Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extractor

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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by NecronLord »

Just got White Dwarf 389, it has a necron campaign in it. On page 80 the campaign has Trazyn, due to communications-warping he's not willing to transfer his conciousness away as he doesn't know where he'd go. Instead of transferring his conciousness into two surrogates, he activates two others, making three of himself in total. "To be certain of vengeance, they must destroy all three Trazyns"

I can scan the page if you like. Third person omniscient proof that Trazyn at least possesses the means to put his mind in new bodies.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by NecronLord »

In fact I got around to scanning it regardless: Link
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Iracundus »

He activates and transforms 2 surrogate hosts so they transform to physically resemble him (which is what is stated in the Codex as the standard procedure: a physical change to match Trazyn). That is like having a stunt or body double.

However there is also a few telling sentences in that scan:
"To swap bodies at this point was be like leaping blindly into the dark, with no guarantee of a destination...He triggers the transfomration of two surrogate hosts but does not attempt to transfer into either."
At the start of the game, the Necron player must make a note as to which Trazyn is the real ruler of Solemnace - the rest are decoys.
Trazyn has transformed 2 other Necron bodies into physical duplicates of himself, but the original Trazyn mind is still in the original Trazyn body. He has duped himself physically but has he really done so mentally? It is like having 2 stunt doubles of yourself active at the same time. They may look like you but physical looks do not imply mental equivalence.

While this article does show that Trazyn can remotely influence prepared surrogate host bodies, I am not seeing where he has duplicated his mind. There is still only the 1 Trazyn, the "real ruler of Solemnace". If they were all truly literally identical in mind as well as body, all 3 would be real Trazyns. Any of the 3 could then take up rulership and everything would be the same as if the real one had survived regardless, but the scenario makes clear that only 1 of the 3 is real and the scenario condition only applies if the real one is "slain" on the battlefield.

The mention of the radiation acting as a barrier to Trazyn's mind moving to another body also shows that the Necron technology to transfer minds is vulnerable to being blocked by something as relatively mundane as radiation. Looking back at the quote you produced from the novel before, that would seem to show that recall of mind is not a given that can be taken for granted when the body self-destructs.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by NecronLord »

The other Trazyns use the same rules, and consequently perform in the same manner as the original. Whether or not they are regarded as the original doesn't really affect its relevance as a means of programming/creating new necrons - it makes two battleworthy necrons, admittedly where there was a pre-existing mind, but there's no suggestion that the original mind is still there, only that there are "other Trazyns."
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Stark »

The attention distracting necron minuate sideline has now gone from 'necrons cant do xy' to 'omg blocked by radiation'.

TA weapons are blocked by trees and dirt. RELATIVELY MUNDANE trees and dirt. :v
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Lord Revan »

Tbh I dout there ever was any honest attempt to establish the capabilities of both sides and compare thoses. I mean can't remember a single pro-TA argument with good solid proof instead of vague statements and hyperboles.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Iracundus »

NecronLord wrote:The other Trazyns use the same rules, and consequently perform in the same manner as the original. Whether or not they are regarded as the original doesn't really affect its relevance as a means of programming/creating new necrons - it makes two battleworthy necrons, admittedly where there was a pre-existing mind, but there's no suggestion that the original mind is still there, only that there are "other Trazyns."
Trazyn's stats are the same as a standard Necron Overlord, and the only special rules that would apply in that scenario is one conferred by wargear, which is a physical prop. A stunt double with the physical appearance and functional props of the one he is supposed to be? Sure, why not. It is still physical emulation. I don't see evidence of any mental emulation.

There were 3 Necrons before the transformations. There were 3 Necrons after the transformations. No new Necrons were created.
Stark wrote:TA weapons are blocked by trees and dirt. RELATIVELY MUNDANE trees and dirt. :v
As are all Necron gauss weaponry, tesla weaponry, and all other Necron direct fire weaponry as evidenced by the feasibility of cover saves against them, even those from mundane trees and dirt.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Iracundus »

Lord Revan wrote:Tbh I dout there ever was any honest attempt to establish the capabilities of both sides and compare thoses. I mean can't remember a single pro-TA argument with good solid proof instead of vague statements and hyperboles.
Perhaps you should look harder. There have been multiple quotes in this thread from the TA manual. Someone on page 8 pulled the speeds of the Commander and Peewee units and they are listed in m/s and accelerations in m/s/s. On page 7, Sea Skimmer examined approximately the number of modern solar plants to a nuclear power plant equivalence, and the ratios for TA are similar.

