Ok, so I decided to create a new Chatroom, because the old one was getting pretty....old!
Everyone may post here, as well as in the good'ol Flameroom...I mean, Chatroom
I would like to keep this Chatroom civilized. Well, as civilized as most forum threads are (doesnt mean that you all have to be polite like Oatesy, lol).
So for this reason, I may update the OP of this thread in the future, posting certain thread rules, as I see fit.
For now though, post away, and everyone is welcome!
Currently these users are banned:
- ArcticBlunder
I had a beautiful post typed out, but then I accidentally opened this page in a new window, and closed it, but clicked too many times and closed this. So now I have to suck it up.
I had this big, huge series of sentences and paragraphs discussing a few of your points, but I sadly lost it. The general gist is:
1) AFAIK/IIRC, you aren't a "The Chatroom>>Forum Post by GeneralVeers" thread vet, so I don't really remember who you are.
2) AFAIK/IIRC, you didn't post very much in December. Post you did, but not very much.
3) Crossovers are one of those things that you can pull it off beautifully, or have something enjoyable but not paricularly high quality, or have something passably entertaining or interesting, or completely flubb it and get flamed into oblivion.
*evil laughs* If it had been the Imperium at First Contact with the Covenant, then there wouldn't have been a Covenant by the time of Halo 3. Really, not kidding.
Because the Imperium is kind of like the Covenant: they have the whole "you're a blasphemy in our religion, so it is our holy duty to exterminate you" kind of thing. It doesn't really hold in every case, but that's usually a result of having bigger fish to fry.
Case in point: the Tau were going to be exterminated because their planet was particularly suitable for human habitation, but then came Warp storms, and the Tau Empire was born a few thousand years later, and now the modern Imperium has this little sphere a couple hundred lightyears in diameter that is annoying them.
This is compared to the fact that the Imperium covers the Milky Way Galaxy. Literally. And they (the Imperium) are uber-xenophobic.
So the only reason the Tau haven't been wiped out to the last grey-blue-skinned freak is because the Imperium has much bigger problems, like the pervasive infestation of the Orks, the incursions of the Chaos legions, and random Eldar raids all over the place.
Oh, and the odd rebelling planet, mutant uprising, or traitor general/governor.
Add on top of that that Halo Covenant weapon calcs put starship firepower in the low-to-mid gigaton range. At a guess, I'd say mid double-digit gigatons, so topping out similar to the SuperMAC.
Imperial warships are rated to high triple-digit gigatons, topping out at low single-digit teratons of firepower. REALLY. This is based on a quote in a game's background material that described a torpedo as having a total of 620 or 640 gigatons of yield. And these torpedoes weren't designed for anti-ship usage.
Also keep in mind that a torpedo salvo from an Imperial warship is typically six. So that's in the ballpark of around three and a half teratons of destructive firepower. Which works out to, oh, around sixty-seven times the yield of a SuperMAC. And an Imperial warship can easily take such impacts.
On top of this, addressing the whole "Warhound vs Scarab" thing, the Warhound has a choice of two anti-tank weapons; a double-barreled turbolaser, or a plasma blastgun. The turbolaser is pretty much a giant laser, while the plasma blastgun is, well, just that. It shoots plasma blasts. Note that both of said weapons can be equipped, and fired, simultaneously, or in a short enough duration to be nearly simultaneous.
Even if a Warhound couldn't win against a Scarab (and I have every confidence it would, due to several factors besides pure firepower*), then a battle titan, such as the Reaver or Warlord, would. Said titans are equipped with multiple guns of Scout Titan (the Warhound's class) size; the Reaver less so than the Warlord. For example, a Reaver has three weapon hardpoints; one for each "arm" and one on it's back, while the Warlord has four; one on each "arm" and one on each "shoulder".
The Warlord typically mounts 2 turbolasers (the same kind of anti-armor weapon used by the Warhound) on each of it's shoulders, while mounting really big guns on it's "arm" hardpoints.
*These other factors include:
1) the centuries-long experiences of the Titan crews2) tactical deployment; Warhounds are deployed in supporting groups of two to six, and usually operate as spotters for battle titans3) unit footprint; a Warhound is around fifteen meters tall**, based on scaling the model produced by ForgeWorld. I'm not sure how big a Scarab is, but probably of similar size. However, a Warhound stands on 2 reverse-jointed legs, and can "squat down" into cover quite effectively.
