Ork WAAUUUUUGHH vs. Trek Earth redux

[Gniops]

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.

Let me get this straight, you actually stated that there would be ten billion combatants, but now you don't even know what earths population is, and you appear to be under the impression that the federation can actually equip 10 billion people with phasers.

What are you playing at ?

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.

You don't actually have any evidence at all do you ?

just random theorising.

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.

This is the fleet from Armageddon 3, which makes it low end a couple of million orks, since the Imperium deployed literally millions in response, and were still massively outnumbered across the entire planet and sector.

Two battlekroozers between them deployed 250k orks and their equipment via tellyporta and landing craft (Epic Armageddon)there are 12-16 other vessels that dwarf these ships and by themselves are described as being capable of carrying hundreds of thousands or even millions of orks, and over 400 vessels about half the displacement of the BKs, and then another 2000 ISD sized vessels, then another hundred Roks.

I'm not artificially inflating the numbers, or making them up completely as you appear to be. These are the facts.

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.

Even though I doubt you can make such an authorative statement as far as 250k orks go, since you apparently have no concept as to how many armed troops the Federation has on earth, between them ,two ork Battlekroozers dropped a quarter of a million troops in mere hours during the attack on Armageddon.

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

Its only "quite possible" if someones got some evidence for such an activity, otherwise its baseless theorising.

Fact: Worf pulled out shoulder mounted weapon that blasted a few Sona off their feet and/or killed them.

Fact: He didn't effortlessly widebeam stun/kill them, or sweep a continuous phaser beam on stun/kill across their group.

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

Which does precisely zip all in countering the fact that they also deploy rather large numbers of everything else.

Just Gretchin, then? Worth knowing.

It wouldn't shock me that even in Thrakas horde there would be blackpowder weaponry, but ultimately it doesn't matter.

"Whom Gods Destroy"

You'll need to do better than that.

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

As I recall, extremely strong individuals can bash their way through transporters, as stupid as that seems, even better, Orks generate their own low level psychic field, one theorised to be part of how their technology functions.

Its entirely possible an ork could be bare arse naked and not get beamed ;)

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

What does it matter ? It doesn't bother the Orks, and they've got the Green to spare.

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

Give me some numbers then.

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.

You must be watching something different, because I could have thrown a tennis ball at that Ferenghi worf was shooting at and hit him.

Maybe I do; maybe I don't.

When a Painboy or mek starts chopping parts off until you tell him how to make the sparklies work, they will break.

Fuck, a Weirdboy could probably mindfuck them if motivated correctly.

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.

When I said you should back that up, I didn't mean repeat what you said with more words.

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

Well, firstly, What bloody information ?

Secondly, are you seriously arguing that guys with hand phasers are going to be able to shoot down supersonic bombers, when they can't effectively shoot someone in combat directly in front of 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.

Dear god, so your argument is that the Orks will crush earth, do their thing, then most will piss off, leaving behind some stragglers and "native" orks who will get defeated by the forces of the federation?

Thats....pretty funny.

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

Even assuming that you insist that we use lower numbers for the fleet, despite the evidence, the Orkish fleet had "dozens" of Roks "guarding their normally vulnerable tail", indeed they were a key part of the planetary assault.

Approximately 100 Roks were identified later on.

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?

Bloody hell, if the Spacehulks are crashlanded into Earth, then its a distinct possibility that the planet gets...kinda fucked up.

Nazdreg managed to crashland his on Medusa, luckily for the Imperium out in the arse end of nowhere, but the Gorkamorka/Angelis hulk laid waste to the planets existing civilisation, and when the Imperium blasted the rear third/engine off Angrons hulk in the first battle for Armageddon, it basically turned a garden world into a living hell IIRC.

The Orks will be fine, but humans probably won't be able to survive without hostile environment suits.

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.

*shrug* Your evidence for such numbers ? I don't mean just episode references either, given you seem to think you can represent your own opinion as "fact".

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

I'm inclined to agree here.

[Roondar]

I think it's pretty much a given that the Federation's only real hope of a ground combat victory lies not in their technology (even though the people rooting for the Ork's are clearly underestimating the Federation abilities here - cherry picking low-end results and refusing to accept equally canon higher-end results does not win any awards for honesty in my book) but in a possible numeric advantage.

Let's be clear: the Ork side has better groundstuff. Easy. They pretty much live for war and have all kinds of nasty stuff that'll make any form of defense difficult to say the least. I'd think the Federation would need at least a ten to one numerical advantage to have a chance and that this 10-1 would not be based on untrained people, but properly equipped and trained soldiers. I'm leaning towards even higher factors being needed, especially if Federation tricks like transporters do end up being unusable. (Which remains to be seen, stating 'well, <technobabble> has occasionally screwed up transporters so my <technobabble> will also stop them' is neither proof nor even nessecarilly likely)

In short, I'm leaning towards an Ork victory here. But with the sidenote that federation technology is quite a bit better than the ork-favouring side gives them credit for. But then, their source for Federation technology capabilities (stardestroyer.net) is neither accurate nor unbiased so I suppose it was to be expected.

[Gniops]

(even though the people rooting for the Ork's are clearly underestimating the Federation abilities here - cherry picking low-end results and refusing to accept equally canon higher-end results does not win any awards for honesty in my book

If you have a specific example, run with it, don't ponce around like this.

