WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Dec 05, 2013 3:59 pm

sonofccn wrote: @Mr. Oragahn

Reply noted. However with the encrouchment of the Christmas season, the resulting difficulties and responsibilities thereof as well as the less then festive undertones slipping into our posts I do not see the need of our back and forth going into the coming weeks. To that end I would like to offically request an armistace till sometime in Janurary. Hopefully such time will allow us to reflect on our disccusion as well as perhaps allow any emotions to settle.
I hope it will give you time to better understand my method and arguments.
So, if I don't have a chance to say it in the intervene, have a merry Christmas Mr. Oragahn and a happy new year.
U too ;)

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Lucky » Sun Dec 08, 2013 7:10 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote: I didn't know your entire post was irrelevant, because I'm rather sure the snippet about Chernobyl represents a very negligeable portion of my post, which is largely about the fictional imperial weapon's design and its workings.
Reactors melting down will always be different from a bomb of the same type. An internal combustion engine that over heats will release the energy in the same amount of fuel different from a gasoline bomb.

Your nitpick is irrelevant because the analogy is valid weather or not we are talking about fission, fusion, or combustion.

Mr. Oragahn wrote: Aside from the fact that those gigatonnes of energy aren't going to come out of nowhere, you forgot that:
Death of Integrity wrote: Bright explosions flared on the side of the hulk, round blisters of fire welling up on its rough skin. Those less sophisticated than the adepts called such rounds lava bombs. Each contained a large fusion generator. In the brief moment the fusion generator operated, the bomb generated several gigatons of explosive energy, hotter than the surface of a star. Weapons like that could crack a planet’s crust, given time.
They were equally effective against the space hulk.
Energy can't be explosive ergo the sentence is flowery fluff not ment to be taken literally, and it contradicts the following sentence if taken literally. An explosion is a sudden release of energy, but the sentence following the talk of "gigatons of explosive energy" talks of the Lava Bombs releasing their energy over time which makes sense as generators make horrible warheads, and are designed to release energy over time. Heck, generators are designed to not catastrophically explode.


Mr. Oragahn wrote: Sense like in a bomb that doesn't blow up? :|
You seem to be taking a paragraph filled with information, and ignoring everything save a single flowery and imprecise sentence that is contradicted by practically every other line.

The quote you failed to read states that Lava Bomb house generators rather then warheads.

Right now you are claiming that energy is explosive rather then an explosion being a sudden release of energy.

If the narrator is wrong about one thing he or she can be wrong about everything he or she says.

Mr. Oragahn wrote: The reason it could be called lava bomb is not because it looks like a lava lamp, but because it cracks crusts that bleed lava.
And to do that you do not need a sudden release of energy as the state of Hawaii proves. The Hawaiian islands are formed from the crust cracking do to a "hot spot" causing an unusual upwelling.

Mr. Oragahn wrote: However, we already know that it didn't require such levels of destruction for inhabitants of the Imperium to call devices magma bombs, when they barely were worth melting a few city blocks.
Without the "explosive", I would be entitled into considering those weapons like cranked up melta-guns of some sort.
The effects of such weapons are indeed very exotic.

You seem to be talking to yourself here. i fail to see the relevance to analyzing the quote in question.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Some authors think that a reactor's plasma is like a super thick soup that's mega hot and equally behaves (and looks like) lava. We got the same in one of the books I dealt with which had a Titan with a breached power core with "boiling" plasma.

The only way to make sense of that is if plasma = fuel. That is, plasma describes a thick flowing substance which, if not properly put through a nuclear reaction, will actually turn into a super hot soup and literally boil and perhaps reach some kind of critical mass level.
But in no way that works in tandem with explosive energy.

The implications of plasma = fuel are rather far reaching and equally interesting for 40K.
Plasma behaves like a liquid last I checked. I think you may be taking flowery language a bit too seriously.

Mr. Oragahn wrote: But the problem with the torpedoes from the quote remains whole, since we have gigatonnes of explosive energy.
You need a violent one shot reaction here.
You simply need the narrator to be a bit unreliable like the narrator is.

1) The narrator describes the Lava Bombs creating blisters of flame which would describe a controlled reaction of some type rather then a flash of an explosion that happened in an instant in space.

2) The Lava bombs are stated to have generators rather then warheads for causing damage.

3) Time rather then numbers is stated to be relevant for Lava Bombs and similar weapons to crack a planet's crust instead of numbers.

4) The narrator stated that the Lava bombs in the scene only worked for a "brief moment", and yet they continued to contain the plasma in "blister" like shapes implying the narrator is wrong about the fusion reactors not still working.

Honestly you seem to be arguing that there is no forest do to the fact you can only see one tree that is centimeters from your nose.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Dec 11, 2013 2:33 pm

Lucky wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: I didn't know your entire post was irrelevant, because I'm rather sure the snippet about Chernobyl represents a very negligeable portion of my post, which is largely about the fictional imperial weapon's design and its workings.
Reactors melting down will always be different from a bomb of the same type. An internal combustion engine that over heats will release the energy in the same amount of fuel different from a gasoline bomb.

Your nitpick is irrelevant because the analogy is valid weather or not we are talking about fission, fusion, or combustion.
I never claimed it was of importance, you realize that? It was a minor detail. However, it also makes your analogy somewhat incorrect.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Aside from the fact that those gigatonnes of energy aren't going to come out of nowhere, you forgot that:
Death of Integrity wrote: Bright explosions flared on the side of the hulk, round blisters of fire welling up on its rough skin. Those less sophisticated than the adepts called such rounds lava bombs. Each contained a large fusion generator. In the brief moment the fusion generator operated, the bomb generated several gigatons of explosive energy, hotter than the surface of a star. Weapons like that could crack a planet’s crust, given time.
They were equally effective against the space hulk.
Energy can't be explosive ergo the sentence is flowery fluff not ment to be taken literally, and it contradicts the following sentence if taken literally.
Energy can't be explosive in nature now?
Explosive energy exactly means what it means. It's the kind of energy levels you find associated to explosions because it's simply truly massive and will precisely do that, explosion.
That is, once there's enough energy in a system, the only thing you will obtain IS an explosion.
An explosion is a sudden release of energy, but the sentence following the talk of "gigatons of explosive energy" talks of the Lava Bombs releasing their energy over time which makes sense as generators make horrible warheads, and are designed to release energy over time. Heck, generators are designed to not catastrophically explode.
Emphasis mine. Where is that part to be found in the quotation?
As for lava bombs, the text tells us that only idiots call them that: "the less sophisticated than the adepts".
The fact that "BRIGHT EXPLOSIONS FLARED" is clearly stated at the beginning of the paragraph is all you actually need in order to put an end to your theory of slowly heating devices.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Sense like in a bomb that doesn't blow up? :|
You seem to be taking a paragraph filled with information, and ignoring everything save a single flowery and imprecise sentence that is contradicted by practically every other line.
No no no, that's what YOU do.
Look it up dude, the text is quite simple.
I condone your try to make the text valid by trying to shoe horn a theory about a long term form of destruction, but this is definitely not what the text says.
In a few lines, the use of the semantic field of "explosions" happens twice, and we get the word bomb. Finally, add to that another damning element, since it clearly says that the fusion generator only operates for a "brief moment". Oh and also add on top of that the levels of energy which are photosphere-like high, which simply doesn't mesh at all with sub-explosion energy levels.
That's quite a lot, don't you think?
It makes your idea totally moot, unfortunately.
The quote you failed to read states that Lava Bomb house generators rather then warheads.
Talking about failure to read, I think you did a great job here. It's also stupid to claim I misread the quote considering how I largely disserted on the point of using a generator as a weapon.
Your theory had some merits but it just doesn't pass muster. Sorry.
So just let it sink at once.
Right now you are claiming that energy is explosive rather then an explosion being a sudden release of energy.
Strawman.
If the narrator is wrong about one thing he or she can be wrong about everything he or she says.
That's quite obvious.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: The reason it could be called lava bomb is not because it looks like a lava lamp, but because it cracks crusts that bleed lava.
And to do that you do not need a sudden release of energy as the state of Hawaii proves. The Hawaiian islands are formed from the crust cracking do to a "hot spot" causing an unusual upwelling.
It's a seismic activity. It has massive amounts of energy COUPLED to some MOMENTUM of a truly ludicrous magnitude.
Our bombs here are dramatically devoid of the second element.
So apples and oranges and pineapples and pudding.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: However, we already know that it didn't require such levels of destruction for inhabitants of the Imperium to call devices magma bombs, when they barely were worth melting a few city blocks.
Without the "explosive", I would be entitled into considering those weapons like cranked up melta-guns of some sort.
The effects of such weapons are indeed very exotic.

You seem to be talking to yourself here. i fail to see the relevance to analyzing the quote in question.
Really?
Well, for starters, most of the posts I made in this thread were personnal thoughts and comments. If some people read them, good.
So point to you for realizing that, at last.
Secondly, it's quite a pity that you can't see where I'm going with that. Perhaps you have some catching up to do about 40K lore before we continue?
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Some authors think that a reactor's plasma is like a super thick soup that's mega hot and equally behaves (and looks like) lava. We got the same in one of the books I dealt with which had a Titan with a breached power core with "boiling" plasma.

The only way to make sense of that is if plasma = fuel. That is, plasma describes a thick flowing substance which, if not properly put through a nuclear reaction, will actually turn into a super hot soup and literally boil and perhaps reach some kind of critical mass level.
But in no way that works in tandem with explosive energy.

The implications of plasma = fuel are rather far reaching and equally interesting for 40K.
Plasma behaves like a liquid last I checked. I think you may be taking flowery language a bit too seriously.
Perhaps, but the problem is that the term plasma is sometimes found used in the oddest ways and associated with effects which don't exactly conform to physics plasma, to say the least.
Plasma is usually understood as a gas in physics. It's not a thick syrup. Both are on opposite ends of the fluid spectrum, really.
In Storm of Iron, plasma acts like a thick fluid, noted as burning. Limitations of the language in this case don't help understanding if it describes the state of the plasma or what it can do to other things (like a seething beam).
We have a description of the Imperium's infantry plasma gun which produces a projectile of boiling plasma. Once again, is it the exotic plasma that is an odd material that reaches boiling point, or is it meant to imply that it will make anything it touches to boil, like flesh, metal, wood, concrete? The former would be more logical, but then make the understanding of plasma something odd?
It easily compares with the oddness of the plasma bomb description, where "each missile becomes a ball of boiling energy sufficient to melt a city-block" as it turns to plasma (again).
The "bubbling plasma" comes from an excerpt in the Codex Titanicus Online.

That's why we might have to think a moment about the idea that plasma=fuel, and that once hot it can be that liquid and it can boil, especially if undergoing some critical mass reaction.
It's also a big problem and just reminds me of very odd behaviour of melta guns (which I think are also, sometimes, said to fire plasma).

Now the analogy with a heart would even have me wonder if we couldn't push the analogy further and consider that this might be some kind of biotech, wherein the plasma is some equivalent to blood plasma, which contains tons of nutrients. Here it would contain tons of reactants.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: But the problem with the torpedoes from the quote remains whole, since we have gigatonnes of explosive energy.
You need a violent one shot reaction here.
You simply need the narrator to be a bit unreliable like the narrator is.
If the narrator is unreliable so we can ignore two references to an explosive behaviour, the extra obvious implication of a massive explosion since what was produced generated energy levels hotter than the surface of a star and that the device -a bomb- worked for a brief moment as a short lived fusion reaction, then why not already ignore the gigatonne reference as well, or anything else?

I left that quote aside because it didn't fit with my multiple analyses of 40K works, even if I attempted to give a shot at rationalization.
But I'm not cherry picking words. It's either all or nothing.
1) The narrator describes the Lava Bombs creating blisters of flame which would describe a controlled reaction of some type rather then a flash of an explosion that happened in an instant in space.

2) The Lava bombs are stated to have generators rather then warheads for causing damage.

3) Time rather then numbers is stated to be relevant for Lava Bombs and similar weapons to crack a planet's crust instead of numbers.

