Precious. Ricrery's counter argument to a well thought out argument: I WIN! I WIN! SEE?! I WON EVERYONE! ME SAYING SO MAKES IT FACT! I HAVE LOTS OF SEX! You know what ricrery? No. You apparently didn't understand what I said when I said we were done. I meant you were done. Until you start acting like a big boy, we're not going to debate you. Until you start following the debate policies that we laid out in the thread (you know the one), then we have no reason to look at anything you say. Fuck, look at you, pathetic as always. On the argument that actually included you, you declared victory because...well, because you say so. Then you demand me to respond to you when I was discussing something with someone else. I'm not playing this game where you seem to need some sort of constant attention to me. You've obviously got a problem, especially if you've gone to the length of stalking other people on other webboards on the assumption that they're me. Because you know, that's what normal people do. Again, I wish you a nice school year. Perhaps maybe you'll make a few friends so you'll stop being so God damn bitter.
You made a lot of claims that you didn't prove. So when you can't make a proper defense you cry "I'm not answering you!". YOU made the claim, YOU back it up. Besides, Mith said that your Youtube account was his. Don't play with me anymore, I'm not playing.
Yeah...because showing that mass reduction exists and that nova cannons can only do gigatons in no way contradicts you claims...right? Sorry, you ate away your final chance. If you want a debate, go find it somewhere else. Make a proper defense? You presume much. I know of two quotes, on general one that cites the use of slave labor to load a Nova Cannon and another that shows it in damn book. The thing is, you're not worth my time to look it up. If the person I'm speaking to wishes for me to cite something, I will. You however, decided to drop our debate entirely and declare yourself the winner arbitrarily and then tried to cover it up by screaming that I need to provide proof for an argument that you weren't even involved in. Allow me to spell it out for you: bite me. No one here gives two shits what you say. I did my best to debate you even when no one else would. And now, I have no interest in wasting my time on you. Oh, good boy. Now when did I say it was my account? Fuck, do you even know where Hellblade8 comes from? No, no I expect you wouldn't. I suppose you're not a D&D fan--or at least a large one. Oh shit, I'm scared nowPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!! Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta eat supper and call my gf. Enjoy your school year.
Yeah... because showing a weapon that matches another is wrong because there are a thousand other weapons that you have yet to name that fit the description. Then show them, because every single claim you've made about 40k has been shit pulled out of your ass thus far. You fail to provide proof anyway. I don't have any interest wasting my time on obvious Star Trek fanboys either (that 31st century Feds vs Xeelee claim sunk any chance of you being anything more than a fanboy). So, tell me how Mith knew I was 16, go on, don't slack, and the way you said you were tired of PoW's shit when not ever talking to him anywhere besides Spacebattles also killed your chance of not being Mith. I will.
Present your evidence that a Nova Cannon shell weighs 770,000 tons, please. Otherwise this is all a load of crock and a red herring to boot. Personally, I doubt you can. Because: 1. An Infidel class escort vessel masses 100,000 tons ("Execution Hour" p 284.) I haven't so far seen anything to inbdicate the Nova shells are as big as warships. 2. They still load these projectiles by manpower. No comments should be necessary.
By the way, since people have made these arguments before in this thread I wouldn't mind if they presented evidence for: 1. There being more than 1 million worlds in the Imperium of Man, let alone billions. The 1 million number is repeated in the preamble stuck onto just about every piece of Black Library fluff and has been consistent since the original "Rogue Trader". 2. Evidence for tens of thousands of gees acceleration and .75 lightspeed speeds for warships. Decidedly at odds with "Execution Hour" and "Shadow Point" which speak of missiles moving at tens of km/s. 3. There being millions of warships in the Imperium Navy. Contrary to what has been claimed here the BFG rulebook does not in fact say no such thing. In "Eye of Terror" the supposedly greatest Black Crusade ever, an event that called up the fleets of two Segmentae, had "hundreds" of battleships. The firepower figures we can go into later when these basic issues have been clarified. (Note: I voted for 40k. Star Trek can't compete with them due to sheer scale alone. But that's no excuse for inflating the canon numbers.)
