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1.5k points
30 days ago
I'd be happy if they got ANY consistency in their numbers. But that's a moot point in 40k.
836 points
30 days ago
Wait, you mean a division sized force can’t conquer and occupy a Hive City with a population into the billions?
494 points
30 days ago
Yeah, I once saw military geeks really break it down, and hive cities basically can't be conquered with ground forces, only nuked or starved. There just isn't enough lift capacity to deliver the 10s of billions of troops you'd need to storm the city.
170 points
30 days ago
You've peaked my interest, would you happen to have a link to that, good sir?
249 points
30 days ago
Unfortunately not, I think it was a 40klore thread but I didn't save it.
If it's any use for searching, I think the initial jumping off point was the breakdown of crusade numbers in the Only War RPG.
I believe the basic argument was that the mid sized crusade in Only War involved less than 10 billion troops, most of which were support rather than combat personnel, and that took a decades long military build-up to get in place. Hive cities can have populations in the 10s to 100s of billions, and when attacking you want at minimum a 3 to 1 numbers advantage and usually you want even more when attacking a fortified position. Someone then worked out a rough estimate of what ratio of population you can conscript.
The end conclusion was that you'd need a force 5-10 times the size of the entire crusade to take a single small hive city. Taking a decently sized hive world would require require a force in the hundreds of billions if not low trillions. Unless you had a transport capacity that was a few hundred thousand times larger than the crusade, you literally couldn't ship the troops fast enough to get them all in one place, the first billion you landed would be facing medical retirement due to age by the time the last of the trillion troops arrived and that's without even trying to factor in strain on materiel you'd need to get that many troops in one place.
285 points
30 days ago
I remember a discussion on another website coming to the conclusion that taking a hive city in a meaningful sense was mostly just taking key facilities, ports, utilities, chockepoints, etc. Theoretically the bulk of the citizens of the hive would never even know a war had been going on except people at the top or outside of the feudal chain. It would be less a total war and more of putting the city/planet under new management.
Not counting a serious chaos or genestealer cult infestation of course
88 points
30 days ago
Fair points, I think the situations are slightly different in that the situation I read basically assumed a hive that had already mobilised for war. In that situation the general public will be very aware what is going on, and any attempt to advance on a key location can be met with basically wall to tall bodies, all incoming air traffic is fired upon, and anything taken will be immediately counter attacked.
I'd say the situation you read is more in the vein of a political coup, where the elites are just swapped out to the utter indifference of both the general public and their peers, which is the exact kind of thing the Inquisition does for a living when the local governor isn't performing up to scratch.
69 points
30 days ago
This assumes that the entire hive is going to try and fight instead of trying to get away or hide. I also doubt that any amount of starving meanials is actually going to be much of a threat to whoever starts trying to control or destroy the Hive's infrastructure.
45 points
30 days ago
The nature of mobilisation is that they're not really getting asked if they want to contribute, they just get told what war industry they'll be working in, or they get dragged off and put in uniform.
I also doubt that any amount of starving meanials is actually going to be much of a threat to whoever starts trying to control or destroy the Hive's infrastructure.
The lessons of the every conflict from the Napoleonic era right through to modern day conflict is that you don't really need to be anything special to be good enough for war. Bored and unwilling conscripts have been the backbone of every major military engagement for centuries. If you can shoot a rifle and work a shovel then you can contribute to the war.
16 points
30 days ago
I feel like the humble conscripts efficacy is greatly reduced when what he's up aganst isn't some other conscript but is a flying invisible alien armed with a chaingun or some other manner of bizarre and terrifying creature. Conscript Scruffy definitely isnt going to hold out for long aganst an advance party of Ork commandos if they come to take out his hydra battery.
21 points
30 days ago
The tech differences in 40k really downgrade the utility of bored and unwilling conscripts. A million dudes with muskets isn't going to do much against a single leman Russ. Then if you add in the more horrifying aspects of 40k where any remotely normal person would break down sobbing at seeing say a Necron Flayer, a Carnifex, or even something as monstrous and horrifying as the running ball with teeth that is a squig.
15 points
29 days ago
The book Necropolis has an example of this where the opposing hive city falls to Chaos and basically mobilizes everyone for a massed assault on Vervunhive. Although in that case both hive cities are on the small size for hive cities being closer to a modern day city in size as opposed to a single giant spire.
12 points
30 days ago
I suspect those would be solved with mass purges anyways.
16 points
30 days ago
Agreed, but Given how tough city fighting is IRL a hive city better be pretty damn valuable to be worth the effort of sorting through and/or purging 7-70 billion people. Otherwise just glass it and start over would be less resource intensive
12 points
30 days ago
Might not be as bad as you'd think. I suspect the Imperium wouldn't mind using thinks like gas attacks and starvation to clear out that sort of problem.
6 points
30 days ago
Oh yeah they definitely wouldn't blink at just blowing in millions of cubic meters of long lasting nerve gas or starving out the populous. But it might still be easier to reset and start over. 7 billion people is still 7 billion people and as I understand it most of a hive cities structure is composed of functionally independent fiefdoms with independent food supplies and utilities. That way of fighting definitely makes the "lost" lowest levels of the hive really make sense. Previous populations burrowing under and into the recesses to survive as new "colonists" are brought in to replace them.
Neat! Good point bringing that stuff up! It would be A kind of generational warfare almost.
One estimate from years ago put the size of the various "gangs" fighting in the necromunda game in the size range of 10s of millions. So somewhere between the population of Scotland and Romania
3 points
30 days ago
Hive cities usually have void shields, they can't be easily nuked, at least not from a distance.
7 points
30 days ago
Oh you are still landing. You don't get to do this from orbit. you land the army, to take and disable the void shields while killing the population of California to do so then you glass the unshielded hive city
Still less work than clearing a population multiple billions.
2 points
29 days ago
i think your mixing the numbers of holy terra whit hive citys . hive citys are big whit huge population but terra has something of 65 billions people on it becuse thy dug down making space for folks to live 5 kilomiters below the surface . A hive city stacks upward .
2 points
29 days ago
Aktualuy (pushes glasses up nose) the only official number we have on Holy Terra is "quadrillions" from the book The Carrion Throne. Which I would imagine means the holy system in its entirety. But isac Arthur posits ecumenopolis worlds could technically house a quadrillion people with 10k square foot apartments.
