Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

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Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by PainRack »

There appears to be a fan consensus that IG armies are superior to SW armies but is this more a the rule of cool as opposed to an objective analysis?

The most popular arguments appear to be a mixture of big numbers and big tanks, hardened armies that can take huge casualties/attrition warfare and superior tactics/abilities.

Of the three, the first two don't neccessarily hold true in a comparison or a war.

For big numbers/tanks, the GE could just as easily amass similar numbers as the Guard equivalent and has done so in several smaller conflicts. In a war sense, what is going on however is that the Guard armies and SW armies are fighting on different strategic scales and doctrines. In a galaxy where response time to raids are in hours, major raids of a day to be successful, the use of orbital bombardment and airpower carrying kiloton weapons(the use of X-wings to kill YV armor columns for example), huge airmobility, even in the older GE supplements, the SW armies fight scattered and group together to take major objectives like modern day armies fighting in a nuclear war. The Guard on the other hand response time is slower, resources/capabilities are less certain due to the vagaries of warp so they go forth to fight in large armies, certain that at least some of what they need will get to the theatre(Apocalyspe).
They are willing to absorb much larger casualties from WMD and orbital support is relatively more limited and easily denied via the use of void shields and theatre guns.

Style wise aside, the GE can easily amass similar numbers to fight over a single planet or even in a concerted front/push against an Imperium sector, even though the Imperium possess largies armies overall. Certainly, the strategic reserve and response time for SW is much faster and relatively larger. Talos campaign and etc all highlight the relative small reserve components at subsector/sector level, along with the expected response time. Consider that even during the Clone Wars, the Republic was able to dedicate a regiment of clonetroopers to rescue a Jedi in Shatterpoint or amass forces to fight at Kashyaak.

For big tanks..... seriously,what? The TIE crawler or some Rebel rework is literally the only tank that's inferior to the common Leman Russ. Every other Imperial/Republic/Rebel model is on par if not superior in "some" aspect. In terms of armoured capabilities, SW armies are not inferior to the Leman Russ at all, and in some aspects like the Juggernaut, are superior. Juggernaut weapons carry anti-starfighter capabilities, as seen in the Rogue Squadron novels, suggesting kiloton weaponery. And that's just it. The heavy tanks, the Baneblades, Shadowswords and etc..... they're relatively rare and while comparitively more durable than the SW equivalent of Juggernauts/Flying Fortress, the SW armies have more of them. This even as landspeeders, airpower is used to supplement armoured firepower/artillery in SW tactics.

Even if we were to bring in the Titans, the AT-AT capabilities provide limited similarity and protection to the Warhound. Certainly, the prevalent of kiloton weaponery and artillery like the Loronar mobile turbolaser battery,SPHAT if not airpower in the sense of TIE bombers and etc means that the Titans do not provide a substantial advantage, or are even superior to SW armies.

The massed infantry line of the Clone army has been brought up for ridicule before but seriously, First Rank, Second Rank fire IG is not the one to laugh at the Clone Army. Especially Mordian regs. While the IG armies tactics do work in their context of war, one simply cannot dimiss the SW armies as being tactically inferior based on the movie depiction.

Ditto to the regenerative capabilities/lethality of Imperial warfare. An army that can fight for months, a fort that can laugh off tactical orbital bombardment/ground invasion for years, requiring the use of the Last chancers to infiltrate and complete the job suggests relatively low lethality of ground ops, no matter the regenerative capabilities of the Imperium forces. Similarly, SW is able to more easily get more bodies, more droids if neccessary to meet any front requirements due to the superiority of hyperdrive, so, the larger regenerative capabilities of the IG is not going to be an advantage against a SW foe.

On the other hand.....

IG artillery is superior to SW armies, but oddly enough, one seldom sees this brought up other than DeathStrike WMD........

IG elites are supposedly superior to SW armies. But seriously..... The Stormtroopers capabilities/tactics were replicated by the Clonetroopers during the Geonosis campaign. The clonetroopers simultaneously disabled the TF airpower, C3 capabilites in the opening campaign, assisted by Republic commandoes and etc. And coordinated this with the use of airpower. Consider SW raids with say... the Talos raid or etc, on what do fans support the basis of stormtroopers being superior to SW elite capabilties like the basic stormtrooper, Imperial commando and etc?

