AQ & GFFA vs. IoM

[Khas 12,158]

Okay, what's going down here is this. It's 2375 AD. The Dominion War is raging. It is also 0 ABY. The Galactic Civil War is raging. Suddenly, thanks to Act of Q (Or any other omnipotent being), all 8 powers (Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Dominion, Breen, Rebels, and Empire), are exposed to the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K, and call for a ceasefire, and then, alliance. The mission of the Unholy Octuple Alliance? Bring the Imperium to it's knees. Some notes, and goals.

 

The Alliance:

- Technology exchanges will be allowed between the factions. In fact, they are encouraged.

- TDiC/ICS yields will be assumed standard. Not "high yield". STANDARD. (Note: I'm not picking ST or SW over the other. Both now have the ability for normal ships to pummel planets with little effort.)

- Should seek Alliances with the Tau and Eldar, and maybe saner Necron tomb worlds.

- Will need to keep an eye out for Chaos. Chroniton emitters should be able to wreak havoc on Daemons of Chaos. This is due to the fact that daemons come from non-linear time, and in ST, chronitons are lethal to beings that come from non-linear time. We can also assume that the Force might be able to do this.

- Should, at the very least, force the Imperium's surrender. Laying siege to Holy Terra is preferred, though.

- The more unscrupulous members of the Alliance will still play by their rules. (This is pretty much everyone except the Federation, Rebels, and Klingons. And even they have their morally dubious members. So yes, Death Stars and trilithium weapons are allowed.)

 

The Imperium:

- At the very least, should force the Alliance out of it's Milky Way.

- Will still have to deal with Tyranids and Chaos.

 

How does this go?

[Vince 520]

IoM take weeks, months or even years to cross the galaxy, have a fleet at most a few hundred thousands of warships (tens of thousands of cruisers, millions of commercial/other), single digit gravity sustainable accelerations with feasible combat speeds of several dozen kilometers per second. The Empire (using the ics figures) in a whole nother magnitude. The only way 40K will get up in the ICS realm of numbers will be through cherry picking or w**k. Their firepower is probably high megatons to low gigatons based on massed evidence, with some examples of exterminatus requiring sustained cyclone bombardment sustaining teratons of killpower a second, to effectively boil the oceans and melt the crust in less than a day.

Ofc a number of sources indicate lower firepower still, in the kiloton range. I think the high mt/low gt hold the most salt at the moment. Regardless, the SW factions are orders of magnitude more powerful.

If we took firepower out the equation, or even said the empire ships were the ones an order of magnitude less powerful, they would still win through logistics. They have stupendous FTL and SL speed advantages over the IoM, allowing them to speedblitz, take out worlds before the imperium can react (days - weeks to send patrol).

 

There wouldn't be a 'cease fire' because the empire could dismantle this foe with such ease BUT i dont think they would. With war comes money and power, the emperors finest excuse to really gain a vice grip over the galaxy and form massive fleets would be the existence of the utter hell that is 40k!

[Vince 520]

Most people rate IoM and GE as about the same, or even IoM as >>>GE, I think its a no brainer lol.

[scvn2812 504]

Ultimately, uniting the industrial capacity and speed of the Empire with the asymmetric warfare potential of Treknology will likely result in a win, this will be a bit of a slog until the geography of 40k's Milky Way is fully mapped out to the extent that hyperdrive can be used to maximum effectiveness. Rewatching A New Hope the other night, I realized that there are hidden limitations to hyperdrive that are never fully explained: namely, SOMETHING caused the Death Star to HAVE to drop out of hyperdrive on the wrong side of Yavin and have to spend 15 minutes slogging through real space orbiting Yavin to bring the super laser to bare on Yavin IV and I don't believe it was Tarkin's flare for the dramatic.

 

The Imperium lacks the ability to coordinate its forces across the galaxy like Star Wars can due to their communications limitations. However, you can't just fight the IoM. The Orks, Tyranids and Necrons just aren't going to vanish. If anything, they may react rather harshly to a new contender for the galactic super power title, especially one with firepower similar to the IoM but superior logistics. I'm really only familiar with 40k through analysis on SB and SD.net so there's not much I can contribute for that side. I've never read any of the books and am not really inclined to, I'm not really into nihilism.