**The Lexicanum (40K wiki) page says 14 meters tall at rest in the data blurb, but the article describes fifteen meters when scaled. I assume both; "at rest" simply means it's hunched over a little to fit into hangars and whatnot.
Also note that Reavers are stated as 40 to 50 meters tall, but when using a 28mm scale, the 400mm tall Reaver model (also made by ForgeWorld) would result in a 26-meter tall Reaver. I consider the 26-meter figure to be correct, as it matched the model's scale. It also coincides neatly with the scale of the Warhound (given above) and the Warlord (given below).
The more common Warlord battle titan is given as 33 meters high in the scale diagram of the Games Workshop Apocalypse tabletop rulebook, while other accounts give heights of around 60 meters, and artwork sometimes shows many hundreds of meters tall. I'm going with the scale diagram, as, while the Imperium does build ridiculously big, even they have their limits.
Note that the heights given by scaling the models or using scale diagrams are the best, as it then coincides with the scale diagram of the largest titan class, the Emperor Titan. The Emperor Titan consists of two types; the Imperator and Warmonger. They are physically identical in stature, and only differ in role and weaponry.
Moving on to height of Emperor titans, the scale diagram (again, GW rulebooks) give it as 55.5 meters IRL (39" on the tabletop). Note that a historical Emperor titan was stated as 43 meters tall; however, most "modern" Emperor titans have expansive cathedral spires, while the historical example was during the Imperial Truth/Horus Heresy era, where said spires would not be present (the Imperium was a secular authority with an ironically anti-religion leaning).
Since we are talking crossovers with sci fi to sci fi Lets talk babylon 5 and Warhammer crossover
The Imperium would see the Earth alliance as a weak and corrupted by alien influences. They most certainly attack the Minbari but would they have much luck?
http://efni.org/Sharlin.htm
I think a sharlin class cruiser could put some mighty holes in the imperial cruisers providing they don't get hit first. The minbari are known for their stealth technology too.
http://efni.org/Warlock.htm
The warlock class cruisers are 2km long with 10-16m thick plating that is going to take a beating no matter what you throw at it.
Forgot this Link
http://efni.org/weapon.htm#GOD5
I'm going to break it to you as gently as I possibly can. Before I do, you'll notice some of my math seems off. It's because I'm using "significant figures", wherein the answer can't have more non-zero numerals than the smallest of the values I subtract/add/multiply/divide. So that would be how I get 800g=8,000 m/s^2, even though 800*9.81=7,848. Mostly I'm using this because I can't really be any more precise if I'm to accurately reflect all this.
The Sharlin is given as 1.5 kilometers in length, and 1.7 kilometers in height. Height-wise, it's probably taller than the average Imperial frigate or light cruiser.
A Cobra destroyer, the smallest warship used by the Imperial Navy of the Imperium of Man, is usually estimated at 1.5 kilometers in length.
The Lunar-class Cruiser, main-line warship of the Imperial Navy, is then scaled to 4 and a half kilometers in length. It's three times longer than a Sharlin, with a commensurate increase in volume. It can hold a lot more stuff, like weapons, engine and reactor systems, and, SHIELDS.
Now, that might not be all that impressive, so what if the main-line Lunars are bigger than Sharlins? Okay, let's talk raw performance.
In the book Flight of the Eisenstein, the Phalanx, a moon-sized spaceship, goes from stationary relative to Earth, to 75% the speed of light, and back to stationary, when it makes orbit around the Moon. That means it has acceleration on the order of 800 g's.
EDIT: Actually, the accelerations in question depend on several variables, and the assumption that Phalanx was decelerating the entire duration it took to make orbit around Luna. The low-end figure is 300g, the high-end is 800g. However, the Phalanx is still the size of a small moon, and by tactical standards very immobile. So the figure I assign to the Lunar is instead of being 20% larger is either 1.2 or 3.33 times the acceleration of the Phalanx. Considering relative sizes, I consider neither to be particularly unreasonable, and in fact find them to be rather conservative in the case that Phalanx has an 800g acceleration.