(Which remains to be seen, stating 'well, <technobabble> has occasionally screwed up transporters so my <technobabble> will also stop them' is neither proof nor even nessecarilly likely)

I could say the same thing, and probably have more of a basis for it, Orkish teleporters are best described as "warp tunnels" rather than direct matter transmission.

But with the sidenote that federation technology is quite a bit better than the ork-favouring side gives them credit for.

I'm sure theres something specific you can refer to here, rather than useless vague accusations.

But then, their source for Federation technology capabilities (stardestroyer.net) is neither accurate nor unbiased so I suppose it was to be expected.

I usually avoid the "catchphrases" of SD.net, I find it stupidly pompous most of the time to post things like "red herring" and so on, but I think a reference to poisoning the well might be appropriate here.

My source for Federation capabilities should be given here, in this thread to back up the claims of its advocates. At the moment I'm getting episode titles as proof of firepower and the Federation having planetary shields, or the capabilties of phasers, and even worse, personal opinion represented as fact, all mocked up with wishy washy "middle of the road", "personal preference" crap.

I mean, sweet Raptor Jesus, a guy with a hand phaser can knock down a bloody fighter plane as it zooms over on a bombing run!

[Roondar]

(even though the people rooting for the Ork's are clearly underestimating the Federation abilities here - cherry picking low-end results and refusing to accept equally canon higher-end results does not win any awards for honesty in my book

If you have a specific example, run with it, don't ponce around like this.

Handphaser accuracy and power would be a good start. Likewise range. There are indeed examples of low accuracy, power and range in the series. Funny enough, the more-numerous examples of high accuracy, power or range are casually forgotten or dismissed as flukes. I wonder why.

For instance on accuracy and range:

In ST:FC a handphaser (not even rifle) is used to hit someone who is running zig-zag at quite a distance. It was a one-hit affair, no further aiming, no retaking shots, not even a careful aiming. I believe it was Riker who made the shot and his words where "we don't have time for this". He flicked out his phaser casually and just shoots and hit. And no one present thought it odd he managed the shot. The guy hit was further away than the people in ST:insurrection where if I recall correctly.

This is not the only example of phasers hitting moving targets in one go and no one ever seems to think it odd they manage to do so. Other examples of phaser accuracy are in the various episodes where they do phaser training and manage to hit quite rapidly moving/appearing/disappearing targets which are rather much smaller than the average human. In rapid succession, not slowly shooting. Very few misses.

On power:

In ST:Insurrection a phaser blasts away a rockface like it wasn't even there. In TOS a handphaser on overload threatens several decks of the Enterprise. Riker blows up a head-sized rock with his tiny phaser (the thing is so small it fits in his hand). Worf cuts through metal with his phaser without any problem. Etc. Yet handphasers are stated to be extremely weak and pretty much useless except on the very highest setting.

(Which remains to be seen, stating 'well, <technobabble> has occasionally screwed up transporters so my <technobabble> will also stop them' is neither proof nor even nessecarilly likely)

I could say the same thing, and probably have more of a basis for it, Orkish teleporters are best described as "warp tunnels" rather than direct matter transmission.

I'm not claiming anything about teleporters. I'm merely pointing out that taking for granted that Fed transports won't work against Ork countermeasures is an assumption that need not be true.

But with the sidenote that federation technology is quite a bit better than the ork-favouring side gives them credit for.

I'm sure theres something specific you can refer to here, rather than useless vague accusations.

How about your assumption that Federation Starships would not be able to do much vs Ork ones.

But then, their source for Federation technology capabilities (stardestroyer.net) is neither accurate nor unbiased so I suppose it was to be expected.

I usually avoid the "catchphrases" of SD.net, I find it stupidly pompous most of the time to post things like "red herring" and so on, but I think a reference to poisoning the well might be appropriate here.

My source for Federation capabilities should be given here, in this thread to back up the claims of its advocates. At the moment I'm getting episode titles as proof of firepower and the Federation having planetary shields, or the capabilties of phasers, and even worse, personal opinion represented as fact, all mocked up with wishy washy "middle of the road", "personal preference" crap.

I mean, sweet Raptor Jesus, a guy with a hand phaser can knock down a bloody fighter plane as it zooms over on a bombing run!

A modern US fighter plane? Sure, if it's flying low enough - Phasers have shown reliable ability to pierce a variety of metals as well as having the ability to ignite fuel and other combustables. An Ork fighter? highly unlikely.

As to posting of episode titles etc, I understand the issue here but it's not entirely avoidable. There is an awful lot of ST about, we don't have pictures from every one handy. Which is exactly why using stardestroyer.net is a bad idea: it is biased against ST and deliberatly picks low-end examples, glosses over high-end examples (or calls them flukes) and adds in non-canon info (such as stuff from the TM's) as if it was in fact canon.

