1189 replies to this topic

[Catamount]

Kragmore, on 22 February 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

One thing that hit me while reading this thread is, Phasers hitting metal.
If we look at a standard firefight in ST we'll see alot of misses and hits on the ship hull etc. The effect of this is usualy just a scorchmark. This leads me to belive that the phasers are a very nasty threat to a non armored individual which usualy is the threat in ST.
But what happends if you fire at an armored target like a Space Marine or even the far more advance (remember that this is lost tech for the imperium) Terminator armor?
If the Phaser would be able to penetrate the inches thick adamantium wouldn't it also pose a very nasty danger to the Ship itself? After all, even imperial lasguns are forbidden in ship combat due to the danger of hull breach.

This partly demonstrates why Trek technology is so nasty. You see, unlike a laser-based weapon which will just burn a hole in something with DET, phasers disrupt the intra-atomic bonds in matter and display other exotic effects, the net result being that a hand phaser can vaporize cubic meters of rock if you're willing to shoot at it for a little while. Again, this is higher than the outputs of even the tanks in 40k, which means a big phaser, like a Type III (rifle) is going to be way more powerful. Scale it up to shipboard sizes and...

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Another note,the voids do not protect against the perils of the warp. That's the Geller field (iirc). So anything exposed by the warp without a geller field....or even with a geller field, would be damned. This exposur could happend when an imperial fleet breaks warp or if a warp engine have a critical failiur, basicly riping reality apart and letting the raw stuff of the warp into our reality.

This is one area where Trek would not only have interesting advantages, but could probably greatly help the human race in 40k. The Federation has dealt with many, many phenomena like the warp, particularly subspace which works in a very similar fashion (but they've dealt with other spacial realms as well). Trek could probably develop all kinds of anti-warp tech to assist in keeping the corporeal universe save.

Looking past Trek for a moment, Stargate actually demonstrated weaponry that would likely be capable of killing the Chaos Gods themselves, as they once deployed a weapon that destroyed equally powerful beings, in vastly greater numbers.

Yay science?

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you can see several photon torpedoes being used with minor damage to the cube. So even with the flimiser Void shields an Imperial warship would be able to hold it's ground for some time.

Ah, but you can't compare a Borg cube to an Imperium vessel. The Borg don't just slap armor on and call it a day, no one does in Trek. Trek powers use structural integrity fields (basically internal shields) to stop damage that penetrates from being devastating, and the Borg most certainly do have shields, they just work differently. For a long time, the Borg were actually immune to photon torpedoes; it took awhile before Trek powers started to learn how to at least be effective at combating their shields, but they still don't just walk past them, they have to blast through Borg shielding, at least by all indications at the Battle of Sector 001 there.

Listen closely to the dialogue:



at 54s, one of the ships reports "we can't penetrate their shields". Again, Borg shields are difference; they're not a wall like a Federation shield kind of is, they negate damage differently from what we've seen. The ship seems to "absorb" it, and you see a few phaser shots in your video (mostly from smaller ships) that do seem to just contact the hull, but do no damage.

So those photorps are not hitting bare metal.

Keep in mind, that even at standard yield, ever single photon torpedo hits with the power of the Tsar Bomba (~50mt). By late TNG, that technology has made a few improvements (tech trading with the Klingons, perhaps? It's odd for a mature tech to advance like that), so ships also pack torp warheads that are far, far more powerful than that.

Ilithi knows specifics better, but iirc, the more powerful warheads are in the low hundreds of megatons, maybe 200-300.


Based on what we know about pound-for-pound Imperium capability, which is just orders of magnitude inferior to Trek (and so it should be; they're only using fusion!), even a small Federation ship would mission kill an Imperium warship with ease. The latter just hasn't demonstrated the power output capabilities to do anything to prevent it.

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how do the Imperiums teleporation work, similar to ST or do they simply wrap a small gelelr field around the thing teleported and then send it through the warp? If that's the case I doubt the tech of the Federation can actually prevent it. Counter it surely but not prevent it.

Either method could be blocked potentially, but I'd actually be more willing to bet they'd be able to block a warp-based teleporter than anything else, since, again, you're dealing with something that basically works like a nastier version of subspace. Trek has dealt with such phenomena for centuries.

If they were smart, they'd probably just alter the trajectory of the teleport so that all the soldiers ended up materializing in space; but the Federation isn't the cruel, usually

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But in a prolonged war I'd say the Imperium would win. The federation controls space, but due to thier limited resources in comparison to the imperium, they just can protect everything at ones.

The Imperium controls a lot of worlds, but many of them, if not most, are not advanced, industrialized worlds. The Imperium has no problem conquering a world, and letting it languish like some backwater moon out of Firefly. On many worlds, they're still using horseback! The Federation doesn't do that. If they control a world, it has all the same tech as the rest of the Federation. The Federation has many worlds, probably hundreds of thousands, but unlike the Imperium, where only a small core of those worlds would be useful in a fight against an advanced power, all of the Federation worlds are.

The Federation also has replicator tech, to effectively be able to transmute matter into whatever material they please, and not just materials, but into any device they please. All they need is power, and the Federation is post-scarcity in that department.

In other words, the UFP would curb stomp the Imperium in industrial capacity. See Ilithi's post above. The Federation gives the maximum number of people the maximum opportunity to make maximum use of their resources, so that the Federation is employing all their people and natural resources optimally. There's no world loaded with valuable resources and useful people that goes to waste because they're stuck with bronze age technology because their hosting empire doesn't care. Add in the real Federation trick, replicator tech, where they don't even have to manufacture parts (they just make them out of thin air, almost literally), and they'd really curb stomp the Imperium.

The Federation has tens of thousands of ships, and any one of them would mission kill any Imperium ship almost instantly, just from tech disparity. The Imperium are not the Borg.

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And when it comes to man power the impeirum have no trouble sending billions of people to their death. After all, a planet like Necromunda or Armaggedon have several hivecities containing around 10 billion people, each. That's the current population of the earth, in each city!

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb ******* die for his country."
-George S Patton

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And even with technological superiority, they federation would be worn out. Even if a phaser is a deadly weapon it still need to hit, and the soldier firing it need to be avoid getting hit. And that's something that could be a problem when a planetary landing force of gaurdsmen and Space marines are firing at you.

We knew the Federation has sophisticated combat gear capable of taking fire from their own weapons; we saw it a couple of times during the Dominion War.

If an Imperium tank can't even output as much as a Trek hand phaser, and so, not enough to penetrate that armor, how effective do you think Imperium infantry are going to be?

It's not just armor, but also almost certainly personal shields. If Worf can make a personal shield out of a communicator and a hairpin, then surely the Federation puts it in their combat gear. We see that gear on and off in times of war all the way back to TMP era (the original-series films). Strangely it didn't appear at AR-558 (real world explanation, VFX budget, story explanation? No clue.). Nevertheless, they have it.