EDIT 2: Since I was checking up on my sources and such, I found that my initial statement on acceleration isn't all the way correct. The 300-800 g figure is if the Phalanx started out at 75% of lightspeed, and decelerated for the entire trip to Luna. If the Phalanx started out stationary, then the figure moves up to 640 to 1700 g's of acceleration, depending on distance from Luna (the Phalanx started out at the orbital region of Eris, or around 38-98 AU's, or about 91-240 million kilometers). So the figures I used are actually EXTREMELY conservative.
A Sharlin can do 3.5 g's. Note that a g=9.81 m/s^2, so 3.5g= about 34 m/s^2 acceleration, while 800 would be about 8,000 m/s^2.
So, in one second, the Phalanx, a moon-sized warship, can go from standing still, to booking it at 8 kilometers per second (which is about Mach 24). Compared to just over one tenth of the speed of sound for a Sharlin.
Scaling down, and accounting for decreased mass, but also decreased volume for engines and requiring smaller and commensurately less powerful engines, still means that the Lunar can, as a rough absolute minimum capability, pull of 1,000g accelerations.
That make's it about 286 times "faster" than the Sharlin.
Okay, so the Lunar can run circles around the Sharlin. So what?
Let's move on to weapons range. There's two approaches: go by the novels, or go by the tabletop stats given in the Battlefleet Gothic rules. BFG is the space-game version of 40K.
In that, we can get a rough approximation of 1cm on the tabletop equals 1,000 kilometers IRL. Which give's a Lunar-class cruiser's broadside weapons batteries and lances a 30,000 kilometer range. Not bad, but it's about half of what a B5 ship can pull off.
However, the weapons range advantage is totally negated by the mobility advantage of the Lunar-class. A Lunar can easily accelerate to a velocity that allows it to cover 100 kilometers every second. That's an ~10 second engine "burn". Once finished, it hurtles through the void, covering 40,000 kilometers (I saw a 70,000 km range on one of the B5 weapons, I'm simply using that as a ballpark for the Sharlin) in 400 seconds.
That's nearly seven minutes. And that's from a ten second burn. Do a sixty-second one, and the Lunar now covers that distance in just over a minute.
We keep going with the stats->RL units, we find that an old Space Hulk book mentioned a 640 gigaton warhead for a single torpedo. This figure has not been contradicted or retconned at all by current rulebooks and fluff. So we use it.
A Lunar-class cruiser carries six torpedo tubes, firing them simultaneously for a single salvo. In-game, the torpedo salvo is a Strength 6 thing, so a single torpedo equals a single point of Strength.
So, a torpedo salvo from the Lunar gives 640*6=about 4,000 gigatons. A broadside battery has the same level of destruction, as the Lunar has a Firepower (same as Strength) 6 battery on each side. That's not including the Strength 2 Lances. Note that lances differ, as they are heavily penetrative weapons, capable of cutting through heavy starship armor with ease.
All of the B5 weapons that I looked over never climbed the 100 megaton mark. Taking the entire offensive armament of a B5 Sharlin, I'd guess that it's up to half a gigaton.
But this isn't all the calculation we can extract from the BFG stats, no. We can also compute shield and hull tolerances, using the 1 point=640 gigatons mark. A Lunar cruiser has 8 damage points to represent hull durability, and 2 shield points. The hull therefore has 8*640=5,000 gigatons of resilience, and the shields can take about 1,000 gigatons.
However, the shields are unique. Once you exceed shield durability, the shields fail. But, all that firepower hitting the shield creates "interference", which, once the ship is clear of it, the shields can rapidly come back up at full strength.
Note also that Imperial shields can't be knocked down to "40%" or something. Void shields, the type used by Imperial warships, are either up all the way or not at all.
So, using the evaluation based on the BFG game and the few pieces of information that give fairly solid numbers from analysis or straight-out, a Lunar-class cruiser has far greater acceleration, firepower, and durability than a Sharlin. In fact, I'd say that a Lunar could comfortably take down the Minbari fleet that attacked Earth during the Earth-Minbari War.
The only disadvantage the Lunar has is in weapons range, but this is trivial. The Minbari can start shooting first, but they can't do squat to the Imperial warship.
And, addressing the Warlock, while it may have 10 to 16 meters or armor plate, it's also of a fairly conventional material mix that cannot withstand more than megaton-range weapons.