Heartless, I would be interested in seeing what figures you personally have for W40K. I am not very familiar with the franchise at all. A couple friends of mine have looked at W40K, and deemed Trek to be superior, though I have not looked at it myself. The figures you have briefly noted are much closer to what my friends have presented to me in the past than what certain other posters have presented here, and I would definitely like to see more, if you have the inclination and the time. Also, welcome to the forums! } : = 8 D EDIT: Also, I'd be happy to post links for you until you hit the 20-post requirement to be able to post them yourself (that drove me crazy, and I ended up spamming the ST-v-SW thread just so I could cite my sources).
Thank you for your interest and glad I can be of service!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Of course I'm not the be-all, end-all expert on 40k by any means, but I've read some dozen of books on it, so I like to think I'm at least somewhat familiar with the setting.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I don't have the time to type up quotes from the novels and game books right now, but I can be back with those later if you like. For a brief presentation going off my general understanding of the setting: *40k has one million, give or take a few tens of thousands, inhabited planets spread across the galaxy. No idea where the billion figure comes from, and even if there is a book saying that it's a hopeless outlier. The Imperum of Man lacks quick and reliable communications with these, meaning that central power is weak. The system is essentially feudal with individual planetary governors ruling as they choose and paying taxes (usually in kind) once every few years or decades, depending. *FTL speed is highly variable. "Average" travel speed for 100,000 LY (across the galaxy) can range from 6 months to several years, with outlier figures as low as months or as high as the decades Hellblade quoted from the old "Spacefleet" supplement. It's noted in one novel ("Rogue Star" IIRC) that in some cases ships can arrive at their destination "before" they even started! This is rare though. *Fleet numbers: Again, can vary by source (GW doesn't care much for consistency it seems). Given the numbers turned up for the aforementioned "Eye of Terror" crusade, the Battle of Macragge against the Tyranids which was described in White Dwarf magazine, the Damocles Gulf Crusade in "Star of Damocles" and some others (ranging from "hundreds" to low double digits capital ships in a campaign, all of these being major efforts by the Imperium and/or Chaos) I tend to go more with the "many thousands" total which Hellblade (again) quoted than the high end numbers of millions that some people extrapolate (on dubious grounds IMHO). Another book series ("Gaunt's Ghosts") mentioned ten thousand vessels in a crusade, but AFAIK there are no "millions" of warships gathered together in any official source. Civilian and military transports, as well as escorts, bring up the number, possibly to the few million implied by the rulebook quoted earlier ITT. Weapons calcs: All over the place, with no consistency whatever. The Nova cannon has been brought up already; 5,000 kps isn't exactly what I'd call "close to lightspeed" (although one might perhaps call it that if one is desperate enough to rationalize the numbers). In "Execution Hour" it takes "sustained" bombardment from a heavy cruiser to destroy a city (necessating kilotons of firepower per second, if not less) while in "Caves of Ice" (also quoted earlier IIT IIRC) a flotilla can supposedly make a terrestrial planet uninhabitable in a few blasts. Though that later novel is notionally a character's memoirs, so the narration might not be entirely reliable. In another novel (which I haven't read, so this is second hand), supposedly a cruiser can blast apart a planet, and in the "Battlefleet: Gothic" rulebook a ship's hull can take "gigawatts" of power before failing, allowing it to withstand enemy fire for some time even without shields.... As I said, no consistency whatever ... :shrug: If we want some kind of hard limit, we know they can't generally cause extinction level events with DET from capital shiips in reasonable numbers and timeframes; they usually have to use technobabblish weapons for that. This is pretty much consistent. Which rules out the tera/petaton numbers for the most part, I think, and probably the high gigatons. Me, I'm not entirely sure where I'd set the benchmark, though subjectively I'm hovering somewhere in between megatons/gigatons for cruiser/battleship sized vessels. Generally I've noted that the novels tend to boost power over the game books, and those are arguably higher canon given that they are directly from the publisher. But don't expect others to necessarily agree on that. There are sufficient numbers that you can argue fairly well for almost any number, depending on what books you use. Thank you, to both. [I would've inserted a smiley here, but the software won't allow for it apparently]
Fascinating... I would love to see more data later, if you have it available. I don't have very much interest in W40K myself, but I would like to expand my knowledge of it regardless. An endeavor to chart logical and rational yield/power/endurance estimates from what figures can be derived from the material, and create some logical connection between them, or at least nail down the most consistent range of magnitude could be fun. No problem! } : = 8 )
