Legiones Astartes in Star Wars verse.

[ForeverShogo]

While there are moments of intense enough desperation that the Imperium is willing to temporarily cooperate with Xenos, their drive to exterminate 99.9% of them existed even during the Great Crusade of the 30k era. The lore pretty clearly says that every time Humanity tried to live in peace with Xenos, those Xenos would inevitably betray Humanity. So the Emperor himself decreed that they couldn't be trusted and is the source of "Suffer not the Xenos to live."

Very rarely they'd decide that a species just flat out wasn't capable of presenting a threat to Humanity, which is when they'd establish protectorates. These protectorates basically being "You're only allowed to live on your homeworld and nowhere else."

While the specifics might vary depending on which Primarch is going after which planet, I don't think there will really be room for negotiations so much as an ultimatum.

"You will lick Humanity's boots or you will die."

Best case, if they deem a species harmless they'll be restricted to just their homeworld. But if they think that species might in any way become a threat, they'll exterminate them to the last.

And even if they create "protectorates", they might decide to exterminate them regardless if they get something out of it. Which is what happened to the Adarnians. It turned out the Adarnians could be processed into a rejuvenation treatment that would allow you to live just a little bit longer, but when the effects wore off you ended up worse off than you were when you first took it so you'd have to keep on injecting yourself with processed Adarnians just to stay alive. Eventually they harvested the entire species despite the fact that they were considered to be under an Imperial Protectorate.

So if the Wookies avoid extinction, you're not gonna see some random Wookie being buddies with any Imperial. They'll just be forced to relocate to Kashyyk and not allowed to leave under penalty of death.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Depends on how you interpret the setting.

If you actually look at what SW weapons can do, and to what extent SW shields can withstand those weapons, you come to the conclusion that SW is ludicrously over-powered compared to most other settings. It's been calculated that a single X-wing would be able to take on the Enterprise, for instance, and destroy it with ease.

Wow, there are still SW fanboys pushing that bullshit?

My man. A single x-wing lacks the means of seriously threatening an Enterprise, outside of the original NX. Its energy cannons are at best in the low MJ range (something akin to a hand grenade) and its only real weapon of power, the proton torpedo, does not carry a very large charge. Not enough that one or two of them could threaten the Enterprise.

I'm not an expert on 40K, but I think it's canonical that their bolters are more powerful than their lasguns. Or, approaching that the other way around: their energy weapons are weaker than high-grade kinetic weapons.

...Sooo?

Energy weapons have their advantages, but they also have their drawbacks. Immense energy and sophistication is needed to make them work. Then of course, you have the fact that lasers can only damage an object's surface, where as an object with mass has penetrating power. There are many advantages that a bolter might have over a laser gun.

But those kinetic weapons are a joke when faced with SW energy shields, just as anything 40K's Imperium has defensively is a joke compared to the SW energy weapons.

Well, SW is no joke when it comes to their energy weapons. The large amount of them and the reasonably powerful cannons make them capable of tearing apart anything that gets close to them...with the exception of a ship that does the same thing, but on a larger scale. And in this case, 40k is that franchise. The very form of combat that SW is exceptional in, is where 40k outdoes them. And while 40k ships are generally far less sophisticated than their SW counterparts, they are also larger, thicker, and armed with far more powerful weapons.

That is: SW capital ships can easily Base Delta Zero any of the Imperium's planets, while the Imperium's weaponry won't even be able to penetrate the shielding of those SW ships. Meanwhile, the Imperium's methods of Exterminatus don't stand a chance of penetrating the planetary defences that even a lot of minor worlds in the SW setting possess.

Lol, the DBZ theory is alive and well it seems.

The disparity is simply staggering. This isn't touching on the fact that the Warp doesn't exist in SW, so they can only move at sublight, whereas the hyperspace-capable SW ships can cross the galaxy in mere weeks (if not days).

Most versus assume that basic powers still work. So we should really just assume that the warp works as it has before.

