40k Titans

[Darth PhysBod]

Jesus, where did that appear?

Iron Hands.

And this ancient and noble machine itself:

[snip]

Is there any more description after that?. I'm Interested to know because it gives nuggets of details such as the precursor wave felt out to 10km, and the machine at a position 'some km' from the target.

[Imperial Overlord]

For the third time, megatons is the high end. An upper limit. Kilotons is more reasonable for most titan weapons. And their building materials are much stronger than ours based on the fact the hive spires don't collapse under their own weight.

[Black Admiral]

When he looks into Cruor Vult's memory banks in Hereticus, Eisenhorn describes seeing "legions of the Imperial Guard incinerated, cities die in flames," presumably from Cruor Vult's own weapons, given that not much later he sees its' memories of engaging and destroying Imperium Titans. (exact quotes can be provided if needed)

And on the subject of Titan weapons against cities:

[Fayde Thuring] could hold cities to ransom, here on Durer or elsewhere. He could raze population centres, kill millions, particularly once the turbines of Cruor Vult were operating at full power.

Eisenhorn is referring to Cruor Vult's energy weapons here, since it was only just powered up and didn't have enough juice to fuel its plasma cannon+ turbo laser batteries.

[Black Admiral]

Is there any more description after that?. I'm Interested to know because it gives nuggets of details such as the precursor wave felt out to 10km, and the machine at a position 'some km' from the target.

The only extra details concern the explosion of the Arakeen artifact that the Gehenna was targetting, although I can type up those if necessary. Just give me a minute to find the book.

[Darth PhysBod]

For the third time, megatons is the high end. An upper limit. Kilotons is more reasonable for most titan weapons. And their building materials are much stronger than ours based on the fact the hive spires don't collapse under their own weight.

If you have direct evidence for a megaton 'upper limit' to Titan weaponry then please share it. I've posted evidence of how devastating sub-kiloton blasts can be, which would fit perfectly well with many of the descriptions of the devastation incurred in most 40K ground battles...

[Imperial Overlord]

A beam weapon won't produce the same effects as an explosive so saying "where is the mushroom cloud" isn't . I don't know the top yield of a volcano cannon. I know with direct fire energy weapons a titan can raze a city in minutes and that warhound class titans have survived close range nuclear blasts with void shields up. So we are talking somewhere between kilotons and at the most megatons. If you can post something to narrow that range, I will be a happy camper.

[Black Admiral]

Okay, data from Iron Hands:

(first, some random stuff)

Astartes strike cruiser shields can withstand energy discharges "with the force of solar flares." (pg. 240) Any way to quantify that?

The lettering on Imperium ships proclaiming which vessel they are can be as much as 100 meters high (pg. 247)

Even through the void shields+gellar fields, the warp entities within the Arakeen warpstorm were able to tear 60 meter long rips in the strike cruiser Ajax's hull. (pg. 245)

And now, the destruction of the Arakeen artifact:

Whatever it was that Arch-Magos Schrodinger had ordered the destruction of had been an artifact of immeasurable eldritch power. Waves of green energy rippled outwards from the epicentre of the ordinatus's strike, rolling across the ravaged landscape in a wave-front a hundred meters high. The bow-wave consumed all before it. Troopers, both loyalist and traitor, were vaporised where the coruscating tidal wave touched them. The only combatants who were safe from the devastating attack were those who had been able to take cover in dugouts and sheltered trench systems, but even they suffered terrible burns from the heat-wash that subsumed them.

Manufactory sheds were flattened, tanks were thrown kilometers away to come crashing down amidst the trenches of the battlefield outside the ancient war engine itself. Chaos creatures were eradicated, men died. Nothing was left whole as the bow-wave of rippling energy ate up all before it, bathing Fornax Orbis Majoris in its deep-ocean glow; nothing but scorched earth was left.

And there was something else. Shapes flickered and capered in the retina-searing light. Those hypnotised by the roiling energy field before it consumed them, believed they could see eldritch creatures writhing within the explosion of light from the epicentre of the blast.

After forty-two seconds the shockwave hit the might Omnissiah's ancient leviathan Gehenna. The esoteric energy beams blasted through the gaping holes torn in the damaged hull as the massive war machine rocked under the phenomenal battering. Those not protected inside the undamaged parts of the ordinatus were killed just like the Chaos forces who had sought to unleash the same terrifying power to further their own ends. Two hundred and fifty-six tech-preist adepts, crew ratings and tech-guard troopers died, immolated by the atomic heat of the all-destroying energy waves. Not one Iron Hand was killed.

The blast was registered by the Guard commanders buried within the bunker command post at Ferroturitus Prime Guard HQ, the lights going out for twenty seconds and dust falling from cracks that appeared in the ruptured ferrocrete ceiling.

[RRoan]

Iron Hands.

And this ancient and noble machine itself:
-snip-

Holy Shit!!!

[Dark Hellion]

Actually PhysBod, you are falling into the trap that most Trekkies fall into when debating about how SW has Gigaton range weaponry. You are assuming that the damage absorbtion capabilities of a normal town are the same as a hive city composed of thousands of 10+km tall buildings. In a built up enough area of a hive city, a jet crashing into a building is only noticable for the few floors it hits.
Megatons is high end, and only the largest classes of Titans carry that size of weaponry, but to say that kilotons is high end is absurd, as we know they can destroy exceptionally large cities in very short time periods (not known exact period, but short enough that it is difficult for PDF forces to respond to) and that a single Titan is threatening enough to hold a planet hostage. Given the general range of ground weapons seen in 40k (lascannons can cut straight through fortified structures, autocannons all but vaporize houses in seconds, bolters are semi-auto RPGs, etc.) we know they field at least Kt yields and most likely have more.