I'll be back later with some quantifiable instances from "Execution Hour", which I have fairly conveniently available. This book is focusing on the naval aspect of 40k and written as a tie-in with the BFG miniature game, so I find it fairly reliable. It avoids both the ultra high- and low ends. If you're interested enough to read the books yourself look for that one and its sequel, "Shadow Point". They're good starting points. "Spacefleet" is available for reading online if you want it (no link due to policy but google "warhammer" and "spacefleet"). It's old and partly retconned but contains some rather valuable information. Can't promise info from more books right now, but I'll see what I can dig up in the cellar ... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Right, here's a first one, from page 27: Firepower benchmark, typical combat range (AFAIK it's usually a few tens of thousands of km, though often it's much closer and sometimes somewhat longer) and firepower. Ships withstand trading blows at what should be roughly megaton levels, taking the prose literally. And from p 183: Crew, fighter complement size and benchmark firepower of a heavy cruiser, the Lord Solar Macharius (Dictator class IIRC). This is the same ship as is dueling with a Chaos cruiser in the quote above. Those were the ones I noted on a quick re-read, there might be more useful instances elsewhere in the book. Otherwise I'll see if I can dig up "Shadow Point" as well.
Great, thanks! My interest in W40K in and of itself is minimal (it's a depressingly bleak and pessimistic universe, constantly at war yet with very little that is truly worth standing and fighting for; perhaps a decent examination of a fail-state post-modern/interstellar civilization, but little more than that and maybe some explosions to attract my interests), but I'm a geek, and these are starships with guns, that I can compare to my favored starships with guns. } : = 8 D Hmm... Let's see. The first one gives a reasonable engagement range of up to the hundreds of thousands of kilometers; I expect that this is mostly the energy/particle weaponry and guided missiles; projectile weapons would be pathetically easy to avoid completely at that range, unless they were traveling very near c, which I you said has never been demonstrated, and with much, much lower speeds having been established. This is roughly comparable to Trek weapons ranges, though I have to wonder how effective Imperium weapons would be at that range against Trek ships, which are much, much smaller and I believe much more maneuverable targets. Trek ships are able to engage each other with respectable accuracy even at that range, though their ability to land precise 'sub-system targeting' shots at that range is unknown (though such precise shots can be made at around 100,000 km, even with the old ball-turret phasers of the TOS era). I agree that the first description fits with total exchanges of energy in the low petawatt range (high kiloton to low megaton per second). I don't think anything over 20 petawatts (~5 megatons) one way could be derived from that statement, though. A 50 kiloton bomb could 'level' most cities by most people's definition, and a 500 kiloton bomb would level any city by anyone's definition. I think 2-4 petawatts total output one-way is a fair estimate. Does the book say how long and/or how well this barrage was endured? What kind of damage was sustained, and how serious was it? How long was this barrage able to be sustained? For the second, an interesting crew compliment. What is the size of this ship again? I'm curious to know the crew density. W40K ships tend to be much larger than Trek ships, so crew density might not be all that different (though Fed ships in the TNG era have rather low crew densities, even compared to earlier generations (probably thanks to increases in automation), and can easily hold much higher crew compliments if necessary). The firepower benchmark is consistent with the 2-4 petawatt sustained output estimate of the earlier figure (not surprising, since it's the same book). That cruiser's overall sustained firepower output (based on these figures) is roughly comparable to the raw discharge energies of a Galaxy Class starship (GCS), coming in at a little over the raw energy discharge in Joules of the bottom-end estimate for one of the highest-powered shots observed from a GCS (1.57 petajoules, the first shot against the Borg Cube in TNG "Q Who?"). More likely yield estimates put the raw energy of the shot at 92 petajoules. That shot also demonstrated a minimum effective yield increase thanks to the phaser/disruptor NDF effect of a factor of 1,315, allowing them to inflict damage comparable to 2,064.55 - 120,980 petajoules of raw energy discharge, against targets not hardened against the NDF (it also allows for the 131,500 - 1,315,000 factor increase in effective yield suggested by DS9 "The Die is Cast")
@HeartlessCapitalist Those Segmentum Battlefleets are just central battlefleets(they are bigger than the Sector Battlefleet). Power to level a city often refers to the vast hive cities. The Caves of Ice thing was told by an Inquisitor and that same Inquisitor often corrected Cain errors in his memoirs.
