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

[Mith]

Have you by chance had a chance to look at the Battlefleet Gothic rules? Check this out from GW: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Cus ... lenium.pdf

pg 2/14:

The Imperial Navy

…All human-inhabited space is further broken down into sectors, which are most usually cubes of space roughly 200 light years to a side. Each sector is comprised of a number of sub-sectors ranging from ten to twenty light years in diameter, centered on densely populated star clusters, important worlds, or meeting pots of various trade routes through the warp. The areas between sub-sectors and sectors – unexplored or uninhabited regions, alien empires, areas inaccessible by the warp ect, --are known as wilderness space or wilderness zones and make up a far greater proportion of the galaxy than that controlled by Humanity.

For all practical purposes, a sector’s battlefleet is the largest operational naval orginisation, under the command of a Lord Admiral. Each battlefleet is then divided into a number of battlegroups. Battlegroups are not permanent organizations, but instead task forces, convoy escorts, patrol flotillas, and other fleets that have been assembled to perform particular functions…

Warships of the Imperium
Each battlefleet normally consists of between 50 and 75 warships of varying size, although in some sectors there will be more or less, according to the importance of the sector and the number of enemies it must contend with. As well as these destroyers, frigates, cruisers, and battleships, a battlefleet also has access to countless smaller vessels such as transports, shuttles, messenger craft, and long-range patrol craft. In addition to interstellar vessels, as sector will also be protected by numerous ships incapable of warp travel, such as system patrol ships and defense monitors. These are stationary defenses – space stations, orbital defense lasers, and missile silos and orbital mines.

My, my, what do we have here? The Imperial Starfleet is more or less, divided into 75 warships (max on average) per 200 lightyears (sectors). Even giving them say, 100,000 LY to work with, that's only 37,500 starships for the Imperial Navy. More reasonable estimations of about 50,000, we'd get about LY 18,750. In addition, they would also have numerous defense ships that are pretty much limited to STL speeds.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Have you by chance had a chance to look at the Battlefleet Gothic rules? Check this out from GW: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Cus ... lenium.pdf

pg 2/14:

The Imperial Navy

…All human-inhabited space is further broken down into sectors, which are most usually cubes of space roughly 200 light years to a side. Each sector is comprised of a number of sub-sectors ranging from ten to twenty light years in diameter, centered on densely populated star clusters, important worlds, or meeting pots of various trade routes through the warp. The areas between sub-sectors and sectors – unexplored or uninhabited regions, alien empires, areas inaccessible by the warp ect, --are known as wilderness space or wilderness zones and make up a far greater proportion of the galaxy than that controlled by Humanity.

For all practical purposes, a sector’s battlefleet is the largest operational naval orginisation, under the command of a Lord Admiral. Each battlefleet is then divided into a number of battlegroups. Battlegroups are not permanent organizations, but instead task forces, convoy escorts, patrol flotillas, and other fleets that have been assembled to perform particular functions…

Warships of the Imperium
Each battlefleet normally consists of between 50 and 75 warships of varying size, although in some sectors there will be more or less, according to the importance of the sector and the number of enemies it must contend with. As well as these destroyers, frigates, cruisers, and battleships, a battlefleet also has access to countless smaller vessels such as transports, shuttles, messenger craft, and long-range patrol craft. In addition to interstellar vessels, as sector will also be protected by numerous ships incapable of warp travel, such as system patrol ships and defense monitors. These are stationary defenses – space stations, orbital defense lasers, and missile silos and orbital mines.

My, my, what do we have here? The Imperial Starfleet is more or less, divided into 75 warships (max on average) per 200 lightyears (sectors). Even giving them say, 100,000 LY to work with, that's only 37,500 starships for the Imperial Navy. More reasonable estimations of about 50,000, we'd get about LY 18,750. In addition, they would also have numerous defense ships that are pretty much limited to STL speeds.

Your geometry is a little off. See, if sectors are 200 light years on a side, that means that there should be tens of thousands of them at least, and easily hundreds of thousands. Given that the Imperium is supposed to mostly fill the galaxy, there should be about as many sectors in the Imperium as other sources give worlds - around a million.

