever Orkified a Sphere. :smalleek:

Misery Esquire

2011-06-08, 09:58 PM

And the God-Emperor alone could save us if they ever Orkified a Sphere. :smalleek:

You're not thinking big enough. Uni-Orktrex Big 'Un.

Lamech

2011-06-08, 10:19 PM

You're not thinking big enough. Uni-Orktrex Big 'Un.
Bork-nano-spores. As soon as they make that the whole collective goes Bork.

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-08, 10:20 PM

willpower

not so much willpower as processor power. The Borg are able to self repair because they can basically assign one drone to connecting each tiny filament

profitofrage

2011-06-08, 11:52 PM

Forum Explorer

2011-06-09, 12:17 AM

Yes yes they CAN materialize bullets, it was given as an example of the waaagh effect in one of the codex's.

I think they still need a gun though. Just not the ammo

profitofrage

2011-06-09, 12:26 AM

I think they still need a gun though. Just not the ammo

The example specifically stated a situation where an Ork "got the idea" that guns fire bullets because of the loud noise they make. And so believed that if he could make as loud a noise he could make bullets to. Cue him then firing bullets from his fingers while shouting "BANG!"

Selrahc

2011-06-09, 02:37 AM

The example specifically stated a situation where an Ork "got the idea" that guns fire bullets because of the loud noise they make. And so believed that if he could make as loud a noise he could make bullets to. Cue him then firing bullets from his fingers while shouting "BANG!"

Where is that stated?

Because it sounds stupid. Completely out of line with what the power of the waaagh does anywhere else in the setting.

And aren't turns measured in minutes or half hours or something? A photon torp (a fairly old one) has a range of 300,000km or 150 cm on that scale. Presumably the newer ones would be longer in range.

Okay.

And apparently Voyager was armed with torpedoes with a range of 8 million kilometres, which properly out-ranges the IoM.

We do run into the problem though, that the Federation never engages at those ranges. Why not? Much smaller ranges have been given for the torpedoes on other occasions and standard practice has them engaging at those smaller ranges on almost every occasion.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-09, 06:03 AM

Where is that stated?

Because it sounds stupid. Completely out of line with what the power of the waaagh does anywhere else in the setting.

It's utterly stupid and out of line with the WAAAAUGH, but he may be right all the same. Orks are horribly inconsistent between editions, even by 40K standards; if it's the 2nd or 5th edition codex, where orks were/are designated 'comedy relief' of the setting, shooting bullets from the fingers might be there.

It's still stupid though, because the only time that would even be theoretically possible would be in the midst of an extremely large WAAAAAUGH - and there, it'd be the power of the collective psyche, so no matter what the one Ork thought about bullets and BANG noises, the nine zillion other orks that disagreed with him would be more influential.

profitofrage

2011-06-09, 09:02 AM

Where is that stated?

Because it sounds stupid. Completely out of line with what the power of the waaagh does anywhere else in the setting.

Out of line? barely. Whats the difference between that and gas lines not being connected? despite requiring MORE disbeleif in real physics and potentially more psychic power? If you ask me it looks like a simple natural progression in terms of the Waagh's abilities.
The whole idea of the waaagh's powers is that "what an ork believes, HAPPENS" It fits fine its just more 'impossible'

Also I believe Glyphstone is right, said things only occur when Orks believe it, so if he was around his 30 other mates who all told him "thats not how it works idiot" He would soon find he can no longer do it through simple self doubt.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-09, 09:30 AM

Out of line? barely. Whats the difference between that and gas lines not being connected? despite requiring MORE disbeleif in real physics and potentially more psychic power? If you ask me it looks like a simple natural progression in terms of the Waagh's abilities.
The whole idea of the waaagh's powers is that "what an ork believes, HAPPENS" It fits fine its just more 'impossible'

Also I believe Glyphstone is right, said things only occur when Orks believe it, so if he was around his 30 other mates who all told him "thats not how it works idiot" He would soon find he can no longer do it through simple self doubt.

