Poll: ST Federation or 40k Imperium - who would win in a war?

[bastardofmelbourne]

I know my W40K stuff but could someone please teach me about Star Trek's ground based warmachines? What is their answer to the armored regiments of the imperial guard and titans of the adeptus titanicus?

The problem is that the ground-based aspect of the Federation's military is never depicted in the show or elaborated on in the supplementary materials. This is due to a combination of the show's focus on idealistic, character-driven exploration and adventure, and basic budget limitations. The latter also means that when ground troops were shown in the shows, they were usually just redshirts with no costume alterations.

It might be safe to guess that they primarily use teleporters or at least shuttles for terrestrial transport - mostly negating the need for tanks or ATVs - and rely on space warfare for nearly all military operations. This is the inverse of the Imperium, which puts the most focus on the ground combat, with the naval aspect being relegated to supplementary fiction or Battlefleet Gothic.

In general, I would expect Starfleet to be at an incredible disadvantage when forced into ground combat. Their best assets would be teleporters. So they'd have the maneouvre advantage, but their ability to actually do any damage would be limited to sabotage and ambushes.

 

[Xan Krieger]

I know my W40K stuff but could someone please teach me about Star Trek's ground based warmachines? What is their answer to the armored regiments of the imperial guard and titans of the adeptus titanicus?

The problem is that the ground-based aspect of the Federation's military is never depicted in the show or elaborated on in the supplementary materials. This is due to a combination of the show's focus on idealistic, character-driven exploration and adventure, and basic budget limitations. The latter also means that when ground troops were shown in the shows, they were usually just redshirts with no costume alterations.

It might be safe to guess that they primarily use teleporters or at least shuttles for terrestrial transport - mostly negating the need for tanks or ATVs - and rely on space warfare for nearly all military operations. This is the inverse of the Imperium, which puts the most focus on the ground combat, with the naval aspect being relegated to supplementary fiction or Battlefleet Gothic.

In general, I would expect Starfleet to be at an incredible disadvantage when forced into ground combat. Their best assets would be teleporters. So they'd have the maneouvre advantage, but their ability to actually do any damage would be limited to sabotage and ambushes.

Thank you for the answer and this isn't as big a deal as I think many people believe. If Halo taught us one thing it's that a victory on the ground is largely meaningless if the enemy controls space as they can just use orbital bombardments to pound you into submission.

*The TV turns on, a report about the war between the humans and the covenant comes on*

Reporter: Today humanity won a glorious victory in the defense of our fortress world of Reach with the covenant taking such heavy losses they had to fall back to their ships. Reach was then immediately lost as the aliens turned the world to glass.

*TV turns off*

I imagine the same would be true in any science fiction universe like in Star Wars Empire at War where if you control the space around the planet you're invading you have access to powerful support abilities like bombers and laser bombardment.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Thank you for the answer and this isn't as big a deal as I think many people believe. If Halo taught us one thing it's that a victory on the ground is largely meaningless if the enemy controls space as they can just use orbital bombardments to pound you into submission.

Yes and no. Yes, you can pound the place to bits, but if you're ok with pounding the place to bits why do both sides want to put people there? You only fight over places that are worth having.

If the star trek ships really were long range specialists dueling from opposite sides of a solar system with pinpoint accurate weapons, it makes too much of the series nonsensical, their combat doctrines and strategies just DONT MAKE SENSE. Capitalize for emphasis. I don't understand science that well but military tactics, a bit more.

Eh, they aren't. They use energy weapons that are limited by the speed of light. And torpedos which move faster than that, except in any battle where the two are used together and the energy weapons clearly move faster.

Firing across a system would take minutes at best, more likely hours if it's properly across a system. You might have pin point accuracy in your weapons (which I doubt anyway), too bad the target change course slightly half an hour after you fired.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Thank you for the answer and this isn't as big a deal as I think many people believe. If Halo taught us one thing it's that a victory on the ground is largely meaningless if the enemy controls space as they can just use orbital bombardments to pound you into submission.

Yes and no. Yes, you can pound the place to bits, but if you're ok with pounding the place to bits why do both sides want to put people there? You only fight over places that are worth having.

If the star trek ships really were long range specialists dueling from opposite sides of a solar system with pinpoint accurate weapons, it makes too much of the series nonsensical, their combat doctrines and strategies just DONT MAKE SENSE. Capitalize for emphasis. I don't understand science that well but military tactics, a bit more.

Eh, they aren't. They use energy weapons that are limited by the speed of light. And torpedos which move faster than that, except in any battle where the two are used together and the energy weapons clearly move faster.

