That's the funny part. Look at the casualty rates in the typical Wartythou game and then work out how any marine survives to get experience! Comes of the Evil Empire (Games Workshop) fanboys preferring bloodbaths over wargames (and having their tastes catered for). Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The fact that they are probably the best foot soldiers out ST, SW, and WH40k, is pretty much undeniable. First off, their armor is massive, an average marine is eight feet tall with the armor on, plus they get super reflexes, super smell, super sight, super strength, etc, and their armor is made up of several layers of ceramite and adamentium which is super dense armor. Itd take a hell of a lot of fire power in star wars to bring one down. And than there are the terminators. Those guys are even more elite, their armor is so good, it can stand extended periods of time inside a plasma reactor that is active without the wearer getting any sort of adverse effects.
And despite all that they STILL get hacked down on a lucky dice roll when attacked by a bunch of goblins... The sad fact is that WH40K is a wargame and is tailored to be playable (for a given value of "playable"). Long-range weapons don't exist as such (so that the fanboys can put their big guns on-table), it's ALL close-combat (even with guns). A favourite pastime of ours is visiting Games Workshop headquarters, pulling the writers to one side and asking if they're ever going to release a war game as opposed to a fantasy game. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
To me, its kinda silly to debate a game vs a show or movie anyway, for the reason mentioned - it's supposed to be playable, and for the reason they're based on war, and so the focus is on weapons, defenses, and power. For any scenario, the powers may rank higher in a game but that only benefits a battle-based scenario whereas a show like star trek is based on encountering so many unknowns that their technological solutions would eventually serve to overcome a variety of situations, including battles. Given time, one of the characters would find a weakness and exploit it.
There's a huuuuuuge disconnect between how the marines are described in the background stories etc. and how they actually perform in the game. According to the background stories the marines are super-great, but in the actual game they aren't really that good. They're equivalent to about 3-4 "regular" soldiers with cheap rifles.
Yeah, the over-the-top descriptions of the marines in the codex etc. is pretty funny. They're made out to be incredibly badass killing machines who can slaughter vast numbers of enemies single-handedly, but if you put a tactical squad of ten marines up against a 30-man platoon of cheap imperial guard infantry, it's about 50/50 who will win.
the IG basilisk has a range of 120"(the normal table is 48" to 60") also in 40k they are called gretchin not goblins
I wish some billionaire geek would finance a big budget 40K movie...set it at the time of the Horus Heresy. Damn that would kick arse if done right, imagine seeing the Emperor and Horus face off on the big screen. Make it happen!! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think that Tabletop statistics aren't usable in this debate since marines are weaker for the game purpose.
The same warsies that you listen to for 40k calcs and on the basis that the Empire would slaughter the Federation? Oops. Paramount Pictures would buy Games Workshop. Begging the Question fallacy. You are assuming that ISDs are indeed more powerful than one ST ship, let alone their entire fleet. You are then assuming that IoM is stronger than they are and thus have come to a flawed conclusion. ICS right? How about we quote the original material of the Base Delta Zero? For this, I will be borrowing the quotes from ST vs SW.net: There is absolutely no mention of slagging the planet. That quote was taken from an entirely different source that said 'An Imperial Star Destroyer has enough power to reduce a world to slag' and in that same book, it describs Base Delta Zero operations as fleet operations. Ie, no ISD is going to be performing that action alone. Ah, you're now referencing the stupidity that is Wong, who gave an hour for a BDZ. Which is just silly, because a good portion of his claim was based on an hour time frame and the fact that he would need to kill all the fishies. The problem is that the quote indicates 'fisheries', it doesn't require you kill every single god damned fish. You could literally just scan the planet for the highest concentrations of fish and fire at them. It isn't hard. Second, let's look at his hour bullshit--and how he sites the ISD: Imperial Sourcebook. The bolding is mine. For those of you who are familiar with these lines, allow me to explain what they consist of: Torpedo Lines: two torpedo spheres for each line (total: 4) Skirmish Line: 4-20 of light ships such as corvettes. Pursuit Line: 4-10 ships consisting of light cruisers and lighter ships Orbital bombardment doesn't start against a fully defended planet. It occurs after space superority has been established. The fact of the matter is, the process takes more than just one lone ISD--fuck, ISDs are rarely alone. They're part of the attack squadron and they count as their own line. An ISD typically has other ships assisting it in combat. And the basis for Wong's numbers was that the process needed to be quick and simple, with only one ISD performing it--though he does cite that three can do it--and we don't even get the time of frame for it. Not likely, as to which we discussed earlier. The Inquisition and the High Lords of Terra are growing more and more uneasy because the chapters are starting to rival their own fleet. More likely the Imperial Navy has about 50,000 ships or so, with the Chapters having a total of about 30,000 ships. It can be higher, but it won't be greater than a million I suspect. And more so, I would also like to point out that aside from the Battle Barge, most chapter ships aren't designed to do combat with other ships; they're supposed to get the marines planet side.