What's more, the Federation wouldn't have to engage in a ground battle. After KOing Imperial ships, they could wipe out any military installation from orbit, never giving Imperium soldiers a target to fire back at, and any Imperium world would happily choose to be liberated, because frankly, for all they're played up to be, the Imperium is effectively the enemy of mankind. They're among the most oppressive, evil regimes in fiction, which brings me to my last point.


It's not the Federation that would wear, but the Imperium. When the Tau approach Imperium worlds, or any worlds, they give them a chance to join peacefully before conquering them, and Imperium worlds often happily oblige. Why? Because even the Tau are lightyears better than the Imperium.

The Imperium's oppression and inconsistent treatment of worlds is one that's going to produce a lot of political instability.

Now imagine the Federation coming in. These guys are so powerful, that any soldier who rises against them is basically throwing their life away, and I'm pretty sure phaser vaporization is not a fun way to die. Trust me, I've seen what phasers can do even when they leave someone intact (in other words, even on lower settings, or long-term stun burning). On top of that, they're not here to conquer Imperium worlds, but rather any world they come across will be liberated, and go from rule by an evil, oppressive power who's leader sacrifices countless people to himself each and every day for his own vanity, to an altrustic power that will educate them, technologically develop them, and let them live in a Utopian society where they can be safe, provided for, and do anythign with their lives that they want. On top of it, there's a not-inconsiderable chance that the Federation could protect the people of the Imperium from the warp, eventually, they might even go to war with the Chaos Gods themselves. It's not without precedent, as the Federation actually does go to war with an extradimensional power later in its history, to stop then from flooding the galaxy with their own extradimensionals space (in other words, just like the warp entering normal space in 40k).


Wear down? I'd bet you $10 that a week after the Federation appear, the Imperium would collapse under its own oppression and political instability into civil war, and half the Imperium (including the military) would split away and join the fight with the Federation. Honestly, what does the Imperium offer them to convince them to do otherwise, threats of death? That's about all they have to offer, and it's a hollow threat when Galaxy class starships start appearing above your worlds

Edited by Catamount, 22 February 2012 - 05:57 AM.

[GDL Rahsan]

After reading this thread I still fail to see from where did you get the Leman Russ lascannon energy output, I have already reread the Imperial Guard Codex and looked around but never saw Games Workshop offer any canonical energy outputs for any weapon or anything for that matter.

Also it appears you got the warp mixed up. Yes, it is the WH40K excuse for subspace but GW have already stated it is not just a nastier version of subspace. And till now there is no official explanation of what the warp is except that some races use it for FTL travel and it is the place where the souls of the dead go. And as a Star Trek fan myself I never saw any dimension that Star Trek has that is similar to the warp. (Unless I think you know one which I don't.)

Edited by GDL Rahsan, 22 February 2012 - 06:25 AM.

[Artifice]

Just to be certain -

We're all sure that Battletech gets pwnt, right?

[Polymorphyne]

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Looking past Trek for a moment, Stargate actually demonstrated weaponry that would likely be capable of killing the Chaos Gods themselves, as they once deployed a weapon that destroyed equally powerful beings, in vastly greater numbers.

You misunderstand the Chaos Gods, they are not individual entities that ascended into beings of energy, they are the side effect of all of the psychic energy that is given off by peoples emotions. The only way to "kill" the chaos gods would be to rid the multiverse of Rage/hatred/anger (Khorne), Pleasure/Pain (Slaneesh), Despair (Nurgle) and Hope (Tzeentch).

Thats all the chaos gods/daemons are.... they are Ideas.... its pretty hard to kill an abstract concept.


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As for battletech getting pwnt- yes, but their mechs look cool while doing it!

Edited by Longsword, 22 February 2012 - 06:35 AM.

[GDL Rahsan]

Longsword, on 22 February 2012 - 06:35 AM, said:

You misunderstand the Chaos Gods, they are not individual entities that ascended into beings of energy, they are the side effect of all of the psychic energy that is given off by peoples emotions. The only way to "kill" the chaos gods would be to rid the multiverse of Rage/hatred/anger (Khorne), Pleasure/Pain (Slaneesh), Despair (Nurgle) and Hope (Tzeentch).

Thats all the chaos gods/daemons are.... they are Ideas.... its pretty hard to kill an abstract concept.


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As for battletech getting pwnt- yes, but their mechs look cool while doing it!

Actually, Chaos Gods get more complicated from that point ( I mean heck there is a Chaos God for Atheism and worshipping him makes him weaker). But I guess I forgot to mention this part too I mean we are still at how can the Federation actually explain the warp and defeat it using SCIENCE. This is not one of the strange uber-powerful alien episodes where the crew suddenly use science to save the day. ( I for that matter do not have anything for science actually I love how science in Star Trek always wins but WH40K is not the villian on the week in STar Trek)



EDIT: But you know I think it is not really fair to compare the Imperial Navy with Starfleet since Star Trek franchise focused a lot on the space combat and all while GW on the other hand focuses more on ground combat and the act of conquering planets and not that much on space warfare (( Well Battlefleet Gothic is not enough)) of course we are not talking about the other major differences between those two settings or between WH40K and any other setting for that matter

Edited by GDL Rahsan, 22 February 2012 - 06:51 AM.

[Polymorphyne]

The imperium does defeat daemons with science- they use geller shields to protect their ships in the warp. So the trekkies could probably make similar geller fields- but that generally is unreliable and still lets enough slip through to drive a few crew members crazy, cause some of them to mutate (in fact, alot of people mutate without ever entering the warp) and turn some of them to chaos worship.
Also, while you can geller field your ships in the warp to stop them being torn apart by daemons in their natural environment... you cant geller field things in the material universe, so when daemonic incursions happen, your understanding of the physics of the immaterium wont stop a bloodletters hellblade.

The thing I love the most about the daemons of chaos... is the irony of fighting against daemons of khorne. When you kill one, your are doing it a favour- khorne is fed by violence, and his daemons seek to do one thing- propogate battle and violence. You killing a bloodletter feeds khorne just as much as the bloodletter killing you.

[GDL Rahsan]

I guess my post was confusing and didn't calrify my point. I was talking about the claims of the trekkies will just study the immaterium understand it and then develop technologies capable of killing the Chaos God themselves jut like any villan of the week. I do not doubt that the trekkies will be able to create similar technologies to the IoM that can protect them from the warp.( That is of course implying that the Star Trek technology level is similar to the WH40K as it have been implied in this thread but I still remain spektical about that. ) So what I am trying to say it should be asked " Can the greatest scientific minds of the Federation manage to create anything to counter the warp?" Not "The Federation will curbstomp everything the warp have to offer and we take it for granted!"

Edited by GDL Rahsan, 22 February 2012 - 08:06 AM.

[Kragmore]

So basicly, phaser works sort of like a microwave in beam form, more or less. I'd say the necron gauss weapons would be the equivalent in the 40k universe. Fair enough, that would most likely work pretty well against the normal space marine armor. The Terminator could still have some protection due to their personal shields. Not possible to determin due to the lost tech it is.