Firing across a system would take minutes at best, more likely hours if it's properly across a system. You might have pin point accuracy in your weapons (which I doubt anyway), too bad the target change course slightly half an hour after you fired.

Two things

1: The "If I can't have it neither can you" strategy of the covenant where if they couldn't take a planet through ground invasion they made sure it was useless to humans as well.

2. The Empire at War and Dawn of War perk of using shots from orbit on enemy strongpoints to allow ground forces to advance. In Battlefleet Gothic: Armada one of the mission types has you moving ships from point to point to hit key enemy ground positions either to halt an enemy advance or allow your ground forces to keep moving.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

In general, I would expect Starfleet to be at an incredible disadvantage when forced into ground combat. Their best assets would be teleporters. So they'd have the maneouvre advantage, but their ability to actually do any damage would be limited to sabotage and ambushes.

Only because Starfleet is nice. I'd expect a dedicated ground support ship to be nothing but transporters and the odd torpedo launcher.

"Transporter room, 30 to beam into low orbit. Don't worry if their arms and legs are inside the beams".

Or hell, just not bother to reassemble them into matter at the other end. Maybe use their energy pattern as a projected energy/psychic attack weapon.

 

[Mangod]

Actually, that's another point: does this take place before the Battle of Wolf 359 [http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Wolf_359], or after? Because if it's before, Starfleet are even less prepared for a battle of the scale that the Imperium operates on.

 

[Jute88]

It depends on how the initial contact would go, how soon a war would start and how much resources would both sides invest in defeating their opponent? Transporter-technology gives an edge to the Federation in maneuverability (assuming to bloody things work properly), but since I know quite little of 40k-lore, I don't know if they have anything similar?

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

1: The "If I can't have it neither can you" strategy of the covenant where if they couldn't take a planet through ground invasion they made sure it was useless to humans as well.

The thing is...the Covenant had a terrible military strategy. The games made a big point out of how they were just a bunch of corrupt, hypocritical religious fanatics using technology they didn't understand. I mean, at the start of Halo 2, they oust most of their competent military elite and replace them with dumb muscle just to cover their own asses.

Their practice of glassing human worlds did nothing except deny themselves territory and infrastructure, while forcing humanity into a fight-or-die mentality that pretty much ensured the Covenant would have to destroy them all.

Only because Starfleet is nice. I'd expect a dedicated ground support ship to be nothing but transporters and the odd torpedo launcher.

"Transporter room, 30 to beam into low orbit. Don't worry if their arms and legs are inside the beams".

Or hell, just not bother to reassemble them into matter at the other end. Maybe use their energy pattern as a projected energy/psychic attack weapon.

I don't know. Taking the technology to its logical extreme like that, you may as well just throw in time travel.

I mean, Imperial teleporters work by making mini-Warp jumps. You could theoretically weaponise that to just open rifts in the Warp wherever you want. Just turn off all the safeties, open the exit point, and send nothing through; the enemy now has a ragged hole in the fabric of reality regurgitating monsters at them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if it isn't used that way in the source material, assume there's a reason.

It depends on how the initial contact would go, how soon a war would start and how much resources would both sides invest in defeating their opponent? Transporter-technology gives an edge to the Federation in maneuverability (assuming to bloody things work properly), but since I know quite little of 40k-lore, I don't know if they have anything similar?

The Imperium has teleporters, but they work totally differently. Federation teleporters work by disintegrating the "package" and re-assembling it in the teleporter bay; they're basically using one of their replicators as a fax machine. Imperial teleporters are of the "folding space" variety, where the package takes a short jaunt through the Warp to reach their destination.

Imperial ones are also a lot less reliable and a lot more dangerous, so they're not employed casually the way Starfleet does. Overall, Federation teleporters are superior in every respect except the philosophical.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

[
I don't know. Taking the technology to its logical extreme like that, you may as well just throw in time travel.

I mean, Imperial teleporters work by making mini-Warp jumps. You could theoretically weaponise that to just open rifts in the Warp wherever you want. Just turn off all the safeties, open the exit point, and send nothing through; the enemy now has a ragged hole in the fabric of reality regurgitating monsters at them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if it isn't used that way in the source material, assume there's a reason.

Exactly. The Federation doesn't do that because they don't like committing war crimes (Section 31 would totally do that though), and the Imperium doesn't do that because allowing deamons through to the material plane is basically the one line they won't cross. (And I don't think they have the understanding of their warp tech to do that on purpose anyway)

 

[Paragon Fury]

I feel like the people voting for and defending the IoM are really overplaying the size and "rule of cool" thing way too much, and are severely underestimating the technology and knowledge gap that exists between FoP and IoM.

