Imperial armour: Siege of Vraks analysis

[Zinegata]

That would be a horrible problem. It might actually be realistic for far future warfare, if everyone had C-RAM out the ass, but this is plainly not the case in 40K and in my opinion I'm not going to judge long in the works writing for not having projected it appearing in the last decade.

...

That would help... but its a universe with a lot enemies that just beg for massed bombardments with DPICM.

I suspect it's also partly due to game balance issues, with the Tau being more of a "precision" army as opposed to the Imperial Guard, which does get numerous bombardment options (including squad mortars, several variants of heavy artillery, and even orbital bombardment).

Given the types of wars that the Tau had to fight prior to meeting the Imperium however (mainly subjugation wars against less civilized races - i.e. the Kroot who now serve as auxilaries) they may not have seen the need for such weapons. They've only really fought one major war against the Imperium thus far.

Ideally you'd just have space capable warships can that fly into the atmosphere and start blowing stuff up from 50-200 feet off the ground like the Star Wars Victory and Acclamator classes should be able to do, but minus the stupid bridge towers. However issues of cost and design optimization may work against this, so failing that go with a dedicated ship several hundred feet long. A ship like a Acclamator would be extra awesome because if it could break the sound barrier in an atmosphere the shockwaves would create blast damage on par with small nuclear weapons. This makes for a very good close range defensive weapon.

This kinda reminds me of a legendary "Sky Fortress" that was involved during the Siege of Terra, back when Warhammer 40K was just Warhammer 30K.

[Simon_Jester]

The two heavy railguns are technically the most powerful anti-vehicle weapons in the game, while the burst cannons and Ion cannons are very effective anti-personnel weapons capable of throwing down a huge number of shots, at least compared to Imperial weaponry.

I didn't notice those, if they have them then shrapnel and canister projectiles could deal with softer targets.

The Tau have a variety of fragmentation weapons, but I think the Manta relies on quick-cycling weapons for antipersonnel work, instead of blasts of shrapnel from its main guns. Said main guns may be energy-intensive, ammo-limited, or just small-caliber high-velocity weapons poorly suited to conventional tube artillery missions.

That would help... but its a universe with a lot enemies that just beg for massed bombardments with DPICM.

The Guard has things along these lines- their artillery includes some pretty strong and competent forces, even if they're not in evidence everywhere. The Tau, on the other hand, just don't go for massed unguided bombardment weaponry, and they do fight orks and Tyranids that really beg for such things.

Games Workshop might actually give them that kind of thing, since it's in keeping with their 'gunline' playing style, except that MASSED ARTILLERY is the Guard's schtick.

Mr aerial battleship meanwhile would have turrets on the damn top, avoiding the retardation of nearly all mecha of not doing this, and it could mount BIG periscopes to look over obstructions with utter minimal exposure.

...Does this mean... ow. My brain hurts, I just had a moment of suggesting laser eyes on a mecha as a way to counter that problem.

[Zinegata]

Simon->

You have to remember that the Tau are technically still on their first Codex, and that pretty much covers only the prelimenary engagements that the Tau experiences against "everyone else". They haven't had time to develop new specialized units - like the Tyrannic War veterans from the Space Marine codex - in response to these new threats.

A second codex may finally introduce new units that they're currently lacking in the field artillery department (or screw them over, like how the Grey Knights are now essentially a Khorne-worshipping army who use the blood of murdered innocents to power their weapons).

[white_rabbit]

Forgeworld have kinda added a few things to the Tau armoury, some of which got adopted by the studio for "mainstream" codex use.

Hazard suits for example, supposedly to bolster close support for the Tau firewarriors. I wouldn't be surprised to see them as a codex option next edition.

[PainRack]

Flying all the time sure is a nice defense against swarming melee attacks...automatically defeating a rather large portion of of all enemies in 40K. I can see how given the way 40K logic works, if such ships were common the Tyranids would be given large biological catapults based on giant mutant crickets to fling the melee fighters onto the hulls of aerial warships.

You're too late.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Harridan

Not as cool as catapults but flying carriers... Meh.

The Imperium isn't completely staffed by incompetents though, or else they'd never win a battle. Space Marines tend to have plot armor which means they pull off crazy feats that should be synonymous with "mass suicide", whereas Imperial Guard tend to be more competent depending on the writer.

The Valhallans in the Ciaphas Cain novel for instance are a very modern mechanized force who don't rely on "Send in the next wave!". Likewise, we see highly effective armor formation in the Gaunt novels (particularly Necropolis and Honour Guard). Gaunt in particular retrieves the situation in Necropolis largely by organizing a competent command structure after everyone else above him (who had been playing politics) were disgraced or killed.

Armour should always support the infantry and send tanks out unsupported by combined arms? I took that as outright parodying the British in the early stages of WW2.

[Connor MacLeod]

Not as big as a Bolo or Titan no, though that would be great if you could build it. Something with no more size or firepower then a main battle tank that could fly would be revoltuonary enough, but I’m thinking of a craft in the size and armament range of the Finnish Ilmarinen class coastal defense ships, able to fly 100-200 feet high, sufficient to negate all conventional counter mobility tactics, as well as firing over trees and buildings. Speed would not need to be any better then that of ground vehicles. Bingo, you have armored air cavalry.

