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

[Mr. Oragahn]

One hot minute, please. Is the above a typo, or did Noble713 make a three-order-of-magnitude error, or am I missing some strange assumption? 400 million would give an annual tithe of 3200 at the same percentage rate as 154 billion tithing 1.2 million.

Lexicanum does also list 400 million as the population.

I don't know. It doesn't seem to be a hive world, not even a quasi hive, although it has a fortress. 400 million would seem about right.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Hang on one minute. I know this may seem a minor pedantic detail, but modern nuclear reactors get on the order of tens of gigawatt-days - i.e., petajoules - per ton of reactor material. I.e., terajoules per kilogram of actual fused output heat. The efficiency of the reactor at producing useful power goes through the efficiency drop of the steam turbine, so less than a terajoule per kilogram net output for a nuclear reactor is not out of the question.

Theoretical maximum for fusion (hydrogen to iron, 100% efficiency) is almost a petajoule per kilogram (800 TJ). If the "conventional" nuclear power plants referred to are fairly primitive fission plants, of fairly robust designs that would actually be useful, and a plasma reactor is a near-100% efficient complete-fusion design, it would be quite close to a thousand times as potent.

It's almost a question of fluke that explains how I got this.
I was looking for an old reference about a crater caused by a specific weapon, following a post from Connor in a WH40K vs SW thread, and landed on some websites providing data from Space Fleet, which is some very old material that slightly predates BFG.

I found two sources that provide what appears to be the complete background literature associated to its rules.

http://members.fortunecity.com/pangolin ... efleet.htm

http://www.snapdrive.net/files/349593/B ... 0Rules.pdf

After finding the original excerpt I was looking for, I scrolled down and realized that the data about the fuel a thousand better blah blah comes from SF.
I realize, now looking back at Connor's post, that the "Space fleet" was the name of the source.

Here's the full quote:

GOLlATH FACTORY SHIP

The Goliath factory ship is a vast interstellar refinery and fuel transporter. Its role is to supply fuel to energy-hungry industrial and hive worlds. It transports its cargo from star systems rich in mineral resources across vast interstellar distances to worlds which have already depleted their own natural resources.

It arrives at a mining planet and takes aboard millions of tons of unrefined rare ores - for, of course, only rare and valuable ores are worth the expense of interstellar transportation. En route, the Goliath's huge refineries extract all the precious minerals from the ores. Working at immense pressures and temperatures, these minerals are then converted into plasma fuels that are incredibly energy-rich.

The Goliath itself needs a vast quantity of energy. Each ton of enriched plasma fuel uses many times more energy in the making than it will ever provide. To power its processes, the Goliath makes use of resources not available to cities and planetary factories - the raw power of the stars themselves. The Goliath skims close to the surface of stars, sucking in the energy that is burning off them by means of power fields that funnel the energy through to the Goliath's reactors.

At the end of its long voyage, a Goliath will have produced several million tons of super-energised plasma fuel. Every ton of this fuel is a thousand times more powerful than conventional nuclear fuels. And any explosion aboard a Goliath produces an incinerating fireball a thousand times more powerful than a conventional nuclear explosion.

Most Goliath factory ships are part of the Imperial merchant fleets. They usually ply the chartered routes between mining worlds and industrial planets. When they are passing through dangerous space, they often form into convoys accompanied by a defensive force of warships.

Sometimes a single Goliath accompanying a large battlefleet for the safety it offers will get caught up in a battle. At other times, a convoy will be deliberately attacked by pirates seeking to capture the ship or enemy raiders seeking to destroy it. A lucky convoy will be well-defended by warships. More often, only a few ships can be spared to protect the convoy and a fierce battle will ensue between raiders and convoy defence ships.

I won't go into the details now, but needless to say that this is a lot of information.
Considering that Connor used it as part of his rant against a newcomer's naive criticism, it's just as fair to use this same source for a complete analysis.

Also, do a thorough search with the keyword 'thousand', and you'll find some other interesting bits (fleet size, etc.).
You can also check out what originally brought me to this SF stuff; the 'Dominator Battleship' chapter.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I put the finger on some interesting details, from the freshier BFG data, Imperial Vessels, and deals with the Space Marine Battlebarges (some of the most powerful ships around):

PLANETARY ASSAULTS AND EXTERMINATUS
Space Marines excel at planetary landings and attacking enemy-held systems. Their entire
organisation and the weapons and ships at their disposal are designed solely for the purpose of
reclaiming or destroying planets that have fallen into enemy hands.
...
In an Exterminatus scenario, a battle barge can be used as an Exterminator, unchanged from
the following data sheet (battle barges are equipped with virus bombs and cyclotronic
warheads as standard).

Assuming the ship gets past the defenses, they can destroy an entire world, and it's fairly possible that they carry such special ordnance for another scouring.

Now, pay attention to that one:

SPACE MARINE WEAPONS
Some weapons function differently on Space Marine vessels, as described below.

Bombardment Cannon
Space Marine battle barges carry a heavyweight battery of bombardment cannons as part of their
main armament. Bombardment cannons are huge, turret-mounted linear accelerators, capable of
launching a salvo of heavy magma bomb warheads.
As their name implies, bombardment cannons are used primarily for pounding planetary defences
into rubble and giving devastating orbital support to Space Marine landing forces. Bombardment
cannons are equally devastating in ship-to-ship combat, capable of blasting apart any capital ship
in just a few salvoes.

A heavy magma bomb is typically fired by a bombardment cannon, a classification of weapon that's largely associated to SM vessels.

Note that as weapons largely intended to be used to deal with planetary targets. Their effect: pounding planetary defenses into rubble. That rather squarely caps their firepower, and really excludes high figures. This fits rather well with the note made about Emperor-class Titans and their armour:

Emperor class Titans tower some 25 to 40 metres tall. They mount veritable arsenals of weaponry and are protected by up to twelve void shield generators and armour so thick it would not be out of place on a planetary defence installation.

