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

[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.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

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.

Yeah probably.
But I would point out photon rifles won't do much against spectral ghost Marines infected with a daemon virus that makes them basically immune to dying and the laws of physics.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

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.

So this whole argument is basically moot then? One side just gets to add a couple more zeros until it wins?

All right then: the Federation uses it's predictable time travel to go back in time to prevent the Imperium from becoming the giant shithole that it is, stopping the AI revolt, and for shuts and giggles, helps prevent the Eldar from throwing a party so large they create Slannesh by showing the Eldar the errors of their ways.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

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.

Yeah probably.
But I would point out photon rifles won't do much against spectral ghost Marines infected with a daemon virus that makes them basically immune to dying and the laws of physics.

The Federation would find the cure for their ailment by the end of the episode and get a powerful new ally.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So this whole argument is basically moot then? One side just gets to add a couple more zeros until it wins?

All right then: the Federation uses it's predictable time travel to go back in time to prevent the Imperium from becoming the giant shithole that it is, stopping the AI revolt, and for shuts and giggles, helps prevent the Eldar from throwing a party so large they create Slannesh by showing the Eldar the errors of their ways.

To be fair, Trek is hardly consistent across the board either. As I've pointed out early, ship based phasers change in power based on the show and episode. Likewise shields range in power from impenetrable to barely there, based entirely on the needs of the plot.

And how can the Federation time travel to the past when they're being invaded? The 40k past is still 30,000 years ahead of Trek.

Would love to see Eldar and Vulcans hanging out though. Emotionless calm, reasoning logical people vs whiny entitled little shits so emotional and aggressive they literally fucked a God of lust and hatred into existence.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Speaking of a scale that's intentionally exaggerated, the largest ordinance an Imperial ship carries are torpedoes, which range from 60m to 300m long. The Enterprise D was 642.5 meters long.

I did actually check it, and based off this [http://i.stack.imgur.com/ndeuf.jpg] at least some incarnations of the Enterprise fall within that range. I mean, there's multiple Enterprises, so I guess I can't make a blanket statement.

We're still talking about an order of magnitude size difference, here. The Imperium's middle-class cruisers are ten times the Enterprise D's cited length.

I mean, size isn't everything - I think a Federation ship that played smart would outclass an Imperial capital ship. But the Federation isn't a militaristic race of fanatics with a 10,000 year history of killing stuff they don't like. They'll learn fast, but they're still primarily explorers first, warriors second. And if forced into a straight-up fight? Like, if Imperial capital ships were above a Federation world and the local navy was forced to defend it? I don't think Starfleet would fare too well. Even a destroyed Imperial capital ship is ten kilometres of explosive wreckage falling down onto the planet you're supposed to be defending.

And that's part of the problem with this whole debate: Star Trek, in spite of it's bullshit superscience, is far more defined than 40k.

Eh...it is and it isn't. There's a ton of supplementary material that explains, in considerable depth, the mechanisms (however plausible) behind stuff like bolters, power armour, and Astartes augmentations. There is also considerable variance in the actual media, but...that's the case with Star Trek as well.

For example, the first reboot film said it was a big deal for Scotty to have figured out how to teleport onto a ship going at warp speed, and the second has Khan casually teleporting from Earth to Klingon space in a manner that makes the whole concept of Starfleet seem somewhat redundant.

I wouldn't say either of them are more "hard" science.

It also has Eldar and Necron levels of tech and fire power. Fleets of Necron and Eldar escort ships routinely pick apart the far larger beheamoths of the Imperial fleet.

Yes and no. Necron ships outclass the Imperium substantially, but Necrons make the Borg look like pussies, and the Federation still had trouble with the Borg if I remember correctly.

Eldar ships are a different matter. In Battlefleet Gothic and most of the fluff, they're described as being faster, more graceful, and with some powerful weaponry, but ultimately hit-and-run ships that can't stand up to an Imperial broadside. Competitively balanced, in other words.

Hell, the only reason Starfleet doesn't have sub space weapons, which in this scenario could be used to shoot at Imperial ships that are still in the warp, is because Starfleet made them illegal, same with time travel and casual exterminatus.