Are you certain of that? For a Segmentum level emergency I would imagine that they would call up sector-level assets. The fleet that went to Macragge for certain they took time to gather before sending it. I believe the Battle of Armageddon also ranged into the hundreds of ships, though I'd have to go back and check that to be sure. In any case, the largest formation I'm aware of having been gathered in any one place is the ten thousand ships from the Gaunt's Ghosts omnibus (unless we discount that as an outlier) and major campaigns like the Damocles Gulf Crusade had barely dozens of cruisers and battleships, if that. Nothing in either quote implied it was a hive city it meant. Going by Occam's Razor, and for the sake of being conservative, I assume "city" to mean an ordinary city. She did, but that just shifts it from his POV to her. Instead of one person thinking something, it's then one person plus another who agrees with him. I would still consider that less certain than an impartial description in third-person narration. Also, from what I recall of the book Cain is pretty prone to hyperbole. There is also the fact that few other sources corroborate such figures (though they do exist). We have several other sources saying that cruiser broadsides destroy cities, not continents (such as Gav Thorpe's "Acceptable Losses" story in "Into The Maelstrom"), and additionally as I noted, 40k doesn't seem to be able to cause planetary extinctions by brute force (or at least, not consistently). They usually have to use virus bombs or cyclonic torpedoes, both of which are totally technobabblish weapons. If a single flotilla can do that in a few volleys, that shouldn't be the case. Overall I find it more parsimonious to just assume that Cain wasn't being literal.
In the quote it means to say "hundreds" only, in contrast to the much greater "tens of thousands" of kilometers of ordinary combat. They are fighting in a parallel universe with reduced sensor ranges, as it notes. The book did have one weapon, bombardment cannon on a strike ruiser, firing shells at close to quarter light speed: It's implied it's pretty special for doing so, however; otherwise the speeds of missiles and the like are much lower, as I noted earlier. Like the Nova cannon, it's not a KE impactor. Trek ranges are usually closer, though, from what I know. Don't they typically fight at visual ranges? It's not specified much; it's a hit-and-run battle rather than a slugfest. It's heavily implied that the Macharius can't keep it up against the Chaos cruiser for any length of time, hence why they are running from it. They do defeat it eventually, though, so they are not that far apart in shields/weapons. In a nutshell? Depends on who you ask. Bad consistency again. :shrug: Cruisers can be anything from "hundreds" of meters to multi-kilometers in length depending on book (though not more than ten, and usually less). I tend towards a klick or two but that's basically just personal preference. Its general shape is much like the ship on the picture posted early in this thread. Some people on the Internet seem to think the following quote (also from EH) means the ship has the wattage of Sol: This would, however, force an inconsistency with the more directly stated firepower figures. I tend to take the "truly stellar" statement as less than literal, when applying Occam's razor. Can't comment on that myself, not having seen the episodes.