... which go down with mid-kiloton level firepower.
And then, remembering that the bombardment cannons that turn "planetary defences into rubble" also happen to be "equally devastating in ship-to-ship combat, capable of blasting apart any capital ship in just a few salvoes."

On the plus side:

SPACE MARINE BATTLEBARGE
Most Space Marine Chapters control two or three battle barges.

With a thousand chapters, most is 51% to 99%. Ergo between 501 and 999 chapters have between 2 and 3 of such ships.
The low end is 1002, the high end is 2997 battlebarges for the whole Adeptus Astartes.

Considering that the IoM fleet can also equip a number of its regular cruisers with large scale Exterminatus weapons, it is abundantly clear that the IoM can really burn planets with little effort.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'll note that throughout the book, it's noted that the Imperium is actually concerned by keeping the balance of power, avoiding the Space Marines becoming too powerful beyond manageable.
With thousands of their battlebarges, probably just as many other ships of equally large classes, and likely many more smaller ships, it really seems that the SM fleet, when it comes to the heavy ships, is around a couple tens of thousands, and somehow, likewise for the Imperial Navy.

ASTARTES SHIP CLASSES

Fortress Monasteries
Several Chapters, most notably the Dark Angels and the Fire Hawks,
operate from mobile space fortresses. These gigantic craft contain
sufficient accommodation, workshops, training areas and dock
facilities for the entire Chapter and operate as a mobile base for
Chapter operations. While their defensive/offensive capabilities are
alleged to be equivalent to a Ramilies class star fort, they are not
only mobile but warp-capable. The warp drives for these structures
must be enormous, far exceeding those of our own Emperor class
battleships. However the loss of the Fire Hawk’s fortress Raptorus
Rex during a standard jump from Piraeus to Crow’s World in 963
may indicate that these craft are dangerously unstable. Allegedly no
Chapter possesses more than a single fortress, on this basis I would
estimate that there are between two and five of these behemoths
operating in the entire Segmentum, and at most one in the Gothic
Sector.

Considering that the warp drives of a Fortress Monastery far outclass, in size, those of the dreaded Emperor-class battleship, there is no doubt that a Fortress is clearly bigger than the biggest Imperial battleship.
What we see, however, is that at this point, the Warp drive technology hits a threshold, since structures that large cannot do better than rely on "dangerously unstable" drives.

Battle Barges
...
If the Unrelenting Fury is a typical example of an Astartes main
fleet unit the following conclusions can be drawn: As might be
expected the vessel is configured for close support of planetary
landings and carries numerous bombardment turrets and torpedo
tubes.
...
In ship-to-ship combat I would rate this vessel as comparable to an
Emperor class battleship, its lower acceleration and closer ranged
weapons weighing off against superior armour and shields. Naturally
the battle barge would make a frightening opponent in any situation
where boarding is involved.

It is interesting to note that boarding ranges usually happen within hundred of kilometers, perhaps a very few thousand.
It also fits with the range of ground based heavy defenses, as you'll see below.

So a ship such as a battlebarge, with enough shields and armour, can actually cut the distance with an Emperor-class battleship and, with support from bombers, give the battleship a run for its money and even get the upper hand if boarding operations are conducted.

This is interesting since it could give an idea of how powerful and tough shields and armour need to be, to compensate for a typical super heavy warship's long range batteries.

Now, more references about the typical heavy ground-to-space defenses, used against capital warships:

LOW ORBIT DEFENCES

They are all ground-based... Low orbit defences can never attack ships which are not on the low orbit table.
It is particularly important to realise that ordnance launched from the ground cannot move up to high orbit - the fuel expended to achieve escape velocity means that the ordnance is rendered useless by the time it gets there.

Read: long ranges are only possible when missiles and torpedoes do not have to fight against gravity.
So much for super fuels, right?
Low Earth Orbit goes between 160 to 2,000 km.

DEFENCE LASER SILO

These huge installations house several massive laser weapons that fire hundreds of miles out of the planet's atmosphere. Planet-based lasers require even more power than ship lances, to compensate for the unavoidable defraction of the energy beam caused by firing through the atmosphere. The bulk of the silo is normally built underground, adding the protection of hundreds of feet of rock to the metres-thick walls of the silo itself.

• Laser weapons are generally among the toughest the IoM has, and also the longest ranged ones.
• Their range, probably the greatest of all, is 804.672 km (500 miles) out of the atmosphere. Although on the extreme side, Earth's exosphere stops at some ten thousand kilometers, since we're dealing with low orbit weapons, +800 km fits with the LEO figures.
• The power of the laser is superior to that of a ship's lance (the laser lance, not fusion/plasma lance or beamer, which I consider could all be the same kind of weapon with just different names).
• Lasers are affected by the atmosphere. Any interaction with a laser also means a heat up to a certain degree. I think I remember that even the best laser, in theory, couldn't prevent losing 15 to 25% of its energy. Although the weapon is buried and well protected, and although I wouldn't think anyone would live anywhere close to those installations, there are going to be strict limits on how much energy these lasers can carry and deliver. I'm not sure having a bleed off in the hundreds of megatons would be wise, and it goes without saying that a bleed off in the gigatons or teratons would be simply stupid.
• This also means that a ship's laser lance, which is less powerful than a laser silo, will have even greater issues with the atmosphere.
• Almost all the silo is built underground. But hundreds of feet or rock (200~999 ft, 61~304 meters) are deemed worth the protection against any bombardment.
• The walls of the silos are "metres-thick", which fits with the note about the Emperor-class Titan's plating, as I noted in the thread I linked to. However, you shouldn't expect more than a couple meters, considering the structure of the 25 to 40 meters tall Emperor-class.

All in all, this doesn't even support a high megaton firepower range.

MISSILE SILO

There are many different types of ground-based missile defence systems. Some are simply one-shot launch tubes dug into the planet's surface, relying on the missiles' own mechanical brain to locate and move towards targets in orbit. Others are mobile launchers, which can be moved about on the planet's surface to provide orbital defence for armies on the ground, often using their own long range surveyors to detect approaching ships and guide their huge payloads to the target.