[Vince 520]

WHen it comes to firepower, SB and SD do tend to go with the very high end, the petatons/teratons calculations make no sense to the setting (Mcloud of SDN admits the flaws of his old 40k firepower calculations now). Exterminatus is the franchises weapons of mass destruction, and several books make these out to be far more powerful than conventional bombardment; fifteen minutes of exterminatus deployed by two ships can do as much damage as a bombardment lasting six full days commenced by an entire fleet. Six full days of bombardment from the fleet fell to level every supermassive structure on the crust or blow of the atmosphere, limiting firepower to far less then what is available in SW, by at least an order of magnitude.

 

Every faction in 40K combined is going to have a larger military force than the empire, possibly with several times as many starships (nids are mostly external the galaxy), but most will take between weeks and years to cross the galaxy. They can take weeks to get reinforcements to attacked worlds too. The only factions that can cross the galaxy in very short periods of times or even instantly are the necrons and the Eldar with their webway, both these factions are the rare and powerful. The Eldar have dozens of FLT moon sized crafworlds in which the survivors of their empire reside (supposedly billions according to the codex), and the necrons have thousands of tomb worlds awaiting to rewake according to newer fluff.

 

I do think the Empire could pacify this galaxy, and even destroy every major empire. As always the largest threat will be chaos and the warp, something the empire will not be accustomed too, but the native empires do endure and survive. Golden age imperium who are stupid advanced would likely be a more even match up, not in raw power but through technobabble and extremism of the written fluff. But we know virtually nothing about them besides a few snippets.

Indeed it would take the empire time to map out the Milky Way, and find the holdings of the various empires within it, perhaps the Federation could help out here, as they have already mapped out portions of the galaxy.

 

IMO it would be a more fair and even match up if the Empire were replaced with the Borg in the same scenario. Squadrons of Federation vessels could overwhelm a IoM cruiser while outmaneuvering its biggest guns, meaning it would have to rely on its dozens - hundreds of rapid firing kiloton ordinances. Federation shields should hold up reasonably well against these lighter weapons, though some of these are kinetic for what its worth. Due to the sheer scale of the IoM cruiser (5 km) and regenerating shielding (every few minutes to full power unless harassed) it could take many minutes for the Feds to cause significant damage to the IoM cruiser. Going with ~1 gigaton broadsides because theres a reasonable collection of sources that could support it, a good in universe analogy for a IoM cruiser might be a borg cube, only the smaller ships can much more easily avoid the heavy firepower of the IoM vessel, making the cube the more frightening opponent. Both are very tough.

 

The mentioned ST forces combined couldn't take the whole milky way though, it would have to be vs the imperium to be interesting.

[Khas 12,158]

The thing is, it is just against the Imperium. And it's the ST & SW factions allied together. And I did say that they are allowed to ally with the Tau and Eldar. Oh, and TDiC firepower is assumed standard for ST, as ICS firepower is assumed standard for SW.

[scvn2812 504]

One thing that occurs to me is that the Star Wars forces are going to be able to mass in a way that they have never been able to before. In the early stages of the conflict, there really is no limit to the size of the fleets that the Empire could assemble (other than ship availability of course) because they have no home territory to defend if there is a truce with the Rebel Alliance. If the GFFA is at peace, then the Imperial fleet does not need to be spread out keeping the peace and combing several hundred billion stars (and the space between them) for rebels or showing the flag to star systems that might get funny ideas. If the occupation of its home galaxy is temporarily at an end, then you have 25,000+ Star Destroyers and their command and supporting ships to throw at the IoM and, at least until the GFFA starts to accumulate meaningful amounts of systems to defend, they can throw every last one of them into any battle they please.

 

The IoM still has exactly the same problems it had before this scenario that prevented it from gathering the kind of force it needs to put an end to issues like the Tau, Chaos' holdings inside the material universe, major Ork infestations, the Dark Eldar, the Necrons and the Tyranids, namely that is has every last one of the aforementioned issues all at once right now and they've got just enough force to hold a line that slips just a little with every passing edition but if they pull enough force from any one front to finally squash one problem forever and finally, they'll get rolled by the front they pulled out from or if they weaken all of the others just a little to commit to a major offensive on one of them, then they lose a little ground that they might not have the force left over to regain once they've dealt with one of their outstanding problems.

