What If? Star Trek Federation is transported into the 40k galaxy

ShadowArxxy

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Trek impulse drives don't really produce the tactical flexiblity you're thinking of; that's all in the warp drives, and that's with the plot-convenient assumption that their 'regular' shields give them free Gellar fields.

(I should point out that even with Gellar fields, travel through the Warp is a terrifying head trip and this will be a phenomenon that the Federation ship crews are completely not prepared to deal with.)
 

S'task

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Trek impulse drives don't really produce the tactical flexiblity you're thinking of; that's all in the warp drives, and that's with the plot-convenient assumption that their 'regular' shields give them free Gellar fields.

(I should point out that even with Gellar fields, travel through the Warp is a terrifying head trip and this will be a phenomenon that the Federation ship crews are completely not prepared to deal with.)
Per the OP Star Trek Warp drives are not going through the Warp, Star Trek subspace is still just subspace, though it is interfered with by powerful enough Warp effects. As such, Trek ships are not going through the warp at all unless they explicitly start experimenting with it.

Secondly, it is not a "plot convenient assumption", Star Trek shields have demonstrated the EXACT CORE CAPABILITIES that a Geller field does: that of holding and preserving a bubble of realspace where the normal laws of physics are preserved while in a dimension where such laws are chaotically unstable / don't apply. See Star Trek Voyager: The Fight.

And that is the most clear example of Trek shields dealing with weird shit like that of the Warp. To list every weird and unexpected thing Trek shields have dealt with and protected their ships from would end up taking hours and going through every series with a fine tooth comb. "The Fight" is easy to remember since its the core premise of the episode.
 

The Whispering Monk

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(I should point out that even with Gellar fields, travel through the Warp is a terrifying head trip and this will be a phenomenon that the Federation ship crews are completely not prepared to deal with.)
Hadn't really thought of this...but it's likely to make combat warp jumps exceedingly useless and downright suicide.

Ship warps into combat range, crew attempts to shrug off the warp effects, while the IoM vessels shoot at them willy nilly.
 

The Whispering Monk

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Per the OP Star Trek Warp drives are not going through the Warp, Star Trek subspace is still just subspace, though it is interfered with by powerful enough Warp effects. As such, Trek ships are not going through the warp at all unless they explicitly start experimenting with it.
@Zachowon

Your post, but I disagree with this decision, simply because it immediately removes one of the key environmental factors in all of 40K. Trek now gets to play around and ignore it...cuz.

I would have gone with subspace just being the Warp. Trek is lucky enough to exist in a 'verse where the Warp hasn't manifested yet.
 

S'task

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@Zachowon

Your post, but I disagree with this decision, simply because it immediately removes one of the key environmental factors in all of 40K. Trek now gets to play around and ignore it...cuz.

I would have gone with subspace just being the Warp. Trek is lucky enough to exist in a 'verse where the Warp hasn't manifested yet.
No, all it does is gives the Federation a chance to have time to adapt and see how things go, rather than immediately being fucked over. Star Trek Warp drive is still considerably slower than anything in 40k and despite Sailor.X's musing, we have no evidence for widespread deployment of quantum slipstream and other higher end FTL systems, YET.

But let's not pretend otherwise, at least half the people arguing against Trek's capabilities just want to see them get rapidly fucked over.

The Warp and Chaos are still entirely a factor, they just don't get their free "we win because you immediately have to come to us to have your FTL" factor.
 

Battlegrinder

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Per the OP Star Trek Warp drives are not going through the Warp, Star Trek subspace is still just subspace, though it is interfered with by powerful enough Warp effects. As such, Trek ships are not going through the warp at all unless they explicitly start experimenting with it.

Secondly, it is not a "plot convenient assumption", Star Trek shields have demonstrated the EXACT CORE CAPABILITIES that a Geller field does: that of holding and preserving a bubble of realspace where the normal laws of physics are preserved while in a dimension where such laws are chaotically unstable / don't apply. See Star Trek Voyager: The Fight.

And that is the most clear example of Trek shields dealing with weird shit like that of the Warp. To list every weird and unexpected thing Trek shields have dealt with and protected their ships from would end up taking hours and going through every series with a fine tooth comb. "The Fight" is easy to remember since its the core premise of the episode.

Eh, that seems like a bad episode to cite, given that shields were completely unable to block out the aliens from telepathically communicating with Chakotay. And that failure is not a one off thing, shields consistently fail to block psychic influence (Nemesis, Bliss, The Loss), and have likewise proven ineffective when confronted by malevolent supernatural forces (Where Silence Has Lease, for example).