The FoP has issues with the Dominion and Klingons for example, because both of those factions are on a technological parity with the FoP (being of relatively equal technological progress and understanding). Despite how "cool" the IoM is, they are very technologically backwards and almost retarded - their ships may be huge, but they're not that advanced, they're slow as hell and incredibly unwieldy - if fact if I remember the fluff right the IoM (including Space Marines) canonically have incredibly shitty accuracy and range; bad to the point where the only faction in the game with worse aim than the IoM are the Orks....who primarily have weapons because they like the BANG! they make when fired.

It would be a completely naval decided fight - the IG and Space Marines would be almost useless. And massive technological gulf and understanding between the two would ensure that even the IoM's huge numbers advantage wouldn't be worth much.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The FoP has issues with the Dominion and Klingons for example, because both of those factions are on a technological parity with the FoP (being of relatively equal technological progress and understanding). Despite how "cool" the IoM is, they are very technologically backwards and almost retarded - their ships may be huge, but they're not that advanced, they're slow as hell and incredibly unwieldy - if fact if I remember the fluff right the IoM (including Space Marines) canonically have incredibly shitty accuracy and range; bad to the point where the only faction in the game with worse aim than the IoM are the Orks....who primarily have weapons because they like the BANG! they make when fired.

You're spot-on about the ships, but nothing in the fluff or the actual game indicates that Space Marines have bad aim.

Just going off the rules as I remember them, the "base" statistic for an average, trained soldier has a BS (Ballistic Skill) of 3. Space Marines have BS 4, which is the same as that of a Tau Fire Warrior, who hails from a military that almost exclusively trains its soldiers in marksmanship. Orks, by comparison, have have a BS of 2, which is the worst in the game.

Admittedly, that's just rules (in-game, BS 4 means you'll only hit two out of three shots) but even in the fluff Space Marines are supposed to have two hours of marksmanship practice daily. I think they know how to fire a gun.

It would be a completely naval decided fight - the IG and Space Marines would be almost useless. And massive technological gulf and understanding between the two would ensure that even the IoM's huge numbers advantage wouldn't be worth much.

Space Marines would only be useless if the Federation could always avoid boarding actions. Which...maaaybe? Depends on whether or not the Imperials can use their teleporters, to be honest. I can't see a boarding torpedo having any effect on a Federation ship, they're too mobile.

 

[Paragon Fury]

The FoP has issues with the Dominion and Klingons for example, because both of those factions are on a technological parity with the FoP (being of relatively equal technological progress and understanding). Despite how "cool" the IoM is, they are very technologically backwards and almost retarded - their ships may be huge, but they're not that advanced, they're slow as hell and incredibly unwieldy - if fact if I remember the fluff right the IoM (including Space Marines) canonically have incredibly shitty accuracy and range; bad to the point where the only faction in the game with worse aim than the IoM are the Orks....who primarily have weapons because they like the BANG! they make when fired.

You're spot-on about the ships, but nothing in the fluff or the actual game indicates that Space Marines have bad aim.

Just going off the rules as I remember them, the "base" statistic for an average, trained soldier has a BS (Ballistic Skill) of 3. Space Marines have BS 4, which is the same as that of a Tau Fire Warrior, who hails from a military that almost exclusively trains its soldiers in marksmanship. Orks, by comparison, have have a BS of 2, which is the worst in the game.

Admittedly, that's just rules (in-game, BS 4 means you'll only hit two out of three shots) but even in the fluff Space Marines are supposed to have two hours of marksmanship practice daily. I think they know how to fire a gun.

It would be a completely naval decided fight - the IG and Space Marines would be almost useless. And massive technological gulf and understanding between the two would ensure that even the IoM's huge numbers advantage wouldn't be worth much.

Space Marines would only be useless if the Federation could always avoid boarding actions. Which...maaaybe? Depends on whether or not the Imperials can use their teleporters, to be honest. I can't see a boarding torpedo having any effect on a Federation ship, they're too mobile.

How can you board something you can't even track, let alone even get a solid lock on? And as I think you pointed out before, it would be incredibly easy for the Federation to use their much more advanced and precise teleporters to simply eject their unwanted quests - since the IoM would have no way to effectively counteract teleporters like the normal enemies of the FoP do.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

...Pretty sure the Imperium wins through sheer force of numbers - Federation is stuck pissing around in a small chunk of their own quadrant, surrounded by other powers, the Imperium is an empire on a more galactic scale and has the technology to move (albeit unreliably) across those same distances much faster than the Federation.