Basically the idea is merge the mobility and terrain masking abilities of a helicopter gunship with the firepower and armor of tanks and artillery, and the integrated defenses of a warship. Even if it was not as good as any of those categories in isolation, the combination of effects would be near unstoppable by anything but air power. What’s more, effectiveness would actually increase the worse the terrain gets as its mobility advantage counts for more and terrain masking is easier. 40K seems like it has the technology to do this.

Then what you want is basically a drop ship or assault shuttle of some kind (The Tau manta, which was mentioned, is either a large starfighter or a small starship depending on your source. Which they have. Apparently even some regiments do (I know the elysians have been mentioned with them) or they requisition them. Anything that behaves like a plane or helicopter is generally going to be the province of the Navy or high-tier/veteran regiments (Except the Meat Droids of Krieg, because gunships and helicopters and air support aren't Trench warfare theme appropriate I guess.) Drop ships/shuttles can do that hovering - at least the armed ones can.

Something the size of the coastal defense ship you mentiond probably would fit into the starfighter/shuttle range anyhow. For comparison, a Marauder bomber (at least in one source) and probably most other starfighters mass somewhere in the hundreds of tonnes and are around (IIRC) 260 feet long. And if that's not enough, apparnetly there are small starships (upwards of 500-1000 m long) both of military and civilian varieties that can enter atmosphere and land on planet (or at least, land at starports.) Again that would be Navy. After the Heresy they broke up the Army into its spaced and ground based components, the same way the military forces in STar Wars are broken up into component arms.

AG vehicles in general may or may not exist (at lieast in civilian or PDF markets) - we get lots of hints its possible and military AG vehicles DO exist - they just don't exist in the Guard (or at least the Guard forces we've seen.) That could be logistics or procurement, or politics, or whatever. As far as this particular battle, given the shitfit they throw over all the DEFENCE LASERS and how it rules out orbital bombardment, its likely they ruled out shuttle/dropship or any sort of aircraft or aircraft like vehicle of any kind (including starfighters, which almost certainly have antigrav). Of course the 'value' of that fear is debatable for the reasons I outline below so....

Speaking of the tau, the 'other Imperial armour' book where the tau kicked the Imperium's ass was Taros, the third IA book and one which I've covered already. It was also the same source for the 'march on foot in the desert over 1500 km with a highly vulnerable supply line and not enough water' tactics, which were compounded by a.) leaving the Space Marines out of the bulk of the major fighting and b.) ignoring the fact they had drop ships and shuttles and other forms of aerial transport for troops and supplies. There is a reason the IA books earn so much derision, and the way tactics go in these books is one of them. Whether this is 'standard' is something that has always been argued over, because there are people who actually THINK its appropriate. Me, I don't. But they're a valid source and I shouldn't ignore it just because I don't like the material, so here I am.

Oh and virtually all races in 40K have guns of some form, even the Tyranids. Even their starships (although by some sources you wouldn't know it.) The Tau also have this annoying tendency to dislike defending anything or holding terrain. How they reconcile this with occupying or defending planets, I have no clue. They're better equipped (The tau themselves at least, the auxiliaries are a diff story) than your average guardsman, have better comms gear (telemetry relays), and are more mobile (at least moreso than the foot infantry and some of the armour forces) but they have no analogues to support weapons in the squad (basically everyone has a rifle, although whether this will change with the next codex I dont know) with their heavy weapons deployed almost exclusively by power armour analogues. And virtually all their artillery is missile based, and relies on telemetry (the aforementioend laser designators) to be employed. Oh and they seem to have the same view on military training that the Kaminoans do, at least by the 40K RPG material. Better in some ways, but not in others. They're as much a 'theme' army as every other army is, and that puts constraints on them.

Artillery fire should really just be destroying all of that, and cratering the landscape so much armored vehicles can’t even counter attack over it. In fact to certain extents it would make actual sense for the Krieg not to be vehicle heavy, if they were very centered in artillery that can blast craters tens of feet deep. Tanks would all get stuck really quickly. Also the attacker has a serious advantage in a circular situation like this, in that his attacks and fires are converging into a narrower area, while the attackers efforts are spread over a divergent path.

If thats the case then they could have just more eaisly done that with orbital bombardments. They've wiped out square kilometres of terrain via tactical orbital strikes before and as noted they don't have to enter into range of the guns as a total risk. Orbital bombardment was not even ruled out by the 'reasons' given, strictly speaking. If they can lob artillery in they can probably lob in beacons for orbital gunnery to home in on, which would allow them to bombard from a higher elevation (even if they have to bring in dedicated orbital bombardment ships, which they apparently have.) They've been known to engage targets from geostationary or higher if they have the coordinates, and Vraks really wouldnt even require that levle of precision. demolishing square kilometres of the enemy's lines shouldn't be that hard from space. Of course they didn't even HAVE much in the way of Navy support (no fighters, no gunships, no orbital bombardment or surveillance, etc.) which is pretty typical for Imperial armour books. I'd guess the Navy was pissed at them for having to haul Kriegers halfway across the galaxy at their own expense rather than deploying forces from much closer. Or maybe they pissed off the local sector Naval forces by bringing in outsiders into their bailiwick.

Given the fact the Dark angels were able to launch an attack from orbit I'm not evne sure the 'orbital threat' was all that great. Drop pods are alot slower moving than most of their ground attack ordnance.

