There's the point about no longer understanding their own technology.
Imperium of Man vs Galactic Empire
- Thread starter Aldarion
- Start date
There's the point about no longer understanding their own technology.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
The STC's are at the root of how that happened too.
Blasterbot
Well-known member
1 didn't building the 2nd one basically bankrupt the GE? IoM has plenty of super weapons capable of hitting as hard or harder than the DS. SW is just a universe that doesn't go as hard as 40k. the legends stuff does get crazy sure. 40k however looked at all the other guys and went crazier. the IoM is bigger. The IoM has more dedicated shipyards. The IoM has better ships. The IoM has better ground capabilities. The wunder weapons that palpy boy is fond of is certainly a threat. but they are not gonna be enough on their own.
They are willing to risk those valuable relics though when it is called for. like against a death star.
droids are big but they are heavily limited after multiple droid rebellions. IoM has machine spirits. they seem to fill roughly similar roles of being I can't believe it isn't AI.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
In many cases "Machine spirits" are AI's especially in the case of Ark mechanicus ships
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
Okay this bit strikes me as a particularly puzzling bit of reasoningProblem is that we do not have any information on the actual production rate, though I attempted to give the best possible estimate:
How Large is the Imperial Navy in Warhammer 40k
Warhammer 40 000 is my favorite science fiction setting by far. In large part it is because it is not science fiction, but rather fantasy with sci-fi veneer. It has it all: heroes and villains, kni…warfantasy.wordpress.com
"It is also confirmed by their being over 600 Lunar class in a Segmentum fleet (specifically, that of Segmentum Obscurus). There are 6 other cruiser and 8 light cruiser classes in a fleet – assuming a minimum of 200 and maximum of 500 ships per Segmentum per class, Imperium would have a minimum of 17 000 and a maximum of 41 000 cruisers in the Imperial Navy. "
Your line of thought, if I understood it correctly, is to assume that because one Segmentum has 600 of a particular class then not only does every segmentum has the same but every cruiser must also be represented in comparable, almost identical numbers on the higher end of your assumption.
Both of these assumptions I find to be unwarrented.
The first is if there's one thing the Imperium is consistent about is that its not consistent with even the quote speaking of the "typical" sector fleet specifying systems are going to fluctuate from the stated figure based upon importance and threat level. And while not explicitly stated in the quote, we can logically assume simply available resources since the Imperium is almost always painted as being short of all resources except warm bodies. So assuming the Segmentum Obscurus is a perfect represenative benchmark for the Imperial navy as a whole is problematic.
Secondly is the whole point of mentioning the number of cruisers, it being a mainstay of the Segmentum Obscurus fleets, ease of being built ect are establishing what makes the Lunar class special. That having half a thousand or more of a single cruiser class is exceptionally rare in a Segmentum. So much so that the Lunar class being an exception is numerous enough to become the mainstay at least within the Segmentum Obscurus. Obviously any estimates are going to be very loose but I would guess in the ballpark of the Lunar's 600 being a third to a half of the total cruisers in Obscurus so 12,000-18,000 total cruisers
Well there are ways to bring the quote more in line with the Word of God statement, assuming said statement is canon, to prevent a contradiction. There could be many sectors in out of the way, unimportant sections of the galaxy that are badly understrengthed. That would fit with the theme of the Imperium being constantly short of material and borrowing from itself just to maintain its demand.
It is possible the "substantial volumes" around Holy Terra don't actually include thousands of sectors focusing on smaller, more fortified territory.
Would be interested in what quote this from but an Imperial fleet 10% of their total merchant fleets would be in the ballpark for Chambers' "official" fleet numbers.
Would be curious as to the quote pertaining to "hundreds" and the full context of what its referring to.
That's a really crucial point. Its more or less a plot point that the Imperium is chronically short on manufactured supplies and equipment. It doesn't seem to be attrition that is the issue since we have numerous examples that Imperium equipment can and frequently does last. Indeed the implication is one of the reasons the Imperium industry can meet its demands is because lasguns, plasma guns and Leman Russ tanks can be maintained in the field with the poorest level of maintenance for centuries. So the equipment isn't breaking down from wear and tear and isn't being destroyed.
Obviously the real answer is 40k is a fictional universe that was never meant to be taken too seriously and is governed by whatever sounds cool in the moment but if we are trying to apply a rigorous analysis of the universe is that, for various reasons up to and including Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale, Imperium industry is anemic.