The issue was more that it's a disproportionate progression. The sort of WAAAUGH power needed to manifest bullets from thin air is only present among massive groups of Orks, exactly the situation where the other orks will tell this one he's an idiot and wrong. One Ork can do things like make Bioniks function, or keep fighting despite horrific injuries from sheer stubborn meanness. A squad of Boyz can generate enough WAAAAUGH power to, say, make a Trukk's engine run while fuel disappears from its gas tank despite the broken line between the two. Entire armies of Boyz supply the latent power needed to drive Gargants.

Selrahc

2011-06-09, 09:41 AM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-09, 09:43 AM

Strictly, a Weirdboy. Their powers tend to manifest more in the forms of breathing fire and random explosions, but one might be able to conjure bullets if he really wanted to.

profitofrage

2011-06-09, 09:48 AM

Feral Orks operate in an atmosphere almost without the Waaagh energy. Base level orktek is viable. Shootaz, Sluggaz, Choppaz, Trucks, Stikkbombs. All of these things work without the Waagh.

As the Ork numbers build and the Orks get riled up to fight the Waaagh energy builds. It papers over the cracks in reality. Even here, Orktek breaks down. It isn't infallible. The mass groupthink of the Orks pushes certain patterns but only to an extent. Higher inspiration grounds itself in the Meks, who push the Waagh energy to its limits building fabulous contraptions like Battlewagons, Death Fortresses and Gargantz.

An Ork who points and yells and bullets appear doesn't fit the pattern. It's just a ludicrous thing. That isn't Waagh power. It isn't the mass collective gestalt unconsciousness of the Orks. It's a psyker.

The example may well fit a weird boy its not specific.
Whats more is that the example of an ork driving a wagon or trukk can again..not even have its gas connected properly and still function.

A trukk engine pushing forward despite not actually having fuel connected...is a major physics changing event, no different from materializing bullets. It just doesnt "seem as silly" ultimatly they both involve tossing conservation of energy out the window, they both involve materializing matter or energy.. Hell the gas not being connected is MORE of a stretch..because its not just ONE bullet popping in ..its this mystical constant creation of kinetic energy while simultaneously destroying the matter that is the fuel in the engine.

The issue here isnt that it doesnt fit, its that its an extreme. It takes a premise that has the wide spread applications of "makin Red go Fasta!" and applying it to an ork stupid and ignorant enough to think bullets come from loud noises.

Selrahc

2011-06-09, 09:52 AM

The issue here isnt that it doesnt fit, its that its an extreme. It takes a premise that has the wide spread applications of "makin Red go Fasta!" and applying it to an ork stupid and ignorant enough to think bullets come from loud noises.

One ork doesn't make a noticeable impact on the Waaagh. You need all the orks.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-09, 09:54 AM

More importantly, you need all the orks (or, at least a lot of them), and then convince all of them that you can shoot bullets from your finger by shouting 'BANG'. Even Feral Orks know guns need bullets, and bullets need guns, so that's very unlikely to work.

profitofrage

2011-06-09, 10:01 AM

Correction...you dont need all the orks to "think they can shoot bullets with there fingers" a large number of them just have to think "Steve the Nob...can shoot bullets with his fingers" :P
In the end it was the example stated in the codex, or maybe it was in the Dark Heresy books...Im not 100% sure since im AFB.

In any case the premise still fits, it wasnt supposed to be a "this exact thing happens all the time" its a "this KIND of thing happens all the time"
Today its Zogg firing off a bullet with his fingers (only to then lose the hand tommorow its Zogg strapping on the mechendrit he tore off a techpriest..only for it to work perfectly at the end of his nub.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-09, 10:03 AM

So, back on topic...

How will, say, the Klingon Empire handle an invasion by overmuscled greenskinned monsters who can, apparently, shoot bullets from their fingers?:smallbiggrin::smallsmile:

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-09, 10:17 AM

So, back on topic...

How will, say, the Klingon Empire handle an invasion by overmuscled greenskinned monsters who can, apparently, shoot bullets from their fingers?:smallbiggrin::smallsmile:

The Klingons, fighting an enemy who enjoys melee?

