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

[TheMysteriousGX]

And those are the guys that are going to lose?

Finally even if i were to agree that lasguns have all the punch of an ak47 (i doubt it but lets roll with it)

Lasguns and the slug-throwing autoguns have the same stats

, guardsmen platoons tend to be carrying a lot more weapony then just those, say hello to mr lascannon or mrs melta gun for all your armor busting needs. A heavy bolter might not be state of the art, but i'm sure that would do well too.

Which would be great if any of them made planetside.

And that's neglecting the heavy armor the guard would bring with them, not to mention titans.

Ever think that the reason the Federation isn't shown having tanks is because they're obsolete?
So to sum up, your average federation marine might be better armed (emphasis on "might") but it doesn't really matter, as the typical guardsman would be just as effective in a ranged firefight, would have a lot more buddies, and have the edge in physical and mental ability when it comes to working in hellish conditions. I suppose a federation marine would be a better tech whizz but in this regard the imperium's low tech approach works in their favor, you can't really do technological BS to them and their troops are tough enough to function in low tech conditions anyway.[/quote]Personal shields would be the equalizer you're looking for, and would be in production much faster if the Federation say a need for standing infantry.

Regarding space combat, whilst the details regarding space combat in 40k is a mixed bag, it's generally accepted they do combat at stupidly long ranges too so don't discount their accuracy too hard.
Honestly i'm a bit skeptical as to how effective federation shields would be, like would they seriously feel nothing if a nova cannon blast hits them? The small pew pew lasers shown in that 1 episode is not quite the same as lance batteries or macro batteries whose ordinance is xbox huge. But I admit i'm not the most sciencey guy so i'd love it if someone who knows more about this could chime in.
And if that doesn't work, there's fucking vortex weaponry and other more exotic ordinance, that's bound to hurt anything in the blast radius.

"If they hit" is the order of the day. A Federation ship can do from a dead stop to the speed of light by flipping a switch. As far as relative velocities go, an Imperial cruiser might as well be standing still. And big explosive cannons? At the end of the day, if your ship regularly flies around at faster than the speed of light without entering another dimension, whether or not that specific piece of matter you just ran into explodes is irrelevant. Fact is, you still hit it at reletavistic speeds and didn't feel it.

Going back to long range space duels, i'm a bit puzzled as to how you describe it..
Why do we see federation ships buzzing like flies around borg cubes if they could just engage at firefights from the other side of the solar system? Something doesn't quite add up here. Look at the battles against the dominion, where the allied fleet had to break through a blockade, why didn't they just pew pew from the other side of the system if they could rather then rush in almost at point blank range? Je ne comprends pas.

A) because firing weapons into the void of space and watching a sensor blob disappear makes for bad television.
B) because if you pew pew at a blockade from the other side of a system, you aren't really breaking through a bloackade, now are you?

Besides 40k ships might be big, but don't discount their movement abilities. They use the warp for travel which is faster (well usually, the warp isn't an exact science) then the warp (this is gonna get confusing xD) used by the feds when long distances are involved. For short distances imperial ships are perfectly capable of doing short jumps so they would just warp out next to the fed ships rather then stay there all helpless and ineffective as they get pounded by ordinance that apparently outranges them (which i'm skeptical about, in battlefleet gothic it's said ships do combat at stupidly long ranges, whereas no star trek episode i've ever watched made a point about this).

Imperial ships cannot enter warp while in system due to a combination of gravity wells and masses of demons hovering around planets. It takes a week or two to get far enough away from a system to enter warp. Meanwhile, a Federation ship can warp between here and Jupiter in a matter of seconds. And can open fire and maneuver while at those speeds.
There are examples of "sensor" combat on TNG listing ranges in excess of 300,000 kilometers. Battlefleet Gothic describes ranges of tens to potentioally a couple hundred thousand kiliometer as most. According to the TNG technical manual, phaser combat tops out around 300,000 km and torpedos have a range of 2.5 million km.

Regarding the other pieces of tech, why do we never see them used then? None of what you described was used against the dominion, nor against the borg. So either the federation hasn't the ability to use these means en mass, it isn't as reliable as you make it out to be, or are just unwilling to use these weapons no matter how dire the situation and if we are counting imperial bureaucracy as a factor against them, it's only fair the federation's psychological disadvantages apply too.

