WH40K - Cyrene crust-melting from DoW novel analysis (SDN)

[Mr. Oragahn]

In his Cyrene crust-melting from DoW novel analysis [Calcs Ahoy!] thread, Connor goes for another round of wank.
This time, he really has pushed the maximalism very far.

Quick reminder:

4.184 e24 W = 1 petaton per second
4.184 e21 W = 1 teraton per second
4.184 e18 W = 1 gigaton per second
4.184 e15 W = 1 megaton per second

For starters, contrary to the impression given by the author of the post I'm looking at, it is necessary to remember that Warhammer 40000 hardly agrees with his nonsensical numbers.
For example, we can notice Connor's effort spent on calling upon his erroneous "Caves of Ice" calcs (see here), while ignoring everything that doesn't fit with his numbers, like, to name a few, clear cut statements that cap firepower from "Execution Hour", "Shadow Point", "Storm of Iron" or plenty of fluff from BFG, Rogue Trader, and other supplements that speak of ground based laser weapons which are more powerful than those on warships because of light scattering, putting them at an advantage over their space-carried equivalents, clear descriptions of yields of weapons such as magma bombs, etc.
There are more WH40K threads on this forum to look at.

So let's wade through his post and see what's claimed.

Yes, I bought Dawn of War. I admit that. And with good reason. Goto may be a lousy writer, but he at least is worth providing some interesting (and calcable) technical tidbits. One of those that I've been most interested in acquiring was the exterminatus of Cyrene. I was debating holding this off until I actaully do my exterminatus essay, but that one is going to be fucking huge as it is, so I won't lose much by doing this one independently.

The quote as such, is as follows:

Shortly afterwards, a flotilla of Naval and Inquisition vessels had joined the Ravenous Spirit in orbit and had proceeded to launch an unrelenting barrage of lance strikes, mass drivers and cyclone torpedoes, reducing the once green world to a primeval, molten state.

Let's point out here how his understanding of the quote here is most important. Although the one that follows below is also indicative of his methodology, it goes without saying that absolute literalism is what drives his argument for absurdly high numbers.

In a franchise that's known for epic exaggeration, metaphors and hyperbole, claiming that it's fine to take such things literally is like dancing on eggs and pretending you won't break any.

The passage identifying it as an exterminatus follows from here:

"As I recall, you were the one who requested the assistance of the Inquisition in the performance of an exterminatus on Cyrene - the systematic annihilation of all life on the planet - genocide by another name."

You will probably appreciate the double standard. It is quite spectacular in fact, considering some of his following posts.

Basically, CML is about to calculate the energy to assuredly destroy ALL life, as deeply buried as it can be, because Exterminatus is described the "systematic annihilation of all life on the planet".
And yet will say later that there have been several Exterminati executed with weapons which would never be able to attain that level of destruction.

His calculations will give ships a level of firepower that totally surpasses this degree of destruction.

Parameters for the bombardment

As anyone who has had some knowledge of Star Wars BDZ incidents can tell you, melting a substantial portion of a planet's surface (IE crust) can be very energy intensive. But how intensive, and how do we determine this? The clue lies mainly in the manner in which the incident is phrased - that the planet is reduced to a "molten, primeval state."

Now, that by itself doesn't really tell us alot, ,aside from the fact the planet's surface is raised to the melting point. The context though suggests that the planet was reduced to such a state simialr to how the Earth was in the very early stages of its life. "Primeval Earth" on google does not turn up many results however (this being the only one I could find), but recalling my older "Cave sof Ice" bombardment analyis, I remembered discovering during that research that the Earth during that period was also quite molten.

That period is known as the Hadean era (or eon, either works.), named so for the hell-like conditions of the planet at that time. As a google search and browsing of some of the resulting links indicates that the earth at that peroid was in a mostly molten state. We can therefore infer that the conditions on cyrene would be similar as a result of the bombardment (IE a fair portion of the planet heavily molten.)

The next question of course is the depth to which the crust is molten. Again, this is not specifically indicated, but we can conclude based on the quote that since the planet would be made "molten", much of its solid mass would be affected. The obvious conclusion woudl be that much of the crust will be melted in the process of the bombardment.

This is perfectly likely, but it is worth noting that the crust is not the ONLY solid part that the bombardment would neccesarily affect. Part of the upper mantle also remains solid (which together with the crust is called the lithosphere.) The actual "depth" seems to vary tremendously.. I've seen as little as eighty kilometers well up to hundreds (300 km) of kilometers) Data on the lithosphere can be found in the google results here

That said, there are other considerations:

- most hatbitable planets also have a considerable quantity of water (water makes up 70% of the Earth's surface.) In a "molten, primeval" state, this almost certainly means that the vast majority of the planet's oceans and other bodies of water will be boiled away (reduced to vapor). In terms of energy, this will probably be alot smaller relative to melting most of the earth's crust (much less the lithosphere), but it serves as a useful lower-limit benchmark.

- while considerable melting is almost certain from the calc, its also quite likely that, given the weapons being used, there was a not-insiginifcant amount of vaporisation involved (Asteroid impacts will create lerge amounts of vapor) as well as fragments. While its not directly possible to calc vaporization, it could argualby increase the calc by up to nearly an order of magnitude, dpeending on the percentage of vaporization inferred.

- it is quite possible that lower levels of the mantle are also heated, since the only temperature increases as you go down fruther towards the core. Considering the mantle makes up most of the Earth's mass and extends down for thousands of kilometers, it can potentially add alot to the calc. However, I ignore this avenue for several reasons. First, I'm not really sure yet how the temperatures breakdown beyond the lithosphere. before it reaches melting point. The lower layers (the ashthenosphere) tend to be more plastic, rather than molten, but the temps and pressures also fudge with calcs, ,whch would entail more research than I currently wish to engage. Secondly, given the probable length of time of the bombardment, inefficiencies will probably dictate that the lower levels will get heated up regardless.

Indeed, inefficiencies themselves could contribute significantly to the calc, as noted here with regard to Base Delta Zero, inefficiencies could contribute to an orders of magnitude increase in calcs.

Numbers of shisp involved

We know there was one strike cruiser present, as well as a "flotilla" of Navy and Inquisition vessels. As previously discussed in the Ciaphas Cain novel and the misc 40K analyis thread, "flotilla" is another word for "squadron" so this tells us there is roughly a squadron of ships here. Now the exact kind of squadron is not specified.
The distribution of "squadrons" is as follows

Battleships and Grand Cruisers are 2-3 ships

Cruisers and batltecruisers are 2-4 ships

Escorts are 2-6 ships.

