Imperium of Man Runs a Biological Gauntlet
- Thread starter Aldarion
- Start date
1. It would be hard fought, but the Imperium would ultimately prevail against the Vong. The IoM has everything that the Republic, Empire, and assorted others don't. I'd say that the Imperium's victory would be due to drowning them in flying Cathedrals, and guys with flashlights. Further, I think this conflict would give the IoM the kick in the rear it needs to eventually, some day, perhaps take tepid steps down the road of reform.
2. Toss-up. Well we have a few options such as the IoM catches it early and kills it, or blows up the planet it is on. Or something else nasty kills it, or it gets slaughtered by the sheer hostility of the 40k Galaxy. Or it goes on and noshes much of the Galaxy...or the least likely option...it becomes another random threat that exists in the Galaxy.
3. Three options. Flood noshes the Imperium, because they literally took down a civilization with reality warping space magic. Two, the Emperor rouses from his throne and utterly obliterates the Flood before they can get off the ground, because he senses exactly what they are (and maybe the Four alongside the remaining Eldar gods join him if allowed...). Or third, the Flood may well leave them alone, because life is suffering enough and they can join the show, maybe they see how badly their colleagues in this universe fucked up and decide to fix it, or maybe they leave everyone alone- because the life in this universe never wronged them. Remember, the Flood are essentially the angry remnants of murdered space gods, they aren't actually there to nosh the entire Galaxy... But, yeah, three options: Flood eats everything, Flood gets nuked by Warp God(s), or they leave the empire alone for their own inscrutable reasons. Or, maybe the Flood gets a bad dice throw and ends up on a world that literally wrecks them the moment they arrive.
4. I think barring some sort of warp fuckery protecting Imperial vessels...the Beast just noshes them. They just don't have the right plot armor. Well, I guess, unless the Beast gets nuked by Empy (or the others) or gets a bad dice throw.
Tl;dr I don't think the Empire has the right resources to deal with the latter two threats. They are just too esoteric and not in the way that meshes with 40k esoteric bullshit. I seriously doubt the Imperium could win against the angry undead space gods, or Clarketech Grey Goo with Assimilate-You beams.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Hmm, not very familiar with HALO so going to leave them out.
Yuuzhang Vong: A hard fight but nothing the Imperium hasn't taken on before, with every other threat neutralized and them able to bring their full force to bear on the Vong they will probably win.
The Thing: They have no particular defense against it, but the Imperium is properly paranoid about such an infiltration, watch each other like hawks for signs of disloyalty or corruption, and will probably resort to scorched earth tactics if all else fails. If there were several trillion Things automatically appearing all over the Imperium they might be threatened.
The Beast: Oh the Imperium is so screwed it's not even funny. The Beast was barely contained in a hail-mary event by an alliance of civilizations far larger, not fractious or hidebound like the Imperium, with superior communications and FTL, and who build ships so vast they can fit a 40K Battleship in one of their cargo bays with plenty of room to spare. And they build those ships on the order of a few days, 40K-sized ships they build in minutes to hours.
King Arts
Well-known member
Umm is home world that strong? I thought except for the Bentusi everyone is around mass effect or maybe Star Trek level at most.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Depends. They don't have energy shielding, or very powerful weapons. However, their construction capabilities and reverse engineering are basically on a meme level. Like, a single Kiith succeeded at designing and building two multi-kilometer motherships in a span of 45 days. That is like Federation building a Galaxy class starship in about a week.
And when Hiigarans got their hands on an ancient, incredibly advanced AI corvette - the Progenitor Mover - they proceeded to reverse engineer and built it within minutes of in-game time. So yeah.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Homeworld's pretty strong but they don't map perfectly to other factions, a lot of their stuff is kind of orthogonal. Note that The Beast was able to curbstomp the Bentusi, which is what we're looking at for this Vs. Debate.