Huge payloads and yet limited in range, because of energy density.
Obviously, if the fuel was even better than conventional nuclear warheads, they'd just fill the missiles with the super fuel and ditch the whole warhead part, just to burn all the remainder of fuel on the target.
But such is not the case.

AIR BASE

Many fighters and bombers are designed to operate in a planet's atmosphere as well as in space. From surface airstrips and underground launch bays, these attack craft can fly up from the planet to attack ships which take up a low orbit or intercept incoming bombers and torpedoes directed towards ground-based targets.

Considering the distances in question, the bombardment torpedoes are certainly not going to fly at speeds greater than very low two digits kilometers per second, otherwise any attempted interception would be pointless.
I must ponder the credibility of a 10 km/s reentry speed for the torpedoes. A blunt and frontal penetration of the atmosphere at such a speed strikes me as more dangerous to the torpedo itself, than for the intended target.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Apocalypse Datasheets <- lutz o' nice stuff!

DEFENCE LASER
The Imperium has long relied on sophisticated laser technology to engage the tryly monstrous opponents that assault it from all sides. Though the lascannon may be potent enough in the field and well suited to the destruction of enemy armour, when a planet is beleaguered by alien behemoths or hostile attack craft only one weapon in the Imperium's arsenal is truly up to the task.

The Defence Laser is a monstrous engine of destruction so large that it can usually only be mounted upon static platforms. The largest Defence Lasers use vast reservoirs of energy, blacking out power grids for miles around each time they fire. The blinding red blasts unleashed by a Defence Laser are so powerful that they can breach atmosphere of a planet and engage targets in low orbit, making the weapon invaluable for repelling aliens invasions. Even a glancing blow from a Defence Laser can be enough to drive off anything up to a cruiser-class ship once its shields are down.

Duty's Fist, the Defence Laser that towers over the west gate of Bellephon, was a miracle of dark age technology. The Fist could reroute the power of the entire metropolis into one almighty laser blast. When fired in this manner Duty's Fist has the capacity to smash a Titan into a thousand pieces, and even engage targets in orbit above the planet. During the battle for Bellephon upon Thesus Reach, Duty's Fist exchanged fire with the Planet Killer, Abaddon the Despoiler's personal flagship. Through it forced the Planet Killer into evasive manouvres it was eventually disabled by a mighty Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, and its defenders were torn apart by a one-man assault by Khâm the Betrayer, champion of Khorne.

Defence Lasers with over 20 confirmed enemy craft kills:
Hammer of the Cursed
Spear of the Emperor's Fury
Eternal Vigilance
Inescapable Wrath
Pious Retribution (called Gunhead by its crew)

SPECIAL RULES
...
Orbital Cannon: Defence lasers are able to lock onto targets in low orbit, driving them off or, with a direct hit, reducing to thousands of pieces of flaming debris.

Source.

I looked around in order to get an idea of what would the power consumption be on Earth's densest areas.
Here, for figures predating 1980, urban areas in West Germany were of 7.5 W/m², and 12 W/m² in India.
A much more recent excerpt affirms a consumption that can be in excess of 100 W/m² for cities like New York and Tokyo.

This study tells that "the abundant and untended New England or New Brunswick forests produce firewood at the renewable rate of about 1200 watts (thermal) per hectare averaged around the year. The 0.12 watts per square meter of biomass is about ten times more powerful than rain, and excellent management can multiply the figure again ten times. [...] One hundred twenty square meters of New Brunswick or Manitoba might electrify one square meter of New York City."
Which puts the ratio at 14.4 W/m² for NYC.

The second source seems excessive. It's bracketed by two sources which point to flux in the ten-fifteen watts per square meter. If the second source's figure was a typo and added an extra zero, the figure would back into the range of other figures.
My observation is supported by other sources: High density population in Bahrain, 10 W/m².
2.535 toe/capita/year for Beijing, (1 toe = 42 e9 J) which means 3,373.8 W/capita. With a population density of 3700 per km², that's 12,483,173.6 W/km². Or roughly 12.5 W/m².

• First, a metropolis is a vast area, but it's not a hive city. The Defence Laser can drain the power grid over several miles. Some very large cities in the WH40K books happened to be in the order of some tens of kilometers wide. One was 50 km wide, for example. That would make a radius between of nearly 16 miles.
  
  It's also a surface area of 1.9635 e9 m². This makes the figure fall below the terawatt range. Even if we picked 50 watts per square meter, that would still be only 98.175 e9 W.
  Although the gun relies on a reservoir of energy, the blackout occurs when it fires, which indicates a short event.
  Assuming the cannon charges up for several seconds, perhaps some minutes eventually, the firepower would still be in the very low terajoules.
  It would require making most singular assumptions to get an output in the petajoules, and the very fact that we would be stretching it would mean that anyway, even a firepower in the low megatons would be an upper end here.
• Secondly, such a weapon is "a miracle" of the dark age of technology. The power of the weapon can force a "cruiser-class ship" to retreat if it has lost its shields, that with a mere glancing blow, which gives a good idea on the toughness of the hulls.
  Draining the equivalent of the power consumption of a metropolis was enough to threaten Abaddon's Planet Killer and force it into trying to evade fire.
  Such a bolt of energy completely blasts a Titan, no matter the size, and that straight through its void shields.
  
  The cannon's bore is slightly larger than two heads of one of those Imperial Guardsmen. Therefore it would be 50~60 cm wide, which makes a surface area between 0.196 and 0.283 m².

[Mr. Oragahn]

I found a reference in Epic that shall help making the firepower a notch greater, by using the high end version of a metropolis.

As the aerial battles reached their height five days after the landings, Acheron Hive fell to the Orks without warning, captured by treachery from within. Garbled reports spoke of power grids sabotaged and the Orks boiling out from secret access tunnels at the very heart of the metropolis.

Warzone Armageddon

The scale of the war on Armageddon is difficult to imagine. Millions lost their lives, mighty war-machines clashed, mile high hivecities were razed to the ground and deeds both heroic and villainous were performed.