4) The narrator stated that the Lava bombs in the scene only worked for a "brief moment", and yet they continued to contain the plasma in "blister" like shapes implying the narrator is wrong about the fusion reactors not still working.

Honestly you seem to be arguing that there is no forest do to the fact you can only see one tree that is centimeters from your nose.
1. The use of the term blister is clearly the part of the text that indulges the most imagery. Blisters, blossoms, spots, etc. Seen from a distance.

2. That produce bright explosions, explosive energy. Hotter than the surface of a star. It cannot be anything but MASSIVELY explosive.

3. Or perhaps it just means that the fusion generator will build up huge amounts of energy before blowing up. If given time. It precisely fits with the idea here.

4. No, "blisters", as I said, is obviously an image to describe what it looks like from a distance, just as if you looked at a black box with little holes made with pins all over its surface, and had a lamp inside.

See, remove explosions, hotter than a star and brief moment, and your theory works. By doing so, you literally strip off the majority of descriptions of the weapon's effects.

It is gigatonnes of explosive energy, not total of gigatonnes of slowly radiating energy that kept melting the spacehulk for hours.


One amusing way to look at it is to consider that gigatonne isn't a technical qualificative here, but an adjective akin to manytonnes, supertonnes, lotsoftonnes, I don't know.
It's obviously a gigastretch. :D

If we really want to get that quote acceptable, to me it means we have to bring it to firepower levels which are cross checked in multiple other sources.
This requires acrobatics.
As an example, "tonne of energy" gets me this page:

http://blog.euromonitor.com/2010/04/map ... nt-te.html
(with this PDF).

So let me quote the parts that mention "tonne":
US$ per tonne of energy consumed

[image]

Source: Euromonitor International from national statisticsNote: Energy intensity indicates the value of GDP produced per tonne of oil equivalent of energy consumed.
Yet, we don't cut it, because even if we were to suggest that the book's text meant gigatonnes of some stuff, it would still need to explode.
Now, where it might get interesting is that you don't need to use TNT to get an explosion. TNT is used because of the blast, which is more effective for immediate destruction.
The idea is that we get gigatonnes [per tonne of fuel equivalent] of explosive energy here.
However, TNT has a lower energy density than common fuels, so we would not solve the problem that way, and frankly, it's plain retarded. Especially since if we were to be that desperate, we'd have to apply the same convoluted "reasonning" to all other fictionnal universes. No thanks.

No, this is a "gigatonnes bang quote" and that's all.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Lucky » Sun Dec 15, 2013 8:40 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote: I never claimed it was of importance, you realize that? It was a minor detail. However, it also makes your analogy somewhat incorrect.
You thought it was important enough to post, and didn't bother to note it as unimportant. Stop backpedaling.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Energy can't be explosive in nature now?
Explosive energy exactly means what it means. It's the kind of energy levels you find associated to explosions because it's simply truly massive and will precisely do that, explosion.
That is, once there's enough energy in a system, the only thing you will obtain IS an explosion.
Energy can't explode, and that means energy can't be explosive.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Emphasis mine. Where is that part to be found in the quotation?
As for lava bombs, the text tells us that only idiots call them that: "the less sophisticated than the adepts".
The fact that "BRIGHT EXPLOSIONS FLARED" is clearly stated at the beginning of the paragraph is all you actually need in order to put an end to your theory of slowly heating devices.
And what does the rest of the sentence say, It talks about the blisters of flame. There aren't going to be blisters of flame unless something contains the energy. In the scene something is causing the Lava Bomb's energy to be slowly released. It it just exploded there would only be a bright flash.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: No no no, that's what YOU do.
Look it up dude, the text is quite simple.
I condone your try to make the text valid by trying to shoe horn a theory about a long term form of destruction, but this is definitely not what the text says.
In a few lines, the use of the semantic field of "explosions" happens twice, and we get the word bomb. Finally, add to that another damning element, since it clearly says that the fusion generator only operates for a "brief moment". Oh and also add on top of that the levels of energy which are photosphere-like high, which simply doesn't mesh at all with sub-explosion energy levels.
That's quite a lot, don't you think?
It makes your idea totally moot, unfortunately.
And if the generator only works for a brief moment then everything he said is impossible and contradicted. There can't be blisters of flame, and time is irrelevant for cracking planetary crust.

Personally, I'd just mark the quote as self contradictory, and therefore useless.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: No no no, that's what YOU do.
Look it up dude, the text is quite simple.
I condone your try to make the text valid by trying to shoe horn a theory about a long term form of destruction, but this is definitely not what the text says.
In a few lines, the use of the semantic field of "explosions" happens twice, and we get the word bomb. Finally, add to that another damning element, since it clearly says that the fusion generator only operates for a "brief moment". Oh and also add on top of that the levels of energy which are photosphere-like high, which simply doesn't mesh at all with sub-explosion energy levels.
That's quite a lot, don't you think?
It makes your idea totally moot, unfortunately.
A "brief moment" is a largely undefined amount of time Mr. O. While a moment is always what is considered a short amount of time it can mean anything from less then a second to minutes.

You are confusing moment and instant.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Talking about failure to read, I think you did a great job here. It's also stupid to claim I misread the quote considering how I largely disserted on the point of using a generator as a weapon.
Your theory had some merits but it just doesn't pass muster. Sorry.
So just let it sink at once.
A generator makes perfect sense if the Lava Bomb delivers the energy over several seconds to minutes.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Strawman.
The narrator is the one stating that the generator is creating explosive energy. To take his statements as 100% correct we must do so for all the narrator says, or else everything is open to interpretation which makes things far less in favor of your argument.

He has already given an undefined amount of time for the Lava Bombs to have done their work. A moment is not an instant.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: It's a seismic activity. It has massive amounts of energy COUPLED to some MOMENTUM of a truly ludicrous magnitude.
Our bombs here are dramatically devoid of the second element.
So apples and oranges and pineapples and pudding.
A lava bomb just needs time to deliver the energy to weaken the crust. Even in the quote the Lava Bombs are not stated to deliver all their energy in an instant. like you claim. The longer the moment the lower the Lava Bomb's output becomes in this case.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Secondly, it's quite a pity that you can't see where I'm going with that. Perhaps you have some catching up to do about 40K lore before we continue?
Says the guy who is confusing a moment and an instant.

I'm not terribly well versed in 40K yields beyond knowing they are all over the place, and that while there are honest high ends many if not most are questionable. In this case it is very easy to get lower the Lava Bomb output depending on how long a moment is.

A moment can be less then a second or even years in rare context (that don't apply here). If the generator ran for 1 second the actual yield will be very different then if the generator ran for five minutes.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Perhaps, but the problem is that the term plasma is sometimes found used in the oddest ways and associated with effects which don't exactly conform to physics plasma, to say the least.
Plasma is usually understood as a gas in physics. It's not a thick syrup. Both are on opposite ends of the fluid spectrum, really.
In Storm of Iron, plasma acts like a thick fluid, noted as burning. Limitations of the language in this case don't help understanding if it describes the state of the plasma or what it can do to other things (like a seething beam).
We have a description of the Imperium's infantry plasma gun which produces a projectile of boiling plasma. Once again, is it the exotic plasma that is an odd material that reaches boiling point, or is it meant to imply that it will make anything it touches to boil, like flesh, metal, wood, concrete? The former would be more logical, but then make the understanding of plasma something odd?
It easily compares with the oddness of the plasma bomb description, where "each missile becomes a ball of boiling energy sufficient to melt a city-block" as it turns to plasma (again).
The "bubbling plasma" comes from an excerpt in the Codex Titanicus Online.

That's why we might have to think a moment about the idea that plasma=fuel, and that once hot it can be that liquid and it can boil, especially if undergoing some critical mass reaction.
It's also a big problem and just reminds me of very odd behaviour of melta guns (which I think are also, sometimes, said to fire plasma).
I'd just assume some sort of containment field. It fits what I recall is shown in the video games at least
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Now the analogy with a heart would even have me wonder if we couldn't push the analogy further and consider that this might be some kind of biotech, wherein the plasma is some equivalent to blood plasma, which contains tons of nutrients. Here it would contain tons of reactants.
As I recall the state of matter called plasma is named after blood plasma do to both behaving similarly in certain ways.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: If the narrator is unreliable so we can ignore two references to an explosive behaviour, the extra obvious implication of a massive explosion since what was produced generated energy levels hotter than the surface of a star and that the device -a bomb- worked for a brief moment as a short lived fusion reaction, then why not already ignore the gigatonne reference as well, or anything else?

I left that quote aside because it didn't fit with my multiple analyses of 40K works, even if I attempted to give a shot at rationalization.
But I'm not cherry picking words. It's either all or nothing.
The narrator may be more imprecise then unreliable as a moment by definition is a brief but undefined amount of time.

Calling something a bomb really doesn't mean much. A LAva Bomb seems to be as much a bomb as a Turbolaser is laser.

The Facts from the quote:
The lava bombs released gigatons, but it is not defined how many gigatons. This means the total yield could range from less then 2 gigatons and likely less then 20

The energy was released in a brief moment, but a moment is only a short amount of time. A moment can easily range from less then a second to minutes.

You could end up with extremely large numbers or extremely small numbers depending on what assumptions you make.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: 1. The use of the term blister is clearly the part of the text that indulges the most imagery. Blisters, blossoms, spots, etc. Seen from a distance.
A blister is either an annoying person, or a swelling bulge filled with something. This imagery fit perfectly with the line about the reactor working for a "brief moment". A moment is an undefined, but short amount of time after all.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: 3. Or perhaps it just means that the fusion generator will build up huge amounts of energy before blowing up. If given time. It precisely fits with the idea here.
The quote says the reactors work for a brief moment so they can easily be working for minutes.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: 4. No, "blisters", as I said, is obviously an image to describe what it looks like from a distance, just as if you looked at a black box with little holes made with pins all over its surface, and had a lamp inside.

See, remove explosions, hotter than a star and brief moment, and your theory works. By doing so, you literally strip off the majority of descriptions of the weapon's effects.

It is gigatonnes of explosive energy, not total of gigatonnes of slowly radiating energy that kept melting the spacehulk for hours.
Read what the Lava Bombs did:
"Bright explosions flared on the side of the hulk, round blisters of fire welling up on its rough skin."
When are they stated to breach the hull, never. The blister of fire is on the outside of the hull working its way in.

Read the description of Lava bombs:
"Those less sophisticated than the adepts called such rounds lava bombs. Each contained a large fusion generator. In the brief moment the fusion generator operated, the bomb generated several gigatons of explosive energy, hotter than the surface of a star. Weapons like that could crack a planet’s crust, given time."
First off we get a a glimpse of the narrator's personality. The narrator has a high opinion of his/herself and education, but speaks using imprecise terms when describing technical details implying said narrator may not be as well educated as he/she thinks.

Secondly we get a description of how a Lava Bomb works.
Lava Bombs contain a large fusion generator.

The fusion generator generates plasma for a short time before stopping for some reason. It does not instantly explode.

Gigaton is a set amount of energy. I can release a gigaton by hopping on a bicycle and peddling for a long enough amount of time, or I can just blowup a gigaton of TNT, the amount of energy will ultimately be the same.

The energy is not released all at once. A moment is a short amount of time, and is often a few seconds to tens of minutes.

The Gigatons are released over a time period of likely seconds to minutes, and that means the true output of the reactor could even be in the kilotons per second.

Being hotter then the sun is not impressive as plasma made on Earth often is hotter then the Sun.