The IG can potentially call upon superior elites, in the form of both Sororitas and Space Marines but they are a scarce resource, and NOT an IG force at all.



So......... again, on what basis are IG armies routinely superior to SW forces?
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Brother-Captain Gaius »

PainRack wrote:IG elites are supposedly superior to SW armies. But seriously..... The Stormtroopers capabilities/tactics were replicated by the Clonetroopers during the Geonosis campaign. The clonetroopers simultaneously disabled the TF airpower, C3 capabilites in the opening campaign, assisted by Republic commandoes and etc. And coordinated this with the use of airpower. Consider SW raids with say... the Talos raid or etc, on what do fans support the basis of stormtroopers being superior to SW elite capabilties like the basic stormtrooper, Imperial commando and etc?
Where has this ever been claimed? I don't see why the respective factions' elites would differ significantly. In fact, they're probably some of the closest match-ups possible between the two universes, simply because special forces follow the same general idea no matter where in time and space they are, and in this case share a comparable tech level. Stormtrooper (40k) vs Storm Commandos or the like is pretty neck-and-neck, I should think. It's like a Green Beret vs SAS pissing match.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by white_rabbit »

This sounds like another one of Painracks moronic pet delusions.

I.e. some imaginary fan consensus we need his help to realise is wrong/right/not what he thinks it should be.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by PainRack »

that"s odd wr,cause u Were one of those who advocated wh40k,ig armies are better on the ground n u also did participate in the sb threads where this elite spec ops was brought up years ago.

and....i see another potential discussion is going to be derailed again because of WR entrance.

of course,since i"m delusional,its should be obvious to search the threads on this forum and prove that there is no fan consensus that IoM armies are stronger on the ground than GE armies.... Or are you going to stick to the red herring and somehow use "oh,elites are comparable,thus,PainRack is delusional"?
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Falkenhayn »

Seriously, are you posting drunk?
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Falkenhayn »

PainRack wrote:There appears to be a fan consensus that IG armies are superior to SW armies but is this more a the rule of cool as opposed to an objective analysis?
Could you quote it please?
The most popular arguments appear to be a mixture of big numbers and big tanks, hardened armies that can take huge casualties/attrition warfare and superior tactics/abilities.
I'd like to know the specifics of these arguments, so please repost them here.
So......... again, on what basis are IG armies routinely superior to SW forces?
Like Gaius said, who's saying this?
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Boeing 757 »

Falkenhayn wrote:
PainRack wrote:There appears to be a fan consensus that IG armies are superior to SW armies but is this more a the rule of cool as opposed to an objective analysis?
Could you quote it please?
He has a point going for him about that, I'm afraid. It doesn't take much searching for one to find some abode of 40k fans on the net championing the superiority of either the IG or Space Marines over stormtroopers, and bringing the Endor-debacle up as proof that SW ground forces suck. it becomes worse in regards to space assets; too many times I've had some nut claiming that an Emperor-class battleship can blow a planet up "Death Star-style." It's utterly laughable, but it's obvious that these fans aren't looking at the subject rationally. It's the same argument of style over substance that most of us have seen countless times beforehand, often coming from rapid Trekkies of the same school of thought. Myself, I don't really pay much heed to them because I know that they're just looking at some thing, and saying that it will win primarily because one thing looks "cooler" than the other. I think that this is the only board that I've found thus far which actually prides itself in comparing each side's pros and cons with as little bias as possible.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Falkenhayn »