For the purposes of the calc, I am going to assume cruisers. AS far as I know, the Inquisition does not normally have its own battleships (but they do have cruisers), and in the navy, cruisers are much more common than battleships (and much more likely to respond quickly.) Moreover, if there were a couple of battleships replying, a strike cruiser would more than likely be superfluous in the bombardment. Escorts, of course, are ignored because while there would be more of them, they'd acutally contribute less overall firepower than the cruisers.

Nonetheless, I may do breakdowns for different kinds of "squadrons" based on this. Battleships will be the conservative one.

Timeframe

According to Battlefleet gothic it takes a single capital ship "hours" to conduct an exterminatus. Given the squadron dispostions above, the timeframes should be arguably much "less" in evey case (with 3-5 cruisers the timeframe should, arguably be 1/3 to 1/5th what it is for a single ship.)

And in the ending cutscene of "Firewarrior", it takes around 40 seconds to complete what would obviously be an Exterminatus, against a planet that's the size of Dione. :p
I'd be most interested into knowing what Connor thinks of this discrepancy and the obvious messed up nature of the Firewarrior outlier. Most logically, his talent for accurate observations and most reliable capacity for providing solid analyses would surely have him address this Firewarrior issue whenever it crops up, right? :)

We will simply assume that he is yet to see this cutscene.
We know this can be only explanation, since he's more than willing to point out the low end outlier from IA's Blood Ravens chapter:

There is a small problem with this: The "Index Astarrtes" entry for the blood ravens (written by Graham McNeill) specifies it took the fleet a whole week of pounding with "mass drivers, lance strikes, and cylconic torpedoes. It also specifies that "fleets of Inquistorial and naval vessels" appeared, implying much greater numbers than what hte novel itself implies.

This cleraly represents a contradiction of sorts - the "fleets" bit can be disregarded probably, but the timeframe (arguably) could not. I am, howver, inclined to give more credene to the "novel" depiction of events for several reasons

- In the novel it is identified as an Exterminatus, and the timeframe of Exterminatus is well defined both within battlefleet gothic as well as corrobroated by other sources. No source I am aware of has ever indicated it takes a week of actual bombardment to exterminate a planet, and the BFG refrence does include brute force weapons (mass drivers and fusion wepaons)

Perhaps to inflict deep wounds when typical Exterminatus weapons are more of the "burning embrace" type?
Mass drivers and lance weapons would be good at digging into the crust while the Exterminatus weapons incinerate matter on the surface. That would also be consistent with what an Exterminatus usually is.

- The novel appears to present the incident from the viewpoint of Gabriel. This would be more consistent "in-universe", as Gabriel was present for the incident. The "Index Astartes" entry is written as if it were reporting an event secondhand.

- In addition to #2, the Index Astartes article also makes it abundantly clear that some or much of hte information is unknown (the Inquisitorial records on the incident are still sealed.) In fact, they flat out state that "only the Inquisition and Gabriel Angelos" know what happened. Which reinforces the idea that Gabriel's recollection of events is more accurate.

- The timeframe given in the article is "months." Now, this is arguably debatable, but "months" may not be very "rapid" a response time for the Imperium (the Imperium in Caves of Ice responded to the Necron bombardment with a flotilla of battleshisp in weeks) Again, its debatable, but this does not seem very likely.

- the Index Astartes article conflicts with both the novel and Battlefleet Gothic on separate points: Two against one.

Perhaps because, in that version of the event, they conducted an Exterminatus without having any special weapons, so they had to count on several ships and a long duration for the bombardment?
How does that go against the BFG's "hours" when it's clear that the BFG speaks of a typical Exterminatus?
It's like having a book describe the typical bombardment of a nation with megaton scale nukes by a few ships, call that operation a "Death From Above", but sometimes in exceptional cases, you don't have those heavy nukes and must rely on many many ships with conventional gigajoule weapons, pounding the target on and on for ages to achieve a similar end result.

- The "week long" timeframe can be more easily reconciled with "hours" (depending on circumstances) without bending over backwards for rationalization. Whereas you can rationalize a "week" as falling under "hours" only in a very loose sense. Moreover, from a logical standpoint, ,constantly firing for over a week is unrealistic - there would have to be reloading, resupplying of ammunition, allowance for maintenancec and cooldown, etc.

Needless to say that he's being very generous with himself when it comes to reconcile "week long" with "hours".
He's actually very generous for a lot of other things. But not when it comes to criticism and parsimony.

Nonetheless, to be conservative, I will further include the use of the week-long timeframe, even though I consider "hours" to be the reliable timeframe.

Calculations

The first number will be ocean vaporizing, as specified before. Having done this previously, this will come out to roughly 4e27 joules. works well as a low limit baseline. In reality melting a significant portion of the crust will result in the oceans boiling off as a side effect (energy radiated away elsewhere, etc.)

Now, to calcualte the actual crust melting, I did two different ways.

The first way, I pulled the classic "one meter, one hour" figure from Mike's Base Delta Zero page. The energy figure is (of course) 2.2e24 joules. I then multiplied by an assumed 30-40 km crust depth, and then took 30% of that figure (only about 30% of the surface of the planet is "solid" from the top of the crust to the bottom - the crust under the oceans is only about 10 km thick at most..) To account for the "ocean crust" I take 2e24 J, multiply by 10 kilometers (10,000 meters) and then take 70% of that. the result for the first calc is between 2e28 and 2.64e28 joules. The energy for the "ocean crust" would be ~1.54e28 joules.

The total energy input would be at least between 3.5e28-4.2e28 joules.


The lazy calc was fairly straightfoward: it involved using the crustal mass figures pulled from the nineplanets, which is roughly 2.6e22 kg. multiplying that by the melting enegy from the BDZ page yielded an energy requirement of around ~5e28 joules.

Since there isn't much difference between the two I'll use the second figure.