Hell the Krieg are infamous for use of WMD in their tactics. As we learn later, the D-KoK basically fuck their own planet to win a war by mass nuke spam (nuclear missiles for really fucking up the entire planet and other cities, and nuke artillery shells to wipe out the enemy army besieging their base (this gets mentioend in another supplement, actually, but its still pretty messed up.) Given the existence of melta warheads and plasma munitions (which by some sources are just pocket, low-yield nukes) I mean equipping them that way isn't going to be a massive increase in firepower either if they've got superheavy titan hunting tanks like the Shadowsword.

Diameter of craters is typically several times the apparent depth. Apparent is important; shell and bomb craters are always deeper then they look but fill back in from the dirt raining back down, but even the true depth would almost never be as a great as the width. Blowing wide craters is just much easier than depth, even when you are using emplaced and tamped explosives to blow deliberate craters.

You're talking about the difference between a 'final' crater and the crater created on impact, right? The ones in Vraks may be final craters, but the one I mentioned from Storm of Iron may not be. AT least the context implies otherwise.

Well, we can level mountains in months in real life too, and it doesn’t even take our largest earthmoving machines to do it. Just lots and lots of drilling and explosives. That they actually field such machines in military units make the whole battle that much more stupid. If you had enough big armored bulldozers, in 12 years you could literally just bury the enemy fortifications. Just keep pushing forward a 100-200 foot thick wall of earth and rock with the dozers steadily plowing stuff over the summit.

They use them to knock down mountains so they can be used as building materials. If destroying it were an issue an orbital strike would handle that far easier. And they're not exactly 'standard issue' - at least not to the Guard or Munitorum. They'd only gain that with AdMech support (which is conspicuously absent, prboably because Forgeworld doesnt have an AdMech line - yet.)

Seems to yet again support my belief that the system just wouldn’t work even in its own retarded universe. Its all just insane.

Define 'work'

[Zinegata]

Armour should always support the infantry and send tanks out unsupported by combined arms? I took that as outright parodying the British in the early stages of WW2.

You're very clearly misremembering what the novel actually said.

Necropolis notes that there is a rule in the Imperial Guard that any armoured command is always subordinate to an infantry command, it does not say that "tanks should always support infantry". It was a plot device that allowed Gaunt (a Colonel) to have command over a General (Grizmund), but that's not really different from real life when a "staff" officer (i.e. doctor with a rank of Major) can be overruled by a junior "line" officer (i.e. a Lieutenant in command of an infantry platoon).

Moreover, the Narmenian Armoured was given almost total independence on how they were to execute their mission anyway - which was to break the enemy's armoured spearhead. So subordinating an armoured command to an infantry command clearly isn't meant to shoehorn them into an infantry support role - rather it's an acknowledgement of the highly specialized nature of armoured formations and that they are ultimately just one piece of an entire army - which consists primarily of infantry.

Finally, the Narmenians were not going in unsupported by infantry. The initial stage of the battle actually involved a great deal of reconnaisance (by foot scouts and Sentinel walkers), followed by a heavy armor-on-armor engagement wherein the Narmenians fought a fast-moving enemy consisting almost entirely of armor. The latter in particular had been running roughshod over the supply lines that had been supporting the infantry (which by this point had depleted their anti-tank weaponry), as they had already broken through to the Imperial rear areas.

By breaking the enemy armoured thrust, the Narmenians were able to re-establish the supply lines for the infantry. What followed then was a combined infantry/armor assault - with the Narmenians providing the main "punch" while the infantry followed and picked off any armor the Narmenians had missed - against a Chaos force that was almost purely armor. This allowed a re-establishment of the defense line.

So, if anything, it was the Chaos forces that demonstrated very poor combined-arms. They essentially lost hundreds of tanks against a mixed tank/infantry force for no gain, because their breakthrough forces were knocked out by the Imperial armor supported by infantry in a counterblow.

[Sea Skimmer]

Necropolis notes that there is a rule in the Imperial Guard that any armoured command is always subordinate to an infantry command, it does not say that "tanks should always support infantry". It was a plot device that allowed Gaunt (a Colonel) to have command over a General (Grizmund), but that's not really different from real life when a "staff" officer (i.e. doctor with a rank of Major) can be overruled by a junior "line" officer (i.e. a Lieutenant in command of an infantry platoon).

Staff officers can only be overruled to a point. It varies by country to country, but normally if a staff officer or any other officer is actually in command of a unit they cannot be overruled by a lesser rank. The point of this is to prevent actual staff officers on staffs or doing random jobs from taking direct control of combat forces. Not really the same thing at all as one combat arm inherently outranking another. All the more so with a Colonel vs General gap. At least in any real army, the step from Colonel to General is a much bigger deal than any other promotion.

If you suddenly need a bright Colonel to outrank a dull General, then this is what brevet ranks are for. Dwight Eisenhower for example was only a Colonel in permanent rank for all of the Second World War, and only recently promoted to that rank in early 1941. As a result most of his subordinate army commanders, who had become Colonels and even generals in the 1930s were far ahead of him in seniority. Eisenhower’s promotion through the general ranks to one of the nation’s only five stars was all by brevet; his five star rank was made permanent only in 1946. This sort of thing did cause friction in the war. Brevet ranks aren’t unique to the US, they just make sense. But 40k does love its convolution.

[madd0ct0r]

back tracking to skimmers flying skimmer tank - i also refer you to the Harbinger Bomber (chaos), the Ork landa, the necron superheavies (aeonic orb, abbatoir), Inquisitorial Guncutters, the Squat Overlord warship, eldar superheavy tanks (all skimmers), dark eldar superheavy tanks ....