[Currald]

And their building materials are much stronger than ours based on the fact the hive spires don't collapse under their own weight.

On some planets. Adeptus Titanicus goes into some detail W/R/T Imperial Architecture. Apparantly, most large buildings are created from STC out of local materials. What these materials are varies wdiely from place to place, but the form the buildings take are the same. I'm not an architect, but this sounds incredibly inefficient to me. But I guess that's the Imperium all over, neh? So, the basic idea is that a Librarium on one planet could be an armored fortress, while another, similar-looking one on another planet could be made from adobe or something. Bloody STC buildings...

[Imperial Overlord]

Sure, that works for some cities. But the hive cities can't be built that way because all those gigantic hive stacks will collapse under their own weight.

[Currald]

True. I'm sure they're made of fancy high-tech materials like ceramite or adamantium or something. I bet they're STC, though. Doubtless some of those templates are simply impossible to construct with adobe.

[Darth PhysBod]

Actually PhysBod, you are falling into the trap that most Trekkies fall into when debating about how SW has Gigaton range weaponry. You are assuming that the damage absorbtion capabilities of a normal town are the same as a hive city composed of thousands of 10+km tall buildings. In a built up enough area of a hive city, a jet crashing into a building is only noticable for the few floors it hits.
Megatons is high end, and only the largest classes of Titans carry that size of weaponry, but to say that kilotons is high end is absurd, as we know they can destroy exceptionally large cities in very short time periods (not known exact period, but short enough that it is difficult for PDF forces to respond to) and that a single Titan is threatening enough to hold a planet hostage. Given the general range of ground weapons seen in 40k (lascannons can cut straight through fortified structures, autocannons all but vaporize houses in seconds, bolters are semi-auto RPGs, etc.) we know they field at least Kt yields and most likely have more.

Don't even go down that route....
Titan Battles don't just happen in 'uber' hive cities, they happen on open plains, jungle, everywhere. Yet I for one have never seen any artwork, read any offical descriptions that would support kiloton-megaton weapons as the 'norm'
Secondly we know directly from 'Necropolis' that conventional heavy artillery will flatten the ordinary hab's/buildings in a Hive city in short order and will even penetrate the 'uber' spire.

If you have direct evidence of Kiloton to megaton range weaponry then please show it. No-one has yet posted, and given I've played 40K for 13 years I highly doubt such evidence exists, until then all you have is pure speculation, you are assuming kiloton to megaton ground weaponry is the norm because??...

Your example of a Titan destroying a city:

1/ Post the evidence to back up your argument So far you have been unable/unwilling to.
2/ From what you have said you have neither: area 'destroyed', qualified what 'destroyed' is in this case, time-frame or number of weapons involved.

You bring up penetrative power las-cannons (a red-herring anyway), but need I remind you that the most advanced armoured vehicle in the Imperium has the equivalent of 365mm of conventional steel armour protection (and that value has appeared the 'chapter approved' yearly annual two years in a row, and is now set in stone in Imperial armour alongside values for the rest of the Imperiums fighting vehicles)

I've already posted an example of the real effects of a munitions ship exploding in a city harbour. Titan weaponry of that magnitude would be utterly devastating and flatten a city in short order given the number of weapons and rate of fire. Even firing only one shot per 10 seconds would result in complete levelling of up to 15 square km a minute (An area roughly the size of Greater london in under two hours)

Finally, you cannot have that magnitude (megaton yield) of energy in a small volume (the area of the beam on a target) without generating a multiple Km fireball.

[Black Admiral]

Okay, examples from the Titan graphic novels.

First off, in the second book, Tyranid bio-titans (unknown number, but at most I think about 3-4) burned 20,000 square miles of jungle (with trees taller than Battle Titans), including three million-plus Imperial Guardsmen and their equipment, in a short enough timeframe that before Imperius Dictatio confirmed it, no-one had any idea what had happened.

Second, in Titan III: Cold Steel a Chaos Warlord is caught in the fireball from a nuclear explosion (actually a Warp rift, but its effects were identical to a nuke).

Now, assuming that the fireball was level with Imperious Dictatio (it wasn't, actually about 750 meters away, but I'm not sure how to account for perspective), and given that Dictatio is most likely one of the "Heavy" 60-meter tall Warlords (height on the page is about 3cm, so a rough scale of 1cm:20 meters), the fireball is at its widest visible point (one side extends off the page) 13.5cm across, which translates to 270m diameter, and according to the main site's nuclear weapons effects calculator ~300 kilotons.

[Darth PhysBod]

Thanks, I shall have to have a look for those books this weekend.

[2000AD]

Thanks, I shall have to have a look for those books this weekend.

They brought out a big compilation a few months back. Should be in any GW store and i've seen them in Waterstones too.

[Black Admiral]

Oh, and as another note, from Necropolis, some of the craters from Zoican shellfire were "five hundred meters across." (pg. 217, second edition)