What other pieces of tech, the Genesis torpedo? The "slingshot around a star" bit Kirk used twice?

If we're going to play "who'd win in a fight" you can't say, "my guy, because the other guys wouldn't fight". That's a lazy cop-out.

Regarding planet busting weapons, i'm confused when you say "one faction" as if it was only the feds who can do such things. They can't seed a planet with life, but when it comes to blowing them up the imperium are just as good in that regard with their cyclonic torpedoes. Dunno if they can do it from super long distances, but it isn't a big deal to just send a few ships to glass a planet in the 40k setting.

The Imperium of Man needs dedicated exterminatus ships, the Federation only needs a torpedo bay. And the Imperium ship needs to hit orbit in order for a planet busting attack to be reliable.

Replicators are the federation's true ace in the hole but that really only comes to play in an extended conflict and are also their achilles heel.. As mentioned before, if they were to lose access to a replicator for w/e reason, federation forces don't do well at all, whereas 40k soldiers are used to hellish hardships and remain combat effective no matter what happens to their gear.

You know Starfleet is still composed of tool users, right?

Finally lol at federation going on the offensive. Check out the maps i posted before. The federation simply doesn't have the manpower or ability to conquer and invade the imperium in its home turf, and it would take a long time to blow everything up via long range torpedoes (which im sure the 40k side would have some sort of defense against), and the imperium can absorb plenty of losses before it really feels anything. The same is not true on the reverse side, let's say the imperials send a battlefleet straight to earth, like the borg have done before, it would be a relatively short journey for them, and this would force the federation to gather up and face them or lose everything.

There are two things the borg had going for that in that attack on Earth that the Imperium didn't though: a tech level advantage and being able to warp directly to the planets, giving the Federation scant hours to mobilize a defense. The Imperium would give them over w eek of prep time, plenty of predicted tragetories for minefields, days of preparatory torpedo bombardment, and comprehensive technical scans for measuring what they're truly up against.

And that's the obvious approach, when you think about how much damage a callidus assassin could do as she infiltrates starfleet command, the Imperium has plenty of tools at their disposal whereas for the federation you really have to start stretching to give them a chance.

Sure, as long as you imagine the potential for damage that Federation propaganda has a chance at wrecking. I mean, if alien overlords like the Tau can convince humans to give up their god emperor and side with the filthy xenos, imagine the image of healthy, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, tolerant, and compassionate humanity is going to look. Hell, they could even keep their worship of the emperor if they wanted, the Federation doesn't care.

And if the federation is like necrons, then it's gg for them. The imperium can already handle a foe with a tech level like the federation by your own admission here, usually in adverse circumstances for the imperium to boot, except federation personel dont rebuild themselves after they die and are far weaker overall to the point a guardsman would feel confident about taking them on regardless of their phasers and they don't have anything big and scary like a c'tan in their arsenal.

If by "handle" you mean, "take grievous losses stopping what amounts to a half broken boobytrap laid out millennia before hand", sure.
The Imperium's made such headway in eliminating the Necron threat.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

[Sure, in a few short decades, they could probably overwhelm the Federation... if the Federation stayed stagnant. The Dominion War shows this wouldn't be the case.

It shows that the Federation would utterly refuse to have any security measures in place to protect themselves. They know Changelings are around infiltrating and replacing people in power, but taking precautions means they've already lost or something.

They'd embarrass the Calidus assassins sent to destroy their government.

Though, in fairness to Star Trek, I try to forget DS9 ever happened.

And yet, somehow, they still won that fight

 

[Thaluikhain]

Ever think that the reason the Federation isn't shown having tanks is because they're obsolete?

Eh, Star Trek mentions a lot of things that the show doesn't have the budget for. I think they have hovertanks or something along those lines.

Actually, you don't see vehicles other than shuttles much at all. People just have to walk.

Or ride about in that stupid buggy from Nemesis, but I might put that movie in with DS9.

Battlefleet Gothic describes ranges of tens to potentioally a couple hundred thousand kiliometer as most.

Hey? In the BFG game, you'd fight over a board that could have multiple planets. That's millions of kms.

And yet, somehow, they still won that fight

Cause they didn't want to kill off the franchise just yet. No way that'd actually work.

 

[Frankster]

snippy

-Federation does have land vehicles, and land warfare still does happen in the ST setting even if it isn't the focus of any of the series.