Now, if you ignore the fridge logic of what SW weapons can demonstrably do (and how powerful they -- and, by comparison, all shielding -- must really be), and instead assume that the weapons of both settings are roughly of equal power... and that the Astartes magically get hyperdrive for all their ships... then I think an organised legion of super-soldiers, which is already extremely experienced, will over-run the complacent Galactic Republic within a very short span of time.

You mean ignore arguments that were thrown into the compactor ten years ago? That shit was stale after the first season of Clone Wars. We've got several seasons of that now, plus several seasons of Rebels, the Mandalorian, and the new movies. All of which take a very large shit all over your argument.

 

[The Original Sixth]

I think something went wrong with the quoting in your post, @Navarro.

Anyway -- as I see it, the overall statements of the two settings are equally matched as far as 'power levels' are concerned just don't hold up. Yes, 40K has impressive tech, but it has intrinsic limitations -- and for the same reason that all those guys in SW have no personal energy shields, for instance. That reason is: Rule of Cool must be conserved.

Coincidentally, I scrolled by this while cross-posting a ship design on twitter earlier today:

That first line is why we even have settings like SW and 40K, and why there are utterly illogical things in both settings... which we have to accept as given to make the setting work. Because otherwise, Rule of Cool fails.

Yes, thank you for explaining to us how drama works.

For instance: we know that exceedingly efficient personal shields are possible in SW. Droidekas have them. When even very skilled Jedi (including the guys we are told are the most powerful and skilled Jedi of their generations) face those shielded bastards, they have to run, or they get captured or killed. Logically, everybody should carry a shield like that. Even if there are power limitations, using it very briefly during intense combat would be an absurd advantage. But does this happen? No. Why not? It would make most of the cool fights impossible.

Or maybe...maybe they just didn't know enough about Droidekas at that time or didn't want to take the time to try and fight them, knowing that they were in enemy territory and could be overwhelmed.

40K faces the same issue, and handles it a bit differently. Yes, there are energy shields. But the people using them have to face off against others with conventional armour (albeit really cool sci-fi armour), and even against foes who consist entirely of biological matter. And the fight has to have real tension! So the shields must be limited in how effective they are, or they break the setting. If energy shields in 40K are like those droideka energy shields, the Tyranids are automatically a joke, and will never stand a shadow of a chance. The fact that Tyranids can tear through shielded units shows the limitations. In 40K, most energy shields are an equivalent of really good conventional armour. Anything else would... make most of the cool fights impossible.

Okay, yeah...energy shields act like extra, light-weight armor. That's what we've all known for years. Decades.

My reasoning is that, since the two franchises deal with the above issue differently, 40K very obviously has the advantage on the ground.

I would actually argue the opposite.

Oh sure, when it comes down to weapons, 40k weapons are much stronger. But when it comes to actual strategic positioning, 40k is not in a great position. Especially if SW is the defender. Because the Republic will be able to move its troops around more quickly, more effectively, and they've shown that they're more proficient when it comes to things like air strikes and artillery.

That's not to say that the Imperium doesn't have them, but their entire methodology is more along the lines of World War I and World War II. Star Wars has that same problem, but they actually lean more towards the World War II aspect and that grants them some advantages. Of course, I don't know if that necessarily offsets the sheer power of Imperial armor, but there you go.

They'll mop the floor with any SW ground forces. But in space, as far as I can tell, it's the other way around. 40K shields mostly still act like really good amour, and weapons within the setting have rough parity. With some difficulty, they can all tear though each other's armour/shielding, more or less.

Again, the Imperium has their strongest advantage in space. At least when it comes to ship vs ship. Their ships are larger, more heavily armored, more heavily armed, and has more missile capability than the Republic. They're even more redundant than Republic ships. The only possible advantage that the Republic has is large-scale super weapons and possibly ion cannons.

Most Imperium ships are as large as where most SW tops out. And their ships top out at a far larger range than SW ships do.

Tyranid ships can do this with giant claws. Conversely, in SW, everybody has the really good SW-typical energy shielding for major vessels. Even a lot of smaller craft are shielded. And the big weapons for space combat are simply scaled up in destructive power to deal with it.

