Imperium of Man vs Galactic Empire

[King Arts]

I kinda disagree that those advantages would be enough tbh, remember the GE is spread thin their sectors aren't as heavily defended as the Imperium 's.

A fleet for the Galactic Empire would take significantly longer to capture or destroy a world than it would for the Imperium, aka getting to the objective first goes to GE but actually accomplishing the objective would favor the Imperium.


Imperium territory in general is more heavily fortified than the planets held by the Galactic Empire, let's not forget a LOT of Galactic Empire planets in both canons only number in the millions of population there's only a handful of planets that reach billions or higher. In contrast some Imperium worlds hold hundreds of billions to trillions of humans, that would take hundreds of Star Destroyers and potentially years to conquer one planet.

Not every Imperium world is a fortress world. And while every world is expected to have a PDF most of them are shit the same as Arab armies, or maybe Russian or Chinese. I would not be surprised if only 1 percent of the Imperiums mortal troops are as good as western military forces.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Thing is if Warp is still unstable without being Daemon plagued it can still take the Imperium weeks, months, years, even decades to react to serious incursions. So Imperium worlds and systems tend to be more well defended but in part due to necessity.

Galactic Empire can bonk some sectors for years without reprisal in some respects in theory.

An Imperium Crusade with less distractions would be hard to stop but Imperium is dealing with lots of inertia even if it's a better situation now due to lack of Xenos threats just from the way the Imperium is structured.

I'm not too familiar with warp travel but I'm pretty sure without Warp fuckery that it'll takes weeks not months or years.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Not every Imperium world is a fortress world. And while every world is expected to have a PDF most of them are shit the same as Arab armies, or maybe Russian or Chinese. I would not be surprised if only 1 percent of the Imperiums mortal troops are as good as western military forces.

Tbf that's still more or less equal quality to GE infantry and most Imperium worlds will still have populations that exceed GE planets on average. Even if the planet wasn't entirely fortified you're looking at tens of millions of potential militia that tens of thousands of Stormtroopers will have to deal with

 

[ATP]

I kinda disagree that those advantages would be enough tbh, remember the GE is spread thin their sectors aren't as heavily defended as the Imperium 's.

A fleet for the Galactic Empire would take significantly longer to capture or destroy a world than it would for the Imperium, aka getting to the objective first goes to GE but actually accomplishing the objective would favor the Imperium.


Imperium territory in general is more heavily fortified than the planets held by the Galactic Empire, let's not forget a LOT of Galactic Empire planets in both canons only number in the millions of population there's only a handful of planets that reach billions or higher. In contrast some Imperium worlds hold hundreds of billions to trillions of humans, that would take hundreds of Star Destroyers and potentially years to conquer one planet.

GE could actually use starships to destroy land targets,so they could do that quickly.And,as i said,IG is no match for stormtroopers.

 

[King Arts]

Tbf that's still more or less equal quality to GE infantry and most Imperium worlds will still have populations that exceed GE planets on average. Even if the planet wasn't entirely fortified you're looking at tens of millions of potential militia that tens of thousands of Stormtroopers will have to deal with

Yes that’s true but storm troopers aren’t the majority of the Imperial armed forces. There is the Imperial army troopers also. And Star Wars worlds vary just like in 40k they have city worlds, they have worlds like ours and they also have outback shitholes like Tatooine.

 

[Scooby Doo]

GE could actually use starships to destroy land targets,so they could do that quickly.And,as i said,IG is no match for stormtroopers.

They can definitely use their Star Destroyers but that'd certainly put them with in range from boarding attempts and ground based anti ship weapons, the GE's Navy has notoriously poor range limit (Disney states it's 1,000 km limit before massive damage drop off so they need more time or energy to hurt hardened targets at a distance) they have to be pretty much close to orbit of the planet in both Canon's for maximum efficiency.

Yes that’s true but storm troopers aren’t the majority of the Imperial armed forces. There is the Imperial army troopers also. And Star Wars worlds vary just like in 40k they have city worlds, they have worlds like ours and they also have outback shitholes like Tatooine.

That's true but at the same time the Stormtrooper Legion is the rapid response force of the GE, the Army is absent for a huge chunk of both cannons so they're not really quantifiable. They'd be the bulk of the man power of the GE though considering one Hive World of the Imperium outnumbers the entire Stormtrooper branch several times over.

Star Wars worlds do vary but their populations are generally much lower, let's look at the inner planets which are supposed to be the most populated and most economically strong.

Manaan (1 Million)
Onderon (4 Million)
Naboo (542 Million)
Cona (1 Billion)
Alderaan (2 Billion)
Corellia (3 billion)


There are of course super populated planets like Mon Cala and Coruscant but they're a small fraction, there are more Hive Worlds than there are GE planets that reach double digit billions

 

[Aldarion]

GE could actually use starships to destroy land targets,so they could do that quickly.And,as i said,IG is no match for stormtroopers.