The last line:
"They were equally effective against the space hulk. "

Here we see more talk about damage being done over time rather then in an instant.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Dec 16, 2013 4:05 pm

Lucky wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: I never claimed it was of importance, you realize that? It was a minor detail. However, it also makes your analogy somewhat incorrect.
You thought it was important enough to post, and didn't bother to note it as unimportant. Stop backpedaling.
Backpedalling over what? Was your understanding of what happened in the nuclear plant erroneous? Yes. Was that secondary to the core of the discussion? Yes as well.
You seem to ignore that there's more subtlety in the art of discussion than just that binary stance between top essential and absolutely irrelevant.
Now can we just move on?
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Energy can't be explosive in nature now?
Explosive energy exactly means what it means. It's the kind of energy levels you find associated to explosions because it's simply truly massive and will precisely do that, explosion.
That is, once there's enough energy in a system, the only thing you will obtain IS an explosion.
Energy can't explode, and that means energy can't be explosive.
Don't be so needlessly obtuse as to forget the richness of the english language.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Emphasis mine. Where is that part to be found in the quotation?
As for lava bombs, the text tells us that only idiots call them that: "the less sophisticated than the adepts".
The fact that "BRIGHT EXPLOSIONS FLARED" is clearly stated at the beginning of the paragraph is all you actually need in order to put an end to your theory of slowly heating devices.
And what does the rest of the sentence say, It talks about the blisters of flame. There aren't going to be blisters of flame unless something contains the energy. In the scene something is causing the Lava Bomb's energy to be slowly released. It it just exploded there would only be a bright flash.
"Blisters" is an image and needs not being taken literally.
In the imagery, you can have anything looking like a glowing "blister" the moment you have hot material or light pouring through a hole.
Both apply here, since massive explosions doubled with molten, destroyed or burning materials fired into the hulk will obviously combine to make it look like blisters to the imaginative.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: No no no, that's what YOU do.
Look it up dude, the text is quite simple.
I condone your try to make the text valid by trying to shoe horn a theory about a long term form of destruction, but this is definitely not what the text says.
In a few lines, the use of the semantic field of "explosions" happens twice, and we get the word bomb. Finally, add to that another damning element, since it clearly says that the fusion generator only operates for a "brief moment". Oh and also add on top of that the levels of energy which are photosphere-like high, which simply doesn't mesh at all with sub-explosion energy levels.
That's quite a lot, don't you think?
It makes your idea totally moot, unfortunately.
And if the generator only works for a brief moment then everything he said is impossible and contradicted.
Says who?
As far as I read the quote, it is all coherent.
There can't be blisters of flame, and time is irrelevant for cracking planetary crust.
Your insistance on ONE interpretation of the metaphoric use of the word blister is not going to get you anywhere.
As for the crust cracking, I already dealt with that.
A "brief moment" is a largely undefined amount of time Mr. O. While a moment is always what is considered a short amount of time it can mean anything from less then a second to minutes.
For your theory to work, brief moments should equal untold amounts of hours, at the very least!
That's the minimal amount of time acceptable for that super-heater of yours to survive its own production and release of energy in some controlled way and still make sense, somehow.
And that goes without even asking how the generator can both work and leak at the same time: a ridiculously small device should also now pack an uber defensive shield system as to allow the bomb to survive its own energy.
Yeah, so a single bomb would now come with shields capable of withstanding gigatonnes of explosive energy. Meaning that the much larger ships should obviously come with shields much more capable, yes, probably getting into the comfy petaton range now for MUNDANE weapons.
And even more peeing all over the concept of Exterminatus.
Hey man, what's so special about an Exterminatus array or an Exterminatus order anyway, when a single stray shot from some heavy plasma lance could depopulate three quarters of a world with a grazing hit?
I see a problem here.
You are confusing moment and instant.
Sorry?
Brief moment is a hell of a short amount of time here. Pretty closer to "instant" than "oh did you turn the heater on darling?"
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Talking about failure to read, I think you did a great job here. It's also stupid to claim I misread the quote considering how I largely disserted on the point of using a generator as a weapon.
Your theory had some merits but it just doesn't pass muster. Sorry.
So just let it sink at once.
A generator makes perfect sense if the Lava Bomb delivers the energy over several seconds to minutes.
Which still makes the device a multi-million terawatt weapon. Plus how do you count on the generator remaining both structurally intact and yet release explosive energy over time?
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Strawman.
The narrator is the one stating that the generator is creating explosive energy. To take his statements as 100% correct we must do so for all the narrator says, or else everything is open to interpretation which makes things far less in favor of your argument.
First of all, MY argument is that the firepower level is at odds with other references about same or similar weapons. Plus it makes the whole concept of Exterminatus a joke.

Secondly, you're again conveniently brushing away the inherent problems of having a generator being functional and yet exploding and releasing energy. It's already contradictory in nature.
For your thing to work, the bomb has to survive... itself. O_o
Not to say all the points I raised which point to an immense and immediate generation and release of power.
He has already given an undefined amount of time for the Lava Bombs to have done their work. A moment is not an instant.
Please stop cutting the full quote. It's a "brief moment", amongst two semantic occurances of the concept of "explosion" btw.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: It's a seismic activity. It has massive amounts of energy COUPLED to some MOMENTUM of a truly ludicrous magnitude.
Our bombs here are dramatically devoid of the second element.
So apples and oranges and pineapples and pudding.
A lava bomb just needs time to deliver the energy to weaken the crust. Even in the quote the Lava Bombs are not stated to deliver all their energy in an instant. like you claim. The longer the moment the lower the Lava Bomb's output becomes in this case.
Or it just needs more time to build up much more energy... which wouldn't solve anything because we're still dealing with a respectively small device capable of constraining several gigatonnes for a prolongated time.

Perhaps "given time" might even be understood as "under the context of a full and constant barrage of such devices"?
Or perhaps the author just read Dune and got inspired by the planet craker device, some kind of funky nuke.
I'm not terribly well versed in 40K yields beyond knowing they are all over the place, and that while there are honest high ends many if not most are questionable. In this case it is very easy to get lower the Lava Bomb output depending on how long a moment is.

A moment can be less then a second or even years in rare context (that don't apply here). If the generator ran for 1 second the actual yield will be very different then if the generator ran for five minutes.
Actually, all over the place is not so exact. It's all over the place in a given range.

The greater claims of firepower, picked from books and fluff, are simply rarer than one thinks.
When there's an impressive event, a better reading of the details often reveals exotic mechanisms (as was revealed by ignoring Connor's interpretations of melta guns and actually understanding what their effects really meant), or said important or impressive event often finds itself contradicted by elements from the same source, even from the same paragraph. And sometimes, plain science. Nostromo, for example.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Perhaps, but the problem is that the term plasma is sometimes found used in the oddest ways and associated with effects which don't exactly conform to physics plasma, to say the least.
Plasma is usually understood as a gas in physics. It's not a thick syrup. Both are on opposite ends of the fluid spectrum, really.
In Storm of Iron, plasma acts like a thick fluid, noted as burning. Limitations of the language in this case don't help understanding if it describes the state of the plasma or what it can do to other things (like a seething beam).
We have a description of the Imperium's infantry plasma gun which produces a projectile of boiling plasma. Once again, is it the exotic plasma that is an odd material that reaches boiling point, or is it meant to imply that it will make anything it touches to boil, like flesh, metal, wood, concrete? The former would be more logical, but then make the understanding of plasma something odd?
It easily compares with the oddness of the plasma bomb description, where "each missile becomes a ball of boiling energy sufficient to melt a city-block" as it turns to plasma (again).
The "bubbling plasma" comes from an excerpt in the Codex Titanicus Online.

That's why we might have to think a moment about the idea that plasma=fuel, and that once hot it can be that liquid and it can boil, especially if undergoing some critical mass reaction.
It's also a big problem and just reminds me of very odd behaviour of melta guns (which I think are also, sometimes, said to fire plasma).
I'd just assume some sort of containment field. It fits what I recall is shown in the video games at least
"Containment field" doesn't even remotely begin to explain the association of terms like boiling and plasma. Especially when such cases can be found where there is clearly no chance of any containment system to exist (as in the case of the titan's core leaking said plasma fuel that flows and fills holes).
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Now the analogy with a heart would even have me wonder if we couldn't push the analogy further and consider that this might be some kind of biotech, wherein the plasma is some equivalent to blood plasma, which contains tons of nutrients. Here it would contain tons of reactants.
As I recall the state of matter called plasma is named after blood plasma do to both behaving similarly in certain ways.
If it were true, although I'd rather read on a source on that, it would be a nice addition, but I'm rather doubtful about that link between the two plasma in question.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: If the narrator is unreliable so we can ignore two references to an explosive behaviour, the extra obvious implication of a massive explosion since what was produced generated energy levels hotter than the surface of a star and that the device -a bomb- worked for a brief moment as a short lived fusion reaction, then why not already ignore the gigatonne reference as well, or anything else?

I left that quote aside because it didn't fit with my multiple analyses of 40K works, even if I attempted to give a shot at rationalization.
But I'm not cherry picking words. It's either all or nothing.
The narrator may be more imprecise then unreliable as a moment by definition is a brief but undefined amount of time.

Calling something a bomb really doesn't mean much. A LAva Bomb seems to be as much a bomb as a Turbolaser is laser.

The Facts from the quote:
The lava bombs released gigatons, but it is not defined how many gigatons. This means the total yield could range from less then 2 gigatons and likely less then 20
Totally arbitrary. It could be 999 gigatons for all we know.
Plus less than 2 GT is a damn stretch for the plural applied to gigaton, you know?
The energy was released in a brief moment, but a moment is only a short amount of time. A moment can easily range from less then a second to minutes.
"In the brief moment the fusion generator operated, the bomb generated several gigatons of explosive energy", means it's the device that worked for a little amount of time.
It does not say that the energy was released over a brief moment (which you peg at seconds or minutes without thinking much about the implications of such a timeframe).
What it actually says is that the fusion generator produced (as piled up) gigatons of explosive energy for a brief amount of time. And explosive, obviously, because after that, the energy would be released and it would obviously make a nice (and violent) explosion.
As far as I'm concerned, considering the implications this has on Imperium capabilities in general, I'd rather have brief moments equal small fractions of a second. Works just as much. Actually, it works better.
You could end up with extremely large numbers or extremely small numbers depending on what assumptions you make.
I believe we only get small figures when we start to become unkindly conservative about the parameters.
We're not talking about the power core of a massive starship, we're talking about a device that would most likely fit in a school bus.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: 1. The use of the term blister is clearly the part of the text that indulges the most imagery. Blisters, blossoms, spots, etc. Seen from a distance.
A blister is either an annoying person, or a swelling bulge filled with something.
If taken literally.
This imagery fit perfectly with the line about the reactor working for a "brief moment". A moment is an undefined, but short amount of time after all.
You seem to find evidence of "containment field" within a rather very vague two-words long piece.
There's nothing like which you hope for.
Read what the Lava Bombs did:
"Bright explosions flared on the side of the hulk, round blisters of fire welling up on its rough skin."
When are they stated to breach the hull, never. The blister of fire is on the outside of the hull working its way in.
Going with that literal interpretation, that would be the silliest device ever invented.
The containment field would just be postponing the obvious explosive-like release of the energy it'd contain, and at the same time it wouldd totally waste the initial bang of gigatons if they were released all at once.
And as I said, that would also mean that a generator that lodges itself into the hull of a ship would be capable of generating and maintaining an exotic dome field worth of millions of terawatts.

Biggatons ain't enough.
Read the description of Lava bombs:
"Those less sophisticated than the adepts called such rounds lava bombs. Each contained a large fusion generator. In the brief moment the fusion generator operated, the bomb generated several gigatons of explosive energy, hotter than the surface of a star. Weapons like that could crack a planet’s crust, given time."
First off we get a a glimpse of the narrator's personality. The narrator has a high opinion of his/herself and education, but speaks using imprecise terms when describing technical details implying said narrator may not be as well educated as he/she thinks.

Secondly we get a description of how a Lava Bomb works.
Lava Bombs contain a large fusion generator.

The fusion generator generates plasma for a short time before stopping for some reason. It does not instantly explode.

Gigaton is a set amount of energy. I can release a gigaton by hopping on a bicycle and peddling for a long enough amount of time, or I can just blowup a gigaton of TNT, the amount of energy will ultimately be the same.