Assuming 2 vessels (of any kind) + 1strike cruiser did it:

For 2 hours: Ocean vaporizing: 1.85e23 watts Complete crust melting: 2.32e24 watts

For 24 hours: Ocean vaporizing: 1.54e22 watts Complete crust melting: 1.93e23 watts

For one week:Ocean vaporizing: 2.2e21 watts Complete crust melting: 2.76e22 watts


Assumign 3 Battleships + stirke cruiser did it

For 2 hours: Ocean vaporizing: 1.4e23 watts Complete crust melting: 1.74e24 watts

For 24 hours: Ocean vaporizing: 1.17e22 watts Complete crust melting: 1.45e23 watts

For one week: Ocean vaporizing:1.67e21 watts Complete crust melting: 2.1e22 watts


Assuming 4 cruisers + strike cruiser did it

For 2 hours: Ocean vaporizing: 1.12e23 watts Complete crust melting: 1.4e24 watts

For 24 hours: Ocean vaporizing 9.33e21 watts Complete crust melting: 1.17e23 watts

For one week: Ocean vaporizing 1.33e21 watts Complete crust melting: 1.67e22 watts


Assuming 6 escorts + strike cruiser did it:

For 2 hours: Ocean vaporizing: 8e22 watts Complete crust melting: 1e24 watts

For 24 hours: Ocean vaporizing 6e21 watts Complete crust melting: 8.33e22 watts

For one week: Ocean vaporizing 9.52e20 watts Complete crust melting: 1.19e22 watts

The above do represent a fairly wide range of numbers, but none of them should be considered upper limits. But, rather, a range of lower limit values. I'm only considering the crust ATM (I'll do calcs for the lithosphere later, with more research permitting), it ignores any inefficiencies in the proceses (which, as noted, could significantly increase the calcs), and I'm also ignoring the fact that the "hours" timeframe applies to a single ship. Logically, with multiple ships in this case the bombardment should be over sooner (IE, with 4 vessels, the 2-24 hour timeframe would be between half an hour and 6 hours.)

Nonetheless, this does serve to indicate a nice level of consistency with other esablished calcs (IE the Caves of Ice bombardment, nova cannons and bombardment cannon calcs, etc.)

More to come...

There are two terms which Connor uses to pin point the time in Earth's history which we have to look at.
"Primeval", and "molten".
The first gives a good indicator of the era.
The second helps us focus on an even narrower period, because it seems we have to find a time when Earth was molten. I emphasize "seems" since things are not what they seem. Wait for the end of this post to get what I mean.

So, the question being how far do we go back into what we understand as "primeval"?

Main Entry: pri·me·val
Pronunciation: \pr?-?m?-v?l\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin primaevus, from primus first + aevum age — more at aye
Date: 1662
1: of or relating to the earliest ages (as of the world or human history) : ancient, primitive <100 acres of primeval forest which has never felt an ax — Mary R. Zimmer>
2: primordial 1b

1. relating to the period when the universe or the Earth first began to exist; primeval rock
2. primeval feelings are natural and happen without thinking; a primeval desire

"Earliest ages of Earth", or "when it began to exist".

Where do we begin?

With molten bit, this would leave out the ages when life grew out of primeval conditions.

Perhaps that brings us back as far as when Earth was... a small ball that was growing to about 40% of its present radius?
If so, then I'm sure Connor's calcs absolutely are conservative, since it would mean he forgot to add all the energy necessary to reduce Cyrene's radius by 60%.

Perhaps we could push the time index even further, who knows?
These are periods which occured over 4.x Ga ago.

Wait.
Aren't we supposed to be looking for a time when Earth was entirely molten? Let's find one where Earth was relatively as big as it is now.
What about the giant impact hypothesis?
It's said to have happened around 4.533 or 4.48 Ga, when Earth was a proto-Earth (with the planet forming about 4.54 billion years ago).
By that time, there already was a crust, and the planet had yet to gain anything near its final mass.
That one would seem right.

But what about oceans then?
They were already there as well.
True, they actually came a bit later, apparently between 44 Ga and 4.0 Ga.
Is that not primeval enough, though?
Yes, it is, but it wouldn't exactly match with the idea of a molten ball of rock. Assuming we do want to look for a time corresponding to such a state of matters. If not, all observations about the presence of life and oceans matter.

In the end, that means we have to make a choice. And this is where things get tricky. What are the options?

1. We try to go further back in time, but hhen Cyrene needs to lose 60% of its radius (something that would make Abaddon's Planet Killer almost unworthy of notice... and you'll have to wait for the end of this post for a little surprise anyway).
2. Or we settle on the time of the impact, which would give us both the right size, and the molten state. However, it's a time where energies were so vast that the Moon was ejected while Earth gained its final mass (minus more or less a few extra minor asteroids and comets impacts) after being hit by a Mars-wide planet at 3-4 km/s (KE > 2.8883 e30 J), a scenario just as ridiculous as above.
3. Or we go to the age where the planet had its final mass (with again, a variation due to future minor impacts), but then the crust was already there, solid and all, with volcanoes spewing lava and seas of magma existed here and there. However, that would mean a colder planet, not molten, and above all, oceans other than of molten rock would have begun to form.

Figures obtained from the first two solutions are so absurdly high that it's a miracle if you have not died of laughter yet, and the much more reasonable figures one could obtain from the third option would be rejected by anyone thinking molten is key to the understanding of what happened to Cyrene.
And yet...

I'm curious as to why he didn't apply the same degree of analysis to other quotes from DoW:

Not unlike the falsely-cursed Prospero, Cyrene was a planet with well-developed nascent psykers and communes of sorcery. It was a place of wonder. But rather than utilising his power to save the souls of his homeworld and the knowledge that they cherished, Gabriel reacted to this realisation with fear and loathing, summoning the Exterminatus and raising the planet to the ground.

When he closed his eyes, he could see nothing except the tortured hell of Cyrene as the Exterminatus finally consumed all the living tissue on the planet's surface. Not only had Cyrene been unsuitable for recruitment on that visit, but it had been riddled with corruption, taint, mutation and heresy. Gabriel had not had any choice - he could not suffer those abominations to live. From orbit, he had killed the entire planet.

Raised to the ground... all living tissue on the planet's surface consumed... don't really depict a situation where the crust has been melted, or very superficially.

'Sergeant Saulh - Hold this position and provide assistance to the Cobras,' said Gabriel. 'I assume that the Exterminatus array is still functioning aboard the Rage of Erudition, sergeant?'
'Yes, captain. It remains undamaged,' replied Saulh, his image crackling and snowing on the view screen.
'You are to fire on Rahe's Paradise when you are ready,' directed Gabriel firmly. This was not the first time that he had ordered the destruction of a planet, but perhaps that was why it felt like such a weight of responsibility. 'We can no longer leave it intact - its labyrinthine structure is riddled with slumbering Necron. It must be destroyed.'

So there is a need for an Exterminatus array after all. Why bother, if other weapons are just as capable? Surely, mass drivers and lance batteries in the teratons would easily provide the necessary destruction.

The last of the Dirge Raiders spiraled down into the atmosphere of Rahe's Paradise, flames pouring from its engine vents and armoured plates free falling from its hull. Beneath its fall, the planet's surface was vaguely visible beneath the clouds of toxic smoke and viral contagions that roiled around in the atmosphere. The Exterminatus arrays had caused all of the volcanoes around the equator to erupt at once, spilling the planet's core out onto its surface and effectively turning the entire world inside out. For good measure, the epic bombardment had continued, throwing viral and bacterial agents down into the mix to ensure that nothing could survive, even if it could swim in molten rock and breath sulphur. In a matter of minutes, the atmosphere had been completely eaten away and then, in less than an hour, the planet's structural integrity collapsed and it simply fell apart, scattering itself into asteroids and meteorites.