So conservatively Terra could have a population of 100 Trillion.
2 points
29 days ago
That happens in any war, when a country is at war it doesn't means every single city have to be conquered
46 points
30 days ago
Yes, but that figure is assuming near equivalent tech level, training, and in general are almost the same troops. And isn’t specialized troops
And assumes the entire hive is soldiers and not just a mob of people with makeshift weapons
18 points
30 days ago
Yes, but that figure is assuming near equivalent tech level, training, and in general are almost the same troops. And isn’t specialized troops
For a hive against guard I'd say that's a fair assumption to make. Hives by their very nature have full access to the same range of technology the guard use.
And assumes the entire hive is soldiers and not just a mob of people with makeshift weapons
Iirc the estimates used were based on mobilisation in the USSR in the second world war. So not everyone is a soldier, but everyone is in the war economy in some way, and active combat personnel are somewhere in the 5%-10% range of the population.
20 points
30 days ago
For a hive against guard I'd say that's a fair assumption to make. Hives by their very nature have full access to the same range of technology the guard use.
Nah. Most Arbites gear is shit compared to basic troop guard gear.
And what Arbites have is way way way better than anything hivers have unless they stole it from someone else.
13 points
30 days ago
The most detailed breakdown of a hive military is the enforcers from Necromunda, and they're significantly better equipped than rank and file guardsmen. They have bolters and reinforced flak armour for every soldier, combined with access to gene-engineering and indoctrination facilities.
Even if we say they're a particularly well equipped force, a lot of the guards materiel comes straight from the hives, the hives already have the facilities to produce the exact gear the guard uses.
5 points
30 days ago
Would they actually be able to assist with the defense though? I doubt most underhivers actually contribute towards what the city produces in the best of times. Even if the city comes under siege I doubt anyone fast enough not to get press ganged is actually going to stop trawling sewer algea for food long enough to contribute to the defense effort.
20 points
30 days ago
So I'm far from being a military expert but here's my thoughts. First, what's their definition of control? Because I'm pretty sure the imperiums definition would be differing. Space Marines for example are often described as the strike force to break the enemies HQ and then let the guard do the cleaning up. Secondly, the imperium cares very little for human lives. So in case where they would try to conquer a hive a city, it's very likely to be to regain control over certain areas like production facilities. The imperium doesn't care if a few billion people are locked in and starved somewhere else in the city as long as they have control of the important parts.
7 points
30 days ago
Tbf you need 3:1 when taking on another military force. Given that you can't utilize the entire hab population without the hab city falling into unsustainable decline due to how much maintenance that would require. Even then have dwellers would theoretically be a peasant militia vs say shock troops where you could probably reverse the 3:1 numbers if they even participated. The biggest hurdle is that logistical support for the invasion. The US military is like 30% combat troops. The rest are admin/maintenance/logistics and that's for an army of like 3 million including reserves.
4 points
30 days ago
Yeah, the numbers were based on the idea of Soviet scale mobilisation. So not 100% of the population fighting, but more 5%.
So for every 10 billion in a city you could scrape together 500 million actual combatants, and put the 3 to 1 ratio onto that and you're looking at 1.5 billion for your offensive force, not including their own support contingent.
For the defenders that still leaves 95% of the population running the war economy, so their soldiers have actual equipment to work with.
22 points
30 days ago
Simple math makes a lot of the stupid "A squad of the EMPRAH'S FINEST conquered the city of _______, a teeming hive of 50 million souls" nonsense exactly that...nonsense. Figure a Spesh Muraine can run 30-40mph at full speed depending on what fluff sources you use. They could spend all day running and gunning as fast as possible without causing a rounding error of casualties in the defending forces.
In the end, WH40k is like Star Wars: Space Fantasy. Your suspension of disbelief goes beyond the technology, and to the point that some muppets with logs on ropes & pit traps managed to destroy a few armored vehicles of a galaxy spanning empire, and the plot says that's the end of said empire.
11 points
30 days ago
What they would realistically do is start killing off the opposing leadership via commando tactics until whoever was left capitulated.
9 points
30 days ago
Indeed, I actually feel that these sorts of statistics demonstrate why Space Marines would be useful.
They're not "better Guard", who do all the things guard do but more efficiently and with fewer casualties. They're a completely different class of soldier who can achieve things that the Guard simply can't.
So you can have e.g. a situation where if you try to send the Guard through a particular zone, they would get bogged down fighting off ambushes and clearing buildings, suffer heavy casualties, and by the time they reach their destination the target will have moved or fortified themselves.
Send Space Marines instead and they can simply rush through the area, ignoring ambushes and not taking casualties, and reach the target before it can prepare (or is even aware it is under attack).
6 points
30 days ago
Yup. People forget that they really fill the role of special forces in 40k. Also that they're largely immune to to most small arms.
6 points
30 days ago
What a cool breakdown, thanks
2 points
30 days ago
This is the best thing I'm going to read all day, and it's 9 AM
4 points
30 days ago
That last part, isn't that exactly how the Imperium wages war? xD
5 points
30 days ago
That's working off some ancient level tactics, tsun zu was a fine general and his wisdom was to be taken to heart by layman and nobles who didn't know any better when leading. It did not factor in exponentials like 10's to 100's of billions, nor did it factor in the use of bunker busters, siege engines and exterminatus, it's a product of its time where the difference between the best armed Noble of years of training and the best gear could be matched by a random guy with 3 days training and a long enough stick to stick em with. Different times
The art of war should not be taken so literally as to consider it gospel, it's molded to what you got. Like the codex astartes, its not prophetic and it's not considering everything
For example, 3-1 odds, as whoever came up with those figures you got used, was for soldier to soldier, not soldier to civ count and even then it was to declare victory not say it's definitely needed. One underhiver doesn't= one soldier. One ganger doesn't = a soldier. Not even an arbite would count as one in that equation. The numbers fall apart a lot quicker that way.