We do get this quote from "For the Emperor", page 162, in regards to going to war with the Tau and an implied industrial disparity :
Basically the Imperium would require "at least" three sector fleets just to secure their supply lines, presumably the total for the whole operation would be larger, against a foe they have faster FTl than and whose ships they are equal if not superior to in comparison.
We can gleam, pound for pound, the Tau are far more industrialized than the Imperium able to equip a fleet far beyond their size in a fraction of the time the Imperium had to build their navy. That the Imperium advantage is simply that they have a wider reserve to draw upon not that their forge and hive worlds are spitting out godly amounts of material.
Against the Galactic Empire, a million world empire with tens if not hundred of thousands of warships, all sizes, at their disposal, such a reserve would be smaller in comparison.
Blasterbot
Well-known member
The IoM is also a galactic spanning empire with millions of worlds and a multitude of warships of varying sizes. if we were talking Tau or something scale of the empire would be a factor to consider. IoM controls most of the milky way. GE has no control of the unknown regions which is like what a third of the SW galaxy?
everything that is smaller than an ISD is not even a frigate. they got 12,000 of those. and anything bigger is quite rare and is considered a super star destroyer. very limited production runs and often serving as flagships for a large fleet. the biggest of them like the executor class and the singular eclipse they made do compete with IoM battleships in size at 19 km and 17.5 km respectively. most of those ships would struggle to do more than commerce raiding with some attrition and serving as ablative armor in an actual fleet engagement.
the order of battle is 12,000 ISDs (which basically are frigates to the IoM) an unknown amount of very limited production SSDs of various classes and a pile of ships that can apply pressure to undefended worlds forcing the IoM to spread their ships out versus the IoM whose superior ships would be outperforming the GE in every respect with possible exception in FTL capability. the ships would be bigger, have more firepower, be faster in sublight speed, have better shields, more ability to just tough out the damage even without the shields, more veteran crews, better boarding capabilities, better fighters and bombers.
Heck another factor to consider is torpedoes ignore shields. IoM ships especially modern ones tend to focus on those in a front mount paired with a heavily armored prow. Imperial ships especially ISDs have garbage point defense. the standard Imperial tie fighter is a joke. quick lightly armed lightly armored. their two virtues are how cheap they are and how quick they are. IoM is gonna be winning the fighter engagements.
GE loses the attrition game. even if you claim the GE has better production capabilities than the IoM which I doubt decisively losing every straight up fight and only being able to harass undefended or lightly defended worlds and generally losing the ground engagements as well when you bother landing is going to do terrible things to morale.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
There is also the story where a tech priest contacted the AI aboard said Ark Mechanicus ship and it suddenly unleashed its real weaponry which was shit that wouldn't be out of place in Xeelee Sequence.
Whose torpedoes and whose shields?
Blasterbot
Well-known member
fair enough. I might just be conflating game mechanics and there is no reason to assume that the torps would go through the shields of the other universe.
Scooby Doo
Well-known member
Shoot I missed everything because of College tests 
What are we arguing about now?
What are we arguing about now?
Shoot I missed everything because of College tests
What are we arguing about now?
Imperium of Man Industrial Capacity and Fleet Size seems to be the main topic of discussion.
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
That wasn't in question. My point was that, in the example being discussed, the Imperium wasn't depicted as some industrial powerhouse but rather someone who could win because it was so much larger than its opponent. That is is the "Russia" to the Tau's "Ukraine". And that when it goes up against an actual peer opponent it will suffer because it doesn't have such a wider reserve to bludgeon its enemies to death.
Well the Imperium doesn't control "most" of its galaxy. Pretty much any description of the Imperium is very clear that the million worlds of the Imperium are little lights of civilization amid a vast darkness in which alien empires and other horror lurks. So strictly speaking the GE likely control more territory than the Imperium.
Now neither faction really exploits space to any real degree with almost everything of value being built on or around planets so the volume of the galaxy they inhabit is likely trivial. What matters are planets of which they are, roughly, similar in number.
25,000 ISDs alone. And no, there are things smaller than an ISD that are not "frigates". Now ship classes in Star Wars are a fricking mess and is whatever sounded cool to the author at that moment but both Victory and Venator Star Destroyers are smaller than an ISD and are Star Destroyers. There is the Carrack light cruiser and the Dreadnought heavy cruiser, So the Galactic Empire has a lot more than just 12,000 warships at its disposable.
