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The Long Night Part One: Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) Complete Sequel Up

Investigate the Sea?

  • Yes

    Votes: 593 80.4%

  • No

    Votes: 145 19.6%
  • Total voters
    738
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Durin said:
Exterminatus via orbital bombardment takes some time and requires that you destroy all stationary defences
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One method of Exterminatus via orbital bombardment is focusing fire on a single point on the planet to crack it open and cause a giant explosion from the mantle exploding out onto the surface. Void shields and bunkers might be able to stop fast-moving munitions, but magma might be able to get through.

EDIT: Here's a clip of this method of Exterminatus.
 
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We'd want to kill everything in orbit anyway - assets in orbit is a rung in the ladder back to being an interstellar threat. If we don't clear them out of the space above then nothing we do to the Orks on the planet below means diddly squat whether it's a strongly worded letter or cyclonic torpedoes.
 
noliar said:
We'd want to kill everything in orbit anyway - assets in orbit is a rung in the ladder back to being an interstellar threat. If we don't clear them out of the space above then nothing we do to the Orks on the planet below means diddly squat whether it's a strongly worded letter or cyclonic torpedoes.
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Danaam should be our priority target. If we can bomb the defenses down enough and catch Garkill when he isnt looking than we can acheive a very big win.

Plus Daanam use to be a Fortress World with large tunnels. There could still be humans living in the darkness below.

An if not we can take a very fortifiable planet.
 
For the IoM, fleet time was much more expensive than it will be for us because our better tech base and the Hellheim Graveyard give us a much higher ship to territory ratio so keeping a sufficient fleet in one place long enough to achieve total space superiority and then a bombardment exterminatus is easier for us to justify.

The Astra Militarum had another dire imperative that we shouldn't have for hundreds of years yet (and can maybe avoid altogether) - they had to keep spending the Imperial Guard. A constant war footing was as key to the social control of the Imperium of Man as the Ecclesiarchy, maybe more. Everywhere was raising military forces, particularly the Guard, or supporting somewhere that did, all the time. They had an expansionist ethos but there wasn't really enough frontier to go around. They sometimes had crises that genuinely required trillions thrown into the meat grinder but not all the time. People were breeding all the time and turning their children into soldiers of the Emperor though, and armies have to be used or they'll get up to mischief.

If you have enough local control for a bombardment exterminatus of an Ork world you have enough local control for an invasion. One uses up valuable fleet resources, the other lets Heroic Guardsmen claim territory for Humanity and die by the division doing it.

We are genuinely small and outnumbered. We have use for our armies alive and we want threats squashed.
 
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Volume Two Non-Cannon Omakes: Striking gold
  • Apocrypha
    • "And we are one hundred percent sure the stealth is working?"

    The Techpriest turned to the captain with a whir.

    "ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL. TRUST IN THE MACHINE SPIRIT. SHE WILL KEEP US SAFE."

    "Roger that. Navigation, begin dewarp preparation. When we come out, I want to be able to leave as soon as possible. Also, prepare to follow technology containment protocols. To the letter."

    The bridge was calm, but the tension bubbling underneath was palpable. This was the first time almost every voidsman on this ship had left the cosy ten inhabited systems they knew. Friendly systems. Systems where every single ship wouldn't pounce on them at the first opportunity.

    Callaghan was different. The system was a well respected minor shipyard 1000 years ago. One of the old Luna class cruisers in the Avernite fleet had been built here. Now, no one on board knew what to expect.

    "DEWARP PREPARATION COMPLETE"

    "Ensign Tak, put me on all channels."

    "Broadcasting all channels captain."

    The captain clasped his hands together behind his back and hauled himself up straight.

    "All crew of the shadow class destroyer Carmen San Diego, this is Captain O'Rouke. We will soon be arriving into Callaghan. As you know, this world is held by the heretic forces who call themselves the golden legion. These shiny bastards will want to tear us apart and then put us back together again as meatpuppets, so I understand that you might be scared. I am. Still, chief enginseer Cox has assured me that the machine spirit will keep us safe, and by the emperor dead body, I believe him. We need to be ready to run silent as soon as we dewarp. Any section with problems with this needs to contact the bridge now."

    O'Rouke turned the vox off and looked at his display panel. No messages had come in. the ship was ready. He tapped his console and reopened the vox channel."

    "Captain O'Rouke to Carmen San Diego. Prepare for dewarp, and may the emperor protect us."

    The captain changed the channel of the voxcaster. "Serafina, you heard all of that, take us out, quiet as you can."

