Starfleet Jedi

Jedi Master Spock: I've followed your advice gathered from ST.com and decided to come to your forum to discuss matters.

But Federation vs. Empire is not the topic I want to discuss. I want to revive an old topic: The Armaggedon WAAAAAUGH vs. Trek Earth.

Scenario is the same as in the previous thread made on the subject.

Now I shall attempt to rebut your claims:

Here's my scenario. Running with the scenario given (which has the Orks making a successful landing, which in turn implies surprise) the Orks do not succeed in completely taking Earth in the first place. The Federation retains control over not merely pockets of resistance, but significant territory.

Uh, no. The Orks have such a large advantage on the ground over the Federation that it isn't even funny. They possess indirect artillery, armored vehicles ranging from light, agile buggies and motorcycles to giant shielded mechs over a hundred feet fall, and devoted teams of assault infantry wearing flight packs.

The Federation posseses no artillery heavier than weak mortars, and no vehicles heavier than light buggies of their own. Sure, they have air support-but so do the Orks.

The Orks will steamroll the Federation on land, and small, isolated pockets of resistance at best will be what Starfleet finds. At worst, Earth will have already have fallen.

Although they do make a big mess of things and take temporary control over much of the surface, with the fleet providing temporary air support until Starfleet engineers put a powerful planetary shield up, separating the fleet from the ground forces.

Several problems with your analysis.

1: Starfleet can't provide temporary air support thanks to the large Ork fleet over Earth. They might be able to pull off a few individual space-to-ground strikes, but the need to fight the Ork fleet will prevent anything more.

2: If a planetary shield is put up, what's stopping the Orks from simply overruning the generator on the ground?

Ground warfare continues at a terrible and increasing cost on Earth while Starfleet outflanks and whittles away at the Ork fleet. Due to its great size and defensive posture, this takes a while. Between the hulk crashes and the Ork onslaught (and fleet bombardments), a significant fraction of Earth's population dies, and the damages are costly.

Orks have such a large advantage over Federation ground forces that any ground battles will be Desert Storm-level turkey shoots. Plus the Ork fleet is going to only get bigger thanks to a convenient source of Roks found between Mars and Jupiter and the construction of new ships from scrap harvested from the surface and from wrecked Federation vessels.

The combination of transporters and high-resolution sensors, however, prevents rogue Ork attacks after the first several incidents, at most.

What are you talking about?

Opecoiler wrote:Uh, no. The Orks have such a large advantage on the ground over the Federation that it isn't even funny. They possess indirect artillery, armored vehicles ranging from light, agile buggies and motorcycles to giant shielded mechs over a hundred feet fall, and devoted teams of assault infantry wearing flight packs.

The Federation posseses no artillery heavier than weak mortars, and no vehicles heavier than light buggies of their own. Sure, they have air support-but so do the Orks.

The Orks will steamroll the Federation on land, and small, isolated pockets of resistance at best will be what Starfleet finds. At worst, Earth will have already have fallen.

Orks have such a large advantage over Federation ground forces that any ground battles will be Desert Storm-level turkey shoots.

Actually, photon grenades are substantially better than "weak mortars," topping off at what is most likely around a kiloton.

We haven't seen much of Starfleet ground equipment, but we do know it's quite possible for them to deploy flying infantry if they need to match the Orks in that unlikely capacity.

We don't know much about combat vehicles; we know that Starfleet has been stockpiling phaser rifles and personal shields per the setting of the scenario (Dominion War era).

The Orks are tough opponents on the ground; however, there are only, most likely, only a few million Orks faced with the task of conquering the entire planet. They are outnumbered and less mobile with less close air support (shuttlecraft are very common) and - most importantly - no transport inhibitors.

Their weaponry has limited accuracy and short range; Orks have a predilection for close combat every bit as strong as Borg and Klingon boarding crews, which is not going to get them very far on the open battlefield. They're not going to simply sweep Earth.

Several problems with your analysis.

1: Starfleet can't provide temporary air support thanks to the large Ork fleet over Earth. They might be able to pull off a few individual space-to-ground strikes, but the need to fight the Ork fleet will prevent anything more.

Actually, I was referring to the Ork fleet's ability to support the attacking forces. We were assuming that Starfleet didn't have forces in the area that would take out the Ork fleet.

2: If a planetary shield is put up, what's stopping the Orks from simply overruning the generator on the ground?

What's to insure the Orks can (a) locate and (b) overrun the generator?

Plus the Ork fleet is going to only get bigger thanks to a convenient source of Roks found between Mars and Jupiter and the construction of new ships from scrap harvested from the surface and from wrecked Federation vessels.

I don't see anything to indicate that the Orks will be able to build a significant number of new ships in a handful of weeks.

What are you talking about?

Here we were discussing the fact that Orks grow from spores, and often pop up years after a repelled attack.

Jedi Master Spock wrote: Actually, photon grenades are substantially better than "weak mortars," topping off at what is most likely around a kiloton.

]Ahem.

In any case, leaving aside all the behind-the-scenes stuff, the fact is that we would not see any sort of mortar again until the Klingons used one, in the DS9 episode "Nor the Battle to the Strong" (which, not surprisingly, was filmed long after Gene Roddenberry's death). During that battle, it was notable that no one in the entire Federation group had any mortars of their own with which to return fire. The same weakness befell the garrison in "The Siege of AR-588", which had no mortars or even sustained-fire automatic weapons with which to ward off Jem'Hadar attacks on their position.

On the surface, this would suggest an extremely powerful weapon such as a low-yield tactical nuclear device. However, it produced none of the effects of a nuclear explosion. There was no shockwave. No deafening roar. No fireball. No prompt ionizing radiation. There was only a bright flash of light, from which the men briefly put their arms up in order to shield their eyes. Given the lack of nuclear or even high-yield chemical explosive effects, it is clear that this shell was not a high explosive or nuclear weapon. Moreover, there is no evidence that any Gorns were actually killed by the blast; the Gorn vessel took the risk of lowering its shields in order to beam its troops back up, which would be illogical if its troops were all dead. It is most likely that the projectile in question was actually some sort of electromagnetic pulse device, designed not to cause physical damage or radiation burns but to disable electronics (such as those in the Gorn projectile launchers, if any, or in the disruptor projectiles themselves). It might have even been capable of "shorting out" biochemical nervous systems, thus causing disorientation or perhaps even unconsciousness (although there is no way of ascertaining the validity of this speculation). In short, it is most likely that the weapon was an EMP grenade.

So a weapon that isn't in use anymore around the time of the Ork invasion, and one that has evidence pointing to it not being kiloton level after all.

We haven't seen much of Starfleet ground equipment, but we do know it's quite possible for them to deploy flying infantry if they need to match the Orks in that unlikely capacity.

The ST:V jetboots, right?

Besides the fact that they're TOS technology that hasn't appeared later, trying to copy Ork stormboy squads by the Federation would not be very effective. Stormboy flight packs aren't exactly "Truly fly around like ork-planes". They're designed simply to boost the stormboyz wearing them towards their target. An obvious example would be a strongpoint that's located on top of a steep hill that would inflict heavy casualties on a normal assault before it's taken. The stormboyz simply fly up, drop in, and butcher the defenders.

Having unarmored humans or near/humans attempt the same to Orks would be utterly laughable.

We don't know much about combat vehicles; we know that Starfleet has been stockpiling phaser rifles and personal shields per the setting of the scenario (Dominion War era).

Quantification on the personal shields, please?

The Orks are tough opponents on the ground; however, there are only, most likely, only a few million Orks faced with the task of conquering the entire planet.

Artillery, vehicles, and heavy weapons are excellent force equalizers.

They are outnumbered

Oh sure, but a good portion of Earth's population is civilian. Plus you must remember that the hulk crashes and subsesquent bombardments will really hurt the population.

and less mobile

The ultra-mechanized Speed Kultz would disagree with you there. Plus the Orks have orbital superiority, meaning they can land troops from the fleet and even entire ships anywhere on the world if they have/want to.

with less close air support (shuttlecraft are very common)

Need I remind you of the masses of fighta-bommerz carried by the fleet? Plus not all shuttles will be military, and major port facilities can be bombarded from orbit or simply taken from the ground if they're close enough to the front line.

and - most importantly - no transport inhibitors.

Any canonical instances of the Federation beaming down bombs en masse to destroy an enemy? Orks have developed their own teleporter technology, FYI.

Their weaponry has limited accuracy and short range

And phasers don't?

Besides, much Ork weaponry makes up for this somewhat by being either rapid fire or having a large blast radius. Orks themselves make up for it by being far more durable and strong than humans.

This isn't even mentioning artillery (which I will get to later), or really big vehicles such as Gargants.

