Imperium vs. the United Federation of Planets

[The Dude]

It's more than fucking like rabbits. Otherwise my garden is full of followers of Slaanesh. :p
All descriptions I read make Slaneesh a true perversion. It's all about hedonism at any occasion, lust and sheer decadence, lots of torture and pain, either through sex or through death. Death is not just enough by the way, it has to be as much painful as possible. The description of Slaanesh's castle quite perfectly completes this gruesome canvas. Oh and rape obviously brings lots of bonus points.
You'll notice that the harsher and corrupted a society is, the more moral values are destroyed and the more open to such practices it becomes, and the more injustice there is when such crimes are commited.
Good luck trying to fit the fit the UFP with that.

I dunno dude, DS9 gave me the impression that the UFP is a fragile thing that doesn't bear much scrutiny.

He still enjoys a fuckton of rage, hate and bloodlust apparently. He's probably very tempting to some warriors, notably those who seek revenge and justice without caring about the price to pay. Short of any enormous tragedy then exploited by a political organ boosting its authority with propaganda surfing on such desires, it will have minimal reach to true warriors, especially those who are told not to hate the ennemy, but to respect it. And of course, in times of peace, Khorne is simply negated.

Nope. What does it say? :)

Read Legion then, have ya?

The later bit of the book has a Xenos Cabal that basically tells Alpharious/Omegon that humanity must be destroyed for Chaos to be defeated and that if he sides with Horus Chaos will be dominate for a while and then be destroyed as humanity consumes itself. If the Emperor wins then humanity will stagnate and the universe will be in a status quo for a good while and Chaos will eventually triumph.

I don't put a lot of stock in it as it was dominated by the Eldar.

Oh no, as I said the UFP would probably bring many worlds to chaos. But the positive aspect of this is that the in fighting and the Chaos forces will finish all those rotten societies off. Chaos, in a way, is like the great purge that grows from corruption to destroy the corruption. There's no corruption to get from Chaos forces after all, since their case is sealed.

Now I may be missing something out here, like the possibility that even with the massive disappearance of the violent, dire, perverted and decadent worlds of humanity, Chaos wouldn't weaken.

Now, with an OP that left all other invasions out, that would also leave Chaos invasions out.

My personal opinion (which is worth about as much as a used condom) is that the UFP is pretty ripe to be exploited by Chaos. Places like Risa, Betazed, Vulcan etc.

[Mr. Oragahn]

For the others worlds I don't know, but Vulcan? Aside from possible scheming, I don't really see how it's going to work. They literally run away from emotions, they're all stuck up zen guys, living in nice cities on some peaceful but barren world, something quite perfect for an unique style of meditation about humility and else.

Would there be a Chaos God shooting itself with an abundance of hard logic?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Interesting, I've seen how the equivalent SBC thread has intellectually "evolved" -I should said flatlined even before being given birth.
Least to say, it's not impressive at all.
One thing I had not considered though was the AdMech Vaults on Mars.

The ignorance of IoM warp speeds and the lack of reliability for warp travel, the warp storm, the ratio of properly achieved jumps, or the fact that jumps have to be made at the edge of systems, or the importance of the Astronomican... all of this is entirely ignored. That's funny.
The importance of Terra in scenario 2 is also completely disregarded.

There's talk about how the IoM has a greater experience of war and combat, but when it comes to naval doctrine, honestly I don't see what's so special about it. You may say that UFP ship design sucks, but it when it comes to true battle ships, the new classes we've seen, including the Defiant, are fucking stellar and modern in comparison.
I'm more puzzled by how they think it's better -and a proof of superior experience, which would logically call for efficiency- to have people mount cannons on chassis before battles, open port holes and load big giant slugs. I'm also puzzled at how it's deemed efficient to lose like 12 people a week on a warship outside of any combat situation and that doesn't get even noticed on the ship's records.

There clearly are odd things over there...

[The Dude]

For the others worlds I don't know, but Vulcan? Aside from possible scheming, I don't really see how it's going to work. They literally run away from emotions, they're all stuck up zen guys, living in nice cities on some peaceful but barren world, something quite perfect for an unique style of meditation about humility and else.

Would there be a Chaos God shooting itself with an abundance of hard logic?

They suppress their emotions but it doesn't seem to take much to break that facade. Hmm...maybe Romulans would have been a better example.

[The Dude]

Interesting, I've seen how the equivalent SBC thread has intellectually "evolved" -I should said flatlined even before being given birth.
Least to say, it's not impressive at all.
One thing I had not considered though was the AdMech Vaults on Mars.

The ignorance of IoM warp speeds and the lack of reliability for warp travel, the warp storm, the ratio of properly achieved jumps, or the fact that jumps have to be made at the edge of systems, or the importance of the Astronomican... all of this is entirely ignored. That's funny.
The importance of Terra in scenario 2 is also completely disregarded.