So yes, a star trek ship could likely enter or be exposed to the warp and not be torn apart instantly. But that's not what the Gellar field is for, even ships without one can survive more or less intact in the warp (ie, space hulk). The field is stop chaos from driving the crew into insanity, and start trek shields have consistently failed to protect the crew from psychic phenomenon.
 

S'task

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Eh, that seems like a bad episode to cite, given that shields were completely unable to block out the aliens from telepathically communicating with Chakotay. And that failure is not a one off thing, shields consistently fail to block psychic influence (Nemesis, Bliss, The Loss), and have likewise proven ineffective when confronted by malevolent supernatural forces (Where Silence Has Lease, for example).

So yes, a star trek ship could likely enter or be exposed to the warp and not be torn apart instantly. But that's not what the Gellar field is for, even ships without one can survive more or less intact in the warp (ie, space hulk). The field is stop chaos from driving the crew into insanity, and start trek shields have consistently failed to protect the crew from psychic phenomenon.
Certainly, but that's not what people who cite "travelling through the warp" like to throw at Trek ships. Psychic corruption is certainly still a threat, but it is one that they are not completely unfamiliar with. People more commonly cite the issues with The Warp being how it breaks the laws of physics, etc., which the Shields would counter, as well as demons being able to manifest.
 

Battlegrinder

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Certainly, but that's not what people who cite "travelling through the warp" like to throw at Trek ships. Psychic corruption is certainly still a threat, but it is one that they are not completely unfamiliar with. People more commonly cite the issues with The Warp being how it breaks the laws of physics, etc., which the Shields would counter, as well as demons being able to manifest.

Fair point on the physics bit, but "not unfamiliar with" is.....a bit of a stretch. People in ST are used to there being, like, 3 guys that get hit with some sort of psychic thing and slowly go nuts/bodtpuppeted. Having the entire crew get hit is much more rare and much, much more prone to resulting in everyone killing each other.

I also really question if it will stop daemons from manifesting. 40k daemons are composed of pyschic energy, which ST shields don't block, and even when in the real world thier "physical" form is just a pyschic projection.
 

ShadowArxxy

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That's my point, yeah. My position is that Trek shields would likely duplicate the mundane "navigational shield" functions of a Gellar Field, but not its more esoteric anti-Warp-fuckery aspects.

"Assumption of convenience" as in, "There's not much of a debate to be had if every single Trek ship gets insta-Space-Hulked the moment it encounters the 'true' Warp."


Amusing side thought: does anyone think the Federation might just be degenerately self-righteous enough to spawn an actual Chaos God of Hypocrisy, or do they just straight up belong to Tzeentch?
 

Crom's Black Blade

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In Battle Fleet Gothic, the games, iirc they were not able to go through shields but I could be wrong.
Well let me know once you confirm whether or not it does I guess.

Then again the torpedoes of the Imperium are somewhat diffrent then that of the Federation.
And what is the difference in this context?

Again I am getting the Lance weapons based of them being lasers and what lexicanum has.
Unfortunately them simply being lasers tells us very little about their targeting and accuracy.

You previously talked about them scoring hits on Necron and Eldar ships. I'm sure in one of the hundred of novels there was a ship engagement that we could look at and see how good the imperium performs.

Iirc the tabletop Gothic is outdated compared to thw game on PC due to updated lore in it
If there's a statement from Games Workshop, it's editors ect were they state the BFG is non-canonical that's fine. Just let me see it.

Ciaphas Cain novels typically have a warp jump limit being some two days of realspace travel from the nearest habitable world (that is, from the circumstellar habitable zone). Rogue Trader specifies that they have to be at the edge of the system, or they tear themselves apart.

That being said, stuff varies wildly. The closest "safe" jump I am aware of was 2,3 million kilometers from the nearest habitable planet. But as a general rule, 1 AU or 150 million kilometers is the closest safe distance, with more typical distance being in billions of kilometers.

However, it is a little more complex than that. You see, jumping safely from the point much closer than this is indeed possible, if somewhat tricky. What you need to do is utilize Lagrange points - called in-universe Mandeville points - where gravitational influence is largely neutralized.

Chaos apparently can negotiate with their gods to smooth out Warp and allow them to jump into realspace literally wherever...
Thank you, I appreciate the information.