See, I'm not one to call people biased by default but surely reading the site you use as evidence for the Federation's abilities didn't strike you as unbiased? You simply must have known by the very tone set there that any info you'd get from it was liable to be as unflattering to ST as it could get.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Let's be clear: the Ork side has better groundstuff. Easy. They pretty much live for war and have all kinds of nasty stuff that'll make any form of defense difficult to say the least. I'd think the Federation would need at least a ten to one numerical advantage to have a chance and that this 10-1 would not be based on untrained people, but properly equipped and trained soldiers. I'm leaning towards even higher factors being needed, especially if Federation tricks like transporters do end up being unusable. (Which remains to be seen, stating 'well, <technobabble> has occasionally screwed up transporters so my <technobabble> will also stop them' is neither proof nor even nessecarilly likely)

Seems pretty plausible to me - but I'm counting on pretty much median estimates of ~50 million trained Starfleet personnel and ~5 million Orkz, with the note that Starfleet has a much better recruiting pool to draw from over the long term (and adapt very well).

Now. Since it's been a while since we talked about WH40K ships, I'll review what's actually known about them. The problem with these scenarios, of course, is that Gniops knows very little about Star Trek, and I know very little about Warhammer.

There are, to my knowledge, three estimates offered for Battlefleet Gothic weaponry yields.

610 GT per torpedo - 2.5e21 J.
2.1e21 J for a bombardment cannon of an Imperial Strike Cruiser.
1e25 J for a nova cannon.

Gniops himself has given me these figures. As I've already stated before, these are sufficient to kill a starship in one hit.

However, to ask ourselves whether or not Star Trek weapons will hurt WH40K ships, we should ask ourselves what power W40K ships pour out over time. These weapons appear to fire an average of once every five minutes.

As I pointed out during a previous discussion with Gniops, if you fire an e25J nova cannon every five minutes, that's a 250 exawatt average output. 2.1e21J every five minutes is 7 exawatts average output.

A GCS can put out 1-10 gigatons per second through its phaser array. That's 0.6-6 times a Strike Cruiser's bombardment attacks, which represent something like a third of its firepower. A Strike Cruiser is a serious, if not excessive, capital ship, well past an escort in firepower.

[Mr. Oragahn]

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.

Are we sure we're talking about firepower here?
Were these effects near immediate?

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.

But I also heard that this 610 gigaton warhead is of the size of a bus.

It is important to consider the yield in comparison to the size of the warhead(s), especially if we're talking about missiles that carry several of them.

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.

Yes, it seems to be correct. I mean, even if Trek could pull out some sort of super concentrated beams of a couple of gigatons, they'd never endanger Ork ships.

[Jedi Master Spock]

You don't actually have any evidence at all do you ?

just random theorising.

This is the fleet from Armageddon 3, which makes it low end a couple of million orks, since the Imperium deployed literally millions in response, and were still massively outnumbered across the entire planet and sector.

Two battlekroozers between them deployed 250k orks and their equipment via tellyporta and landing craft (Epic Armageddon)there are 12-16 other vessels that dwarf these ships and by themselves are described as being capable of carrying hundreds of thousands or even millions of orks, and over 400 vessels about half the displacement of the BKs, and then another 2000 ISD sized vessels, then another hundred Roks.

I'm not artificially inflating the numbers, or making them up completely as you appear to be. These are the facts.

So, in summary, we have very little idea how many Orks there or how many trained combatants will be on Earth.

This is a pretty serious obstacle to certainty.

It wouldn't shock me that even in Thrakas horde there would be blackpowder weaponry, but ultimately it doesn't matter.

Actually, it's very interesting that some Orks would use black powder weaponry. Would a giant black powder Ork slugga really be much less effective in WH40K terms?

You'll need to do better than that.

No, not really.

As I recall, extremely strong individuals can bash their way through transporters, as stupid as that seems, even better, Orks generate their own low level psychic field, one theorised to be part of how their technology functions.

Its entirely possible an ork could be bare arse naked and not get beamed ;)

Through teleporters, you mean?

Not particularly plausible for transporters, but it would help provide a justification for my underplaying the offensive capabilities of transporters.

What does it matter ? It doesn't bother the Orks, and they've got the Green to spare.

They don't have the Green to spare. That's the primary issue in this scenario.

Give me some numbers then.

Try for something in the range of a ~30 km asteroid with a high concentration of rare earth metals. Call it a bulk density of 3-4 g/cc.

When a Painboy or mek starts chopping parts off until you tell him how to make the sparklies work, they will break.

Fuck, a Weirdboy could probably mindfuck them if motivated correctly.

You can probably get a lot of information out of prisoners, yes - but it doesn't change the problem of it being a very rare Ork who can operate sophisticated and delicate captured equipment.

When I said you should back that up, I didn't mean repeat what you said with more words.

When I asked you for details on how you think an Orkish gun wagon can resist phaser fire, I wanted information about Orkish gun wagons.

Well, firstly, What bloody information ?

Everything. Atmospheric performance, heat profile, maneuverability, armor - the works.

Secondly, are you seriously arguing that guys with hand phasers are going to be able to shoot down supersonic bombers, when they can't effectively shoot someone in combat directly in front of them ?

We'll address the question of what and how the fighta-bombas would most likely be targeted with after we get some good specifications for them.

It may be that shuttlepods are quite sufficient to maintain air parity without worrying about the mechanisms of ground-to-air fire.

Dear god, so your argument is that the Orks will crush earth, do their thing, then most will piss off, leaving behind some stragglers and "native" orks who will get defeated by the forces of the federation?

Thats....pretty funny.

No, it isn't.