They will be SO. HAPPY.

I mean, they'll probably end up losing a few worlds, and have to devote their fleet to dealing with the Orks, but they'll be really happy about it.

profitofrage

2011-06-09, 10:23 AM

The Klingons, fighting an enemy who enjoys melee?

They will be SO. HAPPY.

Id like to think they woud find far more enjoyment out of fighting with the kroot, since they would at least be on equal terms untill the kroot bust out there incredible numbers...and realise there heavy calibur rifles shred any form of armor the Klingons grab hold of.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-09, 10:38 AM

...Kroot have incredible numbers compared to ORKS?:smalleek:

Basic Ork warriors are supposed to be incredibly strong and indescribably tough and stubborn. I'd give the win handily to any Klingon soldier from training and ferocity, but it wouldn't be a short fight, and a Nob/Boss would definitely be a challenging battle.

Besides, Klingons would hate Kroot, because fighting fair isn't by any means guaranteed with them; they fight however they need to in order to survive and get paid.

Selrahc

2011-06-09, 10:44 AM

Kroot are one of the few one planet races in 40k. They don't have *incredible* numbers. Even if you assume a large population offworld at any one time in the Warspheres.

Fan

2011-06-09, 05:48 PM

byaku rai

2011-06-09, 07:23 PM

That would be a hilarious matchup. :smallbiggrin: one-on-one, I'd have to give it to the Klingons just because of training, but in full-scale engagements, it'd be Boyz all the way.

profitofrage

2011-06-09, 07:34 PM

WOW hey no I meant the Kroot have superior numbers then the Klingons...the orks outnumber almost every race bar the IoM and Tyranids...Even then they come close in certain sectors.

The Kroot are actually have a very strict honour code, the issue is that said honour code involves eating the fallen to ensure there spirit and strengths live on. There also rather martial minded which is why I think the Klingons would enjoy battling them.

As for a klingon vs an Ork.
People need to remember that Orks have WS 4 in order to represent there ferocious nature in close quarters. This puts them above and beyond even your well trained veteran human. Coupled with the space marine style toughness they sport, you have a very dangerous opponant for a Klingon.
Sure, they may be a fair fight in terms of skill..but where as the Ork can take a bullet to the gut no problem..a klingon cannot.

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-09, 08:19 PM

This puts them above and beyond even your well trained veteran human. Coupled with the space marine style toughness they sport, you have a very dangerous opponant for a Klingon.
Sure, they may be a fair fight in terms of skill..but where as the Ork can take a bullet to the gut no problem..a klingon cannot.

Actually, Klingons have redundant organs and considerable toughness. The Klingon equivalent of a birthday party involves being hit by a dozen space tazers, two at a time. Riker mentions that he once saw a space elephant's head explode because it got tazed too hard.

In one episode of Star Trek, Worf's parents mention that they remember being called in by Worf's kindergarten because he had been picking fights, and arrived to find a bunch of teenagers with broken noses.

The_Admiral

2011-06-09, 09:46 PM

yes and orks are fungus

The Glyphstone

2011-06-09, 09:50 PM

Everyone loves Gazgul Thraka - he's a really fun guy!

profitofrage

2011-06-09, 09:58 PM

funguy......there is no end to the laughter.

Yea im not to sure about the klingon's toughness e.t.c I remember seeing in the movie one of them getting there buts handed to them by a Human though.

As for maltreatment, Ork Nobs have a habit of taking an Axe to the skull of there subordinates should they be annoyed. So I guess there both fairly violent when it comes to social situations :P

Tiki Snakes

2011-06-09, 11:14 PM

Pretty much both Orks and Klingons have a reputation for melee loving ferocity and toughness.
The difference is, I'm really not sure that the Klingons live up to it, especially given that they put so much effort into being the trope namer for the Worf Effect.

On one level, it's worth remembering Klingons spend a lot of time harping on about glorious deaths in battle, and so on. Whereas Orks are made for Fightin' and Winnin.