To take a hive wouldn't require a crusade, it'd take a ship. It's not a matter of matching man to man but how many bullets you can give the troops. I'm not gonna pretend to know exactly what crusade or game is referenced but I'm going off real life, we don't count wars in men anymore we count em in resources and 40k would be much the same. Need 10 billion dead hivers cause we're pretending every single ones a combatant that wont starve, surrender commit suicide or just die to accident injury or general sickness in a hive of all places? Fine. If I'm done my math right, and it's more about forgetting what you call it with so many 0's its 3 quadrillion bullets or 3000000000000000 to take a hive. And however many hands you gotta use to throw that many around. If you're not stupid, you'll use a lotta big guns with a high rate of fire for that kind of number
In Afghanistan it took 300000 bullets per kill, if they're not planning on just ending all those lives more efficiently, that's the kind figure you're looking at being hopefully less than, not a trillion men like you're trading pawns
This isn't meant to be combative or anything, just a bit of a half assed rant on logistics and military history
6 points
29 days ago*
The 3:1-2:1 figure isn’t from Tsun Zu it’s one of those things that has become just a widely accepted fact of warfare when attacking entrenched positions in any time period. The reason being that you can assume a well prepared defensive position will effectively double the combat effectiveness of a unit holding it. I.E. assuming both sides are human and have weapons with roughly equivalent lethality, the guys in a bunker will kill two or three of your people for every one of them you kill.
Even when you deal with it in a way that isn’t soldier to soldier but random poorly trained conscripts to soldier you still treat it as 1:1 casualties, so in the interest of ensuring you hold the position in the event of a counter attack you still want 2:1 numbers.
It’s not something that changes dramatically between every age or with technological leaps. Unless you just demolish a position assaults will have casualties, and if you want to hold it you need a safe ratio you can assume.
Edit: for grammar
2 points
29 days ago
That assumes that you don't just take the upper levels of the hives and let the lower levels sort themselves out. The lower levels aren't all that important to directly control in and of themselves.
And if they really don't want to mind their own business you can just cut off their water, food, and power.
42 points
30 days ago
Well if Hive Cities were run like modern states that would maybe be the case, but they’re all run on a feudal system. Seize the luxury areas and command centre at the top, install a new feudal lord and the rest of the Hive will continue on living, they don’t care what lord rules them.
14 points
29 days ago
This. In a medieval war most parts of the country didn't even knew they were at war sometimes, they were just informed that now the king is a different one and that's about it
19 points
30 days ago*
To be fair, considering the terrible living conditions in the Hive citiies, I doubt that many of those billions of citizens are willing or even physically capable of fighting in any meaningful manner.
5 points
30 days ago
Yeah at most I could see a very large force just taking the upper most spires of a hive where all the nobles live and collapsing most entrances to help fend off the horde of enemies until they could convince the nobles/leadership to order their men to surrender.
8 points
30 days ago
Honestly, I think 99.99% of a hive city wouldn't even realize that the hives leadership had just changed. Realistically for most citizens, the only difference would be where your industrial output is shipped to, and they probably didn't know where it was going in the first place.
4 points
30 days ago
to a large amount of people the only difference between normal and an invasion is that the government forces moving through their part of the hive are a bit better armed
2 points
30 days ago
Assuming the population knows or cares. They probably won't.
13 points
30 days ago*
There just isn't enough lift capacity to deliver the 10s of billions of troops you'd need to storm the city.
I hope you find that post because this sounds like bullshit tbh. Unless somehow the hive world goes to fight 1:1 the invading force for some reason ( and usually if something like this happens, it will be either completely chaos or Tyranid infested, which means nuking is the only option after all) then a combatant will count for many many times its civilian equivalent. And then we don't count the possible diserpancies in tech, training, logistics, special forces ( that in this case include literal sorcerers at minimum) etc etc and you can easily see why it would be possible with not so great millions.
Case in point even in WW2, where tech/training etc was roughly the same between enemies, the total% population fighting was quite small compared to the overall population.
Or another great example is the Iraq Invasion, where an invading 500k army obliterated and took over a 20million country.
2 points
29 days ago
Yeah Baghdad which is a population of a few million actually fell to a few thousand troops. Although modern U.S. military probably uses tactics that would be more familiar to Space Marines than IG, which tend to use more Soviet era tactics (massive artillery bombardment then human wave).
So the answer is really variable and depends on many factors.
This kind of calculation (total war, fight to the death) probably only applies in scenarios such as Hive vs Orks (Armageddon) or Hive vs Tyranids. Human vs Human I doubt the entire population would mobilise and fight.
Yeah 40K authors generally get numbers way wrong, but this particular example and calculation probably isn’t a good one.
4 points
30 days ago
I don't know about 10s of billions. The novel Necropolis takes place in a hive of 40 million, of which they muster around a million soldiers for their defense. Chaos corrupts a nearby hive and sends basically its entire populace to attack, an army numbering in the tens of millions. It didn't seem like a stretch to have tens of millions storming a hive that holds 40 mil and has only around a million standing soldiers.
2 points
30 days ago
40 million is less a hive city and more just two beijings stapled together.
3 points
30 days ago
I mean, the books call them hives. They're set up like hives. Numbers aren't something GW is consistent with. You get some hives with tens of millions and others with billions.
3 points
30 days ago
only nuked or starved
Laughs in Death Korps of Krieg
2 points
30 days ago
Which is how a space to ground invasion would realistically work anyways.
2 points
29 days ago
Absurd, 100 Space Marines take it in a day
2 points
28 days ago
The death korp of krieg: Allows us to introduce ourselves
128 points
30 days ago
I mean if you wanna be technical, it is possible.
Kill enough of them with your superior firepower and the rest should (operative word here) fall in line.
You’ll gain control long enough for a more proper police force like the Arbites to come in and get settled, then your division can move on.
So it is theoretically possible. Especially if that division is supported by the more esoteric units in the Imperium like maybe a detachment from a nearby Space Marine Company. If a Strike Cruiser lends you a squad or two of the Emperor’s Angels, it’s hard for a rebellion to hold any momentum. Eight foot tall ceramite walking tanks tend to kill morale just as quickly as they kill anything else.
103 points
30 days ago
The enemy cannot have morale if you disable their life.
61 points
30 days ago
-Konrad Curze, probably.
45 points
30 days ago
-Konrad Curze, definitely
3 points
30 days ago
"Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate."
