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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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I'm thinking giant lasers, like anti-orbital lasers, but pointed at the ground and near-air.

Like, um, that giant laser gun the Imperium faction used in WH40k Dawn of War Dark Crusade in their fortress level. But, you know, omni-directional.
 
Andres110 said:
It was good until you got to the bit about their technology. Xeno races with technology equal to the Imperium were very rare, the only known ones being the tau. They were noted to be incredible in that area and was the only reason why they could be considered a "major" faction in 40k. One of the "rules" when making a new faction is that you don't take away the specialness of another faction. The tau are very special to have gotten as technologically advanced as they are, and that's what sets them apart. Writing in "oh and these guys I made are better than them" is...I wouldn't say Sueish exactly, but if you have to justify it then that's a sign that you're getting too close to that line.

Giving a xeno empire technology that's better than the Imperium is something you should avoid. The Imperium was so advanced that they barely understood their own technology. The tau were noted to be freaks for matching it, even with technology to reverse-engineer from. Simply getting Imperium-level technology is a major thing that requires building the xenos around, but making them superior to the Imperium arguably enters into Sue territory. You can't have them be that advanced without affecting the galaxy in some major way.
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I did not get that impression, and i read a lot of 40k background fluff.

Species with more advanced technology than the Imperium are not exactly unheard of. If you play a lot of Rogue Trader, you notice that there are tons of xeno artifacts that easily surpass standard Imperial Technology, giving you an incentive to bend the rules and risk conflict with the Inquisition to get that sweet, sweet extra performance.

The Yu'Vath, the Demiurg, the Hruth, arguably the Stryxis, the Slaught and the Khrave are all Xenos that match and surpass human tech. And a third of those species come from a single sector, the Kalixis expanse, so how many must there be out there?

Honorary mention goes to the Saruthi, who are able to build goddamn warp gates, though i don't know anything about their general tech level and they probably cheat by using Chaos.

And during the Great Crusade there were even more species around that could rival or surpass Imperial technology. Its just that the Imperium killed most of them.

So my Impression of 40k is not that the Imperium has the best technology period. They are definitely in a high tier, but what makes humanity superior is its wide spread population, massive resource base and a talent and inclination for violence. And the first two they gathered in the Dark Age of Technology, when their tech really was one of the top five in the history of the galaxy. The Imperium has probably exterminated hundreds of minor Xeno species that surpassed their technology base over the millenia, and i see the Tau as just another one.

Granted, their fast and dynamic advancement is freakish, but in terms of tech level they haven't gotten anywhere special yet.
 
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Chronic said:
I did not get that impression, and i read a lot of 40k background fluff.

Species with more advanced technology than the Imperium are not exactly unheard of. If you play a lot of Rogue Trader, you notice that there are tons of xeno artifacts that easily surpass standard Imperial Technology, giving you an incentive to bend the rules and risk conflict with the Inquisition to get that sweet, sweet extra performance.

The Yu'Vath, the Demiurg, the Hruth, arguably the Stryxis, the Slaught and the Khrave are all Xenos that match and surpass human tech. And a third of those species come from a single sector, the Kalixis expanse, so how many must there be out there?

Honorary mention goes to the Saruthi, who are able to build goddamn warp gates, though i don't know anything about their general tech level and they probably cheat by using Chaos.

And during the Great Crusade there were even more species around that could rival or surpass Imperial technology. Its just that the Imperium killed most of them.

So my Impression of 40k is not that the Imperium has the best technology period. They are definitely in a high tier, but what makes humanity superior is its wide spread population, massive resource base and a talent and inclination for violence. And the first two they gathered in the Dark Age of Technology, when their tech really was one of the top five in the history of the galaxy. The Imperium has probably exterminated hundreds of minor Xeno species that surpassed their technology base over the millenia, and i see the Tau as just another one.

Granted, their fast and dynamic advancement is freakish, but in terms of tech level they haven't gotten anywhere special yet.
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Fair enough. You make a convincing argument based around canon fluff.
 
Shard said:
I'm thinking giant lasers, like anti-orbital lasers, but pointed at the ground and near-air.

Like, um, that giant laser gun the Imperium faction used in WH40k Dawn of War Dark Crusade in their fortress level. But, you know, omni-directional.
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That was an arm of an ancient titan that they found on the city.
 
@Andres110 honest question, is this a serious suggestion, or are you taking the piss?