Assault on Rahe's Paradise.

Several things of importance are to be noted here.
An Exterminatus array was deemed necessary to proceed with the planetary destruction. In fact, several arrays were responsible of the destruction. The planet could not be damaged with conventional weapons. Most obviously, even if terrible technobabble weapons could not melt the crust, it's more than likely that the conventional weapons would fail at this task as well.

Secondly, the crust was still there, but volcanoes on the equator were vomiting the planet's core and that "turned the entire world inside out".
For some unknown reason, bacterial and viral agents were also fired into the biosphere, or whatever could still be called a biosphere.
They weren't sure, somehow, that the weapons would kill the Necrons. Although I don't see what bioweapons would do to the living metal machines.
The atmosphere was eaten away (?), perhaps because some virus bombs would be involved.

Then, perhaps the most bizarre thing of all, the structural integrity of the planet collapsed, and it turned into an expanding field of asteroids and meteorites (basically what the Planet Killer could do in a relatively similar timeframe), like if most of the gravitational binding energy just disappeared. Snap.

The magnitude of destruction is only matched by the advanced level of technobabble.
Had the planet not exploded, then the importance of conventional weapons would be more than obvious, as I pointed out at the beginning of this post.
Indeed, with no magical planetary scattering, the crust was hardly endangered, and reinforced structures would have survived.
This degree of destruction is also very reminiscent of the destruction brought upon Nostramo and Caliban.
A shielded fortress like the Tower of Angels would have easily survived the onslaught (well, it actually survived the crust being cracked into bits by some burst of Chaos piss).
If anything, those rare Exterminatus cases are totally overkill, and the Exterminatus weapons absolutely not conventional at all.

Finally, the timeframe might be gauged.
The final stages of destruction happened within minutes for the destruction of the atmosphere, and then less than an hour for the planetary scattering. Likely, the whole process didn't take much more time, perhaps under two hours at best.
It seems one ship was involved only, but since several Exterminatus arrays were mentioned, and since the Rage of Erudition had one array, other ships must have helped. Yet, there only were escort ships (Cobras) alongside the large cruiser (I guess some special equipment was de rigueur).
Although it wasn't Cyrene, but Rahe's Paraside this time, it still was achieved with the involvement of Blood Ravens naval forces.


On a sidenote, should I also quote the bit about the Necron Shroud Cruiser hit by a solar flare from a red star, channeling the energy from what hit the pyramid structure, and delivering a near critical blow to an eldar warship? :]
Or bombardment cannons designed for planetary assaults (you know, the kind that "can level cities") and punching through the hull of the Necron cruiser and detonating inside?

Oh and a spell-check program wouldn't hurt either.

[Mith]

Well I for one, would very much appreciate sauce on that solar flare bit.

Of course knowing the 40kers, they're just going to squeal that it was only .001% of the total power they needed and were just topping themselves off to be sure.

As for Conner's calcs, he reminds me of those bullshit doomsayers who go around proclaiming the end of the world from some dead civilization/famous guy and rearrange letters, words, and even entire sentences so that their prophecies actually specify some modern place instead of the ancient civilization that they were most likely refering to.

You can't change months to weeks or hours. It just doesn't work that way. Yes, there are times when mistakes are made and it's obvious that the person in question was refering to something else, but there's no reason to believe that there was a mistake here. Gabriel was speaking in a rather vague term throughout the DoW novel in regards to Cyren. This is an official report of the matter. And while yes, information does remain sealed, why would they seal the information on the actual bombardment in such a fashion? They can still know about it, but you're going to tell them that it took months instead of the supposed hours?

[Dabat]

I pretty much agree with Mith. While I think it would be cool if ships in 40k could make the ICS look like children at play, it doesn't fit in with the setting. To be fair, I am surprised the Exterminatus ship had any help from the other ships at all. If one ship can kill all life on the planet, why have help from any other ships at all?

And, for the record, flotilla can refer to the entire formation of ships, which could be (though not likely given fluff) in the dozens.

[Mith]

I pretty much agree with Mith. While I think it would be cool if ships in 40k could make the ICS look like children at play, it doesn't fit in with the setting.

Don't worry about the ICS. That's ten times more retarded than the shit the 40kers try to pass. At least there's some events that help support that--even if they are outliers or outdated sources.

To be fair, I am surprised the Exterminatus ship had any help from the other ships at all. If one ship can kill all life on the planet, why have help from any other ships at all?

Most likely they needed to target planetary defenses such as shield generators, weapon based ground platforms, and the like. Ie, removing the threat of strong resistance could take hours if the defense was well put together.

The exterminatus bombardment was probably very quick. Possibly. It's possible they were using a method that required more time. They did have to use virus bombs and the like to ensure the entire population had been destroyed. If that's the case, then it would make sense for them to use lance weaponry as well.

And, for the record, flotilla can refer to the entire formation of ships, which could be (though not likely given fluff) in the dozens.

That would certainly hurt some of Conner's claims in regards to lance firepower.

EDIT: Wait, a red star Oraghan? As in a red giant? Their solar flares by their very nature would be much cooler than our own (ie, their shells are much cooler and much larger than Sol, but with a very hot core--that doesn't not bode well for Imperium firepower).

[Dabat]

I pretty much agree with Mith. While I think it would be cool if ships in 40k could make the ICS look like children at play, it doesn't fit in with the setting.

Don't worry about the ICS. That's ten times more retarded than the shit the 40kers try to pass. At least there's some events that help support that--even if they are outliers or outdated sources.

Yeah, I remember when that first came out, I was somewhere in my late teens. I, being the huge Wars fan I am, flipped through it and I remembered thinking 'this isn't like what they had in the movies at all'. Interestingly enough, I was willing to accept the figures for the larger ships, I just assumed they had some form of power source that couldn't be scaled down to the smaller fighters and stuff.

To be fair, I am surprised the Exterminatus ship had any help from the other ships at all. If one ship can kill all life on the planet, why have help from any other ships at all?

Most likely they needed to target planetary defenses such as shield generators, weapon based ground platforms, and the like. Ie, removing the threat of strong resistance could take hours if the defense was well put together.

The exterminatus bombardment was probably very quick. Possibly. It's possible they were using a method that required more time. They did have to use virus bombs and the like to ensure the entire population had been destroyed. If that's the case, then it would make sense for them to use lance weaponry as well.

Except 40k doesn't have a lot in the way of shields for installations, much less entire worlds. I could see targeting ground defense platforms that were capable hitting the extermanatus round before it impacted, but that's about it.