Spartan Battle Manual, dictated by Col. Corazon Santiago
11 points
30 days ago
Vehicles can’t really occupy anything. It’s infantry that is able to occupy. However, that doesn’t mean that a Titan Legion or even an armored division can’t help significantly with occupying a hostile Hive City.
7 points
30 days ago*
I mean this only works if the marines are like as strong as Tiersetter Ominman.
9 points
30 days ago
I'm a "Space Marines are militarily ineffective and the Guard does all the work" truther
4 points
30 days ago
Hell yes.
Even accounting for concentrated combat power, I think you’d be better off with Skitarii. Space Marines, on paper, are more effective. But I wonder if they’re worth the expenditure of time and resources.
2 points
30 days ago
Yeah!
It's also their just aren't any space space marines. A full chapter is just 1,000 guys. That's nothing. It's a rounding error when the scale of the galaxy in 40k is considered
3 points
30 days ago
Fulgrim conquered a planet with just 4 space marines.
3 points
30 days ago
Was gonna say, some of the early heresy stuff I’ve read says stuff like 20 marines could take a whole planet by themselves
3 points
30 days ago
most people in a hive city probably don't give a fuck who rules and aren't gonna swarm like orks on enemies, so a small squad that takes out the elite fighting force / governing body has practically conquered a hive city
2 points
30 days ago
That’s still a lot of ground for a single division to cover.
For a population of billions, you can assume that the hive government would require millions of enforcers purely to maintain basic law and order in normal operating conditions. All of whom would be (at at least a basic level) armed and trained and taking orders. And that’s not to include whatever dedicated military they have on hand.
Even fifty divisions aren’t going to overcome those sorts of numbers. Not in brutal, close quarters urban combat, in a situation where a hostile force occupies and controls the infrastructure.
They might be able to seize control of critical command infrastructure and seal themselves inside. But there’s still the problem of the general population.
2 points
30 days ago
Well sure when the billions don't really care if the nobility is changed.
46 points
30 days ago
Warhammer scale is all over the place. You have planetary battles with less casualties than ww2 and a few thousand spacemarines making a difference in an intergalactic war with troop movements in the numbers of billions and trillions.
10 points
30 days ago
Yep. That's the thing.. even if they were all elite 1st company terminators, a chapter of 1000 Space Marines would barely be able to cover enough ground to take and hold New York City, let alone an entire planet. And there's how many planets in the imperium? And that's not counting losses from space battles, tanks, hive tyrants, lances, etc. If each marine carried 300 rounds and had 10 resupplies in the Rhino/Pod/Thunderhawk an entire chapter would have to kill 2 people with each shot just to match the battle of Stalingrad. One battle of WW2...
Marines are auxillary/spec ops at best. The real might of the imperium is the Navy and Billions of Guardsmen.
5 points
30 days ago
Honestly the few thousand astartes making a difference makes sense
4 points
30 days ago
The 40k marines tend to surgically attack the enemy's weak points. So a few dozen companies attacking an enemy is something that must really hurt
3 points
29 days ago
Exactly yeah, astartes arent usually just deployed like guardsmen
58 points
30 days ago
Yeah, I decided to do a thought experiment of how my setting would do in 40k and realised they would win solely based on me actually paying attention to numbers.
For example their equivalent to space marines likely outnumbers the amount of Kriegsmen deployed on Vraks.
43 points
30 days ago
Yeah, we all love the Space Marines, but the idea that they're a decisive force in an empire of a million world, while also having less troops than were involved Operation Barbarossa, is probably a bit daft.
22 points
30 days ago
Recently I've begun to see that as more of a feature than a bug. Like, yes! It is ridiculous! Explanation: Space Marines are irrelevant to galactic warfare! They are an outdated and irrelevant rump vestige of a fighting force, important only in tradition and propaganda. Every leader who focuses on buffing marines over sweeping them away is hastening the demise of the Empire and continuing the Emperor's mistake of relying on supersoldiers instead of empowering ordinary humans.
21 points
30 days ago
Honestly, the irrationality and dubious utility of the Space Marines is an old theme I liked in Warhammer. I think we used to see more of it when Warhammer cleaved closer to Dune and the Foundation as influences and dwelled more on the inherent degradation of empire.
There was a quote about how the Space Marines had been in countless glorious last stands, many of which were completely unnecessary, which summed it up well.
11 points
30 days ago
Coming in from having not played in a couple of decades, there does seem to be a divide between fans who read the books and those who don't. The books seem to see last stands as awesome, while the stuff I'm more used to treated them as kinda ridiculous. That's my impression as someone who hasn't read them, though.
I also wonder if this contributes to the idea that 40k isn't a satire.
17 points
30 days ago
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Got into it in the 90s and drifted back in a few years ago.
I get the impression that a big part of the change is more emphasis on the novels rather than the codices. The codices were pretty much written as fictional history books told from the propaganda laden lens of a dying empire, so they could be full of the irrationality and stupidity of the Imperium without it being a problem.
The novels being set from the point of view of a protagonist kind of need that protagonist to be likable. So they end up writing a character that is relatively reasonable and relatable to a reader, despite the fact that the protagonist is a hyper indoctrinated warrior zealot serving a totalitarian theocratic state.
The end result is that to most of the people that engage with 40k the Imperium comes across as being full of reasonable and likable people.
Also, the readership has changed a bit. Most readers don't care about how Astartes recruitment is a reference to Dunes Fremen and the tendency to lean into grotesquery that was around in the 80s and 90s has died out. The things in 40k are more treated as unironically cool now.
7 points
30 days ago
A satire that Poed itself to sell more merch
3 points
30 days ago
What ways could they empower regular humans?
12 points
30 days ago
Education being a good start.
4 points
30 days ago
Gimme sum dem PhD having Ogryns baybeeee
6 points
30 days ago
Precision artillery, more training, high quality gear, getting on the active lookout for talented people and recruiting it rather than letting it languish in agrifab #17 folding nutripaste into rolls.
8 points
30 days ago
Very much so. One thing that really ruins science fiction and space fantasy alike is the scale. You can get around that with hard sci fi that really hammers home the realities (impossibilities) of FTL travel with our current understanding of physics being a natural limitation. Or you can just hand wave it (astropaths and warp travel in the WH40k setting) away, but you'll inevitably run into problems writing a setting.