This is where having the advantage of real time communication and far superior FTL comes in, allow the Empire to concentrate it forces allowing them to attack where they need to be with overwhelming force.
Something I feel needs to be stressed. The Warhammer side seems overly focused on 1 vs 1 engagements when, due to the GE controlling the initiative and being able to dictate the battlespace, such affairs are going to be rare. It will be more often a 75 ship sector fleet being ambushed by a thousand ISDs or other ships.
Torpedoes ignore Void shields due to, I believe, Void shields not reacting to anything moving "slow" enough. Hence why some Chaos Marines were able to have an Imperator void shield "pass over them" to deal damage. There is no reason torpedoes would ignore a Star Destroyer's shields.
The two sides have very different design philosophies with the Imperium building small starships compared to the Empire. That said Tie bombers, being so small and maneuverable, will likely be utterly unhittable by Imperium point defense guns which struggle against the much, much larger and unguided torpedoes. Bombers could potentially even slip through Void ships to attack ships directly.
Well even if the GE is going to lose, trying to evaluate the Imperium industrial power is a worthwhile endeavor. Indeed its a worthy topic just on its own because many people take it on face value that the Imperium is an industrial juggernaut, able to win wars sheerly through that fact, when its actual portrayal is far less impressive.
That said many of your assumptions, such as the GE decisively losing every engagement, I can not agree with. In fact I think it will be the exact opposite with the Imperium losing most of its engagements.
As for ground engagements, they are largely peripheral to an interstellar battle and considering how poorly they are likely to go for the GE I doubt they will be in a hurry to conduct them.
What are the fleet sizes of the Imperium of Man in actual Space Battles? Is there any numbers given beyond hyperbole and broad numbers in the lore?
And preferably numbers in the recent millenia, not way back whenever.
And preferably numbers in the recent millenia, not way back whenever.
Blasterbot
Well-known member
how so? the GE has less effective weapons, less durable ships, slower sublights, smaller ship sizes, mostly terrible fighters, and comparable FTL when dealing with a becalmed warp in this new galaxy. in terms of wunder weapons yeah they got some but so do the IoM. what advantage do they have in a fleet battle?
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
In what way do GE ships have "less effective" weapons? They have shorter range but with their tactics and precision of hyperjumps they can, for the most part, make up for the former. Per OP ton for ton their weapons are as powerful as the Imperium.
Yes, their ships are, for the most part, smaller than the Imperium.
Sublight speed hasn't been brought up in this thread, to my knowledge, and suffice it to say 40k is badly inconsistent on that matter. There are a couple of examples of Imperium ships having relativist attack speeds, point seventy-five IIRC, and there are examples suggesting or stating much slower speeds.
As for fighters its less being terrible and more being optimized for different tasks and having different design philosophies. Tie fighters are more a roaming, point defense system and could prove most excellent in destroying torpedoes even if they can't do much to warship propers.
The idea of a "becalmed warp" leading to faster warp speed is a fanon idea. We have no data on it and no evidence it would create faster warp speeds. Indeed, going with the age of sail and space is an ocean tropes of 40k, a calm warp might result in slower speed because their is less current/winds to propel your ship.
A galaxy is a big place. Actually its mindboggly large number of places.
Well you've just given the reason... Void shields work like SW's "ray shields" - they block energy weapons but not solid objects. The GE does also have particle shields though.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
I actually minimized the number of cruisers. Segmentum Obscurus is relatively the most fortified Segmentum, but it is not the largest one. Further, I only counted major cruiser classes we know of. And even absolute minimum number of ships (200 worlds per sector, 50 ships per sector) still results in a minimum of 250 000 ships and a minimum of 69 000 cruisers.
And that is the low end. Low end for Imperial Navy is IIRC somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 000 starships of all sizes.
Typical means representative or average. I never claimed that it is possible to estimate hard numbers for Imperial Navy, but ballpark figure is entirely possible.
And 50 - 75 ships per sector, even a hundred ships per sector, would indeed leave the Imperium short on ships.
And as I said, there are other cruiser classes that are unknown. The point was to try and find as many possible data points and thus end up with a ballpark figure for the overall navy.
Sectors are specifically areas which have planets in them. And considering we see engagements involving thousands of ships in single sectors, yes, even a hundred ships per sector would still leave many areas badly understrength.