A million worlds is in a good number of sources, one being the new 40k rule book for 5th edition. Billion is right out, I think people should have realized that some time ago. The only strange thing is the population numbers. Ie, most sources quote something like 'countless billions' when it should be hundreds of trillions. *shrug* Then again, maybe it could just be low population density. Also pretty funny when you consider that the estimation for the Nova Cannon is at something like .7-9c. There isn't. Most of them are just extrapolated from different sources. I find the millions of ships number hard to swallow myself. I did however, find one web board where they suggested 800,000 to 1,200,000 ships, which isn't that bad. However, older sources suggest tens of thousands of ships, of the capital variety. Taking that, we're probably looking at 80,000 ships for the IoM and probaly another 30,000 for the Space Marines. We're probably looking at hundreds of thousands for non-interstellar craft, transports, and scout ships. If you want a higher end, reasonable numbers are probably around 800,000 or so, with probably another 30,000 ships from the Space Marines. Millions might be in defense craft and transports, but as far as ship to ship...well, they'd probably be wrothless. *wipes a tear from his eye* So...so much logic. Probably some obscure source I'm sure. 40k ships sizes and masses have always been off, from what I hear. Not to mention that this is something they've designed to go boom (well, implode actually...mostly), making it uber heavy would go against that. I have to rationalize how an ounce of antimatter can blast off half the atmosphere of a planet and yet they still have megatons.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This depends on what sort of operation we're looking at here. Ie, smaller KT explosions would probably be from the smaller weapons, or at least from lowering ship yields. If it was sort of a tactical nuking, it might explain that. First, Cain didn't say planet, he said continent, but I can understand the confusion given it's sci-fi. It's also worth noting that 'a couple' doesn't always mean two. It can indicate a low or insignificant amount. For example, Gradma's house is a couple of miles away. It doesn't exactly have to be two because it's a figurative use. It could in fact, mean six. I've already discussed this with Ricrery, to which he shoved it to the side and complained about the time required for my suggestion. My point was that Cain probably wasn't thinking literally, but figuratively. And he probably wasn't thinking about literally leveling the entire landscape of said continent (to which some have suggested), but something closer to Hiroshima. And he was probably thinking something like 70% of the continent, not every square inch of it. Taking a rough example of a 1,000 radius continent (I'm lazy as all hell), and we get an area of 1,000,000 km (note to those paying attention, I highballed the other calculations for some reason--ie, I accidently did the pi calculation using the diameter, not the radius, doubling my figures). Now, we need to destroy that much area, presumably with the shockwaves of the weapons, assuming a nuclear-like effect upon impact with the target continent, and we'll go with my (somewhat crude) calc of the SM trailer of roughly 10 megatons--we'll also assume it's the larger lance batteries, simply for the sake of argument. Now, using the calculator link below, (I had another one, but this one is more accurate on the psi): http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html Put in the amount for 10,000 kt (10 megatons) and chart it. You'll note the rather large shockwave radius. Not exactly something to scoff at. Now, keep in mind that 2 psi is enough to deal severe damage to most structures, though reinforced ones will only take light damage. Given that this planet didn't seem all that habited (it was a frozen wasteland), we can probably assume that 2 psi is as high as we need to ensure heavy damage to the area. For a 10 megaton explosion, we'll get 2psi even at around 17.06 km, with the psi increasing as we get closer to the blast. Again, using the pi equation (4.13 x 8.53 x 8.53) we get 300.50 km. Now, that seems like a penny drop compared to what the area is, right? Well again, remember that we're really looking at something in practical terms of 70%, so we're really looking at 700,000km worth of area to cover--but that's still alot. However, we have more things to consider. Assuming a shot every five seconds from one ship, we get 3.23 hours for a single ship with 10 megaton shots every five seconds. Now assume we have say, three ships. That takes us down to 1.08 hours. Six ships? .5 hours for a flotilla that large. Roughly half an hour. Now that was ricrery's example. If you want to go with something say the size of Australia, we're going to get a figure roughly nine times greater of 9,292,500 km. Again, we're looking at 70% though, so our figure is going to be a lower 6,504,750 km. Ten megaton shots every five seconds from a single ship is 30.06 hours. Divided that by three and it easily falls to ten hours. Six and we've got five hours, roughly. And again, we're only assuming one weapon here. Multiple weapons can bring this down to a few hours. The only problem if you take Cain's comment strictly is that it's hardly a 'couple of shots', but we don't know what he's comparing it to or what the size of the continent actually is. Ie, a continent is compared to the relative sizes of the planet, not Earth itself. For all we know, we could be talking about a few thousand