Analyzing WH40K: Roks and other quantification odds and ends

[sonofccn]

You miss my meaning, I don't believe you've actually understood what you've read in Dark Apostle. The Imperial forces aren't there to annihilate the planets infrastructure, or kill its populace they are there to liberate it and kill/drive off the invaders.

They liberate and rescue no one during the course of the book. They obliterate cannon fodder slaves with out a thought. Any ideas of rescue were secondary to simply killing the choas marines. If thier ships had the ability for tactical strikes it would have been a good time to use it. So juding from the book it appears thier ships can't do less then a massive bombadment and are useless in the tactical sense.

Not to mention that Imperial military doctrine dictates the use of airpower, not orbital fire to provide ground support during a ground campaign, which is used quite profusely, despite the interference from the Gehemahnet and daemons.

Well the doctrine wouldn't dictate that unless they couldn't get an acceptable precision with the ships in orbit. Which was what I was refering to.

You also stated "in 40k" combat became "close range".

Okay for this I do apologise. I meant 40k combat in the book

Exactly what is close about "visual range" in ground combat ? You do realise you can see for thousands of meters with your bare eyeballs ?

The fact that in the real world many weapons are fired miles away from the target. Except for the artillery shells and the Titans just about every thing else was up close to the marines.

Did you even read the segments about the howling storms, night combat, how Marduk could see with his visual feed at maximum zoom Elysians disembarking from their transports while under fire from Word Bearer artillery ?

Howling storms, and night combat yeah, but I don't recall if i read that about marduke, what page number.

Not to mention that in every scenario the aims of the various sides basically dictated that one side close in on the other. Sitting back and having an artillery duel with a bunch of space marines while their own unlimited ammo Daemon engines pour fire back at you is frankly insane.

Any less insane then packing men all around them and having them beat them to death with meele weapons? Also I think the Choas marines didn't have much in the way of artillery themselves. So it wouldn't be a duel but just a bombardment. one that the Marines would either have to retreat from or advance into your fortified position which has to be better then rushing the marines out right.

I've bolded the pertinent parts of what youv'e said.

Its pretty dishonest what you are implying mind, but thats something I've become used to with posters on this board.

What? That not all worlds are like armageddon and fortified to the hilt? That thier are peacful worlds out there, which you say is true. Really I have said nothing more then what you have said, all I did was give an example of just what a peaceful world is. That is all I did, and if you read anything else into it then it on your own accord not mine. So no it's not dishonest. Just as if I found a federation world that was war torn and militistic I would find that interesting.

[Sean0931]

I've been curious for a while, nursing the suspicion that we only see high-ball estimates offered for WH40K because almost nobody who isn't a huge fan of WH40K is going to read any WH40K novels, which is where most of the estimates come from.

Actually, loads of people read 40k, i don't even play the game and i read the novels (Because their freakin awesome). The first edition of "Galaxy in flames" sold out in two days in the uk IIRC. Hell, 40k even has its own shelf at my local bookstore.

Apparently there's one ridiculous low-ball comment about "gigawatts" in one novel, but we can actually provide more reasonable low-end estimates using the same sorts of analysis that has been used to provide the ~ gigaton photon torpedo maximum yields, the 1-10 GT/sec phaser yields, et cetera. .

The gigawatts is for INFANTRY. A bunch of necron warriors walked through an 18 gigawatt energy fence with only minor damage in one of the short stories. This fits with most of the calcs for 40k heavy infantary (A lasgun, the basic infantry weapon has a 19mj maazine, roughly 19times a modern MbT main gun)

So I figured I'd start with throwing some figures around, calculating a few isolated examples, just to have a few more numbers to look at. Some will be low-ball estimates; some may be about right; some may be high-ball. And just maybe, if I start pulling out some figures, other people will too.

For isolated examples, the high end, we already know, is pretty high (e25 J), and the low end, pretty low (e9).

Don't forget that Roks have their own shields, they aren't just asteroids, flufffwise they have "Kustom energy shields", Orky weapon factories (Some have Gargant factories) and atmospheric fighter bays

[Sean0931]

Just a quick selection of WH40K quotes with commentary while I get a few things sorted out:

FTL speed

For example, a 100 light year jump will seem to take from 234 to 934 hours to a spaceship's crew, but between 3 days and 3 weeks will have passed in real space. These times do not include journey times out to and from jump points on the edge of the star systems. It takes from days to weeks of travel at sub-light speeds to reach a drop from the spaceship's starting planet, and a similar time to re-enter the destination system.The Imperium is approximately 75 thousand light years from edge to edge. A journey of this length would take between 75 and 300 days in warp time, and between 6 years and 40 years real time.