I'm not familiar with what you mean by sub-space weapons, but I don't see how they'd be able to shoot at ships in the Warp when the Warp doesn't exist in the Star Trek universe.

I mean, that's another thing to consider. Does the Warp exist?

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Haha, wow. I posted that and there was like an entire other page afterwards.

The Federation would find the cure for their ailment by the end of the episode and get a powerful new ally.

Well, that's Star Trek for you.

I mean, it boils down to optimistic utopian universe vs. pessimistic dystopian universe. If we're applying narrative rules here, we'd get a clash between "We mixed some stuff in jars and waved a salt shaker around and cured this guy's otherworldly supernatural virus, so happy ending!" and "We fought all day, lost 90% of our men, killed a hundred times our number of the enemy, and then the Tyranids showed up out of nowhere and ate everything. So, sad ending."

Anyway, these versus threads always end up fighting over granular details like how powerful a phaser is, how big a ship is, so-and-so and blah-blah-blah. I mean, I went through this whole thing with a guy on a Warhammer fanfiction website who wrote a Star Wars/40k crossover. This was literally over a decade ago, mind. But the guy was a huge fanboy, so his "story" consisted of the Empire trouncing the Imperium in every conceivable way while Logan Grimnar fucked some whores - "because he's a Viking" - and our attempts at giving feedback devolved into arguments like "Is the Force equivalent to the Warp?" "Would a Jedi beat a Librarian?" "Are stormtrooper blasters better than lasguns?" "Would a lightsaber cut a power sword?"

I was just like, dude - you want to write a story, there has to be conflict. Interesting conflict. One fandom stomping all over the other one may be cathartic, but it's also boring.

Anyway, that doesn't apply as much here because no-one's writing fanfiction, but it's the memory that inevitably comes to mind every time I read a versus thread.

 

[Megalodon]

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.

You mean the Marines that do not occur in any of the stories at all? Why should we do that? That concession for the table Top is contradicted by the very books that contain the rules. Using in game performance (and which version of the rules to boot?) as the 'true' setting is the very epitome of the cherry picking that unfortunately characterises these 'vs' questions. You yourself mocked the idea of using the game as representative when in came to space combat, why apply different standards to ground war?

I only even bothered here because you guys were making claims about trek tech abilities that don't make sense, because they don't do that stuff in their own setting, so how could they do it in a cross over?

Look, if anything, I'm a 40k fan more than a Trek fan, but the lore is fucked.

And Trek's isn't?

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).

Well, yeah, both are true at different times/places. It's one of the advantages (or not, taste dependent) of the galactic scale clusterfuck that is the 40k setting.

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.

So ignore 90+% of the entire 40k setting then? That's like only counting series 1 of TNG as 'true trek'.

Everything is relative and evasive maneuvers are difficult and expensive to animate.

Why would animating a ship dodging be more expensive than animating it getting hit? Plus with dodging you could save on the exploding console and stunt helmsman budget. So yeah, not a convincing argument I'm afraid.

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.

Not really. That's not actually that much faster than higher end Imperial plasma drives. Using Impulse power, it would take approximately 14 hours to get out to Pluto's orbit. 40k warships are capable of getting from system edge jump points to planetary orbit in very similar timescales (the Forge World books cover this quite well).

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Speaking of a scale that's intentionally exaggerated, the largest ordinance an Imperial ship carries are torpedoes, which range from 60m to 300m long. The Enterprise D was 642.5 meters long.

I did actually check it, and based off this [http://i.stack.imgur.com/ndeuf.jpg] at least some incarnations of the Enterprise fall within that range. I mean, there's multiple Enterprises, so I guess I can't make a blanket statement.

We're still talking about an order of magnitude size difference, here. The Imperium's middle-class cruisers are ten times the Enterprise D's cited length.

I've been generally reasonable and have largely been sticking to the The Next Generation as established in the OP. I figured the 40k version would also be based around decades old fluff considering capabilities and fluff. If we're going full tilt on fluff and using the more modern fluff like Silentpony seems to be, well...