km worth of area. Now as a disclaimer, we could also get higher hours, since the weapon that was taken was from what appears to have been a Battle Barge, which are designed for orbital bombardment--but I remember someone saying that the ships involved were frigates and could be armed with stronger lances...so meh. Even assuming this as a base figure for say, several lower megaton shots, it works. But, just to be on the safe side, taking one 400 kt nuclear weapon and firing it at a planet every five seconds would take out 700,000 km in 40.39 hours. Assuming a ship has say, four of such weapons, it falls down to 10.1 hours. Including say three ships, it's 3.36 hours. With six, it's 1.68 hours. Going with the larger value of 6,504,750 km we get the following (assuming an ROF of 5 seconds): 375.33 hours with x1 400 kiloton shots per 5 seconds 93.83 hours with x4 400 kiloton shots per 5 seconds 31.28 hours with 3 ships with x4 400 kiloton shots per 5 seconds 15.64 hours with 6 ships with x4 400 kiloton shots per 5 seconds It all depends upon the ship really. Even increasing the number of guns to six makes a massive, massive difference. Ie, 62.55 hours for six guns and 10.43 hours for six ships with six guns. Some of you will notice that in fact, the rates are much better for something that is 25x times weaker than 10 megatons. There's a reason for this; the larger weapons assumed less weapons to fire it--and if I were harsher, probably a lower ROF, here we could probably assume 1-2 shots per second. The reason for this is the same reason why our nuclear weapons today use a multi-headed warhead design; nukes don't scale well upwards. Ie, look at the area for the area of the 10 megatons and the 400 kilotons; it's 300.50 vs. 24.07. That looks good, but not when you can create a warhead twenty five times weaker and cover over a third of the same area with six well placed warheads--and almost the same area with a dozen warheads. To give you an idea, assuming that it takes the same amount of fuel (relatively) for both methods, 12x 400 kiloton warheads is only equal to 4.8 megatons. Over half the amount required for the 10 megaton. If we were to use roughly the same amount of fuel for both weapons bombing methods, the smaller warheads would cover a larger area of 577.68 km instead of the 300.50 we saw for the 10 megaton. This is why US nuclear weapons are typically in the hundreds of kiloton ranges; because it's far more effective than a large 6-10 megaton bomb due to the fact that the higher yield warheads can't outpace multiple smaller ones in terms of radius effects. This is probably why Ricrery was so adament about ignoring my CCS-GCS points of phaser bombardment; because he realized that you don't need teratons of energy to destroy all life on a continent; you just need alot of smaller hundreds of kt or single digit megatons to do the job. So when your main phaser array can toss out 100,000 terajoules a second--and if it can sustain that output for several minutes (not hard to imagine), then teratons become silly and unneeded. This is common for sci-fi. Trek has it to. We've put them as outliers, both the absurdly low end and the absurdly high end. The problem is that some people don't think they should be forced to discount those high ends when its inconvinient to them. Exactly. Their higher end weapons are probably roughly 41.8 petawatts (ie, the energy released by a 10 megaton bomb per second), with lower weapons scaling down from there to around the kiloton regions. The Nova Cannons are around single digit gigatons, both KE and warhead. If you want a comparison, a GCS's main phaser array is 100,000 TW (effectively). Roughly 24 megatons a second, the largest guns one one of their largest ships. Most main phaser arrays are probably closer to half of that, with again, smaller arrays scaling downwards. In other words, both sides have roughly equal ships, with only the largest of IoM ships probably outscaling ST ships--although the Dominion Dreadnought and the Romulan Scimitar class could potentially overpower those ships.
What is this based on? Says who? I've seen people try and pass this before. Where does it say it refers to hive cities? When an author writes something, he's doing it to address the audience, not the characters unless stated otherwise. Otherwise, drawing a poetic image of a city being nuked to the audience loses all purpose if you compare it to a hive city. Who said that Cain was in error? He was speaking figuratively. It would be like me saying 'it's a couple of miles from here' and someone screaming "NO! IT'S 3.5 MILES! THAT'S MORE THAN A COUPLE!"
Eh, it depends. In some cases, yes, but that's usually when it's a ship to ship standoff, typically seen in TNG. However, in DS9 and most of the other series, the visuals contradict what the story and dialogue indicate for ship speeds. Ie, we're told ships are fighting at tens of thousands of km when in the visuals, it's a mere fraction of that. The reasoning behind this is that as far as Trek speeds and ranges, it's mostly artistic license. Just like when we see illustrations from a book cover of 40k ships engaging at point blank range, it's not what often happens, but a visual representation because well...you can't entertain people with ships firing at such massive ranges (I disagree, I've seen anime do it fairly well--but I digress). Ships typically fight at tens of thousands of km and at a maximum range of 280,000 km to 300,000km depending on the ships (UFP would be the former there, Cardassians the later). Their weapons typically take about a second or two to cover those distances.