Even assuming that you insist that we use lower numbers for the fleet, despite the evidence, the Orkish fleet had "dozens" of Roks "guarding their normally vulnerable tail", indeed they were a key part of the planetary assault.

Approximately 100 Roks were identified later on.

Isn't this somewhat inconsistent with what Opecoiler said about Roks being unable to enter the Warp?

Bloody hell, if the Spacehulks are crashlanded into Earth, then its a distinct possibility that the planet gets...kinda fucked up.

Nazdreg managed to crashland his on Medusa, luckily for the Imperium out in the arse end of nowhere, but the Gorkamorka/Angelis hulk laid waste to the planets existing civilisation, and when the Imperium blasted the rear third/engine off Angrons hulk in the first battle for Armageddon, it basically turned a garden world into a living hell IIRC.

The Orks will be fine, but humans probably won't be able to survive without hostile environment suits.

Looking here, I see an estimate for Space Hulks being 30 km. Enough to cause ecological devastation, but not short-term destruction outside of a relatively small (globally speaking) area.

I also see some comments suggesting an army of 3 million for some Orkish invasion army similar to this one, so I feel my initial guess of 5 million is not necessarily out of the ballpark.

*shrug* Your evidence for such numbers ? I don't mean just episode references either, given you seem to think you can represent your own opinion as "fact".

Which numbers are you disputing? The number of ships, or their firepower?

The number of ships is most particularly backed up by the Dominion War, although a ballpark of the Klingon order of battle from the Klingon Civil War suggests similar numbers of Klingon ships in particular as seen later in the F-K-R alliance.

The firepower is backed up by a wide range of incidents from "Pegasus" to "Masks" to "Skin of Evil" to "The Paradise Syndrome" to "Balance of Terror," as well as qualitative analysis based on peak warp core outputs. (Weapons fire peaking at 1-10% of overall ship's power, or up to 15% for something like the Defiant.)

[Jedi Master Spock]

But I also heard that this 610 gigaton warhead is of the size of a bus.

It is important to consider the yield in comparison to the size of the warhead(s), especially if we're talking about missiles that carry several of them.

In light of all the blurry information flying around, I decided to grab some official looking sourcebooks.

The Battlefleet Gothic rulebook says that a typical torpedo is 200 feet long, i.e., 60m, almost three times the length of a runabout. To gauge by this image, which looks pretty close to a 5x1 cylinder, it's probably a bit under 7,000 cubic meters. That's only around a sixth the total displacement of a regular old 110m Bird of Prey, and only about a dozen times the size of a runabout.

I can believe that the warhead itself is the size of a bus.

[Gniops]

So, in summary, we have very little idea how many Orks there or how many trained combatants will be on Earth.

Correction.

We have a basis for orkish numbers, if the approximately four BKs can deploy a million Orks, and they are roughly 5-6 km long, then we could posit that Orkish ships might have twixt 40k and 50k troops per 1000 meters of their vessels.

Ignoring spacehulks, Roks, Kroozers and Battlecruisers, with just the 2000 escorts, and reducing that number to 10k just for kicks, the orks would be invading with 20 million troops.

You can't even give me a basic number for the earths population.

This is a pretty serious obstacle to certainty.

I think you are deliberately looking for ambiguity myself.

Actually, it's very interesting that some Orks would use black powder weaponry. Would a giant black powder Ork slugga really be much less effective in WH40K terms?

I have little patience for this sort of thing. What are you implying ?

No, not really.

I take it you absolutely refuse to justify your argument for the existence of planetary shield technology capable of repelling the fire of thousands of vessels, or the ability of the feds to erect one, apparently from scratch during an invasion larger in scale than any planetary assault in the Federations history.

Beyond of course stating the name of an episode ?

Not particularly plausible for transporters, but it would help provide a justification for my underplaying the offensive capabilities of transporters.

I recall mention of some genengineered/uberhuman type disrupting transport by physical action. Are you saying this hasn't happened ?

They don't have the Green to spare. That's the primary issue in this scenario.

I take it you've come up with some numbers for the earth garrison then ?

Try for something in the range of a ~30 km asteroid with a high concentration of rare earth metals. Call it a bulk density of 3-4 g/cc.

If you can give me a number, you've clearly performed analysis, where are the workings behind this ?

Y'see, since you admitted that you'd made up that troop number for earth, I find it difficult to take anything you say on face value.

You can probably get a lot of information out of prisoners, yes - but it doesn't change the problem of it being a very rare Ork who can operate sophisticated and delicate captured equipment.

Yeah, they're called Mekboyz, and they manage to build interstellar starships, a tricorder isn't going to be some inpenetrable box of secrets to them, neither is the abundant treknology scattered around after they kick the shit out of the Feddies.

Besides, its not exactly an issue thats likely to confound this invasion, not being able to operate Feddy kit.

When I asked you for details on how you think an Orkish gun wagon can resist phaser fire, I wanted information about Orkish gun wagons.

Again, you aren't actually going to prove that phasers are battleship broadsides in handgun form are you ?

I'm just going to get the runaround.

Everything. Atmospheric performance, heat profile, maneuverability, armor - the works.

