Galactic Empire vs All the orks in the 40K galaxy

[Connor MacLeod]

Been reading the Codex Titanicus lately for the researhc purposes, and the story in there about Gork and Mork put me in mind of a vs. Let's say for some reason the Orks DID unite, rise up, and conquer the entire 40K galaxy. They steamrolled the Imperium. They stomped out Chaos and the Eye of Terror. They beat the Eldar. They accidentally smacked the Tau down while fighting the Imperium. The Tyranids were stomped. The Necrons... well whatever youw ant to think happened to them happened.

So basically the Orks defeated the entire 40K galaxy... and promptly fell into fighting each other again.

Until... one of the Mekboyz on one Ork world try to get together to make a Gargant shootier. While fiddling with the powerfields they accidentally manage to create some sorrt of wormhole passage. When they explore, they find out this wormhole passage leads to the Star Wars galaxy where they find... more 'humies to stomp. Excitedly they go back through and tell their boss.

To make a logn story short, we have similar events from the CT story happening here. Gork and Mork begin stirring, which triggers the beginning of yet another galaxy-spanning WAAAGH. Orks start rousing themselve, start to team up, and start assembling. The Mekboyz are all "inspired" to build wormhole devices linking to this new galaxy, copying what the original Mekboyz had accomplished. These deviecs are too bulky and unreliable to be mobile, but it allows them to establish footholds in the Star Wars galaxy.

Meanwhile, Palpatine has sensed a disturbance in the Force. A new threat on the horizon. A green one. Reports are coming in of Navy ships facing off against shielded asteroids and giant agglomerations of space debris, many of which are painted red.

Scenario: The Orks have maybe 100 separate wormhmoles, all coming out on the far eastern edge of hte Star Wars galaxy in the Outer Rim - lets say around hutt space. The Wormholes are roughly 100 LY or so apart.

The orks have the resources of those worlds they have conquered - this includes access to Imperial Forge Worlds, looted vehicles of any type, etc. This includes slave populations on the respective worlds. Exceptions to this are tech they would not normally be known to or possibly Loot (I doubt they Loot may Eldar craftworlds or Necron Tomb worlds.)

They are facing the Galactic Empire as of halfway between ROTS and ANH. They know about the Orks and that they are attacking, but they yet have no idea of the scale/scope of the threat or how much territory they have (or yet where they are coming from precisely. They know the general areas being attacked.) Likewise, the Orks dont know much yeta bout the Empire.

The Orks goal is the same as always.. beat the enemy and have a good fight. The Empire will try to repulse and/or defeat them if possible.

Edit: for numbers for ships and such.. assume the Orks have roughly a comparable propoprtion of ships as they threw at the Imperium in the Third Armageddon war (some thousands of ships including a dozen space hulks and lots of cruisers and escorts.. hundreds if not thousands.) Assume as well they've looted the huulks of most of the Imperial Navy and Chaos ships and convereted them to their use
(hundreds of thousands or millions more ships)

[Uraniun235]

I'm not fully versed in 40K but I think the question has to be raised and considered now, since it's going to come up eventually - what exactly does it take to remove an Ork infestation from a planet?

[Azazal]

I'm not fully versed in 40K but I think the question has to be raised and considered now, since it's going to come up eventually - what exactly does it take to remove an Ork infestation from a planet?

DBZ, even if you kill every living Ork, they will leave spores scattered across the planet, so they will be back after some time.

Gut feel at them moment, it's a long drawn out, very very bloody war, the Empire wins, but have to deal with Ork infestation for decades to come. I'll add more in the morning, I leave you with the thought of a red Death Star, because nothing else has more zzap-zzap

[Stark]

I'm not fully versed in 40K but I think the question has to be raised and considered now, since it's going to come up eventually - what exactly does it take to remove an Ork infestation from a planet?

I think you just killed the thread, the Ork infestation thing is fucking hilarious. At least tracking down the source should be simple, and once blockaded I doubt the Orks would be able to break through so it'd just be the initial aimless attacks to deal with.

Hopefully we'll see the equivalent of 'sector-level threat in three days' in this thread soon for lols.

[Crayz9000]

DBZ, even if you kill every living Ork, they will leave spores scattered across the planet, so they will be back after some time.

I think you meant BDZ... as in Base Delta Zero.

Although the image of Goku being surrounded by a horde of big green Orks all going WAAAGH!!!! while he's in the middle of his powerup is amusing.