*shrug* Well keep in mind that if the IoM is operating in the ST universe (which may as well be the IoM's past) that the Warp is most likely a lot more stable then it is in their time. The Astronomican wouldn't be required to travel as it was the birth of Slaanesh in the 29th millennium that fucked over Warp travel and made it necessary. Technically the beacon isn't required in 40K anyways, it just makes things far more reliable.

There's talk about how the IoM has a greater experience of war and combat, but when it comes to naval doctrine, honestly I don't see what's so special about it. You may say that UFP ship design sucks, but it when it comes to true battle ships, the new classes we've seen, including the Defiant, are fucking stellar and modern in comparison.
I'm more puzzled by how they think it's better -and a proof of superior experience, which would logically call for efficiency- to have people mount cannons on chassis before battles, open port holes and load big giant slugs. I'm also puzzled at how it's deemed efficient to lose like 12 people a week on a warship outside of any combat situation and that doesn't get even noticed on the ship's records.

There clearly are odd things over there...

Well those are likely lower deck crew, which are treated as completely expendable. Relentless does a good job of illustrating what life is like for them and the ship just tops them up at port calls via press gangs.

[Mike DiCenso]

There is also an additional factor to be considered that no one at this point has mentioned: Section 31. Given that S31 is given to manipulating and when neccessary, using weapons of mass destruction to achive it's goals of preserving the Federation against all outside threats, how would they react to dealing with something like the IoM?
-Mike

[Khas]

They'd probably go apeshit and poison the GEOM or something.

[The Dude]

They may very well try but it sure is not easy to get at him.

[Enterprise E]

There is also an additional factor to be considered that no one at this point has mentioned: Section 31. Given that S31 is given to manipulating and when neccessary, using weapons of mass destruction to achive it's goals of preserving the Federation against all outside threats, how would they react to dealing with something like the IoM?
-Mike

They'd probably use a Trilithium torpedo or a protomatter bomb like the Changeling Bashir used to try to destroy Bajor's sun on Imperium Sol and take it out that way. You can't tell me that they don't have a weapon like that. If someone like Soran was able to build a Trilithium torpedo, it's probable that Section 31 can too. One thing that I would be interested in is if the Federation citizens are warp nulls in this scenario. If they are, that could allow for interesting scenarios, especially when dealing with psykers.

[Mike DiCenso]

Or set off several isolytic burst subspace weapons in the close vicinity of Terra.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

*shrug* Well keep in mind that if the IoM is operating in the ST universe (which may as well be the IoM's past) that the Warp is most likely a lot more stable then it is in their time. The Astronomican wouldn't be required to travel as it was the birth of Slaanesh in the 29th millennium that fucked over Warp travel and made it necessary. Technically the beacon isn't required in 40K anyways, it just makes things far more reliable.

You're sure of that?
I thought Slaanesh only perturbed the warp in so far as to create the Eye and that's all. i'm sorry but I'm going to ask for a quote here.

Now, what I know is different.
Lexicanum pegs Tau FTL as five times slower, and supposedly that's why the Tau haven't expanded much beyond their little dominion, which is a crappy excuse imho. Five times slower than IoM warp drives would hardly explain this. I'll try to see where this comes from.

Now, a much clearer note from the video game Space Hulk's fluff says the following!

"Whereas it once took centuries for human spacecraft to travel to Sol's closest neighboruing star, the same distance could suddenly be covered in just a few hours."

Proxima Centauri is 4.2 LY away. Back then, their sublight propulsion sucked big donkey balls.
That would be centuries, at least 200 years so, to cross 3.97 e13 km. But with warp drives, the same distance could be covered in only a few hours. Say two or three.
So 20000~30000 hours to cover 42000 LY.
That's between 2.56 and 3.85 years. That's between 10910c and 16406.25c.
Now, unless I got things horribly wrong, humanity discovered warp travel well before the birth of Slaanesh.
I'd say that aside from the exceptional super fast trips or the "lost in time" jumps, that's quite in line with several figures for warp travel during the 41th millennium.
It seems that the Astronomican is what helps the IoM maintain the speeds humanity enjoyed before the coming of Slaanesh.