What fucking madness, we have an aircraft that can fly into orbit and canonically performs its attack runs at the highest possibly velocity, i.e. supersonic, and you want to know shit about its heat profile and armour to ascertain whether or not a bloke with a gun you yourself attributed the range and accuracy of a modern rifle could shoot it down.

What bizarro planet do you come from that detailed tech specs are required to decide whether or not some bloke with a Space-M-16 can shoot down a freaking jet?

Let me just go back to the heat profile bit again.

Do you have a heat profile for even a modern jet fighter, A trek shuttle craft ? Do hand phasers "auto-aim" systems lock on to heat signatures ?

If so, what the fuck happened in every one of those "miss" incidents ?

If not, then we go back to the question of why the hell do you need to know this ?

We'll address the question of what and how the fighta-bombas would most likely be targeted with after we get some good specifications for them.

I'll take this as a tacit admission that you were full of shit about the handphasers shooting down aircraft bit.

It may be that shuttlepods are quite sufficient to maintain air parity without worrying about the mechanisms of ground-to-air fire.

Let me guess, even asking for an estimate of how many shuttlepods there are is an exercise in futility.

No, it isn't.

It really is, you are arguing for a Federation victory based on their opponents pissing off due to complete boredom to annihilate the rest of the Federation.

Isn't this somewhat inconsistent with what Opecoiler said about Roks being unable to enter the Warp?

I rok.

Opecoiler bows before my 40k powah.

Battle For Armageddon, the Imperial forces attack from behind the main body of the orkish fleet only to encounter Orkish Roks trailing behind the pack, defending the normally vulnerable rear of Orky fleets.

Roks are captured often using traktor beam tech, although Thrakas fleet was the most sophisticated, so he could have equipped the roks with Warp engines, its also possible they were anchored via beam and other more physical means for the warp jump.

Looking here, I see an estimate for Space Hulks being 30 km. Enough to cause ecological devastation, but not short-term destruction outside of a relatively small (globally speaking) area.

These aren't inert rocks, they've got engines larger than trek space stations.

I note you managed to go for the random estimate of 30km without any proof or source, while completely ignoring the sourced reference to Eternity of Pain four posts down.

Par for the course.

I also see some comments suggesting an army of 3 million for some Orkish invasion army similar to this one, so I feel my initial guess of 5 million is not necessarily out of the ballpark.

4 ships dropped ONE FREAKING THIRD of that number.

Thats how out of the ball park you are, there are 12-16 vessels at bare minumum, using the number you've plucked selectively from the internet, larger than those four ships put tip to tail.

Seriously, you've actually disintigrated the ball park you've hit the ball so hard.

Which numbers are you disputing? The number of ships, or their firepower?

At this point consider me to be disputing everything you post until theres proof behind it.

The number of ships is most particularly backed up by the Dominion War, although a ballpark of the Klingon order of battle from the Klingon Civil War suggests similar numbers of Klingon ships in particular as seen later in the F-K-R alliance.

my god, post the damn numbers already, who said it, when did they say it ?

You know, proof!

The firepower is backed up by a wide range of incidents from "Pegasus" to "Masks" to "Skin of Evil" to "The Paradise Syndrome" to "Balance of Terror," as well as qualitative analysis based on peak warp core outputs. (Weapons fire peaking at 1-10% of overall ship's power, or up to 15% for something like the Defiant.)

A wide variety of 40k sources show that battleships can roast continents off planets, that the multi-teraton impact of a Nova cannon shell against an ork spacehulk is like throwing an egg at a brick wall, blah fucking blah.

You have absolutely no intention of doing anything but give me episode names.

If you can derive calculations from dialogue and perform qualitative analysis, why is it like pulling teeth to get you to post any of it ?

why won't you post actual evidence?

[Opecoiler]

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

Utter crap. They had just been resupplied.

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.

Proof that the mortars are automatically aiming? Also, proof that the Orks are just going to sit still in the positions you've programmed into your tricorder six hours ago?

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.

Rocket boots that only enabled vertical movement. Something tells me that isn't gonna be of much use here.

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.

Proof that they'll be paying attention to their tricorders in the middle of a furious battle?

"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.

Proof that they've been stockpiling personal shields?

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.

Just like on AR-558, right?

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.

No, they don't. This is a no-limits fallacy. Descent established that the E-D can transport people at a sustained maximum rate of one person per second.

A piecemeal arrival means that the Starfleet personnel will be easy pickings for the Orks.

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.

Another no-limits fallacy, since transporters are jammed by lots of damned things.

(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?)

Name one time that the tactic was used against groups of enemy infantry.

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

It will be more than wince-worthy-it's going to throw the surviving Starfleet troopers into a state of panicked confusion, which the Orks can and will exploit.

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

Bull. The one planetary shield we saw could be breached by the weapons of one ship.

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.

Most of the worthwhile targets destroyed by bombardment will be destroyed accidentally. Ship weaponry as powerful as 40k weapons tends to create large explosions.

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,[/quote]

Darkstar's site counts as much for evidence in Trek vs. Wars as Alex Jones's site counts as much for evidence in the causes behind 9/11.

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.

Again, AR-558. A single continous sweep or long automatic burst could have cut down the Jem'hadar charge. What do the Starfleet troopers do? Fire single shots and nothing else, of course!

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.

Heavier weapons: Proof?