[Darth Raptor]

I figured the Empire just flooded all frequencies with the show prompting the Orks to commit mass suicide.

[NecronLord]

I'm not fully versed in 40K but I think the question has to be raised and considered now, since it's going to come up eventually - what exactly does it take to remove an Ork infestation from a planet?

Weedkiller.

Seriously.

Xenology has a commonly available modern-real-life weedkiller (I can look up which one if you like), if used in modified hollowpoint rounds, course through their bodies like a very fast acting poison, and as well as killing them stone dead, it corrupts the cell nuclei of their spores so they don't drop fertile spores when they die.

This isn't something the Imperium seems to use, but it's not that hard a leap for someone with an actual working scientific research establishment (and, hell, a willingness to test chemical weapons) like the Empire.

Necron gauss flayers are also probably rather useful for stopping them dropping spores after they die, but in both cases, you would have to find their developmental spores-already-settled and shoot them, too. But that's not so great a problem.

The best cure, however, is not letting them land.

[Covenant]

From what we've seen of blasters, they do seem to have an effective thermal component that might be able to burn the Ork bodies effectively enough to keep the risk of spores low. Overall though, assuming the Orks can land in any great number, they're going to need to spray the whole area with weedkiller and fungicides before it's safe, but after that they can move on. I'm not sure how well Ork spaceships perform versus Imperial vessels, but I assume not entirely well individually. Someone with more than a cursory BFG knowledgebase would be helpful, but I thought that Ork spaceforces depended on numbers rather than quality, and the Empire certainly has a lot of ships of their own, and of varying degrees of high power.

I don't think this is going to go well for the Orks though. Imperial production capacity is huge, and the Orks will make plenty of damage after landfall, but the Empire has extremely efficent practices for handling those situations. The question is, once more, can the Empire handle the Orks in space? It all depends on space superiority in the Star Wars universe.

Somewhere between ANH and ROTS the Death Star I will be coming online, or at least be in the half-built level of functionality we saw the Death Star II in. With that production capacity freed up, and with an incomprehensibly badass weapon at their disposal, simply grinding the Orks out of existance wouldn't be impossible.

I'd sum it up as being a battle for the Ultimate High Ground followed up by a question of if a high-powered blaster shot will create the flare-through thermal effects we saw a few times. If it does, might an Ork simply burn instead of seeding Spores?

[Vendetta]

I'm not fully versed in 40K but I think the question has to be raised and considered now, since it's going to come up eventually - what exactly does it take to remove an Ork infestation from a planet?

Quite a lot. However, it takes a lot less to reduce an infestation to manageable levels (sterilise battlefields and any discovered ork camps with fire or chemical weapons). Keeping populations down means that the local boyz never get beyond feral levels, at which they could be easily kept in check by a planetary garrison.

[hongi]

Can I just say how much I love this scenario? Somehow Tyranids, Necrons, Imperium vs the Empire doesn't do it for me, but a galaxy-conquering horde of Orks just fits the bill.

Concerning the herbicides, won't the Orks simply adapt like lots of weed species do here on Earth?

[Darth Hoth]

The Empire can raise bioweapons that are contagious between different species and have nigh-on one hundred percent lethality in weeks or months. Once they have captured Orks to study, figuring out a microbe/nanokiller that can dismantle their spores should be rather easy.

As for space, does the standard scenario (namely, that the Empire can spam them with ships and World Devastators) still apply? If so, it is little enough of a contest.

How does Ork FTL work? Is it Warp-based and of comparable speed and reliability to the Imperium's?

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm not fully versed in 40K but I think the question has to be raised and considered now, since it's going to come up eventually - what exactly does it take to remove an Ork infestation from a planet?

Weedkiller.

Seriously.

Xenology has a commonly available modern-real-life weedkiller (I can look up which one if you like), if used in modified hollowpoint rounds, course through their bodies like a very fast acting poison, and as well as killing them stone dead, it corrupts the cell nuclei of their spores so they don't drop fertile spores when they die.

This isn't something the Imperium seems to use, but it's not that hard a leap for someone with an actual working scientific research establishment (and, hell, a willingness to test chemical weapons) like the Empire.

Necron gauss flayers are also probably rather useful for stopping them dropping spores after they die, but in both cases, you would have to find their developmental spores-already-settled and shoot them, too. But that's not so great a problem.

The best cure, however, is not letting them land.