[Zinegata]

But 40k does love its convolution.

It really does. The funny thing is, while Grizmund (Narmenians) is a "General" he's also just commanding a regiment. Strictly speaking, Gaunt (a Colonel) and Grizmund and are both commanding equal-sized formations.

Moreover, one thing not touched upon is the apparently extremely specialized nature of each IG regiment. Tank regiments are not supposed to have infantry for instance, so that the tankers won't have infantry support if they end up rebelling/turning to Chaos (an apparently very common occurence). Despite the fact this is contradicted by numerous regiments who are all-arms formations... (i.e. Cadogus Mechanized, which had armor and 20-30K infantry plus Sanctioned support. And if I recall right, it was commanded by a Colonel).

[Sea Skimmer]

Something the size of the coastal defense ship you mentiond probably would fit into the starfighter/shuttle range anyhow. For comparison, a Marauder bomber (at least in one source) and probably most other starfighters mass somewhere in the hundreds of tonnes and are around (IIRC) 260 feet long.

Estimates I’ve run for what I have in mind, if it was made of steel are in the 10,000-12,000 ton range for moderate armoring, maybe 50-100% increase it for a lot better armor but potentially just like a tank certain parts are much thicker then others. Also my ideas are powered by jet fuel, which might not be the case here, which turns into a lot of fuel tanks as additional protection.

Now 260 feet is a B-52… plus 100 feet you know, actually the kind of size range I have in mind. But if it has armor and they don’t have some super low mass armor material its probably going to be a damn lot more then hundreds of tones. A 260x30ft wall made of 4in thick steel would be 655.2 short tons. Multiply by four, add two ends and you are at 2772 tons already. That’s just for a 4in thick box.

And if that's not enough, apparnetly there are small starships (upwards of 500-1000 m long) both of military and civilian varieties that can enter atmosphere and land on planet (or at least, land at starports.) Again that would be Navy. After the Heresy they broke up the Army into its spaced and ground based components, the same way the military forces in STar Wars are broken up into component arms.

The forces in Star Wars seem to have no trouble at all working together though. A 1,000m warship would be great if you could afford it. Tank battles would become near completely irrelevant given decent numbers of them. Gain air superiority and you gain aerial battleship superiority, which turns into near total superiority against anything above ground.

AG vehicles in general may or may not exist (at lieast in civilian or PDF markets) - we get lots of hints its possible and military AG vehicles DO exist - they just don't exist in the Guard (or at least the Guard forces we've seen.) That could be logistics or procurement, or politics, or whatever.

Like I said, being able to hover just a few feet up wouldn’t make the same difference. It would neutralize water obstacles but not anti tank mines, buildings or necessarily even passive defenses like anti tank ditches.

[quote\
As far as this particular battle, given the shitfit they throw over all the DEFENCE LASERS and how it rules out orbital bombardment, its likely they ruled out shuttle/dropship or any sort of aircraft or aircraft like vehicle of any kind (including starfighters, which almost certainly have antigrav). Of course the 'value' of that fear is debatable for the reasons I outline below so....[/quote]

If they could throw Titans into the battle, then plainly stuff flying low enough should be okay. Most of the stuff people are naming are clearly meant to be bombers or landing craft, not a platform for heavy direct and indirect fire in a sustained fight. That’s one part of it, this idea wont really work if you don’t have at least tank like ammo and endurance in action. Ideally a lot more.

Oh and virtually all races in 40K have guns of some form, even the Tyranids. Even their starships (although by some sources you wouldn't know it.)

Well, big difference between we have guns, and we can disperse and concentrate massed fires at will with completely devastating effects tailored to specific situations. Having single guns shoot at random stuff in isolation, and being totally unable to coordinate above the battery level... well we know how that goes, it how the IJA fought in WW2 in the Pacific (China was somewhat better). They damn some pretty damn nice artillery designs in many case as well, but it didn’t help them any.

The Tau also have this annoying tendency to dislike defending anything or holding terrain. How they reconcile this with occupying or defending planets, I have no clue.

Actually that works well enough, it’s pretty implausible to defend an entire planet with static forces unless they number at least several billion. That assumes no more land then earth has. I mean you look at Albanian, and they literally covered every inch of the entire country with fields of fire from multiple bunkered fire positions, rejecting the very concept of defensive lines, but odds of this working on a global scale are pretty bad.

So in the absence of that, and given that an attacker’s space superiority means they can land anywhere you’d kind of expect mobile battles, and it’s hard to see planets as actually having that much key terrain that matters globally. Though this also runs into the old problem of how much effect orbital bombardments can really have before they turn into genocide missions.

If thats the case then they could have just more eaisly done that with orbital bombardments. They've wiped out square kilometres of terrain via tactical orbital strikes before and as noted they don't have to enter into range of the guns as a total risk. Orbital bombardment was not even ruled out by the 'reasons' given, strictly speaking. If they can lob artillery in they can probably lob in beacons for orbital gunnery to home in on, which would allow them to bombard from a higher elevation (even if they have to bring in dedicated orbital bombardment ships, which they apparently have.) They've been known to engage targets from geostationary or higher if they have the coordinates, and Vraks really wouldnt even require that levle of precision. demolishing square kilometres of the enemy's lines shouldn't be that hard from space.