Orks have a predilection for close combat every bit as strong as Borg and Klingon boarding crews, which is not going to get them very far on the open battlefield. They're not going to simply sweep Earth.

You're acting as if they're going to simply put down their guns, use only melee weapons, and charge across the battlefield on foot.

Orks do love close combat. They also love lotsa dakka, big explosions, and going really fast. If all Orks cared about was close combat, they'd simply do what I suggested above-which they don't.

They attack using fast mechanized attacks, automatic and explosion weapons, indirect artillery support, and with vehicles as big as Gargants.

Actually, I was referring to the Ork fleet's ability to support the attacking forces. We were assuming that Starfleet didn't have forces in the area that would take out the Ork fleet.

I see.

Even worse for the Federation, then. Many of the larger cities and ports you can kiss goodbye, as the fleet bombards it.

What's to insure the Orks can (a) locate and (b) overrun the generator?

Locate: Scanners. If the Meks can't make their own, they can always steal them from dead Starfleet soldiers.

Overrun: I've outlined just how Orks have so many things that the Federation lacks in ground combat.

I don't see anything to indicate that the Orks will be able to build a significant number of new ships in a handful of weeks.

Roks are often used by Ork fleets and are very simple to build-hollowed out well-rocks with shields, engines and weapons attached. No need to construct a new hull, and Meks can build weapons very quickly (or install looted phaser arrays from destroyed Federation vessels)

Here we were discussing the fact that Orks grow from spores, and often pop up years after a repelled attack.

Yes, and the Orks have a safe haven for spores in the form of their ships.

Opecoiler wrote:Ahem.

So a weapon that isn't in use anymore around the time of the Ork invasion, and one that has evidence pointing to it not being kiloton level after all.

You'll notice that page doesn't actually quantify the yield of a photon grenade, so much as attempt to avoid quantifying it.

Photon grenades have variable yields and settings, much like photon torpedos. They're definitely still around in TNG (see "Legacy"), and that's the tricky part of having artillery.
The fact that it wasn't considered completely safe at 1300 yards actually speaks greatly to its potential hazard - suggesting, in other words, a yield in the terajoule neighborhood.

We'd actually expect from the name that photon grenades are like small photon torpedos with no propulsion system, which would suggest they have a top yield in the kiloton range.

Even an overloading phaser power cell - can reach into the gigajoule range (see multiple decks of damage in "Conscience of the King"), which is quite sufficient to threaten most WH40K vehicles and infantry.

Now, that leaves the question of the launcher itself - but the basic mortar launcher is one of the least complicated pieces of machinery in the modern military arsenal. Suggesting that Starfleet would be unable to deploy them again is just plain silly.

The ST:V jetboots, right?

Besides the fact that they're TOS technology that hasn't appeared later, trying to copy Ork stormboy squads by the Federation would not be very effective. Stormboy flight packs aren't exactly "Truly fly around like ork-planes". They're designed simply to boost the stormboyz wearing them towards their target. An obvious example would be a strongpoint that's located on top of a steep hill that would inflict heavy casualties on a normal assault before it's taken. The stormboyz simply fly up, drop in, and butcher the defenders.

Having unarmored humans or near/humans attempt the same to Orks would be utterly laughable.

They're not as sophisticated as the STV rocket boots, no - however, catapulted infantry aren't a particularly unusually effective tactic against accurate ranged weapons. Will it help? Yes. Will it help enough? No. Stormboyz are not too common, and the tactic is only marginally effective here.

Quantification on the personal shields, please?

Quantification is not available, which is why I haven't been counting on much from them. If the personal shields are highly effective against Ork black powder weapons, then Starfleet infantry are going to easily go at least man for man against their Ork counterparts in a messy melee - which is not a plus for the Orks.

Artillery, vehicles, and heavy weapons are excellent force equalizers.

They are. So, however, are accurate sensors, transport inhibitors, and safe instantaneous transport. Ork teleporters are not up to Starfleet standards.

Oh sure, but a good portion of Earth's population is civilian. Plus you must remember that the hulk crashes and subsesquent bombardments will really hurt the population.

It will. This scenario entails a very high cost to the Federation.

The ultra-mechanized Speed Kultz would disagree with you there. Plus the Orks have orbital superiority, meaning they can land troops from the fleet and even entire ships anywhere on the world if they have/want to.

Under the scenario I outlined, the Orks have temporary orbital superiority and then are cut off by a shield.

Need I remind you of the masses of fighta-bommerz carried by the fleet? Plus not all shuttles will be military, and major port facilities can be bombarded from orbit or simply taken from the ground if they're close enough to the front line.

I don't expect to see vast masses of fighta-bommerz, actually, just a few hundred - and I'd be amazed if there were fewer than ten thousand similarly capable small craft parked around. Is there any reason I should expect more?

Any canonical instances of the Federation beaming down bombs en masse to destroy an enemy? Orks have developed their own teleporter technology, FYI.

There are canonical instances of the Federation (a) using transporters to transport friendlies and (b) using transporters to transport unfriendlies. Presumably, the widespread use of both of those was what led to the deployment of transport inhibitors in the Dominion War.

Transporters are quite a bit more sophisticated than teleporters. Think of them as the more developed version.

And phasers don't?

No, phasers don't. All indications are that phaser rifles (and other weapons, such as the scoped support weapon used to politely disable enemies at range by Worf in Insurrections) have no worse range and accuracy than modern rifles, and possibly quite a bit more (phasers have automatic aiming aids).

Besides, much Ork weaponry makes up for this somewhat by being either rapid fire or having a large blast radius. Orks themselves make up for it by being far more durable and strong than humans.

Rapid fire and blast radius lets you compensate for some inaccuracy (at the cost of logistic concerns); however, it doesn't solve the problem of range. A large number of Orkboyz are primarily melee fighters.

This range issue is what's going to make Orks little more effective than redshirts on the sort of wide open fields and hill assaults you've been talking about. Their durability helps make up for it, but as Riker noted in "Hide and Q," one man with a phaser rifle could very well finish off a regiment of primitively armed individuals, and Orks aren't durable keep fighting after taking a high setting phaser hit.

You're acting as if they're going to simply put down their guns, use only melee weapons, and charge across the battlefield on foot.

I'm not. I'm expecting perhaps a third of Orkboyz to be mainly be armed with melee weapons, though, and I expect their infantry's effectiveness to decrease dramatically past 100 meters.

I see.

Even worse for the Federation, then. Many of the larger cities and ports you can kiss goodbye, as the fleet bombards it.

Quite possibly.

Locate: Scanners. If the Meks can't make their own, they can always steal them from dead Starfleet soldiers.

Highly dubious.

Overrun: I've outlined just how Orks have so many things that the Federation lacks in ground combat.

What, precisely? The only thing that the Orks have to assault a fortified position with transport inhibitors up that might be immune to regular Starfleet infantry weapons is Gargants - and those are hideously easy targets to track and disable with close air support.

Roks are often used by Ork fleets and are very simple to build-hollowed out well-rocks with shields, engines and weapons attached. No need to construct a new hull, and Meks can build weapons very quickly (or install looted phaser arrays from destroyed Federation vessels)

In case you haven't noticed, destroyed Federation vessels very often leave little behind - nor are there likely to be many of those around.

Roks may be simple to build, but hollowing out an asteroid takes a lot of time - and time is what the Ork forces don't have. Even assuming local fleet superiority at the time of their attack, we can expect thousands of starships to collect together in the next few weeks, and we can expect Starfleet to be harrying the Ork fleet with its smaller and more maneuverable ships up until the time they eventually destroy it. (Which could possibly - depending upon which interpretations of WH40K ship capabilities you prefer - take a fleet of thousands of starships.)

Not the time for Orks to be setting up a shipyard in the asteroid belt.

Yes, and the Orks have a safe haven for spores in the form of their ships.

Their ships are not going to be around indefinitely. Two points to consider: Attention span and the massed strength of Starfleet.

Jedi Master Spock wrote: You'll notice that page doesn't actually quantify the yield of a photon grenade, so much as attempt to avoid quantifying it.

Photon grenades have variable yields and settings, much like photon torpedos. They're definitely still around in TNG (see "Legacy"), and that's the tricky part of having artillery.
The fact that it wasn't considered completely safe at 1300 yards actually speaks greatly to its potential hazard - suggesting, in other words, a yield in the terajoule neighborhood.

We'd actually expect from the name that photon grenades are like small photon torpedos with no propulsion system, which would suggest they have a top yield in the kiloton range.

Even an overloading phaser power cell - can reach into the gigajoule range (see multiple decks of damage in "Conscience of the King"), which is quite sufficient to threaten most WH40K vehicles and infantry.