Wait, this was in 09? Sheesh, where have I been? Oh well, might as well go through all the problems. The Empire's control of their galaxy is laughable at best. Ie, their million and a half ships are literally so tied down after the destruction of the Death Star, that Mon Calamari's homeworld can publically produce warships for the rebellion and the Empire can't do a thing to stop them. So now it goes from Wong's one hour, to your ten minutes, and then to your five minutes? My, what a silly one you are. Also, your claim is rather incredibly silly. In A Taste of Armageddon, Kirk ordered Scotty to prepare to destroy the planet's inhabited surface. This was with a 100 year old out of date starship with limited armament and no assistance. It doesn't take anything like 80+ ships and this has been restated in many parts of the series. Another episode called Broken Link stats that the Defiant alone had enough firepower to reduce a planet to cinders. So going by your logic and taking the highest possible figures from this incident, the Defiant alone is a hundred times more powerful than the ISD, correct? After all, the Defiant has 4 pulse phasers, maybe 6 small phaser banks/arrays, and a total of like four launchers compared to the ISD's near hundred armament with double barrel guns. Acclamator right? Funny how in T-G canon, they don't even have any guns. They're unarmed transport ships. Fusion rockets? There's no way you can get hundreds of gigatons from fusion rockets. You'd be getting somewhere in the megaton range. And it sure as hell didn't look like they could take gigaton level firepower in the Ryloth trilogy...where we see land based guns blasting them out of the sky. Again, if they actually had any guns on those ships, maybe you wouldn't look so silly. That's obvious. Which is just silly considering how in that same EU, it literally drained a good deal of the Empire's budget and left them with a fleet that can't take any real hostile action. Ie, a fleet of a hundred or so ships is enough to keep the Empire at bay. The Federation has tens of thousands of ships. Super weapons that aren't seen until after the collapse of the Empire. No, I don't. Your entire argument is silly since in higher canon, that transport has no guns. That shows you how utterly inaccurate Saxton's work is and it goes farther when you consider that your claims are based on vague assumptions made by people who took the highest possible figures from vague explinations or descriptions of BDZs...those same people who find it alright to deny the same methodology to Star Trek because it would meant that the battle would suddenly go the othe way. Which is why small fighters with sub-kt lasers/plasma cannons can deal substantial damage to their shields.
Yep, but it's still on the table in the vast majority of games. Sure they are. But later on (e.g. Warhammer Fantasy) they get their name changed to goblins, and goblins they are. What? You didn't know that ALL the races get smashed up and that Warhammer Fantasy is set later in time than 40K? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Sorry lads but i cant even begin to tell you about how the 40k universe would flatten ST. Its a million times larger. not to mention that the entire imperium does things on a scale that ST just couldnt compete with. Their battleships use rounds so large that it can take up to 1/2 an hour to reload lol :bugeye: and space marines just outclass them all. I'll admit i dont know all the science behind phasers but i just cant see them taking down marines as marines are going to be infinitely better shots and their guns are just overkill on humans. If it were me running starfleet i'd be definitely going for the diplomatic way over war. And we've got titans man, you just aint gunna beat that sort of dedication to war Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Awesome, I've gotten a bad itch for ST vs 40k debates after playing Space Marine (3 out of 5 by the way--if you're a 40k fan, you'll enjoy it, but combat can be frustrating due to the healing system and the story is your standard 40k theme to where me and my friend were calling it long before it got there. Still, there are times when the game is exceptionally enjoyable...but then seems to nose dive afterwards in fun. Still, check it out). An exageration of course, but one that needs to be corrected. The Imperium, in terms of planets, is only 870x larger (at most) and probably only a hundred times larger in terms of population. In terms of fleet, the Imperial Navy is at most three times larger, possibly only twice as large. You have no idea just how wrong you are. Aside from liking really big things for no reason and having a massive empire and population, the Imperium does not operate on a scale larger than the UFP. ...That isn't a good thing. In fact, that's a very bad thing. Do you want to know why it takes half an hour to load a gun? Because they use slave and pulleys to move the weapons into place. Those slaves are a waste of space and energy for absolutely no gain over a more heavily mechanized system that would be fifteen to thirty times faster--at least. In how per say? Let's look at this. Space Marines as genetic super soldiers. Yes and no. While it's true that the Space Marines are incredibly strong, durable, and have a dozen different useful abilities that make them better than the UFP red shirt, the technology itself is archaic and decayed. In order to make such a super soldier, you first need to select young men who have a large amount of combat training and are effectively veteran warriors. Most are also from barbaric societies because they tend to churn out the best in terms of physical abilities. Then you need a gene seed. The gene seed is one of the largest flaws in this design scheme; because the Chapter can't just make their own. They need to grow them inside living marines until they're