Those figures translate to 1,875-12,500 c for 75,000 light years, 1733-12175 c for 100 light years.
"Apparent" speed aboard ship is much faster but not very consistent.

5,000 light years would be the normal maximum jump, but longer jumps have been made.

Individual jumps are generally no more than 5,000 light years. Fairly straightforward.

Perceived journey time is 1-4 days per thousand light years, equivalent to 1-6 months of real time. Even so, a journey from one edge of the galaxy to the other would take between 85 and 510 months of real time.

This gives 2,000-12,000 c. Looks, actually, remarkably consistent so far, although the variability in the dilation is pretty large. The Imperial Guard book, though, muddles things:

Ten thousand light years can be traversed within 10-40 days by warp-capable spacecraft. By the
time ships have been moved into position, munitions collected and troops assembled, the response
time over this distance is in the order of between 30 and 120 days, typically about 75 days.

This has been given before as the apparent time elapsed on the ship. Now we've been given 90,000-365,000 c in the context of response time.

Ground warfare

In addition to their support and technical personnel, a Chapter contains tens of thousands of Marines (Note that after the Heresy new Chapters were formed with far smaller complements so that no Commanders would ever wield the same power as Horus).

High end of current chapter size: Tens of thousands of active Marines plus support personnel.

The Legiones Astartes is known always as the Space Marine, it comprises 1000 independent
fighting units called Chapters, each of roughly 1000 fighting troops.

Low end: ~1,000 space marines per chapter.




There's also a list of space marine abilities. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to include hyper movement speed, new kinds of muscular tissue, or reflex speed increases. All in all, I gather the impression that Space Marines are not particularly consistently described.

On the hive-world of Thranx over a million warriors died in a single day on the killing fields of Perdagor.

Someone in Games Workshop reads Alan Dean Foster.


Fleets

The Space Commander has direct command of a portion of the Segmentum's warfleet. A typical
command comprises about 50 interstellar ships, although the number would obviously vary
depending upon the needs of the sector.

A typical sector fleet has 50 interstellar warships. Straightforward enough. The whole of the Imperium fleet is "many thousands," with nothing more specific anywhere I could find.

The Imperial fleets number many thousands of ships, the majority of which are at least a thousand years old. Some are as old as the Imperium itself, a full ten thousand years. A very few claim a pre-Imperial origin. It is difficult for those born under the claustrophobic sky of a planet to appreciate the great dignity which is inherent in all old spacecraft. The spaceships of the Imperium are vast constructions that take many decades to build.

Average service life is longer than that of a Miranda or even a Klingon battlecruiser.

On the flip side, the Imperium isn't producing ships very quickly.

The living areas of a spaceship contain the thousands, often tens of thousands, of men that serve
aboard.

Thousands to tens of thousands of operating crew. Hundreds of thousands on maint duties, by the way.

Most of the galaxy remains unexplored.

A reiteration of the whole "space is big" theme. Warhammer's galaxy is much like ours.

Storms are constantly forming and dying down, at any time at least 10% of the galaxy's solar systems will be inaccessible because of storms.

On average, 10% of systems are inaccessible to FTL WH40K ships. Interesting fact.

One giant craft span out of control and crashed into a hab-unit, killing a hundred thousand people.

(This is from the Horus Heresy, by the way.)
Not a strange death count for a falling ship.
More importantly, however:

The great Sky Fortress bore Rogal Dorn and the remnants of the Imperial Fists to the inner palace. The loyal old general was determined to stand and die with his Emperor in the final hour. The Sky Fortress raced away from the palace in a desperate attempt to reach Jhagatai Khan and return him to the palace. It was destroyed by a blaze of fire fron the Death ́s Heads Titan Legions. Even in death its commander wrought havoc on the enemy, bringing the crippled vehicle down into the entre of the Chaos Horde. It seemed as if a new sun was born on Earth as the plasma reactor exploded, blasting out a crater three kilometres across. Those within the palace knew they were cut off; now they were truly alone. Only a miracle could save them.