ON AR-558, a single one of these gigajoule-level explosives would have been enough to stop the Jem'hadar charge in its tracks. Yet they weren't used.

Now, that leaves the question of the launcher itself - but the basic mortar launcher is one of the least complicated pieces of machinery in the modern military arsenal. Suggesting that Starfleet would be unable to deploy them again is just plain silly.

There's the issue of crew training. An Ork is nothing compared to a guy with only one or two days training on the mortar in terms of accuracy. And again, lack of mortars on AR-558.

They're not as sophisticated as the STV rocket boots, no - however, catapulted infantry aren't a particularly unusually effective tactic against accurate ranged weapons. Will it help? Yes. Will it help enough? No. Stormboyz are not too common, and the tactic is only marginally effective here.

Yet the tactic of catapulting infantry into the heart of enemy positions can work if the enemy has their attention on something else . While the Starfleet troopers are busy focusing on the charging Ork horde ahead of them, the stormboyz blast into their position without being noticed until it's too late.

And don't say that Starfleet can reintroduce the rocket boots. An unarmored human with minimal training on rocket boots is going to be worse than useless.

Quantification on the personal shields, please?

Quantification is not available, which is why I haven't been counting on much from them. If the personal shields are highly effective against Ork black powder weapons, then Starfleet infantry are going to easily go at least man for man against their Ork counterparts in a messy melee - which is not a plus for the Orks.
[/quote]

Ork "Black powder weapons" are extremely powerful by modern standards. And did you seriously claim that even shielded Starfleet troopers can take on Orks in melee on even terms?

They are. So, however, are accurate sensors

Which will do what in the overall scheme of things? Enable Starfleet to see the Ork artillery pieces that will soon blow them to bits?

transport inhibitors

Many WAAUUGHs get along fine without teleportation.

and safe instantaneous transport. Ork teleporters are not up to Starfleet standards.

What's Starfleet gonna do? Beam a few more redshirts to the slaughter? Take heavily armed Orks right into their HQ?

It will. This scenario entails a very high cost to the Federation.

Not just in terms of total population, but in terms of infrastructure as well. If San Francisco is turned into a glassy field, Starfleet has just lost its central headquarters and a good number of its troops. Same with other important manufacturing and administrative centers.

Under the scenario I outlined, the Orks have temporary orbital superiority and then are cut off by a shield.

Even that "Temporary orbital superiority" enables them to bombard and land troops everywhere on the planet for as long as they have it. And as for the shield, in addition to disabling it on the ground, couldn't it also be breached by a massive orbital bombardment?

I don't expect to see vast masses of fighta-bommerz, actually, just a few hundred - and I'd be amazed if there were fewer than ten thousand similarly capable small craft parked around. Is there any reason I should expect more?

The Orks may be initially outnumbered in terms of attack craft. However, there are plenty of force equalizers.

That Ork bombardments will destroy many shuttles on the ground.

That Orks will start building new fighta-bommerz out of scrap that they find.

That Orks will capture shuttlecraft factories and have them produce vehicles for their cause.

There are canonical instances of the Federation (a) using transporters to transport friendlies and (b) using transporters to transport unfriendlies. Presumably, the widespread use of both of those was what led to the deployment of transport inhibitors in the Dominion War.

But have transporters been used to the extent that would make them matter in a large war (like beaming enemy armies into space, or beaming thousands of men right in front of the enemy)?

No, phasers don't. All indications are that phaser rifles (and other weapons, such as the scoped support weapon used to politely disable enemies at range by Worf in Insurrections) have no worse range and accuracy than modern rifles, and possibly quite a bit more (phasers have automatic aiming aids).

Ahem again

The longest-ranged incident involving the Type III phaser rifle occurred in the "Rocks and Shoals" ambush at a range of perhaps 50-100 metres at most, which is actually a very long distance for a weapon that was designed to be fired from the hip.

And as for what that scoped support weapon will do to an Ork with a proximity hit-barely anything.

Rapid fire and blast radius lets you compensate for some inaccuracy (at the cost of logistic concerns); however, it doesn't solve the problem of range. A large number of Orkboyz are primarily melee fighters.

Orky artillery and vehicles solve the problem of range quite nicely. Plus the Federation lacks fully automatic weapons, which the Orks have plenty of.

This range issue is what's going to make Orks little more effective than redshirts on the sort of wide open fields and hill assaults you've been talking about. Their durability helps make up for it, but as Riker noted in "Hide and Q," one man with a phaser rifle could very well finish off a regiment of primitively armed individuals, and Orks aren't durable keep fighting after taking a high setting phaser hit.

No, the mechanization and heavy weapons of the Orks will make them far more effective than redshirts in wide open fields and hill assaults.

I'm not. I'm expecting perhaps a third of Orkboyz to be mainly be armed with melee weapons, though, and I expect their infantry's effectiveness to decrease dramatically past 100 meters.

Even Orks with melee weapons still carry giant pistols called sluggas. And as I've said for countless times, vehicles and artilley will not decrease in effectiveness past 100 meters.

Highly dubious.

Why? Orks use looted vehicles and items all the time.

What, precisely? The only thing that the Orks have to assault a fortified position with transport inhibitors up that might be immune to regular Starfleet infantry weapons is Gargants - and those are hideously easy targets to track and disable with close air support.

Don't forget the Orks artillery, fighta-bommerz, specialists such as stormboyz, and vehicles to contribute to the attack on the shield generator. Even if they can't take it (which I find doubtful), they can dish it out.

In case you haven't noticed, destroyed Federation vessels very often leave little behind - nor are there likely to be many of those around.

(cough)Spacedocks(cough)

Roks may be simple to build, but hollowing out an asteroid takes a lot of time - and time is what the Ork forces don't have. Even assuming local fleet superiority at the time of their attack, we can expect thousands of starships to collect together in the next few weeks, and we can expect Starfleet to be harrying the Ork fleet with its smaller and more maneuverable ships up until the time they eventually destroy it. (Which could possibly - depending upon which interpretations of WH40K ship capabilities you prefer - take a fleet of thousands of starships.)

With the power of 40k ship weaponry, Roks can be hollowed out pretty quickly. And the Federation is the one that doesn't have time. Each day means they lose more to the Orks, and once Earth falls, any space victory will be meaningless.

Not the time for Orks to be setting up a shipyard in the asteroid belt.

Ironically, an ambush from among celestial phenomena is a standard Ork space tactic.

Their ships are not going to be around indefinitely. Two points to consider: Attention span and the massed strength of Starfleet.

[/quote]

Any Orks who are bored with being in space are likely to head to the ground if they can or simply bombard the shield rather than leave the system.

And whatever Starfleet does is meaningless if Earth falls.

Opecoiler wrote:

Opecoiler wrote:ON AR-558, a single one of these gigajoule-level explosives would have been enough to stop the Jem'hadar charge in its tracks. Yet they weren't used.

There's the issue of crew training. An Ork is nothing compared to a guy with only one or two days training on the mortar in terms of accuracy. And again, lack of mortars on AR-558.

They seemed to be out of almost everything on AR-558.

Give me a ballistics chart, a tricorder function that returns altitude, attitude, altitude of a target point, and wind in a data format of my choice, six hours, and a steady supply of tea and I could code a remarkably accurate control program for an automatically aiming photon grenade launcher. In fact, give me the weekend to debug, and if I can get the tricorder function to spit out the position and velocity of all Ork and non-Ork humanoid lifesigns, and I'll get it to select recommended targets and yield settings automatically.

We shouldn't assume continued stupidity on the part of the Federation. It's not our most plausible choice - possible, sure, but not wholly plausible.

Yet the tactic of catapulting infantry into the heart of enemy positions can work if the enemy has their attention on something else . While the Starfleet troopers are busy focusing on the charging Ork horde ahead of them, the stormboyz blast into their position without being noticed until it's too late.

And don't say that Starfleet can reintroduce the rocket boots. An unarmored human with minimal training on rocket boots is going to be worse than useless.

A shielded human on rocket boots won't be too bad - and there are probably plenty of Starfleet (and non-Starfleet) personnel trained with rocket boots already. Remember, orbital skydiving is a sport here.

However, it's not reasonable to assume Starfleet is going to take advantage of this technology to the maximum, even if creating a million one-man gunships this way is theoretically possible.

Nor is it reasonable to assume Starfleet personnel with tricorders are going to be surprised in more than one or two small battles by stormboyz catapulted at them.

Ork "Black powder weapons" are extremely powerful by modern standards. And did you seriously claim that even shielded Starfleet troopers can take on Orks in melee on even terms?