Borg shields:
Ah yes, they do adapt very quickly and are quite powerful. And if they absorb the energy I can see why there isnt much of ann effect when they are being hit by salvos of 8-12 torpedos. But they are firing at a weak point? Wouldn't there be a bit more destruction in such an area if they are hit by 8 warheads, each stronger then a Tsar?
That's why I'm sceptical to a federation startship whiping out a fleet of imperial warships, especially Redemption class ships or Battlebarges.
And while Starfleet would win the majority of the space battles, the imperial wrships would still be able to inflict damage. Even in fights were the shields hold, crewmembers and equipment are thrown arund by the impact of the weapons.
So a few hits from imperial torpedoes or melta lances would still do internal damage to federation ships, thus requiring repairs.

Planets:
Aye, the technological, social and cultural level of the diffrent planets of the imperium differs vastly. But it still got enough clusters of advanced planets to negate the lower developed sociaties. I'd say that you could probably compare the Ultramar sector with the UFP, and that is just one sector. So even if 75% of the imperium are backwater feudal worlds they still got enough military power on the advanced side of the spectrum to be able to compete.
But we have another major factor here. Every Imperial planet is in a state of alert. The danger of invasion is allways there and everyone is used to living in a constant state of war. This is something the citizens of the federation are not. Neither is their military. While they have conflicts you can't compare the combat expertise of a federation soldier with a cadian guardsman who is born and bread to fight at the Cadian gate, or a corpsman from the Deathcorps of krieg, a people who purged themselves in a 500 year nuclear war.
Moral would be something of a major problem for the federation as they face the atrocitys of the imperial warmachine.

Which leads us to two other points, the warp and the imperial motvation.
While the federation are very fast when it come to adapting scientific solutions they aren't a very religious society. And one of the major reasons to why the imperium have been able to keep the warp at bay is because of faith in the Emperor. Without this it would be very hard to withstand the temptations of the chaos gods which would probably follow in the steps of the imperium.
But since this is mythical it's hard to debate.

Ground wars:
They will happend. Due to the size of the imperium they would be able to suprise at least some planets. And before Starflet can respond they would be able to execute an orbital bombardment and deploy several regiments of imperial guards.
As far as I know, the federation do not have that much of planetary defence? (I could be completely wrong here) I''m thinking orbital canons, city wide shields and such? Thus the invasion could just land in the cities or right outside them, mostly because this would deter the federation from doing counter bombardment when their fleet arrives. And a ground slugfest would be inevitable.
While the federation still s more technologicaly advanced they are still human. Most of their technology is focused on energy weapons and therefore I'd say that most of their protection would be against those kind of weapons. That renders the lasweapons pretty useless, but you still have slug weapons, bolt weapons, explosives, pointy sticks and several of the more exotic weapons. Each of which can generat trauma in several diffrent ways.
And while the federation have an army, I doubt it's anywhere near as large as a planetary invasionforce of the Imperium. The UFP just isn't prepared for the way the Imperium wage war due to their peacful and diplomatic society. And that I think is the major problem the federation will have in a fight with the Imperium. While the Imperium while have major problem during space battles and thus have troubles reaching stage two and a planetary invasion.

The question is, how much internal damage would an Imperial warship be able to inflict before it's taken down.

[GDL Rahsan]

Actually I don't think phasers work like guass weaponary. The Necron Guass rifles basically "flay" the matter of an object molecule by molecule which is why it can basically penetrate anything and even titan class armor can be flayed using that type of weaponary.(( But I think I read somewhere that there are some exceptions with certain type of materials used by some Imperial warmachine not sure where thought))

And I just recalled that according to the fluff a laspistol, the weakest type of sidearm the Imperium army got to offer, can make a human body explode, granted said human is wearing anything lighter than standard issue Imperial Guard armor, which gives you some ideas of what stronger weapons can do and if I am correct there was a certain episode in Star Trek it was about somekind of worm like parasite aliens and in a scene we see Captain Picard and one of his officers using the kill( I think so I forgot which setting it was) setting with their phaser sidearm on an infected human crew member where said human exploded. If this is any sort of canonical then it is safe to assume that lasweaponary can be compared to the Federation phasers. (of course we are just assuming since as already stated Games Workshop never blessed us with technical info of said weapons except they can do stuff)Actually the more I recall WH40K and Star Trek fluff the more I am getting assured that the Federation technological levels is getting blown out of proportions compared to the Imperium here.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Kragmore, on 22 February 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

One thing that hit me while reading this thread is, Phasers hitting metal.
If we look at a standard firefight in ST we'll see alot of misses and hits on the ship hull etc. The effect of this is usualy just a scorchmark. This leads me to belive that the phasers are a very nasty threat to a non armored individual which usualy is the threat in ST.
But what happends if you fire at an armored target like a Space Marine or even the far more advance (remember that this is lost tech for the imperium) Terminator armor?
If the Phaser would be able to penetrate the inches thick adamantium wouldn't it also pose a very nasty danger to the Ship itself? After all, even imperial lasguns are forbidden in ship combat due to the danger of hull breach.

The thing about phasers, as Catamount noted, is that they are much more than just DET weapons. Phasers employ something that is called a rapid nadion effect to create a beam of charged particles/nadions (NADIons, or Non-Anastropic Decay Ions) that induces a disruption of the Strong and Weak nuclear forces that bond atoms and protons and neutrons together. Below a certain threshold, they act as regular DET weapons (and pretty potent ones, at that), but above that threshold, phaser beams basically induce the equivalent of a matter/anti-matter reaction in the target material. Now, this isn't as devastating in some was as it could be because one of the other exotic effects that Catamount mentioned is the phase shifting of the target material by the phaser or disruptor beam (disruptors being essentially the same thing, created by different means), so much of the energy of this atomic and sub-atomic annihilation is released out of phase-sync with the rest of the universe. The way in which it is even more devastating in many ways is that this Nuclear Disruption Force or NDF effect also appears to cause the release of a number of nadions, which enhance the NDF effect by inducing a chain reaction. It's not unlike the chain reaction in a fission reaction: a neutron hits a Uranium-235 atom, briefly turning it into an unstable U-236 atom that then splits into one Kr-92, one Ba-141, three neutrons and a number of gamma-ray photons. The three neutrons then shoot off and hit other U-235 atoms and cause them to split and release three more neutrons.

