Unless the Picard series retconed things Torpedoes have always been depicted as a
physical ordinance not unlike Warhammer torpedoes if far more compact.
Could you provide more details? What precisely did they shoot and how?
Depends on how far away said planet is from the
jump point. The Imperium Warp engines apparently can't drop to realspace to close to a planet's gravity well without risking destruction. I haven't found out exactly what distance out is, and it likely fluctuates with world to world, but I did find this in my copy of "Defender of the Imperium", a Caiphas Cain Omnibus.
Page 67
The above is in reference to an Ork warboss who found a way to prematurely pull Imperium ships from the Warp and ambush them while in-route to the planet he's invading forcing them to transition weeks out-bound in order to avoid it. But apparently without Ork interference they were still expected to drop to realspace days away from the planet in question.
Now a later story in the same omnibus does have Chaos warships dropping far closer, seemingly minutes out from the planet, through it's commented on as being " Way too close to {the} gravity well for safety" and attributed to Chaos followers being "loony" and lacking in self-preservation.
Do you have an example in mind that demonstrates this?
Because browsing through the
BFG rulebook it states ordinance such as torpedoes are such difficult targets to hit, requiring the roll of D6 for a lance battery, because of their relative small size and speed despite torpedoes not counting as direct fire weapons. Which is defined as being able to hit your target "almost immediately, even across tens of thousands of kilometers". They also do not maneuver in-rout to their target and are longer in length than the Millennium Falcon and are roughly two-thirds the length of the Jem'hadar rather massive "fighter".
Information for the above taken form pages 18, 27 and 28 of the rulebook.
Quotes on how 40k cloaking works/is used?
Considering their numerous other weakness and deficiencies they'd better be able to absorb a lot of punishment. Even assuming the Imperium enjoys a large and decisive advantage ship to ship where an Imperium cruiser can one-shot a starfleet vessel and it takes multiple ships dumping their entire payload of torpedoes and phaser strikes to chip the cruiser away I'm starting to think the Federation would have the edge simply by being able to dictate the battle and pommel the Imperial fleet for up to days at a stretch.
To quote the BFG rule book again " All ordnance attacks ignore a target's shields and affects the target vessel immediately upon contact." page 27.
So I'm going to have to ask for a specific quote that says nothing can go through a void shield.
Actually, the TOS episode "Elaine of Troyius" explicitly has a Klingon warship attack the sublight Enterprise while at warp. Not that I'd expect it to be used, it seems to be more a case of early installment weirdness not seen since the original era but it certainly does exist.
Considering this is the Federation they'd probably just scan it with a tricorder, determine it's emitting transdimenisional energies and quarantine the squiggily runes, artifact or talisman behind a forcefield to nullify it.