"A melee" in the sense of a messy mixed-range battle, not in the sense of exclusively using "melee weapons." Only a handful of Starfleet personnel are likely to be able to go axe-to-axe with an Ork, either through remarkable training or remarkable physical ability.

Can you quantify how powerful Ork black powder weapons are?

Which will do what in the overall scheme of things? Enable Starfleet to see the Ork artillery pieces that will soon blow them to bits?

Track every piece of Ork personnel and equipment in real-time. Intel is incredibly valuable in any conflict, but most especially in a large one.

Many WAAUUGHs get along fine without teleportation.

What's Starfleet gonna do? Beam a few more redshirts to the slaughter? Take heavily armed Orks right into their HQ?

Beam their troops where they need to be when they need to be there without having to cross anything in the middle. In other words, Starfleet has unlimited mobility.

Unlimited mobility and perfectly accurate intel are a combination that require a very large force advantage to defeat in a war, even discounting the offensive use of transporters. Imagine that at any time, you can instantly have a thousand troops appear where the enemy isn't expecting them to and start pouring phaser fire out.

(Beaming Orks - filtering out all their weapons in the transporter buffer - into force fielded cells. Or deep space, or a magma pit, but cells are more realistic given Starfleet's habits. Stealing equipment and supplies - how far can the Orks go with no ammunition?)

Not just in terms of total population, but in terms of infrastructure as well. If San Francisco is turned into a glassy field, Starfleet has just lost its central headquarters and a good number of its troops. Same with other important manufacturing and administrative centers.

Very much so. Even the "accidental" collateral damage will be wince worthy.

Even that "Temporary orbital superiority" enables them to bombard and land troops everywhere on the planet for as long as they have it. And as for the shield, in addition to disabling it on the ground, couldn't it also be breached by a massive orbital bombardment?

Not everywhere so much as anywhere. Which, with a few million Orks and a large planet, is probably going to be a few hundred main deployment areas. They have a limited capacity and limited rate of orbital bombardment, and those assets will be having to also deal with Starfleet giving them trouble, most likely from the beginning.

Remember, they're interested in conquest, not shelling the planet dry of life. The Orks will be initially assuming that their ground armies will take the planet as soon as it takes them to march across it.

Indications are that a planetary shield can be made quite strong; indications are also that Orks have no clue what a planetary shield is.

The Orks may be initially outnumbered in terms of attack craft. However, there are plenty of force equalizers.

That Ork bombardments will destroy many shuttles on the ground.

Actually, it's likely they won't even know where most of them are.

That Orks will start building new fighta-bommerz out of scrap that they find.

And how long will that take them? Especially bearing in mind that all sorts of Trek craft tend to explode violently when destroyed.

That Orks will capture shuttlecraft factories and have them produce vehicles for their cause.

If the Orks are heavily bombarding areas they suspect have shuttlecraft, they won't be capturing them.

The problem you're running into is that you're assuming both massive bombardment of any worthwhile targets and Orks trying to capture any worthwhile targets - and Earth forces are more durable and more mobile than collateral targets.

You're also assuming, on the one hand, that the Orks will have all the time in the world to build several times their original equipment (years, in other words) and will conquer the planet in days.

But have transporters been used to the extent that would make them matter in a large war (like beaming enemy armies into space, or beaming thousands of men right in front of the enemy)?

Most likely, given the widespread deployment of transport inhibitors during the Dominion War. They are frequently used for capturing ships, evacuations, et cetera. We should assume Starfleet acts reasonably intelligently here.

Ahem again

I speak to the similarity of Trek rifles to modern rifles and you link to a sight that acknowledges the same while complaining about hand phaser ergonomics. You could link to a Trek ground combat site that actually gives some figures, but the simple fact of the matter is that Trek rifles are similar enough to modern rifles that we can expect a similar performance envelope.

As a matter of fact, "Hide and Q" also says that 100 meters is a ridiculously low effective range for a weapon. Any claim that Trek weapons are short ranged and inaccurate can be dismissed on grounds of a complete lack of evidence.

Orky artillery and vehicles solve the problem of range quite nicely. Plus the Federation lacks fully automatic weapons, which the Orks have plenty of.

Actually, the Federation has fully automatic weapons. Their firing cycle is somewhere on the order of milliseconds, however, making them "continuous beam weapons" as far as analysis is concerned. They also have wide-beam settings, but that's not particularly energy efficient.

No, the mechanization and heavy weapons of the Orks will make them far more effective than redshirts in wide open fields and hill assaults.

They don't have heavier weapons, nor faster ground vehicles, nor better strategic mobility. Further, Ork truks and choppas aren't going to resist phaser rifles any more than Orks do.

Range and accuracy is a pretty key advantage. If I had to guess based on the descriptions, I'd say your average Ork grunt is going to land 10% as many hits as your average redshirt outside 100m, all told.

Even Orks with melee weapons still carry giant pistols called sluggas. And as I've said for countless times, vehicles and artilley will not decrease in effectiveness past 100 meters.

Pistols are not particularly effective at 100 meters even with trained marksmen - which Orks are not. Orks are terribly inaccurate compared with the Imperial Guard. I'm not talking Marines, I'm talking about the Guard - the basic lasgun wielding trooper.

Why? Orks use looted vehicles and items all the time.

They use looted vehicles and items that have some vague similarity to the tech base they're used to, in a fashion almost exclusively oriented to Ork tastes - blowing things up or driving fast.

What, precisely? The only thing that the Orks have to assault a fortified position with transport inhibitors up that might be immune to regular Starfleet infantry weapons is Gargants - and those are hideously easy targets to track and disable with close air support.

Don't forget the Orks artillery, fighta-bommerz, specialists such as stormboyz, and vehicles to contribute to the attack on the shield generator. Even if they can't take it (which I find doubtful), they can dish it out.

All of which are quite vulnerable to Federation infantry weaponry. They'll be at all the usual disadvantages of a force storming a fortified position.

(cough)Spacedocks(cough)

If they're armed, they're going to cause nearly as much damage as their scrap is worth. If they're not armed, you're not going to salvage phaser arrays from them.

Even Spacedocks can be self-destructed, though, and Starfleet may have orders to do that.

With the power of 40k ship weaponry, Roks can be hollowed out pretty quickly. And the Federation is the one that doesn't have time. Each day means they lose more to the Orks, and once Earth falls, any space victory will be meaningless.

Which is why thousands of Roks are built immediately upon any Ork fleet entering a system.

Actually, wait. That doesn't seem to happen.

Any Orks who are bored with being in space are likely to head to the ground if they can or simply bombard the shield rather than leave the system.

And whatever Starfleet does is meaningless if Earth falls.

Actually, explain me this. After the Orks successfully land a ground force - the entire mission of the Armageddon fleet - why is the fleet going to be hanging around in Earth orbit rather than zipping off to find out where Armageddon went?

Apologies to Opecoiler if I'm duplicating anything he's said here.

We haven't seen much of Starfleet ground equipment, but we do know it's quite possible for them to deploy flying infantry if they need to match the Orks in that unlikely capacity

With what, their vast stockpiles of rocket boots ?

We don't know much about combat vehicles; we know that Starfleet has been stockpiling phaser rifles and personal shields per the setting of the scenario (Dominion War era).

This isn't exactly an Ork beating strategy.

The Orks are tough opponents on the ground; however, there are only, most likely, only a few million Orks faced with the task of conquering the entire planet. They are outnumbered and less mobile with less close air support (shuttlecraft are very common) and - most importantly - no transport inhibitors.

This is Waagh Armageddon, the initial landing wave was millions.

How many troops does earth have that you are claiming the Orks are outnumbered ?

"close air support" would come from over 3000 squadrons of orkish fighter craft, this is from 15k to ????? aircraft alone, not withstanding orbital support, Orkish Roks and ground forces providing heavy AA. Hell, in 40k the 1000 meter long escorts, or even battleship classes occasionally get involved in atmospheric battles.

How many shuttles are there ?

Their weaponry has limited accuracy and short range

I'm sorry, are you describing Federation weaponry or Orkish weaponry ? I don't think I've ever seen a phaser fire at a target more than 50 meters away and hit.

I shouldn't need to point out that Orks also have artillery, armour mounted weaponry and even superheavy war machines with weaponry capable of LOS ranges. (which is quite far if you are an 80 meter tall death robot)

Orks have a predilection for close combat every bit as strong as Borg and Klingon boarding crews

Thats nice to know, but I should point out a few flaws with this comparison.

Orks are tremendously more resilient than either the Borg or the Klingons.

Their idea of a close combat weapon for one hand is a giant hunk of vaguely sharpened metal, a weapon tremendously superior to either Klingon or Borg close combat equipment, when wielded by an ork.