I've noted this before here. From Battlefleet Gothic, however (I believe it's the book on the Gothic sector fleet itself, specifically), we also see other choice pieces of information that conflict with that.

I'll just quote myself to save time:

Having established roughly the level of firepower (common weapons best measured in megatons, but lots of them and lots of ammunition) for ships, and having briefly mentioned the size of said ships, we then come to the sticky point:

The logistics of the Imperial Navy. There are two primary functions of the Navy. One is transporting Guardsmen:

Formerly known as the Righteous Fury, the vessel was accompanying fourteen Navy transports (carrying thirty two thousand guardsmen, fifteen hundred battle tanks, and over ten thousand auxiliary staff and vehicles)

In this instance, we see one tank per 21 Guardsmen. The capacity is several thousand per transport. If Guards spend 10% of their time in transit, and each transport on average is transporting one regiment, the Navy needs one transport per ten regiments. That's a ballpark.

First estimate: A sector Battlefleet is typically 50-75 capital ships and deals with a region roughly eight million cubic light years. It would take about a million sectors to fill the galaxy - at close to one sector per inhabited Imperium world.

That would be more than one capital ship per world. Actually, that would be one Battlefleet per inhabited world. Accordingly, I'm going to dismiss that estimate.

Alternative estimate: There are five Segmenta. We know a bit about the Segmentum Obscurus fleet:

The Lunar class cruiser forms the mainstay of Battlefleet Obscuras with over six hundred ships serving throughout the Segmentum and more than twenty ships fighting in the Gothic War.

Unfortunately, this is going to end up being a little bit off from our original estimate. We have a Segmentum fleet, of which 600-odd cruisers form a "mainstay."

I assume it's not a majority, so the Segmentum should have more than 1200 capital ships. There are presumably less than seven hundred and only nine capital classes represented in the Gothic fleet, so the "backbone" should be at least of average number, meaning the Segmentum should have less than 6300 capital ships.

6 of the 32 "notable" ships mentioned are Lunar class vessels. Based on this ratio, my "best guess" is therefore 3500 capital ships in the Segmentum Obscurus fleet. This would correspond to 45-70 BattleFleets (best guess 60) and a similar number of sectors.

If the Segmenta have similar sized fleets and similar numbers of sectors - a substantial but reasonable assumption - the total inventory of the Imperial Navy should include around 17,500 capital ships (6,000-30,000). This would be supplemented by several times this number of escorts, but the total number of genuine dedicated warships does not seem like it should greatly exceed 100,000.

Note this represents roughly an order of magnitude difference, something which has consequences in the number of sectors. This would mean, however, that the actual inhabited volume of the galaxy is about 2 billion cubic light years, or a rather small percent. Not only are inhabited planets within a sector nearly isolated, but patrolled sectors sparsely inhabit the galaxy.

This would also mean about 4000 inhabited worlds per sector, and about 60 inhabited worlds per capital ship. Since the Imperium is supposedly ~99% at peace when we compare the number of conflicts to the number of inhabited worlds, this actually isn't terribly unreasonable.

Third estimate: Let's say we have 5 million regiments of Guard, and on average, one warship will be escorting every ten regiments in transit, with 90 other regiments on station (per the above 10% in transit assumption). Then we have 50,000 escorting warships. If the Navy divides its time equally between escort and patrol, we then have... 100,000 warships, according to assumptions that are reasonable, if fairly arbitrary.

This is not terribly far from the second estimate, whose assumptions are a little more grounded in actual numbers (ratio of Lunar class to other vessels, number of Lunar class in the Obscurus Segmentum, estimated ratio of Lunar to non-Lunar capital ships), so I believe I will take the second estimate as best, for the moment.

I stand by the above estimate as the best guess of Imperium battlefleet strength - on the order of 20,000 capital ships, and a total of perhaps 100,000 total warships. It's quite similar to your estimate, but the reasoning is quite different.

[Mr. Oragahn]

It is not surprising that so few worlds are inhabited. Even Gothic Sector, by far one of the most populated sectors, counts a very low ratio of such worlds among the total amount of worlds the IoM possesses.