Which we've discussed before. Having actually read Xenology now, I'm even MORE convinced of how bizarre this is. Orks won't be harmed by anti-plant weapons yet weedkiller will? Other forms of weedkiller won't work but the specific kind mentioned would? Nevermind that the Tau, Necrons, or Eldar never seemed to bother figuring this out "hey, weedkiller will fuck em up, so why don't we try that?" The Necrons in particular are irksome, as I recall they were indicated in Xenology to have had a hand in all this to begin with.

And now that I think aobut it, how sane was the AdMech guy actually making those notes and observations?

there were other things that bugged me about Xenology (one reason I have a hard time considering whether to actually cover it or not) but the oddities about the "weedkiller" is a big one.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Empire can raise bioweapons that are contagious between different species and have nigh-on one hundred percent lethality in weeks or months. Once they have captured Orks to study, figuring out a microbe/nanokiller that can dismantle their spores should be rather easy.

Which is nothing on the Imperium's biowarfare (including virus weapons, which can dissolve all organic matter on a planet into a massless sludge that will consequently trigger global firestorms sufficient to reduce said organic matter to ashes.) Hell, they can key virus weapons to specific aliens, mutations, or something as mundane as hair color for crying out loud. I dont remember the empire being able to do that.

As for space, does the standard scenario (namely, that the Empire can spam them with ships and World Devastators) still apply? If so, it is little enough of a contest.

If you can determine the criteria by which they would employ such tactics, given that they seemed to be very reluctant to do so in a vast majority of cases (The REpublic never used it against the Separatists, the Rebels never against the Empire, the Empire against the REbels or against rebelling worlds, etc.)

Hell if you're going to go that route, why bother with droid armies or world devastators. Mass producing hyperspacial robot controlled ramships should be little problem, and they can just ram some mass extinction impactor itno planets (something they could do with sW technology but never happens in SW, along with other iterations of hyperspace weapons.)

How does Ork FTL work? Is it Warp-based and of comparable speed and reliability to the Imperium's?

Warp based and varies. They have dedicated warships which assumes they have at least some short-range warp capability (3rd battle for Armageddon would suggest that, since the ORks deliberately went back there to attack again.)

Other (earlier) sourrces indicated they just relied on space huulks travelling through the warp to random locations to travel, as I remember.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, if they have Forge Worlds, can't they have Looted Imperial battlecruisers?

Oh, and the Yuuzhan Vong have nothing on the greenskins.

[Ford Prefect]

Orks won't be harmed by anti-plant weapons yet weedkiller will?

This is especially odd when you consider that the Inquisitor rulebook actually has a specifically anti-plant grenade type which will totally obliterate any plant matter within something like three or so meters. If a mundane herbicide were to work, you would expect these to vaporise them. The Imperium is huge on viral warfare; one of its largest ground-based weapons was an ICBM launcher armed with viral warheads (and it was intended to combat an Ork invasion). Given that they know Orks are fungal in nature, you'd think they'd try something like that at some point.

[Darth Hoth]

Which is nothing on the Imperium's biowarfare (including virus weapons, which can dissolve all organic matter on a planet into a massless sludge that will consequently trigger global firestorms sufficient to reduce said organic matter to ashes.) Hell, they can key virus weapons to specific aliens, mutations, or something as mundane as hair color for crying out loud. I dont remember the empire being able to do that.

Point, given ecocidal virus bombs. As for precision, the Empire can key viruses/nanokillers to a specific individual's genetic code and make them undetectable to SW medical sciences (as per the shit Furgan infected Mon Mothma with in the JAT). The problem with a straight comparison is that the Imperium does not pool its knowledge and (sometimes at least) does not appear to build on the technology they have available; Necron's post above would be one example. Also, the Imperium is very slow at engineering new tech, preferring to use what they know from before. Can they research new bioweapons in short timespans? The Empire funds major science and does not restrict it to (particular factions of) an often reactionary cult.

What is the source for keying viruses to hair colour? I am not doubting you, but merely curious; I had never heard of that.

If you can determine the criteria by which they would employ such tactics, given that they seemed to be very reluctant to do so in a vast majority of cases (The REpublic never used it against the Separatists, the Rebels never against the Empire, the Empire against the REbels or against rebelling worlds, etc.)

Hell if you're going to go that route, why bother with droid armies or world devastators. Mass producing hyperspacial robot controlled ramships should be little problem, and they can just ram some mass extinction impactor itno planets (something they could do with sW technology but never happens in SW, along with other iterations of hyperspace weapons.)