Just as the TA fanboy has been overstating the positive and hyping that while ignoring anything negative, the TA haters have been refusing to look at anything remotely positive and keep claiming there is no proof and everything is vague despite direct quotes and game data having been produced for discussion and analysis.

A Peewee kbot with maximum speed as given by the game data of 21.6 m/s is a max speed of 77.76 km/hr. Whatever the particular disagreement over the precise angle of the camera viewpoint, given such things as stride lengths and number of strides per unit time, it still amounts to the infantry kbots of TA being larger than human sized and moving faster than flesh and blood humans can, and by extension then also basic Necron Warriors. Whatever the individual durability of these kbots are, they walk faster than Necron infantry. Or wait, will the TA haters cherry pick and try to dismiss TA game data that shows TA in a good light, while accepting any TA data that shows TA as weaker such as chortling about TA shots hitting trees? If you are going to accept game performance data, no double standards. Good and bad has to be accepted.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Lord Revan »

Iracundus wrote:
Lord Revan wrote:Tbh I dout there ever was any honest attempt to establish the capabilities of both sides and compare thoses. I mean can't remember a single pro-TA argument with good solid proof instead of vague statements and hyperboles.
Perhaps you should look harder. There have been multiple quotes in this thread from the TA manual. Someone on page 8 pulled the speeds of the Commander and Peewee units and they are listed in m/s and accelerations in m/s/s. On page 7, Sea Skimmer examined approximately the number of modern solar plants to a nuclear power plant equivalence, and the ratios for TA are similar.

Just as the TA fanboy has been overstating the positive and hyping that while ignoring anything negative, the TA haters have been refusing to look at anything remotely positive and keep claiming there is no proof and everything is vague despite direct quotes and game data having been produced for discussion and analysis.

A Peewee kbot with maximum speed as given by the game data of 21.6 m/s is a max speed of 77.76 km/hr. Whatever the particular disagreement over the precise angle of the camera viewpoint, given such things as stride lengths and number of strides per unit time, it still amounts to the infantry kbots of TA being larger than human sized and moving faster than flesh and blood humans can, and by extension then also basic Necron Warriors. Whatever the individual durability of these kbots are, they walk faster than Necron infantry. Or wait, will the TA haters cherry pick and try to dismiss TA game data that shows TA in a good light, while accepting any TA data that shows TA as weaker such as chortling about TA shots hitting trees? If you are going to accept game performance data, no double standards. Good and bad has to be accepted.
thanks forgot about those, I guess Gamer's TA-wank had poisoned my preception.

that said IIRC being faster then a necrons isn't really all that impressive them being characterized as being slow as hell. 80 km/h would roughly the speed of a modern MBT give or take a bit. in DoW (a "lesser" source I know) only thing slower then a nercon warrior on foot was the monolith, with the big "guns" (aka baneblades, greater daemons and such) being roughly as fast (on ground, the bloodthirster could fly faster).
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Iracundus »

If one tracks the listed speeds of other vehicles and walkers in the 40K universe:
Tau MBT the Hammerhead has a max observed speed of 70km/h (p. 158, Imperial Armour 3)
Tau armored Crisis battlesuits at 50 km/hr on jetpacks (p. 172, Imperial Armour 3)
Imperial MBT Leman Russ 38 km/hr on road and 21 km/hr off road (p.15, Imperial Armour 1)
Imperial Support Sentinel walker at 45 km/hr on road and 40 km/hr off road (p. 240, Imperial Armour 3),
Warhound Scout Titan 58 km/hr on road, 42 km/hr off road (p. 252, Imperial Armour 3)

The Peewee k-bot compares favorably in terms of speed to just about every 40K vehicle that involves contact with the ground, being outstripped by scout anti-grav vehicles of the Tau and the anti-grav vehicles of the Eldar. Granted more main combat k-bots are slower, but it demonstrates at least the point that k-bots are larger than human scale and that they have speeds that are more vehicular scale than 40K's ground slogging infantry, whatever the race.

As a comparison, the current fastest human foot speed on record according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_sp ... s_of_speed is 44.72 km/hr and that was during a 100 meter sprint, so it was not a sustained speed nor one done during which there was any other activity (such as firing a weapon).
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Lord Revan »

true, but speed isn't everything Humwees are fasters then most MTB IIRC but still most times the tank would be the winner.