Oh, and the average ork also has a giant freaking gun as well, that blows fist sized chunks out of metal bulkheads, and blasts armoured humans apart.

which is not going to get them very far on the open battlefield.

On an open battlefield, the orks will be fielding a lot more than axes and pistols. Even Feral Orks can build Gargants, and this is the armageddon Waaagh.

They're not going to simply sweep Earth.

YOu need to do better than that, I mean seriously, you've basically described the orks as stupid ill-equipped barbarian raiders with no weaponry other than axes and pistols, and you think this is an accurate representation of a race that fights in 40k ?

Christ, they have guns that teleport tiny orkish lifeforms into well armoured targets, or that envelop armoured vehicles in force fields, tractor beams weapons deployed on a tactical ground combat level.

Actually, I was referring to the Ork fleet's ability to support the attacking forces. We were assuming that Starfleet didn't have forces in the area that would take out the Ork fleet.

There are 12-16 spacehulks alone in the fleet attacking earth at this point. Orkish spacehulks are classed as Battleship level at the very least in 40k, Imperial Navy captains compare direct hits on spacehulks from near-c projectiles 50m in diameter to throwing "eggs at a brick wall"

The fleet that attacked Armageddon came in several waves as it split up, detoured to destroy facilities and engage Imperial forces, but basically...

Over a hundred "roks", some designed specifically to be landed as shielded and cap ship grade armed beachheads.

250-400 multi-kilometer combat vessels, over 2000 star destroyer size vessels, and god knows how many fighters.

They probably outgun and outmass the entire federation fleet, never mind what Feddy forces can get there in time.

What's to insure the Orks can (a) locate and (b) overrun the generator?

Orks are a spacefaring race with all the capabilities you'd expect, despite their fairly crude way of going about it. I was also unaware that Feddy generators were somehow stealthed.

I'd say one easy way of "overrunning" it would be to land millions of tons of orkish Rok on them, or 'Porting a Gargant Big Mob outside its perimeter or something

Besides, the Feds don't have a planetary shield generator around any planet in the TNG setting.

I don't see anything to indicate that the Orks will be able to build a significant number of new ships in a handful of weeks.

They don't need to.

They are. So, however, are accurate sensors, transport inhibitors, and safe instantaneous transport. Ork teleporters are not up to Starfleet standards.

Ork Teleportors don't require safety standards, and they are accurate and safe enough to transport hundreds of troops at least, and war machines tens of meters in height, and thousands of tonnes in mass.

From what I can tell, they are actually capable of longer range transports, and are capable of porting more stuff at once.

Under the scenario I outlined, the Orks have temporary orbital superiority and then are cut off by a shield.

Since Earth doesn't even appear to have a planetary shield during a period of all out war, and no mention of federation planetary shielding exists, I'd firstly question that the technology even exists to completely shield a planet. From a federation perspective anyway.

I'd also question that the Feds could somehow erect a planetary scale defensive forcefield while under invasion by an aggressive, mobile foe with ships in orbit and tens of thousands of aircraft.

I don't expect to see vast masses of fighta-bommerz, actually, just a few hundred - and I'd be amazed if there were fewer than ten thousand similarly capable small craft parked around. Is there any reason I should expect more?

Just a touch more.

There are canonical instances of the Federation (a) using transporters to transport friendlies and (b) using transporters to transport unfriendlies. Presumably, the widespread use of both of those was what led to the deployment of transport inhibitors in the Dominion War.

Orkish powerfields block transporters, and unless Earths fleet suddenly got a lot more powerful, their ain't gonna be many vessels around which can seriously get involved.

Transporters are quite a bit more sophisticated than teleporters. Think of them as the more developed version.

I think an appropriate analogy would be a heavy weight boxer and a karate type. They can both do some of the same things, and one can do some things a hell of a lot better, but the other chap can perhaps do more with it.

No, phasers don't. All indications are that phaser rifles (and other weapons, such as the scoped support weapon used to politely disable enemies at range by Worf in Insurrections) have no worse range and accuracy than modern rifles, and possibly quite a bit more (phasers have automatic aiming aids).

I'm sure you've seen those hilarious Trekmiss videos ?

Phasers don't even have the explaination that they are automatics, these are single shot beam weapons that aren't even used in a fashion to exploit their capabilities.

Rapid fire and blast radius lets you compensate for some inaccuracy (at the cost of logistic concerns); however, it doesn't solve the problem of range. A large number of Orkboyz are primarily melee fighters.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an ork without a large bolter equivalent mate.

This range issue is what's going to make Orks little more effective than redshirts on the sort of wide open fields and hill assaults you've been talking about. Their durability helps make up for it, but as Riker noted in "Hide and Q," one man with a phaser rifle could very well finish off a regiment of primitively armed individuals, and Orks aren't durable keep fighting after taking a high setting phaser hit.

They've got literally thousands and thousands of vehicles, heavy weapons platforms, etc etc in this scenario, they are an army, not some guys with hand weapons

I'm not. I'm expecting perhaps a third of Orkboyz to be mainly be armed with melee weapons, though, and I expect their infantry's effectiveness to decrease dramatically past 100 meters.

How exactly do you think the Feddies are going to do past 100 meters ?

Its pretty likely that the puny kill setting used as standard by the Feds isn't going to cut it, as Sergant Cloten says, to kill an ork you have to rip off its head and show it that its dead, or something similarly drastic.

Assume that the vape setting can actually manage an entire armoured ork, its still only frying a single ork, and in a fashion tremendously less intimidating than say a Necron flayer.

Unless you are claiming they can widebeam vape orks at a hundred meters plus, the Feds are still getting the worst of this.

Highly dubious.

Hardly, Orkish meks have co-opted technology from the Imperium quite easily.

Besides, they have both the most advanced orkish mind known, and his entourage, they can hardly fail to locate technology, they do it all the time in 40k.

What, precisely? The only thing that the Orks have to assault a fortified position with transport inhibitors up that might be immune to regular Starfleet infantry weapons is Gargants - and those are hideously easy targets to track and disable with close air support.

Tanks, dreadnaughts, Commando squads, giant space ships and asteroids.

Just plenty of lads in fact.

Which could possibly - depending upon which interpretations of WH40K ship capabilities you prefer

I don't think preference has anything to do with it. what facts do you offer ?

Their ships are not going to be around indefinitely. Two points to consider: Attention span and the massed strength of Starfleet.

The Proffit of Da Waaaagh tells you to jump, you scream back WAAAAAAAAGH

The massed strength of starfleet has yet to be proven capable of taking on Orkish fleet strength.

"A melee" in the sense of a messy mixed-range battle, not in the sense of exclusively using "melee weapons." Only a handful of Starfleet personnel are likely to be able to go axe-to-axe with an Ork, either through remarkable training or remarkable physical ability.

I can think of two that might have a chance, Data and maybe Worf.

Only if they had a decent weapon though, and even then it'd be pretty damn lucky.

All of which are quite vulnerable to Federation infantry weaponry. They'll be at all the usual disadvantages of a force storming a fortified position.

A supersonic bomber is vulnerable to a phaser rifle ?

Are you insane ?

Actually, explain me this. After the Orks successfully land a ground force - the entire mission of the Armageddon fleet - why is the fleet going to be hanging around in Earth orbit rather than zipping off to find out where Armageddon went?

why shouldn't they be hanging around in orbit ?

its exactly what they did on Armageddon, barring Orkimedes' hulk and roving wolf packs.

Gniops wrote:

We haven't seen much of Starfleet ground equipment, but we do know it's quite possible for them to deploy flying infantry if they need to match the Orks in that unlikely capacity

With what, their vast stockpiles of rocket boots ?

Exactly. Possible, but not particularly likely.

This is Waagh Armageddon, the initial landing wave was millions.

I pressed Cpl Kendall for more figures and he couldn't provide anything more specific than "millions," so I've been running with 5 million Orks.

How many troops does earth have that you are claiming the Orks are outnumbered ?

This is total warfare the Orks are exercising. Earth, accordingly, has something like 10 billion troops, most of them practically untrained.

"close air support" would come from over 3000 squadrons of orkish fighter craft, this is from 15k to ????? aircraft alone,

Source?

I'm sorry, are you describing Federation weaponry or Orkish weaponry ? I don't think I've ever seen a phaser fire at a target more than 50 meters away and hit.

Review that statement: You haven't seen a phaser fire at a target more than 50 meters away. Although Worf used some other variety of weapon at substantially more than 50 meters in Insurrection, and both Riker's comparison in "Hide and Q" as well as the massacre of the low-tech Yangs strongly imply that a phaser rifle has easily the range of a modern rifle.