Plus, while I'm unsure as to what the technological differences would be (Imperial ships still have things like lasers, missiles and shields, yeah?), I reckon the Imperium would win against Federation ships more-often than not since... well, Imperium ships are designed for war and often have things like fighter escorts or support vessels, while the Federation ships are (even post-Worf 359) largely science vessels. Heavily armed and moderately armoured, but still not optimized for a direct fight and quite capable of getting the shit blown out of them by a single enemy, let alone a large number of them.

Like, I love the Star Trek universe, but they stand no chance against the Imperium simply because of numbers and because the Imperium is really good at the whole war thing.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

How can you board something you can't even track, let alone even get a solid lock on? And as I think you pointed out before, it would be incredibly easy for the Federation to use their much more advanced and precise teleporters to simply eject their unwanted quests - since the IoM would have no way to effectively counteract teleporters like the normal enemies of the FoP do.

I'm not really sure how effective Imperial sensors would be against Federation countermeasures. They're definitely archaic, but...hmm. They probably wouldn't do very well.

There's always the psyker element, as a sufficiently powerful psyker would be capable of sensing minds even at a stellar distance. That's how the Imperium's interstellar communication works, after all. Not sure if it would be accurate enough for a successful teleport. Although, there are Imperial psykers capable of opening their own teleportation gates, so "marrying" the sensor and the teleporter in that way might work. But psykers of that calibre are rare, so unless the Federation is fighting Grey Knights it wouldn't matter.

Actually, I just read the Wikipedia article [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_(Star_Trek)] (yeah, there's a Wikipedia article) on Star Trek transporters, and it seems...really inconsistent. There's something in there about a 30,000km distance limit, but then that gets ignored a bunch of times, and then there's a long and vague list of stuff that can block a teleport like shields, dense metals, electromagnetic radiation, and straight-up telekinesis.

What I was wondering was how feasible it would be to teleport hostile boarders in the way you describe. I can't remember them ever doing it in the show. Just from browsing the Memory Alpha wiki, it seems like the crew uses portable or subcutaneous transponders that the transporter locks onto; Space Marines wouldn't have them, obviously. But then there's occasions where they've just locked the transporter onto the good old "life signs," whatever they are and however they work.

So...I dunno? Maybe? This is what it always seems to boil down to; one side's nonsense space magic against another side's nonsense space magic.

 

[Thaluikhain]

if fact if I remember the fluff right the IoM (including Space Marines) canonically have incredibly shitty accuracy and range; bad to the point where the only faction in the game with worse aim than the IoM are the Orks....who primarily have weapons because they like the BANG! they make when fired.

Yes and no. Yes, space marines aren't great shots compared to most races. But this is because space marines are the default. Space marines aren't bad at shooting in an absolute sense, it's just that there are 1,000 year old ninja space elves running around that they get compared to. The Federation does not have any of those, IIRC.

By comparison, the argument that all guardsmen are rubbish, because they aren't genetically enhanced supersoldiers. That's setting the bar a tad high.

1: The "If I can't have it neither can you" strategy of the covenant where if they couldn't take a planet through ground invasion they made sure it was useless to humans as well.

Absolutely...but then you aren't winning, you're just sorta forcing a draw.

2. The Empire at War and Dawn of War perk of using shots from orbit on enemy strongpoints to allow ground forces to advance. In Battlefleet Gothic: Armada one of the mission types has you moving ships from point to point to hit key enemy ground positions either to halt an enemy advance or allow your ground forces to keep moving.

Against surface targets, yes, and this should happen way more often. Real life space agencies can put things onto given spots on other planets and so on, doesn't have to have a warhead but it doesn't need to not have one either. It takes a lot of know-how, but we take it for granted nowdays.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

It depends entirely on if the Federation reacts appropriately in time.

If they go the peaceful/always trying diplomacy route, they'll lose because they won't react in time and the IoM would roll over them. If however they realize they're in a real war with an enemy that can't be negotiated with and react accordingly, the IoM is completely fucked. The IoM would be facing an enemy that would outtech them, outfight them, outrun them, outmanuver them, shatter their supply lines and CoC and completely lose control of their naval superiority as they'd be fighting ships they couldn't likely even track properly, much less effectively damage in combat.

What, you mean like what happened when the Federation went up against the Dominion? Guys, I like the Federation, but unless we accept Voyager-levels of Technobabble as a viable solution, or the Q step in, they're gonna lose, even if by cheer force of attrition.