Imperial warships are armored in "adamantium", which is more-or-less a magitech metal that can take high triple-digit gigaton to low single-digit teraton impacts.
You might think that I've been unfair to the Minbari, especially since I haven't addressed the stealth system. However, the stealth system is more or less irrelevant. It comes down to Imperial naval doctrine.
It comes down to "fill the sky with building-sized explosive rounds and 60-meter long torpedoes, and we're bound to hit something". Yes, Imperial warships really do shoot building-sized projectiles, and 60-meter long torpedoes. The torpedo figure is given in the BFG rulebooks, which describe the torpedoes as 200 feet long. Note that actually doing out the math and then rounding for significant figures gives a length of around 70 meters.
So really, none of the B5 races can expect to have any chance at defeating a lone Imperial escort, like the Cobra destroyer, which (using the BFG figures and calcs) has a durability of 640 gigatons hull, 640 gigatons shield, and a 1 teraton (1,000 gigaton) torpedo salvo, plus a 640 gigaton weapons battery.
A side note on the other method: the novels.
The novels and fluff frequently describe combat occurring at the thousands to millions of kilometers distance mark. Also note that torpedoes in BFG are rated not in range, but in speed, 30 cm per turn. It's widely considered that a turn covers about ten-minutes of in-game time, so we can extract something of a velocity figure from that.
30cm=30,000 kilometers, 1 turn=10 minutes, 1 minute=60 seconds, so 30,000 kilometers/600 seconds=50 kilometers per second.
Now, considering the fact that fluff>gameplay/game rules, I think it's safe to discount that figure. Even if we don't, then there's the small matter that Imperial torpedoes are two hundred feet long, and have a measure of guidance. The weapons are also quite well armored.
EDIT 2: the derived torpedo velocity figure is acceptable if taken as acceleration, keeping in mind the maximum 1,000g acceleration I assigned to the Lunar-class cruiser. With a 1700g figure for Phalanx, and likely 5,000-10,000g accelerations for a cruiser, then it becomes somewhat stretched to impossible (10k g's is almost 100 km/s^2, or going from 0 to 60 miles an hour in ~0.0003 seconds. Or three ten-thousandths of a second.).
EDIT 3: also note that 1cm=1,000 km is a bit strained, and doesn't jive well with the novels and fluff depictions of naval combat. I personally consider it more likely that 1cm=10,000 km, which means that the Lunar gains a 300,000 kilometer range for it's weapons batteries and lances.
It also means that a torpedo covers the distance with an average velocity of 500 kilometers per second, if a game turn equals ten minutes. I've seen some that consider a game turn to be ten seconds of real-time, which means that that torpedo is really booking it, at 30,000 km/s, which is one tenth of the speed of light. If it is ten minutes, which seems a bit more realistic and reasonable, then, as above, about 500 kilometers per second. If you take it as acceleration (in which case units are km/s^2, instead of km/s), then it handily out-maneuvers a 40K ship, as 500 km/s^2 is around 50,000g's.
Let's see those interceptor guns shoot down something that moves more than five thousand times faster than a Starfury!
As a side note, the Imperial Fury Interceptor is seventy meters long. That makes it seven times longer than a Starfury. Also note that Furies have the same acceleration capabilities as a torpedo (ref: BFG speed for Fury is 30cm, the same as a torpedo), giving them five thousand times the speed! It also means that the Imperium has acceleration compensation equipment, something sorely lacking in the B5 races!
So there you have it. Why Babylon 5 races simply cannot stand up to the Imperium, especially one-on-one.
Jeez such long posts
I looked back over your posts and this rather jumped out at me. Since it's not easy to edit in a new quote and I'm a tad lazy, I'll double-post and deal with it.
So, here's the thing about the Imperium's view of the EA. They would see them as weak and corrupt due to alien influences, but there's also the fact that the Imperium will recognize that the EA has not encountered the God-Emperor's Light.
So they don't know that they're supposed to abhor and kill and purge the xeno. Because of that, it's a bit forgivable. The other side is that the aliens that the EA has fought, only one of them really tried to wipe out humanity, and that was the Minbari.
So the EA would likely get severely reprimanded by the Imperium, primarily through mass murder of high-echelon political and military personnel, but the average citizen will probably be no worse for wear.