The Federation has weaponized time travel. It's had to in order to protect its own past. Then you get all the terrifying shit in the upper echelons of the Star Trek Online universe.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

You mean the Marines that do not occur in any of the stories at all? Why should we do that? That concession for the table Top is contradicted by the very books that contain the rules. Using in game performance (and which version of the rules to boot?) as the 'true' setting is the very epitome of the cherry picking that unfortunately characterises these 'vs' questions. You yourself mocked the idea of using the game as representative when in came to space combat, why apply different standards to ground war?

Because if the background fluff for one doesn't count, then neither does the background fluff of the other.

I only even bothered here because you guys were making claims about trek tech abilities that don't make sense, because they don't do that stuff in their own setting, so how could they do it in a cross over?

Examples?

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.

So ignore 90+% of the entire 40k setting then? That's like only counting series 1 of TNG as 'true trek'.

The opening post is defining the Trek abilities as TNG era. In essence "the true trek". You sure you want me pulling out STO and the temporal Cold War and transwarp?

Everything is relative and evasive maneuvers are difficult and expensive to animate.

Why would animating a ship dodging be more expensive than animating it getting hit? Plus with dodging you could save on the exploding console and stunt helmsman budget. So yeah, not a convincing argument I'm afraid.

Remember, this was special effects in the 90s. Static model with drawn on beam effects is far easier than actually moving shit around the screen from multiple angles.

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.

Not really. That's not actually that much faster than higher end Imperial plasma drives. Using Impulse power, it would take approximately 14 hours to get out to Pluto's orbit. 40k warships are capable of getting from system edge jump points to planetary orbit in very similar timescales (the Forge World books cover this quite well).

One of the rare examples of 40k overwriting its fluff to make something smaller.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

I've been generally reasonable and have largely been sticking to the The Next Generation as established in the OP. I figured the 40k version would also be based around decades old fluff considering capabilities and fluff. If we're going full tilt on fluff and using the more modern fluff like Silentpony seems to be, well...

Oh, I missed the part of the OP that said to stick to TNG. My bad.

It's actually a good idea, because as you said...time travel. I mean, time travel is fucking dumb - if we incorporated it into every versus match-up, then the Doctor would beat the Imperium by himself by just...I don't know. Going back in time and blowing up Earth. Every versus thread would be "Do you have time travel? If not, GTFO."

(There is technically time travel in 40k, but it's of the "we fell into the Warp and came out somewhen else" kind.)

 

[Megalodon]

You mean the Marines that do not occur in any of the stories at all? Why should we do that? That concession for the table Top is contradicted by the very books that contain the rules. Using in game performance (and which version of the rules to boot?) as the 'true' setting is the very epitome of the cherry picking that unfortunately characterises these 'vs' questions. You yourself mocked the idea of using the game as representative when in came to space combat, why apply different standards to ground war?

Because if the background fluff for one doesn't count, then neither does the background fluff of the other.

What even is 'background' fluff vs 'real' fluff then? 40k, while it got its start on the tabletop, has evolved into so much more than that over the last 30-odd years. It's not hard to find 40k fans who only read the books, or play the video games and have never even tried painting or playing with the models.

Whereas Star Trek has remained predominantly a TV/film based franchise. While there are of course books, games etc. the shows have always been treated as the gold standard for Trek. Tbh I'm not even sure how 'canon' the rest of it's meant to be (I'd assumed something like Star Wars, where the films and series take precedence).

I only even bothered here because you guys were making claims about trek tech abilities that don't make sense, because they don't do that stuff in their own setting, so how could they do it in a cross over?

Examples?

"What we know from trekkie lore is that if a race still uses lasers (lascannons) and plasma weapons, then they are hopelessly outdated"

Yet the Dominion, who had the Federation pretty badly outgunned during their war, are stated to use some kind of plasma based weaponry. So it seems premature at best to discount plasma weaponry as 'hopelessly outdated'.