You say it's "tricky" to use lagrange points to jump in close. Is there a good book,codex ect that delves deeper into that?

They are incapable of doing that to certain physical threats, why would they be able to do it to something that literally breaks laws of physics?
Oh, precisely because the Warp/Chaos isn't a physical threat but malignant energy field. Something the Federation has considerable experience in. Just as they have experience in breaking the laws of physics as we know them.
@Bear Ribs earlier linked to Medusans were just looking at them causes your organs to crumble to dust. And how the Federation met them and recruited them as navigators.

And lastly the Warp appears to operate on a distinct, if separate, law of physics since things like Gellar Fields and Pylons can interfere with it. So it clearly can be studied and manipulated.

Your post, but I disagree with this decision, simply because it immediately removes one of the key environmental factors in all of 40K. Trek now gets to play around and ignore it...cuz.
Isn't that the entire purpose of this crossover? To see how these two franchises with two radically different philosophies and technologies interact? It seems unfair to remove the advantages of one faction simply because they give an advantage.
 

The Whispering Monk

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Amusing side thought: does anyone think the Federation might just be degenerately self-righteous enough to spawn an actual Chaos God of Hypocrisy, or do they just straight up belong to Tzeentch?
:ROFLMAO:
Isn't that the entire purpose of this crossover? To see how these two franchises with two radically different philosophies and technologies interact? It seems unfair to remove the advantages of one faction simply because they give an advantage.
Certainly, and I'm not saying I won't be party to any discussion because the OP isn't what I'd do. Merely making an opinion known.

The reason I lean that way is because the Feddies have been inserted INTO the 40K'verse. In my mind, that means they are then subject to the same environmental factors. Saying Subspace is NOT the Warp completely skips this factor, and means the Feddies continue to operate outside the rules of the 'verse to a large extent. Part of the reason I'd do this is so we can look at how the Feddies would adapt to their new existence...likely in ways completely different to the IoM.

@Zachowon is free to tell me to shut up about it, and I will. Really, wasn't planning on carrying on the converstaion, but people have asked. ;)
 

Aldarion

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Thank you, I appreciate the information.

You say it's "tricky" to use lagrange points to jump in close. Is there a good book,codex ect that delves deeper into that?

What I mean by "tricky" is that you need to know the masses and orbits of objects in the system in order to calculate the points. And there is an issue is that if you know these points, the enemy will know them as well - so unless you know there are no static defences surrounding them, it is still better to make a sublight approach.

Although, of course, Warhammer 40k has its own share of inconsistencies:


Personally though, I tend to go with the tabletop when possible.

Oh, precisely because the Warp/Chaos isn't a physical threat but malignant energy field. Something the Federation has considerable experience in. Just as they have experience in breaking the laws of physics as we know them.
@Bear Ribs earlier linked to Medusans were just looking at them causes your organs to crumble to dust. And how the Federation met them and recruited them as navigators.

And lastly the Warp appears to operate on a distinct, if separate, law of physics since things like Gellar Fields and Pylons can interfere with it. So it clearly can be studied and manipulated.

Yeah, but question here is more whether Federation will realize true nature and threat of Warp. Sure, Gellar Fields and Pylons can inferfere with it, and Imperium knows this, yet it still has massive issues with Chaos.

If Federation decides to treat Warp as merely another type of subspace, something dangerous but completely inanimate... it might cause them massive issues.

Amusing side thought: does anyone think the Federation might just be degenerately self-righteous enough to spawn an actual Chaos God of Hypocrisy, or do they just straight up belong to Tzeentch?

I think God of Hypocrisy is a given...
 

Crom's Black Blade

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To my knowledge the 40k novels are, as with most things, wildly inconsistent on this and often portrayal void shields as operating either way. This could be because the authors aren't aware of how they "should" work, because how they work was changed at some point and not everyone was up to speed,that different models of void shield have different properties and weaknesses, some combination of the above,or something else entirely.

Thank you for the information. So Void shields are basically depending on the writer in terms of effects.

Also, tactical mobility, while nice, doesn't win wars. Strategic mobility does. How long it takes to get ships into a star system matters a lot more than how long it takes them get around that system itself.
The Strategic mobility front is unlikely to go much better for the Imperium through. The Federation has the advantage of fighting from more condensed territory, has real-time communication for better coordination and doesn't have to deal with currents of the Warp that can slow or throw an Imperium ship off course.