The energy is not released all at once. A moment is a short amount of time, and is often a few seconds to tens of minutes.
Often or not, you admitted that it can be any short duration of time. You also again make the conflation between RELEASE and the working of the device.
Precisely nothing in the text precludes the device from releasing the energy all at once.
The only thing you'd have going for your interpretation is a silly system where a force field (which does not come for free) tries to contain a mass of gigatons worth of explosion into a bubble visible in space at the surface of a hulk for seconds or minutes, when it's known that the best way to crack something when you don't have momentum is to count on power, that is, the fastest delivery of energy possible in this case.
Oh but no, let's just have a forcefield that dissipates the energy at a turtle's pace instead.
Seconds or minutes instead of nanoseconds or microseconds makes a hell of a difference.

Oh and a farce field that would need near equal amounts of energy just to handle the energy inside and perhaps, what? redirect it inside the ship?
Wasteful and convoluted are the words we're looking for here.
Why not just throw all those gigatonns at the hull in one big bang? Don't ask.
The Gigatons are released over a time period of likely seconds to minutes, and that means the true output of the reactor could even be in the kilotons per second.
I thought you were going for the facts, only the facts?
It is never said that gigatons are released over "a time period of likely seconds to minutes".
Besides, "likely" means you're guessing, which is even less than factual.
Being hotter then the sun is not impressive as plasma made on Earth often is hotter then the Sun.
True. You may be thinking of plasma torches? But we're still dealing with compressed, high velocity jets. Which if they were multiplied and packed together, then send their ejecta radially, would form a sphere and would obviously be considered explosive.
Not to say of course that a plasma torch is a device of controlled delivery of plasma that doesn't destroy itself in the process. And only gobble small thousands of watts. Upscaling a plasma torch to a torpedo won't give you a gigaton level weapon.
Now if we were to have a plasma torch delivering gigatonnes of energy and still small enough to fit inside a torpedo, the implications of what we'd get if upscaled to battleships would be absolutely... Connorish.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Lucky » Mon Dec 30, 2013 11:56 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote: Going with that literal interpretation, that would be the silliest device ever invented.
The containment field would just be postponing the obvious explosive-like release of the energy it'd contain, and at the same time it wouldd totally waste the initial bang of gigatons if they were released all at once.
And as I said, that would also mean that a generator that lodges itself into the hull of a ship would be capable of generating and maintaining an exotic dome field worth of millions of terawatts.

Biggatons ain't enough.
1) We are talking about the Imperium of man of Warhammer 40,000. One of its main defining traits is poor use of resources. A Lava Bomb uses a generator rather then a warhead, right there you have questionable design choices as generators are intended to release the energy stored in the fuel in a controlled and non-destructive manner. Efficiency isn't the IOM's priority. You'd have a point if we were talking about nearly any other faction.

2) We don't know why the plasma is forming blisters on the hull. If there is a field holding the plasma in a dome shape then it may be part of the normal operations of the generator.

I seem to recall hearing about astronauts that lit some sort of liquid fuel on fire in 0g, and it formed something akin to a sphere of flame around the fuel.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Often or not, you admitted that it can be any short duration of time. You also again make the conflation between RELEASE and the working of the device.
Precisely nothing in the text precludes the device from releasing the energy all at once.
The use of the word moment precludes the Lava Bomb releasing all the energy at once. You want moment to mean instant.

In the end, you need time for the generator to create the plasma that we see.

An instant is to a point what a moment is to a line segment.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: The only thing you'd have going for your interpretation is a silly system where a force field (which does not come for free) tries to contain a mass of gigatons worth of explosion into a bubble visible in space at the surface of a hulk for seconds or minutes, when it's known that the best way to crack something when you don't have momentum is to count on power, that is, the fastest delivery of energy possible in this case.
Oh but no, let's just have a forcefield that dissipates the energy at a turtle's pace instead.
Seconds or minutes instead of nanoseconds or microseconds makes a hell of a difference.
1) No one uses the word moment to describe lengths of time that are at best barely perceivable by a human.

2) The "blisters" do not require any form of containment beyond gravity which would likely come from the Space Hulk itself.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Oh and a farce field that would need near equal amounts of energy just to handle the energy inside and perhaps, what? redirect it inside the ship?
You have not provided any evidence to support these requirements.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Wasteful and convoluted are the words we're looking for here.
Why not just throw all those gigatonns at the hull in one big bang? Don't ask.
We are talking about the Imperium of Man.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: I thought you were going for the facts, only the facts?
It is never said that gigatons are released over "a time period of likely seconds to minutes".
Besides, "likely" means you're guessing, which is even less than factual.
Is English a second language for you? No one uses the word moment the way you want it used, and the dictionary definition doesn't fit with what you want it to.

Think about how the word moment is used, if someone tells you that they will be with you in a moment they will always be telling you that you will have to wait several minutes.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: True. You may be thinking of plasma torches? But we're still dealing with compressed, high velocity jets. Which if they were multiplied and packed together, then send their ejecta radially, would form a sphere and would obviously be considered explosive.
I was thinking of electrical arcs in general.


Mr. Oragahn wrote: Not to say of course that a plasma torch is a device of controlled delivery of plasma that doesn't destroy itself in the process. And only gobble small thousands of watts. Upscaling a plasma torch to a torpedo won't give you a gigaton level weapon.
Now if we were to have a plasma torch delivering gigatonnes of energy and still small enough to fit inside a torpedo, the implications of what we'd get if upscaled to battleships would be absolutely... Connorish.
1) The Lava Bomb is not a plasma torch. Most of the energy released by the Lava bomb will likely never be transfered to the space hulk do to the fact a large amount of plasma seems to be traveling away from the hull of the target. I'd guess that Lava Bombs are most effective when used on planets.

2) A standard generator will likely need to have a much lower output then the generator in a Lava Bomb. A generator is normally intended to last years rather then destroy itself is minutes.

3) The wattage for the Lava Bomb isn't all that high by Sci-Fi standards when you actually try running the numbers.

The generator just has a total output of gigatons.. Given that vague description, I'd assume somewhere between 1 and 20 gigaton given the speaker's grandiose style of talking. He/She would seemingly want to make the Lava Bomb sound as impressive as possible.

The Generator works for "brief moment". If the Lava Bomb worked like Little Boy then it would work for an instant, and moment usually means a few minutes.

For a low end let's assume 2 gigatons released over 5 minutes

5 minutes = 300 seconds

2 gigatons = 2,000 megatons

2,000/300=6.66666667

About 7 Megatons generated ever second


For a high end let's assume 19 gigatons released over 30 seconds

19 Gigatons = 19,000 Megatons

19,000/30=633.333333

About 633 Megatons generated every second

4) It's not like the IOM can just stick as many reactors on a ship as it wants. Let's take Retribution Class Battleship
Length: 6 Kilometers from stern to prow

Crew: Over 25,000


You need places for the crew to live.

You need Months worth of supplies if not years given how unreliable warp travel can be.

You need to be able to store munitions. The six torpedo tube in the front fire torpedos that are something like 300 meters long, and then you need the huge shells for the 24 cannons on its side.

Even with the likely incorrect assumption of efficient use of space you end up with very little room for reactors.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Jan 12, 2014 4:00 pm

Lucky wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Going with that literal interpretation, that would be the silliest device ever invented.
The containment field would just be postponing the obvious explosive-like release of the energy it'd contain, and at the same time it wouldd totally waste the initial bang of gigatons if they were released all at once.
And as I said, that would also mean that a generator that lodges itself into the hull of a ship would be capable of generating and maintaining an exotic dome field worth of millions of terawatts.

Biggatons ain't enough.
1) We are talking about the Imperium of man of Warhammer 40,000. One of its main defining traits is poor use of resources. A Lava Bomb uses a generator rather then a warhead, right there you have questionable design choices as generators are intended to release the energy stored in the fuel in a controlled and non-destructive manner. Efficiency isn't the IOM's priority. You'd have a point if we were talking about nearly any other faction.
It's more like they're stuck with that design and they decided to weaponize it since they couldn't find a manufacturer for real military-grade nuclear ordnance.
In other words, lava bombs would exist because for some reason there would be an excedent of fusion generator production somewhere in the Imperium, and a severe lack of production of efficient nuclear ordnance.
Which is so totally possible in 40K, btw, notably because of the loss of tech and the ever so important recovery of anything sporting the STC stamp.
So they sort of McGyver fusion generators pushed to some supercritical level.

Still, even if in universe, I could accept that, the problem of those levels of energy remains whole: they are simply too problematic, for reasons put up earlier.
2) We don't know why the plasma is forming blisters on the hull. If there is a field holding the plasma in a dome shape then it may be part of the normal operations of the generator.
Or it is just describing, in a metaphorical way, what an explosion looks like (especially in Hollywood): a ball of fire that grows. And please, note that absolutely nothing is said about the speed of that blossoming event either.
For all we know the author could be describing with ample detail what goes on within fractions of seconds. There's just no information about time given there.
I seem to recall hearing about astronauts that lit some sort of liquid fuel on fire in 0g, and it formed something akin to a sphere of flame around the fuel.
It is fuel. Assuming they had the oxydant with them, it's still going to be limited in terms of power. It's combustion and you have time to see the fuel burn.
What the bomb is, is another thing entirely: much more powerful and coming with a totally different reaction.
I mean, for crying out loud, it's a FUSION reaction. OK??
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Often or not, you admitted that it can be any short duration of time. You also again make the conflation between RELEASE and the working of the device.
Precisely nothing in the text precludes the device from releasing the energy all at once.
The use of the word moment precludes the Lava Bomb releasing all the energy at once. You want moment to mean instant.
You really need to reread the text:
Death of Integrity wrote: Bright explosions flared on the side of the hulk, round blisters of fire welling up on its rough skin. Those less sophisticated than the adepts called such rounds lava bombs. Each contained a large fusion generator. In the brief moment the fusion generator operated, the bomb generated several gigatons of explosive energy, hotter than the surface of a star. Weapons like that could crack a planet’s crust, given time.
They were equally effective against the space hulk.
The section of interest makes ZERO mention of any release of energy, just its production.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: The only thing you'd have going for your interpretation is a silly system where a force field (which does not come for free) tries to contain a mass of gigatons worth of explosion into a bubble visible in space at the surface of a hulk for seconds or minutes, when it's known that the best way to crack something when you don't have momentum is to count on power, that is, the fastest delivery of energy possible in this case.
Oh but no, let's just have a forcefield that dissipates the energy at a turtle's pace instead.
Seconds or minutes instead of nanoseconds or microseconds makes a hell of a difference.
1) No one uses the word moment to describe lengths of time that are at best barely perceivable by a human.
Irrelevant because I don't claim that the release of energy happens in a brief moment.
The production of energy happens in a brief moment, and I didn't say it wouldn't take some significant amount of time.
2) The "blisters" do not require any form of containment beyond gravity which would likely come from the Space Hulk itself.
Now that's really inane. Gravity, on what? A space hulk? A dead piece of amalgamated chunks of drifting ships or stations?
With at the very best, perhaps some systems still working, with all miracles including the much needed artificial gravity, and which conveniently works outside of that munch of mashed metal??
Oh wait, I'm not finished! An artificial gravity of 1g, which thanks to nuclear tests on Earth, tells us that in no way it's going to stop the fireballs at expanding at super fast speeds.
Fireballs, which amusingly enough, exist only because of the atmosphere, which is also the main brake to the expansion of said fireball.
Atmospere that doesn't exist... in space.
Seriously, Lucky, that's absurd.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Oh and a farce field that would need near equal amounts of energy just to handle the energy inside and perhaps, what? redirect it inside the ship?
You have not provided any evidence to support these requirements.
Because you think the force field is just going to manifest magically and require minimal amounts of energy perhaps?
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Wasteful and convoluted are the words we're looking for here.
Why not just throw all those gigatonns at the hull in one big bang? Don't ask.
We are talking about the Imperium of Man.
That's a bad cop out that solves precisely nothing until you actually try to offer an exhaustive explanation.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: I thought you were going for the facts, only the facts?
It is never said that gigatons are released over "a time period of likely seconds to minutes".
Besides, "likely" means you're guessing, which is even less than factual.
Is English a second language for you? No one uses the word moment the way you want it used, and the dictionary definition doesn't fit with what you want it to.