Craftworld

2011-06-09, 11:31 PM

Parra

2011-06-10, 04:46 AM

Keep in mind that in alot of STverse the klingons are nooks to be thrown around by the named characters, so I wouldn't base judgement on them based on that alone.

Also, I doubt kroot would have a numbers advantage over Klingons. Kroot have what, a homeworld and a dozen ish colonies? The Klingon Empire is larger than the federation, so your looking at hundreds of heavily populated worlds and thousands of colonies

shadow_archmagi

2011-06-10, 07:30 AM

Worf loses a lot of his fights

To be fair, Worf fights cyborgs and space demons a lot. He does actually win the occasional fight, and a shapeshifting space bear declared him an equal.

It's just that he's always up against things stronger than your average bear.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-10, 07:34 AM

So, what would Orks call their new Klingon friends? They're not 'oomies or pansies or spikeys - dis new 'Fed-rayshun''s got some pansies in it, but dis bunch are almost as tough as Orks.

Bumpies? Ridgies? It's not like they have any defining features anymore except their foreheads.

profitofrage

2011-06-10, 07:39 AM

If there is one thing that is certain...its that no matter how tough the enemy may be...an ork will never admit that it was tougher then an ork :P
Noones tougher then a greenskin XD

Which brings me back to the orks new name for the klingons.
Are they all that dark brownish colour? If so they will probably be called "those brown skins" as the Orks tend to refer to races without notable features by there skin colour.
Tau - Grey Skins.

byaku rai

2011-06-10, 03:02 PM

Call 'em "crabbies" cuz the forehead thing looks like a crab.

Craftworld

2011-06-10, 08:22 PM

Call 'em "crabbies" cuz the forehead thing looks like a crab.

I would think that they would call the "rinkle faces" or "brown skins".

The Glyphstone

2011-06-10, 08:31 PM

If there is one thing that is certain...its that no matter how tough the enemy may be...an ork will never admit that it was tougher then an ork :P
Noones tougher then a greenskin XD

No, but some are equally tough, though they are few and far between. Commissar Yarrick, for instance; the Orks are terrified of him and his reputation, and even Gazhghkull respects him.

Fan

2011-06-10, 09:07 PM

No, but some are equally tough, though they are few and far between. Commissar Yarrick, for instance; the Orks are terrified of him and his reputation, and even Gazhghkull respects him.

Commisar Yarrick is also cybernetically enhanced, and about as human as a Cybork is an ork.

Craftworld

2011-06-11, 12:07 AM

Commisar Yarrick is also cybernetically enhanced, and about as human as a Cybork is an ork.

That means that Yarrick is a Human. Cyborks are orks with arms/legs/other things replaced with robotics...crude robotics...but still robotics, and Yarrick only has a few (eye, and power klaw are the only two that I know of.) And Yarrick is still human. Now if you want to get into "Hey, this group of "humans" isn't human, look at the Space Marines. Their genetics are majorly different from ours.

profitofrage

2011-06-11, 01:18 AM

Space marines are sufficiently different enough for most other races to distinguish them from "human" orks never seen to refer to them as humans. The Eldar only seem to refer to them as human when insulting them.
The Tau certainly recognise there inherent differences.
uh...well all the other races dont care what the other races are called :P just wether or not they can be eaten / enslaved / corrupted.

byaku rai

2011-06-11, 06:14 PM

Of course, that's a major thematic thing in-universe; The Space Marines, the Emperor's Angels, protectors of Man, have been warped so that they can no longer truly be called human. They have no real bond with humanity.

Craftworld

2011-06-11, 08:42 PM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-11, 09:21 PM

Fan

2011-06-12, 01:14 AM

Even that's warped though - humanity worships the Emperor as a god, but the Space Marines simply regard him as a leader and warrior to be respected. They're almost fighting for different Emperors, despite them being the same person physically.

What..

Chaplains, they lead the Space Marines in WORSHIP of the Emperor before every battle, and recite the Litanies of Purgation, and Purification during battle. They are walking holy men with holy scripture engraved all over their power armor.

Selrahc

2011-06-12, 04:01 AM

What..