Boeing 757 wrote: He has a point going for him about that, I'm afraid. It doesn't take much searching for one to find some abode of 40k fans on the net championing the superiority of either the IG or Space Marines over stormtroopers, and bringing the Endor-debacle up as proof that SW ground forces suck. it becomes worse in regards to space assets; too many times I've had some nut claiming that an Emperor-class battleship can blow a planet up "Death Star-style." It's utterly laughable, but it's obvious that these fans aren't looking at the subject rationally. It's the same argument of style over substance that most of us have seen countless times beforehand, often coming from rapid Trekkies of the same school of thought. Myself, I don't really pay much heed to them because I know that they're just looking at some thing, and saying that it will win primarily because one thing looks "cooler" than the other. I think that this is the only board that I've found thus far which actually prides itself in comparing each side's pros and cons with as little bias as possible.
Which still isn't sufficient evidence that this horrible straw man exists. Appeal to Ignorance, Anecdotal evidence, and all that.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by white_rabbit »

that"s odd wr,cause u Were one of those who advocated wh40k,ig armies are better on the ground n u also did participate in the sb threads where this elite spec ops was brought up years ago.
Fuck me, has this been simmering with you for fucking years ?

I'd have to echo the comment here, are you bloody drunk or something?


and....i see another potential discussion is going to be derailed again because of WR entrance.
Wow, really?
of course,since i"m delusional,its should be obvious to search the threads on this forum and prove that there is no fan consensus that IoM armies are stronger on the ground than GE armies.... Or are you going to stick to the red herring and somehow use "oh,elites are comparable,thus,PainRack is delusional"?
Lets be clear, you've been wittering about the Imperial Guard, although you bounced onto titans, but then dismissed "scarce forces" because they aren't Imperial Guard, so make your fucking mind up about what this discussion is supposed to be about.

At the moment, it seems to be another misconceived Painrack wibble-fest, inconsistent, incoherent, lacking in sources, and as usual, a bit whiny.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Boeing 757 »

Falkenhayn wrote:
Boeing 757 wrote: He has a point going for him about that, I'm afraid. It doesn't take much searching for one to find some abode of 40k fans on the net championing the superiority of either the IG or Space Marines over stormtroopers, and bringing the Endor-debacle up as proof that SW ground forces suck. it becomes worse in regards to space assets; too many times I've had some nut claiming that an Emperor-class battleship can blow a planet up "Death Star-style." It's utterly laughable, but it's obvious that these fans aren't looking at the subject rationally. It's the same argument of style over substance that most of us have seen countless times beforehand, often coming from rapid Trekkies of the same school of thought. Myself, I don't really pay much heed to them because I know that they're just looking at some thing, and saying that it will win primarily because one thing looks "cooler" than the other. I think that this is the only board that I've found thus far which actually prides itself in comparing each side's pros and cons with as little bias as possible.
Which still isn't sufficient evidence that this horrible straw man exists. Appeal to Ignorance, Anecdotal evidence, and all that.
If he's claiming that there's some kind of consensus among WH40K fans about his concerns, then the burden of proof lies with him to show that it is so. All the best to him, if that is his stake. In any case it's likely only a slim minority of fans that have these opinions, and most 40K followers may not even be aware of Versus-debating, especially not how it's carried out here.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Meest »

Just tossing this in here, reading Imperial Glory and the author implies lasguns are slow single shot rifles that have a recharge time. This is for a Brimlock regiment which has lots of Armoured Fist companies because they came from a high population and industrial world. So depends on if you compare them to the author's world war fetish Imperial Guard.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Simon_Jester »

Boeing 757 wrote:He has a point going for him about that, I'm afraid. It doesn't take much searching for one to find some abode of 40k fans on the net championing the superiority of either the IG or Space Marines over stormtroopers, and bringing the Endor-debacle up as proof that SW ground forces suck. it becomes worse in regards to space assets; too many times I've had some nut claiming that an Emperor-class battleship can blow a planet up "Death Star-style." It's utterly laughable, but it's obvious that these fans aren't looking at the subject rationally. It's the same argument of style over substance that most of us have seen countless times beforehand, often coming from rapid Trekkies of the same school of thought. Myself, I don't really pay much heed to them because I know that they're just looking at some thing, and saying that it will win primarily because one thing looks "cooler" than the other. I think that this is the only board that I've found thus far which actually prides itself in comparing each side's pros and cons with as little bias as possible.
To be fair, Space Marines would probably beat stormtroopers at anything like equal odds; they're supposed to be ridiculously talented supersoldiers, and their weapons are definitely in the same range of destructiveness and capability as what we see in Star Wars hand weapons: things like blasting holes in walls a la Han Solo's handgun are well within the capability of a bolter.