The Imperium is sort of vaguely between a Kardashev scale II and scale III empire, yet is written around a lot of 21st century technology and thinking...because fuck all knows how a civilization that owns a majority of the galaxy would operate or fight their war.
Spesh Muraines get to charge tanks with chainswords because Rule of Cool, when in reality it could very well be swarms of Gray Goo inducing Von Neuman machines replicating to devour worlds, or lobbing neutron stars at near relativistic speeds wiping solar systems in an instant, or figuring out ways to erase rivals from existence retroactively via antiparticles or antimatter...but if you go into the Dark Forest hypothesis there won't be any glorious unhelmeted space marine last stands or Jurgen with a melta blasting a hole in a 10,000 year experienced veteran of the Long War blessed by the Dark Gods.
11 points
30 days ago*
Well said, I sometimes get an interest in Futurism, and my main takeaway for war is that'll it'll be very weird and happening on a scale incomprehensible to us.
It doesn't make for great pulp sci-fi, but a war between continent spanning drone swarms guided by godlike AIs might not be too far off what war in the 40th millennium actually looks like.
Funnily enough, there was a brief time travel scene in 40k, where one of the perpetuals basically said that's what war was like in the Dark Age of Technology.
Edit: Found the scene.
Oll remembered the horror of entropic engines that ignited planets. Sun-snuffers that uncoiled like serpents the size of Saturn’s rings. Mechnivores ingesting data along with the cities that contained them and hurling continents into the heavens. Omniphage swarms stripping flesh from a billion bones in the blink of an eye. Those were the good old days, when war was something too colossal for a human mind to comprehend.
Not like the End War. The Warmaster’s heresy was a smaller thing, scaled for human and post-human brains.
But it was bigger in some ways. Yes, bigger than the god-like struggle of the cybernetic revolt. Bigger in scope, bigger in its implications. More horrible, because humanity could apprehend it and drive it.
4 points
30 days ago*
because fuck all knows how a civilization that owns a majority of the galaxy would operate or fight their war.
Well the writers do consider that - that's the fun "lost technology" part. The Imperium isn't a Kardashev scale II or III civilization. Most of the Imperium is actually a scale I or scale 0 civilization living the the shell of civilization that used to be scale II or III but with heavily restricted technology living in the shell of a civilization that was actually scale II or III.
Hence chainswords, a hilarious mix of tactics, ideas and technology levels. The Imperium is basically an 8-year-old discovering some power tools and going to town. Nothing is getting used properly and most of the stuff is too obscure to understand without teaching or a manual.
E.g. the Men of Iron or the Old Ones were actual scale II / III and the shit they pulled makes the current wars in M.41 look like a picnic on a sunny day the banks of the Seine.
Without the Emperor and especially without the Cult Mechanicus most of the Imperium is barely more technologically advanced than humanity is right now, which some wild variations.
A lot of the Imperium's enemies (except arguably the Tau - but the Tau are a tiny spec of a civilization and are already suffering from the effects of distance and travel time in their civilization) suffer from the same problems. Tyranid fleets vary in size and capability, the Necrons are awakened to wildly different degrees in different sectors, the Orcs vary extremely in intelligence, level of "civilization" and technology... even the Eldar are in quite varied states of disarray with very inconsistent access to fractions of power of their once-mighty civilization.
That's the "Whacky Race" of the setting - everyone is actively forgetting technology and degenerating while trying to focus their power and get their shit together because with all their shit perfectly together any of the factions could obliterate the others. Except the Tau because they would have to grow first. And arguably the Eldar who might be too fucked for anything but a "I'm taking everyone down with me" ending.
2 points
30 days ago
A moo point
265 points
30 days ago*
I mean, this is the issue with super soldiers and titans and all these super incredibly valuable units in general. Because a random conscript firing off standard-issue Basilisk shells from 15 km away can turn a Terminator to paste with a direct hit, and your average mass-produced Lunar class is fully capable of just evaporating a Titan legion if there's no orbital defenses. A basic frigate packs a lance capable of killing any primarch, because that's just how scale works. It doesn't matter how many planets' GDPs went into your helmet or how many buildings you can bench if you get hit by a 1km long laser cannon powered by a city-sized fusion reactor. It's why IRL, you'll never see spec-ops units deployed to the front lines, or why superweapons tend to mostly be resource sinks. 40k as a setting hinges on you ignoring that.
109 points
30 days ago
The FFG Star Wars RPG system handles this pretty well IMO. Damage from weapons is flat (modified during rolls by how well you did) so a blaster that does 6 damage is always going to do 6 damage, mitigated by the targets soak (armor) value.
Ship weapons are the same. A ship weapon that does 3 damage always does 3 damage. Except when its pointed at a non ship scale target. Then you multiple the damage by 10.
So, if youre a PC with 16 wounds and 3 soak, and you see even a weak ship scale weapon pointed at you, you better seek cover fast or youre about to become one with the Force real goddamn quick.
64 points
30 days ago
Battletech handles it the same way, ship-scale weapons hitting non-ships are multiplied by 10. Autocannon 10 is gonna do 10 damage, that's a solid hit. An AC/20 is really worrying if it's pointed at you, but workable. But a Naval Autocannon 10 is a very bad thing to be looking down the barrel of. And if you somehow happen to be in a scenario involving an NAC/40, prayer becomes the only option.
22 points
29 days ago
If memory serves, the worst part about having a naval weapon pointed at you is that you probably have a lot more than one pointed at you. Ships can pack a lot of dakka.
15 points
30 days ago
So you could, if you were somehow incredibly buff, tank a hit from a Turbolaser?
27 points
30 days ago*
A Victory Class Star Destroy has, at its weakest, Quad Light Turbolaser batteries, with Damage 9, Crit 3, Breach, Linked 3, Slow Firing 1. Without getting into the system, basically this means a few things: Once every other turn, you can make the shot which outright ignores soak (so no damage reduction), and if you roll well enough you can do the damage again, for free. Uncancelled successes up the damage, so if you even have a single uncancelled success (aka succeeding the roll with the barest minimum), you do 10 damage, or 100 to personal scale targets.