Sky Fortress reactor exploding = 3 km crater on Earth.

Macharius' strategy of sudden and decisive attack was working better than could have been imagined. A hundred worlds fell to him in one year, three hundred the next, and in the third year of the campaign nearly seven hundred planets were taken by the combined forces of the fleets of the Segmentum Solar and the Imperial Guard.

The Imperial Guard's idea of a lightning-swift campaign. Not bad, actually.

Not bad? Macharius is like Thrawn on steroids,show me one example of anything like that kiind of action in any other mainstream sci fi :PP ARGGH This is really pissing me off, the text box keeps flicering from top to bottom when i write! can anyone help with this?
Don't forget the imperial guard, with "Trillions" (stated) of trropps. Space marines do very little of the actual fighting, they're more fiureheads and orale figures.
That was meant to be somewhere in the text, i can't get this text box to stay in one place!

[Mike DiCenso]

Apparently there's one ridiculous low-ball comment about "gigawatts" in one novel, but we can actually provide more reasonable low-end estimates using the same sorts of analysis that has been used to provide the ~ gigaton photon torpedo maximum yields, the 1-10 GT/sec phaser yields, et cetera. .

The gigawatts is for INFANTRY. A bunch of necron warriors walked through an 18 gigawatt energy fence with only minor damage in one of the short stories. This fits with most of the calcs for 40k heavy infantary (A lasgun, the basic infantry weapon has a 19mj maazine, roughly 19times a modern MbT main gun)

Really? Was this actually stated in the story, or is this energy fence's power derived from a calculation based on fluff descriptions? Either way, do you recall which short story this is from, and if possible, could you please post a quote here?
-Mike

[Dabat]

Apparently there's one ridiculous low-ball comment about "gigawatts" in one novel, but we can actually provide more reasonable low-end estimates using the same sorts of analysis that has been used to provide the ~ gigaton photon torpedo maximum yields, the 1-10 GT/sec phaser yields, et cetera. .

The gigawatts is for INFANTRY. A bunch of necron warriors walked through an 18 gigawatt energy fence with only minor damage in one of the short stories. This fits with most of the calcs for 40k heavy infantary (A lasgun, the basic infantry weapon has a 19mj maazine, roughly 19times a modern MbT main gun)

Really? Was this actually stated in the story, or is this energy fence's power derived from a calculation based on fluff descriptions? Either way, do you recall which short story this is from, and if possible, could you please post a quote here?
-Mike

Part of the problem with 40K physics is the writers are just that, writers. I don't think any of them actually has a physics degree and I really doubt that more than a few participate, or even think about, online reality vs. reality discussions. To my knowledge the 19mj figure comes from Dan Abbnet's 'Ghosts' series*. A Mark 3 powercell, the type used by Gaunt's Ghosts (and powering their standard infantry weapon), which is being described as holding enough energy to voporize around eight kilograms of water, which is pared out in between 15 to 100 shots depending on the gun's power setting.

This figure is only for the weapon that the Ghosts use, though there is no indication that their weapons are any more powerful then then most infantry weapons used in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. However, there is also no indication for how the lasguns used in the SWC stack up against lasguns used across the rest of the Imperium. I can think of over a hundred examples of lasguns of differing capabilities described or stated in cannon sources.**


*I do not have the quote on hand, but I do recall seeing it.

**The majority of these are from the games Inquisitor and Dark Heresy. While Dark Heresy is no longer directly owned by Games Workshop, all but a few of the lasweapons described therein were stated out while Games Workshop still owned the rights via it's subsidiary company, Sabertooth Games.

[Jedi Master Spock]

To my knowledge the 19mj figure comes from Dan Abbnet's 'Ghosts' series*. A Mark 3 powercell, the type used by Gaunt's Ghosts (and powering their standard infantry weapon), which is being described as holding enough energy to voporize around eight kilograms of water, which is pared out in between 15 to 100 shots depending on the gun's power setting.

If you could dig up up the quote, that would be very interesting. I've only seen the "19 megathules" reference; that would be much less ambiguous. It also fits reasonably well with the actual described effects in many cases, but would be more precise.

The gigawatts is for INFANTRY. A bunch of necron warriors walked through an 18 gigawatt energy fence with only minor damage in one of the short stories. This fits with most of the calcs for 40k heavy infantary (A lasgun, the basic infantry weapon has a 19mj maazine, roughly 19times a modern MbT main gun)

I don't believe that's the same "gigawatts" reference I was alluding to.