ripe for the picking. This usually takes a decade or so and a marine can only hold two at a time. The then possible candidate must then survive a risky and painful procedure that will transform them into these weapons of destruction--and there's a fairly high rate of failure. Altogether, most chapters have around 1,000 space marines, though there are a few exceptions on both ends of the scales and there are only about a thousand chapters. Meaning roughly, you have about a million space marines. Now let's look at the Jem'Hadar: They're as strong or stronger than Klingons (which have 3x the strength of a human), they can cloak, they can walk through force fields, and they're religiously loyal to their masters. They don't need to eat, sleep, or drink. All substances required is ingested through the white drug. They're also incredibly expendable and are the mainstay of the Dominion war machine. There are easily hundreds of millions, if not a billion of them. They can also be grown in a very short time. They literally reach adulthood in three days. Pound for pound, the Space Marines come out ahead in hand to hand combat, especially with their power armor and longer combat experience (Jem'Hadar don't live very long--the oldest are thirty I think). But Jem'Hadar are also capable of stealth and greater mobility against force fields. Now, that is the Dominion, but even the UFP could have better supers soldiers, were they not downright disgusted with genetic manipulation. The reason is, that the UFP has had that technology for centuries. Hell, Humans developed it in the 20th century. And those humans, called Augments, were easily stronger than Klingons, had incredibly fast reflexes (one Augment literally told a normal human that he was going to take his weapon and kick his ass before he could stop him--and then did it), incredible intelligence, and fairly endurable (not super--but well above average). Then of course, there was that sanction use of genetic humans in TNG, where they were telepathic (move objects with mind, talk to people, ect.) and were literally living biological weapons. Their bodies were designed to have an air-born immune system that literally attacked air born agents dangerous to them. Unfortunately, it turns out that was a bad idea, as their bodies responded to the imperfect immune systems around them by trying to kill them because they saw them as carrying agents for disease. You seem to have a very naive idea of how Starfleet works. First, let's address the Space Marines and their bolters. As a modern day gun--those weapons are incredibly powerful. No doubt about it. It fires a .998 calibre round. The closest thing we have to that in the modern world is a .95 calibre round. That round is beyond the firing capacity of most humans. As in, if you fire it, you're going to get hurt and not likely hit anything. They're that big. Those rounds, with the muzzle velocity of the gun they use (guns and rounds that big are rare and not used often by anyone) at ~50 kilojoules. The bullet is literally powerful enough to punch through several body armored humans in a line without stopping. The bolter is likely to have a similar KE, but due to greater size and muzzle velocity, it probably won't be over 80 kilojoules. At most we can easily stop it at 100 kilojoules. Then there's the second aspect of the bolter; its explosive rounds. Although I've seen where these rounds are supposed to have the yield of hand grenades, the fact is, most of them don't seem to in any sort of animated game or movie. See Dawn of War, Dawn of War II, the Space Marine game, and the Ultramarines movies. Therefore, I suspect that the more common rounds probably don't have a yield that goes any higher than a firecracker. That sounds bad, but keep in mind; this is exploding inside you. And its sending shrapnel throughout your body. If this round were to hit you in the stomach, you might live if you have immediate medical assistance. If it hits you in the chest, you're dead. And that's one bullet. Bolters are automatic weapons. There are also more powerful and larger rounds, which do explode like hand grenades, ect. Or break apart into shrapnel. You get the idea. But consider this. According to Kira, a Cardassian phaser rifle has an output of 4.7 megajoules (on its higher settings, obviously). She also stated that the UFP version was slightly less powerful, so we're probably looking at 4.5 megajoules. Even giving bolter rounds a KE of 100 kilojoules, they're still 45x weaker than a phaser rifle or the phaser pistol (ie, both have the same output, but the phaser rifle has a larger battery). You can see this in how ST weapons work. At high levels, the disintegrate setting takes hold and men and women are vaporized in single shots. Only really heavy Imperium weaponry has that sort of firepower. As in, a relatively large cannon that even a Space Marine is going to be struggling to hold and the Guard would require a small team to move, set up, and fire the thing. That's all in the single hand of one Starfleet officer and is standard issue. So in the gun department, the UFP has the advantage. Phasers are more powerful and have half a dozen different settings for heating objects, melting objects, low-depth tunneling, and can even be set to widebeam to encompass a cone-like area in relatively close proximity. They also have photon grenade launchers, which are smaller than their own rifles, can be carried by one man (including ammunition), and have a range of at least a kilometer--and that was stated to be close range, suggesting that a range of 2-5 kilometers is very likely, with an upper possibility of maybe 10 kilometers. Yield is hard to determine, but it's worth stating that at their minimal setting, beaming a couple into an adjoining room full of guards will 'not kill anybody, but shake them up a bit'. Needless to say, it's much more powerful