I take that as a no. Which is reasonable, given past performance (indicating very strong cultural bias against huge automated militaries) and how that would effectively kill the scenario.

So what levels of mobilisation do we assume are acceptable to the Imperium? Conscription? Hundreds of thousands of ISDs? Millions? As noted, the limit is not production capacity, but psychological/"home front" factors.

Warp based and varies. They have dedicated warships which assumes they have at least some short-range warp capability (3rd battle for Armageddon would suggest that, since the ORks deliberately went back there to attack again.)

Other (earlier) sourrces indicated they just relied on space huulks travelling through the warp to random locations to travel, as I remember.

So I gather that would be less reliable than Imperium, at about the same speeds? That grants the Empire the strategic initiative after the shock of the initial attack.

[NecronLord]

From what we've seen of blasters, they do seem to have an effective thermal component that might be able to burn the Ork bodies effectively enough to keep the risk of spores low.

Hardly. There's nothing they do that lasguns don't. You need to douse them in flames or otherwise hit the whole body with heat for that to work.

Of course, SW has some flamethrowers...

I'd sum it up as being a battle for the Ultimate High Ground followed up by a question of if a high-powered blaster shot will create the flare-through thermal effects we saw a few times. If it does, might an Ork simply burn instead of seeding Spores?

It's unlikely, unless you do what the stormtroopers did to Uncle Owen.

Concerning the herbicides, won't the Orks simply adapt like lots of weed species do here on Earth?

It's highly likely (almost certain) they're 'gene locked' a process used on various species, sapient and not, in 40K, that somehow renders them largely immune to mutation. The Eldar are (hence, no evolutionary change in sixty million years) as presumably, are the Hrud and Orks. A more extreme example would be the 'Camelepards' from Chaos Child, which had been 'locked' millions of years ago into a form suitable for a hot climate, on a (later) cold world, but simply couldn't generate adaptive mutations.

This may seem counterproductive, but is rather useful, given that exposure to the warp creates all sorts of hideous, horrible mutations that fuck up quality of life for billions.

[Oskuro]

Although I'm all for the Boyz, the advantage undoubtely goes to the Empire, simply because of Hyperdrive.

In the given scenario, the Wormholes create a bottleneck, thus negating the Orks' greatest advantage: Power in numbers. Imperial fleets can simply jump from wormhole to wormhole, hitting fast and hard, and cutting off the Orks already in the galaxy from their reinforcements.

In a straight face-to-face battle, the Orks would overwhelm the Imperials by sheer force of numbers, but unless they have some sort of interdiciton technology I don't know about (I'm not too knowledgable on WH40K fluff), the Empire can do hit-and-run tactics with ease.

[Black Admiral]

In a straight face-to-face battle, the Orks would overwhelm the Imperials by sheer force of numbers, but unless they have some sort of interdiciton technology I don't know about (I'm not too knowledgable on WH40K fluff), the Empire can do hit-and-run tactics with ease.

Well, they did once use a number of Weirdboyz (Ork psykers) to drag an IoM fleet out of the Warp and into an ambush (Death or Glory), inflicting a fair bit of damage on the IoM ships in the process - but if they could duplicate that against SW hyperdrives is anyone's guess.

[Azazal]

DBZ, even if you kill every living Ork, they will leave spores scattered across the planet, so they will be back after some time.

I think you meant BDZ... as in Base Delta Zero.

Although the image of Goku being surrounded by a horde of big green Orks all going WAAAGH!!!! while he's in the middle of his powerup is amusing.

Yeah that, that'll teach me to post late at night.

So yeah, the planet needs to be sterilized of spores, as for the weed killer, forgot that one in Xenology, but I have to ask why it is not used by the IoM. The IoM has no qualms with using chemical and biological weapons, so I can;t see a reason why it's held back, hell given the that mankind has been at war with the Orks for at least 20,000 years, some one should have been using the stuff wide spread on the Green Horde and realized, hey this works wonders.

As for interdiction by the Orks, in 2nd ed fluff , they were the masters of force field tech, their mek-boyz could create and manipulate force fields to the point that space hulks entering a solar system were easily captured, and placed in low orbit. The were then boyz transported to the hulk via force field (whether that was through a nice ramp they could walk up, something along the lines shock-attack gun, or some where in between, I'm not sure, that was never made clear or I'm not remembering), then the hulk was launched back out into space. Given all of that, I would feel there is a good chance that a Mek could stumble on a way to use a force field to cause enough troubles to drop Empire ships out of hyperspace, but would that knowledge be wide spread enough to have an effect, that I am not sure of.