Depends on the Guard unit. Many of the Imperial Guard regiments (e.g. Cadian Kasrkin, Imperial Guard Stormtroopers) would be more than a match for Empire's Stormtroopers.

And both Imperium and the Empire are capable of orbital bombardment, so it is a tie there.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I'm not too familiar with warp travel but I'm pretty sure without Warp fuckery that it'll takes weeks not months or years.

It's not just the Warp Fuckery, even if that's no longer Demonified, the Imperium still has a huge onerous bureaucracy to deal with and most interstellar communication coming and going via Astropaths or whatever. While the Warp and general stability will help streamline the process, it has taken canonical years, even decades to respond to incursions including times where worlds have seceded for like a century before the Imperium even notices it and assembles a force to stomp them.

In that regard the Galactic Empire, as big as it is, has a much better built in advantage in FTL communication but even if it didn't, it still has an advantage in that it's bureaucracy and administration, while massive and perhaps ponderous, is still technically more advanced, organized and efficient then the thematically medieval and backwards Administratum and bureaucracy of the Imperium of Man.

I think the Imperium of Man still has the advantage through superior size and power, especially since its not dealing with otherworldly threats, but it'll still be suffering. The Galactic Empire, I don't think, can resist the Crusade Steamroller that the Imperium of Man can muster, but the Galactic Empire can still respond with really powerful counterstrokes and strike all over the Imperium, it just won't be enough to cripple it I feel.

It's like a Sperm Whale versus a Giant Squid I suppose.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

The Imperium's bureaucracy is world class. It has held together a galactic empire without access to quantum entanglement technology for ten thousand years. That is not a bad showing at all.

And once the Imperium gets access to Star Wars FTL communication, that would be a game changer for the entirety of the God Emperor's domains.

 

[Husky_Khan]

They can definitely use their Star Destroyers but that'd certainly put them with in range from boarding attempts and ground based anti ship weapons, the GE's Navy has notoriously poor range limit (Disney states it's 1,000 km limit before massive damage drop off so they need more time or energy to hurt hardened targets at a distance) they have to be pretty much close to orbit of the planet in both Canon's for maximum efficiency.

That's true but at the same time the Stormtrooper Legion is the rapid response force of the GE, the Army is absent for a huge chunk of both cannons so they're not really quantifiable. They'd be the bulk of the man power of the GE though considering one Hive World of the Imperium outnumbers the entire Stormtrooper branch several times over.

Star Wars worlds do vary but their populations are generally much lower, let's look at the inner planets which are supposed to be the most populated and most economically strong.

Manaan (1 Million)
Onderon (4 Million)
Naboo (542 Million)
Cona (1 Billion)
Alderaan (2 Billion)
Corellia (3 billion)


There are of course super populated planets like Mon Cala and Coruscant but they're a small fraction, there are more Hive Worlds than there are GE planets that reach double digit billions

Corellia only has three billion people?!?!?

*checks*

LAWL!!!

OMG... looks like its the same in Legends Essential Atlas as well.

Speaking of numbers, the basic numbers for the Star Wars galaxy have wandered a bit too much over the years for the Atlas's take to satisfy everybody. A galaxy 100,000 light years across containing 400 billion stars became the baseline in the years before the Atlas - see, for instance, the New Essential Guide to Alien Species. The 2nd Edition Star Wars Roleplaying Book from West End Games is the most-specific source about the extent of civilization. It says that at its peak the Republic included "over a million member worlds, and countless more colonies, protectorates and governorships. Nearly 100 quadrillion beings pledged allegiance to the Republic in nearly 50 million systems." Shatterpoint is similarly specific, stating that the Republic has 1.2 million member worlds and the Confederacy of Independent Systems 1/10 of that number - which would be 1.32 million member worlds between them. But that's during a time in which Republic authorities has broken down in much of the Outer Rim and Hutt Space has swollen to include worlds as far coreward as Gyndine. The numbers used in the Atlas chapter were arrived at by postulating that the Empire reclaimed much of the lost Republic territory and incorporating the WEG portrayal of the Empire as having dramatically stepped up exploration and colonization.

So Coruscant has 1 trillion or so. Geonosis has 400 billion. 100 quadrillion sentients in the galaxy with an average of two billion per inhabited member system according to the Legends Star Wars RPG which would be about 50 million inhabited systems. But that's at its peak of the Republic.

Shatterpoint says 1.2 million plus 1/10th that for the Seperatists. So 1.3 million worlds which is a fiftieth of the other number which said systems. I know from the Yuuzhang Vong War that 365 trillion sentients died, which seems like a lot but... it's a fraction of one percent of the total known space population regardless.

