- Fin5434p
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"but you already knew that, I mean, how couldn't you?
Only when no Human brick is left atop another, shall we be satisfied with your destruction.
Ok, this may be a long post:
Posted by: Xd00999
I will focus on the Necron Empire.
At their height ( and the OP specifically stated everyone is at their height) they ruled the Galaxy just like the Forerunners. They have millions of Tomb Worlds which puts their size at roughly the same as the Forerunners.
Agreed, both have similarly crazy industrial capabilities as well, the Necrons can build dyson spheres as well IIRC.
Every weapon rips targets apart molecule by molecule, therefore the best defense is thicker armor. From what we have seen, Forerunner Combat skins are not that bulky but rather like regular clothes. This means Gauss weapons would rip through them easily.
The primary defence of Forerunner armour is it's energy shields, (and possibly hard-light related systems,) it doesn't just rely on physical armour.
Secondly their armed force. The Necron navy is the best in the galaxy. 4 light Necron ships breezed past all the defenses and landed on Mars. The Necrons are the only non-human force to land on Mars. Even the lightest ships could breeze past the Imperium's greatest defenses.
That was one bit of the 5E codex I was dissapointed with, the Necrons seem to have had their FTL retconned to the webway, with only very few ships capable of the old reactionless FTL system.
Anyway, that aside, I'm confident a Forerunner ship could accomplish the same mission: Slipspace in close to the planet, use it's suppressors to disable all the 'machine spirits' (basicly AI/VI systems) of the defence installations, and then swarm them with sentinels and remote weapons platforms.
The Diviner. The Diviner is a Nexron Cryptek who can predict the future. He predicted the Fall of the Eldar, the Horus Heresy, the Tyranids' arrival, and several other major events 65 million years in advance. If an event does not go according to plan, he can always go back in time and rewrite history.
Orikan? Just because he can predict the future does not necissarily imply he can do anything about it, and his predictions are not foolproof.
Posted by: Xd00999
Another thing to say: several of you suggest that the Forerunners just go and nova Sol. That is assuming the know where Sol is and are able to get past it's defenses.
I feel it is a reasonable assumption; the vast majority of IOM starships (including civilian ones) will have starcharts with Sol and "Holy Terra" marked on them, these records will be easily obtained by the Forerunner, we see how easily a Forerunner AI gets hold of human data when 343 GS takes all of the Autumn's databanks, I doubt IOM civilian computers will be much harder to get information from.
They can simply avoid all the defences by the use of slipspace travel, in this the Forerunner have a massive tactical advantage. Forerunner slipspace travel is faster (a lot faster) and more precise than 40k warp travel.
Once in-system the Forerunner fleet can use it's Suppressors to cripple the enemy defence, while it is possible to manually target and fire 40k weapons at the ranges we are dealing with the chances of hitting your target without computer/machine spirit aid is pretty low.
The Suppressor systems should be a potent force-multiplier for the Forerunner.
It should be possible to bypass much of the orbital defences as they are primarily concentrated around Earth, not Sol. Sol is not usually at risk in 40k.
If we assume the Forerunners know the location of the most important planet in the galaxy even though the two universes are completely separate and they should have no knowledge of it's location, we should assume the Warhammer forces likewise know where some key planets are.
It's going to be much harder for a 40K faction to get hold of a Forerunner starmap than vice-versa, the Forerunner make ubiquitous use of high-level AI-counterintrusion by 40k AIs is not likely to be very effective. And capturing a Forerunner vessel could be difficult when it can flee to slipspace at any time, as slipspace does not have some of the limitations that warp travel does.
If not, the Necrons can always use the Celestial Orrey and destroy half the Milky Way. The Celestial Orrey is a hollow Tomb World that contains a map of the entire galaxy. Destroy a star(s) on the map and the corresponding star(s) in realspace will go supernova. The Necrons don't even have to be there to destroy Forerunner worlds.
But that map is only of the 40k milky way, (I am assuming the two galaxies are being held seperate) If the Forerunner are invading 40k it may be of use, but not before.
About Imperium tech, Elder Bias did me a favor at one time and calculated that Imperial Lance Batteries (standard ship board weapon, weaker than a Nova Cannon) fire power was in the range of high terratonnes / low petatonnes. A mid-sized Imperial warship is said to be capable of stripping an area "down to it's mantle" and there are many references to Imperial broadsides being "continent cracking".
I'm not familiar with that calculation, however I do know that a stated number for IOM firepower is ~ 600 Gigatons for an anti-shipping torpedo, so teratons per broadside seems plausible, especially for the larger vessels.
And the Tyranids would win through sheer numbers alone. A White Dwarf article states that the Tyranids are responsible for the destruction of thousands of galaxies and are responsible for the extinction of millions of species. This is much more than the single galaxy the Flood were able to consume.
Please can you link a source for the thousands of galaxies bit? The highest I've seen was for 13 galaxies, and that was speculation.
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Posted by: rst7503
The Necrons had the Aeonic Orb, as well as the C'tan who are depicted as more or less the gods the material universe who could only be countered by warp powers.
Not strictly correct, the Necrons themselves shattered and captured the C'tan at the close of the War In Heaven, and they did so by technological means-the Necrons don't use the warp.
But what I mean to say is that most races can, as a pool of their collective subconsciousnesses, create major warp entities, not just Chaos Gods.
Of the big five, three do. I guess this is a majority, but with the sample size being so small it's a little iffy to claim it's the rule rather than the exception. If we include the Tau then it's 3vs3 for Warp Critter creation.
I mean, I suppose it is possible that the Forerunners are purely entities of the Material Realm, like the C'tan, but this makes them especially vulnerable to warp powers, much as how the C'tan were especially vulnerable because of their status of being purely of the Material Realm
The Forerunner are not creatures like the C'tan, why should they be especially vulnerable to the warp? the Tau aren't, the Tyranids aren't.
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Posted by: grey101
Other than the fact in warhammer's overpowered universe the flood are nothing. Bring the flood into warhammer and they won't even waste time laughing. Bring the Nids into halo and everything is done for.
I disagree, the Flood would be a massive threat in 40K, spacecraft are ubiquitous and easily obtainable, populations are high, and the governments are not quick to respond on a strategic scale.
The Flood need only get hold of a few ships from any one of the millions of inhabited worlds in the galaxy and you are going to see them spread widely and wildly as they did in the war against the Forerunner. And they will be using IOM tech, or Eldar tech, etc.
In contrast the Tyranids are slower than the IOM in FTL, and follow predictable courses, predictable enough that worlds can be fortified as "choke points" to stop their advance.
This is not the same pattern of spread as the Flood employ, and the IOM's slow FTL and slow beuraucracy will cripple their ability to contain the outbreak.
If you read all that, have ten points. :)