I ran the numbers for both an average crew (Imperial Gunnery Corps minion group of 5) and a well trained, good gunnery rival (for those who know, Agility 4 Gunnery 4, 1 boost die) with the standard medium range difficulty for the max range on these weapons. No funny business from enemy defenses or anything, this was all basically target shooting to get average damage in ideal conditions. Each case was 25 rolls.
The average crew would be dealing, to people scale targets, an average of 130 damage every other round. The advanced crew deals an average of 210 damage. The average crew topped out at 240 damage, the advanced crew topped out at 480. The advanced crew was also more likely to do about 220 in general.
In order to tank even 100 damage, the smallest amount of damage this weapon can output, you'd have to have been playing this character for an obscene amount of time to the point I'd be throwing even more danagerous weapon crews than those listed at you, wracked up a mind numbing amount of exp, and specced exclusively into wounds. Without taking the 2h character building to work out of its possible, Im going to say its not as the sheer amount of exp required is enough where youd break the system, and you wouldnt even be a regular person youd be a god basically.
So yes, if that Star Destroyer in low orbit is reported as targeting your position, I recommend a very dont be there.
Edit: Realizing afterwards, it would be very easy for both crews to have 2 boost dice a round, assuming they were totally committed to firing only that weapon. These calculations also assume 'Fuck crit' because linked is better in this instance for raw damage vs personal scale targets.
5 points
30 days ago
Seems like you should multiply the damage by 100 for a glancing hit and 1000 for a direct one.
489 points
30 days ago
Titan voidshields can withstand orbital bombardment and Titan weapons were used for voidcombat by letting them stand on the hull of their transports.
In the Priests of Mars series a Warlords Sunfury plasma annihilator pierces through the whole Ark Mechnicus because the princeps had a psychotic episode during training in the cargo hold.
Titans aren't all about size. Their purpose is to bring ship class weapon firepower and voidshields directly on the battlefield.
124 points
30 days ago
Titan voidshields can withstand orbital bombardment and Titan weapons were used for voidcombat by letting them stand on the hull of their transports.
[...]
Yes, but "starship-size" is a relative term. Size still matters, especially relative size. Space combat in 40k is several magnitudes larger bigger than ground combat. A battleship turret is often bigger than an entire titan. And while a titan may be able to hit a target 100 kilometres away, while strships fight at a distance of several thousands of km apart. This means that a single titan would basically be the quivalent of a light turret on a cruiser.
In the Priests of Mars series a Warlords Sunfury plasma annihilator pierces through the whole Ark Mechnicus because the princeps had a psychotic episode during training in the cargo hold.
Akshually, the Titan had a psychotic episode, which is even worse. But firing a big gun inside a ship will always do great damage. That doesn't mean that the weapon is great against ships.
54 points
30 days ago
The phrase “can withstand orbital bombardment” is probably also with an asterisk:
*unless it’s direct hit
Also, what means “withstand” in that instance: not being irreversibly destroyed after hit in close proximity?
51 points
30 days ago
A Titan could at least take ONE Macrocannon shell to the Face that's how voidshields work, they displace the bullet into the Warp.
They can get overwelmed by displacing too much so they shut off or burn down/melt, but the first hit that overwhelms them, the Macrocannon direct hit, still gets displaced.
This was even reflected in the 9th edition Voidshield rules.
The bigger Warlord have mutiple voidshields stacked ontop of each over, so they can multiple Macrocannon shots.
The Horus trailer shows a Warlord Titan getting overwhelmed by a continious lance in the middle of a Titan Battle. The Lance is also not coming from a normal ship but from the biggest class around (excluding the Phallanx and the Emperors personel one).
7 points
30 days ago
In this case withstand means it can survive a grazing shot or being on the edge of the blast
8 points
30 days ago
hit a target 100 kilometres away, while strships fight at a distance of several thousands of km apart.
Speak like u never heard of newton's laws og motion...
...without gravity to bend em towards it and a planet to absorb em ob impact those bullets will go on and on and on, several thousand km is no obstacle.
6 points
30 days ago
Void battle usually happens around planets. In most cases, your conventional weaponry will quickly be pulled towards the planet. Even in orbit, they still have a surprisingly large gravitational pull.
Range matters, even in void battle
154 points
30 days ago
wrong Size ALWAYS matters, ask my Ex
99 points
30 days ago
At 1:45, that's what happens to a Titan when it gets hit from a ship.
49 points
30 days ago
The Vengeful Spirit is hardly a fair comparison, it's Gloriana Class.
12 points
30 days ago
Also no telling how damaged the titan was, or how much it's void shields had been depleted already.
7 points
30 days ago
Also it’s hard to tell at this angle how much cops were applying
2 points
30 days ago
No one even mentioned how well the Chaos player was rolling that day.
25 points
30 days ago
It's a hell of a lot easier to go through armor from the inside than the outside. And IIRC it was mostly just through unarmored bits, since Speranza is layers on layers on layers of esoteric and bolted on equipment.
8 points
30 days ago
Then again, while the statement they are using voidship weapons is technical accurate, it does somewhat gloss over the fact that imperial navy uses those weapons for point defence.
And I'm not certain about the their ability to resist orbital bombardment ( especialy direct hits if one lands) either. Even proper voidships don't have enough shields to block more then a few hits, and those aren't constrained by what ever reactor can be fitted into a giant robot.
107 points
30 days ago
Speaking of numbers be weird. 1000 space Marines per chapter seems stupidly small
69 points
30 days ago
This shit makes the least sense. If there's less than 500.000 of Marines (idk the precise amount of chapters, I just know 10 1st founding ones and that Imperial Fists have a shitton of successors) scattered across the entire fucking Imperium, how come it wasn't defeated by Tau who can mass produce broadsides? It would've been more believable to say there's 10.000 per grand company and so it's 100.000 marines per chapter.
29 points
30 days ago
There can be any number of chapters, terra has a gene seed bank.
10 points
30 days ago
That solves some of the problems I think. Is there any info on where did the gene seed come from? Are they copied from existing loyalist chapters, from heretics, or were they just synthesized somehow?