Energy shield =/ better than armor

Really, it's a trade-off. An energy shield requires constant energy to produce, which requires fuel. Armor is heavier, but is a constant, passive defense. And we've seen some of the power that SW fighters have...they are simply not that impressive. The most we've seen is about 4.184 megajoules of energy. Their energy falls well short of modern tank rounds. They certainly aren't releasing terajoules or even gigajoules of energy in every shot.

In fact, I dare say that their energy cannons tend to top out at the same level as WWI or WWII battleships. Which is not unreasonable, given that they're based off that era of fighting. Nor is it controversial, because as we've seen in modern warfare, it's not necessarily about building more powerful weapons, but rather weaker weapons with greater accuracy and penetration capabilities.

Modern warships haven't moved towards larger guns, they've moved towards more accurate weapons, which generally requires smaller warheads and smaller guns. The modern test rail guns that the Navy is using now are not greatly outstripping WWII battleships. Rather, they tend to be weaker, but with far greater range and speed.

What I deduce from all this can be summed up as:

-- SW has limited use (basically: not for ground forces!) of really effective shields, and weapons that demonstrably have the power to match that.

But your deductions are based on bullshit and absolute denial of strategic situations that cannot exist if these weapons were as powerful as you say they are. You cannot--not even with lasers, have multi-gigaton discharges between two small fleets where characters fly around and fight in the air between them. The sheer amount of energy thrown around would have cooked them alive.

-- 40K has ubiquitous use (on the ground and in space) of less effective shields, and weapons that demonstrably have the power to match that.

While I don't buy the 40k biggatons arguments anymore...the fact is that they've presented strategic situations where they CAN produce at least kiloton or megaton effects and in some cases, far more. They generally don't get themselves stuck in situations where a single nuke could solve all their problems.

Generally.

That's why I think it follows that 40K will win ground engagements, and SW will win space engagements. It's a result of how the two settings have taken different approaches to conserving the Rule of Cool.

Or rather, you're trying to soothe a 40ker's ego by telling them how cool they are, while tacitly informing them that it doesn't matter, because Star Wars is going to skullfuck them from orbit. Despite the fact that they almost never do so. And when they do, their effects are LESS than what we might expect.

Naturally, one can easily point out all sorts of internal contradictions. This is all very soft sci-fi. Often, weapons are as powerful as the plot demands. Apply rigid logic, and it all falls apart. Just like the above screen-shot indicates. And yes, we can theoretically fight about this, coming up with all sorts of details, which can be contradicted by other details... but for me, this is just a general look at how these two soft sci-fi settings treat certain issues, and the consequences of that, in the event of a 'collision' of the two settings.

In other words, you aren't at all going to support your argument with logic, evidence, or references. Because that might require that you do some hard work. Instead you're going to find a joint and get fucking high and tell us about "the rule of cool, maaaan"

There can be little doubt that if we apply some kind of power parity, 40K wins every time and all the time. The fact that 'war' is in the title of both franchises notwithstanding, the people inhabiting the 40K setting are clearly much better at every practical aspect of it. SW is actually more "Star Adventures" than "Star Wars". But this doesn't change the above considerations.

And now we're talking about names of franchises, as if that fucking means anything.

For the record: although I'm more into SW, I like both these settings for what they are, and the notion of "franchise rivalry" is something I have always considered absurd.

Which is why you're engaging in it.

I don't think treating this as some embittered "versus" debate makes any sense. Investigating why certain things would play out in a certain way is more interesting. The results of a "versus" contest are ultimately quite uninteresting, even-- For the same reason that SW would be uninteresting if one faction had ubiquitous personal energy shields, and 40K would be uninteresting if one faction had truly near-impenetrable energy shields. The setting would break immediately, and it wouldn't be fun anymore.

Translation: I want the satisfaction of being an arm-chair general, but having done none of the work.

Which is really a shockingly low standard.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Oh sure, when it comes down to weapons, 40k weapons are much stronger. But when it comes to actual strategic positioning, 40k is not in a great position. Especially if SW is the defender. Because the Republic will be able to move its troops around more quickly, more effectively, and they've shown that they're more proficient when it comes to things like air strikes and artillery.