Faster ground vehicles? Because a dune buggy that can only fire backward is so going to beat an Ork warbuggy with a fully rotating turret (sarcasm)

Strategic mobility: Orbital supremacy, reinforced even more by the hundreds of Roks they'll be making.

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.

Proof or just making stuff up?

Besides, 10% of as many hits equalizes out nicely when the Ork in question fires ten times as many shots.

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.

And yet, the Orks regularly beat the Guard in battle.

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.

Tanks in WWII were quite vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry. Yet they were still immensely useful, because they could dish out great degrees of firepower

Same deal with the Ork battle and gun wagons. Try hitting a target when you're constantly being showered with explosives and bullets much louder than Trek weaponry. If you aren't killed, you're almost certainly going to be suppressed, pinned, and terrified.

And you know what, Spock. I'm humoring you. I'm accepting your ridiculously low claim of only 5 million Orks. There exists evidence that far more than 5 million Orks landed on Armageddon. Heck, there may be more Orks than there are civilians on Trek Earth.

Why don't you come over to SB.com and debate this and Fed vs. Empire? You've only presented your case on your tiny little board that has fewer users online total than SB.com and SD.net generally have online at any one time, and on ST.com-hardly the most neutral place.

I've come over to your forum to debate, and I am convinced of its bias. It would only be fair for you to do the same.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Correction.

We have a basis for orkish numbers, if the approximately four BKs can deploy a million Orks, and they are roughly 5-6 km long, then we could posit that Orkish ships might have twixt 40k and 50k troops per 1000 meters of their vessels.

Ignoring spacehulks, Roks, Kroozers and Battlecruisers, with just the 2000 escorts, and reducing that number to 10k just for kicks, the orks would be invading with 20 million troops.

You can't even give me a basic number for the earths population.

Except that size ~ the cube of dimension. If the four BattleKroozers carry 250,000 troops each, and are 5 km long, and the escorts are 1.6 km, we'd expect each escort to carry ~8,000 troops, for 1.6 million troops in escorts - i.e., barely more than in the four BattleKroozers.

It's quite possible that our base assumption is wrong, of course, in which case all estimates are out the window, but it's a reasonable assumption.

Can you develop the order of battle a little better?

I have little patience for this sort of thing. What are you implying ?

I'm genuinely curious as to what difference to expect between a high-ex Slugga and a black powder Slugga.

Beyond of course stating the name of an episode ?

The episode is reasonably clear and the assumption of scalable power underlying it perfectly reasonable.

I recall mention of some genengineered/uberhuman type disrupting transport by physical action. Are you saying this hasn't happened ?

It's not reasonable to assume it applies to Orks.

I take it you've come up with some numbers for the earth garrison then ?

Nothing more specific than what I mentioned before.
[qutoe]If you can give me a number, you've clearly performed analysis, where are the workings behind this ?[/quote]
Assuming that the asteroid can collapse inward on itself faster than a couple cm/s gives you a Pegasus asteroid large enough to justify gigaton yields.

Yeah, they're called Mekboyz, and they manage to build interstellar starships, a tricorder isn't going to be some inpenetrable box of secrets to them, neither is the abundant treknology scattered around after they kick the shit out of the Feddies.

Actually, we're talking about a device much more sophisticated than a basic drive system.

Besides, its not exactly an issue thats likely to confound this invasion, not being able to operate Feddy kit.

Right. The question of acquiring improved sensors may not even come up.

Again, you aren't actually going to prove that phasers are battleship broadsides in handgun form are you ?

I'm just going to get the runaround.

You're giving me the runaround. Discussion of phasers can be found around here very easily; discussion of Orkish gun wagons cannot.

If not, then we go back to the question of why the hell do you need to know this ?

A manually operated phaser rifle isn't even the only option on the table, and because the Feddies may have close-air superiority in any case.

I'll take this as a tacit admission that you were full of shit about the handphasers shooting down aircraft bit.

Actually, we can expect infantry operated anti-aircraft weaponry.

What we don't expect is that such weaponry is much more powerful than a gigajoule range phaser blast. Got it? Now, are you going to actually cough up anything resembling specifications, or should we just assume that any old shuttlepod is going to nail an Ork aircraft, and that accordingly there won't be any operating close to the surface in most battles?

It really is, you are arguing for a Federation victory based on their opponents pissing off due to complete boredom to annihilate the rest of the Federation.

No, I'm not. I'm genuinely curious about whether or not most of the Ork fleet would be hanging around in Earth orbit for months waiting to get hammered.

I rok.

Opecoiler bows before my 40k powah.

Except that I now have the BFG rulebook that he quoted, and it very definitely says Roks can't enter the Warp.

Is there any possibility that the Roks were assembled in Armageddon?

These aren't inert rocks, they've got engines larger than trek space stations.

I note you managed to go for the random estimate of 30km without any proof or source, while completely ignoring the sourced reference to Eternity of Pain four posts down.

And what size does that give?

my god, post the damn numbers already, who said it, when did they say it ?

It's not a question of explicit numbers. We have thousands of ships projected lost in victorious action against the Dominion. We have 30,000 Dominion ships, which outnumber the Klingon's fleet 15:1 (echoing the rough figures given in the Klingon civil war, in which at least 8 squadrons on the side of the Moghs and 7 squadrons on the side of the Duras means that most of the fleet is still uncommitted, i.e., the fleet has >30 squadrons, with each squadron being enough to control multiple sectors.)