With galactic scaling of course things get pretty wonky anyhow. It'd be easier to wrap ones head around if the Core Worlds all got dozens or hundreds of billions in population though.

 

[Skallagrim]

So Coruscant has 1 trillion or so. Geonosis has 400 billion. 100 quadrillion sentients in the galaxy with an average of two billion per inhabited member system according to the Legends Star Wars RPG which would be about 50 million inhabited systems. But that's at its peak of the Republic.

Shatterpoint says 1.2 million plus 1/10th that for the Seperatists. So 1.3 million worlds which is a fiftieth of the other number which said systems. I know from the Yuuzhang Vong War that 365 trillion sentients died, which seems like a lot but... it's a fraction of one percent of the total known space population regardless.

I think the official gloss-over for this discrepancy (which encompasses a few other figures from other sources as well) is that there is the number for worlds that actually count for representation in the senate, and then there is the far larger number that includes all sorts of colonies, which don't actually enjoy representation at the galactic level. (They either don't get considered when their sector's selection of representatives is concerned, or they're frontier settlements in quasi-unorganised space.)

The exact degree of worlds that are represented varies over time, and colony-formation is ramped up in various successive waves, and so you get different numbers. (Also, some characters/sources can be viewed as "just using old census data".)

Regardless, the SW galaxy is very sparsely settled, compared to what you might reasonably expect. And that's after various retcons, even, because for a while there, Alderaan was not held to be home to two billion people... on the grounds that Obi-Wan said "millions of voice (...) suddenly silenced", meaning that Alderaan's population had to be under a billion, right? Right? (They quietly dropped that notion later on.)

 

[Husky_Khan]

Yeah. Warhammer 40K has another advantage in that it has a more disjointed narrative as well. While Star Wars throughout history, even in its big events Legends or Old Republic or otherwise, focused largely on groups of heroes doing stuff, that focuses and narrows the scale down. The biggest and broadest we really ever got was with the Clone Wars. 40K meanwhile can have entire novel series and video games set on a single planet and you have entire epic storylines playing out in the background of their huge, I'll defined galaxy.

The most focused the Imperium gets is during War of the Beast or Horus Heresy stuff where the scaling kind of starts to look peculiar when you take a step back and think, wait... if the Imperium is this big why are some Ork Battlemoons such an intractable problem when 40Kers have been telling me for ages they could easily pop Death Stars? Or tiny Tau expansions having any significance? The Imperium of Man though has the benefit (or hindrance) of fighting on 40,000 different fronts at the same time though with its mutant powered FTL communications technology and Renaissance era inspired level of administration and bureaucracy. So those stories can still be relevant and partially compensated for.

Hence... I still hold it to being the steamroller in this scenario since it doesn't have any distractions and the entire force of the Black Library/40K games library can be brought to bear, times 40,000 against the Star Wars galaxy.

The Galactic Empire will have to churn out more plucky bands of heroes protagonists main characters than it ever has before to deal with such Crusade inflation.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

The Imperium of Man is quite a sparsely settled thing too, much as it has been around for a very long time. A quiet Agri-world compared to a teaming Hive City is a dramatic comparison, and whilst the Imperium is enormous it is still “smaller” so to speak than the Galactic Republic/the Galactic Empire. Being an empire of a million worlds (probably has more than that to be honest) it may well be a little smaller than the Separatist Alliance.

Only issue of course is the Imperium has been at war for ten thousand years straight, and has a monstrous industrial and munitions sector to supply a truly monstrous war machine. Krieg laughs at Kamino, and worse we have the Primarch Guilliman, “mr logistics himself,” at the monster’s head.

 

[Aldarion]

Corellia only has three billion people?!?!?

*checks*

LAWL!!!

OMG... looks like its the same in Legends Essential Atlas as well.



So Coruscant has 1 trillion or so. Geonosis has 400 billion. 100 quadrillion sentients in the galaxy with an average of two billion per inhabited member system according to the Legends Star Wars RPG which would be about 50 million inhabited systems. But that's at its peak of the Republic.

Shatterpoint says 1.2 million plus 1/10th that for the Seperatists. So 1.3 million worlds which is a fiftieth of the other number which said systems. I know from the Yuuzhang Vong War that 365 trillion sentients died, which seems like a lot but... it's a fraction of one percent of the total known space population regardless.

With galactic scaling of course things get pretty wonky anyhow. It'd be easier to wrap ones head around if the Core Worlds all got dozens or hundreds of billions in population though.

The Imperium of Man is quite a sparsely settled thing too, much as it has been around for a very long time. A quiet Agri-world compared to a teaming Hive City is a dramatic comparison, and whilst the Imperium is enormous it is still “smaller” so to speak than the Galactic Republic/the Galactic Empire. Being an empire of a million worlds (probably has more than that to be honest) it may well be a little smaller than the Separatist Alliance.