Not to mention Q is quite possibly an aspect of Tzeentch. He'd probably be helping the Imperium.

 

[Mangod]

It depends entirely on if the Federation reacts appropriately in time.

If they go the peaceful/always trying diplomacy route, they'll lose because they won't react in time and the IoM would roll over them. If however they realize they're in a real war with an enemy that can't be negotiated with and react accordingly, the IoM is completely fucked. The IoM would be facing an enemy that would outtech them, outfight them, outrun them, outmanuver them, shatter their supply lines and CoC and completely lose control of their naval superiority as they'd be fighting ships they couldn't likely even track properly, much less effectively damage in combat.

What, you mean like what happened when the Federation went up against the Dominion? Guys, I like the Federation, but unless we accept Voyager-levels of Technobabble as a viable solution, or the Q step in, they're gonna lose, even if by cheer force of attrition.

Not to mention Q is quite possibly an aspect of Tzeentch. He'd probably be helping the Imperium.

Well, the scenario is that it's the Federation VS the Imperium, not 40k VS 'Trek in general. Q isn't part of the Federation, so he's not a part of the debate. Neither are the Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi or anyone else not part of the Federation, and neither are the Orks, Eldar, Tau, Tyranids, or Necrons, other than as comparisons.

 

[Jute88]

It depends entirely on if the Federation reacts appropriately in time.

If they go the peaceful/always trying diplomacy route, they'll lose because they won't react in time and the IoM would roll over them. If however they realize they're in a real war with an enemy that can't be negotiated with and react accordingly, the IoM is completely fucked. The IoM would be facing an enemy that would outtech them, outfight them, outrun them, outmanuver them, shatter their supply lines and CoC and completely lose control of their naval superiority as they'd be fighting ships they couldn't likely even track properly, much less effectively damage in combat.

What, you mean like what happened when the Federation went up against the Dominion? Guys, I like the Federation, but unless we accept Voyager-levels of Technobabble as a viable solution, or the Q step in, they're gonna lose, even if by cheer force of attrition.

Not to mention Q is quite possibly an aspect of Tzeentch. He'd probably be helping the Imperium.

Well, the scenario is that it's the Federation VS the Imperium, not 40k VS 'Trek in general. Q isn't part of the Federation, so he's not a part of the debate. Neither are the Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi or anyone else not part of the Federation, and neither are the Orks, Eldar, Tau, Tyranids, or Necrons, other than as comparisons.

But it would make sense to speculate how the other great powers would react to this war. Things don't happen in a vacuum, Federation has allies and enemies and how they'd react to a sudden appearance of the 40k-universe would be an interesting thing to see. Though granted, having such different franchises duke it out in the first place is kinda difficult to imagine. The worlds work in so many different ways that comparing them to another feels a bit forced.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

It depends entirely on if the Federation reacts appropriately in time.

If they go the peaceful/always trying diplomacy route, they'll lose because they won't react in time and the IoM would roll over them. If however they realize they're in a real war with an enemy that can't be negotiated with and react accordingly, the IoM is completely fucked. The IoM would be facing an enemy that would outtech them, outfight them, outrun them, outmanuver them, shatter their supply lines and CoC and completely lose control of their naval superiority as they'd be fighting ships they couldn't likely even track properly, much less effectively damage in combat.

What, you mean like what happened when the Federation went up against the Dominion? Guys, I like the Federation, but unless we accept Voyager-levels of Technobabble as a viable solution, or the Q step in, they're gonna lose, even if by cheer force of attrition.

Not to mention Q is quite possibly an aspect of Tzeentch. He'd probably be helping the Imperium.

Well, the scenario is that it's the Federation VS the Imperium, not 40k VS 'Trek in general. Q isn't part of the Federation, so he's not a part of the debate. Neither are the Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi or anyone else not part of the Federation, and neither are the Orks, Eldar, Tau, Tyranids, or Necrons, other than as comparisons.

If the Imperium is gonna be fielding Psykers though you kind of HAVE to bring the ruinous powers with you. Psykers just DON'T WORK without the Warp, and the Chaos Gods and the Daemons are part of that package.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Well, the scenario is that it's the Federation VS the Imperium, not 40k VS 'Trek in general. Q isn't part of the Federation, so he's not a part of the debate. Neither are the Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi or anyone else not part of the Federation, and neither are the Orks, Eldar, Tau, Tyranids, or Necrons, other than as comparisons.

Hmmm...in that case, we must ask how much does the Federation trade with people outside it? That might become relevant.