Now, there are materials that are resistent to the NDF effect, which are naturally alloyed into armors, and as Catamount noted, the armor, hulls, and spaceframes of 24th Century starships are reinforced by a Structural Integrity Field (SIF) that consists of forcefields and focused inertial damping fields that greatly increase the effective material strength of the ship's hull and spaceframe, making it much more resistant to shear, tension and compression stress, and also significantly increasing its resistance to the NDF effect of phasers and disruptors (usually - phasers can sometimes be much less hindered by the SIF field, such as we saw with the Cardassian weapons platforms at Chin'Toka, that used Dominion-upgraded phaser cannons and were extremely effective against the Romulans, who had seen little if any combat with the Cardassians prior, and so didn't have defenses well-adapted to the particulars of Cardassian weaponry). This is why phasers used against Trek ships rarely disintegrate the entire ship, though we do see it on occasion, most notably in the First Battle of Chin'Toka when a handful of phaser beams and plasma torpedoes disintegrated two big chunks out of a D'Deridex, both of which were the size of an Ambassador class or bigger, and also in the Enterprise-D's first contact with the Borg, when the E-D's opening phaser blasts carved enormous holes into the hull of the Borg Cube (which is known for its high density and for being comprised of larger percentages of stronger, more resillient materials like tritanium than the norm). The Borg Cube example from "Q Who?" is actually superb, because we see three very powerful shots from the E-D's main arrays, all among the most powerful shots observed from the E-D, and all roughly comparable in energy yield, but the size of the holes they blow into the Cube diminish dramatically with each successive hit.

We can also get an idea of what kind of yield modifier the NDF effect has on Trek weapons from that scene. I've linked to the calculations of that a couple times already in this thread, so I won't bother doing so again unless asked, but the modifier in that scene, based on the volume apparently vaporized by the beam itself vs the total volume vaporized by the chain reaction, was 1,315 times. The total volume vaporized by the NDF of the opening shot is 1,315 times greater than the volume vaporized by just the beam. Now, the Borg ship quickly adapted, and most powers the Federation engages are also pretty well-adapted to resist the NDF effect, so the modifier of the NDF effect against contemporary Trek ships is generally around an order of magnitude or so. However, the Borg weren't completely UNadapted to phaser NDF effects, because most of the local powers in their home region of the Delta Quadrant use phasers or disruptors themselves, some of them having fairly advanced weaponry even by the Federation's standards, and the hull composition of the Borg Cube undoubtedly includes materials that are naturally resistant to the NDF effect, so even in our "Q Who?" example we are not seeing the full effect of the NDF against non-resistant target materials.

For that, we go to DS9 "The Die is Cast", when a fleet of 20 Romulan and Cardassian ships attacked what they thought was the Founder homeworld. Their plan had them blasting an ~Earth-sized planet down to its nickel-iron core in about five hours, and their opening salvo produced compound fireballs the size of Western Europe and reportedly destroyed a full thirty percent of the planet's crust. Against target materials completely non-resistant to the NDF effect, the chain reaction modifier is easily on the order of 6+ orders of magnitude.

Kragmore, on 22 February 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

As for shields, ST have the advantage all hands down. While the void shields are powerfull they aren't very stable and tend to overload the generators way to easy. That's the problem of ancient tech.
Another note,the voids do not protect against the perils of the warp. That's the Geller field (iirc). So anything exposed by the warp without a geller field....or even with a geller field, would be damned. This exposur could happend when an imperial fleet breaks warp or if a warp engine have a critical failiur, basicly riping reality apart and letting the raw stuff of the warp into our reality.

Yeah, it's the Gellar Field that protects stuff from things in the Warp (and from what I understand of the lore, it's not so much the Warp itself that causes problems, so much as the critters that live IN the Warp). The failure of a ship's Gellar Field while at warp is, as far as I know, always catastrophic (as in, if they're lucky, the ship just spontaneiously explodes, if they're lucky...).

Kragmore, on 22 February 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

But over all, in a space battle I'd say the federation have the upper hand. But not really as much as has ben stated. If we take a look at some of the battles with borg cubes (First contact ) you can see several photon torpedoes being used with minor damage to the cube. So even with the flimiser Void shields an Imperial warship would be able to hold it's ground for some time.

Well, as Catamount noted, you can't compare the Imperium to the Borg. The Borg are extremely advanced, and while they don't generally use the conventional bubble of focused gravimetric fields that most Trek powers use as shields, they do employ some sort of adaptive shield that neutralizes the effectiveness of incoming weapons fire. This includes an electromagnetic field around the Borg ship that allows them to better analyze incoming weapons fire and adapt the hull to each shot. This can be overwhelmed with enough phasers firing at frequencies and nutations alternating with sufficient rapidity, but it basically renders most enemy weapons ineffective outside of highly varied and modulated massed fire, and reduces the effectiveness of much of that, while apparently absorbing much of the energy of shots it is completely adapted to.

The Borg are also very well adapted to resist phasers and disruptors, with both their shielding mechanisms, their hull/spaceframe reinforcement mechanisms, and their hull/spaceframe composition. 40K ships, on the other hand, are not well-adapted to phasers and disruptors in any respect, they do not have anything that compares to Trek Structural Integrity Fields at all, and in fact, most of their armor appears to be a composite of plasteel and ceramite, with limited applications of adamantium. From what I gather, plasteel is just a type of steel/iron, and ceramite is a fairly impressive, non-conductive ceramic material. Ceramite might show some resistance to the NDF effect, but plasteel most certainly won't (Trek ships don't even use iron or steel in their construction anymore). From what little description I can find of Adamantium in 40K, it actually sounds a lot like tritanium in Trek, which is still a remarkably tough material even in the mid-24th Century. Tritanium does not have any inherent resistance to the phaser NDF effect (Borg ships are primarily comprised of tritanium, but the E-D was still able to vaporize huge chunks out of the "Q Who?" Cube before it adapted), but it is remarkably dense and super-hard.

Because of this, and because of the superior energy yields Trek ships can achieve, a 40K ship would be cut to pieces by a Trek ship's phasers or disruptors. A single photon torpedo, maybe two, would be sufficient to mission-kill most Imperium of Man warships, and phasers would do this and this and this to them, only worse.

Kragmore, on 22 February 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

As for teleportation. ST has the upper hand when it comes to counter teleportation (cheesy tactics ;P). But how do the Imperiums teleporation work, similar to ST or do they simply wrap a small gelelr field around the thing teleported and then send it through the warp? If that's the case I doubt the tech of the Federation can actually prevent it. Counter it surely but not prevent it.

Well, I'm not sure how 40K teleportation works, but it sounds like more along the lines of the latter. However, we've seen Trek shields defend against that already. In VOY "Equinox", the Equinox was being attacked by aliens who opened subspace rifts to teleport onto the ship from another dimension, yet the Equinox's shields were able to block them quite easily (though they wore down over time). Voyager was able to do the same without any modification to their shields at all.

At the very least, Trek shields should be easily adapted to block 40K teleportation tech, if they don't block it already. Depending on how 40K ships establish their targeting locks for their teleporters, they may or may not be able to attempt to transport through Trek shields (Trek transporters can't transport if they can't get a lock), but if they can try to teleport even while Trek shields are up, it wouldn't end well for the people being teleported (if they're lucky, they'll pop back into realspace smacked against the Trek ship's shields... if they're lucky...).

Kragmore, on 22 February 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

But in a prolonged war I'd say the Imperium would win. The federation controls space, but due to thier limited resources in comparison to the imperium, they just can protect everything at ones. And when it comes to man power the impeirum have no trouble sending billions of people to their death. After all, a planet like Necromunda or Armaggedon have several hivecities containing around 10 billion people, each. That's the current population of the earth, in each city!