Your idea of where modern MBT main guns fall is off. The M829A2 kinetic penetrator has about 6.9 MJ of kinetic energy in the penetrator initially. In fact, the M4 Sherman tank, the most common US tank of WWII, had a muzzle energy of 1.2 MJ on its 75mm gun - meaning that the impact kinetic energy often exceeded a megajoule. There was often a bursting charge to consider as well.

As explained in detail in the Spock v. Thanatos debate, the kinetic penetrator rounds used by the Vanquisher tank, as described in the Imperial Armor sourcebooks, and can potentially pierce the armor of any WH40k land unit. "Even Titans," says the description.

Briefly? It's a third-caliber sabot round fired from a gun that has a recoil less than that of the Earthshaker, which IA1 puts at 38 kg and 814 m/s and at the recoil limits of the chassis commonly mounting it. Since the barrel assembly appears to be substantially lighter than that of the Earthshaker (6.5m barrel vs 9m barrel, smaller caliber) that means the Vanquisher round has substantially less momentum exiting the barrel. We're talking something like 10 kg exiting the barrel at no more than 1900 m/s in a 40mm sabot, as best as I can nail it down from the evidence - which would be 18 MJ muzzle energy.

[Sean0931]

Apparently there's one ridiculous low-ball comment about "gigawatts" in one novel, but we can actually provide more reasonable low-end estimates using the same sorts of analysis that has been used to provide the ~ gigaton photon torpedo maximum yields, the 1-10 GT/sec phaser yields, et cetera. .

The gigawatts is for INFANTRY. A bunch of necron warriors walked through an 18 gigawatt energy fence with only minor damage in one of the short stories. This fits with most of the calcs for 40k heavy infantry (A lasgun, the basic infantry weapon has a 19mj magazine, roughly 19times a modern MbT main gun)

Really? Was this actually stated in the story, or is this energy fence's power derived from a calculation based on fluff descriptions? Either way, do you recall which short story this is from, and if possible, could you please post a quote here?
-Mike

It was stated definitely. It was one of the stories from Let The Galaxy Burn, but I don't have the book on me atm (lent it to a friend). Ask around on Spacebattles.com they should have the quote.

And Spock, Imperial tanks having armour incapable of taking 18mj is frankly ridiculous. How many 40k books have you read? For example, in "Honour Guard" a Leman Russ is slammed 6 metres sideways by a kinetic round (stated) which failed to penetrate (Its stated that the enemy tanks had the energy to penetrate but as they were mostly basic kinetic rounds, not SABOTs, they couldn't harm the Russes. A Vindicator round is stated to be "Hypersonic", too, and recoil isn't an issue because any race with fighters and ships capable of pulling multiple-hundred G turns (Double Eagle) is going to have some serious inertial damping technology, unless their ships can be crewed by the pink mush left of the crew members.

Also, in Storm of Iron, a multi-melta slags a bunker, vapourising all the troops inside and making the steel-rockcrete walls "Run like wax". This is easily multiple hundred Gigajoules. The same multi melta later fires twice at a leman russ at close range, and only succeeds in warping the barrel so that the russ explodes when it fires (Although the context with the narrator shows that surviving two shots would be very uncommon). In the same book, a single shoulder-launched Krak missile rips through "six meters of plasteel-hardened rockcrete".

The most common effect of 40k plasma hand-weapons impacting on a human is total incineration (Too many occurrences to count) which is a multi-gigajoule feat. Plasma weapons aren't useless against tanks in 40k, but they normally need a lot of shots to weaken the armour of imperial tanks to penetrate (Chaos tanks are usually lower quality, Chaos Russes are actually very rare). Leman Russes are also very advanced. In most 40k literature (Which is highest canon, btw, the novels "Portray the best image of the universe" and codex fluff and rules are secondary.) we see Leman russes with auspexes, radar and thermal imaging systems as standard, with gyro-stablised weapons, targeting software and "Target discriminators". IG armour crews are also extremely well trained, apparently. I'd like to see any modern armour units preform the "Pincer" manure without a single case of friendly fire or crash.