But that's irrelevant to overall SW vs 40k questions, because there are so few Space Marines their numbers don't really decide the issue on a strategic level. There are a million or so Space Marines; who knows how many stormtroopers there are? Billions, I'd guess.

Guard versus Star Wars armies- I'm reluctant to hand a difference in quality to either side, really. The endless, grinding warfare of 40k makes me think that people from that setting would have the edge in sheer battle-hardening and combat experience, but Star Wars armies have some arguments in their favor in terms of equipment quality, mobility, and possibly flexibility of doctrine.

I'd say it would be a pretty interesting matchup.
Meest wrote:Just tossing this in here, reading Imperial Glory and the author implies lasguns are slow single shot rifles that have a recharge time. This is for a Brimlock regiment which has lots of Armoured Fist companies because they came from a high population and industrial world. So depends on if you compare them to the author's world war fetish Imperial Guard.
40k weapons are ridiculously diverse- they've been presented as head-vaporizers, as burn-wounds-only, as automatic fire, as single-shot, as continuous-beam. There's no consistency across the setting as a whole, so far as I know, and trying to find it is a waste of time.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Meest »

Simon_Jester wrote:
Meest wrote:Just tossing this in here, reading Imperial Glory and the author implies lasguns are slow single shot rifles that have a recharge time. This is for a Brimlock regiment which has lots of Armoured Fist companies because they came from a high population and industrial world. So depends on if you compare them to the author's world war fetish Imperial Guard.
40k weapons are ridiculously diverse- they've been presented as head-vaporizers, as burn-wounds-only, as automatic fire, as single-shot, as continuous-beam. There's no consistency across the setting as a whole, so far as I know, and trying to find it is a waste of time.
True but this novel just annoyed me more than usual, basically just World War 1 or 2 in 40k is lazy writing. Inspired by it sure but this author is pretty much making the Brimlocks into a stereotypical English regiment down to a sergeant saying "sah" for sir. Also never read lasguns being slow semi auto rifles (2-3sec at least recycle time, guessing he wants to simulate a bolt action?) , they usually say older laslock models do that when showing primitive troops/weapons. There's even a scene where a trooper holds the trigger too long (doesn't fire, just builds up) and fouls and explodes the power pack, that's a new one.

Back to the topic will say IG seems more complete in terms of overall combined arms and tactics, SW seems to have more advanced common tech but they don't exploit it (like artillery that fires at starships with a direct line of sight, how many times would that be useful?). Has any SW army shown engineers or digging in etc? Or is everything prefabricated.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Srelex »

Well, as we saw in the Muunilinst battle, SW can just be capable as massing artillery as the IG can...
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

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Meest wrote:Back to the topic will say IG seems more complete in terms of overall combined arms and tactics, SW seems to have more advanced common tech but they don't exploit it (like artillery that fires at starships with a direct line of sight, how many times would that be useful?).
If SDN calculations for Star Wars ship firepower are anywhere near correct, direct fire beam weapons that can knock out starships would be priceless for ground troops, because they're the only thing stopping a nuke-proof Corellian Corvette from hovering over your troops and obliterating them with umpty-megaton turbolaser blasts.
Has any SW army shown engineers or digging in etc? Or is everything prefabricated.
Star Wars ground combat seems to rely heavily on spacemobile tactics. With hyperspace travel so easy, you could easily drop troops from clear across the galaxy onto a new planet with a few days' notice. Ground combat usually involves either chaotic battles fought all over a planet (where starfighters and fast repulsor vehicles dominate), or a direct assault on some ground installation that for some reason you can't take from space (like Geonosis or Hoth).

The monkey wrench in my assessment is, or could be, the "Outer Rim Sieges" of the Clone Wars. I don't know what to make of those, or of how protracted they actually were.

