The Covenant (Halo) vs The Grand Imperium of Man (Warhammer 40k)

[Soras Teva Gee]

I avoid getting caught up in the Power Of The Lasgun debates, mostly because of the various sources being different. I personally believe that it's a better weapon than modern assault rifles, if only because there's no recoil in a Lasgun. (And the infinite Logisitics of Wonderfulness.)

I once pinned a guy down for a text quote and the best offered was a description of concrete being "boiled" by heavy las fire. However I called and still called hyperbole on that, you fire a normal bullet into concrete and its going to leave marks and so forth. I'm going with the more coherent version, personally.

I would argue that the Imperium Ground War has less requirement for Space Marines to fight the High-End Covenant than the UNSC needed the Spartans. Mostly because IG carry a lot of deadly Heavy Weapons with them as a matter of course. A pair of Hunters won't stand up long against support Lascannons, any better than they stand up against the much-rarer Spartan Laser.

Quite possibly and I don't think the Imperium have a choice anyways, there just aren't going to be enough to go around.

Though on those heavy weapons. Well I the most common are various bolters which are easily the most overrated 40k weapon. Yes its large caliber and it explodes, it doesn't however act like a grenade or rocket so that puts a definite ceiling on its power.

Lascannon though should punch right through. Eveything else should be too rare, and melta's are short range anyways.

Both for the IG though are static, the Covenant isn't above a certain tactical acumen so I'd totally see say sending a Hunter or two out to flank the position with Fuel Rod Canons. Or say an Elite with active-camo and sword.

If this was purely infantry then I'd say for a reasonable parity of force Covenant should win there. (Given well the Reasonable Marine's joke this can even apply to the 1000 or so Spess Mehruns around)

Titans are rarer than Space Marines, but the IoM doesn't really need them in this case, as a Baneblade can probably solo Scarabs. An Armoured Company of Leman Russ can take out more than thier weight in Covvie' vechicles, and the Antivechicle weapons that the Guardsmen cart around are good enough to kill everything smaller than the Scarabs.

Baneblades aren't exactly common either, but I think I loosely agree here on the overall assessment. Outside Scarbs you go all the way down to the Wraith which seem more a glorified fireworks van. It can tank rockets sure, but its offense is terrible for that. I can make a Banshee or Ghost dance a fine jig and kill about anything, but I don't presume that to be normal performance either.

I always figure the Covenant must have sabotaged Scorpion production or something. Or some strong special interest boondoggled the project or something. Or like the Halo 1 pistol game and "reality" just don't match up.

Either way yeah I do consider Imperium tanks a pretty decent showing (given how rare air support is in 40k) and well, they seem to actually have them in numbers.

It takes them a while to glass a planet... Might just have more to do with not having a wide enough AoE, though. Doesn't really matter when they don't have range to engage properly.

There isn't really range in space, just how accurately it get portrayed. Arbitrary silliness can be arbitrary though.

And taking awhile is actually establishing some parity. Doing it slowly suggests the longer sort of massive orbital strikes taking out a planet at the nuke scale. Which matches with what I've seen of lance battery strikes from Imperium ships when not breaking out the big Exterminatus weapons.

Edit: Also, in the RPGs while the SP weapons SEEM equivalent to our modern world guns, they're not really as most of them do use caseless ammunition, I think we can assume that things just operate on a different scale.

Here's the thing, projectile weapons have essentially nowhere to go as technology. They are trapped by Newton, you can't get more powerful and not make recoil too massive for a human. So anything propelling slugs has certain limits. I'd not be suprised if the AK-47 was in use a couple hundred years from now in much the fashion it is to day: common, rugged, and all the gun you really need.

Sure one can do things that play around with the formula, but not all that much. Guns seemed to have reached a point of diminishing returns, sure one might be more accurate but even a less accurate rifle is still good enough for the non-sharpshooter. For what you mentioned Caseless ammo assault rifles already exist. If they are somehow cheap/reliable enough in 40k to be stand will be the only meaningful difference in my book.

The great secret of 40k is that its really isn't super advanced at all. Certainly not enough to justify the distressingly common attitude that everything must be so much epically more powerful and advanced because its the year 40k.

Yes with specific exceptions, all of which tend towards being irreplaceable relics of a bygone age that were thankfully Raganrok proof. Simply remembered by rote or prayed out of an STC at best. And probably for every plasma rifle you probably have 10 billion citizens that don't enjoy developed world standards of living and have never even seen one.

All in all, I'd say it's a little bit of an edge over anything you see in the Halo games and given the numbers of the IG makes them more of a match for anything the Covenant can throw at them in terms of ranged combat.

In FPS multiplayer sure, but in open battle I think these differences sorta disappear. At least compared to terrain and tactics.

As for it being a numbers game, I would say the higher end Covenant Infantry really aren't a match for the Adeptus Astartes unless they have overwhelming numbers.

I don't want to get too deep into Spartan versus Astartes but they have a similar strategic weakness, there just aren't enough of them. Or we shouldn't really expect more then like a thousand or so spread across the entire campaign.

And its worth remembering for every feat of badass by a Space Marine there's some ignoble defeat where they did go down. Might require some special tactics but the Covenant does have weapons that should crack power armor.

The big point in space combat is again scale. Covenant ships are in a different class of tonnage than 40k spacecraft. Combine that with the fact that Covenant ships engagement range is about 10,000 km, and 40k is 45,000km, and you've got the makings of a real massacre.

Tonnage is irrelevant, it means nothing other then how compressed your tech is.

And if your ranges are on the money I remain a touch unimpressed unless there's a reason either can't go at longer or shorter ranges. Its space unless something stops it or there's a special reason why not then your weapon range is unlimited. Unless you go all Honor Harrington and point out lightspeed delay its all pretty short range stuff relatively speaking. Between that once you reach orbital bombardment capable I tend to assume some level of parity.

Also whatever the Imperium's numbers seems the Covenant has serious ship amounts to consider. One of the EU space battles list a human Admiral pulling a pure Star Trek solution and using a bunch of nukes to make a gas giant go nova to destroy 300 Covenant ships... and this is the war where humanity steadily lost with no hope in sight so it didn't make even make a dent.

Now, this is more or less exactly how 40k ships travel as well, except when they enter the subspace dimension (that is, The Warp) they must contend with roiling eddies, storms, and horrific eldritch daemons and forces of sheer madness. Now, I like to think that if the Covenant ever invaded the Imperium in the 41st Millenium, they'd have to contend with all the same maladies, and would be woefully ill prepared for them. Vice Versa, if the Imperium were defending in Halo Universe, the simplicity and safety of Warp travel would be a blessed relief.

This is not general practice for these sort of threads.

Also. The answer is that if they had to enter the Warp without proper tech every Covenant ship would die, or worse -not-, since only particular shields render the Warp as unsafe as it is. That's just plain unfair, beside different realms would demand completely new navigation methodology.

Also being the psychic reflection of everything the Warp is quite different. Hyperspaces do tend to be pretty distinct ideas on the whole.

It much simpler to have two unrelated dimensions for different tech. And its broadly assumed in these threads factions can move around about as well as they can natively, often the idea being they suddenly are sharing a single galaxy.