Then again, it is entirely possible that the other ships joined in out of a sense of religious duty, or they were just upset someone had bigger toys than them. The nobles that ship masters tend to come from (as a generalization) tend to be both very pious and extremely jealous of others.

And, for the record, flotilla can refer to the entire formation of ships, which could be (though not likely given fluff) in the dozens.

That would certainly hurt some of Conner's claims in regards to lance firepower.

Flotilla is one of those tricky words. Depending on the time and nationality using it it can mean a single floating gun platform; it can be like Connor uses it (and much of 40k does too) and be used to designate a squadron, ore it can be used to refer to an entire formation (which itself can be anything from a single ship to an entire fleet). Note I am not saying that Connor is wrong, I am just saying that he could be.

EDIT: Wait, a red star Oraghan? As in a red giant? Their solar flares by their very nature would be much cooler than our own (ie, their shells are much cooler and much larger than Sol, but with a very hot core--that doesn't not bode well for Imperium firepower).

This is another tricky thing. Void shields which the Imperium uses tend to preform poorly when there is a lot of electromagnetic interference, which the flair would happily provide. As well as the fact that once down many types can not be raised when there is a significant amount of matter in the vicinity (though just why is never explained), also provided by the flair in the form of the aforementioned charged particles.

[Mr. Oragahn]

[Except 40k doesn't have a lot in the way of shields for installations, much less entire worlds.

Curious. One guy at SBC recently claimed that prison worlds and other important cities had shields.

Flotilla is one of those tricky words. Depending on the time and nationality using it it can mean a single floating gun platform; it can be like Connor uses it (and much of 40k does too) and be used to designate a squadron, ore it can be used to refer to an entire formation (which itself can be anything from a single ship to an entire fleet). Note I am not saying that Connor is wrong, I am just saying that he could be.

But I think it's pretty well defined in WH40K that a flotilla is a small formation. A quick key word search through the local WH40K threads would most likely reveal this. Either it directly comes from the BFG rulebook, or some references in novels.

On a sidenote, should I also quote the bit about the Necron Shroud Cruiser hit by a solar flare from a red star, channeling the energy from what hit the pyramid structure, and delivering a near critical blow to an eldar warship? :]
Or bombardment cannons designed for planetary assaults (you know, the kind that "can level cities") and punching through the hull of the Necron cruiser and detonating inside?

Well I for one, would very much appreciate sauce on that solar flare bit.

Of course knowing the 40kers, they're just going to squeal that it was only .001% of the total power they needed and were just topping themselves off to be sure.

EDIT: Wait, a red star Oraghan? As in a red giant? Their solar flares by their very nature would be much cooler than our own (ie, their shells are much cooler and much larger than Sol, but with a very hot core--that doesn't not bode well for Imperium firepower).

The Shroud Cruiser had been entombed there for quite some time, under the Blood Ravens' monastery, and as it woke up, the whole planet started to get a bit more active.
The local Blood Ravens outpost in this system (the monastery), was surrounded by a some mountains, volcanoes (with names formed from the prefix Krax and a number, such as the dormant Krax-7, used as an arena and an amphitheatre, much bigger than the monastery itself and quite not too far from it either) and a desert.
Right there, you understand that when the book says lava was begining to cover the planet, things were cracking everywhere, walls, grounds. Geysers of lava were surrounding warriors. The Eldar had come because of the Necron, and while the SMs were fighting them at first, they finally joined forces to get rid of the Necrons.
The destruction brought upon Rahe's Paradise was a necessity, but little of the seismic activity was due to the weapons from the ships in space.
The lava and the volcanoes spewing lava at the equator, that happened before the bombardment begun. Odd phenomena were taking place around the monastery and in its foundations. Shadows which would absorb intense light, dark lightning striking in the desert, not far from the monastery, which turned the sand to black mica. There's some hint that this originated from beyond the planet's atmosphere, but it's not clear. A Space Marine thinks he's seen the phenomenon depart from the mesophere, blah blah.
Pretty much the whole planet's geological structure was tied to some "magic", with a Necronlord sealed deep into the crust.
It would seem that Yngir is just another name for Necron. The Yngir were fought by the Eldars eons ago, and somewhat sealed.
Deep down in a cave a hundred meters wide or so, below the Blood Ravens' monastery, a Librarian called called Jonas was trying to decipher the riddles and tales carved into the walls, ceiling and floor. Then he understood the puzzle, saw that the missing piece was a giant rune in the middle of some large stone element towards which several streams of lava flowed. He thought Yngir, and then spoke its name. The runic seal put into place ages ago split, and was revealed the dark tip of a Necron pyramid quite some distance underneath. Later on, there's a battle around that pit between the IoM forces and the Eldards. As warp energy is released for spells, it is sucked down by the pyramid. And as anything with Warp is odd, it's therefore not surprising that messing the Warp in proximity of a planet could generate odd effects as well. We've seen what the most powerful Warp related phenomena could do to a planet.
Anyway, the Eldar were freaked out. The IoM's Sisters present there also were spooked. The older, Meritia, killed herself because she thought she got tainted: one night, she suffered of violent visions visions, she woke up with her hairs turned grey, stuff like that.
I'm not supposed to tell everything, I'm not reading the whole book. I'm just showing how those who supposedly did, because they are the fans, just talk nonsense.
That Necron entity was something old, prophetized and all that. Let's say it sucked energy from stuff around, the planet, something.
Fact is, the odd seismic activity is not the result of the weapons.

So for the background:

'Ten millennia ago, the eldar left a device on this planet that regulated the psychic field around its surface,' explained Gabriel. The
device was designed by a powerful farseer, who understood that the Yngir would sleep for as long as they believed that the eldar
still dominated the stars. The psychic field synthesised the presence of the eldar on this planet, even after they left. It seems that
the excavations of Father Jonas disturbed the device causing it to malfunction. The result was an emission of the psychic echoes of
the original battles between the eldar and the Yngir on this planet, which would be picked up and amplified by receptive minds on
the planet's surface—'
'—minds like those of a librarian?' asked Jonas, finishing the thought.
'Exactly, but not only librarians. Other people with latent psychic potentials or sensitivities might also be affected. People like the
local aspirants in the Blood Trials, or…' Gabriel trailed off, not wanted to finish the thought out loud in front of Ptolemea and the
Battle Sisters. However, Ptolemea nodded slowly, as though expressing an unspoken solidarity, as the images of eldar fighting in
a jungle swam back into her mind.
'The eldar had to remove those minds lest they disturb the slumber of the Yngir?' concluded Ptolemea, realising that the
explanation fitted exactly with her own experiences.
'How could it be that the Blood Ravens have been here all this time and not realised what was under our own monastery?' asked
Jonas, still reluctant to be persuaded by the alien's story.
'We have not been here all this time, Jonas,' said Gabriel, knowing that it would come as a shock to the old scholar. 'The fortress
on whose remains we built our outpost was not a Blood Ravens facility. Another Chapter was here before us - a Chapter that
seems to have made some kind of pact with the eldar to stand guard over the slumbering evil under the planet's crust. But the
fortress was destroyed or abandoned, perhaps at the time when the forests were scoured from the face of this. world. Whatever
Chapter was here, it left the planet to die. But it did not die, and the Blood Ravens discovered it, making it our own, ignorant of
the promises made by the servants of the Emperor before our arrival, and ignorant of what lay beneath the tectonic plates of this
ruinous world.'