I shouldn't need to point out that Orks also have artillery, armour mounted weaponry and even superheavy war machines with weaponry capable of LOS ranges. (which is quite far if you are an 80 meter tall death robot)

No, we've been working with that assumption already.

Thats nice to know, but I should point out a few flaws with this comparison.

Orks are tremendously more resilient than either the Borg or the Klingons.

Their idea of a close combat weapon for one hand is a giant hunk of vaguely sharpened metal, a weapon tremendously superior to either Klingon or Borg close combat equipment, when wielded by an ork.

Oh, and the average ork also has a giant freaking gun as well, that blows fist sized chunks out of metal bulkheads, and blasts armoured humans apart.

On an open battlefield, the orks will be fielding a lot more than axes and pistols. Even Feral Orks can build Gargants, and this is the armageddon Waaagh.

YOu need to do better than that, I mean seriously, you've basically described the orks as stupid ill-equipped barbarian raiders with no weaponry other than axes and pistols, and you think this is an accurate representation of a race that fights in 40k ?

Christ, they have guns that teleport tiny orkish lifeforms into well armoured targets, or that envelop armoured vehicles in force fields, tractor beams weapons deployed on a tactical ground combat level.

A "giant freaking" black powder weapon. A black powder weapon is going to give you 250-400 kilojoules per kilogram of propellant, period - that's talking about long arms rather than the short-barreled giant pistols common to most Orks. If it blows holes in bulkheads and is equivalent to a bolter, that just tells us how strong the bulkheads and bolters really are.

It's a pretty lethal weapon unless personal shields stop them, which is quite possible.

There are 12-16 spacehulks alone in the fleet attacking earth at this point. Orkish spacehulks are classed as Battleship level at the very least in 40k, Imperial Navy captains compare direct hits on spacehulks from near-c projectiles 50m in diameter to throwing "eggs at a brick wall"

The fleet that attacked Armageddon came in several waves as it split up, detoured to destroy facilities and engage Imperial forces, but basically...

Over a hundred "roks", some designed specifically to be landed as shielded and cap ship grade armed beachheads.

250-400 multi-kilometer combat vessels, over 2000 star destroyer size vessels, and god knows how many fighters.

They probably outgun and outmass the entire federation fleet, never mind what Feddy forces can get there in time.

Actually, the original scenario proposed by Cpl Kendall involved set forth different figures:

By an act of the Ork gods a warpstorm deposits the Ork invasion fleet bound for the Third War of Armageddon just outside the Sol System in the ST universe. This fleet consists of about 400 ships of various types (transports, raiders, Ork assualt ships etc) and four space hulks. These then make their way in system thinking that Sol is Armageddon. Orkz being Orks they will then crash the space hulks into Earth to land the force contained on them on Earth as well as crash their transports on the plant, disgorging more Orkz.

Orks are a spacefaring race with all the capabilities you'd expect, despite their fairly crude way of going about it. I was also unaware that Feddy generators were somehow stealthed.

I'd say one easy way of "overrunning" it would be to land millions of tons of orkish Rok on them, or 'Porting a Gargant Big Mob outside its perimeter or something

Besides, the Feds don't have a planetary shield generator around any planet in the TNG setting.

We don't have clear evidence that they don't - and we do know they could. Again, in this particular as in all of them, I'm taking a middle road - they don't actually have one, but can build one.

Now, here's the big point: How many Gargants can we expect 5 million Orks deploy, and how well can they be expected to survive? (Remember, these are giant targets.)

Ork Teleportors don't require safety standards, and they are accurate and safe enough to transport hundreds of troops at least, and war machines tens of meters in height, and thousands of tonnes in mass.

From what I can tell, they are actually capable of longer range transports, and are capable of porting more stuff at once.

Really? Sources, details?

Orkish powerfields block transporters, and unless Earths fleet suddenly got a lot more powerful, their ain't gonna be many vessels around which can seriously get involved.

Over what radius do these block teleporters, and how widely deployed will powerfields be?

Regarding the vessels, I think the scope of that is due a fresh thread.

I'm sure you've seen those hilarious Trekmiss videos ?

And if we had ~600 hours of filmed WH40K Ork Trek, we would be able to composite a short series of Orkmiss feature films.

Phasers don't even have the explaination that they are automatics, these are single shot beam weapons that aren't even used in a fashion to exploit their capabilities.

Actually, there's no visible restriction on phaser fire rates, and they can and have been used on continuous beam settings.

They've got literally thousands and thousands of vehicles, heavy weapons platforms, etc etc in this scenario, they are an army, not some guys with hand weapons.

That's assumed already.

How exactly do you think the Feddies are going to do past 100 meters ?

Averaging at least similar hit rates to soldiers engaging in trench warfare in WWI.

Its pretty likely that the puny kill setting used as standard by the Feds isn't going to cut it, as Sergant Cloten says, to kill an ork you have to rip off its head and show it that its dead, or something similarly drastic.

Assume that the vape setting can actually manage an entire armoured ork, its still only frying a single ork, and in a fashion tremendously less intimidating than say a Necron flayer.

Which is one reason I assume the Orks to be much more effective in initial contact. A phaser on high setting can take out an Ork's weight in solid rock. Vape settings are going to fairly thoroughly kill an Ork.

Hardly, Orkish meks have co-opted technology from the Imperium quite easily.

Imperium technology is primarily operated by Imperials, who are not particularly technically minded themselves. Hence quite a bit more user friendly - Federation tricorders et cetera are generally both sophisticated and relatively delicate, two things that don't go very well with WH40K operators.

Tanks, dreadnaughts, Commando squads, giant space ships and asteroids.

Tanks and commando squads are, as I pointed out, quite vulnerable to conventional phaser fire, let alone heavier weapons. The air support isn't going to be available for attacking a shield generator separating the fleet

I don't think preference has anything to do with it.

It does. WH40K ship figures vary quite wildly from what I've seen.

The Proffit of Da Waaaagh tells you to jump, you scream back WAAAAAAAAGH

The massed strength of starfleet has yet to be proven capable of taking on Orkish fleet strength.

The massed strength of Starfleet can almost certainly take out a fleet of ~400 assorted Ork ships.

I can think of two that might have a chance, Data and maybe Worf.

Only if they had a decent weapon though, and even then it'd be pretty damn lucky.

Two out of the personnel we're familiar with. There will probably be more kicking around, but not a statistically significant fraction.

(Any Horta officers, anyone?)

A supersonic bomber is vulnerable to a phaser rifle ?

Are you insane ?

Describe this "supersonic bomber." Sources, please.

Actually, explain me this. After the Orks successfully land a ground force - the entire mission of the Armageddon fleet - why is the fleet going to be hanging around in Earth orbit rather than zipping off to find out where Armageddon went?

why shouldn't they be hanging around in orbit ?

its exactly what they did on Armageddon, barring Orkimedes' hulk and roving wolf packs.

Well, this is a mission to Armageddon that got sideswiped in the Warp. Would they consider that mission more important, or hanging around to hit this new world that the Imperium isn't on?

Exactly. Possible, but not particularly likely.

I might have put it a little stronger myself, but yeah.

I pressed Cpl Kendall for more figures and he couldn't provide anything more specific than "millions," so I've been running with 5 million Orks.

Kendall quails before my mighty lore knowledge type stuff, do you hear that Kendall ? I AM YOUR GOD?!

This is total warfare the Orks are exercising. Earth, accordingly, has something like 10 billion troops, most of them practically untrained.

Okay, joking aside, how many trained combat effectives does earth have ? The potential casualty/enslavement number isn't relevent here.

Source?

Codex Armageddon, Battle for Armageddon, Epic: Armageddon. Epic Armageddon actually goes with 1500-2000 Squadrons, its also the source of the smaller numbers Kendall used as the "entire" invasion, as it refers to first ships to get there and kick the shite out of Admiral Parols command, it also describes four space hulks arriving, with at least 8 more turning up along with the rest of Thrakas initial forces hours later.

Review that statement: You haven't seen a phaser fire at a target more than 50 meters away. Although Worf used some other variety of weapon at substantially more than 50 meters in Insurrection, and both Riker's comparison in "Hide and Q" as well as the massacre of the low-tech Yangs strongly imply that a phaser rifle has easily the range of a modern rifle.

Well, pretty obviously Worfs isomagnetic disintigrator is the worst thing the feds could tote along, its bloody pathetic, its also not a phaser, and that Worf decided to use it at such a range as opposed to simply whipping out his phaser and widebeaming, or beam strafing indicates that Phasers aren't much cop at range.

Add to this your apparent lack of counter examples.....?

No, we've been working with that assumption already.

Then why do you keep thumping away at the idea that Orks are mere melee combatants with guns and axes ?