Only issue of course is the Imperium has been at war for ten thousand years straight, and has a monstrous industrial and munitions sector to supply a truly monstrous war machine. Krieg laughs at Kamino, and worse we have the Primarch Guilliman, “mr logistics himself,” at the monster’s head.

I don't think that is really the case.

This station is the final link in the new-forged Imperial chain which will bind the million systems of the galactic Empire together once and for all. Your petty Alliance will no longer be of any concern to us.

This is also supported by novelizations where "tens of thousands" of systems joined the Separatists, and Republic has population numbering in the trillions.

Using EU for information about Star Wars is kinda like using books for information about the Imperium... it is fun for atmosphere, but completely unreliable for actual information. If you use books, you can find quotes supporting anything from empires of thousands of worlds throwing around hand grenade level firepower in ship-to-ship combat to empires of billions of worlds throwing around planet-cracking firepower... for both settings.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Narratively speaking I think the GE having an Empire of one million planets should be its cap, in both Legends and Disney canon I think it was confirmed there were only tens of thousands of Star Destroyers and that they had to govern them in sectors because there wasn't enough ships for to defend every planet.

25,000 ISD's would be like a standing Naval fleet and there'd be a ton of lighter ships but those tonnage wise would be complete fodder and speed bumps for a Crusade fleet. The Galactic Empire will need time to build more ISD's to defend their vast territory (but the issue of having 40 planets to defend per Capital ship available means the GE is going to have to sacrifice a lot of worlds) also if I recall correctly that a lot of the Galactic Empire industry is centralized at least it is in Disney canon.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

The twenty-five thousand ISDs number is something I’ve always taken to mean capital ships. In terms of support vessels and so on, the Imperial Navy is as like tremendously bigger than that. A million starships altogether is not an impossible estimate.

 

[Scooby Doo]

The twenty-five thousand ISDs number is something I’ve always taken to mean capital ships. In terms of support vessels and so on, the Imperial Navy is as like tremendously bigger than that. A million starships altogether is not an impossible estimate.

Those other ships though are literal fodder, they're significantly smaller and of less tonnage and significantly less well armed. The fire power is equalized per tonnage but most of the auxiliary ships are 450 meters and under.

Meaning the average extremely common 4.5 km Dauntless light cruisers of the Imperium would slaughter anything not a ISD, it's like pointing out you only have 25 Navy Seals to fight the USSR but then be like "but hah hah I may only have 25 Navy Seals to fight the entire USSR but I also have one million Aztec warriors with sling shots and spears!"

Irrelevant fodder that couldn't even successfully invade a planet even if you got a dozen or two dozen together.

 

[Husky_Khan]

The twenty-five thousand ISDs number is something I’ve always taken to mean capital ships. In terms of support vessels and so on, the Imperial Navy is as like tremendously bigger than that. A million starships altogether is not an impossible estimate.

It's like with the Stormtroopers/Clonetroopers. Both are the default for the setting despite supposedly being a more exceptional class of the military. Yet you never see the non-ISD ships really in Imperial service or the Imperial Army and whatnot for the same reason. Disney has been a bit better in showing other vessels though and non-Stormtroopers doing military things in some cases however.

 

[Aldarion]

Narratively speaking I think the GE having an Empire of one million planets should be its cap, in both Legends and Disney canon I think it was confirmed there were only tens of thousands of Star Destroyers and that they had to govern them in sectors because there wasn't enough ships for to defend every planet.

25,000 ISD's would be like a standing Naval fleet and there'd be a ton of lighter ships but those tonnage wise would be complete fodder and speed bumps for a Crusade fleet. The Galactic Empire will need time to build more ISD's to defend their vast territory (but the issue of having 40 planets to defend per Capital ship available means the GE is going to have to sacrifice a lot of worlds) also if I recall correctly that a lot of the Galactic Empire industry is centralized at least it is in Disney canon.

The twenty-five thousand ISDs number is something I’ve always taken to mean capital ships. In terms of support vessels and so on, the Imperial Navy is as like tremendously bigger than that. A million starships altogether is not an impossible estimate.

Imperial Star Destroyers are basically battleships... fact that we see them used in movies to fulfill destroyer-like roles (chasing Milennium Falcon etc) is I believe because Lucas may have modelled them on modern destroyers, which fulfill battleship role in addition to that of a destroyer.

 

[Carrot of Truth]

Imperial Star Destroyers are basically battleships... fact that we see them used in movies to fulfill destroyer-like roles (chasing Milennium Falcon etc) is I believe because Lucas may have modelled them on modern destroyers, which fulfill battleship role in addition to that of a destroyer.

Imperial ships have the most boring designs IMO its like someone told the engineer to give them big fucking triangles.