The prophecy speaks of such power that it would threaten the galaxy. Yet the Eldars didn't dispatch that many warships for what would be quite the ultimate trial. That said, it's not exactly the Eldars per se, but a fraction of them, a secular religious group branching off from one single dude who survived his craftworld sunking into the Eye of Terror for five hundred years or so, when all his comrades died.

The entire planet seems to have been the sleeping bed of an entire Necron force. Swarms of dark metal clouds were erupting from the cracks in the crust.
Another bit, just like that:

Slowly and deliberately, one of the metal skeletons lifted its own weapon and pointed it at a white and emerald eldar Guardian. A
stream of glittering darkness flashed out of the barrel and crashed into the elegant alien as it struggled to move aside, catching it in
its ribs. The stream instantly spread out, creeping and flowing all over the eldar warrior, coating it completely in a shimmering,
silver darkness in less than a second. A fraction of a second later, the darkness blinked and evaporated into the air, leaving the
flickering image of an atrophied and decomposed eldar where the Guardian had been. The image flickered and then vanished,
leaving nothing of the alien at all.
Tanthius lumbered into a run, dragging his damaged limbs across the trembling, lava-riddled, smoke-enshrouded battlefield. In the
distance, he could see the Blood Ravens' monastery rocking and cracking as the movements in the ground became more violent.
He wasn't sure what was going on, but he was certain that the Blood Ravens should get off Rahe's Paradise as quickly as possible.
He had never before seen warriors that could climb imperviously out of magma and resist eldar fire as though it were nothing, and
he had certainly never seen weapons that could vaporise an eldar Guardian in less than a second. Whatever was ascending out of
the bowels of the planet, Tanthius had a very bad feeling about it.

As for the solar flare bit, we come to the point where the Shroud Cruiser tries to leave Rahe's Paradise:

A sudden convulsion pulsed through orbit, rippling out from the planet as another vessel started to push its way slowly out of the
atmosphere. A tiny point of shimmering black was the first thing to break the atmosphere, like the tip of an iceberg. It grew
slowly, with the atmosphere bursting into flames on all sides of it as the pyramid pushed out into space. A moment later, and the
broad, crescent-shaped hull of the Shroud Cruiser pressed up into the troposphere, highlighted in an aura of burning ozone.
Macha! Uldreth's thoughts were urgent and precisely directed. Macha! He has ascended!
The Avenging Sword disengaged its cannons from its support role in the dogfights and redirected them down towards the
emerging Shroud Cruiser, knowing that the Yngir lord was encased within it. At exactly the same time, the weapons of the Eternal
Star also turned down to atmosphere, pounding it with tirades of violence.
Even as the Shroud pulled clear of the planet and into orbit, with lashes of fire and torpedoes bouncing off its hull, entire
squadrons of Dirge Raiders zipped out of the atmosphere in its wake, flashing straight into the mire of combat with the
Shadowhunters and the lumbering mon-keigh gunships.
Starting slowly the Shroud quickly gathered pace as it accelerated off towards the sun, apparently ignoring the continuous
bombardment to which it was being subjected by the eldar cruisers.

[...]

THE SHROUD CRUISER closed on the star as hostile fire rained onto it from its eldar hunters. It was beginning to suffer under the
onslaught and it started to rotate to face them. Even as he watched, Uldreth could see dark sunspots appearing on the red star
behind the Shroud and thin solar flares lashing out from its burning surface like massive storms. He knew what was coming.
The sunspots grew and darkened as the solar flares lengthened and strengthened, reaching out towards the Shroud as it pitched up
vertically in front of the star. Then in an incredible burst of power, a searing flare exploded out from the sun striking the central
pyramidal structure on the Shroud, from where it was refracted into a constellation of beams that flashed through the other
pyramid-prisms on its hull, lighting the vessel like a brilliant, geometric star of its own. Then, the beams reconverged on the
central pyramid and combined into a single bolt, lashing out at the Eternal Star as a blinding lightning-arc.
The wraithship quaked under the impact, spiralling backwards, out of control.
No! yelled Uldreth into the warp, watching Macha's cruiser tumbling uncontrollably through space.
Just as he screamed, his own vessel returned fire, throwing everything it had into the side of the Shroud.
At the same time, a flood of fire lashed into the Yngir cruiser from another side, and Uldreth snatched his head around to see the
roaring engines of a Blood Ravens strike cruiser blasting into the blind side of the Shroud, throwing las-fire and torpedoes at the
nearly impregnable hull. It was also firing some kind of bombardment cannon that was probably designed for planetary assaults,
but its shells were punching into the armoured plates of the Shroud and detonating inside.
In a matter of seconds, part of the central pyramid on the Yngir cruiser exploded and cracked off, sending the concentrated beams
of solar power crackling for uncontrolled targets. The lightning arcs lashed out into space, striking the Avenging Sword with a
wild and crackling whip of power, but then turning back on themselves and engulfing the Shroud itself.
The vessel convulsed and shook, throbbing with an overload of power, and then detonated right in its core. The silvery black
Shroud Cruiser erupted into flames of darkness and then blew apart, sending lethal shards and shadows hurtling out through the
system. For a moment, silhouetted against the dying sun, where the Shroud had once been, there was the shimmering figure of a
glorious humanoid - like a star god caught in his own inferno. And then it was gone.

It may seem that the cruiser managed to focus the flare onto the tip of its pyramid or so, so it all boils down to how much energy you think there's in such a red star flare.

[Dabat]

[Except 40k doesn't have a lot in the way of shields for installations, much less entire worlds.

Curious. One guy at SBC recently claimed that prison worlds and other important cities had shields.

This is one of those 'varies widely by sectors' things. In the Sabbat Sector nearly every major city had some sort of shield, a few of which (like the one that protected Vervunhive in the book Necropolis) could was supposedly able to withstand gigaton* level firepower, while others were only useful in keeping out rain and snow; while other sectors, like the Cadian Sector, have no city sized shields at all.