Chaplains, they lead the Space Marines in WORSHIP of the Emperor before every battle, and recite the Litanies of Purgation, and Purification during battle. They are walking holy men with holy scripture engraved all over their power armor.

Glyphstone is right. Space Marines aren't part of the Cult of the Emperor. They see him as the paragon of humanity, but not truly divine. Holy scripture and litany is still common. It's a religion, but one which is not so dogmatic as the majority faith.

Chaplains have something of a strained relationship with the Ecclesiarchy. They study with them, and are gifted a Rosarius, but still aren't members of the cult. They act almost like emissaries between the Marines and the Ecclesiarchy.

Fan

2011-06-12, 05:44 AM

Glyphstone is right. Space Marines aren't part of the Cult of the Emperor. They see him as the paragon of humanity, but not truly divine. Holy scripture and litany is still common. It's a religion, but one which is not so dogmatic as the majority faith.

Chaplains have something of a strained relationship with the Ecclesiarchy. They study with them, and are gifted a Rosarius, but still aren't members of the cult. They act almost like emissaries between the Marines and the Ecclesiarchy.

Then explain why in almost all literature the pre battle rites include "Venerating the holy God Emperor", and "Praising his immortal name", and the following quote.

"For eleven hundred years, I have fought and I have seen the darkness in our galaxy. I have seen the vileness of the alien and the heresy of the mutant. I have witnessed the sin of possession. I have seen all the evil that the galaxy harbors, and I have slain all whose presence defiles the Emperor. I have seen what you will see. I have fought what you must fight, and I have slain what you must slay..."

"Our enemies number untold billions and they will fight you with tooth and claw, with starships and guns, with vile sorceries and corrupt illusions. They are armed with all the strength that evil can muster. But you, brothers, have something more.

"You are armoured by the Emperor himself. Righteousness is your shield, Faith your armour and Hatred your weapon. So fear not and be proud, for we are the sons of the Sanguinius, the Protectors of Mankind. Aye, we are indeed the Angels of Death."- Blood Angels Commander Dante

How is that anything, IF NOT, faith?

The Space Marines DO venerate the Immortal God Emperor in everything they do, they battle in his name, praise his name on high to their deaths, and every personal failure is an immaculate lesson to be shown to us by The God Emperor.

Cult Level fanaticism may not be REQUIRED, but you cannot say that in literature that there are not those Space Marines who venerate his name.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-12, 07:58 AM

Then explain why in almost all literature the pre battle rites include "Venerating the holy God Emperor", and "Praising his immortal name", and the following quote.

"For eleven hundred years, I have fought and I have seen the darkness in our galaxy. I have seen the vileness of the alien and the heresy of the mutant. I have witnessed the sin of possession. I have seen all the evil that the galaxy harbors, and I have slain all whose presence defiles the Emperor. I have seen what you will see. I have fought what you must fight, and I have slain what you must slay..."

"Our enemies number untold billions and they will fight you with tooth and claw, with starships and guns, with vile sorceries and corrupt illusions. They are armed with all the strength that evil can muster. But you, brothers, have something more.

"You are armoured by the Emperor himself. Righteousness is your shield, Faith your armour and Hatred your weapon. So fear not and be proud, for we are the sons of the Sanguinius, the Protectors of Mankind. Aye, we are indeed the Angels of Death."- Blood Angels Commander Dante

How is that anything, IF NOT, faith?

The Space Marines DO venerate the Immortal God Emperor in everything they do, they battle in his name, praise his name on high to their deaths, and every personal failure is an immaculate lesson to be shown to us by The God Emperor.

Cult Level fanaticism may not be REQUIRED, but you cannot say that in literature that there are not those Space Marines who venerate his name.

They venerate him as a leader, a champion, and their somewhat literal semi-biological father, but it's explicit canon that they don't worship him as a god. The Word Bearers are a Traitor Legion who were declared heretical pre-Heresy because they did so. You want quotes?

However, the Space Marine Chapters do not adhere to the teachings of
the Ecclesiarchy. Their beliefs vary wildly from Chapter to Chapter, with
each worshipping the Emperor and their primarchs to differing degrees...