-Like with many other things, why didn't the federation mass produce those shields and hand them out to their infantry then? They didn't use them in the war against the dominion nor do you ever see shielded redshirts when they board the borg. Either way it isn't the equalizer, the 40k guardsmen could be unarmed and they would still win through sheer weight of numbers and cold blooded savagery. If the klingons or jemhadar can enter melee range with redshirts, there is no reason why a guardsman couldn't even if they take losses on the charge.

-Again, i'm seeing a massive disconnect between what i've watched, and what you're telling me. You bought up how there's different versions of 40k and which version we should go with, but the same seems to be true of star trek.
Your technical manual seems to be about as valid as a copy of the tabletop rules from 2nd edition 40k, because none of what you mention are things i've seen in the show. And even though i'm arguing in favor of the 40k side, i like my star trek, i've watched all the original series, TNG, a fair amount of voyager, all of DS9 and some enterprise. I might not be as familiar with the supplementary material but i'm familiar with the primary sources of canon.
I've NEVER seen these super long range ship duels you describe, more often then not, ships seem to be fighting at relatively short distances, to the point Borg cubes can just use tractor beams on ships.

Honestly i'm wondering if this isn't like the phaser thing, where the supposed science of how it works doesn't match the actual lore of the setting nor what you see in the shows. I'm starting to realize the science and logic in star trek isn't really that hard as you're making it out to be nor are the rules consistent. So as much as you mock 40k for having conflicting lore or rule systems that suggest different interpretations, it seems star trek isn't that much better.

-The point about the blockade thing is that close range ship fights obviously do happen, it seems long range pew pewing from opposite sides of a solar system doesn't seem to be the norm or possible all the time. Ultimately the federation has to defend its turf, and to do that it needs to physically be a presence there or those millions of guard are going to be landing.
Also as an aside i've always wondered how a blockade in space could even work, it's a hell of a lot of space to cover.

-I can somewhat understand what we see in a tv show has to be taken with a grain of salt, but you can't discount it entirely either. Those federation ships were buzzing around borg cubes at close range, every single space battle we have seen has been at ranges where ships were visible to each other, if only distantly. Ships are routinely able to teleport people to each other when shields are down, they are often in tractor range, etc.. You really can't say "they were actually shooting at each other from super far away!" to hand wave all these moments, it just doesn't add up.

-Lasguns =/= Slug throwers unless we are sticking purely to the tabletop where a muscly catachan is as strong and tough as an underfed hive street urchin.

-"If we're going to play "who'd win in a fight" you can't say, "my guy, because the other guys wouldn't fight". That's a lazy cop-out."
It's not a lazy copout if it's true and that's not what i was saying anyways. Just like how the 40k side is capable of building sentient AI soldiers but doesn't due to psychological factors, the federation side has psychological factors of its own that seems to prevent it going all out. It's also why the imperium's size and response time is something discussed in this thread, that the imperial response would take time to muster which gives the federation prep time, maybe a lot of it.

So to go back to this, you never see the federation fight this way, they never bomb cardassian or dominion planets and installations with super long range ordinance, they never use all these super weapons you mention.
The 40k side has no such reservations when it comes to going all out, this isn't a lazy copout, it's something rather important and even intrinsical to the federation: their utopian ideals. Which you even conveniently bring up later that they could use as part of a propaganda attempt.

-The point is the imperium is able to fight against the necrons. The reason they can't eliminate the necron threat entirely is due to factors which don't apply in the case of the federation. Redshirts don't warp out when they die to tomb worlds to be reconstructed for example. The federation has necron style weapons and tech if i am to believe you, but they are not necrons, and have homeworlds to defend and a clear civilian population to target which the necrons don't.
So by handle i mean they are able to actually fight them and even hit their super fast ships just fine, it's their necrodermic whatever you call it armor that gives them problems and allows them to tank imperium firepower so effectively.

-Fair enough regarding in system short warp jumps, guess i been playing too much battlefleet gothic armada where i do short range warp jumps all the time xP

-"You know Starfleet is still composed of tool users, right?"
Yes and i don't get what you're trying to say. I already mentioned your average redshirt would likely be a tech whizz, but it doesn't change that if something happens to their replicators and they lack the means to fix it for whatever reason like in that siege of x episode from ds9, they do very poorly. It's not a stretch to say relying on tech makes you somewhat dependent on it, that's true for a lot of people even in our modern world.