A "giant freaking" black powder weapon. A black powder weapon is going to give you 250-400 kilojoules per kilogram of propellant, period - that's talking about long arms rather than the short-barreled giant pistols common to most Orks. If it blows holes in bulkheads and is equivalent to a bolter, that just tells us how strong the bulkheads and bolters really are.

Black powder ? Gretchin use black powder guns occasionally, but even Ferals are capable of constructing hi-ex rounds and Orkish versions of bolters.

It's a pretty lethal weapon unless personal shields stop them, which is quite possible.

The proportion of Federation personnel with personal shields is probably fairly small, since they can't afford to give them to their operatives as standard, and again, you can't actually give any numbers as far as their capabilities, how many were "stockpiled" etc.

Seriously, how are the Feddies even going to equip these ten billion people? Most of them will end up in slave camps or dead.

Actually, the original scenario proposed by Cpl Kendall involved set forth different figures:

Thats cos Kendall doesn't know the correct numbers for the orkish invasion of Armageddon, or rather, he's taken the guesstimates from Epic Armageddon, or been told them, but hasn't seen the rest of the book. ( Orky invasion number two) (bad kendall!)

I do, and have.

We don't have clear evidence that they don't - and we do know they could

Um, sorry ?

Based on what ?

Now, here's the big point: How many Gargants can we expect 5 million Orks deploy, and how well can they be expected to survive? (Remember, these are giant targets.)

Initially the Fleet deployed over a hundred Gargants (number may or may not included Stompas, which are either giant dreadnaughts or baby gargants) and 300 superheavy tanks.

They should be fine, its not like the Federation has any armour weapons at all, and these are shielded, with horrifically unsecured ork tech reactors and barely controlled energy systems. They don't even need shields to fuck up a feddy transport.

Really? Sources, details?

Orkimedes' Spacehulk ran tellyporta operations against Armageddon from the outskirts of the system (BFG Armada, BFA) Epic:Armageddon, Thraka allies with Nazdreg to test out a spacehulk that teleported "orks and their warmachines" directly onto the Dark Angel recruiting world of Piscina, again from a distance.

Epic Armageddon, Ork Roks contained teleporta arrays to transport down Gargants and hundreds of Orks.

Medusa Campaign: Nazdreg has his meks fit a tellyporta to a superheavy tank and uses it as a tactical transporter, porting hundreds of orks at a time.

Over what radius do these block teleporters, and how widely deployed will powerfields be?

Around every Gargant and stompa and Rok, Space Wolf had an orkish Warboss using one to prevent teleport attacks against his headquarters, I don't expect Thrakas subordinates to be any different.

Regarding the vessels, I think the scope of that is due a fresh thread.

I think its pretty simple, what was that ep with the asteroid and the phase cloaked ship ?

If a fed ship requires most, or all of its torps to blast such an asteroid apart, then a Rok or spacehulk is likely to be untouchable, given they have energy shields and armour as well.

And if we had ~600 hours of filmed WH40K Ork Trek, we would be able to composite a short series of Orkmiss feature films.

It'd probably be more like the SW blaster impacts, people getting fragged by near misses,

Plus, nobody ever accused the orks of being incredibly accurate, or crowed about their gyrostabilised auto-aim systems ;)

Actually, there's no visible restriction on phaser fire rates, and they can and have been used on continuous beam settings.

You misunderstand, if they were a full auto weapon, they might have been used in surpressing fire or something similar, accounting for some of the more retarded misses.

But they aren't, its a single beam each thumbpress, of variable duration, and no bugger sweeps with it.

Averaging at least similar hit rates to soldiers engaging in trench warfare in WWI.

They don't have quite as good guns though, as far as accurate shooting goes.

Which is one reason I assume the Orks to be much more effective in initial contact. A phaser on high setting can take out an Ork's weight in solid rock. Vape settings are going to fairly thoroughly kill an Ork.

Possibly, but taking the middle ground, why should a vape setting fry through orkish armour when the technobabble disintigration of phasers can't be used to cut through doors on DS9 ?

Imperium technology is primarily operated by Imperials, who are not particularly technically minded themselves. Hence quite a bit more user friendly - Federation tricorders et cetera are generally both sophisticated and relatively delicate, two things that don't go very well with WH40K operators.

Yeah, I think you both underestimate orks, the amount of raw materials they will have to play with, and how motivating an ork Mek can be with his brand new slaves. ;)

Tanks and commando squads are, as I pointed out, quite vulnerable to conventional phaser fire, let alone heavier weapons. The air support isn't going to be available for attacking a shield generator separating the fleet

I seriously doubt an Orkish gun-wagon is going to be damaged by a phaser, thats one you are going to have to back up I think.

Commando squads I should point out aren't meant to be invulnerable to phaser fire,

Airsupport can operate off the ground, thats why they landed the Roks and captured Imperial starports, or at a push, built their own.

It does. WH40K ship figures vary quite wildly from what I've seen.

Lets stop beating about the bush eh ?

You provide an example of conventional Federation/alpha quadrent firepower, and I'll give you an example of what orks have to put up with.

The massed strength of Starfleet can almost certainly take out a fleet of ~400 assorted Ork ships.

Prove it.

Firstly what the massed strength of Starfleet actually is, then that they can take out 400 ork ships. although I'll point out that Kendalls numbers were slightly off, and I have provided the correct numbers.

Describe this "supersonic bomber." Sources, please.

Its any orkish aircraft fitting under the description bomma/fighter bomma.

They use these things in space combat you know, and Imperial capital ships at their most grotesquely slow can still pull hundreds of gees.

Aeronautica Imperialis describes atmospheric fighterbombas as supersonic .

Well, this is a mission to Armageddon that got sideswiped in the Warp. Would they consider that mission more important, or hanging around to hit this new world that the Imperium isn't on?

Thraka might be a bit miffed he doesn't get to personally torture Yarrick again, but I can't believe you seriously expect them to not loot and pillage such a juicy target.

In fact, the harder the Federation fights, the more likely the orks will stick around!

Their best hope , and the most likely outcome is that the orks crush Fed-Earth, enslave vast swathes of the populace, brutally kill the rest, lay waste and loot the place, then piss off to go raid the other planets that their new slaves told them about when the Mad Docs and Runtherdz were torturing them.

Which is why thousands of Roks are built immediately upon any Ork fleet entering a system.

Actually, wait. That doesn't seem to happen.

Maybe not in the thousands, but-

BFG Armada, page 63 wrote:Though Roks are incapable of travelling through the Warp, any system containing Orks will quickly accumulate a growing number of Roks, as the Orks 'build' them at a prodigious rate. For example, in 147.M41 an Imperial cruiser force swept the Kaloth system for Ork pirates and destroyed seven escort class ships and four Roks. In 148.M41 another expedition encountered twenty-one Roks in the same system

Even taking the low-end and assuming that the the two expeditions were exactly 365 days apart, that still gives a construction time of 17 days per Rok. And this was the work of a small pirate band, not a gigantic WAAAAAAUGHH.[/b]

Gniops wrote:Okay, joking aside, how many trained combat effectives does earth have ? The potential casualty/enslavement number isn't relevent here.

Actually, since even most normally combat ineffective personnel can kill on Ork using a hand phaser if cornered, it is somewhat relevant. In truth, we don't know, just as we don't actually know Earth's population.

We don't know how heavily Starfleet personnel are concentrated on Earth. It's apparently heavily enough to enact very thorough martial law, but it could very easily be anywhere from 1 to 100 million well trained personnel. Depending on choice of recreation and, again, the geographic concentration of Starfleet personnel, up to 1 billion might be capable of providing able armed resistance.

Codex Armageddon, Battle for Armageddon, Epic: Armageddon. Epic Armageddon actually goes with 1500-2000 Squadrons, its also the source of the smaller numbers Kendall used as the "entire" invasion, as it refers to first ships to get there and kick the shite out of Admiral Parols command, it also describes four space hulks arriving, with at least 8 more turning up along with the rest of Thrakas initial forces hours later.

Well, if we make the ground force sufficiently large, the Orks will sweep the planet; if the fleet is sufficiently large, Starfleet won't be able to take it apart in anything resembling a reasonable time.

For example, if there are ~100 million Orks landed, then it's quite certain the planet will be swept in no more than a couple of weeks at most. If 250,000 Orks land (on the other extreme) they'll get wiped out in a couple weeks.

Well, pretty obviously Worfs isomagnetic disintigrator is the worst thing the feds could tote along, its bloody pathetic, its also not a phaser, and that Worf decided to use it at such a range as opposed to simply whipping out his phaser and widebeaming, or beam strafing indicates that Phasers aren't much cop at range.