Think about how the word moment is used, if someone tells you that they will be with you in a moment they will always be telling you that you will have to wait several minutes.
Geez, it's got nothing to do with the meaning of moment, but the fact that moment doesn't refer to the release of energy but its generation within the fusion core.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: True. You may be thinking of plasma torches? But we're still dealing with compressed, high velocity jets. Which if they were multiplied and packed together, then send their ejecta radially, would form a sphere and would obviously be considered explosive.
I was thinking of electrical arcs in general.
Why?
How do you relate them to our fusion device here?
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Not to say of course that a plasma torch is a device of controlled delivery of plasma that doesn't destroy itself in the process. And only gobble small thousands of watts. Upscaling a plasma torch to a torpedo won't give you a gigaton level weapon.
Now if we were to have a plasma torch delivering gigatonnes of energy and still small enough to fit inside a torpedo, the implications of what we'd get if upscaled to battleships would be absolutely... Connorish.
1) The Lava Bomb is not a plasma torch. Most of the energy released by the Lava bomb will likely never be transfered to the space hulk do to the fact a large amount of plasma seems to be traveling away from the hull of the target. I'd guess that Lava Bombs are most effective when used on planets.
Dude, it's a FUSION device. It burns nuclear fuel by fusing atoms together. It's clearly going to be closer to an omnidirectional plasma torch than a thick hot bubbling syrup for goodness' sake!
2) A standard generator will likely need to have a much lower output then the generator in a Lava Bomb. A generator is normally intended to last years rather then destroy itself is minutes.
It's fine excepted that we know generators on ships are enormous and will obviously surpass those pidly cores mounted in those rockets.
It's quite simple: if the core is capable of producing gigatonnes of explosive energy before blowing up because it can't handle it anymore, then it can clearly work a notch below, remain stable at near max levels and still produce at last something around 1 gigaton of energy within moments.
Silly for all elements provided earlier.
3) The wattage for the Lava Bomb isn't all that high by Sci-Fi standards when you actually try running the numbers.

The generator just has a total output of gigatons.. Given that vague description, I'd assume somewhere between 1 and 20 gigaton given the speaker's grandiose style of talking. He/She would seemingly want to make the Lava Bomb sound as impressive as possible.

The Generator works for "brief moment". If the Lava Bomb worked like Little Boy then it would work for an instant, and moment usually means a few minutes.

For a low end let's assume 2 gigatons released over 5 minutes

5 minutes = 300 seconds

2 gigatons = 2,000 megatons

2,000/300=6.66666667

About 7 Megatons generated ever second
That's fine and well for a very low end power output figure.
Let's just muse on that for a moment.
The trouble is that it can be stored up and up. Technically, the best way to avoid the explosion would be to release the energy through a conduit (cannon) of some sort.
So there, you've already got a multi-gigaton beam weapon mounted on the tip of a torpedo. (we only need a monkey smoking a cigar on top of it and it's perfect)
But even with your calcs, we still end with a still small device which can handle a field in the gigatonnes range within that short amount of time.
Even if it were to remain stable for a much longer duration, it would just have to work at 10% of the what you've got; that is, over 50 minutes to go super critical (and have no way to purge the energy into weapons or else), you're simply back into a realm where an upscaled version of that device, still used under the stable parameters of 10% of that previously calculated output, would make the ships capable of delivering much more destruction as per mundane barrages than through a coordonated Exterminatus. 50 minutes, that's after all quite a lot of time before you actually shoot the juice at the target. Assuming you don't fall asleep, there should never be any internal explosion.

Besides, we can go with gigatons meaning 900+ and moments being several dozen seconds tops.
Numbers get more ridiculous. Hell, even with an inbetween figure, it's still totally mad. Mind boggingly retarded regarding the setting.

See, Exterminatus operations wouldn't be so rare, important, dreaded and a big deal if their respective and much required weapon arrays had the same amount of firepower, or even less, than standard weapons.
I'll let that sink for a moment.

Let's also note that aside hastily cobbled video games cutscenes, Exterminatus operations actually -and most of the time- involve a constant bombardment of a target with special weapons.
And they're not exactly totally effective either. A heavy kind of tyranid turtling down managed to survive one on the surface of a planet.
For a high end let's assume 19 gigatons released over 30 seconds

19 Gigatons = 19,000 Megatons

19,000/30=633.333333

About 633 Megatons generated every second
You underestimate the meaning of high end then. Go for 30 seconds AND 900 GT.

30 GT/s.
Oops.
4) It's not like the IOM can just stick as many reactors on a ship as it wants. Let's take Retribution Class Battleship
Length: 6 Kilometers from stern to prow

Crew: Over 25,000


You need places for the crew to live.

You need Months worth of supplies if not years given how unreliable warp travel can be.

You need to be able to store munitions. The six torpedo tube in the front fire torpedos that are something like 300 meters long, and then you need the huge shells for the 24 cannons on its side.

Even with the likely incorrect assumption of efficient use of space you end up with very little room for reactors.
300 meters long torpedoes?
1. Data please.
2. How the heck is that even a plausible weapon since not only are torpedoes dumb projectiles by default (guided torps are very rare in 40K) and even the big IoM warships have accelerations in the few gees tops.

Who couldn't evade a pounderous ship used as ordnance and launched at you?? Heck, who couldn't even shoot it down????
Last edited by Mr. Oragahn on Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by sonofccn » Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:10 pm

My reply as promised:

I. The Who-Teenage Wastland{for mood}
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Well I do. If there's no way to make it fit with the majority, even under the extreme acrobytics of special circumstances, then bye bye.
Well then, in that case we are in rough agreement and I thank you for taking the time and effort to answer my question.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Arbitrarily? Oh yes, my position is so totally arbitrary. I just make stuff up. Why don't you take those awesome Dick Tracy skills you've displayed thus far and put them to good use in every single thread I made about 40K. I'm sure your remarks will be valuable.
Mockery is not a counter argument. To expand my position if we accept for purpose of debate and analysis that 40K is myth and legend, as opposed to facilitating fan's "head cannon" and retcons, then we have no "factual" framework in which to make determination. Any point of evidence, or set, incongruent to one's perfered paradigm could be dismissed as part of a misremembered tale and the Verse becomes a subjective mush of personal interpetation and prefrence. Using "memory" to form a "pattern" is, in otherwords, useless if your "pattern" is composed from folklore.

That is my issue with declaring elements, even incongruent elements, false or unreal. Not that I think you "just make stuff up" or that I'm trying to ignore evidence you documented in previous threads.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Lodge whatever you want wherever you think it fits. Who cares about what I think of Guy Something? I just gave my opinion and pointed out the most likely way he grabbed this piece of info. Strike that, not most likely. The only way it actually happened. :)
The plausibility of your justification aside its still rude, even more so since Mr. Haley is not here to defend himself.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:35 pm

sonofccn wrote:My reply as promised:
Methinks you should have refrained from replying...
I. The Who-Teenage Wastland{for mood}
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Well I do. If there's no way to make it fit with the majority, even under the extreme acrobytics of special circumstances, then bye bye.
Well then, in that case we are in rough agreement and I thank you for taking the time and effort to answer my question.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Arbitrarily? Oh yes, my position is so totally arbitrary. I just make stuff up. Why don't you take those awesome Dick Tracy skills you've displayed thus far and put them to good use in every single thread I made about 40K. I'm sure your remarks will be valuable.
Mockery is not a counter argument.
Calling my methodology arbitrary, despite the work I did, simply called for it.
What, were you seriously thinking I'd accept your accusation of ditching elements on a whim, based on the moon cycles or some such?
To expand my position if we accept for purpose of debate and analysis that 40K is myth and legend, as opposed to facilitating fan's "head cannon" and retcons, then we have no "factual" framework in which to make determination. Any point of evidence, or set, incongruent to one's perfered paradigm could be dismissed as part of a misremembered tale and the Verse becomes a subjective mush of personal interpetation and prefrence. Using "memory" to form a "pattern" is, in otherwords, useless if your "pattern" is composed from folklore.

That is my issue with declaring elements, even incongruent elements, false or unreal. Not that I think you "just make stuff up" or that I'm trying to ignore evidence you documented in previous threads.
LOL, what an irrelevant stance to our matters. It is totally useless, obviously, when it comes to our debates or even the mere production of a franchise's material.
Are we even talking about the same shit or something? I mean, that's some seriously misfit reasoning you have here! The kind you can try to apply to ANY and ALL fictional universes so far; yet, would still fail to get you anywhere.
Perhaps because we don't work from "memory" or "folklore" but ... lemme see... collected data? Not to say that there's anything wrong with memory and vocal folk traditions, since that's the way they were passed down before someone decided to pen them. We judge material from what we can study, no matter the support.
And what a fluke really that we can actually verify said data, printed and all that, thanks to those wretched published official works you can buy in stores and those very threads full of quotations and calculations you can find on internet!

Besides, here's a much required reminder (unfortunately):

Since a fiction, in order to work, needs a certain minimal level of credibility, it requires a distinctive coherent narrative and set of facts, which means you should avoid at all costs to change rules constantly from one work to another. It's this consistency that makes the setting work and it's the one I'm looking for, like anyone should in fact in such debates (hence the concept of outliers, amongst others). I believe I found one common pattern that's pretty spot on for the franchise.
The only reason the biggatons became so popular is because Gehris' hamfisted analysis was of a very poor quality at the very beginning and solely meant to favour idiotic numbers, while largely ignoring the inherent massive problems they posed regarding science or even fictional coherency (since like many trademarked SDN "debaters", he'd conveniently misinterpret or outright ignore annoying facts). In fact, looking at his broken methodology has revealed that he made all is subsequent reviews conform to some initial screwed up analysis. Then, his nonsense spread beyond SDN, with all the idiots repeating his numbers and findings, although it didn't get too far on the other hand since a cursory look at dedicated 40K boards shows that his BS doesn't fly very well over here -- aside from some recent attempts by some IvanTih guy (or something) to fervently push such numbers... at a time when A.G. himself has been trying so clumsily to backpedal out of this mess.
Then, when authors looking for background data stumble upon that pile of garbage, they say cool, they eventually get more or less impressed and rush back to their text editor to include those golden nuggets into their works.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Lodge whatever you want wherever you think it fits. Who cares about what I think of Guy Something? I just gave my opinion and pointed out the most likely way he grabbed this piece of info. Strike that, not most likely. The only way it actually happened. :)
The plausibility of your justification aside its still rude, even more so since Mr. Haley is not here to defend himself.
Geez. Drop the pompous tone and your little police-of-the-world number, will ya?
Why should I care? Since when can't anyone say anything about people if the subjects of our remarks are not even there? Are you his personnal most faithful inquisitor or super expensive lawyer? Again, it's nothing more than my opinion. Get it?
How terribly stupid it is to ask that I wait for the man to be able to move here to "defend" himself! I'm not even asking for him to do anything of the sort, nor could I care less.
Do you always try your best to book a meeting with Obama everytime you say something nice or stingy about him or his work? Yes? Or do you refrain from saying anything about people who can't "defend" themselves by virtue of being OMG DEAD!!?
This is just asinine.
Are you the real sonofccn?








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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by User15046 » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:11 am

There is nothing ambiguous about that quote, it is clearly defining bombardment cannon rounds as "multi-gigaton" in yield.

Its simply contradictory to a "kilotons" or "megatons" or "teratons and beyond" hypothesis and consistent with a gigatons paradigm.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:49 am

Magos wrote:There is nothing ambiguous about that quote, it is clearly defining bombardment cannon rounds as "multi-gigaton" in yield.

