Here we go...
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
The notion that the Star Trek foot military would have any chance against the IoM is not even feasible. First off the IoM's main army is the Imperial Guard, there are more Imperial Guardsmen than the Federation has in overall personel by a long shot, they're also better trained and have more hours of active service than Fed since they are constantly at war. There are entire planets(such as Cadia) whose population is 99% Imperial Guard, they have the numbers to poplate entire Federation systems and then some.
I have a couple problems with this, regarding the Imperial Guard and how well-trained they are. From what I know of how the IoM employs the Imperial Guard (which is admittedly limited), they don't use them as a well-trained, highly-skilled, highly valuable military force, but rather they use them as cannon fodder. The standard combat doctrine for IG forces appears to be "Throw troops at the problem until it goes away or you run out of troops." They are thrown away like nothing in maneuvers like one instance under the command of Kubrik Chenkov, when the commander ordered his own troops to march in formation ahead of a line of Leman Russ battle tanks, to clear a minefield that was slowing the advance of said tanks.
While the survivors of these engagements would become brutal, hardened veterans unphased by certain doom, the survival rate would be very, very low. Few troops would live long enough to become experienced veterans. Furthermore, the level of skill and training seems to vary greatly depending on the worlds the troops are recruited from.
All of that said, the total force of the Imperial Guard does greatly out-number the forces available to the Federation, or even the Federation and all its likely alllies. However, this does NOT mean that the IoM could win a war of attrition through numbers alone. The quality difference between IoM and Trek weaponry is such that properly-equipped Trek soldiers would only be threatened by the most powerful strategic weaponry employed by the IoM.
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
Fed infantry tech is not superior to IoM. Not all phasers reduce their targets to ash, not all phasers even kill in a single blow to unarmored humans. Not all Federation crewmen have armor. Imperial Guard can field plasma weaponry that burns with the heat of a sun, that will burn through any armor a soldier can carry. This also excludes a vast amount of additional weapons such as man portable auto-cannons and supporting equipment like frag grenades, blind grenades, viral grenades, vortex grenades that can be used in conjunction with existing man power.
The Space Marine's most basic weapon is the Bolt Rifle. They fire .75 to 1.00 calibre rounds of explosive ammo, they are essentially rifles that fire grenades with rifle round trajectories. They enter your body and explode inside, blasting you from the inside out and it's a standard issue weapon. Federation armor isn't strong enough to resist that sort of impact penetration, and even if they were they'd be blasted straight off their feet with cracked ribs from kinetic transfer.
So the IoM basically uses small-calibur hand cannons (19-25mm) as the standard weapon of a Space Marine. I checked the 40K wiki, and the standard Imperial Guardsman is equipped with a low-powered lasgun and some body armor comparable to a flak jacket. They can field heavier weapons, but the standard battle weapon for a basic infantryman is a low-powered lasgun, and for special forces it's a 19-25mm handheld autocannon (the explosive round thing isn't particularly special - we have those today in the small-calibur cannons we use, like the 20mm gattling gun mounted in the AH-1Z Viper's chin, or the 25mm autocannon mounted on the M2 and M3 Bradleys, or the 18.5mm grenade round fired from the AA-12 shotgun, and they do a number against infantry). 19-25mm cannons have total energies in the mid- to high-kilojoule range, while the lasguns employed by IG infantry probably have energy levels in the low- to mid-kilojoule range.
Trek infantry generally has a much smaller array of weapons, typically of one or two types, but those types are incredibly versatile, with a wide range of energy settings from light stun to very high yields. Modern Trek hand-phasers and hand-disruptors are capable of mid-level effective yields in the range of 200+ megajoules (the energy required to completely vaporize a typical human body), and high-level energy yields in the range of single- to double-digit gigajoules. Phaser and Disruptor rifles are capable of equal and better performance, with longer endurance. Other heavy weapons include Tetryon Pulse Launchers employed by the Federation, which are basically a man-portable Type-IV phaser (the lower range of phasers typically mounted on shuttles), capable of even greater energy outputs. A variety of stun and lethal grenades have been observed, including photon grenades, which are basically miniaturized, soda-can-sized photon torpedoes with low kiloton-range (or low terajoule-range) warhead yields.