Well, none of that really gives any reason for them to be vehicle heavy, either. If you can blow up all significant defenses, the main mission becomes mopping up and that’s an infantry centric task. Ideally one backed up by flying battleships with flamethrower systems superior to that concocted to burn out Fort Drum.

You're talking about the difference between a 'final' crater and the crater created on impact, right? The ones in Vraks may be final craters, but the one I mentioned from Storm of Iron may not be. AT least the context implies otherwise.

basically yeah. Like this. Not the best image ever, but it illustrates the point of the crater being partly filled back in, and actual ground damage being considerably larger. The part filled back in can be 50% or more of the entire volume of earth that was originally expelled from the ground.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33 ... image.jpg/

Define 'work'

I’ve already tried for you and you keep insisting no, it works, then point out a bunch of other horrible problems and contradictions. It requires inhuman levels of stupid, on a persistent basis. Literally everyone's brain must be cooked in a brain slowing down machine before they live in this world; but even then it'd have to be awful slow to keep this up.

[Simon_Jester]

On this very site, someone once hypothesized that this is literally the case: the influence of the Warp is actively making human beings stupider. Dramatically so.

[Connor MacLeod]

Estimates I’ve run for what I have in mind, if it was made of steel are in the 10,000-12,000 ton range for moderate armoring, maybe 50-100% increase it for a lot better armor but potentially just like a tank certain parts are much thicker then others. Also my ideas are powered by jet fuel, which might not be the case here, which turns into a lot of fuel tanks as additional protection.

Now 260 feet is a B-52… plus 100 feet you know, actually the kind of size range I have in mind. But if it has armor and they don’t have some super low mass armor material its probably going to be a damn lot more then hundreds of tones. A 260x30ft wall made of 4in thick steel would be 655.2 short tons. Multiply by four, add two ends and you are at 2772 tons already. That’s just for a 4in thick box.

Thats why I specified drop ships and probably starfighters - they all more than likely involve antigrav in some way given mass and aerodynamics. The fighters probably don't get into thousands of tonnes nor the bombers. The dropships might. Some are huge enough to carry entire regiments of thousands of men in one go. And there are of course tank carriers.

Examples I know of that are 'canonical' are here, here, and supposedly here. The last I heard was an unreleased model for Epic 40K, so it may or may not be true. It at least looks genuine. They're basically the IG equivalent of the Tau manta anyhow, which basically combines starship/aircraft/gunship with troop and vehicle transport.

The forces in Star Wars seem to have no trouble at all working together though. A 1,000m warship would be great if you could afford it. Tank battles would become near completely irrelevant given decent numbers of them. Gain air superiority and you gain aerial battleship superiority, which turns into near total superiority against anything above ground.

Well thats navy support. In many cases (in novels at least and in some of the other mateiral) we're told the Navy and some generals would rather bomb the enemy from orbit unless they're forced to fight on the ground. Considering that 'tactical' bombardments can affect areas that can go up to (to my knowledge at least) 50 km in diameter (or maybe it was radius, I forgot) that could be quite effective.

Like I said, being able to hover just a few feet up wouldn’t make the same difference. It would neutralize water obstacles but not anti tank mines, buildings or necessarily even passive defenses like anti tank ditches.

Depending on the sort of weapon even a few dozen metres may not matter either. Some of their antitank weapons are basically miniature, on eshot melta or plasma weapons, and that means they probalbly could shoot over short ranges at the target. And even if not, the enemy on teh ground can just target you if they have LOS.

A fair number of the antigrav vehicles we DO know exist (technically classified as skimmers) tend to behave more like helicopter gunships than actual tanks, probably for that reason (mobility and cover matter more than taking the hits.)

If they could throw Titans into the battle, then plainly stuff flying low enough should be okay. Most of the stuff people are naming are clearly meant to be bombers or landing craft, not a platform for heavy direct and indirect fire in a sustained fight. That’s one part of it, this idea wont really work if you don’t have at least tank like ammo and endurance in action. Ideally a lot more.

They didnt throw Titans into the battle until sometime in book 6, and by then the situation had, IIRC changed. Different commander, different scope to the conflict (it was an actual out and out chaos incursion by this point.) although I'm ont sure things got any less stupid because of this because of 'thematic'.

Well, big difference between we have guns, and we can disperse and concentrate massed fires at will with completely devastating effects tailored to specific situations. Having single guns shoot at random stuff in isolation, and being totally unable to coordinate above the battery level... well we know how that goes, it how the IJA fought in WW2 in the Pacific (China was somewhat better). They damn some pretty damn nice artillery designs in many case as well, but it didn’t help them any.

They have guns for their infantry (a vartiey of guns, in fact), they have their own tank analogues, their own air force analogues (Several different flying creatures now as I recall), and they have superheavy and titan analogues, and artillery analogues. As well as orbitla bombardment support. At least two of the known arty platforms are capable of firing guided munitions of diffreent kinds (one IIRC is basically a sort of mortar or mine launcher, and the other fires what amounts to a guided kinetic penetrator. They even have the ability to guide the targets in by 'seing' the target through other Tyranid creatures and using that to guide the projectile on target.

There's also all the warp attack 'nid types which is also technically artillery, but I digress.

Actually that works well enough, it’s pretty implausible to defend an entire planet with static forces unless they number at least several billion. That assumes no more land then earth has. I mean you look at Albanian, and they literally covered every inch of the entire country with fields of fire from multiple bunkered fire positions, rejecting the very concept of defensive lines, but odds of this working on a global scale are pretty bad.