Eh, I disagree with this, and Catamount has already covered much of why. The Federation has tens of thousands of worlds at least, probably over a hundred thousand between all members, associate members, colonies and protectorates, and all but the newest, most fledgling colonies would be able to make significant industrial contributions to a total war effort. From what I gather, a very large portion of the Imperium's worlds exist in a state of development somewhere between the Pre-Industrial Age and the Stone Age. Yes, they have huge Hive Worlds with massive populations or huge Forge Worlds almost entirely dedicated to industry, but the much of their planetary count seems to fall between stone-tipped spears and early gunpowder weapons in capabilities. They do also have a fairly large number of 'civilized' worlds that tend to fall between the Industrial Age and the Information Age in technology and development, and it sounds like these comprise the single-largest group of planetary classifications, but even those are going to be extremely limited in what they can contribute to an advanced, space-fairing civilization. The Imperium of Man has a little over 32,000 Hive Worlds, compared to around a million or few worlds nominally under control at any given point. There are at least a million worlds in the Imperium, listed officially, though there are more human worlds around that generally fall under the Imperium's control, though the number fluctuates greatly. As far as I can tell, there are at least a million worlds and as many as several million worlds under the Imperium's control at any given point (the 40K wiki lists a million worlds nominally under Imperium control, and references millions of worlds that the Imperium could potentially control at any given point).

So let's assume that the Imperium controls, on average, 4 million worlds at any given time. With 32,000 of those being Hive Worlds, that's just 0.8% of their total world count. If we assume comparable numbers of Forge Worlds, and the Agri-Worlds and Mining Worlds to support them, and comparable numbersof Armory Worlds, we get a grand total of 4.0% of the Imperium's total world count being highly develeped and able to make very significant material contributions to any war effort. Round this up to 5% to account for the miscellany highly-developed worlds, and 95% of the Imperium of Man falls somewhere between the Stone Age and the Information Age in development, and they are not going to be able to make any significant material contribution, not even in terms of raw manpower for recruits. A single Hive World has 50 billion to 2 trillion people living on it, compared to the 100,000 - 5,000,000 people liviing on Feral worlds and the 10,000,000 - 500,000,000 people living on Feudal worlds. Even the Civilized Worlds, which have populations of 15 million to 10 billion people wouldn't be able to make a huge contribution in manpower, relative to the hyper-developed planets. The 95% of the Imperium of Man comprised of Feral, Feudal and Civilized Worlds probably contribute only 50% of the Imperium's total gross national product, at best. The 5% of their worlds that are hyper-developed represent the vast majority of their capabilities and gross national product.

So in effect, the Imperium of Man's industrial might is actually only the equivalent of maybe 400,000 highly-developed worlds.


But even THAT isn't an accurate comparison of their industrial capacity vs the industrial capacity of the Federation, because it doesn't account for the technological differnces. The Federation has replicators, transporters, and holographic equipment. These are all invalubable industrial tools. The Federation can produce most things it wants as completed objects from replicators. There are a few things that can't be replicated, and the energy cost of replicators is high, so it's often more energy-efficient to mine the duranium and tritanium and forge it than replicate it, but the capability to almost instantly replicate whole parts, ready-to-use out of raw materials is invaluable. Transporters are also invaluable in cutting down transit times, and in some assembly operations. Holographic tools are also invaluable, because while energy-intensive, they allow for the instantaneous retooling of equipment to entirely different tasks and operations. One day a factory can be pumping out advanced fabrics with holographic looms, and the next they're forging titanium hull plates for Galaxy class starships in holographic foundries. Throw in replicators and transporters, and the transition could probably be made in 30 seconds.

The Federation has few worlds as highly populated or converted to industry as the Imperium, but their technology is vastly superior, and the production capacity of an individual person is vastly greater than in even the most developed of Imperial worlds. With its technological advantages, the Federation could probably match the full industrial capacity of the Imperium of Man with relative ease, and if given time to shift into a full-blown total war economy, they could probably completely blow past the IoM's military industrial capacity.

Kragmore, on 22 February 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

And even with technological superiority, they federation would be worn out. Even if a phaser is a deadly weapon it still need to hit, and the soldier firing it need to be avoid getting hit. And that's something that could be a problem when a planetary landing force of gaurdsmen and Space marines are firing at you.

Well, the IoM definitely has a population advantage, no doubt about that. The Federation has a population numbering in the several trillion, at least, with 10+ trillion being most likely. The IoM easily has a population of 10+ quadrillion, about a thousand times more people.

But numbers aren't everything. As Catamount noted, Trek hand weapons match the firepower of IoM tank cannons, and they have personal armor and shields that can resist their own infantry weapons. We don't see them very often because we rarely see serious ground combat, and the few occasions we have we've seen poorly-equipped troops. Ajilon Prime in DS9 was a lightly-defended outpost along the Klingon border - they didn't have much in the way of heavy weapons stationed there because the Klingons had been allies for decades. The Siege of AR-558 saw a small Federation outpost of under-manned, under-equipped troops holding off superior Dominion forces. They didn't have shields because they were short on just about every piece of basic equipment you could think of. They probably weren't even frontline combat troops, just the Starfleet Security detatchment asigned to the outpost.

But what little we have seen of Trek defensive ground tech has been impressive. A squad of Federation troopers fully equipped and outfitted would be more than a match for any infantry force the IoM could throw at them, and while they could just pull a Zerg tactic and try to swarm them with overwhelming numbers, it would take a LOT of overwhelming numbers because of how poorly equipped the majority of their standard infantry are. The IoM has a manpower advantage over the Federation of something like 1,000 or 10,000 to 1. But, with phaser rifles, armor, shields and the full array of ordnance you'd expect a properly-outfitted infantry squad to field, a properly-equipped Federation infantry unit could easily achieve an effectiveness vs individual IoM troopers on the order of 1,000 or 10,000 to 1. Throw in heavy artillery support from Trek ground and aerospace vehiciles and that number only goes up, even against IoM artillery.

Longsword, on 22 February 2012 - 05:31 AM, said:

and there are billions of such planets in the Imperium Despite peoples arguments against it, Quantity does have a Quality of its own. (Which is how the imperium is the dominant power in a galaxy full of incomphrehensably powerful and advanced aliens) (Also because there are few powers greater than human hatred and intolerance)

Actually, I've seen no indication that the Imperium controls billions of worlds. They officially list at least 1 million, and there are references to 'millions' that could potentially be under Imperium control at any given point, but I have not seen anything that makes mention of billions of worlds. The rest in that regard I've already covered above.

Also, that Stalin quote is very frequently misused. It referred to the specifics of the Russian campaign against the Nazis in WWII. Quantity certainly has its own value, but it will only get you so far, and your numbers are irrelevant if your opponent's advantage in Quality is superior to your advantage in Quantity. If you have a thousand troops and I have ten, but my ten troops are each equal to twenty of yours, I'm still going to have the advantage because my force is worth the equivalent of twice yours.