*not a word I throw around lightly. The shield was supposed to be able to protect the city from anything that did not slip under it. The hive city was protected by a fort over a kilometer across which was entirely vaporized by a weapon (described as a 'cutting beam') which left no trace of anything it hit, including the 200 meter high fort. The structure was not blown up, as no rubble fell on the survivors in gun pits. The entire fort essentially vanished. Yet this weapon was not used until after the shields of the city were turned off. Though anecdotal, the way I read the book shield extended out over the edge of the wall and protected at least part of it, as the ramparts suffered from long range artillery before the shield was activated, but were only hit by short range fire afterward, and the bastion for the fort was much taller than the surrounding wall.

Flotilla is one of those tricky words. Depending on the time and nationality using it it can mean a single floating gun platform; it can be like Connor uses it (and much of 40k does too) and be used to designate a squadron, ore it can be used to refer to an entire formation (which itself can be anything from a single ship to an entire fleet). Note I am not saying that Connor is wrong, I am just saying that he could be.

But I think it's pretty well defined in WH40K that a flotilla is a small formation. A quick key word search through the local WH40K threads would most likely reveal this. Either it directly comes from the BFG rulebook, or some references in novels.

You may be correct. But again, I am not 100% sure either way. I am virturally certain I have seen it used in the 'entire fleet' context in 40k fiction.

*snip*

It may seem that the cruiser managed to focus the flare onto the tip of its pyramid or so, so it all boils down to how much energy you think there's in such a red star flare.

I didn't get to that part in the Blood Ravens book, I could not stand it. Though it sounds like the Shroud just used the flair to activate it's lightning arc. My earlier reply to Mith was because I thought he said that you said a solar flare dropped a ship's shields, and kept them down. Which in cannon (according to BFG anyway) they do.

[Mr. Oragahn]

[Except 40k doesn't have a lot in the way of shields for installations, much less entire worlds.

Curious. One guy at SBC recently claimed that prison worlds and other important cities had shields.

This is one of those 'varies widely by sectors' things. In the Sabbat Sector nearly every major city had some sort of shield, a few of which (like the one that protected Vervunhive in the book Necropolis) could was supposedly able to withstand gigaton* level firepower, while others were only useful in keeping out rain and snow; while other sectors, like the Cadian Sector, have no city sized shields at all.

*not a word I throw around lightly. The shield was supposed to be able to protect the city from anything that did not slip under it. The hive city was protected by a fort over a kilometer across which was entirely vaporized by a weapon (described as a 'cutting beam') which left no trace of anything it hit, including the 200 meter high fort. The structure was not blown up, as no rubble fell on the survivors in gun pits. The entire fort essentially vanished. Yet this weapon was not used until after the shields of the city were turned off. Though anecdotal, the way I read the book shield extended out over the edge of the wall and protected at least part of it, as the ramparts suffered from long range artillery before the shield was activated, but were only hit by short range fire afterward, and the bastion for the fort was much taller than the surrounding wall.

So only the 1 km wide fort was protected, not Vervunhive?
Or did it erect a shield that protected both the fort and the hive located some distance behind the fort's walls?

As for the beam, if it managed to punch through the shield and just sort of ate the whole site away, and never got used a second time after that, it's obviously a long charge, high overheat or one shot weapon, and most likely which pulls stuff into the Warp. Like a vortex beam, essentially. Your description makes it look like there were very little of the expected secondary effects of a weapon of such magnitude if it were DET.

*snip*

It may seem that the cruiser managed to focus the flare onto the tip of its pyramid or so, so it all boils down to how much energy you think there's in such a red star flare.

I didn't get to that part in the Blood Ravens book, I could not stand it.

Mmm, for what it is supposed to be, that is, dumb entertainment, the bits I read were quite good enough. Most of all, visually speaking, the author easily conveys what he has in mind. Contrary to many other authors, this one knows how to quickly and easily give you a mental image of what goes on and what looks like. The whole Eldar raid through the red desert, the attack against the automatic towers and then the attack on the monastery, that was quite nice to read. Besides, it didn't suck big balls because the scales were small. There was no huge thousand against thousand battle for which you wonder why the fuck the dumbies don't throw some mini-nukes to end all this mess and instead decide to pull out the chainswords and other totems.
The whole thing a Dune feel to it, so I liked that. That said, I didn't read the whole book, so I can't tell what's just too awful about it, and since I'm not that much of a WH40K fan.
I think the universe is just too dumb as a whole, with entire factions built entirely on the premise that they must be cool and sell to certain demographics, like with the Tau meant for Koreans/Asians and other angry otakus, etc.
Besides, the behaviour of its rabid fans just make it even more despicable.

Though it sounds like the Shroud just used the flair to activate it's lightning arc.

The question being how much of that solar flare the Shroud sucked.
Considering that Necron related super power can suck energy out of stars, whatever happened there could be the result of controlled triggers:

THE LAST OF the Dirge Raiders spiralled down into the atmosphere of Rahe's Paradise, flames pouring from its engine vents and
armoured plates free falling from its hull. Beneath its fall, the planet's surface was vaguely visible beneath the clouds of toxic
smoke and viral contagions that roiled around in the atmosphere. The Exterminatus arrays had caused all of the volcanoes around
the equator to erupt at once, spilling the planet's core out onto its surface and effectively turning the entire world inside out. For
good measure, the epic bombardment had continued, throwing viral and bacterial agents down into the mix to ensure that nothing
could survive, even if it could swim in molten rock and breath sulphur. In a matter of minutes, the atmosphere had been
completely eaten away and then, in less than an hour, the planet's structural integrity collapsed and it simply fell apart, scattering
itself into asteroids and meteorites.
Gabriel watched the planet die with confidence. This time he knew that he had done the right thing. It would, in any case, be only
a matter of days before the local star would collapse in on itself and turn supernova. The necron lord had destabilised it enough,
even in that short period of exposure. Emperor only knows what harm it could have done had it escaped the system.
Clicking the view screen, Gabriel watched the speeding form of the eldar Ghost Dragon flash after the tumbling wraithship. It had
departed without a word only an instant after Gabriel had destroyed the necron cruiser. Not a single word, and certainly no thanks.

With all this destabilization going on, both inside the planet and inside the star, things are more complicated to gauge.
Anyway, the flare, even if provoked, doesn't extinguish the red star: it can only be a fraction of the star's power.