The Imperium of Man knows how to use massed batteries of ultra heavy artillery. It's air wings are nothing to sneeze at either, especially in atmosphere. The Imperium has dedicated fighters, heavy bombers, strike aircraft, reconnaissance, you name it. LAAT Gunships are going to be target practice for battle hardened Imperial aces.

Again, the Imperium has their strongest advantage in space. At least when it comes to ship vs ship. Their ships are larger, more heavily armored, more heavily armed, and has more missile capability than the Republic. They're even more redundant than Republic ships. The only possible advantage that the Republic has is large-scale super weapons and possibly ion cannons.

Most Imperium ships are as large as where most SW tops out. And their ships top out at a far larger range than SW ships do.

The Imperial Armada also engages at a far greater range than anything in Star Wars. Whilst they too like a good broadside, they'll do it from far beyond the naked eye.

 

[The Original Sixth]

The Imperium of Man knows how to use massed batteries of ultra heavy artillery. It's air wings are nothing to sneeze at either, especially in atmosphere. The Imperium has dedicated fighters, heavy bombers, strike aircraft, reconnaissance, you name it. LAAT Gunships are going to be target practice for battle hardened Imperial aces.

I feel as though I haven't made myself clear.

Yes, the Imperium has all these things. And I would argue that they make heavy use of all of them. It's not that they don't exist or are rarely used. Rather it's a matter of modernization of those concepts. You could for example, use modern technology today to wage a WWI or WWII style war, assuming both sides were intent to do so. And this is sort of what 40k and SW to an extent, do.

What I am arguing though, is that Star Wars has a style that is more in line with WWII and later day combat doctrines than the Imperium. This is impart because while Star Wars takes heavy inspiration from the two world wars, as does the Imperium, it also takes some more modernized inspirations of battles and tactical situations. In this case, a X-Wing is more akin to a Cold War style fighter, even though it still uses gunships that are closer to WWII American bombers.

Nor is that an argument that the Imperium or the Republic don't at all make use of more modern weaponries. Clone Wars gave us one of the more technologically sophisticated planets using megaton-level weapons to threaten anyone who attacked the capital city. And of course, the Imperium has their own versions of ICBMs--and they have no doubt used them more often than your casual mainstream sci-fi series.

But these are sort of far in the field. The majority of the franchises focuses more on epic-style invasions and wars.

Having said that, I am not sure the more forward facing methods of the Republic (and the Empire is actually regressive in a lot of its attitudes) is enough to offset the incredibly durable Space Marine forces. The two honestly fight in such a similar fashion that it's very difficult to say which one might actually think outside the box more. Although the Republic, under the command of the more liberal-minded Jedi (in the Locke sense, mind you), would probably be very quick to adopt a more modern style combat, because it would be their only choice against the more durable Space Marines.

Of course, the Space Marines also have their own version of liberals who might adopt a more forward looking combat style to suit them. And I must admit I am thinking more of 40k than say, 30k.

The Imperial Armada also engages at a far greater range than anything in Star Wars. Whilst they too like a good broadside, they'll do it from far beyond the naked eye.

Well, that's a little questionable.

It all comes down to certain realities of space combat that neither creative franchises really had any means of predicting, as space combat is still (at best) highly theoretical and limited to space combat simulators, which require certain levels of assumptions about future science and engineering capabilities.

What we have seen however, is that while ships can engage at very long distances with missiles and you could in theory do so with a very fast projectile, there are certain hard limits to this. For instance, anything that can hurl a solid mass at serious fractions of the speed of light is going to result in said slug shifting into plasma. It won't be so much that you hit the target with a sold mass, as it is that it's actually a flying explosion in space.

Now, setting aside massive rail guns or mass drivers, that brings back to the sci-fi staple of lasers and particle weapons. In this case, these weapons are going to be very limited to...I think a few dozen kilometers? And that would be the best case scenario for laser weapons. Particle weapons are even worse. To make matters even more complicated, both lasers and particle weapons can be affected by atmosphere and you may find that one which works well in space is complete shit in atmosphere.