GDL Rahsan, on 22 February 2012 - 06:23 AM, said:

After reading this thread I still fail to see from where did you get the Leman Russ lascannon energy output, I have already reread the Imperial Guard Codex and looked around but never saw Games Workshop offer any canonical energy outputs for any weapon or anything for that matter.

We're getting it from here.

Quote

In addition, the Russ is commonly equipped with a hull-mounted lascannon, a triple-digit megajoule weapon which would easily destroy a modern tank.

Bolding mine.

GDL Rahsan, on 22 February 2012 - 06:23 AM, said:

Also it appears you got the warp mixed up. Yes, it is the WH40K excuse for subspace but GW have already stated it is not just a nastier version of subspace. And till now there is no official explanation of what the warp is except that some races use it for FTL travel and it is the place where the souls of the dead go. And as a Star Trek fan myself I never saw any dimension that Star Trek has that is similar to the warp. (Unless I think you know one which I don't.)

The thing is, though, that it behaves remarkably similar to subspace in most respects. The only significant difference is its maleability to the minds of sentient life. That aside, it basically operates like most 'subspac'/'hyperspace' realms in most science fiction.

[GDL Rahsan]

Well, thanks Dragon I havn't seen bit of info before.( I remain specktical about it but it's there).

Oh and by the way you seem to be understating the materials the Imperium use. According to fluff (( that which I recall right now anyway)) the Imperium or whatever it was back started developing materials that are more resistent to energy and generally more powerful than their current ones (( which I believe were steel, titanium etc )) during the circa of 3000-6000 the current versions Plasteel, ceramic, Admantanium etc are the highly advanced versions of those which were created around 20,000-30,000 probably before 25,000 since that is when the age of strife began thought they didn't specify any differences sadly except the ones you can read around in any WH40K wiki but it is safe to say that they are more resistant than materials like iron or steel. (( I will try to look up more info about this for you))

For how does Imperium teleporting technology work it is hard to say since I think they have a number of ways the most known one is a device that creates a gellar field around you ((which prevents deamons from attacking you and somehow greatly lessen the maddening effects of the warp on you if not nullify them not explained how)) the targetting system was not mentioned if it ever exists but the fluff say that after transferring the person into the warp he can actually navigate his way to the desired location without the need for a target lock(( again not specified how)). For the normal teleporters that teleport troops etc they function like the Star Trek versions except they send their troops throught the warp those types do use a target lock on to achieve a succesful teleport.

For the Imperium amount of worlds, the 1 million of worlds that are always considered a part of the IoM are actually just the nearby planets which are advanced enough to communicate with the core worlds of the Imperium ((all of which are either hive worlds, forge worlds, agri worlds, and osme are death worlds used for getting the elite recruits for marines but those ons are rare in the current million worlds)). The IoM might actually have even more forge worlds all around since those are made by the Adeptus not the IoM and they usually keep their forge worlds only for them without letting the rest of the IoM knowing about it. So basically saying that 95% of the IoM worlds are between stonge age to Information age is a great understatement the Imperium must have many hive, forge, agri, etc worlds that they dont always keep tabs on them becuase of communication problems. I mean logically if they were indeed 95% the IoM warmachine would have stopped in its tracks thousands of years ago.


EDIT: Well I am off for now hope the new info gets you some fun in your silly wars that will never actually happen.

Edited by GDL Rahsan, 22 February 2012 - 10:48 AM.

[Kartr]

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

This partly demonstrates why Trek technology is so nasty. You see, unlike a laser-based weapon which will just burn a hole in something with DET, phasers disrupt the intra-atomic bonds in matter and display other exotic effects, the net result being that a hand phaser can vaporize cubic meters of rock if you're willing to shoot at it for a little while. Again, this is higher than the outputs of even the tanks in 40k, which means a big phaser, like a Type III (rifle) is going to be way more powerful. Scale it up to shipboard sizes and...

It always makes me laugh when Trekkies claim Star Trek is "scientific" and then spout this nonsense that anyone with a year of college chemistry and more brains than the Scarecrow can show is absurd.

1. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. So when you "disrupt the inter-atomic bonds" where are the dissociated atoms? Why isn't there a rapidly expanding cloud of O2, H2 and other gasses along with a pile of Carbons and other solids that make up the body?

2. The amount of energy it takes to break every single atomic bond in a body is so great that you'd likely see random compounds forming, such as ash, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, just to name a couple of possibilities. So why don't we see piles of ash and clouds of noxious fumes when someone gets phasered?

3. No phaser has ever "vaporized" a rock in any episode of Star Trek. They have made rocks magically disappear but never vaporized them. To vaporize something means to turn it into vapor, vapor is a cloud of gas that occupies more volume than the solid version of that substance. The process of turning a solid into a vapor(gas) without going through the liquid stage is called sublimation. A good example of sublimation is detonating an explosive charge. When a solid charge, C-4 for example, is detonated it sublimates and turns into a cloud of gas (vapor). The energy released in sublimation and the fact that the vapor by its nature has to expand is what gives you the blast and shockwave effects of explosives. If phasers were actually vaporizing their targets it would cause very large explosions as the target sublimated and there would be blast shockwaves that would radiate out from the target.

The fact that phasers do not have any of the effects of vaporization, rules out the fact they actually vaporize the target. The fact that phasers do not leave behind any physical remains means, they do not disassociate the atomic bonds in the target. So no they don't do what you claim they do. A more valid theory based on what we see is that phasers are transporters that beam their targets directly to Hell. This helps explain why when phasers are fired at enemy ships they always cause consoles to explode, even when the armor and shields are intact. The Hell energy in the Hell Teleporters(phasers) is attenuated by the shields and the armor, so it only has enough energy to cause the consoles to explode in a shower of Hell Sparks which send the victims soul directly to the plains of Hell. This explains why other crew members can jump on the console and start using it again right away, it didn't actually explode it just acted as a conduit for Hell Energy.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

This is one area where Trek would not only have interesting advantages, but could probably greatly help the human race in 40k. The Federation has dealt with many, many phenomena like the warp, particularly subspace which works in a very similar fashion (but they've dealt with other spacial realms as well). Trek could probably develop all kinds of anti-warp tech to assist in keeping the corporeal universe save.

How is the Trekkies philosophy? Because from what I understand beings of the Warp are less influenced by technology than by beliefs. A person with weak beliefs can be consumed and form a conduit/vessel for a warp Daemon, while a person with strong convictions would be safe. I've also heard that this can even happen inside gellar fields though I don't know of this for sure. Personally if the Trekkies can make shields against thoughts and beliefs I'd say they were the most powerful beings ever.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

Ah, but you can't compare a Borg cube to an Imperium vessel. The Borg don't just slap armor on and call it a day, no one does in Trek. Trek powers use structural integrity fields (basically internal shields) to stop damage that penetrates from being devastating, and the Borg most certainly do have shields, they just work differently. For a long time, the Borg were actually immune to photon torpedoes; it took awhile before Trek powers started to learn how to at least be effective at combating their shields, but they still don't just walk past them, they have to blast through Borg shielding, at least by all indications at the Battle of Sector 001 there.