-Federation propaganda is a valid strat. But i think you're overestimating its effectiveness. What kind of damage do you think the propaganda would do exactly? The best the tau could do after years of effort is getting a few planets on their borders with flaky planetary governors to secede, but this was also due to a sentiment that the imperium had abandoned them or were busy elsewhere. It's not like entire sectors broke off to join the tau and if there was any real possibility of damage, suddenly you've drawn the attention of the inquisition.
You just can't compare this to callidus infiltration who can easily work their way up to the upper echelons of starfleet command (something which has already happened in the show), made all the more easier by the federation's small size and more simple hierarchy in comparison the byzantine like power structure of the imperium. A section 51 agent trying to work their way up to the high lords would have his work cut out for him, not to mention having to deal with pyskers and inquisitors. The imperium is a totalitarian state full of paranoia, whereas the federation is an utopia all about freedom and personal liberties, and as wonderful as that is, it is only much more susceptible to infiltration tactics.

-Assuming the imperium can warp travel to earth (and if they can't, then an invasion of federation space becomes just plain unfeasible), then they would get even less warning then they had with the borg since their method of FTL is faster when it comes to vast distances. Furthermore fleet travelling through the warp wouldn't be picked up by the federation's sensors unless they already did extensive research on warp travel and did techno sciencey stuff to be able to detect an approaching fleet without psykers.

-The federation beating the dominion was a massive hax. In all seriousness i felt absolutely cheated by Ds9 in that regard. Dukat should have won, he beat the federation fair and square, until a litteral deus ex machina happened and wops, that massive dominion armada got wiped by extra dimensional powers.
The federation didn't win the dominion war by themselves, without the intervention of the prophets and that the protagonist starfleet officer happened to be their chose emissary, they would have lost that war.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Also as an aside i've always wondered how a blockade in space could even work, it's a hell of a lot of space to cover.

Eh, I imagine it'd be like a naval interdiction. Either you put your warships right next to what you are interdicting and attack anything coming in or out (in that case you would be able to attack planets themselves in ways that don't always apply to naval ships, unless there's some other factors in play), or you send out patrols roaming round a great distance away and probably accept that you are going to miss a lot of ships.

In the sense of getting a bunch of ships to stay in formation in interstellar space between systems, that'd work about as well as having ships in the same place in the middle of the Atlantic and hoping convoys just run into you all the time. Star Trek has done this at least once, though, but never explained how such a thing could possibly work.

 

[veloper]

SNIP

The Federation is basically the Tau in technology terms. And half of their shit barely works at all against Imperial Cruisers. Most Imperial ships fire weapons, including laser and Gauss technology, larger than Federation ships. And damage to Federation ships is way harder to repair and devastating. A single laser hit is enough to damage half the systems in a starship, whereas even quantum torpedoes would just put a few holes in a Battlecruiser and kill a few thousand, which is negligible to the Imperial Navy.

The Tau have absolutely nothing on the Federation or any of the major trekkie races.

Take your gauss cannon for example: so your WH40K flagship can fire ship sized slugs at maybe 1000 m/s at a target.. .cool, but the thing is that a Federation ship can handle pebbles hitting it at lightspeed and far beyond, with it's minor navigational deflectors. That's one of the excuses why they can supposedly zoom around at 100 times the speed of light.
The energy of a rock at lightspeed is enough to destroy earth and that's just their weak navigational deflectors working, not even their real shields.

Lasers, gauss weapons, anything vaguely resembling something that already exists now, will always be many orders of magnitude too weak to damage such fantastic shielding. Upscaling the size of the weapon doesn't matter at this point anymore, because those trekkie inventions are completely off the charts.

Now take the trekkie phasor: these things don't make holes if the operator doesn't want it too, but will completely obliterate a ship regardless of size.
Best example is the TNG enterprise vs the Borg: the instant the Borg shields are down, a metal cube the size of a city, goes from looking perfectly pristene, to completely obliterated, not even leaving a wreckage; this from a pixel wide beam on the tv screen.

The physics of star trek are just completely ludicrous. A colossal imperial ship too them, would be just a bigger balloon to pop.

 

[veloper]

Warhammer40K may be over the top, but Star Trek is crazily OP in it's own way. Basically 1 enterprise easily beats a billion wh40k flagships, all because of the silly fictional descriptions of their tech levels.