There were forests on Rahe's Paradise before. Red giants don't really have a surface. They're more like a constant gradiant. Red dwarves, though, have surfaces. The luminosity of a red dwarf is a fraction of Sol's. At best, the most powerful red dwarf is already 10 ten times weaker (10% of L_Sol), and it can drop down to 0.01% and even with examples going as far as 0.002%.
The star wasn't described as getting suddenly brighter either.
If we look at Sol's flares, the most powerful ones can release about 6 e25 J, around a sixth of Sol's power. Velues can be considerably lower.
Basically, only the highest flare ratio timed the highest luminosity figure can fit with the claimed yields. It also assumes that the flare was as powerful as a natural flare. It could have been much weaker than the weakest flare so far as we know. It also assumes that the entire flare's was concentrated onto the pyramid tip, and it assumes that nothing of that energy was lost, no matter the nature of any radiation.

My earlier reply to Mith was because I thought he said that you said a solar flare dropped a ship's shields, and kept them down. Which in cannon (according to BFG anyway) they do.

For some reason the rabid hammies at SBC can't make the difference between a solar flare and a mere corona. It's not like it's very hard.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Just for a measure of precaution, I decided to quote three of Connor's posts I refered to previously in my opening post, when talking about Connor's double standards.

Nice.
Are cyclonic torpedoes not funky weapons which ignite the atmosphere of plants or am I misremembering something?

Before it wasn't specifically noted. As per the Black Library "Tactica Imperialis" book? Some (most) are brute force in nature (Basically), the other is mre technobabble (though still produces energy, the mechanism by which it does so isn't. And in TI you only needed a single torpedo for that.)

I should point out that this assumes "igniting the atmosphere" is taken literally.. atmosphere is not really "combustible" all by itself, you need to add something to it or change it (which is presumably what virus bombs do) or do some sort of matter/energy conversion (which is what certain cyclonics do.)

I should also note some novels specify cyclonic torpedoes being used for conventional bombardment or even ship to ship combat(or with conventional weapons.. Anniilhation squad and Bleeding Chalice come to mind.)

It would seem that the torpedo seen fired in the DoW:R cutscene to be one of those über one shot world killers.
But a further examination of TI remains needed nonetheless. Never too sure with that guy.

In at least one case (perhaps two) a single barrage of cyclonic torpedoes has been known to kill a world in a distinctly tectonic way. Cyclonic torpedoes are a very broad weapon.

You don't think a massive quantity of energy injected into the ground could create seismic effects? Why do you think earthquakes can (and have) been measured in terms of "gigatons" or "Teratons"?

A ground-penetrating warhead, even a nuke of sufficient power, could cause quakes. Indeed, nukes have indeed caused quakes to occur.

Generally though, most cyclonics aren't that "deep penetrating."

In at least one case (perhaps two) a single barrage of cyclonic torpedoes has been known to kill a world in a distinctly tectonic way. Cyclonic torpedoes are a very broad weapon.

Is it possible that certain planets have quite a bit of pent-up seismic energy, and can thus massive earthquakes can be caused through precise application of lots of force?
I know nothing of geophysics, much less the potential behaviour of the crust of a world other than Earth, however.

I highly doubt it, because planets are not bombs. If you dump energy into something, it has to manifest it in some way - waste heat or work, basically. Where would all this "pent up energy" be stored, much less in such a manner that it could be spontaneously and explosively released?

Besides, even the biggest quakes are only really teraton level. A big nuke would be simpler and far more plausible than something like a temblor bomb.

Planets are not bombs, yet I can't tell how many times cases of planet blown to death are cited as demonstration of conventional firepower. Nostramo, for example. This one is just silly. The science is so molested.

You know guys, on Earth there have been nuclear weapons with barely enough yield to level a few city blocks. There are also been nuclear weapons so powerful they can render a major city like London to ashes. Why precisely should we assume that 40k Cyclonic torpedoes or any other sort of weapon has a fixed yield when real life weapons don't?

There probably are variable yields as well as variable kinds (radiation, Mass/energy conversion, and plasma IIRC T.I.). It probably also matters whether its "airburst", "ground burst" or possibly even "Grround penetrating."

As to why I believe the Cyrene cyclonics probably are brute force..

1.) Most cyclonics would be generally termed "fire and forget" weapons rather than requiring prolonged bombardment. They can take hours to achieve their effects (like virus bombS) but the target need not stick around once the weapon is fired. The only reason for this would be if it were brute force and you needed to fire many such warheads.

In a similar vein, the technobabble "chain reaction" variety (like the mass/energy conversion) also seem to require very few warheads - as few as one in some cases. Which does not neccessitate a "flotilla" of warships, much less hours of bombardment.

2.) Most cyclonics of the technobabble (or even allegedly technobabble) nature only sterilize the surface with maybe some light heating of the crust as a side effect. They are not, for lack of a better term, all that "ground penetrating" - indeed, the Tyranids have been known to survive ceertain forms of Exterminatus (including cyclonics.) by burrowing underground or (for larger forms) digging in. If one melted the crust to a substnatial depth, as one would with a brute force weapon, this would not work.

3.) They're using lance strikes and mass drivers alongside the cyclonics. Pretty pointless if you're using technobabble attacks to melt the crust.

Regarding point 2, I'd suggest "incineration of the topsoil" instead of "light heating of the crust", since bunkers can withstand that hellish fire. Crust suggests that the heat really reaches to a significant depth, since the crust is measured in kilometers.
That said, Cyrene has been subjected to a thorough bombardment, but as I demonstrated, taking the literal route on the use of the adjective "primeval" was pretty absurd.

As for point 3, let's just say that it's also pretty pointless to use technobabble-type cyclonic torps when you have giga/tera/petaton weapons firing at the crust. Actually, the whole need for special weapons is nonsensical. But still, as we've seen, specialized Exterminatus arrays were required: conventional weapons wouldn't cut it.

On a second thought, it seems I should begin working on some Exterminatus thread as well at some point: the amount of odd claims I see piling up here and there requires some re-evaluation.

[Mr. Oragahn]

On the topic of squadrons, the 2002 BFG Annual describes a "small squadron" consisting of a Dauntless-class Light Cruiser, and half a dozen escort ships. It was named Squadron Farsight. The escort part was composed of the Aries squadron, consisting of three Sword-class frigates. The three other ships were the Omni Squadron, Cobra destroyers.

[Dabat]

I was going to say more, but then I realized I can't recall any instance of cyclonic torpedos being used (at least that I have on hand). I can find refrences to cyclonic torpedos being used in exterminatus, but not just what they do. I can, however, find a passage referring to modified 'Plasma Torpedos' being used to set fire to the atmosphere of a planet (pg 98 of the BFG main rulebook). The fire was hellish enough that shielded ships (possibly including warships) were destroyed.

Planets are not bombs, yet I can't tell how many times cases of planet blown to death are cited as demonstration of conventional firepower. Nostramo, for example. This one is just silly. The science is so molested.

BTW, the bolded is one of my new favorite quotes.