In either case, the Imperial Guard trains for year-long sieges and protracted slugging matches, though they do have mobile warfare capability here and there. They're good at positional combat- they'd do pretty well in a situation like what we saw of Geonosis in Episode II- but their strategic level doctrine is totally different, motivated by the differences between 40k warp travel (slow and unreliable, forcing the Imperium to adopt a decentralized system of deployment and crisis response) and Star Wars hyperdrive (fast and reliable, letting the Republic and Empire treat the entire galaxy like one big battlefield and shift troops and ships from one part to another almost at will).

The nature of the ground combat may alter what Star Wars troops bother to carry with them- because their typical campaign is expected to be over very quickly, or a protracted garrison mission. And even then they definitely have prefab installations like the infamous "Imperial Garrison Base..."
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by open_sketchbook »

GE troops are definitely not equipped for the sort of protracted campaigns the Imperial Guard are. Imperial Army personal aren't reliably issued body armour or grenades, and Stormtroopers are far more often equipped for garrison/anti-insurgency work than fighting wars. As Simon says (heh), the nature of Star Wars ships and FTL means that any fight that threatens to be a drag-out, knock-down brawl is one that will be resolved with space assets. If Q threw down a senario with a few divisions of Guard vs IA/Stormtrooper assets duking it out without any space assets, I'd probably give it to the Guard; even though a blaster is considerably scarier than a lasgun and Star Wars vehicles are frightening prospects, they aren't really designed for brawling that way and Star Wars forces probably don't know the first thing about fighting a real ground war in a situation where you can't just order help or supplies from the off-world and get it in a few days. On the other hand, the Imperial Guard are well used to both being out of supply and being outclassed, are intimately familiar with long-term fights, and have stuff specialize for it that the Empire goons have only ever heard of in campfire stories, like indirect artillery, issuing soldiers more than one grenade, and massed armour. After a month of campaigning I imagine that most Imperial Army units would be absolute messes and Stormtroopers, being ship-based fast reaction guys, would probably blow their load pretty early and get themselves in over their heads. But that's just because the situation the Imperial Guard are designed for is the sort of situation that would basically never happen in Star Wars. Allow ships back in, and suddenly the Guard are being vapourized by giant ships floating in atmo throwing gigawhatsits around like confetti.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Simon_Jester »

Well, there's considerable evidence that 40k ships are at least in the right general firepower range to fight Star Wars ships on credible terms. The bigger ones are capable of something like Base Delta Zero attacks, which are what we usually use here to set the bounds on ISD firepower, for example. But there's a huge strategic speed disparity working against 40k... although there's also a huge numerical disparity working against Star Wars; the Imperium has far more ISD-sized ships than the Empire ever had ISDs.

That said, yeah, on the ground this is why I give it to the Guard: they're prepared to fight under any conditions for As Long As It Takes, including multi-decade campaigns where the regiments involved are destroyed and reformed out of drafts from the homeworld several times over. Given weapon parity I'm pretty sure they'd win, and I don't see convincing evidence that typical Star Wars ground forces have enough weapon superiority to overcome the difference in combat experience, doctrine, and logistical preparations.

The catch, of course, is that in a short, firepower-intensive battle the Guard is at its biggest disadvantage.

And I'm sure that Star Wars could presumably create good forces for long, slogging campaigns if they cared to- but in the strategic context they operate in, why bother?
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Connor MacLeod »

I'm a bit busy right now to really get involved in things, but to show an example of SW army military competence I present to you the Battle of Renatasia

The next few days were bedlam, exactly as Whett had expected. The Navy appeared at the fringes of the system, close enough to be fully detectable by Renatasian defense sensors. They even let the local military lob a few primitive thermonuclear weapons at them to demonstrate the utter futility of, resistance. The fleet's shields glowed briefly, restoring energy consumed by the voyage out, and that was that. Almost.

Unfortunately for the Navy, and high-technology aggressors everywhere in space and time, invasions cannot be conducted with continent-destroying weapons or from behind shields. Not unless you're willing to obliterate the enemy, and not at all if you're interested in taking what the enemy has: raw materials, agricultural products, certain manufactured goods, and the potential labor of her citizens.