...The Space Marines worship the Emperor as a great and gifted man, but
they do not consider him a god in the same sense as preached by the
Ecclesiarchy. His blood pumps through their veins, and he is considered
the ultimate example of mankind, but he is a man nonetheless.

byaku rai

2011-06-12, 09:24 AM

I think I can help here. Space Marines are psycho-indoctrinated to believe that the human form is the most perfect and holy of forms. The Emperor, as the paragon of humanity, is the most holy of the holy species, in addition to what Glyphstone has already posted. This also explains why corruption by the warp, possession, mutation, and a dozen other things are considered "sins".

Fan

2011-06-12, 12:00 PM

Tiki Snakes

2011-06-12, 12:02 PM

But that is all religious in aspect. :smallconfused:

A god by another name. =/

Kind of, but the distinction is important.
I like the idea that they're all "He's no mere God. He is so much more! He is a Man."

The important point is that it's still distinct from the Ecclesiarchy thingy.

Mx.Silver

2011-06-12, 12:26 PM

But that is all religious in aspect. :smallconfused:
A god by another name. =/
One can be religiously venerated without falling under the 'god' classification. It happens in real world religions, both current and historical, to varying degrees although I'm not sure if I can go into detail without going against board rules.

Fan

2011-06-12, 12:41 PM

Kind of, but the distinction is important.
I like the idea that they're all "He's no mere God. He is so much more! He is a Man."

The important point is that it's still distinct from the Ecclesiarchy thingy.

The argument was one of applicability of source of faith I believe.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-12, 01:09 PM

The argument was one of applicability of source of faith I believe.

But the original point was that Space Marines have nothing in common with Humanity. The counter-point was that they both worship the Emperor. The counter-counter-point was that they 'worship' him in a completely different way than humans do. And now we're here.

Fan

2011-06-12, 01:13 PM

But the original point was that Space Marines have nothing in common with Humanity. The counter-point was that they both worship the Emperor. The counter-counter-point was that they 'worship' him in a completely different way than humans do. And now we're here.

Well the Space Marines are very obviously not human, but they do venerate the God Emperor as a GOD. It's the first part of his bleeding name.

It's just as a GOD among gods, the veneration is different. That I will grant you.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-12, 01:16 PM

Well the Space Marines are very obviously not human, but they do venerate the God Emperor as a GOD. It's the first part of his bleeding name.

Except we've given direct quotes that say otherwise. We can't give political or religious real-world figures as examples, but there's precedent in an ancient civilization that liked triangular tombs, for one...

God-Emperor is his title, like King or President. Only humans actually believe him to be a divine entity.

Fan

2011-06-12, 01:20 PM

And isn't he?

As far as I'm aware he was an actual Deific figure. (In a strictly theological sense.)

Tiki Snakes

2011-06-12, 01:24 PM

And isn't he?

As far as I'm aware he was an actual Deific figure. (In a strictly theological sense.)

No.

Just a man
With a man's courage
You know he's
Nothing but a man
And he can never fail
Saviour of the universe, he'll save every one of us...

Fan

2011-06-12, 01:25 PM

No.

Just a man
With a man's courage
You know he's
Nothing but a man
And he can never fail
Saviour of the universe, he'll save every one of us...

A man can't shoot Super Nova's out of his eyes.:smallconfused:

Tiki Snakes

2011-06-12, 01:29 PM

King of the impossible?

He's for every one of us
Stand for every one of us
He save with a mighty hand
Every man, every woman
Every child, with a mighty
Flash

er... that is to say, he was a supremely powerful human psyker. He may or may not at this point be forming in the warp as the Starchild, a godlike entity, but he really was a normal Man in most respects, once.
And quaterback for the New York Jets.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-12, 01:37 PM

A man can't shoot Super Nova's out of his eyes.:smallconfused:

In the 40Kverse, they can.

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-12, 06:20 PM

Isn't the GEoM just a reincarnated horde of shamans/psykers?