 

Imagine if the Tyranids suddenly decided Milky Way biomass tastes awful and decided to head for Andromeda, that wall of metal and blood that's slowing down the Hive Fleets while the rest of the galaxy scrambles for a Plan B could be put to use purging Chaos from the material universe, bombing anything and everything the Orks might be able to use to venture into space, eradicating the Tau or crossing off any one item on the Imperium's To Do list.

 

Except they can't, because no one is going anywhere anytime soon so the Imperium is obliged to take on all comers simultaneously and now on top of all the other hostile forces that they are slowly losing to, you've just set loose the forces of a galactic dictatorship and the masters of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat by bouncing a neutron particle beam off the main deflector dish. The only bright side, is that the Imperium won't fall in an afternoon because the GFFA won't be able to set their cruise controls to Plaid until they've thoroughly mapped their invasion routes (a process that I don't think anyone can really guess as to how easy or hard this is, other than the Atlas has the colonization of the GFFA taking several millennium, although that was with the industry and infrastructure of a developing galactic civilization rather than a mature one) and, short of finding convenient worm holes or identifying warp "high ways" that are used to rationalize craziness like visiting the edge of the galaxy or the core, the ABQ alliance will be launching transwarp fleets to meet up with their original warp drive fleets to replace their centenarian ensigns on the opposite side of the Imperium by the time they make any meaningful progress at conquest.

[Khas 12,158]

And as I said, technology exchanges between the various allied factions are allowed.

 

What I'd do if I was in command is this:

 

Start building some Executor-sized ship that combines tech from all factions. Give it turbolasers, ion cannons, phasers, disruptors, polaron cannons, energy dissipators, proton, photon, plasma, and quantum torpedoes, tricobalt devices, and concussion missiles, and give all energy weapons feed directly from the main reactor. If it proves itself, begin mass-production. Then I'd show the might of this vessel to the Tau and Craftworld Eldar, and hope to form alliances with them. The Tau will see this as an opportunity to help spread the Greater Good, while the Eldar will be cautious at first, but will recognize the value of giving the Imperium a kick in the 'nads. Also, I'd equip it with both a warp drive and a hyperdrive, and maybe begin thinking of ways to combine the technologies.

 

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I'd "deal with" more troublesome people, like Palpatine, so that by the time Holy Terra is in ruins, I'd withdraw from the 40K galaxy, leaving it to its own devices, but not before saturating major Chaos worlds with chronitons, to wipe out a good number of daemons, my ascension to power will be easier. And I'll also push research into thalaron weapons to use against the 'nids, and upon leaving, have some "accidentally" fall into the hands of a techpriest, and then I'd seal the wormhole behind me, leaving my fleets in two galaxies instead of three. With loyalists acquired over the years, I'd launch coups in every power, until I controlled both the ST and SW galaxies. Using armadas of the new Ludicrous-class starships, (yes, that's what I named that ship with the combo tech), I'd usher in a new age for the Universe.

 

Of course, since I can't have people rebelling, I'd need to be a benevolent dictator, and ensure upon my death of natural causes, power would return to the people. I'd have to be both loved and feared at the same time, in order to ensure loyalty from the populace.

[Vince 520]

Phaser tech backed by the power output of an Executor could probably make planets disappear in short order, leaving no remains. That would be unsettling for the enemy!

[enigma 521]

This is assuming that chronitons will affect Warp beings. Just saying that it'll affect any non-linear being is really disingenuous. So chronitons would kill a Q?

 

We'll have to take into account Chaos' affect on the ST and SW factions. How many of them would end up being corrupted? They do not have the same protection that the IoM seem to enjoy.

 

Chaos aside, ST factions will have to rely on the Empire and Rebels for transportation. Get them to use their tractor beams on the SW ships and piggyback into hyperspace. Or simply dock inside either DS or DS2.

 

To get the IoM to surrender, you really can't just stick around for a long drawn out battle. The ST\SW factoin will have to act quick. Hyper a DS (either one but I'd prefer DS2) with an escorting fleet, blast Mars into pebbles and then demand them to surrender or else Terra will be next.