Trek infantry are also protected by a variety of armor and shielding. We have seen limited examples of these because most of Trek never even touches on serious ground combat, but what we have seen has been impressive. Modern Trek body armor is capable of at least resisting modern Trek phaser and disruptor fire (as seen on Ajilon Prime during the brief Federation-Klingon War in DS9), allowing Trek infantry to at least survive a single hit well enough to continue fighting for a time (the trooper we saw on Ajilon prime had been hit at least once, by an unknown-strength disruptor weapon, and ultimately died due to lack of medical attention, but the armor prevented an immediate fatal injury and left the trooper combat-capable for some time after being shot). We have also seen rollable ballistic shields, sheets of metal apparently about as thick as a credit card, that when unrolled formed ballistic tower shields that were capable of stopping conventional firearm projectiles with ease. Granted, the firearms they were engaged against were relatively crude weapons, but this was a snap-bracelet-like shield about as thick as a credit card that shrugged them off with ease, in the mid/late-23rd Century (ST V). Trek armor materials of the mid/late 24th Century would likely be capable of shrugging off most conventional projectiles, even fired by high-powered military weapons, with ease. Trek forces are also capable of fielding a variety of defensive forcefields, including personal shield generators (the specifically-designed versions of these have been only mentioned and never seen, but jury-rigged personal forcefields have been observed on a number of occasions), which would render them completely immune to all but the most powerful strategic-level weaponry available in the IoM arsenal.
The IoM most certainly can field far more ground-troops than any Trek power can (with the possible exception of the Dominion and the Borg), but the quality of Trek ground troops so far exceeds the capabilities of IoM troops that numbers would be almost inconsequential. A well-equipped ground force, employing the various ground combat craft we have heard of but never seen (troop hoppers, assault skimmers, etc.), would waste any IoM force pitted against them, regardless of size. The only thing the size of the IoM force would affect would be the length of the battle, because Trek forces would be able to waste them with impunity, whilte being largely immune to any return fire the IoM could muster.
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
That doesn't even begin to touch that Space Marines carry personal teleporters, Space Marines carry personal shielding. It doesn't touch Space Marine Tactical Dreadnaught Armor aka Terminator Armor that fields full sized vehicle weapons like 6 barrelled rotating assault auto cannons that would easily turn the most heavily armored Federation soldier into chunks of meat flat. Terminators have cyclone missile batters that each individually can destroy tanks and are launched LRM style by the 12's. Terminators get all the benefits of ordinary Space Marines too, Terminators have personal teleporters, Terminators have personal shielding that can resist the weaponfire of super heavy vehicles. Fed phasers do not match the power of super heavy vehicles like the Baneblade, Terminators have ample protection from Fed phaser weaponry.
Fed -hand phasers- might well be out-matched by the total firepower available to the larger IoM vehicles. But they can match or even best the firepower available to their conventional battle vehicles, like the Leman Russ, and Trek heavy troop ordnance, let alone Trek -vehicle- orndnace, would trounce anything the IoM could field. A single Fed trooper, equipped a phaser rifle (either the reliable Type-III or the more modern Type-IIIc or -d) and a phaser pistol with modern body armor and a personal forcefield capable of withstanding Trek firepower, would be able to engage a Terminator with ease. Hell, I'd pit a well-equipped Federation trooper against any IoM armored vehicle, including Dreadnoughts and Baneblades and any other heavy armored vehicle and walker, and put odds on the Federation trooper. With a full-powered Type-III phaser blast, the Federation trooper would be able to hit much harder than just about anything any of the IoM vehicles carry, hitting with as much as tens of gigajoules of effective firepower. At best, IoM heavy vehicle weapons can match that in their heaviest guns or full salvoes from all guns, and a Federation trooper's shields and armor are designed to protect him or her from firepower comparable to his own weapon. Hell, a Federation trooper could probably hit any IoM armored vehicle at range before she was even detected, being a lone infantry able to hit a target at considerable range.