than a typical hand grenade if people 3-5 feet away with a wall separating them is going to leave them shaken up at its lowest possible setting. Even if one were to dismiss the photon grenade as being able to kill a Space Marine, one can look no further than the Breen CRM 114. It's an energy weapon with the ability to pierce a 4.6 gigajoule shield. Which suggests that at the very least, it can produce equal or greater firepower than that shield can absorb. To give you an idea of what that means, 4.184 gigajoules is equal to a one ton bomb. See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAYVMXYYAp4 These were weapons that the Breen were selling to illegal arms dealers and one of them bought two thousand of such devices. The Breen are also less powerful than the UFP, so it's very likely that they can field something similar, if not more powerful. ...Um, Titans aren't all that impressive actually. See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXiYGiqG1FQ Time index 2:10. The captain puts in a warp-based power source that enhances the Titan's main cannon. It fires and destroys the spire. The destruction was less than impressive. It maybe had a yield of a few tons. Compare that to the CRM 144, which is just a bit larger than a rifle, has a quick recharge rate, and are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of such devices in the black market. Titans are cool as all hell, but they're bulky and their firepower does not pay off for the large hulk of mass that they are. Small phaser banks can easily match its firepower, are smaller, easier to deploy, and are cheap as fuck for the UFP to make.
What of the Tyranids then? You gotta remember that the space marines are only one of about 12 different factions. And I hate to break it to you but phasers are subject to the same problems as bolters, where in literature and statistics they are stated to have a ridiculously high amount of energy, but in reality they display none of those qualities. Same can be said of star wars turbolasers, I refuse to believe they have the energy of several thermonuclear weapons per shot.
As per OP, ST also gets the Borg and Species 8472. The Tyranid fleets don't stand a chance. That aside, they'd still overpower them in land battles. The UFP's sensor technology, transporter technology, and weapons are still more powerful than most of what they have to offer, and the UFP can easily scale upwards. I was addressing his claims. Let's try that again, only where you support that argument with some evidence. Phasers do show immense amount of energy. The difference is that in Star Trek, they don't consistently use all of those settings. In TOS, the kill setting was disintegration. No more, no less. In TNG and DS9, those weapons could still be used to disintegrate people and still had the same features as the TOS phasers, we just see the settings used less often. Voyager had some issues to the efficiency of phasers, as the kill setting seemed useless half the time, but Voyager was plagued with terrible writing and poor application of both Star Trek ideology, Starfleet protocol, and Federation technology. The problem here is that you are comparing three groups and treating them as if they're the same thing. They aren't. In Star Wars, the yield of a turbolaser has been ambiguous in G canon and T canon could be objectionable due to the cartoonish design. In 40k, bolters are often described in books which makes heavy use of figurative speech and therefore, cannot assumed immediately to be literal. The same problem goes for comic books, which often aim for over the top explosions and physical displays. Visual media, such as the Ultramarines movie, is designed to act less as a figurative work, since a writer and artist aren't being forced to stir the reader's imagination, as it's being displayed right before them. The same goes for video games. That is not to say of course, that such things are perfect. Each piece of evidence must be examined in its own right. But the Ultmarines Movie, the Dawn of War series, and the relatively new Space Marine game all point to standard round bolters having a relatively low-yield in regards to explosives. Nor is this unexpected given their large military pieces that tend to produce less than stellar results in regards to efficiency. If a Titan has weaponry the length of several buses and powered by a high powered plasma reactor, then why does it produce so little firepower for its size? Cold War US military had tactical nukes rated in the ten ton range that were the size of footballs and could be fired by a man like a rocket launcher. And yet, these massive titans cannot match that firepower. Star Trek however, does repeatedly show that their weapons are capable of vaporizing people. It's shown up in every series; that is Star Trek TOS, Star Trek TNG, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek VOY, and even Star Trek ENT managed to stick a phaser in its series that disintegrated someone. These were also shown to do just that in some of the movies as well. And these aren't just in one or two episodes of each series. TOS used that setting exclusively and TNG, DS9, and VOY showed phasers to have such abilities as well. Nor is there any stretch that a heavier piece, such as the Breen CRM 144, is an unlikely device. If I were trying to go for absurd firepower, I'd try and pass off a 1 terajoule rifle that Voyager was looking to purchase in Just Cause (I think that was the episode). A terajoule would be equal to 239 tons of TNT. It had a range of ten kilometers and if I recall correctly, was suggested to have better accuracy than Voyager's compression rifles. But given the absurdity and the fact that the weapon was from an alien race with a weapons expert genius, I prefer to ignore that. That and that series didn't have anyone on hand who knew the difference between gigawatt and terawatt.