Before we get too excited about how amazing the Enterprise is, lets remember that any band of nobody aliens can toss together something capable of matching it. Remember the Scimitar? Remember the Son'a? And remember that Klingons - who aren't that far removed from the mentality of the Imperium - rival the Federation in technical prowess. The Federation hasn't managed to steamroll the ideologically-blinkered and illiberal regimes via technological advantage in it's own neck of the woods, why would we expect it to do so against an empire that's had a head start of thirty-seven and a half thousand years to invent things?

Those are not really nobody aliens, as most trekkie races are all ludicrously advanced.
The Klingons may look primitive and silly, but they are supposed to be a match for the early federation and they invented photon torpedos before the federation did and stories like that.

The main issue is that big lasers have nothing on those silly OP phasors and giant gauss cannons are nothing against ships that supposedly can dance around faster than the speed of light.

 

[Megalodon]

Now take the trekkie phasor: these things don't make holes if the operator doesn't want it too, but will completely obliterate a ship regardless of size.

Then why doesn't that happen in the show? When Federation troops get into firefights, the phasers behave exactly like any generic laser weapon, Star Wars blasters, Farscape Pulse Weapons, Stargate Staffs etc. There's a slow, potentially dodge-able energy effect, a little explosion when they hit a gut, then he falls over, assuming the guns have decided to work that episode. If the phasers are so powerful, why don't we see people with big holes blown in them? When Clingons or Hirogen board Federation vessels, let alone when they're engaged in full blown war with the Dominion, we never see the mythical power of Federation tech brought up in this thread.

As for the ships, if Trek phasers/energy weapons are so good, why did the Jem'hadar ram the Odyssey? Why not just shoot it if it's so easy to total unshielded ships? If Trek ships can use their FTL to easily dodge incoming fire, why do they never do it in the shows? Whenever we see ship combat, phasers and torpedoes are clearly moving at lest than the speed of light.

If you're going to trek fanboy, why not use something ridiculous from the show? It's not like it's hard to find something, like the self replicating mines used to block the DS9 wormhole for a time. That's the thing with Trek in these 'vs' arguments, while I do like it, they so often introduce complete asspulls to resolve plots, it makes it hard to gauge their 'true' abilities. Summed up so well by this song.

 

[lionsprey]

The Imperium would win if only because they are not afraid to send people on suicide missions and blow up planets. besides the Imperium is already plenty used to fighting against superior technology.

 

[veloper]

Now take the trekkie phasor: these things don't make holes if the operator doesn't want it too, but will completely obliterate a ship regardless of size.

Then why doesn't that happen in the show?

Possibly because these guys are all softies and will take prisoners, except against the Borg and perhaps a few others enemies.
Phasors can do it, see the Borg cube, but trekkies play nice against Klingons and such.

When Federation troops get into firefights, the phasers behave exactly like any generic laser weapon, Star Wars blasters, Farscape Pulse Weapons, Stargate Staffs etc. There's a slow, potentially dodge-able energy effect, a little explosion when they hit a gut, then he falls over, assuming the guns have decided to work that episode. If the phasers are so powerful, why don't we see people with big holes blown in them? When Clingons or Hirogen board Federation vessels, let alone when they're engaged in full blown war with the Dominion, we never see the mythical power of Federation tech brought up in this thread.

They set things on weak mode for reasons all the time. Shit, a phasor is exactly nothing like a generic energy weapon, it can even stun various species, but otherwise leave the target unharmed. What kind of laser of plasma beam would do that? Shit is fucking magic.

As for the ships, if Trek phasers/energy weapons are so good, why did the Jem'hadar ram the Odyssey? Why not just shoot it if it's so easy to total unshielded ships? If Trek ships can use their FTL to easily dodge incoming fire, why do they never do it in the shows? Whenever we see ship combat, phasers and torpedoes are clearly moving at lest than the speed of light.

Trekkie lore says photon torpedos were invented exactly because they move at warp speed and ships can outrun phasors, because light speed.

The distances must be huge and the representations of the battles entirely simulated, because you cannot see things moving at those speeds.

If you're going to trek fanboy, why not use something ridiculous from the show? It's not like it's hard to find something, like the self replicating mines used to block the DS9 wormhole for a time. That's the thing with Trek in these 'vs' arguments, while I do like it, they so often introduce complete asspulls to resolve plots, it makes it hard to gauge their 'true' abilities. Summed up so well by this song.