So in the absence of that, and given that an attacker’s space superiority means they can land anywhere you’d kind of expect mobile battles, and it’s hard to see planets as actually having that much key terrain that matters globally. Though this also runs into the old problem of how much effect orbital bombardments can really have before they turn into genocide missions.

Well what I mean and as I've read it, they actually prefer to abandon their own territory as needed until they can amass forces to counterattack. Which is not the problem per se - choosing the time and palce to fight is a good thing - but they'll completely abandon cities and (IIRC) even planets rather than fight. There's only so far you can do that because you DO need a base of operations - for logistics and supplies and industry if nothing else. If they didn't need that they wouldn't need planets at all, would they?

As I also recall it they're also fond of extensive, meticulous planning to make sure everything is exactly right, ro something like that. and if it isn't right they'll call off the battle and wait til it is right (although don't quote me 100% on that, I'm working on memory and at the moment I'm too busy to dig out the quotes I've posted before via search function.)

I’ve already tried for you and you keep insisting no, it works, then point out a bunch of other horrible problems and contradictions. It requires inhuman levels of stupid, on a persistent basis. Literally everyone's brain must be cooked in a brain slowing down machine before they live in this world; but even then it'd have to be awful slow to keep this up.

Because as far as the information I have and what I know (both of which is limited, which means I can of course be wrong) it doesn't seem to. I can't claim to know definitively I'm right - and for all I know you have the extensive background that allows one to analyze and predict the functioning of governemtns and societies - but I don't think its going to be resolved without either more evidence, more education on the topic (if not both) and a whole shit load more quotes than I think you would want to deal with. If you want to say it is retarded and won't work without magic, its not going to bother me. I've not really even convinced any writer could fully develop a culture or empire that 'works' in a logical manner anyway - at least not in any reasonable timeframe. So if I have to invoke magic to make it work, then magic it is.

[Cykeisme]

Sea Skimmer, take into account that Connor has already stated up front that the Imperial Armour series of books are some of the worst-written and illogical fiction, put together by authors who apparently have a very flawed or nonexistent understanding of actual military concerns, enjoy being bound by heavy thematic ideas (i.e. WW1 trench warfare and GRIMDARK), and actually revolve around showcasing and boosting the sale of their supplementary tabletop wargame models.

He's just trying to make whatever sense possible of this Imperial Armour stuff and how it fits into the greater WH40k fictional universe, and if the only explanation is that the characters in the books are mind-numbingly, brain-blastingly stupid.. so be it.
The point is, as his analyses of other better-written (and less tabletop model sales-oriented) 40k fiction show, most of the 40k Imperium of Man is as tactically and strategically stupid as this.

[Gunhead]

Sea Skimmer, take into account that Connor has already stated up front that the Imperial Armour series of books are some of the worst-written and illogical fiction, put together by authors who apparently have a very flawed or nonexistent understanding of actual military concerns, enjoy being bound by heavy thematic ideas (i.e. WW1 trench warfare and GRIMDARK), and actually revolve around showcasing and boosting the sale of their supplementary tabletop wargame models.

I'd say Skimmer knows this and I'm sure he'll agree with me on this. IA authors have taken the worst and most stupid examples of WWI and ramped them to eleven. This is beyond flawed it's pants on head retarded. To top if it off the authors fail also in the thematic sense since they cram in all types of shit that rose to real prominence till much later in real history and do nothing to have all that work in a sensible way in their little emulation. Not to mention all the hi tech gizmos in existence in the universe they are writing in. You cannot just slap WWI mentality into a setting with automatic weapons, armor, radios, airplanes, tanks, APCs etc. and expect it all to be thematically appropriate. WWI was fought in the way it was for a variety of reasons I will not go into here in detail. But if you're writing fiction you must establish conditions that match what ever you are trying to emulate, or at least close enough for it to be even remotely plausible. The example we have here is one of the worst ones, but 40K does suffer from this all across the board. Severity varies by author.

-Gunhead

[Cykeisme]

The point is, as his analyses of other better-written (and less tabletop model sales-oriented) 40k fiction show, most of the 40k Imperium of Man is as tactically and strategically stupid as this.

Whoops, I meant most of the IoM is not as tactically and strategically stupid as the characters in IA.

[Cykeisme]

Gunhead: Yes, the hardest hitting stupidity is shoehorning in the themes that don't make sense given the equipment available. If more effort was put into contriving a situation where the armies are forced to fight in the method of their choice, at least it won't be so painfully dumb.

[Alkaloid]

I think part of the problem with the planetary invasion scenarios they come up with now is that a while ago, someone at GW was writing and actually realised that you need something to stop one side having orbital superiority and just blowing the crap out of any enemy forces on the ground.

They normally do it two ways, either there is something valuable on the planet that they don't want to risk destroying, or they have heavily fortified cities that have void shields and defence lasers and the defensive fleet is actually supported by them. The first is pretty simple, the invaders just land forces near what they want and go for it, but the second means the invaders have to form a beachhead on the planet where they can and then the landed troops have to take the cities themselves while the space forces fight running battles to keep the defenders ships off their back. That's why you originally got these huge city sieges and long marches overland to get to them, and why nearly every single depiction of a planetary war involves a massive fight for a spaceport pretty early on.

