so humans are space orcs (with a C and not a K)?
I can show you that without any seers. The biggest, fastest battle barge with the most thick adamantium armor. That's the one that carries most space marines. They are known to charge through whole enemy fleets and still deliver their payload to the planet.
I want to see them try that when most of our capital ships have these install on them:
WOG is saying that they don't do orbital bombardment for varying different reasons (most of them cultural / strategic), we - being a craftworld - don't need to settle a glassed planet when we're done, we don't have any reason NOT to glass the Ork worlds if we can help it.
true but also:
Actually, it depends. Imperial Guard Veterans are normal infantry squads, but with more special weapons and skills, Sternguard Veterans are Tactical Marines with better weapons and skills, Vanguard Veterans are Assault Marines with optionally better weapons and more skilled, Custodian Wardens are Custodes but mostly more skilled...
Might I interest you in void spinners but BIGGER?
I mean, the entire Starlance line unambiguously announces it. Standard infantry weaponry nearly as powerful as a Lascannon? Infantry heavy weaponry that's twice as powerful as said Lascannon with (presumably) assault cannon rates of fire?
Yeah I'd be all for some starcarvers in our elite detachments to give us some good anti-vehicle/heavy infantry firepower.
We are very likely going to be using an Attack Barge design that adds grav shields and holofields, then replaces their vehicle-scale weapon with a Starlance (next step up from Starcarver). Then we put three of them in every Detachment as our standard infantry transport.
I doubt Imperium gets anywhere near eldar before they get battle barges. Crusade and Mechanicus start in Sol system. It's a long ass way from there to here. Also Crusade time standard loadout for Imperial ships is also Lance batteries. They switch to macro cannons only after the Heresy. That's why all the Chaos Marine ships are still rocking around with lasers.
In this case, this is one place where this quest majorly diverges from TT mechanically, because what you put in those catagories is a matter of internal, doctrinal organization, not game balance. For example Saim-Hann would have various flavors of Jetbikes for all the options where you have foot troops, because they don't use foot infantry at all. Similarly, if this was The Good Old Days™, Blade Dancers, Warcasters and veterans would probably be Elites, Warseers either Elites or HQ, and your current Elites would have been Troops; with all of them as "squad contains one (1) Eldar and 10+ Psychic Murder Robots".
You are correct in this summation; the defense of Meros will be an ongoing commitment until they get their engines fixed and can flee.
Keep in mind that the reason why the Grav-Shield takes so much space and costs so much (compared to the armor) is because it's a very slightly cut down version of what normally gets stuck on a tank, because you don't have infantry-scale ones (yet). So yes, Infantry scale defenses will be much less expensive in both slots and EP.
And, let's be honest, probably also most Vehicle Level threats.
Yeah, Ithilmar suits are pretty high on the "what does it take to kill that thing-" / "screw it." *calls for artillery strike* scale.