Add to this your apparent lack of counter examples.....?

Not necessarily. As suggested here, it's quite possible Worf was deploying an area-effect weapon designed to disable enemy weaponry.

Then why do you keep thumping away at the idea that Orks are mere melee combatants with guns and axes ?

Because for a pseudomodern force, they are quite heavily concentrated on axes and pistols.

Black powder ? Gretchin use black powder guns occasionally, but even Ferals are capable of constructing hi-ex rounds and Orkish versions of bolters.

Just Gretchin, then? Worth knowing.

The proportion of Federation personnel with personal shields is probably fairly small, since they can't afford to give them to their operatives as standard, and again, you can't actually give any numbers as far as their capabilities, how many were "stockpiled" etc.

We can assume a significant number are present. Deploying some variety of portable shield doesn't seem unheard of (see "Chains of Command") although it does seem rather unusual for us to have not seen them. We also don't know what kind of attacks the shields are designed for. Between those, I've weighed this as potentially substantially favorable but unlikely to have effect, i.e., very little.

We could come to the conclusion that normally, the ability to beam personnel out is considered more valuable.

Um, sorry ?

Based on what ?

"Whom Gods Destroy"

Initially the Fleet deployed over a hundred Gargants (number may or may not included Stompas, which are either giant dreadnaughts or baby gargants) and 300 superheavy tanks.

They should be fine, its not like the Federation has any armour weapons at all, and these are shielded, with horrifically unsecured ork tech reactors and barely controlled energy systems. They don't even need shields to fuck up a feddy transport.

It's going to take shields to be reasonably sure.

Orkimedes' Spacehulk ran tellyporta operations against Armageddon from the outskirts of the system (BFG Armada, BFA) Epic:Armageddon, Thraka allies with Nazdreg to test out a spacehulk that teleported "orks and their warmachines" directly onto the Dark Angel recruiting world of Piscina, again from a distance.

Epic Armageddon, Ork Roks contained teleporta arrays to transport down Gargants and hundreds of Orks.

Medusa Campaign: Nazdreg has his meks fit a tellyporta to a superheavy tank and uses it as a tactical transporter, porting hundreds of orks at a time.

Good, then. About what's the failure rate on them?

Around every Gargant and stompa and Rok, Space Wolf had an orkish Warboss using one to prevent teleport attacks against his headquarters, I don't expect Thrakas subordinates to be any different.

So on Warbosses and HQs.

I think its pretty simple, what was that ep with the asteroid and the phase cloaked ship ?

If a fed ship requires most, or all of its torps to blast such an asteroid apart, then a Rok or spacehulk is likely to be untouchable, given they have energy shields and armour as well.

As I pointed out, that asteroid is, on close consideration of the episode, actually quite a bit more massive than commonly suggested.

It'd probably be more like the SW blaster impacts, people getting fragged by near misses,

Plus, nobody ever accused the orks of being incredibly accurate, or crowed about their gyrostabilised auto-aim systems ;)

You misunderstand, if they were a full auto weapon, they might have been used in surpressing fire or something similar, accounting for some of the more retarded misses.

But they aren't, its a single beam each thumbpress, of variable duration, and no bugger sweeps with it.

They don't have quite as good guns though, as far as accurate shooting goes.

Nothing particularly unusual happens miss-wise in Trek. As I said, we should assume no worse accuracy, and possibly higher due to auto-aiming aids.

Possibly, but taking the middle ground, why should a vape setting fry through orkish armour when the technobabble disintigration of phasers can't be used to cut through doors on DS9 ?

Actually, they could - it just took a long while.

This is in large part because not only does Star Trek have very strong personal weapons, they have remarkably strong hull materials. A hatch in Enterprise withstood a point blank nuke without any damage, shielding people behind it quite well.

Of course, neither the Federation nor the Orkz are likely to build or deploy tritanium or duranium personal armor. It's a pity, in some ways, because the Federation has demonstrated all the technology necessary to outfit powered armor troops that would make Heinlein's Starship Troopers look primitive and unwieldy. They're just not using it that way. The Federation pays most of its military attention to space superiority, and suffers severely in scenarios like this as a result.

Yeah, I think you both underestimate orks, the amount of raw materials they will have to play with, and how motivating an ork Mek can be with his brand new slaves.

Maybe I do; maybe I don't.

I seriously doubt an Orkish gun-wagon is going to be damaged by a phaser, thats one you are going to have to back up I think.

In order to feel reasonably confident that an Orkish gun-wagon is invulnerable to hand phasers, you should feel reasonably confident about parking it in front of the U.S.S. Missouri during a test fire. High setting hand phaser attacks range up into the gigajoule range.

Its any orkish aircraft fitting under the description bomma/fighter bomma.

They use these things in space combat you know, and Imperial capital ships at their most grotesquely slow can still pull hundreds of gees.

Aeronautica Imperialis describes atmospheric fighterbombas as supersonic .

I need more information than that to estimate how effective they are.

Thraka might be a bit miffed he doesn't get to personally torture Yarrick again, but I can't believe you seriously expect them to not loot and pillage such a juicy target.

In fact, the harder the Federation fights, the more likely the orks will stick around!

Their best hope , and the most likely outcome is that the orks crush Fed-Earth, enslave vast swathes of the populace, brutally kill the rest, lay waste and loot the place, then piss off to go raid the other planets that their new slaves told them about when the Mad Docs and Runtherdz were torturing them.

Well, here's the thing. Earth is most likely to present relatively low initial resistance. They're not expecting anything like this; from the advances of the first week of combat, Orkz will probably expect to have the whole planet nicely subjugated in a month.

Opecoiler wrote:

Which is why thousands of Roks are built immediately upon any Ork fleet entering a system.

Actually, wait. That doesn't seem to happen.

Maybe not in the thousands, but-

BFG Armada, page 63 wrote:Though Roks are incapable of travelling through the Warp, any system containing Orks will quickly accumulate a growing number of Roks, as the Orks 'build' them at a prodigious rate. For example, in 147.M41 an Imperial cruiser force swept the Kaloth system for Ork pirates and destroyed seven escort class ships and four Roks. In 148.M41 another expedition encountered twenty-one Roks in the same system

Even taking the low-end and assuming that the the two expeditions were exactly 365 days apart, that still gives a construction time of 17 day per Rok. And this was the work of a small pirate band, not a gigantic WAAAAAAUGHH.[/b]

That also tells me the fleet, coming out of warp, will have no Roks.

Pound for pound, it looks to me like WH40K ships are about equal with SW ships (and, accordingly, pound for pound, substantially inferior to ST ships). They tend to be much larger than SW ships, though, which makes up for a lot.

So we have 2,000 SD-size "small escorts", 250-400 "multi-kilometer" ships, and the space hulks (which are being crash-landed into Earth per the OP scenario and therefore not engaged in fleet combat). Call the capital ships worth 10 smaller ships each and we have 4,500-6,000 ISD equivalents, no?

However, Starfleet's total strength is something like 10,000-20,000 starships, which typically output somewhere around the range of GT/sec in peak sustained firepower. That puts Starfleet's total strength well above that of the fleet.

It is good to see that the descent into self parody has turned into a full blown death spiral.

Thanatos wrote:It is good to see that the descent into self parody has turned into a full blown death spiral.

Less of that, thank you.

As for the pound for pound thingy... what's the firepower of 40K ships exactly?

I hear that they keep increasing it after each book, well, something like that...

Mr. Oraghan wrote:As for the pound for pound thingy... what's the firepower of 40K ships exactly?

Exactly percise figures are hard to come by, but several order of magnitude estimates can be made. For instance, at the end Xenos a flotilla of Imperial warships fire broadsides at a planet which case 'continent wide blossoms of fire', implying firepower, at the low end (that is, using Australia as the example of a size of continent instead of, say, Asia) that implies middle level triple digit teratons. For an older reference, the BFG codex pings individual torpedoes (they come in groupings of three in game, IIRC) at 610 gigatons, although this is a specialized warhead (cluster bomb, actually)more for killing Roks than for serious combat so it's almost certain it's of a much lower yield than a torpedo with a proper plasma warhead.

So, to finish the answer, there's a question mark, but it's a question mark with an addendum that says, *"Anywhere between 1e23 and 1e25J). Hard exterminatus (exterminatus performed with weapons batteries, lances, and torpedoes as opposed to specialized weapons like virus or magma bombs) supports this general area of energetic output.

Ork naval weaponry is generally on par with Imperial weaponry, although of course more erratic and finicky. Star Trek is sort of out of its league here, Ork Roks could appear in system and sweep it clear of ships quite quickly. I'm not expert on ST ground combat, though, so I can't weigh in there.