When you start getting writers coming in who see that these things happen in 40k but don't really understand why you get things like the Taros campaign where they land hundreds of miles from anything for no reason at all or really inappropriate forces trying to assault cities. Look at the Armageddon campaign and how it was depicted, stupid things happened and people made mistakes but they were done in the context of a whole planet being involved in one of the single biggest planetary wars in the Imperiums history, so you could understand how and why they happened. While there are forces that are mainly infantry and relatively light armour besieging hives, it's not because that's how people think it should be done but because they are fighting a planetary scale war and are trying to contain that hive until they get the forces they need to actually take it free to do so.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm pretty sure Sea Skimmer is taking the series context into account, and he's simply sharing his insights in a very blunt manner. Part of the problem is I simply forgot I already asked him that bit. And overall he may even be right, the Imperium may be too stupid to exist, but its just one of those 'fictional debate' things, like hyperspace or when people do stupid shit (like in ST, or SW, or whatever.) You either accept it and work around it somehow or you try to change the facts to make it not true. Or you just give up and not bother doing it at all. As already mentioned, working in your own fictional universe is easier (although that doesnt mean its automatically going to be any more realistic, or better.)

And to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how IA scales to the rest of the stuff or other stuff is automatically 'better'. I have covered storm of Iron for example, and having recently reread it I've changed my opinion - there's a shit-ton of stuff in that story that si damn contrived to make it work, and come across as downright silly (like the fact the AdMech are deliberately poisoning the garrison regiment by tricking them into taking 'detox pills' to protect them against the hostile atmosphere.... except we know - even in the book - that they have respirators. Why the detox pills if they can just use respirators outside - which they never do except in rare cases, I might add - despite the 'poisonous atmosphere. Thre's a particular kind of ignorance there required to make things work out that can't be ignored.) And this isn't the first time. Iron Warrior (the 'sequel') has siege warfare being laid on fucking SPACE STATSION. Not boarding actions. SIeges. IN SPACE. And if that weren't bad enough we have an IG novel DEVOTED to the Meat Droid Krieg...

To be perfectly blunt, there's LOTS of stuff I need to re-cover specifically pertaining to the guard that I just haven't gotten around yet, and I'm not even sure how you could 'generalize' about IG tactics without restricting yourself to one source. Go by the codex and you could conclude one thing or another. Go by earlier sources and its different. Go by a particular novela nd its another. And even if its 'better' than the IA stuff or some of the dumber stuff, that still doesn't make it equal to modern warfare doctrine, organization, training, etc.

On the other hand, to be perfectly blunt, I don't think many folk - particularily in a vs debate context - ever really BOTHER to analyze tactics, doctrine or aspects like that. Numbers and technology yes (like I've done), but don't hear much talk about things like the logistics or such. You may hear about tactics, or doctrine being described purely in 'historicla' contexts (EG 'so and so universe uses WW1/WW2/Napoleonic tactics' so they would win/lose against this other force...) which seems INCREDIBLY simpleminded and retarded.. and yet it gets done on both sides. Hell I've done it, and I play that 'catch up' game where I try to find ways in which 40K (or STar Wars, or any other universe) is NOT an incompetent military force like modern warfare, or cases where 'MODERN' forces migth use trench warfare, or bayonet tactics, or whatever - simply because the discussion suddnely becomes a focal point of silly little details like that.

Instead what I should e doing is focusing on it on a bigger scale, and that means accepting the bad things as well as the good things. How the 'mixed bag' actually plays out (EG is there more good than bad, bad than good, etc.) is hard to describe because it is complicated (all this shit to dig through) but I'm not really sure specific examples matter as much as whether the possibility that their tactics and doctrine might be able to change - and if so how quickly it does to do so. Its not like tactics, doctrine, operational, etc. may be set in stone for any one particular force.

Funny enough I actually came to realize this when reading vs debates about ST military forces. I mean they've actually been ridiculed for not being 'like a modern military force' so often, but one has to actually ask if they NEED to be. Or whether SW needs to be (there's plenty of cases of shitty tactics there.) Or 40K needs to be. Not having those tactics can be a massive disadvantage in a 'vs' setting, but its not any more an 'insta-win' for one side or another either it usually is assumed to be.

[Connor MacLeod]

Besides.. this is something I can learn about it if I'm going to cover it in any detail or discuss it. I need to understand at least the basics, and that means owning up to the ignorance and whatever that entails (up to and including being yelled at for stubbornnes and asking stupid questions and accepting correction when I make obvious mistakes.)

Edit: Besides I'm pretty sure he's going off what is being posted and he is being told. Which means his analysis is limited by the information he is being given (eg if I'm not presenting it correctly thats my fault.)

[Gunhead]

On the other hand, to be perfectly blunt, I don't think many folk - particularily in a vs debate context - ever really BOTHER to analyze tactics, doctrine or aspects like that. Numbers and technology yes (like I've done), but don't hear much talk about things like the logistics or such. You may hear about tactics, or doctrine being described purely in 'historicla' contexts (EG 'so and so universe uses WW1/WW2/Napoleonic tactics' so they would win/lose against this other force...) which seems INCREDIBLY simpleminded and retarded.. and yet it gets done on both sides. Hell I've done it, and I play that 'catch up' game where I try to find ways in which 40K (or STar Wars, or any other universe) is NOT an incompetent military force like modern warfare, or cases where 'MODERN' forces migth use trench warfare, or bayonet tactics, or whatever - simply because the discussion suddnely becomes a focal point of silly little details like that.