And then you have to factor in all the special tech the Federation has, not just reliable transporters that can be used to move any and all kinds of troops and equipment without danger of possession or distortion, but also holographic disguises like the duck blinds used to study primitive cultures, which would be of enormous utility for ambushes and the like. A well-equipped Trek ground force would be more than capable of taking on a vastly larger IoM force and winning with relative ease, even without aerial or orbital support.
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
What about combat servitors? The IoM has millions of combat servitors that can carry up to vehicle level weaponry. They have no minds of their own so they easily march to their doom taking as many down as they can.
Combat servitors are basically just slower, dumber, less capable versions of Imperial Guardsmen with some heavier weaponry, and they're used the same way. They would not present any additional advantage to the IoM beyond increasing their body count, and would probably often be less effective than IoM troopers, who have the ability to respond to the changing circumstances of battle, despite often having heavier weapons.
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
What about Officio Assassinorum? The Imperium have shape shifters(Callidus Assassin) who can immitate humans, they have psykers who can instantly learn any language they hear down to the very accent(logokinesis). They're masters of infiltration, masters of espionage, masters of assassination.
Meh... Trek internal sensor equipment is probably more than a match for them. I mean, standard starship internal sensors monitor the brainwave emissions of the ship's crew as part of standard, routine scans. DNA and a whole host of other biometric details can be obtained by cursory scans with most basic medical sensors. The sheer depth and detail to which Trek sensors can scan and track a person is staggering. I highly doubt that the Officio Assassinorum would have any huge luck against Trek internal security measures.
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
The Fed is not as technologically superior to the IoM like people are proclaiming, if the Fed want to win vs the IoM man-to-man conflicts are a critical weakness and should be avoided at all costs.
Eh... That greatly depends on which man you're referring to. The standard-issue Imperial Guardsman would probably be on a more-or-less even footing with an infantryman from a present-day first-world military. Against Trek troopers, conventional IoM infantry is pathetic and would be greatly out-matched, especially if the Trek troopres are well-equipped. Even IoM heavy infantry would be out-matched by well-equipped Trek infantry. IoM heavy infantry would be a rough match for lightly-equipped Trek security teams, but not proper infantry.
Also, you're again making a bare assertion fallacy, claiming that Trek tech is not as superior as we have demonstrated, but you completely fail to provide anything at all, let alone anything substantive, to back up this claim. Please provide technical specifications or specific examples of observed capabilities or performance that out-match the stated specifications and observed performance of Trek weapons. Trek has demonstrated infantry sidearm energy weapons capable of effective yields in the range of hundreds of megajoules to tens of gigajoules. Where has 40K demonstrated even comparable yields in ANY infantry weaponry, let alone the equivalent of a handgun? Where has 40K demonstrated gigajoule-range weapon yields on any armored vehicle?
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
And the IoM has their share of incredible battleships like the Blackstone Fortress, a weapon that fires immaterium beams. Raw immaterium at that level destroys anything that is real(not in the warp) on contact, AND they have 5 of them. The Imperial Fist's monastery fortress "Phalanx" is a battleship fortress the size of a small planet that houses 12 battleships inside it and has planet destroying payloads within its hull.
Actually, there were six built, but the Imperium doesn't have them anymore, or at best the might have one. The Blackstone Fortresses were originally created by the Old Ones in the first war with the C'tan. The Imperials found them abandoned, all-but-unpowered derelicts that they used as big space stations, grafting their own equipment onto them. With the 'assistance' of one of the C'tan, Abaddon the Destroyer was able to find a pair of devices that could be used to reactivate them, and captured three of them. A major fleet battle drove two of them off and captured the third, but when it was boarded the remaining three Fortresses in Imperial control disintegrated simultaneously. The wiki is not very clear on whether the captured Fortress disintegrated as well or not, but the general implication is that it self-destructed as well. There is no further mention of it, with only the two captured by the forces of Chaos being mentioned, one of which may have been destroyed by the Necrons.