Tactical Cube? Sure looks like they slapped armor on those puppies. Besides what happens to your fancy SIF when your reactor starts to overload or cascade or whatever it is they do so often and you have to eject it? No power, no SIF, no SIF, no real hull strength, no hull strength, easy kill. Also Borg are not immune to Photon torpedoes. The very first time the Enterprise encounters the Borg, they fire a photon torpedo that destroys a large chunk of the Cube chasing them, and then the Cube "adapts" and becomes almost immune.

The Feddies should probably have stuck with phasers, the Hell Energy would have been more likely to destroy drones, since we know Borg drones can be dissapeared by phasers so we know they can be transported to hell.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

at 54s, one of the ships reports "we can't penetrate their shields". Again, Borg shields are difference; they're not a wall like a Federation shield kind of is, they negate damage differently from what we've seen. The ship seems to "absorb" it, and you see a few phaser shots in your video (mostly from smaller ships) that do seem to just contact the hull, but do no damage.

In your video the dialog says "we can't penetrate their shields" but in the next video posted we see torps and phasers striking the hull and get a report that "the borg cube has sustained significant damage to its outer hull and reading powerfluctions". There is no evidence that the Borg shields work any different than the Federation shields.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

So those photorps are not hitting bare metal.

I saw plenty of torp and phaser fire striking the hull and causing explosions. I suggest you rewatch the video.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

Based on what we know about pound-for-pound Imperium capability, which is just orders of magnitude inferior to Trek (and so it should be; they're only using fusion!), even a small Federation ship would mission kill an Imperium warship with ease. The latter just hasn't demonstrated the power output capabilities to do anything to prevent it.

Star Trek uses fusion, its what the impulse engines are powered by IIRC. And why is fusion so much weaker? Your own example of the Tsar Bomba vs a photon torpedo shows that 60's technology fusion bombs are on par with Star Trek torpedos. We don't even have true fusion yet and the capabilities of Trek ships don't reflect a significant advantage of M/AM over fusion.


More later.

[Name113200]

I originally voted gundam thinking individual battles.. I think a protracted battle between any universe, battletech would come out on top. The McKenna class warship is probably one of the most devastating ships in Science Ficition and at the height of the starleague they had hundreds of them. Maybe one of the ultra rediculous gundams could destroy a Mckkena warship. It certainly couldnt destroy several of them. Each universe has it's super weapons. Starwars has death stars, star trek has borg cubes. Battletech made that super weapon into a massive armada.

[Kyroan]

I think Babylon 5 should be added to this category due to the fact that Babylon 5 was also a major sci-fi series.

[Zakatak]

This topic made me realize why I dislike Trek so much.

The CIC/Bridge members being frontline soldiers, 100 redshirts being killed every episode and not even getting a salute (let alone a funeral), having fights at 500m despite 1 billion km ranges and warp strafing being possible, over embundance of technobabble and extremely conveniant technologies, saving the Earth at the 11th hour with some scientific epiphany. Bleh.



Babylon 5. What kind of weapon outputs do they have? It seems to increase greatly as the series goes on. Omega-class destroyers having like 0.5g acceleration and 2 megaton nukes, to 64 megaton beams and 50g Whitestars with super-armor.

Edited by Zakatak, 22 February 2012 - 11:40 AM.

[Kyroan]

As far as I recall, they do use heavy yield nukes in space combat. Also through out the series energy weapons start to appear starting with normal beam weapons and then upgrading to heavier and faster firing pulse cannons. But it also depends on which race you are looking at which all developed in slightly different directions.

One of the nice things about Babylon 5 was the Starfurys. Which could re-direct their thrust and suddenly be facing the enemy that had been following them.

The Vorlons weapons I would almost describe as particle beams, and the Shadow ships which were very similar tech wise. The Shadow ships are known to be durable due to the fact that a few of the ships stayed buried beneath a planets surface for hundreds or even thousands of years and lifted off the planet after being dug out with little or no difficulty.

[Perguru]

Babylon 5 will win ( or the Crusade)

[Name113200]

Not to mention Leviathan II battleship..... those things are bad ***

Edited by DeathlyEyes, 22 February 2012 - 11:39 AM.

[Kyroan]

I almost forgot about Crusade and the Excalibur. Damn that thing is powerful...

[Kartr]

Back from mid-terms.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

The Imperium controls a lot of worlds, but many of them, if not most, are not advanced, industrialized worlds. The Imperium has no problem conquering a world, and letting it languish like some backwater moon out of Firefly. On many worlds, they're still using horseback! The Federation doesn't do that. If they control a world, it has all the same tech as the rest of the Federation. The Federation has many worlds, probably hundreds of thousands, but unlike the Imperium, where only a small core of those worlds would be useful in a fight against an advanced power, all of the Federation worlds are.

Having the same tech doesn't really mean anything. Sure you could have replicators on every planet in the UFP, but on newer colonies they're going to have less development than older colonies. The worth of a planet is not dependent on its technological advancement. Agri-worlds that are almost exclusively used for farming don't need the same level of industrialization/technological abundance as a factory world, or world that blends large populations and industry. Yet despite the fact that the Agri-world is going to have much less technology on it doesn't make it any less valuable than a world packed full of technology. After all your soldiers and sailors, scientist and engineers and your civilian workers and population all need food.

Even planets that are "useless" because they don't contribute any kind of war materials to the nation isn't actually useless. Empty or near empty planets that use horses for transportation can be perfect staging grounds for an armada. Or training grounds, or weapons test sites, or even just buffers. A planets value is not based on the technological advancement of its population, but rather on what its function is.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

The Federation also has replicator tech, to effectively be able to transmute matter into whatever material they please, and not just materials, but into any device they please. All they need is power, and the Federation is post-scarcity in that department.

This isn't quite true, otherwise why did Picard have to go to the Holo-deck to get a Tommy Gun? Why couldn't he just have pulled the specs from the computer and fed it into the replicator and turned out Thompsons for his entire crew? Why don't they just build giant replicators that spit out perfect ships, instead of assembling them from pieces that may or may not have been replicated? And they don't just need power, they need the raw materials, the "replicator stock" if you will. Stock that at the very least has to contain every known element so that every possible pure substance, alloy and compound can be replicated. To get that stock you still have to have some sort of mining equipment (we know they have mines) to get the resources out of the ground, you have to have some sort of refinery to seperate the unwanted material from the desired material, etc. ect. The idea that the UFP can just wave their magic replicator wands and get whatever they want is fallacious, there is still an infrastructure and industrial complex supporting the communist utopia of Star Trek.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

In other words, the UFP would curb stomp the Imperium in industrial capacity. See Ilithi's post above. The Federation gives the maximum number of people the maximum opportunity to make maximum use of their resources, so that the Federation is employing all their people and natural resources optimally. There's no world loaded with valuable resources and useful people that goes to waste because they're stuck with bronze age technology because their hosting empire doesn't care. Add in the real Federation trick, replicator tech, where they don't even have to manufacture parts (they just make them out of thin air, almost literally), and they'd really curb stomp the Imperium.