We have, fairly consistently, Dominion forces outnumbering F-K-R forces by close to 2:1 in key battles.

We also have the NCCs, too. All of it adds up fairly well to indicate that the order of magnitude of the Federation fleet is e4.

A wide variety of 40k sources show that battleships can roast continents off planets, that the multi-teraton impact of a Nova cannon shell against an ork spacehulk is like throwing an egg at a brick wall, blah fucking blah.

Actually, the "throwing eggs at a brick wall" quote is almost certainly hyperbolic.

The "roasting continents" bit is what's used to quantify the Strike cruiser's bombardment cannons, is it not?

If you can derive calculations from dialogue and perform qualitative analysis, why is it like pulling teeth to get you to post any of it ?

Because most of it is right here, and also because I tend to assume (perhaps mistakenly) that people here already have some familiarity with Star Trek. The thread about Trek reactors is a particularly good read.

So I'll point you to the TOS weapons page and the TNG weapons page and see if you have any problems.

Something that does particularly strike me is that WH40K shields don't stop torpedos, and that WH40K torpedos aren't shielded. What, I will ask, prevents Starfleet from aiming directly for critical systems (e.g., weapons, reactors, drive units, et cetera) using photon torpedos, and disabling the ships elegantly without resorting to massed hammering?

[Jedi Master Spock]

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.

Proof that the mortars are automatically aiming? Also, proof that the Orks are just going to sit still in the positions you've programmed into your tricorder six hours ago?

Read what I said more carefully. Given the data I pointed out and a free weekend, I could program an automatically aiming mortar that selects Ork targets in real time. A team of Starfleet engineers should have no trouble whatsoever. Mortars are that simple to deal with, so - as I pointed out - there's no reason to assume Starfleet personnel will be unable to use them to full effect.

Rocket boots that only enabled vertical movement. Something tells me that isn't gonna be of much use here.

Opecoiler, they're rockets. You can point them a different direction.

Proof that they'll be paying attention to their tricorders in the middle of a furious battle?

*chirp* "More flying Orks coming in!"

Proof that they've been stockpiling personal shields?

"Homefront."

LEYTON
We've been preparing for something
like this for a long time. We
have stockpiles of phaser rifles,
personal forcefields, photon
grenades, enough to equip an
entire army. I can start placing
troops in the streets immediately.

No, they don't. This is a no-limits fallacy. Descent established that the E-D can transport people at a sustained maximum rate of one person per second.

Given Voyager has beamed people much faster than that (a couple hundred in moments), and given also that we have a very high number of pads on Earth, I wouldn't count on there being any practically low limit.

Another no-limits fallacy, since transporters are jammed by lots of damned things.

Very few, actually.

Name one time that the tactic was used against groups of enemy infantry.

Beaming hostiles has been done. Enemy infantry in groups simply aren't represented enough to expect this to have been used.

Bull. The one planetary shield we saw could be breached by the weapons of one ship.

Actually, they thought it could be breached. It turned out that it was quite impenetrable for full phaser power...

... and that was a shield with a single, not particularly high powered source.

Darkstar's site counts as much for evidence in Trek vs. Wars

... as Wong's site.

Understand now?

Again, AR-558. A single continous sweep or long automatic burst could have cut down the Jem'hadar charge. What do the Starfleet troopers do? Fire single shots and nothing else, of course!

A similar charge in "Rocks and Shoals" is gunned down in seconds. Don't expect wholesale consistency.

Heavier weapons: Proof?

Name one ground weapon used by Orks that does more than an antimatter grenade the size of your fist.

Strategic mobility: Orbital supremacy, reinforced even more by the hundreds of Roks they'll be making.

This isn't going to be a matter of decades.

Besides, 10% of as many hits equalizes out nicely when the Ork in question fires ten times as many shots.

What makes you think they will?

And yet, the Orks regularly beat the Guard in battle.

While outnumbered with weapons deadlier than lasguns?

Tanks in WWII were quite vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry. Yet they were still immensely useful, because they could dish out great degrees of firepower

That, and most infantry-portable anti-tank weaponry had to hit just right to damage them. Tanks have always been most useful on the basis of the fact that the typical infantryman has few weapons with more than an off-chance of hurting a tank.

There exists evidence that far more than 5 million Orks landed on Armageddon. Heck, there may be more Orks than there are civilians on Trek Earth.

By all means, present your case for this! As I said, enough Orkz will overrun Earth. That's not the issue under dispute. The dispute appears to be over how many it would take.

I've come over to your forum to debate, and I am convinced of its bias. It would only be fair for you to do the same.

Bias? You have not been banned or threatened with a ban, nor will you be so long as you follow the very basic rules of conduct we have here.

I'm not interested in registering on any board that will ban solely on the basis of my holding a dissenting opinion from the moderation staff. Nor am I interested in wasting too much time online outside of my own projects.

[Jaded]

Are we sure we're talking about firepower here?
Were these effects near immediate?

Yes and yes. They were described as petals of flame the size of continents.