As for the Phalanx, it's a one-off station probably notably smaller than a Death Star. It is noted as being the size of a small moon or large asteroid, which puts its maximum size at around 1000 km in diameter (largest known asteroid), however it is also noted as being able to dock twelve Imperial Navy -cruisers- around its circumference. IoM cruisers are, what, 2-3 kilometers long? Being generous, assuming 3km long ships docked sideways with a gap between each ship of a kilometer, that's a circumference of the main spherical ship of 48 kilometers, or a diameter of ~15 kilometers. Upper limit. That could easily be much smaller, assuming the ships are docked with the ship perpendicular to its axis, requiring a space of only, what, half a kilometer to dock in? Leave another half-kilometer between each ship to allow for work space in the docks, etc. and that's a total circumference of 12 kilometers, or a diameter of some 3.82 kilometers.
To put this into perspective, the Phalanx is a single, one-off station the IoM has that they do not have the ability to replace. In the mid-23rd Century, Starfleet had constructed Earth Spacedock, a 3.81km-long starbase, that orbited Earth. A mushroom-shaped station, it wasn't as large as a 3.82km-diameter sphere, but it is in the same range. By the mid-24th Century, Starfleet had constructed a considerable number of greatly-scaled-up Spacedock-style starbases, some 8.78km in length. Now, this is not nearly the same size as a 15km-diameter sphere (about 1% the size), but it IS about three times the size of a 3.82km-diameter sphere, so it's well within the lower-end size range for the Phalanx, AND Starfleet has built a large number of them, and retains the ability to build even more. The Phalanx might dwarf any one station the Federation has, but the Federation has built several stations within the general size range of the Phalanx, and retains the ability to build more.
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
Imperium battleships number the hundreds of thousands and are equipped with Nova Cannons that cause cataclysmic nuclear explosions(a nova)in the midst of their enemies. They're equipped with Cyclonic Torpedoes that are capable of single handedly destroying entire planets.
Nova Cannons are just extra-large nuclear warheads. Large enough to compete with Federation level energy yields, but the Federation can throw out that much firepower in a much smaller package. The IoMs biggest, most unweildly guns can fire weapons comparable to standard Trek shipboard weapons that take up a fraction of a fraction of the space.
Cyclonic Torpedoes are also within the energy range of Trek weaponry, even high-end Trek weaponry, but they are very rare special weapons available only to the Inquisition and Adeptus Astartes, and are used as a planetary bombardment weapon when executing Exterminatus. In other words, it's a special, highly-restricted weapon that is only used against planets. It is highly unlikely that it would be able to be used as a ship-to-ship weapon, especially against Trek ships with their superior weapons range and combat maneuverability. (Oh, and for the record, igniting a planet's atmosphere (something a Galaxy's main phaser array could do by accident), cracking a planet's crust and destabilizing its core does not result in the planet being destroyed, just rendered uninhabitable.)
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
Everything about Warhammer 40,000 is designed to be over powered. The whole mentality that Fed ships are going to be impregnable to IoM ships and that IoM weaponry will bounce off of Fed ships is not true. Fed ships can blast planets apart, so can IoM ships, IoM ships are equipped with void shields designed to resist the exact same planet destroying payloads they are dishing out. The Fed does not have a tech advantage on the IoM.
Except that the planet-cracking payloads are NOT used ship-to-ship, and vastly outperform any of the ship-to-ship weaponry. IoM ship-to-ship weaponry, while nothing to sneeze at all on its own (a broadside with an energy equivalent in the low petajoule range is pretty respectable), pales in comparison to the conventional, ship-to-ship weaponry that is not just employed by Trek, but thrown around like candy. Conventional Trek weapons are vastly more powerful than conventional IoM weaponry, and only IoM ship-to-planet special weapons can match the firepower of -conventional- Trek weapons. Trek has some pretty potent special weapons, as well, some of which make even Cyclonic Torpedoes look like popguns.