EDIT: This is an empire 38,000 years in the future, containing at the very least a million worlds (Another aside: There are several references to being able to visit a world of the imperium every dar for a lifetime and not managing it [Wolfblade, Sabbat Martyr ], so in my opinion, it is likely that the "Million worlds" is just the major capital worlds. After all, the IOM has some serious terraforming technology, and there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy, most of which have at least one planet.). and ships capable of "Reducing continents to ashes". Its unlikely that our modern day tanks will be in the same ballpark as theirs.

It's not like 40k is "Over the top" either, people who think it is have obviously never heard of the Culture, Hyperions FORCE: Ground or the Xeeleeverse.

[Jedi Master Spock]

And Spock, Imperial tanks having armour incapable of taking 18mj is frankly ridiculous. How many 40k books have you read? For example, in "Honour Guard" a Leman Russ is slammed 6 metres sideways by a kinetic round (stated) which failed to penetrate (Its stated that the enemy tanks had the energy to penetrate but as they were mostly basic kinetic rounds, not SABOTs, they couldn't harm the Russes.

Do you mean this quote?

Re-laying the gun took a vital second. In that time, the second tank fired again and hit the Wrath squarely. The impact was enough to lurch all sixty-two tonnes of armoured machine several metres sideways. But it didn't penetrate the twenty centimetre-thick armour skin. Inside, the crew were dazed and they'd lost most of the forward scopes."

"Several" does not translate to "six." It's most likely not due to the kinetic impact of the shell, but its explosion - and, if I recall correctly from previous discussion of the incident, slopes and mud are involved in the scenario, making the lurch more understandable. And I think when you consider the distortion that oft-cited incident had to go through for you to translate "several" to "six," I think you'll understand why I'm a stickler for exact quotes in context.

It actually lines up fairly nicely with the cited equivalences of the armor of various vehicles to "conventional steel." For the record, WH40k tanks do quite well at resisting what we might bemusedly call "blunt trauma" - the sort of high explosive rounds standard on the Imperial battlefield.

Nor does it mean they can't resist an 18 MJ round. It simply means that 18 MJ of KE concentrated into a span of around 40mm is enough to pierce through.

An 88mm high explosive round fired point-blank from a German WWII Flak gun can deliver up to 5 MJ to a target. The M829A2 projectile, near the edge of its effective range, will deliver a similar yield, having slowed down some. However, a T-72 from a quarter century after the Flak gun and a quarter century before the M829A2 will more or less be able to ignore the 88mm high explosive round, while failing to resist the kinetic penetrator.

A Vindicator round is stated to be "Hypersonic", too, and recoil isn't an issue because any race with fighters and ships capable of pulling multiple-hundred G turns (Double Eagle) is going to have some serious inertial damping technology, unless their ships can be crewed by the pink mush left of the crew members.

The M829A2 is hypersonic, as have most kinetic penetrators for MBT tanks since the 1960s.

Also, in Storm of Iron, a multi-melta slags a bunker, vapourising all the troops inside and making the steel-rockcrete walls "Run like wax". This is easily multiple hundred Gigajoules.

Another quote that seems to grow with the retelling. You might want to put that back into context and show your calculation for the energy - and further, the time in which the melta comes up with the energy. For example, we have a multi-gigajoule incident from a regular meltagun in Caves of Ice, but it would not be easy to deliver that entire yield to a tank in combat due to the time involved.

The same multi melta later fires twice at a leman russ at close range, and only succeeds in warping the barrel so that the russ explodes when it fires (Although the context with the narrator shows that surviving two shots would be very uncommon).

A multimelta is practically the least energy-efficient way of trying to take down a tank.

In the same book, a single shoulder-launched Krak missile rips through "six meters of plasteel-hardened rockcrete".

Really? Context and full quote, please. I can actually work with that.

The most common effect of 40k plasma hand-weapons impacting on a human is total incineration (Too many occurrences to count)

I'm afraid I'm going to hold out for actual quotes here before I take you seriously in making such a bold claim.

which is a multi-gigajoule feat.

Minimum energy to vaporize a human size target is well under a gigajoule.

Plasma weapons aren't useless against tanks in 40k, but they normally need a lot of shots to weaken the armour of imperial tanks to penetrate (Chaos tanks are usually lower quality, Chaos Russes are actually very rare). Leman Russes are also very advanced. In most 40k literature (Which is highest canon, btw, the novels "Portray the best image of the universe" and codex fluff and rules are secondary.) we see Leman russes with auspexes, radar and thermal imaging systems as standard, with gyro-stablised weapons, targeting software and "Target discriminators". IG armour crews are also extremely well trained, apparently. I'd like to see any modern armour units preform the "Pincer" manure without a single case of friendly fire or crash.