Similarly, there's an old calc for bombardment cannons based on Execution Hour where they are noted to fire at a quarter the speed of light (plus whatever the velocity of the firing ship is and, considering 'attack speed' is .75c for Imperial cruisers, this might be a considerable amount). Nova cannon shells, which are noted as being similar in size to bombardment cannon shells, are said to be 50 meters in diameter in Warriors of Ultramar. Since both are said to fire 'building sized shells', a 50 x 30m shell isn't entirely flailing in the dark.

The original calc assumed the shell was 99% empty (almost asininely conservative) and came out with 2.129E21 joules. For more sane shell masses (considering the materials constraints, it'd be almost impossible to have an empty shell, and the tech priests would be stupid to not at least fill it with more of the stuff they made the skin of) the calc ranges as high as 4e23J (more in line with other known calcs).

For instance, BFG clearly claims battleships as capable of leveling continents. There's even a reference somewhere to BBs being able to vaporize continents, but that gets a bit into the extreme high end (rather, the second teir high end -- one could look back into the immediately post-Heresy era and make some claims that a small flotilla could mass scatter a planet).

But I also heard that this 610 gigaton warhead is of the size of a bus.

It is important to consider the yield in comparison to the size of the warhead(s), especially if we're talking about missiles that carry several of them.

Actually, it's not the size of a bus because it's not one warhead. It's a multitude of 5 gigaton fusion devices (122 to be exact). Space hulks aren't known for their sturdy construction, so this specific sort of torpedo is meant for spreading the damage over a wide area so as to break the hulk early on.

We've no real idea as to the power of plasma torpedoes. Presumably it's comparable to normal Imperial weaponry, though, which tends towards multiple digit teratons (and it would have a hefty KE component, too, as torpedoes have a base velocity of a tenth C and they're the size of a WWII destroyer).

Yes, it seems to be correct. I mean, even if Trek could pull out some sort of super concentrated beams of a couple of gigatons, they'd never endanger Ork ships.

A few gigatons wouldn't accomplish much against anything bar perhaps the occasional rogue trader in 40k. It might be enough to give the Tau a rough fight if you bring enough sheer numbers.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Are we sure we're talking about firepower here?
Were these effects near immediate?

Yes and yes. They were described as petals of flame the size of continents.

Similarly, there's an old calc for bombardment cannons based on Execution Hour where they are noted to fire at a quarter the speed of light (plus whatever the velocity of the firing ship is and, considering 'attack speed' is .75c for Imperial cruisers, this might be a considerable amount). Nova cannon shells, which are noted as being similar in size to bombardment cannon shells, are said to be 50 meters in diameter in Warriors of Ultramar. Since both are said to fire 'building sized shells', a 50 x 30m shell isn't entirely flailing in the dark.

The original calc assumed the shell was 99% empty (almost asininely conservative) and came out with 2.129E21 joules. For more sane shell masses (considering the materials constraints, it'd be almost impossible to have an empty shell, and the tech priests would be stupid to not at least fill it with more of the stuff they made the skin of) the calc ranges as high as 4e23J (more in line with other known calcs).

For instance, BFG clearly claims battleships as capable of leveling continents. There's even a reference somewhere to BBs being able to vaporize continents, but that gets a bit into the extreme high end (rather, the second teir high end -- one could look back into the immediately post-Heresy era and make some claims that a small flotilla could mass scatter a planet).

But I also heard that this 610 gigaton warhead is of the size of a bus.

It is important to consider the yield in comparison to the size of the warhead(s), especially if we're talking about missiles that carry several of them.

Actually, it's not the size of a bus because it's not one warhead. It's a multitude of 5 gigaton fusion devices (122 to be exact). Space hulks aren't known for their sturdy construction, so this specific sort of torpedo is meant for spreading the damage over a wide area so as to break the hulk early on.

We've no real idea as to the power of plasma torpedoes. Presumably it's comparable to normal Imperial weaponry, though, which tends towards multiple digit teratons (and it would have a hefty KE component, too, as torpedoes have a base velocity of a tenth C and they're the size of a WWII destroyer).

Yes, it seems to be correct. I mean, even if Trek could pull out some sort of super concentrated beams of a couple of gigatons, they'd never endanger Ork ships.

A few gigatons wouldn't accomplish much against anything bar perhaps the occasional rogue trader in 40k. It might be enough to give the Tau a rough fight if you bring enough sheer numbers.

What elements do they use for their fusion?

What are their power cores? How big are they? How much fuel do they have?

Those firepower figures are impressive when you talk about nukes, but when you consider that ships' shields are supposed to withstand a couple of those... just how they manage to power their shields? It's easier to obtain large energies with nukes than with reactors.
The amount of fuel they'd burn in such conditions would be staggering.

Thinking about it, if Trek threw bus sized warhead largely filled with dense antimatter and matter, they'd get yields even higher.

[Jedi Master Spock]

The original calc assumed the shell was 99% empty (almost asininely conservative) and came out with 2.129E21 joules. For more sane shell masses (considering the materials constraints, it'd be almost impossible to have an empty shell, and the tech priests would be stupid to not at least fill it with more of the stuff they made the skin of) the calc ranges as high as 4e23J (more in line with other known calcs).

What other known calcs? I'm genuinely curious here, Warhammer data seems remarkably sparse. I've done a few searches to find out what fanalysis has already been done, but it seems pretty minimal.