It's all ludicrous to various degrees and often illogical and inconsistent, but what's for sure is that it's all outside all boundaries.

 

[Megalodon]

Possibly because these guys are all softies and will take prisoners, except against the Borg and perhaps a few others enemies.
Phasors can do it, see the Borg cube, but trekkies play nice against Klingons and such.

Sorry, but that doesn't add up. When there's a Klingon charging you with a big sharp thing, why would a redshirt 'play nice'? It's literally life or death. Either the guns cannot do what you describe (the most likely outcome), or ever time we see Trek characters in a life or death situation, they use a less effective 'kill' functionality on their guns (which is ludicrous, as they're still trying to kill people).

When Federation troops get into firefights, the phasers behave exactly like any generic laser weapon, Star Wars blasters, Farscape Pulse Weapons, Stargate Staffs etc. There's a slow, potentially dodge-able energy effect, a little explosion when they hit a gut, then he falls over, assuming the guns have decided to work that episode. If the phasers are so powerful, why don't we see people with big holes blown in them? When Clingons or Hirogen board Federation vessels, let alone when they're engaged in full blown war with the Dominion, we never see the mythical power of Federation tech brought up in this thread.

They set things on weak mode for reasons all the time. Shit, a phasor is exactly nothing like a generic energy weapon, it can even stun various species, but otherwise leave the target unharmed. What kind of laser of plasma beam would do that? Shit is fucking magic.

Re read what I said. What we see in the show, when they use phasers to kill, is identical to any generic sci fi ray gun. Yes they have the stun stuff, but those clearly have their limitations too, because the weapons have a kill setting. After all, if a wide beam stun burst (or whatever) could stop a Klingon boarding party, they would've been used in (for example) Way of the Warrior. Again, there's no reason to suppose phasers have deadlier options than what we see in the show, because if they don't use them when their backs are to the wall, there no point in having them in the first place.

As for the ships, if Trek phasers/energy weapons are so good, why did the Jem'hadar ram the Odyssey? Why not just shoot it if it's so easy to total unshielded ships? If Trek ships can use their FTL to easily dodge incoming fire, why do they never do it in the shows? Whenever we see ship combat, phasers and torpedoes are clearly moving at lest than the speed of light.

Trekkie lore says photon torpedos were invented exactly because they move at warp speed and ships can outrun phasors, because light speed.

The why ever have/use phasers then, if they're so easy for ships to dodge? Besides, the consensus on the torpedoes seems to be that they can travel at warp, but only if launched from a platform already at warp. As the vast majority of ship combat seen in the show does not appear to be taking place at warp, so the torpedoes should still be easily dodgable. Yet they aren't. Which suggests that Trek ships cannot dodge using their FTL as easily as you claim.

The distances must be huge and the representations of the battles entirely simulated, because you cannot see things moving at those speeds.

Why? There's nothing to suggest in the show that the scenes we see are anything other than literally what is occurring.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

The physics of Star Trek change based on the plot of the episode.

Phasers in TNG/DS9 can on the occasion atomize a ship. TOS they barely scratch the paint. Voyager they do whatever dramatic thing needs doing. At best its an inconsistent technology, and certainly not one we can reliably assume has the same effect on titanic ships from 40k.

Blowing up a single Borg Cube the size of a small city is no the same as blowing up a Gloriana Flagship the size of an New Zealand, or a battlefortress the size of a moon. Besides phasers are basically point blank weapons, requiring visual contact to hit, whereas 40k ships can shoot from across a star system and still hit.

Also the Imperium is much more willing to commit warcrimes to win. The Federation would never think of triggering a supernova to deny a planet to an enemy. The Imperium does that regularly. The Imperium is more than capable of destroying entire planets at ranges considered impossible by the Federation.

Also Warp Travel, albiet unstable what with the hell dimension and ghosts, is more reliable at longer distances. Voyager traveling at maximum warp was gonna take what, 2-3 centuries to get back to the Federation? Imperium ships can travel the entire galaxy in a week if the Warp tides are in their favor, because it doesn't obey the laws of physics. Its an alternate dimension where you're just as likely to get there yesterday, last week, tomorrow, in 5 seconds, never, a billion years from now, or arrive as pasta salad. So while the Federation is spending weeks/months/years marshaling its ships in one small empire, the Imperium can bring in tens of thousands of ships from across the Galaxy to overwhelm them.
And seeings how Warp travel is impossible to track, Imperial ships can basically appear anywhere in the Federation at anytime, literally.