EDIT: This is an empire 38,000 years in the future, containing at the very least a million worlds (Another aside: There are several references to being able to visit a world of the imperium every dar for a lifetime and not managing it [Wolfblade, Sabbat Martyr ], so in my opinion, it is likely that the "Million worlds" is just the major capital worlds. After all, the IOM has some serious terraforming technology, and there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy, most of which have at least one planet.). and ships capable of "Reducing continents to ashes". Its unlikely that our modern day tanks will be in the same ballpark as theirs.

This is a technologically regressive empire that has chosen to emphasize simplicity and robustness over sophistication for its army, and a franchise with widely divergent portrayals of firepower.

It's not like 40k is "Over the top" either, people who think it is have obviously never heard of the Culture, Hyperions FORCE: Ground or the Xeeleeverse.

WH40k is - on a certain level - absurdist dark comedy. It's supposed to be over the top in some ways.

[Sean0931]

https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic ... 4&t=115477

That has the multimelta calc, about 1/3 down.

Also, you do know that the average IG combat blade in 40k is monomolecular sharp super-steel? which entirely fails to even scratch Leman Russ armour. I'm not a physics whizz, but wouldn't that imply some scary toughness?

[Jedi Master Spock]

That has the multimelta calc, about 1/3 down.

Connor is an unabashed maximalist who window-dresses his calculations with the word "minimum" when it's quite uncalled for. He's assuming complete heating and melting of the entire bunker to incandescent bright orange.

His "minimum" figure, you'll note, is predicated on half-meter thick walls, which earlier he was estimating could be as thin as 30 cm. So now we're down to about 70 GJ "minimum" when we take that into account. Next:

News flash: Molten and partially molten rock is found at much lower temperatures, several hundred degrees less, than the "minimum" temperature he cites. And then:

Honsou leapt onto the remains of the bunker, his ironshod boot sinking into the molten rock.

Solid enough to afford a Space Marine purchase. Sounds more like partially molten rock. You know, stuff that's mostly hot enough to melt but hasn't gone all the way liquid. 1 MJ/kg is enough to do a nice mix of softening and melting of rock, depending on the type - enough to get some runniness. So the true "minimum" figure here is tens, not hundreds, of gigajoules. The hundreds figure he comes up with? That's actually the upper range of it, and not particularly well supported by the amount of collateral damage.

But yes, a multimelta can come up with at least tens, possible hundreds, of gigajoules in that incident - but how tightly can it direct it? Not very tightly at all, in time or in space. It's slow firing, short ranged, and a broad-area-of-effect thermal weapon. In this particular case, the passage describes a dramatic charge-up effect. This is going to be, as I mentioned, about the least effective possible method of attacking an armored vehicle, and also probably on a higher setting than when he shoots at the tank later.

The Vanquisher round, assuming it's at the "maximal" parameters I've put it at, is going to interact with 13 square centimeters of armor. The multimelta will interact with something closer to 13 square meters of exposed tank surface - and open air, ground, etc that has nothing to do with the tank.

The difference between square meters and square centimeters is a factor of 10,000 - which is to say quite similar to the difference between 180 GJ (high-end multimelta calc with unclear duration) and 18 MJ (Vanquisher round).

The melta's high energy would make a difference in some cases in spite of its inefficiencies of effect (e.g., overwhelming shields with a fixed energy capacity, attacking magic-wank superconductive armor, trying to kill lots of soft targets, clear out a whole bunker at once, etc) but it doesn't change the energy levels of other weapons. Lascannon, for example. Looking at the largest body of evidence I could find, lascannon are no more than 2 GJ. Only a single incident presses that point. More often, they look to be an order of magnitude lower. (Again, I would point you to Spock v. Thanatos and related threads for a complete listing of the incidents.)

The highest conventional explosive yield for an Earthshaker appears to be around 2 GJ. Again, only a single incident I've seen measures up to it; most of the time, it seems likely to be lower.

Also, you do know that the average IG combat blade in 40k is monomolecular sharp super-steel? which entirely fails to even scratch Leman Russ armour. I'm not a physics whizz, but wouldn't that imply some scary toughness?