On page 1, in this post, we have a clear description of the concentration of such worlds from page 45 of the Battlefleet Gothic rulebook, with "over two hundred inhabited worlds and tens of thousands of other planets."

At the very best your percentage is below one point, and can fall down as low as 0.2%.

So it's actually not surprising that an Empire of a million worlds or so would actually count only a couple tens of thousands inhabited worlds, including 32380 hive worlds (100-500 Bn people each).
It seems that the numbers were pumped up by the 5th edition. I've seen people argue for hundreds of hive worlds before. Odd.

[Mith]

Your geometry is a little off. See, if sectors are 200 light years on a side, that means that there should be tens of thousands of them at least, and easily hundreds of thousands. Given that the Imperium is supposed to mostly fill the galaxy, there should be about as many sectors in the Imperium as other sources give worlds - around a million.

Oh...I didn't do the area.

Oh my.

So that would be 50,000 x 50,000 x 3.14 = 2,500,000,000

It would then be divided by the area of the 200 LY (on a side) sectors of 40,000 LY

to give us 62,500 x 75 = 4,687,500

Then that can't work. The Imperium has tens of thousands of ships according to older sources. I think the problem is that we're assuming the Imperium owns every sector-like space within the Imperium. This calculation would be terribly flawed. =(

I've noted this before here. From Battlefleet Gothic, however (I believe it's the book on the Gothic sector fleet itself, specifically), we also see other choice pieces of information that conflict with that.

I'll just quote myself to save time:

Having established roughly the level of firepower (common weapons best measured in megatons, but lots of them and lots of ammunition) for ships, and having briefly mentioned the size of said ships, we then come to the sticky point:

The logistics of the Imperial Navy. There are two primary functions of the Navy. One is transporting Guardsmen:

Formerly known as the Righteous Fury, the vessel was accompanying fourteen Navy transports (carrying thirty two thousand guardsmen, fifteen hundred battle tanks, and over ten thousand auxiliary staff and vehicles)

In this instance, we see one tank per 21 Guardsmen. The capacity is several thousand per transport. If Guards spend 10% of their time in transit, and each transport on average is transporting one regiment, the Navy needs one transport per ten regiments. That's a ballpark.

First estimate: A sector Battlefleet is typically 50-75 capital ships and deals with a region roughly eight million cubic light years. It would take about a million sectors to fill the galaxy - at close to one sector per inhabited Imperium world.

That would be more than one capital ship per world. Actually, that would be one Battlefleet per inhabited world. Accordingly, I'm going to dismiss that estimate.

Alternative estimate: There are five Segmenta. We know a bit about the Segmentum Obscurus fleet:

The Lunar class cruiser forms the mainstay of Battlefleet Obscuras with over six hundred ships serving throughout the Segmentum and more than twenty ships fighting in the Gothic War.

Unfortunately, this is going to end up being a little bit off from our original estimate. We have a Segmentum fleet, of which 600-odd cruisers form a "mainstay."

I assume it's not a majority, so the Segmentum should have more than 1200 capital ships. There are presumably less than seven hundred and only nine capital classes represented in the Gothic fleet, so the "backbone" should be at least of average number, meaning the Segmentum should have less than 6300 capital ships.

6 of the 32 "notable" ships mentioned are Lunar class vessels. Based on this ratio, my "best guess" is therefore 3500 capital ships in the Segmentum Obscurus fleet. This would correspond to 45-70 BattleFleets (best guess 60) and a similar number of sectors.

If the Segmenta have similar sized fleets and similar numbers of sectors - a substantial but reasonable assumption - the total inventory of the Imperial Navy should include around 17,500 capital ships (6,000-30,000). This would be supplemented by several times this number of escorts, but the total number of genuine dedicated warships does not seem like it should greatly exceed 100,000.

Note this represents roughly an order of magnitude difference, something which has consequences in the number of sectors. This would mean, however, that the actual inhabited volume of the galaxy is about 2 billion cubic light years, or a rather small percent. Not only are inhabited planets within a sector nearly isolated, but patrolled sectors sparsely inhabit the galaxy.

This would also mean about 4000 inhabited worlds per sector, and about 60 inhabited worlds per capital ship. Since the Imperium is supposedly ~99% at peace when we compare the number of conflicts to the number of inhabited worlds, this actually isn't terribly unreasonable.