So even through Imperium ships are faster in pure FTL terms, the Federation would likely be the more nimble and responsive entity shifting assets around to meet and counter the more ponderous Imperium.

The reason I lean that way is because the Feddies have been inserted INTO the 40K'verse. In my mind, that means they are then subject to the same environmental factors. Saying Subspace is NOT the Warp completely skips this factor, and means the Feddies continue to operate outside the rules of the 'verse to a large extent. Part of the reason I'd do this is so we can look at how the Feddies would adapt to their new existence...likely in ways completely different to the IoM.
Well to be fair it isn't like the Warp is the only way to travel faster than light in 40k. The Tau, Eldar and Necrons all have found work arounds to various degrees.

But I would like to apologize for misconstruing your argument. I can see your point you are making.

For myself I lean the otherway imagining how I'd feel if this was 40K in Trek what if and being told Warp engines and Pyskers don't work because there's no Warp in Star Trek.
 

Battlegrinder

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The Strategic mobility front is unlikely to go much better for the Imperium through. The Federation has the advantage of fighting from more condensed territory, has real-time communication for better coordination and doesn't have to deal with currents of the Warp that can slow or throw an Imperium ship off course.

So even through Imperium ships are faster in pure FTL terms, the Federation would likely be the more nimble and responsive entity shifting assets around to meet and counter the more ponderous Imperium.

Not really. Yes, the Federation has easier communications and can move ships around on a more precise timetable. The issue is the sheer FTL speed the imperium enjoys. Yes. Imperial ships will reach their destination with an error bar of a week and a half either way. That doesn't matter when it will take the federation like 2 months to get backup to the site, by which time the imperium has won the battle and thier ships have moved on to the other side of the federation.

Additionally, the imperium will emerge from the warp with zero warning, as the Federation cannot detect and track imperial ships while they're in the warp. This tilts things well into the imperium favor, as it cuts the federation's response window down significantly.
 

The Whispering Monk

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The Tau, Eldar and Necrons all have found work arounds to various degrees.
The Tau do actually use the Warp. They just skim across it in microjumps that don't tend to really immerse them completely. Slower than the rest of 40K Warp travel, but also generally much safer.
Eldar and Necrons definitely cheat though.
But I would like to apologize for misconstruing your argument. I can see your point you are making.
Not necessary but appreciated.
For myself I lean the otherway imagining how I'd feel if this was 40K in Trek what if and being told Warp engines and Pyskers don't work because there's no Warp in Star Trek.
Totally fair POV. I'd imagine that IoM tech would still be able to Warp. They'd just have to figure out how to navigate without Holy Terra's guiding light.
Also, would they start to manifest the Warp in subspace simply b/c they believe it should be there?

Anyways...back to our regularly scheduled topic!!
 

Crom's Black Blade

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Not really. Yes, the Federation has easier communications and can move ships around on a more precise timetable. The issue is the sheer FTL speed the imperium enjoys. Yes. Imperial ships will reach their destination with an error bar of a week and a half either way. That doesn't matter when it will take the federation like 2 months to get backup to the site, by which time the imperium has won the battle and thier ships have moved on to the other side of the federation.
In terms of Strategic mobility, raw sheer speed is only a minor facet. We're talking more about the issue of the Imperium knowing where it's ships are, relaying orders to them, them gathering and preparing for the coming battle relying on information that could be months, years or even decades old in addition to the battle group potentially arriving at different times and different locations.

Further its unlikely that it would take the Federation 2 months to simply get reinforcements. The DS9 episode "Way of the Warrior" establishes it takes 8 weeks to reach Cestus Three which was on the opposite side of the Federation compared to the titular station. So response times for closer fleets should be days or weeks rather than months.

Additionally, the imperium will emerge from the warp with zero warning, as the Federation cannot detect and track imperial ships while they're in the warp. This tilts things well into the imperium favor, as it cuts the federation's response window down significantly.

Depends on where they drop into real-space, really. If they drop in orbit around the planet, yes most definitely. If they emerge days' travel out from the world in question then things tilt right back to the Federation.
 

Sailor.X

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Moreover, something that the official tech materials explicitly show Federation torpedoes can’t do; they have warp sustainers and not full warp drives.
Hmm I had no idea the Romulan Empire was part of the UFP back in the 23rd Century. Oh wait it wasn't.
 