[scvn2812 504]

After reviewing the Memory Alpha article on chronitons, I'd say its a pretty big leap to assume that chronitons would be a decisive weapon against warp beings. The only instance in which they've been used against non-linear beings was the Prophets, who are one species of non-linear being. We just don't know enough about the specific mechanism behind them being harmed by it. Warp entities could have an entirely different "biology" and not be meaningfully harmed by chronitons. If you want to declare all non-linear entities physiologically the same by fiat for the purposes of this discussion then that's cool but there's no basis for saying they'd work that way without author fiat.

 

Allowing tech "sharing" just makes things worse. The Empire doesn't need help militarily crushing the IoM, the IoM's apocalyptic strategic position will do that for them. I'd even go so far as to say that a few task forces similar in size and composition to Death Squadron might even be able to tip the IoM from a slow motion defeat to a much more rapid defeat just by taking out a few key IoM systems and task forces without a corresponding loss of strength to the IoM's foes. It really reads like the IoM's situation hangs on that narrow of a knife's edge.

 

The problem for the ABQ side is that they won't really influence the way the war is fought in any meaningful way, they really bring so little to the table. The Empire can win militarily without them although having access to Treknology opens up a lot of possibility for asymmetric warfare if the Empire can retrain their engineers to think creatively with gear operating under new physics they've never known before. The main problem with Treknology being that to use it creatively generally requires intimate knowledge of the physics and equipment, its almost never as simple as just pushing a button to stop time locally or turn the main deflector dish into silver bullet for slaying noncorporeal Cthulian horrors. The Starfleet officers who turn physics on their head to save the day have had years of education in their fields and experience handling their equipment, it may seem like they're making it up as they go along but that's what professionals do, make it look so easy a child could do it. Can subspace voodoo and chroniton kabbalah be taught on the fly or to enough Imperial engineers to make a difference to the outcome of the war on the galactic scale?

 

Palpatine is a Sith Lord and also has a role to play. He's a megalomaniac. In his younger days, he was pragmatic evil but in his later days, if the complex gamble that the Battle of Endor and his underestimation of Vader are any indication, he might have been starting to lose the plot. Which means he might do something incredibly stupid and vain like actually try to occupy the 40k universe or try to study the warp in the hopes of augmenting his power.

 

The ideal battle plan is for the Empire to blitz the IoM as fast as they can chart safe routes and throw everything they've got at the Tyranids so they don't potentially become a threat to the GFFA some day or at least are severely blunted if they do or just go home, use the 40k galaxy as propaganda and fort up. Sol might be a tough nut to crack and it may pay off to have allies of convenience so that the Empire's losses are not so severe that when they and the Rebellion inevitably return to fighting, the Rebel threat is much harder to counter. Logistically, the ABQ should probably avoid stand up fights against the IoM, they can't marshal the sheer numbers of two heavily militarized galactic civilizations. Losses would hurt, a lot.

[Khas 12,158]

Well, the Tau shouldn't be able to either, as they control a small empire, and are handing the Imperium's asses to them when they fight.

 

Besides, there was one thing that said that the largest Imperial (40K) gathered fleet in history didn't even measure a hundred ships. Compare this to the multi-hundred ship fleets we see in DS9.

 

As for chronitons hurting the Prophets and Pah-Wraiths, due to them being from non-linear time, well, we don't see too many non-linear time beings in ST. You might say Q, but there have been quotes that time in the Continuum is linear, just flowing at a different rate.

[scvn2812 504]

The Q lack the "otherness" of the Wormhole aliens. Possibly because they were a conventional species that evolved into their non-corporeal state where as the Wormhole aliens might have just originated that way or been that way longer enough than the Q to have lost touch with linear existence. The Q can clearly manipulate time to a very fine degree but I think you're right in that they still experience it normally if they aren't actively fiddling with it.

[enigma 521]

Q's son is billions of years old I believe even though technically he should have been a couple of years old. They don't experience time like other linear beings. Time literally means nothing to them.

[scvn2812 504]

Q's son is billions of years old I believe even though technically he should have been a couple of years old. They don't experience time like other linear beings. Time literally means nothing to them.

 

Q could easily have gone back in time to raise him and jumped around for a few billion years before finding his way back to Voyager. Doesn't mean he's a non-linear being, it means he's clinically immortal with the ability to time travel.