I didn't. I'll believe it when you come up with an actual citation. I would be slightly more impressed if I didn't know that obsidian knives usually hold a monomolecular edge; it says nothing about the strength or hardness of the blade. It just means that it's sharp.

[Dabat]

To my knowledge the 19mj figure comes from Dan Abbnet's 'Ghosts' series*. A Mark 3 powercell, the type used by Gaunt's Ghosts (and powering their standard infantry weapon), which is being described as holding enough energy to voporize around eight kilograms of water, which is pared out in between 15 to 100 shots depending on the gun's power setting.

If you could dig up up the quote, that would be very interesting. I've only seen the "19 megathules" reference; that would be much less ambiguous. It also fits reasonably well with the actual described effects in many cases, but would be more precise.

I can't find it, I thought it was in Only In Death or Armour Of Contempt, but couldn't find it when skimming through them or The Saint Omnibus. I did find reference to a standard shot causing explosive vaporization of significant quantities of water in a human body, , blowing away shoulders, arms, legs, etc... And more specifically a low power shot burning through a human skull, but not out the other side. But I wasn't able to figure out how much energy that would take.

Not to mention the fact that I likely got put on at least a few watchlists for the google searchwords I entered to try and find that out. XD

Also, you do know that the average IG combat blade in 40k is monomolecular sharp super-steel? which entirely fails to even scratch Leman Russ armour. I'm not a physics whizz, but wouldn't that imply some scary toughness?

I didn't. I'll believe it when you come up with an actual citation. I would be slightly more impressed if I didn't know that obsidian knives usually hold a monomolecular edge; it says nothing about the strength or hardness of the blade. It just means that it's sharp.

I have to agree with JMS here. Mono edge weapons do exist, as do super alloys (leathe blades, adamantine, etc..) but the majority of knives are simple steel, high quality steel, but steel none the less.

[Sean0931]

To my knowledge the 19mj figure comes from Dan Abbnet's 'Ghosts' series*. A Mark 3 powercell, the type used by Gaunt's Ghosts (and powering their standard infantry weapon), which is being described as holding enough energy to voporize around eight kilograms of water, which is pared out in between 15 to 100 shots depending on the gun's power setting.

If you could dig up up the quote, that would be very interesting. I've only seen the "19 megathules" reference; that would be much less ambiguous. It also fits reasonably well with the actual described effects in many cases, but would be more precise.

I can't find it, I thought it was in Only In Death or Armour Of Contempt, but couldn't find it when skimming through them or The Saint Omnibus. I did find reference to a standard shot causing explosive vaporization of significant quantities of water in a human body, , blowing away shoulders, arms, legs, etc... And more specifically a low power shot burning through a human skull, but not out the other side. But I wasn't able to figure out how much energy that would take.

Not to mention the fact that I likely got put on at least a few watchlists for the google searchwords I entered to try and find that out. XD

Also, you do know that the average IG combat blade in 40k is monomolecular sharp super-steel? which entirely fails to even scratch Leman Russ armour. I'm not a physics whizz, but wouldn't that imply some scary toughness?

I didn't. I'll believe it when you come up with an actual citation. I would be slightly more impressed if I didn't know that obsidian knives usually hold a monomolecular edge; it says nothing about the strength or hardness of the blade. It just means that it's sharp.

I have to agree with JMS here. Mono edge weapons do exist, as do super alloys (leathe blades, adamantine, etc..) but the majority of knives are simple steel, high quality steel, but steel none the less.

The mono-edged weapons is from "Deus Sangunius". I don't have the book (borrowed it from the library), so meh. I'm gonna stop postin here, the text box flickering up and down is REALLY doing my head in. I'm not a very good debater, so if you want a debate, go to Spacebattles.com and have a debate there, that's where most of the veteran 40kers are. I see your points, but from the multitude of 40k books i have read, I can't agree with them.

e.g. The idea that a modern tank could even hurt a titan, when we have seen them take nearby nuclear blasts (Titan), suvive a global firestorm (HH) and other generally huge forces.

edit: One quote from space hulk is "A Space Marines bolter can rip through eight inches of plasteel as if it were tissue paper". Bolter Shells are often descriped as having RPG-7 like effects (Vapourising torsos [Storm of Iron], blowing man sized holes in Rockcrete walls [Night Lord, I think, though this is high end] outright bodily destruction [Ragnar's claw "There was nothing left of him save his boots"] bolters, and even heavy bolters are next to useless against Russes.