The only illustrations of a hivecity I've ever seen shows a city which is is conical. There are a few central spires, very high, and if there were concentric circles of skyscrapers, one would say that they'd be shorter than the buildings they surround.
Try hive city on Google to get a collection of pictures, sometimes from GW. You'll even find some pages with references which, I suppose, may be taken from official sources:
1, 2, 3, 4.

You also find some weird, funny, low budget stuff. :D Nice attempt though.



So, with a hive city being conical, with an example being a mile high, it comes to reason that the city, perhaps with slightly fanning out base, would have a width of a couple of miles, with numerous ground level and low height structures.

We can go with the highest estimation of the population of a hive city, billions, and see what we get in terms of griw power drainage.
Notice that hive worlds can rate between ten and a hundred billion people.


In a study of a urban centre in India, the city of Hyderabad:

Background on Hyderabad

Hyderabad, with a population of five million, ranks sixth among the 16 India metropolises with a population
exceeding one million. It is one of the historic cities of India founded in 1591. Its modern phase of development
commenced in 1956, when it was declared the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh. The population of Hyderabad
has grown rapidly from 1.25 million in 1961 to 4.74 million in 1991, a 279% increase in 30 years at an annual rate
of 4.4%, which has increased steadily, and averaged 7.2% between 1981 and 1991. The population growth has been
accompanied by an increase in built-up area, which has more than doubled since 1971.
Hyderabad economy appears stagnant and over 40% of the population lies in the low-income brackets. The literacy
level is only 76% and most of the literates are not educated beyond the high school level. The size of the household
is unusually large (6.5 persons per household) for a metropolitan settlement and has not changed much over the last
three decades. The dependency ratio is high with one earner for every four non-earners on the average in a
household.

Electricity consumption
Electricity demand has increased rapidly in Hyderabad in recent years. Higher appliance saturations and more
intensive lighting, despite the decrease in household income. have spurred this growth. The incomes of the top two
income groups have increased since 1982, however, which coupled with a drop in appliance prices may explain this
seeming paradox. Electricity is available to all households in Hyderabad, but it is subject to frequent load shedding.
black outs, and voltage fluctuations. The survey revealed that over 30 space illuminating and conditioning,
entertainment, water heating and kitchen gadgets and appliances are in use in Hyderabad households. The saturation
rate of appliances is similar to that found in another Indian city. Pune (Kulkarni et al. 1994), although the water
heater saturation is lower.
Electricity represents over one fourth of the total energy consumed in the household sector. The rich consume far
larger quantum of electrical energy than the poor. The average monthly per household and per capita consumption
of electricity is only 90 and 15 kWh respectively. The consumption level of the rich and the poor households varies
widely. Monthly consumption ranges from 180 and 41 kWh per household and per capita in the highest income
group to 57 and 7 kWh, respectively in the lowest income group.

Hive cities are a mix of select righ people living in the higher quarters, and the base literally swarming with masses of poors, where its core is barely better than slums.

A watt hour is 3600 joules. A kilowatt hour is 3.6 e6 J, or 3.6 megajoules.
The highest monthly consumption detailed in the document above is 180 kWh, or 180 times 3.6 megajoules, per month. That's 648 MJ/month.
With 31 days a month, we get 242 W per capita. Considering the mass of poors, there's no need to reach for a higher power figure.

So for a hive city that housed 10 billion people and was entirely drained out by the firing of a Defence Laser, you'd extract 2.42 e12 W out of the entire hive city.

Now, a hive city is also used to produce many goods, so it also counts factories. But if factories ran with power requirements worth 1 GW, unless they outnumber the population beyond 1 factory for 1000 people, the figure wouldn't be altered.
Not to say that the ratio above would be totally absurd, since for 10 billion people crammed into a hive, you'd get 10 million factories. Also, the heat radiated from factories would be used for the rest of the hive, therefore meaning that a large percentage of the power used by the population would actually be a fraction of the factories' power consumption.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Traditionally, a Sentinelt is considered ill suited to fuelling with super-heavy, Titan-class war engines, being outgunned and out-classed in almost every regard. However, when organised into dedicated search-and-destroy teams, Armoured Sentinels hunt their quarry in large packs. Together, they are capable of unleashing a torrent of firepower that can topple giants.

But the giants are Stompas.
They're small Gargants, which are the Orks' Titans, albeit small ones.

Having tracker their quarry, the Stompa Hunters close to within optimal firing range and pounce upon an unprotected flank. Then, in a desperate attempt to halt the beast before it has time to alter course and flatten them to scrap, all power is diverted to the primary weapons systems. Such drastic measures quickly overload the Sentinels' machine spirits, forcing the walkers to enter a state of temporary shut-down whilst energy reservoirs replenish and machine spirits reawaken. During the time, the Stompa Hunters are extremely vulnearble and, without support from nearby troops, they are easy prey.

Source.

So the cumulative firepower of several SHs, needed to blast a Stompa, drains them severaly, their respective power sources being incapable of providing even enough power for them to move out of the way or fire at normal power.

It's very doubtful that such machines would need a horsepower equivalent to more than a dozen megawatts of energy to move around.

[The volcano cannon] can cripple the largest war engines with a single shot. Nothing short of the most powerful energy shields can hope to stop a direct hit from a volcano cannon - no amount of armour or cover can offer protection from it.

Throughout the history of the Imperium, Shadowsword tanks have proven to be the natural enemy of Titans of all classes and sizes. Differently from their towering antagonists, the Shadowswords lie in ambush until the other units in the army have taken out the Titan's shields. At that point, they open fire with their targeter-guided volcano cannon, delivering the killing blow with precise shots aimed at the Titan's weak points.

Source.

Assuming the figures for Titan shields obtained earlier on are reliable, if anything, this should quell any attempt at claiming these cannons fire kilotons of energy, since they can't pierce the shields of Titans, and even have to strike weak points once shields are down.