Andres110 said:
@Skewfiend, promethium is the catch-all term used by the Imperium to mean "combustible material". Coal and even some times of ice count as promethium. It's entirely possible with their technology for the Mechanicus to create a concentrated kind of fuel that significantly lowers the required amount of space required to store the necessary amount of fuel, converting it to a more useful one in the same moment it's used as fuel for the mega flamers.
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I am well aware that "Promethium" is a catchall, and that some measure of fuel condensation is possible. That said, barring some miracle method of fuel condensation, which we would know if we had, to get any sort of endurance with a monumental flamer, it would need to draw from a truly monumental reservoir of promethium, and there are serious design difficulties in designing something mobile that draws from a monumental promethium reservoir.

The concept of mega-engineering is one the Mechanicus is familiar with. No, more than that, it's something that even something as technologically low as the Administratum is familiar with, hence why the constructing of hives is an Adeptus Administratum action instead of an Adeptus Mechanicus action. Engineering constraints don't exist.
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I do not disagree it would probably be within our capabilities to make something that successfully did that job, but I absolutely disagree that we could pull it off in a way that would make it worthwhile.

Promethium reservoirs are defensive liabilities, and giant ones are giant liabilities. For your Train Flamers to not be a free fuel-air-explosive for the enemy, wherever the fuel is stored would have to be extremely heavily armoured and shielded, as would the Train Flamer itself. Even with as much expensive shielding as we can reasonably throw on it, it will still amplify the damage caused by anything that can punch through it.

Then there's the fact that above-ground train-tracks are ridiculously easy to disrupt, as the Midgard war taught us, so their mobility would be very easy to cripple. Hell, tracks around the city are likely to be badly damaged in any major assault on it even if the attackers don't deliberately target them. Take away their mobility, and the Train Flamers rapidly become less useful, and easier to destroy with relative impunity.

Perhaps most damning is the fact that as something outside the walls with limited mobility, they basically have the weaknesses of fixed defences without the benefits of being behind the walls. Sure, we could make that semi-viable if we kitted them out like a superheavy, but they'd likely be flatly inferior to a superheavy.

On the whole, while an enticing idea, I do not think it is workable.

If you wanted to make a satellite-defence in that vein, a detachment of floating fortresses might work better.
 
I'm looking at the Battle Psyker Deployment, and questions for @Durin:

1) I assume that the location of our Heroic Primaris will be decided later?
2) Choir 'Power' - Is it linear, exponential or quadratic? Logarithmic?
3) What scale of activity is a
a) 10 Power Choir?
b) 19 Power Choir?
c) 26 Power Choir?

And, unrelatedly:
4) Is Ridcully able to see more than 5 Years in advance in the future? (All divinations so far seem limited to 5 yrs.)
 
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Skewfiend said:
@Andres110 honest question, is this a serious suggestion, or are you taking the piss?
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Serious suggestion. It seems more or less in line with such 40k ideas such as the Imperium's ship designs and Titans, and it's not like having something really big to shoot at the enemy is a bad thing.

Skewfiend said:
For your Train Flamers to not be a free fuel-air-explosive for the enemy, wherever the fuel is stored would have to be extremely heavily armoured and shielded, as would the Train Flamer itself.
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Everything in our territory is extremely heavily armoured and shielded. It would be the same for this idea.

Skewfiend said:
Then there's the fact that above-ground train-tracks are ridiculously easy to disrupt, as the Midgard war taught us, so their mobility would be very easy to cripple. Hell, tracks around the city are likely to be badly damaged in any major assault on it even if the attackers don't deliberately target them. Take away their mobility, and the Train Flamers rapidly become less useful, and easier to destroy with relative impunity.
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Aha! A refinement of the idea! Instead of train tracks, just go with the idea (which has actually already been mentioned) to put them on turrets. They'll have close to the same range of fire but without being hamstrung if the tracks get damaged. Instead, the tracks can be underground and used to rotate them around if one or more gets damaged, allowing operational turrets to move to positions that need them most when the turrets in those positions are destroyed.

In fact, this idea of an underground rotational track system would be useful even with conventional fortresses. Is the west side of the city under attack but the west fortress was destroyed? Just rotate the north/east/south fortress around so it's on the west and elevate it to the surface!

EDIT: A web design might be better than a ring design for that actually, for both the flamers and the fortresses.

Skewfiend said:
If you wanted to make a satellite-defence in that vein, a detachment of floating fortresses might work better.
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The floating fortresses float, though, so you can just have them on top of whatever ground defences we make.
 
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Andres110 said:
In fact, this idea of an underground rotational track system would be useful even with conventional fortresses. Is the west side of the city under attack but the west fortress was destroyed? Just rotate the north/east/south fortress around so it's on the west and elevate it to the surface
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Dewtruction of the flamer is likely to damage the swutching mechanism as well.
 