Third estimate: Let's say we have 5 million regiments of Guard, and on average, one warship will be escorting every ten regiments in transit, with 90 other regiments on station (per the above 10% in transit assumption). Then we have 50,000 escorting warships. If the Navy divides its time equally between escort and patrol, we then have... 100,000 warships, according to assumptions that are reasonable, if fairly arbitrary.

This is not terribly far from the second estimate, whose assumptions are a little more grounded in actual numbers (ratio of Lunar class to other vessels, number of Lunar class in the Obscurus Segmentum, estimated ratio of Lunar to non-Lunar capital ships), so I believe I will take the second estimate as best, for the moment.

I stand by the above estimate as the best guess of Imperium battlefleet strength - on the order of 20,000 capital ships, and a total of perhaps 100,000 total warships. It's quite similar to your estimate, but the reasoning is quite different.

True.

[Mith]

Hmmm...

An Empire Among the Stars
The Imperium of Man comprises a million of inhabited worlds, stretching from the furthest reaches of the Easter Fringe to the distant Halo Stars. Although this is a huge number of planets, it is as nothing when compared to the immense size of the galaxy itself. The Imperium is spread very thinly across space; its worlds are dotted through the void and divided by hundreds, if not thousands of light years. It is therefore wrong to think of the Imperium in terms of a territory which extends across the galaxy. The truth is far more complex. The Imperium’s holdings are scattered far and wide by vagaries of Warp travel and spatial drift. One inhabited system may be separated from its nearest neighbour by alien civilizations, unstable Warp storms, dimensional cascades, or unexplored space. Indeed, Mankind’s ignorance of his environs far exceeds his meager knowledge, for humanity has yet to explore much of the galaxy. Who knows what ancient secrets lie undiscovered and undisturbed among the stars.

One million inhabited worlds, 30,000 of which are Hive Worlds. The others are Forge Worlds, Agri Worlds, Feral/Feudal Worlds, and a few Ghost Worlds and Dead Worlds, though that would probably be fairly rare (maybe 5% at most?)

Let's take a look though. First up is Agri Worlds:

Agri Worlds
Agri worlds are given over entirely to hydroponics, animal breeding, and crop cultivation. Small human populations work thousands of acres of farmland and battery farms, to feed the countless billions who toil on barren and diseased hive worlds, or serve with deep space fleets. Without the verdant fields of Kabaal II, Delephenia, Chiros, and a thousand others, the Imperium would starve.

This quote tells us there are at least a thousand, but I find it highly unlikely that 1,000 Agri worlds could feed the 30,000 Hive Worlds of the Imperium. A good estimation I think, would be one Agri World for every Hive World. That gives us 30,000 and taking us up to a total of 60% of the Imperium. However, we're also told that Forge Worlds are planet-wide factories with billions of people. Again, it seems that we would need more Hive Worlds, but this is dependant upon how many Forge Worlds are in the Imperium. The Lexicanum names at least 40 of them and the Warhammer 40k wiki states that there are hundreds of them, but then again, some sources said that about Hive Worlds as well.

Given that the figure for Hive Worlds used to be hundreds, but is now thousands, I'll go ahead and go with the same idea for Forge Worlds and give them 10,000, a third of what the Hive Worlds are. This will also bump up Agri worlds to 40,000

But then we also have to consider that there are also billions of soldiers on the frontline and thousands in the navy, not to mention Starbases. I think just for the purpose of spacing them out and touch and go, another say, 20,000 would do well to help support that aspect of the Imperium.

That's a total of thus far of 100,000 worlds, about 10% of what we need. Unfortunately, that would leave the rest of the Imperium with Feral/Feudal and Dead Worlds as far as the book goes. However, it does note that there are other types of worlds. Given that we've seen worlds like those in Dawn of War, which seem to be based with large cities seperated by miles of woods and such, I would like to think of them as Average Worlds. Worlds where their population is closer to ours and not part of the extreme forms we see in the book.

Given this, I would try and say that 60% of the Imperium are these sorts of worlds, ranging around maybe 6-10 billion people. That leaves 20% to the other worlds, which I think is a fairly good number. So...