Okay, before I go too far into this argument, I get bored when I see that there are more then three paragraphs to a single post. Secondly, I'm only going to argue for the tyranids in this case because again, I hate having to read more then my average homework load. So for starters, explain to me why the tyranids don't stand a chance against either borg or 8472? For the second paragraph about UFP, is that against the nids or is that against space marines? Because again, I'm only doing nids. Saying a phaser can disintegrate an unarmored human doesn't actually do anything to advance the argument towards an armored space marine or even a nid. How many of those disintegration settings only ever left the adjacent wall with a scorch mark? Pretty much all of them, and don't bring up the whole disintegrating boulder claim, last I checked no one ever used boulders for armor. Do you mind if we can just ignore space marines and just do nids vs. say... Jem'hadar, UFP, and you pick the other race. I'd rather you not have the ability to cite from any number of different overpowered species. So lets start with some facts. The tyranids exterminate galaxies to sustain themselves. They constantly evolve from generation to generation and the average time it takes for them to exterminate a world from first landfall to all life exterminated is around 50 days. The fact is that there are metric crap loads of them. Their ships are far more massive then anything in the UFP and Jem'Hadar arsenal. It could be easily argued that Dawn of War, and the ultramarine movie (which really did suck) are hardly canon, the fact is that the codices and rulebooks are the ultimate sources of canon since they are created by the original creators and not by some third party which has to deal with balancing issues. The nids are really magnificent in their own way, no one can deny that. There's a beauty in having so many soldiers turned into a massive tidal wave that sweeps through entire civilizations. And they are coordinated by genius hive minds and there is no way of knowing how many civilizations have been devoured by them.
You're going to get bored of this real fast then.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Borg ships are far superior in terms of firepower than what the Imperium of Man likely has. Not to mention bombs that produce shockwaves registered in the distance of light years. Both. Yeah, but armor isn't as thick as people or boulders, even in 40k. However, the disintegration aspect is only part of the issue. The kinetic energy behind a bolter's round is going to be around 50-80 kilojoules. That's 50,000 to 80,000 joules. The highest level a phaser rifle can reach is about 4 to 4.5 megajoules. That's 4,000,000 t0 4,500,000 joules. If you recall, bolters are capable of penetrating Space Marine armor, though it does tend to be a little resistant to it. But we're talking a massive gap in output. The bolters KE is in the tens of thousands of joules. A phaser has a yield of up to around four million joules. So lets start with some facts. Size =/ greater firepower. 40k technology is clunktech for the most part and most of their technology represents that with oversized artillery pieces that fire WWII level shells and titans that are the size of office buildings but offer sub kiloton firepower in return. Most game rules are pretty vague on how powerful those bolters are. In fact, given that they don't have explosive measurements for bolter rounds, but they do for grenades and rocket launchers, the chances of super high bolter rounds is rather low. And that said, those bolter rounds would kill you even after passing through ten other people and even if it didn't hit anything vital due to fragments tearing up your inside. And that's one bullet, not the six or eight that an ork would feel. Perhaps, but I don't see them doing much against defensive weapons rated in the ton range from from several kilometers away. And yet the Tyranids don't act super intelligent--they mostly just zerg rush people and overpower them through sheer numbers. There's an intelligence behind it and a grand scheme to it all, but the hive mind is bestial.