Basically, in terms of combat range:

Missiles >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>solid projectiles >>>>> Lasers >>>> Particle Weapons


You can easily make an argument for two ships with the distance of earth between them launching drones or missiles at an enemy, but for projectiles, you're going to be generally limited to how quickly the projectile can reach the target vs how quickly the target can move. With energy weapons, you're going to be very limited in terms of range to dozens of kilometers in terms of doing real damage--although I think you can boost that range if you target low-armored targets and just let loose.

So in the context of a "realistic" engagement with how these weapons should act, what you would first see is the Imperium fleet is firing its prow-missiles at the Republic fleet. The Republic fleet, generally lacking any real sort of missile capability of their own, will launch their fighters. The Imperium will likewise follow.

The fighter fleets will struggle for superiority. The primary goal will be to either make way for the other's bombers fleet to reach the enemy or for one fighter force to defeat the other and therefore act as an early strike force for their fleet or as support in a more close-range battle.

In any case, whoever wins, what you'll see is the two sides closing to the range at which solid projectiles and really powerful energy weapons (more or less useless, but good for minor damage) will begin to fire. This I put fully in the hands of the Imperium, who generally have really powerful lances and lots and lots of macrocannons. If the Imperium's fighter fleet prevailed over the Republic's, you can expect that the Republican fleet will be wholly on the defensive. In fact, I'd say they'd be in rater dire straits. If the reverse is true, then what you might see is Republic fighters and bombers making attack runs on the Imperium fleet, even as the Republic takes heavy shelling. In which case, it might be more or less even.

Then you get into the area where energy weapons take over. At this point, Imperium energy weapons are probably powerful enough to bisect any heavily damaged ship or one whose shields have been compromised. On the other, you'll have a shitload of Republic laser fire raining down upon the Imperium. If the Imperium's fighter fleet prevailed, then the Republic was probably already crippled and is now in the process of complete and utter defeat. If not, then what you might have is a slugging match between the two sides. You can expect smaller Republic ships, if they aren't already out of the action, to be swiftly put out of action. However, any sort of ion cannon could prove devastating to the Imperium battleships, which are admittedly, somewhat backwards in their designs and may not be able to handle a weapon that causes that sort of secondary damage...of course, Imperium ships are also very redundant...

At best, I'd grant a Republic fleet maybe a 50/50 chance if their fighter/bomber fleet survived the confrontation with its Imperium counterpart. If it hadn't, then I would argue that the Republic fleet would probably be forced to withdraw or make a micro hyperspace jump to close the gap. Because as soon as they're trying to fight bombers AND missiles AND macrocannons, while not being able to return any sort of damage, the game is probably done.

I think for this sort of war, it would really come down to better strategic moves. I would argue that Imperium has a really strong pound for pound advantage...while massively outweighing the Republic to begin with, but I think it would actually come down to how the Republic deploys itself. It has the industrial, economic, and communicative advantage here. An Imperium fleet with 80 ships might be a match for 800 Republic ships, but the Republic will be able to coordinate and move faster than the Imperium can.

And before we assume they can just slap on a hyperdrive...that would probably require that they completely remodel an ancient ship whose worth is more than just its military value, but its historical and religious value as well. Imperium ships often take decades to construct and they are works of beauty, faith, and history. You're not going to get a quick new class of ships on any timescale that would be helpful for an immediate invasion.

So what you might have is the Imperium winning the battles, but losing the war. In which case, you'll have a sort of Tau situation; so long as it is within reasonable range of Horus's fleet that they can communicate and coordinate effectively, then the Republic probably won't be able to oust them, but step outside that and the Republic will outmaneuver and overwhelm the Space Marines.

That said, Horus might always rely upon the horrific incompetency of the Republic Senate. They are after all, horrifically corrupt, inept, and willfully blind to the problems around them. So much so that it was almost child's play for Palpatine to both become its leader, spawn the outer rim against the inner rim, and set himself up to become emperor...only to collapse within decades of forming.

Especially if the Confederate states were to join with the Imperium as distinct vassal states. Although the whole android army might make that...well, difficult.