Hive Worlds............................30,000 (3%)
Forge Worlds..........................10,000 (1%)
Argi Worlds............................60,000 (6%)
Average Worlds......................600,000 (60%)
Feral/Feudal Worlds.................19,900 (19.9%)
Dead Worlds..........................1,000 (.1%)

That's my rough estimation.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Hmmm...

An Empire Among the Stars
The Imperium of Man comprises a million of inhabited worlds, stretching from the furthest reaches of the Easter Fringe to the distant Halo Stars. Although this is a huge number of planets, it is as nothing when compared to the immense size of the galaxy itself. The Imperium is spread very thinly across space; its worlds are dotted through the void and divided by hundreds, if not thousands of light years. It is therefore wrong to think of the Imperium in terms of a territory which extends across the galaxy. The truth is far more complex. The Imperium’s holdings are scattered far and wide by vagaries of Warp travel and spatial drift. One inhabited system may be separated from its nearest neighbour by alien civilizations, unstable Warp storms, dimensional cascades, or unexplored space. Indeed, Mankind’s ignorance of his environs far exceeds his meager knowledge, for humanity has yet to explore much of the galaxy. Who knows what ancient secrets lie undiscovered and undisturbed among the stars.

One million inhabited worlds, 30,000 of which are Hive Worlds. The others are Forge Worlds, Agri Worlds, Feral/Feudal Worlds, and a few Ghost Worlds and Dead Worlds, though that would probably be fairly rare (maybe 5% at most?)

Doesn't mesh well with the Gothic Sector ratio of inhabited worlds. Otherwise it means the IoM actually controls more than a hundred million worlds, less than 1% of them being populated.

[Mith]

What did the Gothic Source say?

[Mr. Oragahn]

There's the quote on page 1 or 2 of this thread. It basically says something like 200 inhabited worlds and tens of thousands more.

[Mith]

Well, this source is from the 5th Edition Handbook...is it possible that they're retconning some stuff?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Could be. I think the 32380 hive worlds also comes from the 5th edition.
They seem to be multiplying everything a hundred fold, at least.
I'm not sure how it makes the gaming universe any better, I didn't get the feeling that they even managed to exploit the entirety of what they had at hand before.
Anyway, if that's so, the IoM would logically control far more worlds which can't be used for settling people.

Now, here's an interesting document.

FORCES OF THE SPACE MARINES

In the 41st Millennium humanity has
reached the stars and spread across the
galaxy. The sons of Terra inhabit over a
million worlds, in colonies that range from
mining outposts on desolate moons with a
population of less than a hundred souls, to
hive worlds where the population
numbers in the tens of billions. But vast
though this empire is, the galaxy is larger
still, and Mankind is beset on all sides by
hideous alien threats and heretical
elements far too numerous to mention.
The Space Marines of the Adeptus
Astartes are humanity’s first and best line
of defence against these innumerable
enemies, although, when compared to
humanity’s teeming billions, there are very
few Space Marines indeed. They are an
elite and highly mobile fighting force, and
this more than makes up for their lack of
numbers. Genetically engineered to be the
ultimate human warrior, protected by
adamantine armour, equipped with the
best weapons humanity can produce,
trained and indoctrinated to fight without
fear or mercy, and fiercely loyal to the
Emperor and their Chapter, they are the
unshakeable defenders of Mankind in a
galaxy that knows only war. Without them,
humanity would surely have perished
many millennia ago.

Over a million inhabited worlds. Billions of humans. Hive worlds with populations in the tens of billions (and not 100 to 500 bn).

Of course this can't work at all, since there could only be a handful hive worlds before humanity would be counted in trillions. Seems the people writing this can't even check their basic math.

But let's not stop here.
A guy quoting wikipedia states a hive world comes with a population between 50 bn and 2 trillion (probably Terra? I thought this world only counted several hundred billion people?).

I'd cite another bloke:

Hmm? North Korea has 23 million people. It has a standing army of around 1,2 million men. Additionally, it has a reserve of about 6-7 million trained personel (they use both genders). That is about 8 million combatants, that can be running towards Seoul, if hostilities commence.