There's other factors like rate of fire, firing arcs, replacebility (which I would assume TA would win as their units seems much more expendble) and so forth.

That said I'm not the best man to talk about the capabilities of the Necron as they and the orks are the only WH40k races I don't own any codex from.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Iracundus »

Lord Revan wrote:true, but speed isn't everything Humwees are fasters then most MTB IIRC but still most times the tank would be the winner.

There's other factors like rate of fire, firing arcs, replacebility (which I would assume TA would win as their units seems much more expendble) and so forth.

That said I'm not the best man to talk about the capabilities of the Necron as they and the orks are the only WH40k races I don't own any codex from.
There are no numerical capabilities in real world units for the Necrons given.

Speed isn't everything but it is also the only parameter from the TA units that is in real world units. All the rest such as damage output, armor, cost are all given in in-game units.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Lord Revan »

Iracundus wrote:
Lord Revan wrote:true, but speed isn't everything Humwees are fasters then most MTB IIRC but still most times the tank would be the winner.

There's other factors like rate of fire, firing arcs, replacebility (which I would assume TA would win as their units seems much more expendble) and so forth.

That said I'm not the best man to talk about the capabilities of the Necron as they and the orks are the only WH40k races I don't own any codex from.
There are no numerical capabilities in real world units for the Necrons given.

Speed isn't everything but it is also the only parameter from the TA units that is in real world units. All the rest such as damage output, armor, cost are all given in in-game units.
which is why I've been willing to call this thread "inconclusive due lack of viable data" since page 3 or so, but alas gamer hasn't learned his lesson and still posts vague stuff and harps on about gigatons of firepower without proof or qualifiers.

I'm not concerned which side "wins" only that it's done fairly and honestly(tbh I'm not concerned even if there's no clear winner, as that's quite common in vs debates involving games due to lack of viable data).
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by gamer »

I really don't think it matters if the Necrons can upload minds to another tomb complex or build new units, if they can how fast can they do this? If it takes minutes just to build a Necron Warrior this is much too slow. Also how fast do they respond? Necrons don't strike me as the type that will respond immediately with the heaviest gear they have.

@Lord Revan
I gave you proof complete with sources, I'm not pulling information about TA from my ass, you just don't like the proof I gave. Even going on low-end calcs a single Peewee or AK is like a Space Marine Dreadnought that has both its arms replaced with high-powered automatic lascannons, cloaked, can run 60mph, armor tougher than most tanks, and fielded in numbers that rival or even surpass the Tyranids, and these will likely only be used in the very beginning to ward off any Necron scouting parties.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Lord Revan »

your proof tends be so poorly done, it would give me an F if I used that in an university assingment. I wonder why is it that only you harp on about "supermega firepower!" while even other pro-TA debaters think you're full of shit, hmm is it a) because here hates TA with passion or b)because you're full of shit

as I've already stated I don't give a damn which side is the winners if there's a clear winner to begin with, so please do us all a favor and quit posting here so maybe this thread can die as it should have ages ago.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by gamer »

Other TA debaters lets see one guy okay. The problem you have with my proof is that you want to use in-game info instead.

Okay again even with low-end calcs going purely on in-game visuals even the weakest units have enough firepower to wreck 40k tanks unless you want to argue somehow Peewees are comparable to guardsmen. Fluff wise fighting on the ground can reduce a planet to barerock in a week and a single commander can bring back a civilization.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by JointStrikeFighter »

No fuckstick the I. Game fire power is pee wee cam set trees of fire.


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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by gamer »

JointStrikeFighter wrote:No fuckstick the I. Game fire power is pee wee cam set trees of fire.


SO MAMY GIGATONS
Try writing that in english, thank you.

Everyone's quick to point out burning trees when debating against TA, but if you actually do the calcs, those are some pretty hardcore trees. They tower over Peewees and burn out in seconds. A 1m diameter 20m cylinder of wood burning to a crisp in five seconds puts out over two gigawatts for those five seconds, yet burning trees fail to light other trees on fire unless they're so close that their branches are actually touching. If you want to talk about burning trees, it actually suggests that those trees are pretty damn tough.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by JointStrikeFighter »

Show your math or shut up.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Senteth »

First off, to revisit the size arguments earlier in the thread, the developer's internal tools list the Peewee as about 10 meters in height. Take that as you will.