Shard said:
I'm looking at the Battle Psyker Deployment, and questions for @Durin:

1) I assume that the location of our Heroic Primaris will be decided later?
2) Choir 'Power' - Is it linear, exponential or quadratic? Logarithmic?
3) What scale of activity is a
a) 10 Power Choir?
b) 19 Power Choir?
c) 26 Power Choir?

And, unrelatedly:
4) Is Ridcully able to see more than 5 Years in advance in the future? (All divinations so far seem limited to 5 yrs.)
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1. yes
2. quadratic
3. will go into more detail later
4. yes, but the further ahead he sees the lower the accuracy,
 
I still don't know how Psyker Choirs work (Is it the sum of power of psykers?), and how well Psyker Regiments will perform, so I'm certainly anticipating their action here.
 
Alex pears said:
Honestly why bother when we could make a super sized Rammilies.
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... Because they operate in completely different theatres, and occupy completely different roles? :confused:

A ramilies is a large space station, with no ability to safely enter a gravity well, while flying fortresses are superheavy atmospheric craft.
 
Skewfiend said:
... Because they operate in completely different theatres, and occupy completely different roles? :confused:

A ramilies is a large space station, with no ability to safely enter a gravity well, while flying fortresses are superheavy atmospheric craft.
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No reason, it's just a Ramilies.

I want a death star it wasn't a serious suggestion.
 
Megaprojects for the sake of megaprojects is vanity. Is your planned function sufficiently desirable? At what scale will it work best?

For instance: a Ramilles starfort already has the biggest guns and the best armour. A bigger fort cannot protect any more space. Multiple, mutually supporting Ramilles would be strictly better than the same mass of super-Ramilles.
 
Hm.

So, our weakest points are:

By defence:

Belegost, Dorthonion, Silver Lake (Forge-City): +160
Malea (Quartok City): +135

And by Population:
Psyker Cities: 1 Mil Each, and... trainee psykers and Sanctionites? Um. Plus the Psyker Regiments, of course..
Malea: ~17 mil and.. Quartokness, I suppose.
Yphax: ~6 mil. Um.

Anyway. We probably don't have to worry about any population issues for the next few turns, but I anticipate that Avernus could well support hundreds of billions of people, eventually, once we colonize all the continents.

@Durin

1. How much would it cost to increase the Defence Level of our Psyker Cities, in the future? In normal turns. (They're considered Regional Cities, It seems?)
a. To 8
b. To 9
c. To 10 (Maximum?)
 
Shard said:
Anyway. We probably don't have to worry about any population issues for the next few turns, but I anticipate that Avernus could well support hundreds of billions of people, eventually, once we colonize all the continents.
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Screw that.

Start building more space habitats which are much less hostile than the planet.
An exponentially growing orbiting infrastructure will eventually give you space capability that could rival Mars.

Every space colony is attached to multiple warships. The warships are the actual expensive part, but the colony is much more comfortable to live in.
However compared to the price of the warships it is expendable.
We are talking 21st century level O'Neal cylinder colonies made of steel and dirt, vs 40th millinnium exotic bullshittium. They will be Impressively fuckhuge though.

During an attack, the
People evacuate into the ships.

Any forces that board the empty colonies will find themselves self-destructed or blown to Smithereens by our own forces.

Anything really expensive, like a factory or Shipyard will have an engine or a Tug to move it somewhere safer.

Meanwhile all those empty O'Neill cylinders will make a nice fat decoy.

Especially if their automated defenses open up on boarding craft like an angry Babylon station.

Lastly, you could probably fit some very very impressive rail guns down the axis of a few. They only have to manage a few shots.
 
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CrackedCosmonaut said:
Start building more space habitats which are much less hostile than the planet.
An exponentially growing orbiting infrastructure will eventually give you space capability that could rival Mars.
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We are not Vanaheim. Space habitats are their shtick.
Plus it would cost us our Death Worlder bonus, which is the entire point of Avernus.

However compared to the price of the warships it is expendable.
We are talking 21st century level O'Neal cylinder colonies made of steel and dirt, vs 40th millinnium exotic bullshittium. They will be Impressively fuckhuge though.
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Giant space stations are not expendable. Cities worth living in are not expendable. Space habitats would be worse than both.

Anything really expensive, like a factory or Shipyard will have an engine or a Tug to move it somewhere safer.
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I don't think you quite understand how big a shipyard really is. Towing our stuff to another planet in the same system took years and that was before we had the bigger ones.

Perhaps in another setting what you propose would be viable, but not in 40K.
 
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