The siege gun fires huge rocket-propelled siege shells, each weighing in excess of 180 kg, with enough explosive power to flatten a building in a single shot.

Source.

The question is what kind of high explosive do they use exactly?
180 kg is the entire mass of the shell. But it's composed of several elements, including propellant.

Should the impact of such a crude device not kill the trespasser, the ensuing detonation of a ton of high explosive invariably will.

Source.

The mine's width is between an Ork's height and a height and a half. With a creature being two meters high, that's a width of 2~3 meters.

[Mr. Oragahn]

A good dozen weeks ago (or more, can't be arsed to count them), the following thread on Warhammer 40000 power generation was split from another Halo firepower thread (*). It proved to be interesting on several fronts, although very short lived. One of those reasons probably being that few people, if not none, really cared about taking care of addressing the disputable quality of hermeneutics over there, and despite being challenged to address several quotes which were presented to me, as part of some kind of convincing rhetoric, I simply didn't see their relevance to what I asked back then, so I kindly rejected the "debate".

But now that I've a bit more time on my hands and above all, an interest in dealing with them. Therefore, I'll post them here, take a look at them and comment on them.
I'll skip the 90/110 Peta-watt Open-core Plasma Ioniser, since I already addressed this one since it's largely inconclusive. I'll also dodge the topics of range and acceleration, since as per the words of l33telboi and Chris O'Farrell (and even white_rabbit to some degree), numbers seem all over the place... an idea that flies in the face of the idea that the corpus of interpretations is sufficiently monolithic and would point to high feats.
A concept which I believe I helped proving to be totally wrong on many accounts via several Warhammer 40000 threads here.

So let's move to the first batch of quotations I have something to say about:

Four Gothic-class cruisers--Intolerable, Invincible, and Righteous Force--awaited four parsecs from target. Each ship carried 100 Hellfire nuclear missiles. Each missile 122 warheads, each with a firepower of 5 GT. If boarding action fails, nuclear missiles will turn a ship to dust.

My comments:

I'm wondering if that weapon was ever seconded in any other WH40K book. You surely must be able to find a second reference, right?
I also wonder what the point was about throwing thousands of virus bombs at a world (that was the procedure, they'd fire thousands of them) when they were supposed to be Super Death Kill Kill Weapons of T3h d00m, and yet a thousand of those much less exotic 610 GT things, themselves spreading their multiple missiles all over the surface of a planet, weren't talked about that much?

They're not guaranteed kills of everything organic without NBC protection, is why.

But those 610 GT would. You wouldn't bother with virus bombs with that kind of firepower, especially since a virus bomb or a thousand of them would apparently largely make a difference of time, not of firepower. Those 610 GT missiles would clearly manage to put holes in a crust, what virus bombs can't do. Hell, even some large Tyranid thing sort of survived on the surface of a planet that was subjected to those exotic weapons or something very similar.
It doesn't stand very well to the idea of a flotilla having those missiles "just in case" something would go wrong with a piece of hulk, because this suggests they can have them rather easily if they use them for tasks nearly as mundane as a cleaning lady vacuuming your living room.
And again, is the existence of those 610 GT Hellfires ever confirmed later on?

A single ship would carry 100 x 610 GT, so 61 TT of firepower, and the flotilla in question, four ships, would total 244 TT, and that should be rather conventional firepower?
Hence why I pointed out that those surface licking virus bombs, supposed be stuff of Exterminatus you know, are absolutely pathetic in comparison.

The 5 GT a missile interpretation, albeit less elegant (some would say reaching), not only makes much more sense in light of the Exterminatus weapons, but would also happen to fit with the higher end of various calculations and other events I analyzed.

Also, a slight correction. The Tyranid that survived was a Carnifex, and it was against the barrage of Cyclonic torpedoes in Damnatus pattern (Tyranid Codex, 4th Ed, p.27).




I'll now give Drachyench's evidence of higher yields a look. An evidence which clearly was presented as solid.
This has nothing to with Drach himself. I have no grudge to hold here. I merely use his post as an example.

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... stcount=46

Can you consistently provide any example in-fluff, where a ship wasn't providing orbital-to-ground support without trying to fry its own side's infantry, that supports vastly inferior numbers? I can only think of one example, in the Planetstrike Supplement Book, and even then it featured a steady rain of "Megatonnes" of explosives being dropped to force a Daemon Fortress' occupants to choose between engaging the Space Marines or being demolished by the bombardment (which funnily enough implies Space Marines operating within short distances of multi-megaton explosions, but that's a point for other threads).

For the reference, on the few books I examined for this forum, two already featured bombardments which didn't involve nuclear firepower, as they were taking down batteries and destroying tank groups, with infantry standing rather close. One of these cases involved a battlecruiser.

I'm earnestly curious, as 40K is drastically short on numbers for weapons. Hell, I can only think of three exact number instances with 100% clarity on "You have to be a fucking tool to get these wrong" information:
1) The Gigaton torpedos I provided, which no matter what level of interpretation you give it (122 warheads totaling 5 Gigatons, or 122 warheads each with the firepower of 5 Gigatons), still gives you Gigatons for the weapon.

Notice that this is piece of data I wanted to know if it had been repeated in later sources. To no avail.

3) Marauder 40K Bombers hold (and I'm going off memory here, it should be in Apocalypse and the Into the Maelstrom books) a 50 megatonne payload of bombs. These it should be noted are often used in ground warfare, but are similarly seen as "effective" anti-ship measures.

I went over those bits, and indeed, there were mentions of megatonnes of fire dropped on targets, without knowing the type and count of ammunitions.
Interestingly, Drach literally went as saying that these yields were effective against ships. This would be in reference to at least the non-FTL warships, unless you want to think that dropships can withstand that kind of firepower.
I know some would.

*Examples of outliers that support higher firepower: the significant fraction of C Nova Cannons, the multiple AU's covered by the IoM ship in 93 minutes, the bombing in Caves of Ice in a few bombardments, "Flame Petals the Size of Continents", the destruction of Nostramo / Calliban (the later planet being whichever was the Dark Angel homeworld). If I can find my blasted sheet of paper which I hastily copied some Planetstrike info from, I'll try to see what calcs they support.