While the fleet sat tight and safe in orbit above the eight planets of Renatasia, 93 percent of the first wave of troopers were savagely massacred by the locals, using chemical bullet projectors, crude high-powered lasers, poison gases, clubs, meat cleavers, and fists.

Eighty-seven percent of the second wave died similarly, even though they'd been forewarned, 71 percent of the third, and so on, The Navy was winning a glorious, disastrously expensive victory. Troopships carrying replacements began showing up at hourly intervals.
I should note this sort of performance echoes some of the fighting we see at Geonosis and other clone wars battles (I won't mention the usual examples trotted out from the OT because that doesn't seem fair.) In fact there was this little tidbit from the first Coruscant Nights novel:
Nick had once watched a phalanx of clones on Muunilinst fearlessly attack a hill against the blasterfire of three times as many droidekas. None of the clones so much as faltered, even though the droidekas' lasers, plasma rays, and particle beams had torn through the majority of them as if they'd been
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Ford Prefect »

You know, this whole topic seems like a lot of quibbling, given that neither the Imperial Guard or the armed forces of the Galactic Empire are particularly well designed or realised forces. Both operate in a way which might be charitably described as 'endearingly quaint'.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Gunhead »

What Ford said. Both suffer from having wildly different capabilities depending on who's doing the story and on top of that it's hard to determine if did faction X win because of skill, capability, luck or because the writer simply said so. You can find examples of people doing smart things, but then you get also shit like "Thrawn dictating tactics by watching art" and IG's "Let's do a WWI bayonet charge URAA!". Both IG and SW are so fucking huge you're allways stuck with a problem of what do you consider to be a representative take on either side. You probably could take Army X from the battle of Y and pit them against Army Y from battle X and get some kind of a conclusion ... but you'd still be comparing a totally tiny portions of both against each other. If you want to get some sense of how SW compares to IG on a grand scale, pick an event where you know who was fighting what, with what and see if the other side could do better. These X fights Y till one side is "dead" are stupid since they all happen in some odd vacuum where there is no defined goal to be achieved .. other than the utter destruction of the other and usually these end up as wank fests with both sides fapping to the most uber gigatonjoule examples they can find. Comparing tactical abilities is equally hard btw as tactics are dictated by such a huge number of variables you cannot usually get more than a general idea of a persons tactical prowness i.e Captain "Danger" Powers was / wasn't a total tool when it comes to tactics. Tactical ability is also highly dependent on authorial fiat.

-Gunhead
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Simon_Jester »

Ford Prefect wrote:You know, this whole topic seems like a lot of quibbling, given that neither the Imperial Guard or the armed forces of the Galactic Empire are particularly well designed or realised forces. Both operate in a way which might be charitably described as 'endearingly quaint'.
Very true. I think the Guard is at least a little more prepared to fight on those terms, because it does so more often and has a wider panoply of equipment to deal with the job, but that's about it.
Gunhead wrote:These X fights Y till one side is "dead" are stupid since they all happen in some odd vacuum where there is no defined goal to be achieved .. other than the utter destruction of the other and usually these end up as wank fests with both sides fapping to the most uber gigatonjoule examples they can find. Comparing tactical abilities is equally hard btw as tactics are dictated by such a huge number of variables you cannot usually get more than a general idea of a persons tactical prowness i.e Captain "Danger" Powers was / wasn't a total tool when it comes to tactics. Tactical ability is also highly dependent on authorial fiat.

-Gunhead
All this is a good point, I think. Defined goals matter a lot, as does scale: different aspects of a nation's capabilities, doctrines, and resources come into play in large-scale conflict than in small-scale.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Falkenhayn »