    -----

    The sensor operator saw a brief flicker of warp activity. She felt nothing about this, but a pulse of activity running through her brain indicated this was important. She engaged the long range scopes and... Nothing. She saw nothing. A brief burst of worry, followed by confusion, followed by more nothing. She, and she didn't have a name, had barely felt anything ever, so marked it up for later investigation, and went back to monitoring her warpscopes.

    -----

    Captain O'Rouke looked at the long range scope footage again. Still nothing. It seemed the locals had missed their arrival.

    He turned to his bridge crew. "Bring the main screens online, I want you all to see this".

    The crew looked to the front of the austere bridge, and a trio of massive holoscreens flickered into life. Glittering in the display was a planet, beautiful and blue, and in front of that were shipyards that almost matched those around Vanahiem in scale. In the centre of this, was a gleaning golden statue of the emperor, larger than a battleship.

    "Zoom in on the face."

    The centre screen flickered, and the statues face loomed large over the bridge. Something seemed off about it. Generally statues of the emperor had a rageful, or happy, or dissapointed, or even dismissive expression. This one was just... Contented. The longer the crew looked at it the more they felt the saccerine monstrosity of the face stare at them, the more they saw the monster wearing the dead face of their god.

    "Turn it off." The screen lingered for a second. "Do it!" The screen died.

    "Now, I think, each and every one of you know what we are fighting. I first saw it young. After the Pink Skies, just before my family fled. Cultists. They killed people dear to me."

    The crew knew O'Rouke was Avernite, but didn't expect this.

    A young lieutenant spoke up.

    "It was just so, wrong."

    "Chaos is wrong McEwan. And that's why we fight it."

    "Bring back the display. Blur all faces. Now, since you've seen the face of evil, let's look at this strategically. We can all tell this shipyard is enormous, but we don't know how productive it is. Assuming minor techbase increases since loss of contact, it should take them years to build anything, but someone will need to check back to confirm that. McEwan, if you are done retching, I need a report on all the ships in system.

    McEwan looked up, her large green eyes still watering. She glanced down at her console, and let a smile climb onto her face.

    "Got one, sir. Observation decks are way ahead of us. Not many ships in system sir."

    "What, exactly do we have McEwan?"

    "Sir. Seems like 55 monitors, 70 escorts, all imperial vintage, a dozen Luna's, 2 dominations and an Emperor, Sir."

    "In the emperor's name! Afelhiems defense fleet could take them out!"

    "Sir. The system defences are substantial outside of the ships. 50 defence platforms, sir!"

    "We'll stay in system another few days. See if anything interesting shows up. Until then, I dare say we have found a perfect target. First Enginseer Cox! Make sure our stealth remains perfect. I don't want to suddenly have to dodge Nova cannons."

    "AYE CAPTAIN"

    "And everyone. Ave Imperator!"

    "Ave Imperator!"
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • Durin said:
    the main reason for trying to take an Ork World to bait the Orks is that if they are attacking your worlds they will do significant damage to your industries, with only a few worlds having the fortifications to limit this and even then losing cities being possible
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    I would give this argument more weight if the Ork with a fleet hadn't already proven himself an intellectual and somewhat obsessed with Avernus.
    If he wants a fight he will come to us and our stupidly elite troops will kick his arse from within our stupidly heavy fortifications. If he wants to hurt the Trust he will pick a soft target, ignoring obvious traps like the 'taunt' world.

    While there are no doubt a great many Orks who would respond to the taunt of a conquered Ork world the warboss with the giant fleet is not one of them.
     
    What about moving our fleet to just level the orbitals, repeating for the major ork fleet worlds again and again?
     
    HanEmpire said:
    What'd be the point? If we don't follow up the orks will just rebuild.
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    It will take time to rebuild, and we can retrash their navy and orbitals at our own base.

    Similar to how we'd be crippled if someone with a suprior navy levelled the Imperial Trust's navy and orbitals (Includ Shipyards), and returned every time we rebuilt them, before they had any odds of posing a challenge.
     
    Andres110 said:
    The Mechanicus doesn't consider all emotions to be evi
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    I'm not referring to the Mechanicus in that statement, I'm referring to Abomination worshippers.

    This entire line:

    "Support/enforces a society that considers all emotions to be evil, rigid adherence to a martial code, very little/no innovation, etc."

    Is in reference to my take on Abomination cults.

    My second line is more in reference to your comments about the Mechanicus sharing some of the traits I consider Abomination worshiper traits.
     
    I don't think Abomination cults consider all emotions to be evil. Chaos Gods are fed by emotion and the Abomination is no different.