Its simply contradictory to a "kilotons" or "megatons" or "teratons and beyond" hypothesis and consistent with a gigatons paradigm.
Agreed.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by sonofccn » Tue Jan 14, 2014 3:24 pm

I. I won't back down {For the hell of it}
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Methinks you should have refrained from replying...
We seemed to settle on a truce amicably and I hoped we could finish our discussion as such.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Calling my methodology arbitrary, despite the work I did, simply called for it.
What, were you seriously thinking I'd accept your accusation of ditching elements on a whim, based on the moon cycles or some such?
Mr. Oragahn wrote:LOL, what an irrelevant stance to our matters. It is totally useless, obviously, when it comes to our debates or even the mere production of a franchise's material.
Are we even talking about the same shit or something? I mean, that's some seriously misfit reasoning you have here! The kind you can try to apply to ANY and ALL fictional universes so far; yet, would still fail to get you anywhere.
Perhaps because we don't work from "memory" or "folklore" but ... lemme see... collected data? Not to say that there's anything wrong with memory and vocal folk traditions, since that's the way they were passed down before someone decided to pen them. We judge material from what we can study, no matter the support.
And what a fluke really that we can actually verify said data, printed and all that, thanks to those wretched published official works you can buy in stores and those very threads full of quotations and calculations you can find on internet!
Point of order Oragahn, I wasn't the one who said Prospero Burns was an "in-universe epic tale" but you. Nor have I argued we shouldn't look to and collect evidence which is either your inablity to comprehend my argument or a strawman. I am not asking you to ignore your collected evidence, indeed I'm asking the exact opposite, but rather trying to explain my point.

To wit, as I see it, you argued Prospero Burns was incongruent with established evidence and argued it "obviously needs to be taken as an in-universe epic tale told to citizens of the Imperium, somehow". My position is once you start declaring bits of canon less real than others, not incongruent but less real, you open your position to the same attack. That your evidence is all faulty myth and his is all accurate "reality" making arguments based on simple numeracy or consistency meaningless.

One can certainly disagree with this position but I would like it to be addressed rather than pretending I'm trying discarde all your precious evidence.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Since a fiction, in order to work, needs a certain minimal level of credibility, it requires a distinctive coherent narrative and set of facts, which means you should avoid at all costs to change rules constantly from one work to another. It's this consistency that makes the setting work and it's the one I'm looking for, like anyone should in fact in such debates (hence the concept of outliers, amongst others). I believe I found one common pattern that's pretty spot on for the franchise.
The only reason the biggatons became so popular is because Gehris' hamfisted analysis was of a very poor quality at the very beginning and solely meant to favour idiotic numbers, while largely ignoring the inherent massive problems they posed regarding science or even fictional coherency (since like many trademarked SDN "debaters", he'd conveniently misinterpret or outright ignore annoying facts). In fact, looking at his broken methodology has revealed that he made all is subsequent reviews conform to some initial screwed up analysis. Then, his nonsense spread beyond SDN, with all the idiots repeating his numbers and findings, although it didn't get too far on the other hand since a cursory look at dedicated 40K boards shows that his BS doesn't fly very well over here -- aside from some recent attempts by some IvanTih guy (or something) to fervently push such numbers... at a time when A.G. himself has been trying so clumsily to backpedal out of this mess.
Well I certainly thank you for taking the time to type this up but, like you, I don't believe in "biggatons" and I, as supported by my first post in our discussion, am a supporter compiling evidence,through I put more empahsis on fictional coherency than scientific, so I would argue this "reminder" merely reinforces that neither of us appear to understand the other.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Geez. Drop the pompous tone and your little police-of-the-world number, will ya?
Why should I care? Since when can't anyone say anything about people if the subjects of our remarks are not even there? Are you his personnal most faithful inquisitor or super expensive lawyer? Again, it's nothing more than my opinion. Get it?
Oragahn, have I infringed on your right to speak, threatened penalty? Even so much as reported to a Mod? No. I have, as you have repeated, stated my opinion. You are free to do what you want and say what you want about whomever. And if a little tepid nagging by an anonymous bloke on the internet is somehow crucially prohibitive of that then its your problem not mine.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:How terribly stupid it is to ask that I wait for the man to be able to move here to "defend" himself! I'm not even asking for him to do anything of the sort, nor could I care less.
Do you always try your best to book a meeting with Obama everytime you say something nice or stingy about him or his work? Yes? Or do you refrain from saying anything about people who can't "defend" themselves by virtue of being OMG DEAD!!?
Leaving aside that I have not mandated or asked you to "wait" I do feel the need to clarify there is a difference between evaluating ones work and making disparaging comments concerning his person. Further when and if I say something rude concerning Obama, such as he's petty and thin-skinned, I don't have issue admitting I'm being rude.

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Jan 15, 2014 3:56 pm

sonofccn wrote:We seemed to settle on a truce amicably and I hoped we could finish our discussion as such.
LOL you call that a discussion? Sounds more like the disruptive screeching of some random insect one second before I smash it.
Point of order Oragahn, I wasn't the one who said Prospero Burns was an "in-universe epic tale" but you.
And?...
Nor have I argued we shouldn't look to and collect evidence which is either your inablity to comprehend my argument or a strawman. I am not asking you to ignore your collected evidence, indeed I'm asking the exact opposite, but rather trying to explain my point.

To wit, as I see it, you argued Prospero Burns was incongruent with established evidence and argued it "obviously needs to be taken as an in-universe epic tale told to citizens of the Imperium, somehow". My position is once you start declaring bits of canon less real than others, not incongruent but less real, you open your position to the same attack. That your evidence is all faulty myth and his is all accurate "reality" making arguments based on simple numeracy or consistency meaningless.

One can certainly disagree with this position but I would like it to be addressed rather than pretending I'm trying discarde all your precious evidence.
Perhaps you could pay attention to the reasons as to why I offered this conclusion? Like, by reading the thread and not just quote mining like crazy to try to make a point.
Hell, it must be a long and arduous task reading all I wrote in order to pick one single seeminly contradictory claim I may have made some time.
You did the same in that Termies vs Clonetroopers thread, gravedigging some old quotes out of context. You're really having fun retroactively stalking me, aren't you?
What next thread will you crawl along in order to find some quotes to darg here? Are you sure you haven't got anything better to do than running this menial investigation?

Besides, I never claimed my observations would be attack-proof. But the establishment of a fool-proof pattern certainly solidifies my conclusions.
In other words, I dealt with PB that specific way for the very good reasons I gave (which I'm not going to repeat here), and quite fantastically, the canonical rules of Warhammer 40000 allow me to do that precisely.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Since a fiction, in order to work, needs a certain minimal level of credibility, it requires a distinctive coherent narrative and set of facts, which means you should avoid at all costs to change rules constantly from one work to another. It's this consistency that makes the setting work and it's the one I'm looking for, like anyone should in fact in such debates (hence the concept of outliers, amongst others). I believe I found one common pattern that's pretty spot on for the franchise.
The only reason the biggatons became so popular is because Gehris' hamfisted analysis was of a very poor quality at the very beginning and solely meant to favour idiotic numbers, while largely ignoring the inherent massive problems they posed regarding science or even fictional coherency (since like many trademarked SDN "debaters", he'd conveniently misinterpret or outright ignore annoying facts). In fact, looking at his broken methodology has revealed that he made all is subsequent reviews conform to some initial screwed up analysis. Then, his nonsense spread beyond SDN, with all the idiots repeating his numbers and findings, although it didn't get too far on the other hand since a cursory look at dedicated 40K boards shows that his BS doesn't fly very well over here -- aside from some recent attempts by some IvanTih guy (or something) to fervently push such numbers... at a time when A.G. himself has been trying so clumsily to backpedal out of this mess.
Well I certainly thank you for taking the time to type this up but, like you, I don't believe in "biggatons" and I, as supported by my first post in our discussion, am a supporter compiling evidence,through I put more empahsis on fictional coherency than scientific, so I would argue this "reminder" merely reinforces that neither of us appear to understand the other.
Define scientific then because under your appreciation of the term, disagreeing on a normal sword being able to cut through flesh and then the same exact sword with no modification, featured in a sequel book, being able to cut through adamantium, would be a scientific detail not relevant to the fiction. Which is obviously not the case.
Or like having a car needing to reach 80 mph for some very exotic phenomenon to kick in and suddenly only having to reach 20 mph the next day for no apparent reason, only for that threshold to suddenly bump up to mach 2.

Let me help you, here, troubled one.

>>> Science is knowledge. <<<

If it's contradictory, your work is nothing more than a glorified glass house, at best. It has no solid foundations.

Knowing what a sword is and does is just as scientific as knowing what gigaton nukes do in general. It's just that the later is not a mainstream form of knowledge.
Just like it's normal that a bolter doesn't rip a tank apart.
All rules are equally important.
Incoherent elements that keep going up and down on virtue of plot suck and make the fiction lose its much precious suspension of disbelief power.
It also means that such a fiction would be the less qualified to pretend being worthy of any "guide" or detailed fluff.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Geez. Drop the pompous tone and your little police-of-the-world number, will ya?
Why should I care? Since when can't anyone say anything about people if the subjects of our remarks are not even there? Are you his personnal most faithful inquisitor or super expensive lawyer? Again, it's nothing more than my opinion. Get it?
Oragahn, have I infringed on your right to speak, threatened penalty? Even so much as reported to a Mod? No.
Yes.
You condemn my OMG naughty words and clearly weigh them in a negative way. By this judgement, you clearly imply if not outright state that I shouldn't say or type such things, especially since the person exposed to this ruthless pounding is not there to defend himself.
By his honour, let him stand before me and smack me in the face!

Since you didn't really notice, let me explain it to you: this is a strong suggestion for behavioural restriction.
Even more so since you've been insisting on it in several posts.
I have, as you have repeated, stated my opinion.
Both are compatible. Your opinion is just what you *think*.
And you think I should not say things you deem rude about someone who's not there.
In other words, by your judgement on those parts you deem rude, I really should refrain from saying such things.

Actually, you're not even debating the why I made those comments but solely spewing debilitating remarks about the form.
You paint all this as a vast ad hominem instead of dealing with the crux of the matter here.

You've derailed this thread for far too long with those red herrings, after needlessly reviving an irrelevant exchange that should have been left to rest last year, and I'll have to ask a mod to cut those parts out and have them moved to a new thread, in Rules of Evidence perhaps. And good luck to the mod for trying to find a title to that one!
You are free to do what you want and say what you want about whomever. And if a little tepid nagging by an anonymous bloke on the internet is somehow crucially prohibitive of that then its your problem not mine.
Thin skinned are we?
Who gives a shit if it's rude? And how was it rude? Only one option out of three was rude ("wanky fanboyism", another way to say lustful for big numbers, which you'd have considered rude anyway, as annoying as you are).
And damn, not only it has a very good chance of being true, but it's also very tame in light of what we've seen in the world of versusdom.

Now, "Poor research" and "scientific ignorance" are not rude as far as I'm concerned, and you do-gooder shall leave this thread at once, you're pissing me off with that nonsense.
If calling a cat a cat troubles you, then you're the one having a problem here. And you just can't let it go.
Instead of arguing the point, you waste an inordinate amount of words and time on shooting at totally peripheral elements, all that billowing in some geometrical fashion.

You're some really bored tart and arguing for the sake of arguing.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:How terribly stupid it is to ask that I wait for the man to be able to move here to "defend" himself! I'm not even asking for him to do anything of the sort, nor could I care less.
Do you always try your best to book a meeting with Obama everytime you say something nice or stingy about him or his work? Yes? Or do you refrain from saying anything about people who can't "defend" themselves by virtue of being OMG DEAD!!?
Leaving aside that I have not mandated or asked you to "wait"
You most certainly implied I should.
You clearly objected against:

- Me making some rude remarks about Guy Haley.
- Doing it while he was not present on those boards.

Ego: don't do it again.
Can't be any clearer.
There's also no point making me know you didn't like that if you didn't wish I'd conform to your standards.
I first tried to dismiss your opinion as just that, an opinion, by reminding you that I was just giving mine, but you came back at me with two more posts full of the same drivel.
That's just enough.
I do feel the need to clarify there is a difference between evaluating ones work and making disparaging comments concerning his person.
Amuse me. I didn't even really attack him. I merely pointed out the three possible reasons why he introduced those elements. No more, no less.
Only one might appear rude, and it's nothing more than a logical plausibility, not even a given.
Are you going to latch onto anyone who uses the term wank now?
Further when and if I say something rude concerning Obama, such as he's petty and thin-skinned, I don't have issue admitting I'm being rude.
Me neither. Yet three posts later you keep soiling my shiny boots.
Could it be possible to see you remove yourself from this thread at once?