Simon_Jester wrote:Well, there's considerable evidence that 40k ships are at least in the right general firepower range to fight Star Wars ships on credible terms. The bigger ones are capable of something like Base Delta Zero attacks, which are what we usually use here to set the bounds on ISD firepower, for example. But there's a huge strategic speed disparity working against 40k... although there's also a huge numerical disparity working against Star Wars; the Imperium has far more ISD-sized ships than the Empire ever had ISDs.
*Looks at the Death Stars*. Industrial ouput seems to indicate that the GE can mobilize far beyond its presented limits (which aren't in any sense geared for TOTAL WAR!!11!, but rather repression and punitive expedition coupled with hyperdrive's strategic speed). And if the World Devastators are any evidence, large-scale automation is possible (probably to make up the manpower bottleneck created by the Empire's official xenophobia, albeit not knowing the size of the pool for potential human recruits).
Many thanks! These darned computers always screw me up. I calculated my first death-toll using a hand-cranked adding machine (we actually calculated the average mortality in each city block individually). Ah, those were the days.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by Simon_Jester »

Ghetto edit:
Connor MacLeod wrote:I'm a bit busy right now to really get involved in things, but to show an example of SW army military competence I present to you the Battle of Renatasia
The next few days were bedlam, exactly as Whett had expected. The Navy appeared at the fringes of the system, close enough to be fully detectable by Renatasian defense sensors. They even let the local military lob a few primitive thermonuclear weapons at them to demonstrate the utter futility of, resistance. The fleet's shields glowed briefly, restoring energy consumed by the voyage out, and that was that. Almost.

Unfortunately for the Navy, and high-technology aggressors everywhere in space and time, invasions cannot be conducted with continent-destroying weapons or from behind shields. Not unless you're willing to obliterate the enemy, and not at all if you're interested in taking what the enemy has: raw materials, agricultural products, certain manufactured goods, and the potential labor of her citizens.

While the fleet sat tight and safe in orbit above the eight planets of Renatasia, 93 percent of the first wave of troopers were savagely massacred by the locals, using chemical bullet projectors, crude high-powered lasers, poison gases, clubs, meat cleavers, and fists.

Eighty-seven percent of the second wave died similarly, even though they'd been forewarned, 71 percent of the third, and so on, The Navy was winning a glorious, disastrously expensive victory. Troopships carrying replacements began showing up at hourly intervals.
Idly, I wonder just how many troops they sent in those lead waves. If you land 100 million troops to occupy a planet of billions, and 93% of them are massacred by inferior technology, you're doing it wrong, yeah. But if you land ten thousand to take symbolic possession of key landmarks after "demonstrating the futility of resistance" in space and expecting them to fold up and collapse, then the idea of a massacre becomes more plausible.

So it would be interesting to know the numbers involved. I doubt they're available, though.
Falkenhayn wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:Well, there's considerable evidence that 40k ships are at least in the right general firepower range to fight Star Wars ships on credible terms. The bigger ones are capable of something like Base Delta Zero attacks, which are what we usually use here to set the bounds on ISD firepower, for example. But there's a huge strategic speed disparity working against 40k... although there's also a huge numerical disparity working against Star Wars; the Imperium has far more ISD-sized ships than the Empire ever had ISDs.
*Looks at the Death Stars*. Industrial ouput seems to indicate that the GE can mobilize far beyond its presented limits (which aren't in any sense geared for TOTAL WAR!!11!, but rather repression and punitive expedition coupled with hyperdrive's strategic speed). And if the World Devastators are any evidence, large-scale automation is possible (probably to make up the manpower bottleneck created by the Empire's official xenophobia, albeit not knowing the size of the pool for potential human recruits).
Falkenhayn, I have serious problems with the argument that the GE can mobilize to umpty thousand times its current level. Yes, the evidence suggests they have the tonnage-production capability to do so, but is tonnage-production the critical factor? Why does the Empire stop at a few tens of thousands of star destroyers, when they obviously have more planets than warships and face great difficulty controlling anything but their core worlds against random invaders, bandits, and rebels?

If it we go by the creation of the single massive Death Star, look at the tonnage and say it would be that easy for them to churn out a million ISDs, and that practical for them to do so... how do we explain the fact that they don't, aside from "plot imposed stupidity?" Answers like "Palpatine didn't want to mobilize that fast" don't make sense in light of the fact that he was able to build Death Stars relatively cheaply and quickly- if a Death Star's weight in ISDs wouldn't cost much more than the Death Star did, why couldn't he do the same with a million-ship fleet of ISDs?