Battlegrinder

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Regarding the overrall thread topic, for the record I don't think the federation is all that likely to run into significant opposition from the imperium. Yes, the imperium won't like them, they're clearly all heretics and blah blah, but the imperium doesn't like a lot of people and unlike, say, the Tau, the Federation isn't trying to manifest destiny a bunch of imperial planets. There will be conflict here and there when a segmentum commander tries to conquer some little chunk of the federation,and sometimes win and sometimes not, but it's going to be, in 40k terms, little more than skirmish and small wars (in ST terms I'd put it somewhere between the Klingon/Federation war in mid DS9 and the Dominion War).

Ditto orks, Tau, Eldar, etc. The federation is going to see its fair share of fighting but they're not going to catapult to the tip of anyone's "kill all these guys right now" lists. Most likely result is either they collapse from the constant pressure after a few centuries or they shrink down to a more defensible size as they tech up and reorganize.

In terms of Strategic mobility, raw sheer speed is only a minor facet. We're talking more about the issue of the Imperium knowing where it's ships are, relaying orders to them, them gathering and preparing for the coming battle relying on information that could be months, years or even decades old in addition to the battle group potentially arriving at different times and different locations.

You are overstating the difficulty on the imperium end, and drastically so. The imperium has FTL communications, and they're functionally enough to run a military. Imperial warp drive is not precise, but it reliably gets ships where they need to be at a roughly predictable time.

No, you can't time an offensive down to the minute or call on reinforcements to help you out mid-battle, but you're talking like the imperium will send 10 ships to take a planet, and half of them will arrive there sometime between 2 months ago and 20 years from now, with the other half ending up in the wrong system by accident, and that's not the case either.

GW invokes a lot of age of sail tropes when it comes to the warp, and that should be your guideline. So you'll know roughly how long a trip will take and roughly where they'll end up,, and some routes will be faster than others because of currents in the warp (even if the distance in real space is the same), but it's not a total crapshoot as to what happens when you give an order.

Further its unlikely that it would take the Federation 2 months to simply get reinforcements. The DS9 episode "Way of the Warrior" establishes it takes 8 weeks to reach Cestus Three which was on the opposite side of the Federation compared to the titular station. So response times for closer fleets should be days or weeks rather than months.

Depends on where they drop into real-space, really. If they drop in orbit around the planet, yes most definitely. If they emerge days' travel out from the world in question then things tilt right back to the Federation.

A response time of days still favors the imperium significantly, because imperial ships outmatch federation ones by a massive degree. You don't need to get a few ships to respond to an imperial incursion, you need a ton of ships. And the federation doesn't have dozens and dozens of ships within a two day range of every single planet, it will take time to gather them up and assemble a counterforce (also, needing only a few dozen ships to match a small imperial fleet is being very generous to the federation).

Add it gets much, much harder if you gave to respond to more than one crisis at once.

Hmm I had no idea the Romulan Empire was part of the UFP back in the 23rd Century. Oh wait it wasn't.

This is the same episode that stated the Romulans fought the Earth Romulan war with only impulse drive, and only figured out FTL drive at some point post balance of terror. You can't take every bit of the series as gospel, and particularly not TOS given the writers were still figuring out how everything was supposed to work.
 
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Aldarion

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Further its unlikely that it would take the Federation 2 months to simply get reinforcements. The DS9 episode "Way of the Warrior" establishes it takes 8 weeks to reach Cestus Three which was on the opposite side of the Federation compared to the titular station. So response times for closer fleets should be days or weeks rather than months.
A response time of days still favors the imperium significantly, because imperial ships outmatch federation ones by a massive degree. You don't need to get a few ships to respond to an imperial incursion, you need a ton of ships. And the federation doesn't have dozens and dozens of ships within a two day range of every single planet, it will take time to gather them up and assemble a counterforce (also, needing only a few dozen ships to match a small imperial fleet is being very generous to the federation).

Add it gets much, much harder if you gave to respond to more than one crisis at once.

I'd say Federation's quick-response force should be counted on the order of 10 to 40 ships. You have 40 ships scrambled to engage the Borg cube at Wolf 359, 23 ships in response to Klingon Civil War, six ships to relieve Deep Space Nine in Way of the Warrior, 18 ships with 9 more en route in Endgame, and eight ships to intercept Scimitar in Nemesis.

Of course, when there is an active war going on, then you have permanent fleets numbering in hundreds, and these can send out detachments of whatever size or move as unit in response to emergencies.
 

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