WH40k Wiki: (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Emperor_of_Mankind)

The Emperor is the collective reincarnation of all the shamans of Neolithic humanity's various peoples, the first human psykers. The foul Warp entities that would became the four Great Powers of Chaos had not yet fully formed when the Emperor was born on Earth during prehistoric times, somewhere in ancient central Anatolia (modern Turkey) in the 8th Millennium B.C.
the shamans decided to pool their collective psychic energies by reincarnating as a single soul in a single human body to create an individual they called "the New Man." The thousands of shamans, as one, took poison, and as one, they died, their souls flowing into the Immaterium in a rush of psychic power that overwhelmed those daemons who sought to feast upon it with a cleansing, purifying fire, a flame imperishable that became one soul out of many. A year later the child who would become the Emperor was born in a Neolithic settlement of Anatolian herders and farmers. His psychic power was so great that its energies altered his genome and physiology in the womb and rendered him immortal so he would no longer need to reincarnate and could not be assaulted by the daemonic creatures of the Immaterium upon his death.

He isn't actually a God but he is the most powerful being in the universe anyway.
The guy fights of 4 Gods daily while crippled and essentially in a coma on life support!

byaku rai

2011-06-13, 04:17 PM

Back on topic, people. Whether or not the God-Emperor is worshipped as a god is immaterial to the topic of the thread as a whole. :smalltongue:

Who would win between the Tyranids and the Borg?

DragonOfUndeath

2011-06-13, 04:30 PM

Back on topic, people. Whether or not the God-Emperor is worshipped as a god is immaterial to the topic of the thread as a whole. :smalltongue:

Who would win between the Tyranids and the Borg?

TyranBorg of course.
No-one knows which one of them won, only that the survivor incorporated the loser into them, becoming the greatest scourge the universe has ever seen.

Misery Esquire

2011-06-13, 04:30 PM

Back on topic, people. Whether or not the God-Emperor is worshipped as a god is immaterial to the topic of the thread as a whole. :smalltongue:

Who would win between the Tyranids and the Borg?

Tryanids. There's only so much you can do when your nanoprobes melt in the bug's blood and there's a few billion hive ships per fleet. And the borg aren't exactly resistant to melee beyond being coated in metal. (Doesn't help.)

Lamech

2011-06-13, 04:42 PM

Back on topic, people. Whether or not the God-Emperor is worshipped as a god is immaterial to the topic of the thread as a whole. :smalltongue:

Who would win between the Tyranids and the Borg?
Well the borg have weapons that can destroy systems, a inanely high degree of strategic speed and tactical speed, and probably longer range than any of the tryn weapons, and also probably a crap ton of ships. The only way they could lose this is if they tried sending cubes one at a time and didn't use any tactics at all. ... Crap.

Okay so if the borg nano-probes work on the tryn they will probably end up assimilating them all. Of course even so if there are enough Tryn the hive mind might end up shifting to Tryn tactics, or they might even end up adopting Tryn tactics and strategies ect. even if the borg hive mind isn't overcome.

So the outcomes are:
Borg are dumb, Tryn are immune to assimilation. Winner Tryn, and the borg are wiped out.
Borg are smart, Tryn immune to assimilation. Winner borg, Tryn are wiped out.
Tryn are not immune to assimilation. Winner, both! Both the Borg and the Tryn like expanding and eating up everything, and they are both a hive mind. Sure technically one hive mind might overcome the other, but really? Who cares?

Parra

2011-06-14, 02:17 AM

Tryanids. There's only so much you can do when your nanoprobes melt in the bug's blood and there's a few billion hive ships per fleet. And the borg aren't exactly resistant to melee beyond being coated in metal. (Doesn't help.)

thing is, those nanoprobes would probably adapt after a while to being able to survive in Tyranid blood.
Lacking in melee is overcome by the Borg Drone spewing nanoprobes in the immediate area in its death throes. Net result is still infected Tyranids.

Fan

2011-06-14, 02:30 AM

thing is, those nanoprobes would probably adapt after a while to being able to survive in Tyranid blood.
Lacking in melee is overcome by the Borg Drone spewing nanoprobes in the immediate area in its death throes. Net result is still infected Tyranids.