There is always wastage, in fact you're advocating wastage. On worlds where the primary product is grains and other food stuffs, why do you need copious amounts of advanced technology? If you're herding meat animals why not use a horse or horse analog as your ride? It can keep up with the herd, it doesn't need advanced parts, doesn't need advanced fuel, it just eats the same things the herd animals do, sleeps when they do and needs to be brushed, shod and watered. Using anything more advanced would be a waste.
As for the replicators, like I said earlier the UFP doesn't and can't just wave the magic replicator wand and get something for nothing. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. This means that raw resources have to be gathered, refined and transported to every single replicator in the Federation. On top of that many large and complex items like warships aren't simply replicated, but rather assembled from parts by people working in a shipyard. Nor does the Federation simply replicate more phasers when they need them, nor even arguably simpler (and more effective) weapons like modern rifles and machine guns.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

The Federation has tens of thousands of ships, and any one of them would mission kill any Imperium ship almost instantly, just from tech disparity. The Imperium are not the Borg.

Supporting firepower calculations? Simply saying "lolz we haz Antimatter weapons and phasers, you use gunz" doesn't prove firepower levels. Federation torpedoes are on par with 1960's nukes and from what I've read and seen WH40K weapons and tech are significantly more powerful than modern nukes. Personally I'd put WH40K and ST on par for firepower at a minimum, with WH40K being the more likely of the two to have superior firepower.
Also remember that Starfleet is a bunch of pacifist weenies who balk at the idea of doing anything military and even object to calling their ships warships. They don't have the stomach or the stones for warfare on the level that the Imperium does. Not to mention that the Imperium is going to view it as a holy war to exterminate the aliens and the heretic humans who've allied with them, making them even more fanatical. On top of the fact that phasers have proven again and again to be fairly worthless against any sort of armor... and refuse to wear any sort of real protection themselves.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

We knew the Federation has sophisticated combat gear capable of taking fire from their own weapons; we saw it a couple of times during the Dominion War.

Why didn't we see it every time? Why isn't every starfleeter equipped with body armor and or shields to protect them from phaser/disrupter/energy weapon fire? Even if they are is it going to do any good against bolters and projectile weapons when Borg personal shields can't defend them from "primitive" chemical propellant guns?

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

If an Imperium tank can't even output as much as a Trek hand phaser, and so, not enough to penetrate that armor, how effective do you think Imperium infantry are going to be?

Proof that Imperium tanks don't have significant levels of firepower? Proof that phasers aren't actually soul sucking Hell Transporters? Proof that phasers, which don't vaporize targets, don't dissasociate the atomic bonds, don't do anything plausibly within the realms of science, are going to even have an effect on Imperium equipment?
Also if I recall correctly, meltabombs are some sort of nuclear shaped charge. If so that'd kinda make your assertion false.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

It's not just armor, but also almost certainly personal shields. If Worf can make a personal shield out of a communicator and a hairpin, then surely the Federation puts it in their combat gear. We see that gear on and off in times of war all the way back to TMP era (the original-series films). Strangely it didn't appear at AR-558 (real world explanation, VFX budget, story explanation? No clue.). Nevertheless, they have it.

Once again if its good against magic-phasers whats to say its going to have an effect against projectile weapons? Especially since the Borg shields don't stop bullets.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

What's more, the Federation wouldn't have to engage in a ground battle. After KOing Imperial ships, they could wipe out any military installation from orbit, never giving Imperium soldiers a target to fire back at, and any Imperium world would happily choose to be liberated, because frankly, for all they're played up to be, the Imperium is effectively the enemy of mankind. They're among the most oppressive, evil regimes in fiction, which brings me to my last point.

First you're assuming that Starfleet can KO Imperium vessels, but you still haven't offered any proof. Secondly the Imperium is far more capable and prepared to conduct orbital bombardments and defend against them than the Federation. The level of destruction that would result from an orbital bombardment sufficient to wipe out Imperium defenders would be abhorrent to the Federation. They wouldn't have the stomach to slag a planet, unleash fire storms and seismic activity sufficient to decimate entire continents.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

It's not the Federation that would wear, but the Imperium. When the Tau approach Imperium worlds, or any worlds, they give them a chance to join peacefully before conquering them, and Imperium worlds often happily oblige. Why? Because even the Tau are lightyears better than the Imperium.

When? When and where does this happen? Sources you got this information from.

Catamount, on 22 February 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

The Imperium's oppression and inconsistent treatment of worlds is one that's going to produce a lot of political instability.
Now imagine the Federation coming in. These guys are so powerful, that any soldier who rises against them is basically throwing their life away, and I'm pretty sure phaser vaporization is not a fun way to die. Trust me, I've seen what phasers can do even when they leave someone intact (in other words, even on lower settings, or long-term stun burning). On top of that, they're not here to conquer Imperium worlds, but rather any world they come across will be liberated, and go from rule by an evil, oppressive power who's leader sacrifices countless people to himself each and every day for his own vanity, to an altrustic power that will educate them, technologically develop them, and let them live in a Utopian society where they can be safe, provided for, and do anythign with their lives that they want. On top of it, there's a not-inconsiderable chance that the Federation could protect the people of the Imperium from the warp, eventually, they might even go to war with the Chaos Gods themselves. It's not without precedent, as the Federation actually does go to war with an extradimensional power later in its history, to stop then from flooding the galaxy with their own extradimensionals space (in other words, just like the warp entering normal space in 40k).

Phasers don't vaporize people, can we please get away from that idiotic notion? Second you still haven't proven that the Federation's equipment is going to be superior, or even effective. Any planet that leaves the Emperor and the Imperium is going to become prime targets for Chaos. Heck the Feds are going to be prime targets for Chaos. Their inquisitive, questioning minds are perfect gardens for the seeds of Chaos to grow. You thought Troi's mind rape in Star Trek: Nemisis was bad? Wait until Khorne or one of the others finds her open and sensitive mind. Arguably the Imperium is actually the UFP's best hope to not be consumed by the forces of Chaos. So it's give up a crappy life in an oppresive regime, or join an open free thinking nation that is perfect food for Chaos. Yeah I think I'll stay with the Imperium, I don't like the idea of getting possesed by some horrific monster that exists because of thoughts and emotions.
Furthermore if you're refering to the Species 8472, those are nothing like the Chaos Daemons. Those things are biological entities, beings bounded by physics even if they're from another dimension. Chaos Daemons are beings that exist because of thoughts, beliefs and emotions. They didn't evolve, they aren't based in physics, these are beings created of philosophy, beings that gain power through worship. Creatures that can be summoned by doubt or sacrfices. They can enter "real space" simply by finding a seed of doubt, or arrogance, or hatred. They are unlike anything Star Trek has ever seen.