Besides, without the Astronomican, how would psykers perform in a calm warp? The astronomican is a point of reference after all, if I get it properly.
We know that in a troubled warp like it is in the MW, humanity would be reduced to silly little slow ass hops. The question is how fast the IoM will be able to move through the Trek version of the MW.
If it's at the speeds mentionned above, it would be very complicated for the UFP to resist. Eventually, if there's like tens of thousands of warships in the whole IoM fleet, the UFP won't have enough ships to defend itself. Ship numbers is not all that matters; the ratio of firepower per unit of volume does as well.
Now, it's all about how powerful you think each side's weapons are.
If a single 600-700 meters long UFP ship can do well against a 1-2 km long warship, then the UFP can take fight effectively, since UFP ships are quite agile. Although lances weapons are instant hit weapons and quite the most powerful the IoM ships have in terms of immediate output right out of the reactor (I'm leaving out charged weapons like the Nova Cannon), their accuracy is not so stellar at thousand of km, as per Execution Hour. As per other sources from documents taken at GW, their beams even scatter noticeably through a planet's atmosphere.
IoM ships have no means to intercept photon torpedoes. They can have walls of flak, but they're only effective against enemy bombers and those ships certainly have not accomplished the feats torpedoes did.
If the UFP fights DS9 style, they'll get toasted fast. If they fight like in other shows, from TOS to TNG, and use fire their torps from several dozen thousands of kilometers, they can beat IoM ships relatively safely.
The UFP, by the time of late DS9, had 30,000 ships or so. I suppose their build rate bests the IoM's, but the IoM has just too many worlds. Now it takes many decades to build ships in general, so that evens the field.

The problem here is that if the IoM can travel the Trek MW via warp drives without being limited to the small hops, then they can head straight for the Sol System with the vast bulk of their fleet and there's nothing the UFP can do. They won't even prevent Exterminatus spam, and it would be game over relatively fast, since both sides seem to have similar FTL speeds on the average.

Scenario 1 is very harsh for the UFP. I'll wait for the proof that Slaanesh is the thing that really fucked up the warp and that the Astronomican is there because of the mess started by Slaanesh's rise. If this is correct, then the UFP is dead.
If not, the UFP can rely on its war industry to produce combat orientated ships.

The importance of the Astronomican and its real effect and role will be what makes the difference between the UFP looking for a MAD by beheading the IoM and actually having a chance to win because the IoM could never attack the UFP before being brought to a halt and crumble.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Or set off several isolytic burst subspace weapons in the close vicinity of Terra.
-Mike

Well surely a special mission with several ships filled with such bombs could achieve something, although it is not clear at all how powerful they are.
It's not even clear if the UFP/S31 actually have any left, and if they still have the blueprints (S31 may), then how long would it take to build them?

Now, for that last question, unless it takes several years to do so, we could safely consider that they could build them in sufficient quantity for that special death tripe mission, operation Burn Terra.
But you know, Terra in WH40K is not an easy target. Although UFP ships be able to bypass all the intrasystem defenses, the Imperial Palace (more a super city) is a large target, and its most important parts are deeply buried and protected.

Does the UFP have super WMDs?

[The Dude]

Unfortunately I lack the relevant Codexes so I'll have to pop over to the wiki:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fall_of_the_Eldar

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Age_of_Strife

Hmm, so looks like I was wrong. It was the emergence of human psykers corresponding with warp storms that brought in the Age of Strife.

However, humanity had discovered warp drive long before the 29th millennium and many of the novels hint at a human empire before the AoS, long before the Astronmican existed. I'm certainly convinced that if the IoM can navigate the Warp in the ST galaxy then they shouldn't have the troubles that exist now. There are no signs of WH40K psykers in Trek, nor are there signs of any of the other warp related nasties.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The 4th edition Codex of the Eldar says that storms existed ten thousand years before the Fall, so that's around the 20th millennium.
That would be right between the second and third DAoT (see here).
Perhaps that's because the Eldars were really getting closer to the ultimate perversion. It's said that the birth of Slaanesh actually brought calm to the warp for some time.

[Mith]

It's more than fucking like rabbits. Otherwise my garden is full of followers of Slaanesh. :p
All descriptions I read make Slaneesh a true perversion. It's all about hedonism at any occasion, lust and sheer decadence, lots of torture and pain, either through sex or through death. Death is not just enough by the way, it has to be as much painful as possible. The description of Slaanesh's castle quite perfectly completes this gruesome canvas. Oh and rape obviously brings lots of bonus points.
You'll notice that the harsher and corrupted a society is, the more moral values are destroyed and the more open to such practices it becomes, and the more injustice there is when such crimes are commited.
Good luck trying to fit the fit the UFP with that.

Your average Federation citizen would probably faint at the thought of date rape, let alone what Slaansh followers follow.

He still enjoys a fuckton of rage, hate and bloodlust apparently. He's probably very tempting to some warriors, notably those who seek revenge and justice without caring about the price to pay. Short of any enormous tragedy then exploited by a political organ boosting its authority with propaganda surfing on such desires, it will have minimal reach to true warriors, especially those who are told not to hate the ennemy, but to respect it. And of course, in times of peace, Khorne is simply negated.

Given that Picard is about as close to someone being mentally unstable when it comes to the Borg--and given what it took for him to reach that point, I'd say their chances of finding many of them is unlikely to say the least.