[Mr. Oragahn]

In a recent thread at SBC, Small Necron Force vs Entirety of Borg, it appears that at last, a hammie provided all three versions of the Space Hulk fluff which originally gave ships missiles 610 GT each (MIRV or not doesn't matter). The context: a couple IoM ships waiting some distance away from a giant space hulk infested with monsters, boarded by Blood Angels SMs.

Appreciate:

I'd ask you to justify it, but I suspect its going to be " Gigatons wasn't said SO ITS WRITTEN OUT!" Basically because you've drank the same Kool-aid that Crazy O has been peddling, and think somehow if you introduce the slightest doubt about it all, you can ignore it.

To lay it out.

The Sin of Damnation is a "gigantic spacehulk" that is discovered by Rogue Trader Borrak Vorra.

The Blood Angels set out to board it, led by Captain Raphael. In first edition they are ferried by Battlefleet Obscuras, similar in second edition. By 3rd, the Blood Angels own Strike Cruisers deploy.

1st edition explains that normally Stealer infested spacehulks like SoD are prime candidates for simply being blasted, since it was mostly dormant. In this case, the Blood Angels have a thing about boarding it, due to their near annihilation when attempting a similar feat.

This isn't mentioned in later editions, 2nd edition cuts out a lot of background, and 3rd revises things to be more specific to the existing setting, i.e. strike cruisers instead of Gothics, Michealus Raphael is 1st Company Commander, not the Chapters Imperial Commander (i.e. chapter master, Dante is CM at this point now)

Whilst the marines board the Hulk, in each edition, starships are on watch to destroy the hulk if the mission fails, or the stealers make a break for it.

1st edition is the most explanatory, the specific paragraph we get named Gothic class battlecruisers, their payload (TEH GIGATONZ) and what they will do if the mission fails.

"...the gothic class battlecruisers Intolerance, Indestructability and Righteous Power. Each ship carried a payload of one hundred hellfire class nuclear missiles. The payload of a Hellfire is 112 sub-munitions, each one with a five gigatonne warhead. If the vanguard failed, the vessel would be fusion bombed, down to a fine powder."

2nd edition tweaks things a little.
Battlefleet obscuras still investigates, but the BA's respond to a astropathic request for help, instead of being assigned to them.

" The blood angels arrived a few hours after the Imperial Ships, and the commanders immediately held a conference on the flagship, Intolerance. It was decided to attempt a boarding action, and , if this failed, the hulk would be fusion bombed down to a fine powder..."

So, from three pages, we are down to 3 paragraphs of fluff, AND TEH JIGGATONS are gone!

Except they aren't gone, since the Imperial ships are still expected to blow the hulk away, which is still the same giant spacehulk, (mission floorplans are even the same, ), and logically requires the same firepower.

3rd edition.

Updates the background details I've mentioned, still keeps the same setup, Vorra finds the hulk, the BA's are near, and they aim to redeem their fuckup, this time with BA strike cruisers around to blast the hulk, in exactly the same scenario.

"Raphael's strike cruisers orbited the spacehulk at a safe distance, their bombardment cannons and torpedoes primed to reduce the Sin of Damnation to atoms at the first sign that the genestealers were escaping, or that the mission was failing."

To sum up. In each edition, the giant arse spacehulk, The Sin of Damnation, with the same layout, features etc, is boarded by Blood Angels, and Imperial forces will blast the hulk if needed.

Not only that, but in the final description, they are going to blast the thing to atoms! Fuck dust, we've got atoms baby!

So forgive me, but you can cram your "written out" up your puling backside. The Sin of Damnation has not suddenly become easier to blow up, nor will Imperial firepower somehow alter, without contextual evidence of a contradiction.

Heh, and I've actually calced bombardment cannons with a gigaton KE yield as well, which meshes nicely.

In other words, a pure retcon.
In the last two incarnations of the event, no yield is given to the weapons. What this means is that even IF gigatons were required to vaporize the whole hulk -and then we'll be nice and take this literally- nothing is said about how long it's going to take them. It's not like the hulk or its ugly inhabitants will be going anywhere.