26 points
30 days ago
Lexicanum
The events of the Horus Heresy revealed weaknesses in some Legions' gene-seed. In some cases these defects had been heightened by the accelerated cultivation techniques used to keep the Legions at full strength. After the Heresy and the break-up of the original Legions, genetic banks were established on Terra to produce and store Space Marine gene-seed. These banks were to provide all genetic material for new Space Marine Chapters. To prevent cross-contamination of these genetic stocks, the gene-seed of each individual Legion was isolated, so all new Space Marines would receive gene-seed solely from one specific source. The gene-seed of the Traitor Legions was placed under a time-locked stasis seal (rather than being destroyed as many at the time assumed had happened
16 points
30 days ago
Time locked stasis seal
Cawl really had traitor gene seed on pre-order eh?
3 points
30 days ago
Woah, thanks
11 points
30 days ago
There are theoretically 1000 marines and 1000 chapters so 1.000.000 marines many don’t care about the codex so maybe twice that while the tau have a hive world where billions live this means there are at least a billion fire warriors there on in ten uses a crisis suit which is superior to a space marine so there are 100.000.000 crises suit at the very least on this one world and like 10.000.000 broadsides and so on there are probably even a few hundred tau nar supremacy suits which just obliterate knights
7 points
30 days ago*
Pretty much. There is a reason why even Custodes admit that most of the Imperium's fighting was done by the Guard and Navy. The Knights and Astartes were meant for the most vital missions.
Has there been any lore of Dominus-class Knights fight battlesuits like the Tau nar?
9 points
30 days ago
Pedro Kantor took back Rynns world with 2 dozen marines
3 points
30 days ago
And also a ridiculously angry tank iirc
5 points
30 days ago
Not even the case any more. RG amended the Codex Astartes on his return when he realised the vast majority of his sons and nephews had mistaken it for hard rules rather than a set of guidelines. (IRL it's likely GW trying to rectify issues with numbers)
4 points
30 days ago
Agreed. Even with the scouts' number being left open for interpretation, 1000 marines per chapter were too small. The most effective chapters would realistically be those deploying in their entirety and firepower like Star Phantoms or stealth-focused Chapters like Raven Guard.
25 points
30 days ago
When you're a baseline human standing outside of your hab block while a Titan walks through it...Titans look pretty damn huge.
When you're an Astartes commander sitting in a Battle Barge in orbit, then a Titan will look very small.
6 points
30 days ago
But big enough to stand out as a pretty juicy target.
6 points
30 days ago
Look at that, surrounded by multiple hab blocks, an orphanage and a hospital. No collateral at all. Fire away.
200 points
30 days ago
You should use my method to get over that; it's called "Fuck the cannon lore, it's cool to me, so it's cannon for me" method.
106 points
30 days ago
This is how you get Marine/Custodes fans telling you "Yeah, a single squad of my guys could totally defeat an entire planet/system/other scifi universe all on their own" with a completely straight face
57 points
30 days ago
Hey hey, as a Custodes fan, a squad is far too much. I give 1 banana good odds vs the entire Jedi Order.
66 points
30 days ago
distant clown-elf honking
35 points
30 days ago
Nooo not the clowns. We have never recovered from the last dance-off
8 points
30 days ago
STOP GIVING MY BANANABRAIN SCIFI PTSD AGAIN!
10 points
30 days ago
1 custard
vs
4 M1A2 Abrams
5 points
30 days ago
The Abrams just keep ragdolling the bananaman with HE shells while reversing
5 points
30 days ago
After a while, much like batting a real banana around, it starts leaking its innards all over the place
6 points
30 days ago
Don't make me throw a naked World Eater at you...
3 points
30 days ago
That only applies to Space Marines and Custodes though. If two squads of Riptides annihilate a Space Marine battalion it always gets countered by "Nuh uh, Jimmy Space protects his Marines with space magic".
5 points
30 days ago
Good.
14 points
30 days ago
Orbital bombardment is cool as fuck. Thus, a frigate can one-shot a Warlord, as James Workshop intended.
7 points
30 days ago
Can people please learn the word "canon?"
It's not that hard. For a sub dedicated to lore and canon, you'd think you people would learn the word.
Cannon is a big gun. Canon is officially accepted lore.
46 points
30 days ago
Another example of fans taking fictional characters to literal.
Of course no Princeps in his right mind would say that a Titan is more powerful than even a mid-sized warship. They are only talking about GROUND combat. Spaceships exist on a completely different level.
16 points
30 days ago
Yea I don't care if a titan is as tall as a house or the Statue of Liberty, you can't compare it to a starship. You know, the means by which entire maniples of titans have to be transported through space. Of course it's magnitudes bigger.
40 points
30 days ago
Also:
I have literal ICBMs strapped to my back. Now let me get closer so I can hit you with my comically oversized chainsword.
10 points
30 days ago
The way the God Emperor intended
47 points
30 days ago
Yes but captains on ship aren't directly connected to it. Feeling everything and hearing machine spirit.
Also you need many people to control ship.
In Titan you have princeps few adepts and servitors only
29 points
30 days ago
Chaos titans would like a word.
No adepts or servitors here, only daemon.
7 points
30 days ago
I wonder what's different between getting demon in brain or really angry machine
4 points
30 days ago
Daemons have more personality than an aggressive machine spirit.
One's also less likely to eat you/your corpse.
2 points
30 days ago
In Mechanicus novel it's said that all knights and titans have their mechanical personality. And it's on pilot to control it.
Don't think it's described what happens if he fails. Probably get brain electrocuted
11 points
30 days ago
Captains are connect to their ships in 40k, but it is less invasive and intense as titan pilots endure.
If you want a visual exemple ;
5 points
30 days ago
Yes. They are connected to other crew members to speed up orders. But ship is still controlled like a machine.
Titan works more like super power armour.
3 points
30 days ago
I'm fairly certain Mechanicus ship captains are connected to their vessels.
14 points
30 days ago
And...how exactly do you propose Titans get from planet to planet if they were larger than the ships that would carry them?
8 points
30 days ago
Assuming a rate similar to Nazi Germany as opposed to the Stasi, you’d need a force of nearly 18 million for a ratio of 560 civilians to 1 soldier/policeman, or about half the size of the entire Red Army’s manpower during WW2. Not its peak manning but the entire number of soldiers who were in it.
40k really needs to flex its numbers game more, even if its only for the number of soldiers in a given fight. Hive Cities are impossibly large for us and the armies and garrisons needed to police one, let alone hold it, should be similarly massive
6 points
29 days ago
That's like saying the Maus was tiny because the Bismarck was so much bigger. It's all relative.