Most of which are riddled with scientific issues, are inconsistent or are misunderstood.

Take the destruction of Nostramo and Caliban. I managed to pick the original texts.

Drach cited Lexicanum:

I have to snag these examples from Lexicanum, mind, as I do not own any copies of "Index Astartes" (which features the descriptions of the destruction of Nostramo, Calliban, etcetera).

Caliban:
"Luther began to feel jealousy against Jonson. When Jonson returned from the Horus Heresy, a withering salvo of fire knocked ships out of orbit. Over many decades Luther had corrupted the remaining legion on Caliban. Jonson was furious and moved his ships back into orbit, bombarding the planet. Eventually, Jonson ordered the invasion and the loyal Dark Angels landed across the planet. The corrupt Dark Angels took hold in the Order monastery, and Luther and Jonson faced off. The ancient home was reduced to rubble and the planet was flattened.
Eventually, due to the bombardment, the planets crust began to shift and crack. Around the planet, the warp shifted as the dark powers realised they had failed again and a warp storm spewed forth around the planet. A swirling vortex of warp power was created around Caliban and it eventually broke up, being pulled into the warp. Only an asteroid with the Fortress Monastery ruins remained."

While not a direct planet-scattering here from the bombardment, they weren't even finished with their firing before they were shifting continental plates and causing cracks in it.
As for Nostramo? Curze and his fleet pulled up above Nostramo and started pounding the shit out of it's core. Eventually, planet go boom.

Nostramo
_________

Does any of this make sense to you?
Hundreds of weapons all shoot at a previous fracture in the adamantium crust of the planet (which would have no reason to be as tough as the hulls made of the refined ore). Somehow the original crack they fire at was due to the Primarch's impact with the planet eons ago.
Then the weapons reach the core, and the planet blows up, just like that.
. . .
Mmkay.

The case for Caliban is not exactly better:


Jonson's ships are forced to leave orbit as the laser weapons of Caliban fired from the surface. Once again, let's think about the idea of lasers fired from a position that's located inside an atmosphere. Gigatons? Teratons??
Of course Jonson returns with the remaining ships and attacks his own homeworld.
The Dark Angels' fleet destroys the ground weapons, forcing the rebel Dark Angels to seek shelter deep into their monasteries.
Somehow it is known that a surgical strike can end the conflict, but it's achieved by having Jonson and his soldiers entering the Tower of Angels, one of those monasteries, to face Luther. Don't ask. You'd think that massing firepower like it's done for the other monasteries, but all on the Tower of Angels, would actually do the job. Especially if the weapons are supposed to be capable of fragmenting the crust! But we later on learn that the monastery had a rather tough force field. I guess the others didn't.

More amusingly, the fleet's weapons were still firing at the other monasteries on and on, until all that would be left would be miles wide craters.
Yet that's also capable of cracking the crust and heaving its fragments. The difference of magnitude in firepower that's required for each respective level of destruction is vast. One only makes miles wide craters into the crust, the other literally smashes it into wobbling pieces.
I'm not even sure the Chicxulub impact, pegged at 100 teratons, has left any evidence that it did anything like breaking the crust over a wide area around the point of impact, and that's for an impactor, not an energy beam, that left a 180 km wide crater. A wee bit more than just "miles wide" you know.
Meanwhile, Jonson and Luther are still fighting inside the Tower of Angels. The duel ends, both are wounded, one cries mommy or something, Chaos Gods are infuriated. They unleash a kind of end-of-the-world storm/vortex. The "already weakened" planet (huh) is ripped apart by the power of the Chaos tide, each fragment and the rest sucked into Lalaland.
The Tower of Angels and the piece of rock it was built on is now drifting in space, its survival allowed by the presence of a "force field of awesome power."
So the force field can be backed up by some über power generator, capable of repelling the energies that literally pulverized the planet, so much that apparently it was actually better going inside by foot to kill Luther than focusing all the firepower onto that single spot, but for some reason the defense batteries of Caliban couldn't defeat Jonson's remaining fleet with only a fraction of that power? That the ToA didn't even have a couple defenses of its own to smack the insects?
I guess the defense batteries must have been powered by coal plants.

EDIT: Found the paper, the planetstrike quote is:

The familiar whistling scream of an incoming firestorm barrage drowned out even the thunderous chorus of Squad Abriel's Bolter fire. Megatonnes of ordinance rained into the twisted fortress behind them.

It should be noted they're fighting inside / around the fortress, at this point, and have not broken considerable distance from such.

Only other things I can find in Planetstrike that I managed to copy down is orbital weapons being used to laser-burn lines / giant craters across battlefields, and specifically targeting planetary cracks / faultlines to stimulate earthquakes.

Which isn't exactly surprising when focusing your mass drivers and other beam weapons onto those fault lines. The idea that earthquakes were even deemed relevant instead of simply using a variety of weapons aimed at the targets is perhaps even more telling.
Note that it doesn't take much to actually generate earthquakes. Without knowing the range and effects, it could be estimated to be as low as a couple of gigajoules, just to give an example you know.

Calth and Tallarn were also brought up by Ford Prefect. Calth was an airless moon. Apparently FP would have us believe Calth lost its atmosphere due to some attack. There is nothing I could find in the second edition of the Ultramarines Codex that proves this.
Tallarn was virus bombed by the Iron Warriors, so that's irrelevant.

And no, you aren't. If you want, I'll provide you the quotes supporting Gigaton-plus firepower. Ready?

They [battleships] can absorb tremendous amount of damage and mount weapons batteries capable of laying waste to entire continents.

Unless, of course, you want to argue that a ship that can only carry a few gigaton's payload total could lay waste to a continent.