And I'm not even going to mention ground forces. Hand phasers are all well and good, but they're still wielded by people, who are not Space Marines. A single Space Marine with a bolter could kill the entire bridge crew of any Federation ship in a matter of heartbeats. They'd be dead before they even realized a Marine was there the Marines move so fast. And God help the Federation if the Imperium brings in Assassins, the Grey Knights, Titans or more than 1 Marine.

 

[Mangod]

Guys, we're literally pitting

Spoiler: this guy

against

Spoiler: this guy.

In what world is the latter gonna be considered anything resembling a threat? Yeah, he's got a fancy gun - it also barely bothers people when you shoot them with it half the time.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Battlefleet Gothic describes ranges of tens to potentioally a couple hundred thousand kiliometer as most.

Hey? In the BFG game, you'd fight over a board that could have multiple planets. That's millions of kms.

Well sure, if you ignore any of the fluff numbers they give in Gothic and assume two planets in sufficiently different orbits you could make a case for Imperial ships having ranges in the dozens or hundreds of millions of kilometers.

And I could set up a game of Starfleet Battles and do the same. Which would be silly.

Then why doesn't that happen in the show? When Federation troops get into firefights, the phasers behave exactly like any generic laser weapon, Star Wars blasters, Farscape Pulse Weapons, Stargate Staffs etc. There's a slow, potentially dodge-able energy effect, a little explosion when they hit a gut, then he falls over, assuming the guns have decided to work that episode. If the phasers are so powerful, why don't we see people with big holes blown in them? When Clingons or Hirogen board Federation vessels, let alone when they're engaged in full blown war with the Dominion, we never see the mythical power of Federation tech brought up in this thread.

Because they're a show on tv with a budget. Same way as you could hear tales of a couple dozen Sapce Marines taking over a planet but in the tabletop an Imperial Guardsman with an auto gun has a 1/20 chance of downing one with every pull of the trigger.

Let's talk about those Space Marines if we're going to acknowledge a limited TV budget as being the full extent of Star Trek's power. Let's go with the version of Battlefleet Gothic's rules where moving through minor and dissipating debris fields will bring a ship's void shields down.

Look, if anything, I'm a 40k fan more than a Trek fan, but the lore is fucked. There's been times where the described crew size of a ship, in mass alone, wouldn't physically fit inside the ship. The Imperial Guard vacillates between being a hyper competent elite force most are honored to join and being a conscript force where sending a million men on a suicide mission with no chance if success is the order of the day (and something rightly mocked in the Ciaphas Cain novels).

Given that the tabletop game is the starter underpinning of the franchise, I go with that being closer to the reality of the situation, with the more egregious lore being the myths and propaganda.

As for the ships, if Trek phasers/energy weapons are so good, why did the Jem'hadar ram the Odyssey? Why not just shoot it if it's so easy to total unshielded ships? If Trek ships can use their FTL to easily dodge incoming fire, why do they never do it in the shows? Whenever we see ship combat, phasers and torpedoes are clearly moving at lest than the speed of light.

Everything is relative and evasive maneuvers are difficult and expensive to animate. Ship combat in the franchise where almost everyone can fight at velocities fighter than the speed of light must rely on hyper advanced targeting systems. And Impulse power, let alone warp, gives ships an acceleration rate of something like 15,000 km/s. Imperial Admirals would commit some quite impressive heresies to get that kind of speed.

If you're going to trek fanboy, why not use something ridiculous from the show? It's not like it's hard to find something, like the self replicating mines used to block the DS9 wormhole for a time. That's the thing with Trek in these 'vs' arguments, while I do like it, they so often introduce complete asspulls to resolve plots, it makes it hard to gauge their 'true' abilities. Summed up so well by this song.