    EDIT: The Iron Hands' suppression of emotions fed a Slaaneshi daemon. Turning off their emotion suppressors weakened the daemon enough that they could kill it permanently.
     
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    Shard said:
    It will take time to rebuild, and we can retrash their navy and orbitals at our own base.

    Similar to how we'd be crippled if someone with a suprior navy levelled the Imperial Trust's navy and orbitals (Includ Shipyards), and returned every time we rebuilt them, before they had any odds of posing a challenge.
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    You're proposing that we fight a war of attrition against orks, on the conditions that we'd be able to continually beat them in space time and again while simultaneously outproducing the three substantially larger ork empires. Unless we can cripple all of their orbital industries and then keep them that way, the only thing this strategy will net us will be denuded Trust navies and Ork Overlords practiced against the Trust Imperial Navy. This strategy plays to all of the orks' strengths.
    Instead it'd be much better to leverage our technological superiority and force concentration to hit hard and fast, regressing entire worlds' greenskins to feral levels of development.
     
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    Andres110 said:
    The Abomination only gets hatred for the heretic, the mutant, and the alien, if that. Khorne has always been about general hatred - unqualified, mindless, savage hatred. At most the Abomination could get Bigotry out of the deal, not Hatred itself.
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    Notably, this is similar to how Khorne gets battle and fighting related stuff, but Slaanesh gets the benefits for someone trying to perfect their fighting skills since perfection is one of Slaanesh's themes.
     
    The idea is to demolish their orbital industries and keep them demolished, yes.

    All their numbers dont do any good if they cant move them.
     
    Shard said:
    The idea is to demolish their orbital industries and keep them demolished, yes.

    All their numbers dont do any good if they cant move them.
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    I find your strategy to be completely impractical.
    For it to be successful we'd have to take down all the current ork navies to prevent resistance, destroy all of their orbital defences and industries, and find and destroy all hidden space-bound ork outposts to prevent scattered pockets of ork shipyards and roks from springing up. This would have to be done simultaneously for all three empires lest we risk the attacked ork empire getting gobbled up by another ork empire, which in turn risks the local orks unifying into a single empire.
    After that initial work is done, we'd have to permanently devote ships to patrol the ork territories to continue clearing their orbitals. These will have to be periodically reinforced because the orks will inevitably start building their shipyards in low orbit within the range of ground-based orbital weapons. All of this will occupy large amounts of naval assets to carry out with our ships fighting for months and years away from maintenance infrastructure, spread out and increasing the risk of destruction/capture.
    Valinor will likely use the ships freed up by lack of ork attacks to start mounting major invasions of the Imperial Trust. We would need the navy to move our armies to besieged worlds, so we'd need to station large amounts of ships at home all the while the campaigns in the ork empires are being carried out. We would also need a concentration of naval assets to transport besieging armies to hostile ork worlds and clear them out one by one, braving orkish anti-orbital weapons fire throughout. These will each likely be costly extended campaigns needing orbital support because the orks will have responded to our strategy by entrenching themselves on their worlds.
    The Trust navies will rely mostly on Vanaheim's shipyards to keep it reinforced, which despite its continued expansions is still backed up by over a century of building queue. Our supply of decrepit ancient ships is about to run out as well, so the rate of ship construction will nosedive once the Vanir start building new ships from bottom up.

    We don't have the naval assets to carry this out.
     
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    HanEmpire said:
    You're proposing that we fight a war of attrition against orks, on the conditions that we'd be able to continually beat them in space time and again while simultaneously outproducing the three substantially larger ork empires. Unless we can cripple all of their orbital industries and then keep them that way, the only thing this strategy will net us will be denuded Trust navies and Ork Overlords practiced against the Trust Imperial Navy. This strategy plays to all of the orks' strengths.
    Instead it'd be much better to leverage our technological superiority and force concentration to hit hard and fast, regressing entire worlds' greenskins to feral levels of development.
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    o_O how is it less of an attrition contest to literally invite all three Ork empires to throw everything they have at one world? Letting the Orks build up and hit us at a time of their choosing plays to their greatest strength and robs many of our advantages.

    Our ships are fast and powerful. Our fleet vastly larger than a polity our size should have. In space we can fight all three Ork factions. On the ground, if they are serious, they will simply drown us in bodies.
    But only if they have the ships to get those endless hordes to our planets in the first place.

    HanEmpire said:
    I find your strategy to be completely impractical.
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    Then propose an alternative strategy. Because your argument that it would take too many military resources to fight them all will apply to any direct conflict with the Orks. Including just sitting back and waiting for them to attack us at their leisure.
     
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