It would.
Hundreds of forge worlds.
And that is a minimum. According to Battlefleet Gothic campaign map, there are 4 forge worlds in the sector of 50 worlds. Which means that Forge Worlds may be as much as 8% of all the worlds.
Yes, Tau are more industrialized than the Imperium per size. But their main advantage is that they are a minor threat: Imperium could easily wipe them out, but they always have something more important to do.
Imperium is in fact heavily outnumbered by its enemies. Even just the Orks and the Tyranids in fact outnumber the Imperium - each of them separately. By contrast, Galactic Empire was basically in peace, which is why it could afford to waste resources on fanciful ego projects like Death Stars.
Wouldn't need to =/= couldn't support building one. That is like saying that US couldn't have built new battleships in the interwar period because it chose to refit the old ones. But same facilities you need to refit and repair damaged or disabled battleships can be used to build new ones... some of the maintenance on ships will be basically reconstructing them anyway.
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
Okay, I'll try again. Where is it stated the Lunar class is representative as opposed to being the exceptional outlier.
That may or may not be but it doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not the Lunar class is representative of cruiser numbers.
In this context likely closer to an idealized goal rather than literial. Again the quote itself stresses how basically no real sector is going to be exactly like this due to facts on the ground. And obviously a more fortified system just doesn't sprout more ships they must come from somewhere.
You are assuming those "thousands" aren't being pulled from hundreds of sectors leaving them empty.
And I do like how being 25 ships over the upper end of a sector fleet counts as "understrenght" in your eyes.
The quotes if you please. I'd like to see them and draw my own conclusions.
Or that sector is not representing. Which if the quote caps it as hundreds we'd have to assume to comply with Canon.
So you agree, per capita, the Tau are more Industrialized. So why do you feel the situation will be different with the Galactic Empire?
The issue of needing to build is distinct from if they can build them perpetually. If they don't have a need then they are unlikely ro stagger building them like you assume since even a cruiser takes years to build from start to finish.
Now another issue is that it can be possible to hammer a ship together in two years but take, say, a decade to amass the needed materials to do so.
So an example of their actual production rate would be useful
As another random aside... The Galactic Empire actually does seem rather under militarized as in its military potential could be much greater, but just isn't. Since their main threat is the Rebel Alliance and other domestic issues for the most part it kinda makes sense. In the opening of Fallen Order they're scrapping ships, which granted, being Separatist ships, might not be convenient for Galactic Empire use, and they're replacing Clonetroopers with Stormtroopers and the Imperial Army for reasons beyond military efficacy. The Galactic Empire is more militarized than the Republic it seems, but there's probably capability to do much more.
Somehow Palpatine returned after all, and he did so with a fleet of ten thousand Imperial Star Destroyers... with super lasers... presumably from one isolated planet or Star system hidden in the middle of nowhere.
And that goes without saying on how the First Order created a Moon into a giant superweapon, and had its own small fleet of mega ships... including a literal tard looking Mega Star Destroyer/flying wing dealio. And the First Order is supposedly a remnant... of an existing Imperial Remnant. Blargh...
And of course the almost secret buildup of both a Separatist Military... and a Republic military apparatus to support the secret Clone Army ordered a decade in advance in the lead up to the Clone Wars.
And of course, before the rise of the Empire, there were no twenty five thousand Imperial Star Destroyers and other support vessels... those were all made in the span of a couple decades at most.
Somehow Palpatine returned after all, and he did so with a fleet of ten thousand Imperial Star Destroyers... with super lasers... presumably from one isolated planet or Star system hidden in the middle of nowhere.
And that goes without saying on how the First Order created a Moon into a giant superweapon, and had its own small fleet of mega ships... including a literal tard looking Mega Star Destroyer/flying wing dealio. And the First Order is supposedly a remnant... of an existing Imperial Remnant. Blargh...
And of course the almost secret buildup of both a Separatist Military... and a Republic military apparatus to support the secret Clone Army ordered a decade in advance in the lead up to the Clone Wars.
And of course, before the rise of the Empire, there were no twenty five thousand Imperial Star Destroyers and other support vessels... those were all made in the span of a couple decades at most.
A galaxy is a big place... full of places where people were not looking.
People in this sort of vs debates talk glibly about one side attacking the other side's worlds and important stuff. But what we see is that StarWars is really good at hiding things like that.