Miles Tails Prower, on 24 December 2011 - 08:43 PM, said:
That doesn't even bring into the issue that the 40,000 fed ships supplied by 150+ planets are no where near the numerical level of Imperium who control a "chunk" of the milky way? Assembling the ENTIRE Imperium Fleet would blot out the stars with their numbers, their alpha strike would would be terrifying to behold. Fire power capable of reducing system after system after system to space debris effortlessly. Thousands of battleships that all dwarf Federation ships in size, ships that are several kilometers in length armed to the teeth with planet destroying fire power and the full strength void shielding to withstand as much as they dish out. Their hulls are of equally impressive power, it took 3 nuclear charges(inside the ship no less!) to completely destroy the Eisenstein, and it was a mere frigate.
Well, first off you're getting the Federation numbers a bit skewed. As of Deep Space 9, Starfleet had some 25,000 - 30,000 ships (a number that probably fluctuated over the course of the Dominion War), though that probably expanded notably after the war. 30,000 is a fair rough estimate. The planet count is way off in the other direction, however. As of 2373, there were 150 -member worlds- in the Federation. That is, 150 worlds who had a full seat on the Federation Council, or probably about 150 member races. This does not include all of the associate members, protectorates and colonies. In the 2260s, Kirk told Zefhram Cochrane that they had over a thousand colonies, and the context of the conversation implied strictly -human- colonies, not Federation colonies. If Earth alone had a thousand colonies by the 2260s, then the Federation as a whole, with 150 member races plus unknown associate members and protectorates, must have -at least- several thousand colonies on top of the member worlds by the 2370s. Most likely, the Federation consists of some few hundred member worlds and associate members, with a few tens of thousands of colonies, and probably dozens to a hundred or two protectorates of various sizes. In total, the Federation probably consists of some few tens of thousands of worlds, with ~50,000 being a fair guess (though it could easily jump into the 100,000 - 200,000+ range at the high end).
Secondly, the Imperium of Man is stated to be comprised of about 1 million worlds, scattered across the galaxy. This is supposedly a notable chunk of the Galaxy. Now, a million star systems isn't even a hundredth of a percent of the total number of stars in our galaxy, but it may well be a sizable chunk of the -habitable- worlds in the galaxy (a great many of those stars are not going to have habitable planets). This is vastly larger than the planets available to the Federation, about twenty times larger, but once again, there is more to this to consider than just raw numerical advantage alone. The IoM has a lot of planets, but a great many of them are subsisting at a barely industrial, and very often -pre-industrial-(!!!) level. So many of the IoM's planets operate on a pre-industrial level that the IoM maintains a not-insignificant -horse cavalry force- because a not-insignificant chunk of their troopers come from worlds where horse cavalry with spears and lances is the state-of-the-art in local military technology.
The IoM has a million worlds, but it does not have a million worlds with full modern industrial capacities, nowhere near. The Federation has some fifty thousand worlds, with varying levels of population and infrastructure development, but ALL of them have modern industrial capabilities, industrial capabilities that far exceed anything the IoM can field. With replicator technology, transporters, and M/AM reactor power generation technology, the industrial capacity of the Federation, let alone the Federation and its allies, likely can easily match, if not exceed, the total industrial capacity of the Imperium of Man. Even if they can't match the IoM's industrial capacity, they can certainly close most of the gap with their advantage in technology and the widespread proliferation of their technology across all worlds.
To reiterate a point you seem to be missing regarding IoM vs Trek weaponry. The height of IoM ship-to-ship weaponry are nuclear warheads. Probably pretty damn high-yield nuclear warheads, but the are nuclear warheads, nonetheless. Trek was beginning to phase out nuclear warheads in favor of matter/anti-matter warheads before the Federation was even founded. By the mid-23rd Century, nuclear warheads are considered to be obsolete relics of a bygone era. By the mid-24th Century, Trek forces are lobbing around M/AM warheads with -standard yields- equivalent to the Tsar Bomba, what would take a pretty damned big nuclear warhead to achieve, like candy. We see Trek ships take multiple successive hits from warheads equivalent to very high-yield nukes, and shrug them off like nothing.
Nuclear weapons are obsolete relics to Trek. Trek is using M/AM reactions that are literally 100 times more energetic per gram of fuel than the most efficient and energetic fusion reaction. The IoM probably does throw around warheads that greatly exceed the standard yield of a modern photon torpedo, but they have to do it in a package that is -at least- 100 times larger.
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