Analyzing tactics and strategy in detail in a vs. context is really hard for several reasons. First being that successful tactics and strategies are measured by winning really. If it's stupid but works it's not stupid It's an over simplification but I think it illustrates the problem. Secondly, in written fiction all tactics and strategies fail or succeed due to writer fiat. This also causes a massive brainfarts when it's painfully obvious the tactics used should not work but work anyway. This leads to crude over simplifications like you mention there. Last but not least is the fact that successful tactics are hugely dependent on who's implementing them and basically when measuring leader capability we run into almost the same problems we have if analyzing relative tactics. This also makes vs. debating into a megaton hunt when people scurry to find the one example with the most power output.

-Gunhead

[Sea Skimmer]

Analyzing tactics and strategy in detail in a vs. context is really hard for several reasons. First being that successful tactics and strategies are measured by winning really. If it's stupid but works it's not stupid It's an over simplification but I think it illustrates the problem.

The problem is, plainly what they are doing doesn't work. In this case the defenders have no possible means of winning, and yet still grossly upset a timetable which was ridiculously drawn out in the first place. Given the weapons they have, and should have, either way, this should just not even be possible even if the generals were as incompetent as they are. Its not for nothing I was asking before if they literally had stronger dirt.

[Alkaloid]

The problem is, plainly what they are doing doesn't work.

Thats kind of the point though. It does work by the Imperiums standards of work. The timetable is tiny, it took twelve years, true, but the initial plan and the one that the military thought was the best option was a centuries long naval blockade to starve them out. It cost them more lives and equipment than it really needed to, sure, but not even close to enough to hurt the Imperium even at a sector or subsector level and it solved their chaos insurrection problem. tentially come up with a better plan that cost less lives. Saying the Imperium is tactically inept because they couldn't beat the galactic empire or a modern military or whatever is all well and good, but they never have to fight anything resembling either force in the first place so is that a bad thing?

[Connor MacLeod]

actually it doesn't even work by Imperium standards. Especially not the way they do it. At the very least, they should have had Navy ships in orbit, aircraft, gunships, transports and the like providing them with all the air support they could need and want here, even though that isn't 'trench warfare theme' friendly. They may or may not have been able to grab Titans and/or Astartes (although I find it hard to believe any Adeptus Astartes would ignore the conflict if requested, especially since they were able to get the Dark Angels involved later on!)

They also decided to haul the Kriegers from halfway across the galaxy, and ONLY recruit Krieg troopers. No other kinds. And evne with that, they only opted for Siege Regiments. In other cases the forces would have been pulled from closer in, massed together, and then thrown at the enemy all at once to try and crush them (usually with Naval and Astartes providing important support.) and the IG forces would have been far more diversified. It would have only degenerated into trench warfare as a last resort (it happens precisely like that in a number of cases - such as in the Tactica Imperialis I'm covering right now.) Indeed, degenerating to static trench warfare is seen as something of f ailure because the warfare becomes evne more grueling and resource intensive, and is far more defensive. Hell, the planners for this little conflict considered it the third option (and not all of them actually wanted it) and yet this was the one chosen (quite ironic, isn't it!) And then they go about it in a way that is contrary to most everything else I am aware of.

There could be many other problems with it, but that basically sums it up. Its another fukced up Imperial Armour conflict. I was hoping I could be charitable and find something positive about this, because I and others can be prone to view Imperial armour books as being retarded by default (which is a bad habit to get into - vs debate mentality) but it seems that I was wrong in that regard. It is retarded in many ways - at least with the execution, and it doesn't even seem to succeed in the thematic vein either. It comes across as contrived.

[Sea Skimmer]

Thats kind of the point though. It does work by the Imperiums standards of work.

Reminds me of Zapp Brannigan and the rampaging killbots. But then, that plan also apparently worked without adjustment. The statement was made that tactics and strategies are measured by winning really. This is not true when winning had nothing to do with the specifics of the tactics or strategy.

The timetable is tiny, it took twelve years, true, but the initial plan and the one that the military thought was the best option was a centuries long naval blockade to starve them out. It cost them more lives and equipment than it really needed to, sure, but not even close to enough to hurt the Imperium even at a sector or subsector level and it solved their chaos insurrection problem.

And had they faced a more serious threat many of the problems shown would have still 100% applied and it’d be a disaster. If such a threat is impossible, which is obviously false, then the whole place would be even more retarded for having such massive forces around able to rebel in the first place. A blockade seems like a fine idea if its going to use few or no extra resources and apparently nothing urgent exists about seizing the place to start with. Though, starving them out sounds retarded anyway because what would stop a mere 8 million people from growing food locally.

tentially come up with a better plan that cost less lives.

I’ve already pointed out I don’t know how many problems that could be fixed before you even considered changes to the grand plan.

Saying the Imperium is tactically inept because they couldn't beat the galactic empire or a modern military or whatever is all well and good, but they never have to fight anything resembling either force in the first place so is that a bad thing?

Certainly is when they are plainly are expending vast amounts of resources on military forces just to piss them away being absurdly retarded. Its like North Korea... except North Korea knows how to train people and conduct a real war. Usually people who are able to produce huge amounts of armaments do.

It comes across as contrived.

Very much so. Which is just bad writing, most of what they wanted in the way of the plot elements they wanted could have gone into something that doesn't come off this dumb. Starting with maybe, don't claim its a tiny spec of land rebelling if you want a protracted battle?