"Handheld vaporization beams as a sidearm"

If their personal weapons are so deadly, how is a Klingon with a sharp stick a threat in a fight?

"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."

This is the one that prompted me to actually bother posting. I addressed my issues with the claim in post 69.

"The Imperium of Man needs dedicated exterminatus ships, the Federation only needs a torpedo bay."

This one's more of pedantic quibble. The BFG game had dedicated extermiantus ships for gameplay reasons. In the 40k fluff, while the Imperium does use dedicated exterminatus vessels (or just the Space Marines), that's because of political choice, not specialised need. Exterminatus, the ultimate sanction, is not actuaaly used quite as blas? a fashion as some claim. It's serious business and needs serious organisation. While any cruiser could fire cyclonics or virus bombs from its torpedo tubes, that's not the responsibility of naval line officers.

So ignore 90+% of the entire 40k setting then? That's like only counting series 1 of TNG as 'true trek'.

The opening post is defining the Trek abilities as TNG era. In essence "the true trek". You sure you want me pulling out STO and the temporal Cold War and transwarp?

That's not what I said, I specified a single series of TNG. Trying to make a case using only 1/7 of one of the shows in that time period is needlessly hobbling, which is similar to only counting tabletop crunch as representative of 40k.

 

[Level 7 Dragon]

So this whole argument is basically moot then? One side just gets to add a couple more zeros until it wins?

All right then: the Federation uses it's predictable time travel to go back in time to prevent the Imperium from becoming the giant shithole that it is, stopping the AI revolt, and for shuts and giggles, helps prevent the Eldar from throwing a party so large they create Slannesh by showing the Eldar the errors of their ways.

To be fair, Trek is hardly consistent across the board either. As I've pointed out early, ship based phasers change in power based on the show and episode. Likewise shields range in power from impenetrable to barely there, based entirely on the needs of the plot.

And how can the Federation time travel to the past when they're being invaded? The 40k past is still 30,000 years ahead of Trek.

Would love to see Eldar and Vulcans hanging out though. Emotionless calm, reasoning logical people vs whiny entitled little shits so emotional and aggressive they literally fucked a God of lust and hatred into existence.

The thing about Elder is that they have a lot in common when it comes to culture. One destroyed their homeworld in a nuclear exange, the other organized an orgy so massive that it ended up creating an Elder God. Both grew to regret their past actions and developed a religion based around reason and self control. Both have elf ears.

 

[veloper]

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).

Nothing adds up in star trek, but you still occasionally see them pulls such tricks, so we simply have to assume they CAN do it.
With the replicators, teleporters and AI they have, a space ship should look nothing like a ship with a bridge, human operators and squishy exploration parties, let alone towing 1000 civilians, but they still dick around anyway.

Put it down too lazy writing. I guess the trekkies also want more relatable scenario's.

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.

They can even dig tunnels in rock with them when required. Again, lazy writing and trekkies rarely using their maximum capabilities, but still winning anyway.

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.

A somewhat logical explanation could be that when your opponents and their torpedoes are also super fast, turning loops in the empty vacuum of space doesn't help much and you're better off diverting all your power from engines to shields and weapons.

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.

Because in the black vacuum of space we can still witness 1 thing: human operators apparently still have time to react, even going through a verbal command chain. Given the kind of speeds trekkies give us, like warp 1 is light speed and max impulse is c/4, we can deduct that the distances should be in the order of light seconds or light minutes.

 

[veloper]

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.

I agree on the total inconsistency of the star trek universe, but that leaves the question which episode we're going to take and why.

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.

Sure it's not the same, but when a vessel can instantly atomize an unshielded city, how much should it even matter that it might then take a minute or so to wreck a country?

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.

I don't think a phaser is short range. With the kind of speeds they give out for the torpedoes and ships and how much time everyone gets to react, I estimate trekkies typically fight at distances measured in light seconds.

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.

The problem is payload delivery. Imperials cannot warp close to planets and outside the warp, imperial speeds are just conventional. The trekkies may just disintegrate the slow and unshielded ammo, with their magic beams, as long as they have a presence in the solar system.