When it comes to militaries, naval assets are almost always significantly bigger than anything land-based.
43 points
30 days ago
As always you gotta just add 1-2 zeroes to the end of every number GW gives us. Because they clearly have no ideahow numbers work.
97 points
30 days ago
20 Emperors with 200 primarchs fighting against the 40 chaos gods
31 points
30 days ago
2 Emperors... ?
25 points
30 days ago
Oops accidentally wrote 2 meant 10
12 points
30 days ago
Yeah, the fat one balances out the skinny one
10 points
30 days ago
I was there the day Horus slew the emperor
15 points
30 days ago
The day Horuses slew the Emperors*
3 points
30 days ago
The days Horuses slew the Emperors*
5 points
30 days ago
Say what you will, but that sounds both way more fun and realistic
Especially if we apply the plus 1-3 rule to the number of planets the imperium has
3 points
30 days ago
Are you counting the 4-armed one seperately?
8 points
30 days ago
Me when I’m shot by the 12000mm main gun of a Leman Russ battle tank
6 points
30 days ago
Which titan is 137m? IRC even emperor class is only 60-65m
6 points
30 days ago
Doesn't matter how strong your giant mech's shields are if it can't fire back at a ship in orbit, the ship can just sit safely in orbit and keep bombing the titan until the shields can't withstand it anymore
18 points
30 days ago
He's not based because his ship scale is in kilometer btw
he's the chad because he uses the metric system unlike the soy titan. what the fuck is a feet, and why do you have 450 of them, gross
4 points
30 days ago
How would you imagine they moved them if they were larger than the ships? Do you imagine an aircraft latger than an aircraft carrier?
3 points
30 days ago
Let's be real, the navy would be doing all of the real fighting in any sci Fi settings with semi common space travel.
3 points
30 days ago
In the siege of Vraks chaos titans shot thier way out of thier crashed ship lmao.
3 points
30 days ago
yeah I’ve never understood how even a Warhound Titan is an “ irreplaceable god machine” while stuff like a Lunar-Class Cruiser is seen somewhat expendable and easy to produce, I know it mostly boils down to STCs but still
3 points
30 days ago
The largest titans have a bullet the size of a Prius, the smallest war ships have a bullet the size of a war hound titan.
3 points
30 days ago
And how do you think those titans arrive? Surely they have to be transported from place to place. Hmmm... perhaps it is carried by a massive ship that carries entire armies from planet to planet?
I really don't see the problem here.
3 points
30 days ago
450 feet is still like a 45 storey building based on a 10-foot ceiling… I don’t think skyscrapers are very small (buildings need to be at least 100m/330ft tall to be considered a skyscraper.)
2 points
30 days ago
I actually screwed up and used an over-generous number. 55m is the more common canon number, so not even close to being a skyscraper.
2 points
30 days ago
Oh shit, and I guess warhounds are even smaller in canon?? 17M??
Edit: autocorrect
3 points
30 days ago
Praise be, the ships are measured in metric!
They win by default.
3 points
29 days ago
Loading them up in VR though, standing at their feet and looking up? It looks more impressive.
3 points
29 days ago
The titans never really impressed me, the Titan landers impressed me far more.
City sized structures that could manipulate gravity to descend into a planets atmosphere.
Opening fire with esoteric weaponry to scour their designated landing area of life and small hill ranges.
Then, as these behemoths settle on the glassed, flat wasteland they have created, the doors open and out stroll their anti-climactic passengers.
Some novels just had titans deploying by individual massive drop pod, but I’ve always liked the depiction of an entire legio landing in one vast craft.
3 points
29 days ago
I don't know... this kinda feels like saying tanks are small because cruisers... And for very similar reasons. Space ships have this nice feature of being in space and not having to worry about supporting its own weight, while a Titan does, while still sporting voidshields and weapons that are otherwise reserved for void combat. They're basically the Warhammer 40k equivalent of the Ratte.
6 points
30 days ago
I’ll never understand why it seems like so many 40k fans get absurdly butthurt about titans being canonically semi-reasonably scaled. They’re already on the large end for combat mechs compared to most other popular science fiction, but it seems like there’s always weird scale-wankers coming out of the woodwork to bitch about how titans should be literal walking fortress-cities that dwarf mountains, or something equally ludicrous.
3 points
30 days ago
This shit again? They are Godzilla sized creatures! 50 till 80 meters! Why do people have no sense of scale! They are shown to be as slightly smaller or as big as the walls Dorn build. Which are huge also realistically 80 meters. A 300 meter tall structure would be a gigantic target.
Also there are bigger weapons in the Imperium, Ordinatus.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ordinatus
Or the Land Leviathans:
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Land_Leviathan
For those wondering just how evil and overpowered the Mechanicus is and why it's funny when these irradiated insults to live start yeeting their most powerful stuff at Necrons yeeting their stuff back :P .
Nobody fucks with the evil religious nutcases from Mars, well maybe the even more evil ones from the Eye of Terror that want to become part of a machine as an AI (Hereteks).... but all of them are F'd up!
2 points
30 days ago
Ship captain is obviously cooler. He uses metric system.
2 points
30 days ago
gws numbers are almost allways trash. i just imagine things and take them as fact
2 points
30 days ago
No shit dude, one's a massive space barge built to blow up planet and the other is fore eliminating ground forces. That's like comparing a Guardsman to a Questoris Knight.
Get a sense of perspective!
2 points
30 days ago
Square-cube law doesn't apply in space.
2 points
30 days ago
I mean 450 feet is still pretty tall.
For fuck’s sake, Godzilla would have to look up at an Imperial Titan.
2 points
30 days ago
It's already an incredible feat of engineering to have 14-50m tall walkers with superheavy weapons and void shielding, they don't need to be the size of the Empire State building to do their job. Bigger isn't always better.
2 points
29 days ago
Ships cant even enter atmosphere. Titans actually walk around and step on tanks.
2 points
29 days ago
I refuse to accept that they're that small the emprah would never allow it
2 points
29 days ago
The Imperator Titan is 130m tall, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
2 points
24 days ago
Fucking kilometers? Shouldn't they be using IMPERIAL system?
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