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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Lucky » Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:21 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote: It's more like they're stuck with that design and they decided to weaponize it since they couldn't find a manufacturer for real military-grade nuclear ordnance.
In other words, lava bombs would exist because for some reason there would be an excedent of fusion generator production somewhere in the Imperium, and a severe lack of production of efficient nuclear ordnance.
Which is so totally possible in 40K, btw, notably because of the loss of tech and the ever so important recovery of anything sporting the STC stamp.
So they sort of McGyver fusion generators pushed to some supercritical level.

Still, even if in universe, I could accept that, the problem of those levels of energy remains whole: they are simply too problematic, for reasons put up earlier.
You keep assuming the Lava Bomb is a particle and efficient weapon, but there is no reason to think that.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Or it is just describing, in a metaphorical way, what an explosion looks like (especially in Hollywood): a ball of fire that grows. And please, note that absolutely nothing is said about the speed of that blossoming event either.
We are talking about rounded blobs of plasma sticking to the hull of a space hulk. You keep acting as if something exploded for no reason.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: For all we know the author could be describing with ample detail what goes on within fractions of seconds. There's just no information about time given there.
There wouldn't be "blisters" on the hull if the event plays out that quickly. The described event has to happen relatively slowly or you end up with the plasma flying off in all directions at high speed.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: It is fuel. Assuming they had the oxydant with them, it's still going to be limited in terms of power. It's combustion and you have time to see the fuel burn.
What the bomb is, is another thing entirely: much more powerful and coming with a totally different reaction.
I mean, for crying out loud, it's a FUSION reaction. OK??
No, the idea that Lava bomb takes a notable amount of time to release the "gigatons" comes from the fact the plasma is described as a blister on the hull. You won't get that with a sudden release.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: The section of interest makes ZERO mention of any release of energy, just its production.
If there was no release of energy then there would be no plasma generated to create something that can be described as a blister. The plasma has to come from the generator because the narrator states the Lava Bomb hasn't even made a hole in the hull.

If the Lava bomb actually explodes rather then fails in a non-catistrofic fashion we would not get blisters, but rapidly expanding clouds that we would never get a good view of.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Irrelevant because I don't claim that the release of energy happens in a brief moment.
The production of energy happens in a brief moment, and I didn't say it wouldn't take some significant amount of time.
No you claim an it is released in an instant. You're so hung up on the word bomb. You are assuming that because they are called bombs they explode like Little Boy.

If the Lava Bombs explode then there would not be any "blisters" on the hull. There would be a bright flash, and the plasma would spread out becoming invisible.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Now that's really inane. Gravity, on what? A space hulk? A dead piece of amalgamated chunks of drifting ships or stations?
With at the very best, perhaps some systems still working, with all miracles including the much needed artificial gravity, and which conveniently works outside of that munch of mashed metal??
Oh wait, I'm not finished! An artificial gravity of 1g, which thanks to nuclear tests on Earth, tells us that in no way it's going to stop the fireballs at expanding at super fast speeds.
Fireballs, which amusingly enough, exist only because of the atmosphere, which is also the main brake to the expansion of said fireball.
Atmospere that doesn't exist... in space.
Seriously, Lucky, that's absurd.
You're the one claiming those things by default because you are claiming an explosion. You need to think your theories to their logical conclusions.

I'm putting forth the theory the plasma generator is generating plasma that slowly floats away.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Because you think the force field is just going to manifest magically and require minimal amounts of energy perhaps?
First you claim a shield needs to have the same amount of energy put into it as it is going to contain or repel.

Your theory requires something stopping the plasma from expanding beyond being blisters.

My theory only requires the generators to slowly release plasma into space. You act like you've never seen a still fail before.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: That's a bad cop out that solves precisely nothing until you actually try to offer an exhaustive explanation.
Wasteful and convoluted is what the IOM does. We aren't talking about the Knights Inductor here.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Geez, it's got nothing to do with the meaning of moment, but the fact that moment doesn't refer to the release of energy but its generation within the fusion core.
And that Fusion Generator doesn't seem to explode, but rather leak plasma into the environment like a still with a hole in it.

Mr. Oragahn wrote: Why?
How do you relate them to our fusion device here?
Plasma hotter then the sun is plasma hotter then the sun.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Dude, it's a FUSION device. It burns nuclear fuel by fusing atoms together. It's clearly going to be closer to an omnidirectional plasma torch than a thick hot bubbling syrup for goodness' sake!
A fusion reactor/generator makes plasma that is normally contained inside. It would appear that a Lava Bomb has fusion reactors that at some point start to leak plasma instead of explosive warheads.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: It's fine excepted that we know generators on ships are enormous and will obviously surpass those pidly cores mounted in those rockets.
It's quite simple: if the core is capable of producing gigatonnes of explosive energy before blowing up because it can't handle it anymore, then it can clearly work a notch below, remain stable at near max levels and still produce at last something around 1 gigaton of energy within moments.
Silly for all elements provided earlier.
The fusion generators/reactors fail in minutes at most. The IOM may need to build their reactors that big to keep them from destroying themselves like a Lava Bomb.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: That's fine and well for a very low end power output figure.
Let's just muse on that for a moment.
The trouble is that it can be stored up and up. Technically, the best way to avoid the explosion would be to release the energy through a conduit (cannon) of some sort.
So there, you've already got a multi-gigaton beam weapon mounted on the tip of a torpedo. (we only need on monkey smoking a cigar on top of it and it's perfect)
But even with your calcs, we still end with a still small device which can handle a field in the gigatonnes range within that short amount of time.
Even if it were to remain stable for a much longer duration, it would just have to work at 10% of the what you've got; that is, over 50 minutes to go super critical (and have no way to purge the energy into weapons or else), you're simply back into a realm where an upscaled version of that device, still used under the stable parameters of 10% of that previously calculated output, would make the ships capable of delivering much more destruction as per mundane barrages than through a coordonated Exterminatus. 50 minutes, that's after all quite a lot of time before you actually shoot the juice at the target. Assuming you don't fall asleep, there should never be any internal explosion.

Besides, we can go with gigatons meaning 900+ and moments being several dozen seconds tops.
Numbers get more ridiculous. Hell, even with an inbetween figure, it's still totally mad. Mind boggingly retarded regarding the setting.

See, Exterminatus operations wouldn't be so rare, important, dreaded and a big deal if their respective and much required weapon arrays had the same amount of firepower, or even less, than standard weapons.
I'll let that sink for a moment.

Let's also note that aside hastily cobbled video games cutscenes, Exterminatus operations actually -and most of the time- involve a constant bombardment of a target with special weapons.
And they're not exactly totally effective either. A heavy kind of tyranid turtling down managed to survive one on the surface of a planet.
That doesn't solve all the problems. They can't contain the energy hence the Lava Bomb leaks plasma as the method of which it causes damage.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: You underestimate the meaning of high end then. Go for 30 seconds AND 900 GT.

30 GT/s.
Oops.
Except that gigatons meaning 900 doesn't fit with the style the quote is written in. The author is trying to make the Lava Bombs seem as impressive as possible without lying. We can tell this by the unneeded detail about the gigatons. What you are suggesting is that the speaker/is actually lowballing the power of the weapons.

IF the person giving the description intended for the Lava Bomb to have an output of tens of or hundreds of gigatons the speaker would have.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: 300 meters long torpedoes?
1. Data please.
2. How the heck is that even a plausible weapon since not only are torpedoes dumb projectiles by default (guided torps are very rare in 40K) and even the big IoM warships have accelerations in the few gees tops.

Who couldn't evade a pounderous ship used as ordnance and launched at you?? Heck, who couldn't even shoot it down????
1) I suppose you could try scaling the size of the torpedo tubes as ship sizes are basically stated.

This is what i may have been thinking of.
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Torpedo#Torpedoes
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Impe ... #Torpedoes
http://www.factpile.com/9629-warhammer- ... star-wars/

2) It's 40k, where everything is super fast and super powerful except when it needs those capabilities.

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: WH40K - 40K misc numbers... (SDN)

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Jan 22, 2014 12:25 am

Lucky wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: It's more like they're stuck with that design and they decided to weaponize it since they couldn't find a manufacturer for real military-grade nuclear ordnance.
In other words, lava bombs would exist because for some reason there would be an excedent of fusion generator production somewhere in the Imperium, and a severe lack of production of efficient nuclear ordnance.
Which is so totally possible in 40K, btw, notably because of the loss of tech and the ever so important recovery of anything sporting the STC stamp.
So they sort of McGyver fusion generators pushed to some supercritical level.

Still, even if in universe, I could accept that, the problem of those levels of energy remains whole: they are simply too problematic, for reasons put up earlier.
You keep assuming the Lava Bomb is a particle and efficient weapon, but there is no reason to think that.
LOL, you're not debating but merely typing sentences as fast as possible, putting down anything your brain comes with.
So should I be surprised that what you say right above is nothing but a bold lie?
Quote me making such repetitive claims.
For the reminder and for those who can't read properly, I don't have any problem with the design being inefficient. I think it's pretty clear from what I quote, I even delved deeper into the technical and logistical reasons behind this situation.
Funnily, the real problem you didn't spot in the part you quoted is about how the energy levels are complete bollocks in light of the universe's need of coherence and logic.
That's a radically different topic.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Or it is just describing, in a metaphorical way, what an explosion looks like (especially in Hollywood): a ball of fire that grows. And please, note that absolutely nothing is said about the speed of that blossoming event either.
We are talking about rounded blobs of plasma sticking to the hull of a space hulk. You keep acting as if something exploded for no reason.
No, you are talking about rounded blobs of plasma sticking to the hull of a space hulk, because that is solely your interpretation.
As for the absurd strawman in the second sentence: WTF? Where did I pretend explosions came out of nowhere?
Oh come on, is this going to be the "quality" standard of your entire post?
This is so bad.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: For all we know the author could be describing with ample detail what goes on within fractions of seconds. There's just no information about time given there.
There wouldn't be "blisters" on the hull if the event plays out that quickly. The described event has to happen relatively slowly or you end up with the plasma flying off in all directions at high speed.
Y U SO LITRALL ?

It can be taken as a metaphor. Hellooo!! METAPHOR. It's a figure of speech.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: It is fuel. Assuming they had the oxydant with them, it's still going to be limited in terms of power. It's combustion and you have time to see the fuel burn.
What the bomb is, is another thing entirely: much more powerful and coming with a totally different reaction.
I mean, for crying out loud, it's a FUSION reaction. OK??
No, the idea that Lava bomb takes a notable amount of time to release the "gigatons" comes from the fact the plasma is described as a blister on the hull. You won't get that with a sudden release.
... because a nuclear fireball seen from a high vantage point in the sky wouldn't look like a blister?
As I suggested, once translated to space, if you're expecting some high yield kerosene fireball effect, then it's easier to say that he author might suffer from Hollywoodite.
But that's the silly way to go at it.

The other and more sensible reason could be that an explosion is going to propel a cloud of particles at varying speeds. You will find lingering material while other bits will be cast out at phenomenal speeds.
Above all, the hot spot on the surface will be left glowing, and light will also be scattered through the lingering faint fog of particles.
In other words, from a distance, it is possible you might see a sort of luminous spot. Even more with molten metal and other burning and molten elements still being ejected into space through the newly created holes.
40K ships usually fire from long range. At that distance, any kind of mark left by a mighty nuclear explosion on the surface of a complicated and dense object would look like a luminous spot.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: The section of interest makes ZERO mention of any release of energy, just its production.
If there was no release of energy then there would be no plasma generated to create something that can be described as a blister. The plasma has to come from the generator because the narrator states the Lava Bomb hasn't even made a hole in the hull.
The section of interest in the quotation, aka the part of the sentence.
This very section does not feature any mention of any release of energy, only its production.
I didn't say energy does not get released. I'm trying to tell you that the sentence that contains the information about time (the brief moments bit) only refers to production of energy.
FFS, this shouldn't be hard to understand! Read the damn text.
I'm just telling you what we read in the relevant part of the entire quotation fluff.