In contrast, the Imperium will then go all xeno-purging on the Minbari, and proceed to wipe out the collective groups of aliens in the area that the Younger Races inhabit. Note that, so far as I understand the timelines of the Younger Races, Imperial humanity has had space travel for longer than (likely) most of those species have had industrial, pre-spaceflight government.
The Imperium has probably been at war for longer than some of those empires have even been extant political entities with space presence. I'd guess that the Imperium isn't older than the Old Races like the Vorlons and Shadows, but the sad part is that the Imperium could, to pardon my language, "bitch-slap the hell out of them".
To my knowledge, the Vorlons and Shadows have never shown firepower substantially greater (as in hundreds or thousands of times greater) than the Younger Races. And it would be in the Imperium's best interest to do so. The Vorlons/Shadows are, to some degree or other, manipulating the progress of the Younger Races (which includes humanity), and so, from the Imperium's POV, are "interfering with the ability for Man to fulfill his manifest destiny to rule the stars".
Minbari are dead, because they tried to xenocide (like genocide, only species-wide) the humans. Narn, Centauri, [other B5 aliens here], they're also going to be wiped out, because, from what little I admittedly know about the show, they occupy planets that are favorable for human habitation.
There's even precedence for the Imperium planning to exterminate alien species that posed no threat, but happened to be in the way of some prime real estate. The Tau from 40K. An Imperial exploration fleet finds the Tau's home planet, and the Tau are stone age at the time. They mark the planet for future colonization, declare the Tau to be the worst type of xeno and thus requiring extermination, and then leave.
Cue multiple warp storms to cut off the area from Imperial influence, and then the Tau develop into a tiny, space-flight civilization capable of meeting the Imperium on equal terms in space and on the ground. Note that that's solely in terms of technology, not in terms of overall military capacity. The Imperium would actually wipe out the Tau, if not for the fact that the Tau:
1) inhabit a sphere of space a few hundred lightyears in diameter (tiny empire)2) there are bigger problems, like the forces of Chaos, the Orks, and Eldar raiders. Oh yeah, and the Tyranids.
As it just so happens, Orks infest the galaxy from end to end, and the Tyranids happen to be invading from the same regions the Tau inhabit (there might be hope that the Tyranids will eat the Tau, or, even better, the Tyranids and Tau will kill each other a lot). The Tau are content to very slowly expand, while the Tyranids are ravenously devouring planet after planet.
On a side note, Shalkto, do you happen to know of a credible B5 space-map? I already know that the Imperium dwarves the collective territories of the B5 powers by a significant margin (Imperium covers the entire Milky Way), but I'm curious as to how the Younger Races' collective territory stacks up to the Tau Empire. My gut says that the Tau Empire is only marginally smaller.
It's a somewhat complicated topic.
Also, WELCOME BACK SHIRO.
Also, Morph has left us.
Oh why did he leave?
He said that it no longer felt fun to post, and it was more like an obligation. The post in which he said this is on Page 30 of this thread if you want to look at it.
Ah well...he deleted me from LoL anyway so I havent talked to him in a long time.
im back
SO SAYS THINE KING!
You are not my king. You never will be my king.
AVE DEUS-IMPERATOR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_npkWGwYJpU&feature=feedu
EPIC VIDEO IS EPIC.
hahaha
Wow, I think Morph must have had some sort of Force Field over the forums...Old posters are coming back in swarms...and new ones(To the chatroom anyway) are coming too...
-Twilight Storm
This is known as a Field of Online Repulsion, a rare anomaly only found in the presence of a Troll, which is a digital life-form which somehow feeds off the failure of others, so long as the aforementioned failure is not only epic, but also induced somehow by the Troll.
HOORAY!!!
A new DBS vid!
Huzzah!
Yeah.
well, i always make my way back eventually...
SO SAYS THE KING
The King arrives with beer!
And I get a two day holiday just after Easter because of a certain important marriage that is going to occur.
WUT MARRIAGE?
Limeyman is marrying a lesser-known heroine, Ausie-girl.
You'll have to google it guys.
It's an important British marriage, between two important (one really important) British people.
I don't care enough to Google. I'll just go with my previous guess.
Really guys? I am pretty sure he's talking about the prince.
Meh, I don't really follow the Brits that much. Seeing as how I live a good 10,000 miles away from Britain (California FTW).
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