Those have been brought up. Along with various asspulls in the show being made illegal for future use by Starfleet regarding things like time travel, cloaking devices, and sub space weaponry. Presumably, using a Genesis torpedo on inhabited worlds is under a similar restriction.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Actually its more like these guys

Spoiler

against these guys

Spoiler

And most of us are correct in assuming which side is gonna' win.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Blowing up a single Borg Cube the size of a small city is no the same as blowing up a Gloriana Flagship the size of an New Zealand, or a battlefortress the size of a moon. Besides phasers are basically point blank weapons, requiring visual contact to hit, whereas 40k ships can shoot from across a star system and still hit.

See, this shit is why these "who would win, 40k or " discussions get a bad rap. There are actual numbers you can look up about this shit, but the 40k side just tends to make shit up.

Case in point: the Gloriana class Battleship is an impressive 26 kilometers long. Slightly longer than New York City, sure, but not nearly the size of New Zealand. (1600km)

Is there anything in fiction for 40k that has Imperial ships shooting across star systems? The longest example of weapon fire I could find was 500,000 km, and that was acknowledged as an egregious breach of the rest of the fiction. Comparing the fights shown on the visual medium of tv and movies, then comparing that to background fluff of 40k is wrong. It'd be like if I posted this:

and made the argument that, clearly, the warships of the 40k millennium only have ranges measured in the dozens of kilometers at most.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

As for the ships, if Trek phasers/energy weapons are so good, why did the Jem'hadar ram the Odyssey? Why not just shoot it if it's so easy to total unshielded ships?

Sorry to poke my nose in here, but this bit stood out for me. In the show, the reason the Jen'hadar rammed the Odyssey had nothing to do with weapons or shields. They did so as a psychological move. "You guys REALLY want to take us on? Then you should know that we will kill our own in order to achieve victory, you pansies! We'll blow up our own soldiers and ships without hesitation if that's what it takes to win! You want to come against that?"

Onto the actual topic: The reason it is impossible to compare competing fictional universes is very simple: There are no rules to physics in those universes except the one big rule that commands everything Is it important to the plot?

Does this weapon destroy a ship in one shot? Depends on if it moves the plot along.
Do the shields hold against the enemy onslaught? Depends on if it moves the plot along.
Can this attack be dodged? Depends on if it moves the plot along.

Absolutely nothing is set in fictional physics and no amount of tech manuals or theorizing changes that simple fact. Everything, and I do means absolutely EVERYTHING is subservient to the needs of the plot, physics included.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

SNIP

Actually its more like these guys

Spoiler

against these guys

Spoiler

And most of us are correct in assuming which side is gonna' win.

That's the side with the Gauss Flayers, right?

Thematically, Star Trek would be existing in what the 41st milunium refers to as The Golden Age of Technology, that forever lost point in time where everything was awesome.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Interesting thought for discussion:

A majority of these types of threads assumes the more militant side as the aggressor, making first contact with an invasion.

What if, instead, the Federation made first contact? Talking to fringe worlds, sharing technology and information, propagandizing, etc.

Where the situation is "this new batch of technologically advance humans with a message of inclusiveness and peace which works for them" is causing an unexpected disruption to the Imperium?

Which would give the Federation years or decades of lead time before the Imperium is able to react in force. Which, given the rate of development the Federation has could prove dangerous to the Imperium's power structure, especially if the masses witness the rapid development and complete lack of alien dominance or mystical and physical corruption. If the Feds ran into a hive world, the place would be in revolt within hours.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Never look for consistency in 40k Lore. Gloriana Ships have been described as just large Battle Barges in Horus Rising, 5 miles long in Gulliman and Know No Fear, 26km in Fear to Tread and Angel Exterminatus, and the size of small continents in several short stories and later novels.

And in the Deathwatch novels the Inquisition do in fact have giant portable alien origin space guns capable of firing across star systems by basically teleporting the blast the instant its fired across the system.
Other weapons are indeed capable of triggering Super Novas, used in this example to eliminate an entire Hive Fleet that was in-system.

Hell the Planet Killer basically has no real minimum range because it uses physics breaking Chaos Magic.

The reason you think there's a 'bad rap' is because every novel, codex and game is using its own scale. Imperator Titans for example. Some people will cite 20 year old statistic that put them at like 50-90m tall. Others, such as myself, will cite new stories that have Imperators walking across oceans(described at taller than the deepest recorded depth) will being above surface, and firing guns that are "kilometers long" at targets half a continent away.

So yeah, there's no real 40k scale because there are so many alternate versions. Its safe to say 40k is simply bigger than whatever they're fighting.