I went over that one in my own BFG section, here.
We don't know how long it takes. We don't know the extent of the damage, as "laying waste" is rather vague. Hey, my ship "has enough firepower to turn an entire planet into a smoking cinder" surely sounds even moar a'some. :)

Let me skip the Nova cannon reference, which I amply disserted about by now, and the Caves of Ice calculation one, which you can read about here, to see how a couple of directed megatons are enough to complete the mission, and that the incredible firepower figures entirely stem from a misinterpretation.

The attacking fleet is escorting Exterminators, ships capable of laying waste to entire planetary populations or even obliterating all life on a world in a matter of hours.

All life killed in a matter of hours. In the very least, I find it very unlikely that a fleet that's sum armory is maybe ten or twenty gigatons could nuke everything to hell and back. Especially considering the presence of Hive Shields that can withstand constant bombardment from thousands of enemy artillery pieces for days.

Firstly, artillery pieces are different from warships main weapons, obviously.
Secondly, if the ships escorting the Exterminators were literally capable of snuffing life out of a world in a matter of hours, they'd be Exterminators.
Exterminators are ships carrying weapons of mass destruction on a planetary scale. Cyclonic and virus bombs. Again, the same virus bombs which effects would actually be less efficient and absolute than the raw DET firepower that's touted by Connor.

Moving on, we come to the Dominator Battleship reference. It's actually from Space Fleet. More details here.

Then we have the infamous "petals of flame" reference (re-again):

Petals of flame, the size of continents, spread out from under its milky skin

Time until we're told it's hyperbole?

The fact the quotation contains the crucial information about the extremely low altitude reach of those petals seems not to be obvious and clear enough.

I also already addressed the Rogue Trader reference.
Then the Tyranid related reference, which obviously is nothing more than a quotation of Connor's post at SDN, which I commented on here. Cyclonic torpedoes are, of course, a special type of weapon used for Exterminatus.

The second reference was purely useless for the topic of conventional weapons since it dealt with Exterminati and the use of cyclonic torpedoes and virus bombs.
Finally, the last reference is clearly pointing to megatons. I also talked about it here, where I also speak of the cyclonic torps and point out how odd they are.

Rather obviously, most of his argumentation entirely relied on mindlessly pasting the stuff posted by Connor. A pattern which I had already pointed out, and this is just a perfect example of it.

EDIT: corrected a misplaced zero that slipped in the 610 GT torpedo section of my post.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Was checking out that other SDN thread, and noticed that particularly interesting piece of information which Connor from the 1997 Ed. of Epic; p. 59:

Huge capacitors store up the energy generated by the roaring furnaces, while fusion reactors and plasma chambers generate raw power to be distributed through massive cables and along pylon supported wires to the factories and smelting works of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Perhaps it is a Generator Vulcanis, tapping directly into the white hot mantle beneath the forge world's crust, using the immense potential of geothermal energy to send gigawatts of power surging through its web of conduits to nearby installations. Power stations can be highly volatile areas and troops who take shelter in such a place must be careful to pay heed to the warning signs and hazard markers lest they melt down a plasma reactor or electrocute themselves on a live wire!

The worlds of the AM produce many goods and other tools for the Imperium.
Some of their worlds are literally covered with factories.
To power them, they use fusion furnaces.
Most interesting is that when they can have access to something different, like geothermal energy, they go for it. A "Generator Vulcanis" makes good use of the "immense potential" of such an energy source to obtain gigawatts to nearby installations.
With this in mind, you can look a couple of posts up and re-read the part about the "Defence Laser".
It would require extremely generous assumptions to pretend that this weapon would manage to deliver even low petajoules to its target.
Technically, if we want to be quite nasty, such a weapon could be rated at several dozens or hundreds of gigawatts as a low end.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Oopsie.
I mad quoted one of my posts (here) by mistake.

[Jedi Master Spock]

(BFG rulebook)
Page 8

"They [battleships] can absorb tremendous amount of damage and mount weapons batteries capable of laying waste to entire continents.

Aside from the error in the orders of magnitude, I know that taking Connor's words at face value is not acceptable. A pity he doesn't present the evidence in question.

The nice thing about analyzing BFG is that all the rulebooks are available in most current form in PDF format, for free, on the Games Workshop website.
Click the "Specialist Games" tab (top bar) then "Battlefleet Gothic" within the menu. On the left side bar, click "Battle Fleet Gothic Resources." You should be able to get there. (If I link you directly to it, you get sent to the front page anyway - GW's website is a little funky.)

The full quote (p 9, basic rulebook):

Battleships are the largest fighting ships in space. They can absorb a tremendous amount of damage and mount weapons capable of laying waste to entire continents. These vessels are so huge that they are comparatively slow and ponderous to manoeuvre, so they need support from other vessels to bring the enemy to battle.

There's absolutely nothing about this description which further clarifies timeframes or anything else, so Connor is just pulling his implications out of thin air here. It's worth noting, however, that the book goes on to describe cruisers and escort vessels, and doesn't say anything about them having similar capabilities.

Let's note that lances are worth their own paragraph, and as being high-powered weapons (no such mention is made for other weapons), could be the prime weapons of warships. Fits with "Caves of Ice", since Cain only thought about lances destroying the Necrons.

Page 18

Direct fire attacks include weapons such as lasers, fusion beams, and plasma launchers which when fired hit almost immediately, even across tens of thousands of kilometers.

Page 19:

Enemies at close range pose a much greater threat than those thousands of kilometres away.

Meaning, in other words, that anything thousands of kilometres away is not, in fact, at close range. Did Connor cite this quote?

I would recommend downloading them and looking at them for yourself.

[Mith]

I did some digging and according to Warriors of Ultramar novel, it gives the nova cannon firing a shell at 5,000 km/s. Not sure if that helps or not.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I did some digging and according to Warriors of Ultramar novel, it gives the nova cannon firing a shell at 5,000 km/s. Not sure if that helps or not.

Ah, yes, that's the same one he's pulling a 50m nova cannon diameter from. (Can you get us the exact quote for that?)

Compared to the figures Connor is using (with velocities pulled out of thin air), it reduces kinetic energy by four orders of magnitude.