Notice that with the third quote, the fact that they were fusion warheads has been retconned as well, so now we're only left with "bombardment cannons and torpedoes", which is not bad for hammies since it does imply, with even greater certainty, that they're doing it with their normal weapons, not some special huge missiles.
Those weapons would include all sorts of macro cannons, fusion or laser lances, plasma/magma bomb, etc.

The double standards in the way canon is used for WH40K is interesting. As far as I've seen, it's not very different than Star Wars or any other recent big franchise which creators are actually aware of how other franchises like Star Wars manage their canon. See Halo, for example. Newer editions of the same events tend to reposition the reality of its elements into a more accurate context -otherwise no chances would be brought.
In Star Wars, newest editions of the movies outrank the older versions. They totally outrank them. It's hard to believe that the latest version (say revision) of the same event, already told twice before, but differently, would have less value than the very first and very old version.

Notice, by the way, that nothing says that a hulk should contain no explosive stuff like fuel or warheads. Hulks are agglomerated wrecked ships pulled and fused together.

[Jedi Master Spock]

The Sin of Damnation is a "gigantic spacehulk" that is discovered by Rogue Trader Borrak Vorra.


1st edition is the most explanatory, the specific paragraph we get named Gothic class battlecruisers, their payload (TEH GIGATONZ) and what they will do if the mission fails.
...

So, from three pages, we are down to 3 paragraphs of fluff, AND TEH JIGGATONS are gone!

Except they aren't gone, since the Imperial ships are still expected to blow the hulk away, which is still the same giant spacehulk, (mission floorplans are even the same, ), and logically requires the same firepower.

This is precisely a circular argument; the only reason why one would conclude it requires that many gigatons to destroy the space hulk is the original cited yield figure in the first edition.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The Sin of Damnation is a "gigantic spacehulk" that is discovered by Rogue Trader Borrak Vorra.


1st edition is the most explanatory, the specific paragraph we get named Gothic class battlecruisers, their payload (TEH GIGATONZ) and what they will do if the mission fails.
...

So, from three pages, we are down to 3 paragraphs of fluff, AND TEH JIGGATONS are gone!

Except they aren't gone, since the Imperial ships are still expected to blow the hulk away, which is still the same giant spacehulk, (mission floorplans are even the same, ), and logically requires the same firepower.

This is precisely a circular argument; the only reason why one would conclude it requires that many gigatons to destroy the space hulk is the original cited yield figure in the first edition.

It would quite require many teh gigatonz to turn to atoms such hulks. But then, the formulation stinks hyperbole, nothing more. But I didn't care much, since I only included his comments for the kicks. I only largely wanted the quotations. WR can say what pleases him about them, he's missing out the big retcon. By the third version, the quote has become incredibly vague, in comparison.
Somehow he thinks each quote builds up on the former, despite being a complete rewriting of the same passage. It's like pretending that Greedo still shoots first in the DVD version. No matter how much you'd wish it were true, it's simply not.

[Mith]

Um...anyone want to try and calc this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHKIFDj ... r_embedded#!

The nuclear explosion starts at 1:18.

[Mr. Oragahn]

For some reason it appears I never posted the Eisenhorn quote here, despite being the one which actually had me starting questioning the extravagant figures.
Perhaps I was planning on making an Eisenhorn thread, I don't know.

Anyway, here it is:

56-Izar hung like a pearl in space, milky white and gleaming. Vivid flashes and slower blossoms of destruction underlit its translucent skin of cloud. The heretic fleet had arrived two days ahead of us, and had begun its assault of the planet.

I kept thinking of it as Estrum's fleet, but it wasn't of course. I'd made certain of that. This was Locke's battle fleet now, I was sure.
The thirteen ships had blockaded 56-Izar in a non-standard but effective conquest pattern. Serial waves of their fighter-bombers, interceptors, and dropships rained down on the planet and the orbiting heavies bombarded the surface with their entire batteries.

A mere copy from the version provided here.
Most interesting, the argument that this planet was a Saruthi Tetrascape makes the excerpt itself entirely moot, instead of contradicting the claims of high firepower (the text would literally limits the firepower to high kilotons, perhaps 1 or 2 megatons at best per impact).