Second, a Peewee cannot, under any circumstances, set a tree on fire. They can however make one violently explode with a single hit, leaving no visible debris. (supported by the destruction animation showing the entire tree being shredded. Also, note that it is a single shot that can cause this, not the entirety of the triple EMG salvo)

A quick extrapolation from Mike Wong's own tree destruction calcs shows that about 22.646 megajoules are needed to overcome the tensile strength of 1 cubic meter of live wood. Going with Gamer's assumption that the trees can be represented as cylinders of wood 20 meters tall and 1 meter wide, (a generous assumption since the average TA tree looks much thicker than that in proportion to its height) that leaves us with 15.7 m^3 of wood, and approximately 355.5 mj needed to make it explode. Triple that figure to account for the full salvo and also take into account the reload rate of 0.4 seconds between salvos, and a Peewee can therefore pump out 2.66 gigajoules of death per second.

It takes 0.04 units of energy to fire a single EMG bolt, (0.12 energy for the full salvo, or 0.3 energy over the course of a single second) and a Solar Panel provides 20 energy per second, so assuming perfect efficiency, a single TA Solar panel provides an output of 177.33 gigawatts.

Going by these figures, a Peewee's weapon is roughly comparable to a Tomahawk cruise missile fired every second, and it would take 10,000 Peewees just under 44 hours to produce the equivalent of 1 gigaton of explosive force over the course of a battle. I feel that this is a reasonable accommodation of both the figures stated in the Galactic War reports and common sense when faced with the in-game visuals.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Sea Skimmer »

If they had that much firepower they'd be blowing craters in everything all the time, which is seen in neither game nor the opening movie. Since no weapon in the game can make a crater I conclude none of them have even as much firepower as a 75mm artillery shell. If you can't grasp the nonsense of using game mechanics to calculate energy then please don't waste space.
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Senteth »

Sea Skimmer wrote:If they had that much firepower they'd be blowing craters in everything all the time, which is seen in neither game nor the opening movie. Since no weapon in the game can make a crater I conclude none of them have even as much firepower as a 75mm artillery shell. If you can't grasp the nonsense of using game mechanics to calculate energy then please don't waste space.
*shrugs* Evidence for higher yields in fluff were presented, (albeit in an over-enthusiastically optimistic manner that tried ignoring the lower-end showings) and then disregarded by certain posters simply because of game mechanics. My previous post was simply an attempt to quantify firepower based on observed in-game feats to satisfy those people.

Since Gamer seems loath to provide the background information used in his burning tree calcs, I will attempt to do my own quantization. On average, perfectly dry wood releases 18-22 megajoules of energy per kilogram, while wood with 20% moisture content releases about 15 megajoules per kilogram. [1] Right away we see a problem, namely that as moisture content increases, the energy released by burning diminishes. At 50% moisture, 'green' or live wood releases 9.5 mj/kg. [2] The density of wood varies widely, both by species and by moisture content. 60 pounds per cubic foot seems to be a good average for green wood, [3] which comes to 961.1 kilograms per cubic meter.

Using our previous approximation of the tree's size, (again, a conservative one since it is both thinner than the tree's actual girth and ignores the limbs and branches entirely) that gives us a total energy release of 143.35 gigajoules, delivered over a 5-15 second period, or 28.67-9.5 gigawatts.

Strange, here I was expecting Gamer to have generously over-estimated his figures again, yet they actually lowball the expected yield. Fancy that. :?
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Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

Post by Senteth »

*bump*
Sea Skimmer wrote:If they had that much firepower they'd be blowing craters in everything all the time, which is seen in neither game nor the opening movie. Since no weapon in the game can make a crater I conclude none of them have even as much firepower as a 75mm artillery shell. If you can't grasp the nonsense of using game mechanics to calculate energy then please don't waste space.
One more thing that I forgot to address in my previous post- I re-watched the Total Annihilation intro, and noticed a conspicuous lack of shots hitting the ground. Almost without exception, they either hit their target, or fly offscreen never to be seen again. If TA weaponry is really as focused as the manual implies, then very little energy would spill over into the environment if they hit a target sufficiently tough enough to absorb the entire shot. (as would be expected from conservation of energy however, any shots that hit the landscape should show the full extent of the blast, regardless of how focused the original shot was)

The only clear instance of ordinance hitting the ground would be when the ARM bombers fly over a CORE installation and level it, but even then it's problematic to derive calcs from it since the scene cuts away before the explosions dissipate, leaving no chance to show crater size or depth, and due to the focused nature of their weaponry, much of the blast may well have been directed underground.
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