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.

The main downside with warp dimension travel, is that's like public transport: it doesn't take you exactly where you want to be, aside from the reliability issues.
As soon as they leave the warp, the imperials are stuck to conventional speeds while not being there yet, which means that if there are trekkies in the system, they will intercept the imperials before they reach their destination.

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.

I will give you that one. If the imperials can get past the hurdle of transporting troops safely through interplanetary space, they will win the battles, as those trekkies clearly have got no clue what to do with all their science-magic when fighting on the ground.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Whichever side's creators are writing the story, that side will win.

 

[Paragon Fury]

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.

 

[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.

 

[Frankster]

naval interdiction

Makes me really wonder how big the dominion/cardassian fleet was in order to project such a large blockade that the federation fleet couldn't bypass it in that one big ds9 battle.

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).

This part of the lore is actually a good part. The imperial guard is such a vast organization, with so many different fighting forces of various quality and doctrines, that you can get just about anything ranging from british redcoats in space, to a an army of space rambos, to an army of towel heads, to "insert your own favorite military fantasy here".

-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?

I think this is one of the exceptions to the rule because i feel most here are in agreement that the imperium would be slow to react here. On my side at least i assumed federation would have a decent amount of prep time.

That said, some of what you're suggesting would be a poor move for the feds. Propaganda efforts that are actually noticeable and start to see planets secede (something which even the tau have taken quite a lot of time and special circumstances to achieve i'll remind you), then suddenly the inquisition, and the imperium, will start shifting its attention to you.

Imo the best use of their time would be to study the threat, not go poke the bear. The way the imperium works is it lets you nibble at it without really reacting, but as you start annoying it, the amount of resistance increases.
I really do think you overestimate how effective propaganda efforts would be, and it would hasten the imperial response times+draw the inquisition to investigate in the meantime.

It's actually a good idea, because as you said...time travel. I mean, time travel is fucking dumb - if we incorporated it into every versus match-up, then the Doctor would beat the Imperium by himself by just...I don't know. Going back in time and blowing up Earth. Every versus thread would be "Do you have time travel? If not, GTFO."

Worth pointing out that there is a 40k inquisitorial branch to deal with time travel shenanigans.. Something i wish was expanded on xP

To no one in particular but it's been bought up a few times: the "it's for the sake of tv" reasoning as to why we never see any space combat in the show reflect what some people here are saying: that isn't a satisfying answer to me.

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.

And the way star trek ship combat is usually presented is akin to ballet dancers dancing a deadly dance, with lots of strafing runs and "pattern delta attack!" and fancy formation names. Even when facing static targets that should in theory be easily bombed out from long range, they don't do it, they always go in (relatively) close.

Even if i was to convince myself, ok all those ranges are actually stupidly big, it's just a tv thing, it still doesn't explain why federation captains do the things they do, you can't just hand wave it off as "it's just a representation for tv", no this makes some big plot points: why did x federation captain put his/her ship in harms way when they could easily have kept their distance? This makes the klingon the only logical race in the setting, at least in their case one can see it as a warrior ethos kinda thing, they refuse to use such dishonorable tactics!

If i have to accept that actually yup, federation ships really are super long range with perfect accuracy then i am left with only 1 explanation in order to preserve the plot of quite a few episodes: federation officers are massively incompetent to the point that the worst imperial guard general who sends millions of troops forwards in a meat grinder battle, armed only with spatulas and riding trolley carts, is a tactical genius in comparison.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

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.

That's actually a really good point.

It reminds me of a detail in the Star Wars canon that always amused me when it was brought up. Apparently some technical supplement published somewhere mentioned, probably off-handedly, that the Stormtrooper's basic blaster carbine had a maximum range of 10 (!) kilometres, and that therefore (logically!) all land battles between infantry were fought at those ranges.

The reason this is funny is because, while a blaster bolt may indeed be capable of travelling ten kilometres accurately, if a stormtrooper ever tried to actually shoot something at that distance, he would have to start compensating for the curvature of the Earth. Or whatever planet he was standing on, I guess.