Assuming the Tyranids don't kill those Infected Tyranids (a common process), and merely adapt to be immune to Borg Nanoprobes.:smalltongue:

As a matter of fact, this type of thing is PRECISELY the kind of thing Borg has trouble with, Species 8- Whatever,ended up winning for similar reasons.

Parra

2011-06-14, 04:59 AM

Fan

2011-06-14, 05:09 AM

I was thinking about that, Species8472 being the closest we have to Tyranids in the STverse, but beyond a superfical bio-themed resemblence they are nothing alike.

Species8472 do not adapt in the same manner as Tyranids. They are essentially super apt at bio-engineering and do so in and individualistc fashion (as opposed to hive mind guided instinct).
The Borg couldnt adapt to 8472 because they couldnt assimilate even the most basic cells (at least not without Voyagers help). Tyranids, for all there viciousness, dont have that same defence. Their basic cells are still just basic cells, combined they make all sort of nasty things, but at the basic level they are still just cells.

You essentially enter an adaptabilty arms race as to who wins. Im of the belief that Borg adapt faster. Tyranids adapt in hours/days, Borg adapt in minutes/seconds.
Granted borg are going to have a horrible time in ground combat, but with enough assimilation they will just nanoprobe carpet bomb a planet and assimilate everything there. No reason this couldnt be used during bording actions either.
I get that Tyranids have a highly adaptable genome, but if billions of its combinations are assimilated rapidly, with enough processing power (which Borg certainly have), they will adapt to it and the Tyranids will quickly become fodder.

If they adapted in minutes and seconds they would be able to resist new types of fire arms in the same battle they are introduced.

This is not true. At all.

You are vastly overrating the Borg here, and not even coming close to giving Tyranid biology enough credit.

You assume that there is even a singular type of basic cell, or that creatures which can live in space, and have acid for blood are even remotely similar biologically to anything the Borg have encountered.

The mere assumption that there is a singular basic cell is a failure to understand the diversity of Xenobiology. Simply put, for something to evolve that fast it would develop entirely new cells to handle entirely new tasks with new organelles and new defensive mechanisms, and the Tyranids do this over the course of a single battle (to the degree of becoming immune to lasers.), the borg have never encountered anything like the Tyranids, and even with Species 8472 in consideration they simply can't win in combat against them, and the tyranids would simply evolve suicide units (ala banelings) that were designed specifically to handle Borg teleport drone attacks.

Also Borg Nanoprobes are administered via injection as far as I understand, there was none of this... cloud nonsense in First Contact.

Parra

2011-06-14, 05:29 AM

Assimilation via a Cloud Dispersal method was brought up in Voyager.

Borg, in almost every single encounter, adapt to the weapons being used within 2-3 shots. This created the need to have adjustable frequencey weapons when combating them and all that did was increase the number of shots before adaption.

I never said that ALL Tyranids are made from a single uniform cell, simply that they are made of basic assimilatable cells. The distinction I was making between 8472 and Tyranids was that even 8472's individual blood cells would attack and kill Borg nanoprobes. You can have acidic blood all you want, but its still a blood cell and thats still assimilatable.

Not to mention that a Tyranid swarm is not full of uniquely bioengenerred weapons. By that I mean a swarm of 1 billion Tyranids is not a swarm of 1 billion unique life forms. Its a swarm of 1million type X Tyranid, 5 million type Y Tyranid, 100k Type Z Tyranid.
They might have (near)limitless potential variations, but at any given time there is a finite number in use and it takes longer for Tyranids to tap into and produce from that potential than it would take Borg to adapt to them once they appeared.

This returns again to the adaptabilty arms race. Can Borg nanoprobes out adpat the Tyranid bio-nanoprobe-killer?
Borg effectively flick a switch and every new generation nanoprobe is upgraded (taking a tiny fraction of a second) where they are, already dispersed
Tyranids flick a switch and every new bio-nanoprobe-killer that is produced is uprgraded, which is then dispersed through the organism from its relivant new organ.