As for the bomb not even making a hole in the hull yet at a time when it's already creating flaring explosions, then when is the hole supposed to be made? When Jesus returns?
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Irrelevant because I don't claim that the release of energy happens in a brief moment.
The production of energy happens in a brief moment, and I didn't say it wouldn't take some significant amount of time.
No you claim an it is released in an instant. You're so hung up on the word bomb. You are assuming that because they are called bombs they explode like Little Boy.

If the Lava Bombs explode then there would not be any "blisters" on the hull. There would be a bright flash, and the plasma would spread out becoming invisible.
Actually, no. The damaged point would remain luminous for a very long period.
See for example the Deep Impact case against the comet Tempel-1. Awesome stuff there. The impact spot remained luminous for hours and hours and hours after the crash, and we could see the light from behind the comet's core!
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Now that's really inane. Gravity, on what? A space hulk? A dead piece of amalgamated chunks of drifting ships or stations?
With at the very best, perhaps some systems still working, with all miracles including the much needed artificial gravity, and which conveniently works outside of that munch of mashed metal??
Oh wait, I'm not finished! An artificial gravity of 1g, which thanks to nuclear tests on Earth, tells us that in no way it's going to stop the fireballs at expanding at super fast speeds.
Fireballs, which amusingly enough, exist only because of the atmosphere, which is also the main brake to the expansion of said fireball.
Atmospere that doesn't exist... in space.
Seriously, Lucky, that's absurd.
You're the one claiming those things by default because you are claiming an explosion. You need to think your theories to their logical conclusions.
I don't need to "claim" any explosion because that's exactly what is written. Reread the quotation. Explosions flare up, they're stated to happen, in the opening section of the quoted material.
And hell, if there are no explosions, what's supposed to happen?
Oh I remember, "energy can't be explosive"... it's all a torch...
Sorry, you still fail.

You know, the chances of having a fusion reactor blowing up because its internal force field cannot constrain the energies are far higher than a reactor managing to extend a force field past its own volume, against the logic of the reactor's design itself! Even instincts would tell us that a reactor has more chances to blow up before some magical phenomenon would have the internal force field manage to form outside of the reactor and conveniently contain BOTH the super hot plasma that would damage the hull AND the reactor itself, while NOT destroying the reactor.
For some kind of convoluted and non-efficient design, that's amazingly hardcore on the scale of super advanced systems. Safe that it does not even make sense as a reactor design.
Have you ever heard of Occam's razor by chance?
Now who's got a bad theory again?
I'm putting forth the theory the plasma generator is generating plasma that slowly floats away.
Oh, now you've ditched the mysterious force field.
As I said, you don't seem to realize the magnitude of energies involved here. We're dealing with a star-like plasma torch.
The vast majority of the plasma is not going to slowly float away! Why? Because there has been some multi-gigaton explosions.
In fact any explosion in space, no matter the yield, is going to naturally produce that very tidy little round hemisphere your mind has conjured.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Because you think the force field is just going to manifest magically and require minimal amounts of energy perhaps?
First you claim a shield needs to have the same amount of energy put into it as it is going to contain or repel.

Your theory requires something stopping the plasma from expanding beyond being blisters.
Well, unless you think you can contain, outside of the device, gigatons of energy with much less power.
Wow. These Imperium techs have access to a technology that's impressive indeed.

In general, one would wisely think that you need to spend more energy, because of waste, in order to get enough left to counter the "enemy" energy.
My theory only requires the generators to slowly release plasma into space. You act like you've never seen a still fail before.
A still fail?
And need I quote you claiming that the blisters result from the energy being contained?
Your post: "And what does the rest of the sentence say, It talks about the blisters of flame. There aren't going to be blisters of flame unless something contains the energy. In the scene something is causing the Lava Bomb's energy to be slowly released. It it just exploded there would only be a bright flash."
In another post, you say: "The blister of fire is on the outside of the hull working its way in."
And another one: "2) We don't know why the plasma is forming blisters on the hull. If there is a field holding the plasma in a dome shape then it may be part of the normal operations of the generator."

Perhaps you've changed your theory AFTER my reply, but then it's stupid to accuse me of criticizing your old theory without being able to predict your next creative contribution. :/
By definition the plasma is not going to slowly form, bulge or drift. It's not going to slowly burn like a bubble of fuel in a 0g environment either, as I told you. It's simply not going to happen.

Now, on the other hand, if we're talking about the boiling type of plasma that's found in 40K (and assuming "boiling" isn't just used because of mere bubbles going up due to buoyancy), I already gave some suggestions about how it may be some kind of biofuel called plasma that turns critical (not super critical) when leaking from a core, and may be used in a wide range of exotic weapons.
But this has nothing to do with your pet theory.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: That's a bad cop out that solves precisely nothing until you actually try to offer an exhaustive explanation.
Wasteful and convoluted is what the IOM does. We aren't talking about the Knights Inductor here.
Still a bad cop out since I shoot down each of your arguments you try to bring up in defense of your theory. You talk about inefficiency but your theoretical design's problem is one of efficiency or lack thereof, but of complete nonsense. It doesn't even begin to make sense as a crappy in efficient power plant. It is simply totally inane.
Besides, you misunderstand fusion, plasma, how fuel burns, misread words (mine and from the quote), etc. This is not good.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Geez, it's got nothing to do with the meaning of moment, but the fact that moment doesn't refer to the release of energy but its generation within the fusion core.
And that Fusion Generator doesn't seem to explode, but rather leak plasma into the environment like a still with a hole in it.
Even if this is your new theory, then you'll still have to admit that there's no way around the fact that star-hot plasma is going to escape insanely fast (even more since it's compressed).
So you'll have to bury your literal interpretation of blister deep down. Then we'll be able to focus on the energy levels instead...

Mr. Oragahn wrote: Why?
How do you relate them to our fusion device here?
Plasma hotter then the sun is plasma hotter then the sun.
WUT? Is that even a mediocre attempt at some red herring?
Please answer the question. I replied to this:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: True. You may be thinking of plasma torches? But we're still dealing with compressed, high velocity jets. Which if they were multiplied and packed together, then send their ejecta radially, would form a sphere and would obviously be considered explosive.
I was thinking of electrical arcs in general.
And please make some effort about properly following the discussion.
If you're not arsed enough to keep track of your own claims, do us a favour and just give up, thanks.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Dude, it's a FUSION device. It burns nuclear fuel by fusing atoms together. It's clearly going to be closer to an omnidirectional plasma torch than a thick hot bubbling syrup for goodness' sake!
A fusion reactor/generator makes plasma that is normally contained inside. It would appear that a Lava Bomb has fusion reactors that at some point start to leak plasma instead of explosive warheads.
Yes, imprisonned by internal forces, most likely that of a magnetic field generated by the reactor inside itself.
It doesn't change the fact that once there's a hole in that, it's going to burst nastily. As GIAGATONS NUCLEAR EXPLOSION nasty.
That's a very basic fact I've been covering over several posts again and again. It gets very tiring.
If you just can't understand that, then stop thinking too hard and boot out of this thread at once, thanks.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: It's fine excepted that we know generators on ships are enormous and will obviously surpass those pidly cores mounted in those rockets.
It's quite simple: if the core is capable of producing gigatonnes of explosive energy before blowing up because it can't handle it anymore, then it can clearly work a notch below, remain stable at near max levels and still produce at last something around 1 gigaton of energy within moments.
Silly for all elements provided earlier.
The fusion generators/reactors fail in minutes at most. The IOM may need to build their reactors that big to keep them from destroying themselves like a Lava Bomb.
Thank you for admitting they fail, after all.
Anyway, they'd fail precisely because they would obviously reach a point where they can't maintain safe working parameters.
My point precisely was that the Imperium just needs to dial those generators down so they never get there. It still gives those ships stupid levels of power, because we're talking about small generators that fit in a section of a rocket.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: That's fine and well for a very low end power output figure.
Let's just muse on that for a moment.
The trouble is that it can be stored up and up. Technically, the best way to avoid the explosion would be to release the energy through a conduit (cannon) of some sort.
So there, you've already got a multi-gigaton beam weapon mounted on the tip of a torpedo. (we only need one monkey smoking a cigar on top of it and it's perfect)
But even with your calcs, we still end with a still small device which can handle a field in the gigatonnes range within that short amount of time.
Even if it were to remain stable for a much longer duration, it would just have to work at 10% of the what you've got; that is, over 50 minutes to go super critical (and have no way to purge the energy into weapons or else), you're simply back into a realm where an upscaled version of that device, still used under the stable parameters of 10% of that previously calculated output, would make the ships capable of delivering much more destruction as per mundane barrages than through a coordonated Exterminatus. 50 minutes, that's after all quite a lot of time before you actually shoot the juice at the target. Assuming you don't fall asleep, there should never be any internal explosion.

Besides, we can go with gigatons meaning 900+ and moments being several dozen seconds tops.
Numbers get more ridiculous. Hell, even with an inbetween figure, it's still totally mad. Mind boggingly retarded regarding the setting.

See, Exterminatus operations wouldn't be so rare, important, dreaded and a big deal if their respective and much required weapon arrays had the same amount of firepower, or even less, than standard weapons.
I'll let that sink for a moment.

Let's also note that aside hastily cobbled video games cutscenes, Exterminatus operations actually -and most of the time- involve a constant bombardment of a target with special weapons.
And they're not exactly totally effective either. A heavy kind of tyranid turtling down managed to survive one on the surface of a planet.
That doesn't solve all the problems. They can't contain the energy hence the Lava Bomb leaks plasma as the method of which it causes damage.
Did you read what I typed?
No.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: You underestimate the meaning of high end then. Go for 30 seconds AND 900 GT.

30 GT/s.
Oops.
Except that gigatons meaning 900 doesn't fit with the style the quote is written in.
Ah?
You know that how?
Or are you just making shit up now?
The author is trying to make the Lava Bombs seem as impressive as possible without lying. We can tell this by the unneeded detail about the gigatons. What you are suggesting is that the speaker/is actually lowballing the power of the weapons.
LOL, I say gigatons could mean something close to teratons and this is supposed to be lowballing?
o_O
IF the person giving the description intended for the Lava Bomb to have an output of tens of or hundreds of gigatons the speaker would have.
Oh, obviously. That's quite a heavy assumption you've got there. Like when one speaks of the kilotons or megatons of a nuke when said nuke can release multiple digits of it at once?
Mr. Oragahn wrote: 300 meters long torpedoes?
1. Data please.
2. How the heck is that even a plausible weapon since not only are torpedoes dumb projectiles by default (guided torps are very rare in 40K) and even the big IoM warships have accelerations in the few gees tops.

Who couldn't evade a pounderous ship used as ordnance and launched at you?? Heck, who couldn't even shoot it down????
1) I suppose you could try scaling the size of the torpedo tubes as ship sizes are basically stated.

This is what i may have been thinking of.
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Torpedo#Torpedoes
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Impe ... #Torpedoes
http://www.factpile.com/9629-warhammer- ... star-wars/

2) It's 40k, where everything is super fast and super powerful except when it needs those capabilities.
Not only 40K isn't super fast (that's typical Connorish BS and totally contrary to the concept of age of sail in space), but even super speeds solve nothing.
Super speeds mean ships are still very fast, torpedoes still largely dumb projectiles for the most part (documented fact) so unable to correct course, and such speeds mean super sensors and lots of power, thus lots of firepower, and therefore no problem to shoot down small but already ship sized torpedoes.

As for the links, the first one disagrees with the super size torps, and the second provides no clear, direct source at all (like the first one).
Vague mentions of books don't cut it.

Finally, I'm not sure I'd have enough time to crawl through the texts that awaits me beyond the third link.

Just one more note: if your next reply is going to be more of the same subpar drivel you've thrown at me, don't expect any reply.

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