[Jedi Master Spock]

The mono-edged weapons is from "Deus Sangunius". I don't have the book (borrowed it from the library), so meh. I'm gonna stop postin here, the text box flickering up and down is REALLY doing my head in.

What browser are you using? You're at least the second person to report this problem, but I haven't been able to duplicate it yet. (As an interim fix, you might consider just C&Ping to and from a text editor window, e.g., Notepad or Wordpad if you're a Windows user).

I'm not a very good debater, so if you want a debate, go to Spacebattles.com and have a debate there, that's where most of the veteran 40kers are. I see your points, but from the multitude of 40k books i have read, I can't agree with them.

e.g. The idea that a modern tank could even hurt a titan, when we have seen them take nearby nuclear blasts (Titan), suvive a global firestorm (HH) and other generally huge forces.

Actually, there's a famous case where a tank survived a nuclear test unscathed at 500m from ground zero.

I don't on the whole think a modern tank would have much chance to hurt a Titan. WH40k armor doesn't do well against kinetic penetrators, but while a modern kinetic penetrator may be able to pierce Titan armor at good incident angles (much like a Vanquisher KE penetrator) it may not do very much damage.

edit: One quote from space hulk is "A Space Marines bolter can rip through eight inches of plasteel as if it were tissue paper". Bolter Shells are often descriped as having RPG-7 like effects (Vapourising torsos [Storm of Iron], blowing man sized holes in Rockcrete walls [Night Lord, I think, though this is high end] outright bodily destruction [Ragnar's claw "There was nothing left of him save his boots"] bolters, and even heavy bolters are next to useless against Russes.

Actually, that would be a very good benchmark. A Bolter is a 19mm weapon.

Let's compare this with a a couple kinetic penetrators.

M829A2 has a 22mm penetrator. At point-blank, it'll punch through around thirty inches of steel, AFAIK. With about three quarters of the area and a little over a quarter of the penetration, we're going to be talking somewhere in the 1-2 MJ (1.4 off the cuff, but there are a lot of potential fudge factors here) range for the bolter round to similarly penetrate.

Not too shabby - impressive, even - but an RPG-7 HEAT round will penetrate over a foot of steel armor (for the oldest model of RPG-7 HEAT round), and a high explosive round will tend to kill everybody within 25-30'. Penetrating 8" of plasteel doesn't mean a Space Marine with a bolter will be able to blow up a modern tank with a shot; however, the bolter has a much higher rate of fire than the RPG-7.

On the whole, I'm more impressed by Space Marines' technology than that of the Imperial Guard - their vehicles have more effective armor, for example. There's no small amount of variation in Imperial military technology.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I can't find it, I thought it was in Only In Death or Armour Of Contempt, but couldn't find it when skimming through them or The Saint Omnibus. I did find reference to a standard shot causing explosive vaporization of significant quantities of water in a human body, , blowing away shoulders, arms, legs, etc... And more specifically a low power shot burning through a human skull, but not out the other side. But I wasn't able to figure out how much energy that would take.

Not to mention the fact that I likely got put on at least a few watchlists for the google searchwords I entered to try and find that out. XD

Aww. Well, maybe you'll stumble across it later when you aren't looking for it, but don't worry about it too much. As I said, a quote saying that would be very nicely specific and fit reasonably well with the effects we see, but if it's elusive, it's elusive.

[l33telboi]

Having read the Horus Heresy novel (and at this point I might add that anyone who hasn’t read the series should really pick it up, the novels are awesome) where the whole Titan in a firestorm thing happened, I don't really see what's supposed to be so impressive about it. The firestorm was one released after a virus-bombing, i.e. a planet-wide chemical reaction rather then something more extreme, like a nuclear fireball. I dare also point out that to survive this they had to lock the entire thing up and shut it down, and even then the crew were close to the end during the firestorm.

I mean yeah, it's impressive in the sense that it's basically the same as having a bunch of flame-throwers spraying the thing, but not anywhere close to the 'I eat nuclear bombs for breakfast' department.

In general, the Horus Heresy trilogy isn't something you want to bring up in a versus debate. The Titans there don't really seem to have the nuclear-scale weaponry or resistance to as much, as people seem to think. I guess all that was in another series of novels.