D'oh! I transposed "hundreds" there. I haven't had enough caffeine today... So tens of thousands of kilometers is comparable to typical Trek engagement ranges, but we've seen Trek ships engage each other at much higher ranges quiet easily. I see. I am beginning to suspect that projectile and missile weaponry of the IoM would be useless against Federation ships. The range issues aside, when the fastest weapon velocity is ~0.25c and that is a very notable feat, ships with accelerations in the thousands to millions of meters per second and with top speeds rated at 0.8c would easily be able to avoid them at those ranges. We do see several engagements at visual range, though many of those are occurring after a set of ships meet and stand off talking or posturing before firing at each other, or large fleets flying into each other in DS9. We just as frequently see ships engaging at ranges from 2,000 - 100,000 kilometers, and weapons ranges of up to 200,000 kilometers have been stated (~200,000km is implied to be the typical maximum range for phasers/disruptors, as well as Cardassian torpedoes, in TNG "The Wounded"). Torpedoes have been observed firing at ranges upwards of 4.5 million kilometers. In fact, even Kazon torpedoes have been observed to have ranges in tens of millions to billions of kilometers (the episode where three Kazon warships ambushed Voyager, firing torpedoes on her while she was still warping towards them. Torpedoes started impacting 15 seconds before Voyager dropped out of warp, and iirc she was moving at a fairly high warp speed). In warp-speed engagements, torpedo ranges are vastly increased. When engaging at ranges of kilometers or less, the extreme short range of the combat is typically noted. Was the problem sustaining the engagement more related to the Macharius' endurance or ability to maintain fire? Additionally, how was the Chaos cruiser destroyed? Was it a long, wearing-down and slow pounding to oblivion, or was it relatively few choice shots to critical areas (or general short span of heavy fire at an opportune moment)? *nods* Well, that always makes things interesting... Do the stated size figures at least remain consistent for individual ships? I think that's taking an artistic phrasing way too literally. "Stellar" in this usage can have multiple meanings. It can mean "star-like" and suggest a power level literally equivalent to that of a star (not fitting with the rest of the known figures, even the highest-yield figures, as any reactor with that kind of output would be able to toss out a planet-vaporizing stream of plasma from an exhaust port without even a fraction of a percent drop in power output), or the more common usage of "Incredible," "Great," "Awesome," "Awe-inspiring," etc. such as with the phrase, "That was stellar, man!" I can provide screencaps when I get home if you'd like, and link to a thread that does a fairly thorough analysis of "Q Who?" with more recent comparisons of those yields with TDiC.
Well, it may be the feral worlds that drag down the average. Going by EH there are only "hundreds" of hive worlds, and even these don't necessarily have hundreds of billions of people. I should note that other sources mention "countless billions" in the Imperial Guard, and if I recall the Munitorum Manual correctly, that one said that number died in battle every day ... though that's an in-universe document possibly subject to propaganda/hyperbole. That might be it, possibly; I'd forgotten about planetary defense craft, but supposedly those can be rather numerous as well. Counting those the numbers may well range into the few millions. Generally, every author tends to have his own view on the matter.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Possiibly if they needed speed ... or if they really do use mass lightening for it (which, to date, nothing I've seen implies), it might make sense. Otherwise it's a hideously designed weapon. Of course, 40k isn't exactly short on those ...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Eh? Sorry, haven't kept up. Is this about Spock's lines in that TOS episode? He did say that the barrage (presumably the one required for taking out the Necrons) would render the "planet" to become "uninhabitable". Of course, as I noted, it doesn't really mesh very well with most other numbers, so I tend to interpret it as hyperbole. That was the BFG battleships that could "level continents" IIRC. Unlike Cain's musings, the BFG rulebook made no mention of a timeframe. Insofar as it's meaningful to try and get consistency out of 40k (Good luck!), I'd assume one would look for the most commonly repeated range of numbers. There are those 5-gigaton MIRV warheads on the Space Hulk torpedoes, though. So firepower might be somewhat higher, at least with specialized warheads. Again, I don't know enough Trek to comment on this.
