Poll: ST Federation or 40k Imperium - who would win in a war?

[JamesStone]

Or the Death Star. Its generator can output enough energy to instantly disintegrate a planet, but when the station itself explodes, all the fighter ships still within its orbit and all the Ewoks on the planet beneath it are mysteriously unscathed.

Just a quickie as goodbye, because I can see this pointless discussion is going absolutely nowhere even by internet discussion standards, I think the "unofficial" (read: fanwank) justification for it is that the forcefield shields work both ways, and persist for a small instant after the generator supplying them power is taken out of commission. Basically, the shields absorbed most of the devastating consequences of the death star exploding.

Plus, potential energy output isn't exactly the tell-all, end-all for determining scale. A power station can provide electricity for an entire city, but it won't go supernova if you drop a bomb in it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Like...holodecks. How the fuck do holodecks work? What can they do? They may as well be Green Lantern rings. You can't tell me that Jean-Luc Picard grabbing a holographic tommy gun and shooting two Borg dead with it isn't just a little bit silly.

Only in the sense that Star Fleet knows that the Borg adapt to phasers but not kinetic energy and refuse to exploit this.

I mean, this is always a thing with science fiction. Look at photon torpedoes. I think earlier in the thread you said they had a minimum yield of ~50 megatons? If that's true, then why isn't there a fifty-megaton explosion every time one hits the Enterprise? Shouldn't a fifty-megaton explosion envelop the Enterprise?

Actually, no, that sort of thing works oddly in space. A hit on the shields might not be that impressive. Of course, there's been a zillion times when it's gone through the shields and gone off inside the hull of the target, in which case, no more target.

 

[Terminal Blue]

What's the statement, here? Are you saying that nova cannons shouldn't be able to kill planets? That they should, but they don't? That they do, and it's ridiculous?

Again, it's just an internal contradiction of the setting. In universe, weaponry capable of wiping out the life on a planet is carefully controlled and requires the explicit approval of one of a handful of super-elite agents in order to use. The problem is that in real physics terms any weapon in 40k space combat could destroy a planet, or at least end all life on it. The basic guns on a cruiser could do it.

Anyway.. these questions are pretty pointless because both settings are governed by rules of narrative convenience. The Federation are completely outclassed by the Borg in one episode, for example, then in the next (well, the next borg episode) the Enterprise crew builds a virus which can wipe out the entire species in what is implied to be no more than a few days. The important thing to remember is that much as people hate on Star Trek for its techno-babble, it's really a show about ethical questions. The creation of that virus raised an interesting ethical problem, therefore it was allowed to happen.

As for 40k.. 40k, narratively, is about selling toys. The Imperium wins whenever a new Imperial codex gets released.

Okay, I'll be less cynical.. but regardless, 40k is a universe which works on 80s metal album cover rules. It's a simple place which isn't really about ethical questions or complex solutions but what would be really extreme or badass. It's also one of the least well-preserved canons around, at this point, due to the habit of contracting out to professional writers who tend to put their own spin on things. Space marines can either be generic cannon fodder or invincible supermen. The imperial fleet is either the greatest in the galaxy and composed of awesome ships fuelled by ancient human superscience, or it's getting its ass kicked by a bunch of myopic space cows who've been building spaceships for about a century at most. It all depends whose doing the writing.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

@altnamejag

You're using game rules too much to define the power of weapons. Even the designers (the original ones, not the current, terrible one) recognise that certain thing need to be toned down for the table top.

An actual Space Marine for example would be closer to Movie Marine. A joke list published once wherein a basic marine was WS/BS 5, S6, T6, W2, boltguns were Assault 4, S6 AP4, Rending and power armor conferred a 3+ invulnerable save AND a 3+ armor save which was also rerollable. They also had Fleet, ignored terrain, had Infiltrate and a single guy counts as his own unit.

Really theres no point in asking the question to begin with. 40k is so batshit off the scales rediculous that it easily beats basically anything else except maybe Demonbane, which is even more batshit off the scales.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

An exploding nuclear weapon and an exploding nuclear power plant are going to have vastly differing yields.

It's a sound point, but I figure we can guesstimate the strength of the Death Star's reactor exploding based on how it seems to almost instantly shred a moon-sized space station. But it's a silly tangent; I was just trying to point out how science fiction prefers to fudge the numbers when necessary for narrative convenience, special effects budgets, or competitive balance.

Or I already explained it: a limited bombardment by a small section of weapons battery has a chance of being absorbed by advanced powered armor. Which makes perfect sense when a full combat broadside is equivalent to the Hiroshima attack, but not so much when it can supposedly devastate a small continent

I don't think a single macrocannon broadside would devastate a continent. At most, it would level an area roughly the size of the starships it is intended to damage, so maybe the Melbourne metropolitan area. So maybe you're onto something there.

I still think a nova cannon shot as described would definitely devastate a planet; not to Death Star or Planet Killer standards, but enough to kill the dinosaurs, environmentally speaking. I imagine the reason this doesn't happen more often is due to the fact that an Exterminatus warhead is simply more efficient, and that nova cannons themselves are rare, unwieldy, logistical nightmares that only become cost-effective when used in long-range fleet engagements.

Anyway, we're really getting into the pointlessly nitty-gritty bits here, so maybe we should move on.