Generally, their ships are slow, with low-double-digit Gs of acceleration at the top and single-digit Gs for their biggest ships. Most factions can outrun them.
FLT speed, though, is really fast. The Kushan traveled across most of the galaxy, constantly having to stop and scavenge, mine, or fight for their lives, and did it in about six months.
They have no shields but the manual goes into a great deal of detail on their armor, which makes heavy use of composites, reactive components, and spacing. Basically they don't miss a trick when it comes to maxing what they can get out of armor.
Power generation of a single hypercore is stated to rival the total output of a main sequence G-type star in Deserts of Kharak. That said there was some retconning going on, in Homeworld those cores were just power plants the Kushan reverse-engineered from the Khar Toba. The Kadeshi had the exact same cores, it's kinda a plot point there since the Kadeshi had reverse-engineered the exact same model of ship and shared a common ancestor with the Kushan. Homeworld 2 changed that to them being ancient progenitor artifacts which is really hard to square with the Kadeshi having multiples of them.
Firepower is decent but not the highest in the multiverse. Even their strike craft are packing, essentially, battleship-scaled cannons except they're Gatling. These weapons are all but useless against larger craft. Fusion warheads are only really effective against Frigates until At the top end, we have a ship whose main weapon requires three of those hypercores to supply it with enough energy...
Research and Construction speeds are a thing that would make Minecrafters weep with envy. To build on what @Aldarion said, we know Kiith Somtaaw rented the Mothership's fabricator for six months. First, they designed and built their own mothership, the Faal-Corum. During the construction process they did enough research to design a second, much more advanced and modular Mothership, and used that knowledge to build the Kuun-Laan. Finally they instead built a top-of-the-line science vessel, the Clee-San, with their remaining fabricator time. Missile Destroyers are flat-out stated to be manufacturing new missiles on the fly, they can "dump the tubes" and then manufacture a fresh supply of missiles in under a minute. Just in general, if they have the resources, their manufacturing ability is "yes."
In general, their design philosophies can be a bit wonky. Homeworld ships are usually very specialized, they tend to plan on having a large number of ships with multiple layers of screening elements screening their screening elements. This makes sense given their crazy build speeds and ability to make stuff as needed, but also means that, f'rex, a Battlecruiser entirely by itself and lacking its screen can be highly vulnerable to being swarmed with fighters.
Their AI and Automation is about as high-end as it gets without having fully autonomous droid ships. A hundred people can operate a ship the size of a small city. The manual calls out how boarding parties have to hit the enemy ship with a massive spam of computer viruses and fight constant counter-measures to try to keep a ships automated systems locked down while they take it over.
Everybody in Homeworld is loot-happy to an extent that makes the Orks look like ascetic monks. Salvage Corvettes stealing everything that isn't nailed down is mimetic. The Beast infects and subverts everything it comes near whether an enemy ship or organic brains. The Junkyard Dog stealing capital craft and whatever the ancient ship is that mind-controls vessels at range are hazards the Kushan have to deal with. Basically stealing everybody else's ships and reverse-engineering everybody else's tech is SOP for every faction in the setting.
TL;DR: Overall the traits that are going to let The Beast roll through the Imperium are its Blazing FTL speed, absurd manufacturing/reverse engineering, and ability to turn anything at range into more of itself with Infection Beam. Its speed and spread rate gives it good odds of being able to invade and take over large chunks of the Imperium faster than the Imperium is even able to spread news of what's happening. The Beast can corrupt any known organic or physical material it encounters into more of itself. It also absorbs the crews of ships it eats, allowing it full access to their memories which it has used to great effect. It can integrate any tech it reverse-engineers and design new infected ships to use that tech. It has a super-genius intellect with great cunning and no sense of fair play, and was able to piece together literally every race and major event in the galaxy from stray radio signals when it was still confined to a broken beacon, and stated it knew "More about your race than you do." It can throw down entire fleets in a matter of days, every one of which carries more Beast virus and can spread it further.