Now, let's be clear: A 5,000 kps shell is fast, and even if it were substantially smaller and lighter than Connor is claiming, it could easily break the gigaton KE barrier, which puts it on the higher end. With the mass Connor claims (which is to say that the shell is about the mass of the entire USS Voyager, to put his claim into perspective), that would be close to two teratons of KE.

IMO, Connor's mass estimate is severely off as well, by a couple more orders of magnitude.

[Mith]

I did some digging and according to Warriors of Ultramar novel, it gives the nova cannon firing a shell at 5,000 km/s. Not sure if that helps or not.

Ah, yes, that's the same one he's pulling a 50m nova cannon diameter from. (Can you get us the exact quote for that?)

I'll see what I can do.

Compared to the figures Connor is using (with velocities pulled out of thin air), it reduces kinetic energy by four orders of magnitude.

Now, let's be clear: A 5,000 kps shell is fast, and even if it were substantially smaller and lighter than Connor is claiming, it could easily break the gigaton KE barrier, which puts it on the higher end. With the mass Connor claims (which is to say that the shell is about the mass of the entire USS Voyager, to put his claim into perspective), that would be close to two teratons of KE.

IMO, Connor's mass estimate is severely off as well, by a couple more orders of magnitude.

Oh, no doubt its fast. It is very fast, but we should also remember the relative speed is also a factor, which if the target is moving at near speeds, the KE drops dramatically.

That said, using the more reasonable mass and the lower speed, what would that bring us to?

[Mith]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

My dear Connor, you have been a bad boy, haven't you?

Here's your fifty meter wide slug:

Deep in the bowels of the Argus, the fifty-metre wide door of the
nova cannon’s breech groaned shut as thousands of sweating
naval ratings dragged the massive weapon’s recoil compensators
into position. Hot steam and noise filled the long chamber, its
cavernous structure fogged with the furnace heat of lifting mechanisms
that hauled the enormous projectiles from the armoured
magazines below.

Suffice to say, if the breech door is fifty meters wide, then it's unikely that the projectile is that large.

But oh, it gets better.

The chamber ran almost the entire length of the ship and
stank of grease, sweat and blood. A booming hymnal echoed
from ancient brass speakers set into grilled alcoves in the wa l l
accompanied by the droning chant of thousands of men.
Senior gunner Mabon watched from his gantry above the firing
chamber as a series of bells chimed and a row of lights lit up
along a battered iron panel before him. He couldn’t hear the
bells, his long service as a gunner in the Imperial Navy having
deafened him decades ago.
The shell was loaded and he muttered the gunner’s prayer to
the warhead as he squinted through a bronze optical attachment
that lifted on groaning hinges from the panel. He clamped his
augmetic monocle to the optical, lining up the thin crosshairs on
the red triangle that represented his target. The target was closing
on them so he didn’t have to make any adjustments for crosswise
motion. It was a simple shot, one he could have easily made, even
in the earliest days following his press-ganging on Carpathia.
Satisfied that the shell would be on target, he lifted his head
8 Graham McNeill
and ran his gaze across the chamber, checking that his gunnery
crew gangs were clear of the greased rails that ran the length of the
chamber and that each had their green flag raised to indicate that
all the blast dampers had been closed. He reached up and took
hold of the firing chain that hung above his station.
He grunted in satisfaction and pulled hard on the chain, shouting,
‘Spirits of war and fire, I invoke thee with the wrath of the
Machine God. Go forth and purify!’
Steam hissed from juddering pipes and a high-pitched screech
filled the weapon chamber as the gravometric impellers built up
power in the breech.
Mabon rushed to the edge of the gantry and gripped the iron
railings. Seeing a weapon of such power discharge was a potent
symbol of the might of the Imperial Navy and he never tired of
the sight.
The screeching rose to an incredible volume, though Mabon
was oblivious to it, until the nova cannon fired, and the enormous
pressure wave slammed through the chamber. The
weapon’s firing sent the three-hundred metre barrel hurtling back
with the ferocious recoil. The air blazed with sparks and burning
steam as the grease coating the rails vaporised in the heat of the
recoil, the stench of scorched metal and propellant filling the
chamber with choking fumes.
Mabon roared in triumph, gagging on the stinking clouds of
gas that boiled around him. Juddering vibrations attempted to
topple him from the gantry, but he had long since grown used to
them and easily kept his balance.
The smoke started to clear and his gunnery overseers began
whipping their gangs into dragging the massive weapon back into
its firing position once more. The armoured bays in the floor
groaned open and the looped chains descended to be attached to
a fresh shell.
Mabon had drilled his gunnery teams without mercy and he
prided himself that he could have the nova cannon ready to fire
again within thirty minutes. This time would be no different.

It takes thirty minutes to reload the Nova Cannon. In short, unless you're in a large fleet engagement, the refire rate on that weapon is just horrifyingly bad.

Oh, and the entire bullshit of it being KE...is well, laughable. See for yourself:

The shell from the Argus streaked like a blur of light through
space, exploding like a miniature sun in the heart of the tyranid
ships. More potent than a dozen plasma bombs, the shell detonated
only a few kilometres from one of the manta-like creatures,
instantly incinerating it in a roiling cloud of fire, which also scattered
a nearby flotilla of smaller creatures. One creature fell away
from its pack, glutinous fluids leaking from its ruptured belly. It
thrashed as it died, eventually becoming still as it haemorrhaged
fatally.
The swarm scattered from the blast, though a host of small
organisms, each no larger than a drop pod, converged on the
shrinking cloud of organic debris, exploding with terrific violence
as they neared the centre of the blast.
A group of creatures surged forward, as though galvanised into
action by the blast, and closed on the approaching Sword frigates.
Behind the frigates came Sword of Retribution, the Cobras of
Cypria squadron and the strike cruisers of the Ultramarines and
the Mortifactors.
First blood had gone to the Imperial fleet, but the battle had
only just begun.

The projectile was designed to detonate a few KM away from the target. The entire idea of this thing being used as a gun is laughable.