If we ask about manpower, we know that there are a number of 'ecumenopolis' worlds with populations in the trillions, a significant fraction of which are supposed to be human. Ruling families of numerous worlds are human, too, as are plenty of farmers on random backwater worlds like Tatooine. All in all, I'm sure the Empire could drum up the few tens of billions of men it would need to man those ISDs, or at worst clone them since it had that technology too.

I think there are hidden variables at work here that make it somehow challenging for the Empire to build a lot more ships than it already does. If it's not a question of the tax burden or industrial output required to make the ships (which conflicts with the size and ease of building the Death Stars had)... Well, at a guess, maybe it's political*. Maybe the problem is finding the handful of beings in the galaxy you can actually trust to command a Base Delta Zero-capable starship, and the enforcement mechanisms to keep those beings in line.

*tip of the hat to ECR.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by PainRack »

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/po ... 47966.page
Emperors Faithful wrote:
40k universe Vs Star Wars. (At the end of no.6).

3) Guard Stormtroopers make a mess of Stormtroopers.
Frazzled [DCM] wrote
Space: Empire> Imperium
On the ground: Imperium > Empire.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195298
Selrahc wrote: Empire vs. Imperium is a subject that we have endlessly on this forum. Empire has a much faster fleet. Imperium probably has a more powerful space-fleet and ground forces, at least at the start of the conflict.
Serafina wrote
The GE would also have to rely on orbital bombardement with little opportunities to capture important GE-worlds without it, since the IoM-forces are a much more well-rounded and larger force on the ground. However, firepower is again pretty close (a lasgun is about equal to a blaster).

So, short answer:
-Space goes to the GE due to numbers
-Ground goes to the IoM due to numbers&capability
-Special abilities (psykers/force) go mostly to the IoM but don't really matter on the grand scale
However, i have yet to see a sure plan to actually counqer any worlds - if you don't do that, why invade in the first place?
Smaller worlds (agricultural, mining etc.) are not that heavily defended, but any interesting worlds (hive/garrision/fleet/factory) easily have millions or billons of defenders.
While a stormtrooper might be slightly better than a soldier of the Guard (propably on IoM-stormtrooper-level), the GE is lacking in the vehicle compartement - notably artillery and tanks.
Even if they match the sheer numbers, the Guard alone would propably outmatch them, ignoring the better troops of the IoM.
Night Stalker wrote
Yeah, in all honesty the GE would probably win in space, but would be screwed on the ground.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... +star+wars


I think that's a pretty good sampling of fan opinion out there.
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Re: Imperial Guard superior to SW armies?

Post by PainRack »

white_rabbit wrote:
that"s odd wr,cause u Were one of those who advocated wh40k,ig armies are better on the ground n u also did participate in the sb threads where this elite spec ops was brought up years ago.
Fuck me, has this been simmering with you for fucking years ?

I'd have to echo the comment here, are you bloody drunk or something?
God.... NO!

Its just that every fucking time you bump into a Wh40k discussion I have, your ENTIRE fucking purpose is to diss me and claim that I'm being whiny about Wh40k. Seriously.

And its frankly pissing me off because this was exactly the SAME fucking stunt you pulled years ago when we started the SW vs Warhammer 40k debate on Spacebattles, and you're ignoring that what was an actual whine about Wh40k wankery, refusal to back up facts and Lord Khorak playacting has moved on!

I won't care so much if its a genuine mistake I made, such as the last thread in SB regarding Tyranids, although I WOULD had appreciated it if you had simply tackled the thread on its own merit instead of bringing in past history .....
But EVERY FUCKING SINGLE TIME, You BRING UP THE PAST.

I'm not the person who's "simmering" about the past, You are. You're the person who keeps bringing up this image of me whining and delusional about Wh40k.

And it pisses me off because you STILL ignored that the whole stunt pulled off then was a deliberate tack, combined with genuine frustration at Wh40k wankery and refusal to play by vs rules back on SB.
Let him land on any Lyran world to taste firsthand the wrath of peace loving people thwarted by the myopic greed of a few miserly old farts- Katrina Steiner
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