[NecronLord]

Yeah that, that'll teach me to post late at night.

So yeah, the planet needs to be sterilized of spores, as for the weed killer, forgot that one in Xenology, but I have to ask why it is not used by the IoM. The IoM has no qualms with using chemical and biological weapons, so I can;t see a reason why it's held back, hell given the that mankind has been at war with the Orks for at least 20,000 years, some one should have been using the stuff wide spread on the Green Horde and realized, hey this works wonders.

The first half of those twenty thousand are forgotten all but completely. As for why they don't use it, they don't know, it was discovered by accident, and as it was in a secret laborotory, word wasn't spread...

[Peptuck]

Three questions, as Orky spacecraft are not my area of expertise.

First, how tough are Space Hulks? Becasue (and correct me if I'm wrong) the things are nigh impossible to destroy, even for the Imperium, which has firepower comparable to SW ships.

Second, and very, very important for this scenario: does the Empire know where the WAAAAAAGHoles are located? Not just their general area, but their exact locations?

Third, and ties into the second, do the Orks have navigational data the Empire can interpret to backtrack them to these WAAAAAAGHoles?

I think these last two are very important, as they can determine how quickly the Empire can attempt to bottleneck the Orks. If they can find the WAAAAAAGHole locations quickly, they can lock them down (though they'd be stuck on defense permenantly unless they can punch through the WAAAAAAGHoles, and then they'd be in the Milky Way with all its uncounted numbers of Orks happily pouring down their throats) but if they can't find them, then they're going to have to comb the areas of space for the WAAAAAAAGHoles, and that'll give the Orks time to get established and start lootin'.

[Jawawithagun]

The Emperor gains a whole new level of popularity throughout the galaxy when he promises a Deathstar for every sector to combat the Ork threat.

[Todeswind]

The joy of the Orks is their unpredictability. Orks by their very nature are random, capricious, and warlike. I will spare you the details of every aspect of Ork "Kulture" however suffice it to say that my money is on the Orks and not the Empire.

Ork technology is capable of a number of capacities that baffle and frustrate both the Adeptus Mechanus and Earth Caste scientists because, insofar as anybody has been able to figure out, there is no physical reason for large parts of the tech to actually function. Red making vehicles move faster for example or louder weapons doing more damage. The giant Shock Attack Gun is my personal favorite example of the technological prowess of the Orks and their own incapacity to use it for anything productive other than destruction.

But for a second lets assume that the Empire stomps the hell out of the early Waarrggh party that enters Imperial space. There is no reason to assume that the Empire would have a clue that their defense fleets, which would no doubt respond to any incursion, could become carriers for spores. The majority of the IoM is ignorant of how orks breed outside of the military forced dedicated specifically to the task of combatting them. I would assume that it is Empire SOP to take prisoners, or at least some bodies, from any sort of hostile extragalactic invasion. Once the ork spores get in the oxygen recyclers then they are ticking time bombs. IOM ships that have been boarded by orks are supposed to (but rarely do) go through strict quarantine procedures to ensure that all spores are eliminated. As the Empire no doubt does not know this the specimins would be taken to a number of research labs. They would probably obey some sort of quarantie procedures but no system is perfect and after the immediate dangers of disease are proven to be false issues any survivors would be turned over for interrogation and any dead bodies would be dissected to learn what they could learn (true the two aren't mutually exclusive).

It doesn't seem like a stretch to assume that the best equipped facilites for the sort of research would be on or within reach of major population centers. The undercity of Courscaunt would be a prime breeding ground for ork spores. Orks regularly infest hive worlds in this manner, some well menaing Lord will try to have Orks studied and interrogated and unitentionally infect their worlds.

The Empire wouldn't automatically asume that the Orks are breeding in the sewers when raiding parties start, they'll assume that there are infiltrators who are heralding some invasion. Which may or may not be true if the orks in the now properly orks 40k universe hear that there is fighting to be had in the SW one.

One does not assume that a hostile sentinet is a fungus when you meet them, you reach for your blaster. When there are waves of them descending on your planets you start looking for thermal detenators long before you look for bio-weapons.

[Todeswind]

The Emperor gains a whole new level of popularity throughout the galaxy when he promises a Deathstar for every sector to combat the Ork threat.

Didn't the cost of the joint losses of the Death Star 1 and Dark Trooper projects nearly bankrupt the Empire?