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
@Enjou, please include conscripting the Imperial Trust's militias to help fight the tyranids. One of the best counters to fragile, mobile, stealthy enemies is to inundate the battlefield with bodies, and only the militias can provide us with enough bodies to do that. Unless you include it in your plan, only the Avernite militia can be conscripted.

@Durin, can the eldar create a warp storm strong enough to prevent the tyranids from piercing through it with their Shadow in the Warp? If so, how much will it cost us for them to make that warp storm?
 
I don't like militia conscription. We can already stack the cities to capacity with professional soldiers, and if they're hitting the Trust in enough force that heavily fortified cities filled to the brim with our highest quality soldiers then adding a bunch of lower tier bodies isn't going to help.
 
I don't like militia conscription. We can already stack the cities to capacity with professional soldiers, and if they're hitting the Trust in enough force that heavily fortified cities filled to the brim with our highest quality soldiers then adding a bunch of lower tier bodies isn't going to help.
To allow the tyranids into the cities in the first place would be a very difficult fight that we may lose, and if not will at least suffer dearly for. It's the same as with the Khornate daemons - if they enter the cities, they will cause us much suffering thanks to their excellence in close range combat.

The best thing to do, then, is to combat the tyranid armies in the field. In the field we can much more freely distribute indiscriminate artillery bombardment and air strikes, we can field much larger armies with militias, and where if the tyranids reach into melee, they will fight the melee in the open field rather than in the cramped cities.

Furthermore, even if we went with the bad strategy of waiting for them in our cities, doubling our forces (or more) with militia would be useful. They can be stationed outside the cities, presenting the tyranids with an extra layer of defence that will soften them up before they hit the regulars we'd keep in the cramped, melee-friendly cities which the tyranids are so well-suited to fight in.
 
To allow the tyranids into the cities in the first place would be a very difficult fight that we may lose, and if not will at least suffer dearly for. It's the same as with the Khornate daemons - if they enter the cities, they will cause us much suffering thanks to their excellence in close range combat.

The best thing to do, then, is to combat the tyranid armies in the field. In the field we can much more freely distribute indiscriminate artillery bombardment and air strikes, we can field much larger armies with militias, and where if the tyranids reach into melee, they will fight the melee in the open field rather than in the cramped cities.

Furthermore, even if we went with the bad strategy of waiting for them in our cities, doubling our forces (or more) with militia would be useful. They can be stationed outside the cities, presenting the tyranids with an extra layer of defence that will soften them up before they hit the regulars we'd keep in the cramped, melee-friendly cities which the tyranids are so well-suited to fight in.
They are a harassment focused enemy, they do best in the field. Unless you are literally flooding the entire planet with bodies.
 
They are a harassment focused enemy, they do best in the field. Unless you are literally flooding the entire planet with bodies.
They are melee harassers. That makes them more dangerous inside the cities than in the field. Ideally it's best to keep them on the other side of a big wall, but that won't last against the tyranids' psychic powers.
 
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They are melee harassers. That makes them more dangerous inside the cities than in the field. Ideally it's best to keep them on the other side of a big wall, but that won't last against the tyranids' psychic powers.
No, if you have to enter a city you have to face the walls and bombardment before you hit melee. In the field you don't even get that.
 
...Yes you do? I mean, not the walls, but I am very sure that artillery is used in field battles. Like, dead certain.
Well if you want to risk your generally immobile artillery in the field to an enemy that specializes in melee and harassment...

Maybe if we had implemented Codiac Artillery but without that we would be kinda screwed.

On that note we can ask the nice worlds to burn their harvests to reduce Nid biomass infusion. We need to give them something though in return I expect.
 
Well if you want to risk your generally immobile artillery in the field to an enemy that specializes in melee and harassment...
Well, yes. You're not going to put the artillery in front of everyone else, you're going to put it in the rear lines or the centre of the formation, behind a whole bunch of other troops. Sneaky or not they're not going to stealthily walk through the giant mass of men between them and the artillery.

But my point remains: letting them get into the cities is dumb. If we don't fight them in the field, they will have to get past ONE (1) singular layer of defence before they get into their favoured terrain. The field is only their second-favoured terrain. Better to fight the entire war in the second-worst place than most of the war in the worst place.
 
I would point out that if the nid's have the ablity to remove carbon from the air (which is possable for conventional physics......just not in large quanitys), then burning a world won't actually stop the nid's from nabbing the biomass. it would cost them alot of energy pulling the carbon out tho, so still potentially worth it for us.
(so using a proper planet cracker weapon is better then burning the fields)
 
Well, yes. You're not going to put the artillery in front of everyone else, you're going to put it in the rear lines or the centre of the formation, behind a whole bunch of other troops. Sneaky or not they're not going to stealthily walk through the giant mass of men between them and the artillery.

But my point remains: letting them get into the cities is dumb. If we don't fight them in the field, they will have to get past ONE (1) singular layer of defence before they get into their favoured terrain. The field is only their second-favoured terrain. Better to fight the entire war in the second-worst place than most of the war in the worst place.
Our favored terrain is City.

Anyway fighting in the field basically lets the Nids come into melee immediately. Very bad. Melee in City is still better than Melee in field.
 
Well, yes. You're not going to put the artillery in front of everyone else, you're going to put it in the rear lines or the centre of the formation, behind a whole bunch of other troops. Sneaky or not they're not going to stealthily walk through the giant mass of men between them and the artillery.

But my point remains: letting them get into the cities is dumb. If we don't fight them in the field, they will have to get past ONE (1) singular layer of defence before they get into their favoured terrain. The field is only their second-favoured terrain. Better to fight the entire war in the second-worst place than most of the war in the worst place.
My issue with that logic is that one singular layer of defense you mention is a very strong layer of defense. Further, we can send out troops to the field and have city defenses. Heck, if we don't defend the cities directly, the Tyranids will just ignore the army and head straight for the city, there's more biomass there.
 
Well, yes. You're not going to put the artillery in front of everyone else, you're going to put it in the rear lines or the centre of the formation, behind a whole bunch of other troops. Sneaky or not they're not going to stealthily walk through the giant mass of men between them and the artillery.

But my point remains: letting them get into the cities is dumb. If we don't fight them in the field, they will have to get past ONE (1) singular layer of defence before they get into their favoured terrain. The field is only their second-favoured terrain. Better to fight the entire war in the second-worst place than most of the war in the worst place.
However, that one layer of defence would be much, much stronger than anything we'd have in the field.
 
Fighting th3 Nids in the field is like fighting them in the xity minus the benefits of walls.
 
My issue with that logic is that one singular layer of defense you mention is a very strong layer of defense.
Whatever.

Our favored terrain is City.

Anyway fighting in the field basically lets the Nids come into melee immediately. Very bad. Melee in City is still better than Melee in field.
Our favoured terrain is the city walls, which won't last long. After that, while city benefits us more than field, it benefits the tyranids even more. And on the field, it'd be gunfire before melee, and when it's melee it'd be with a tarpiting layer of militia, with a tarpiting layer of militia beyond them, and another layer beyond them, etc. Tarpiting is a proven method of beating hara-

Fighting th3 Nids in the field is like fighting them in the xity minus the benefits of walls.
Ah, I see I am not fighting logic. I'll stop now.
 
Please don't categorize people not agreeing with you as people incapable of thinking, it is insultive.
First you said "Artillery isn't used in field battles" and then you said "Fighting tyranids in the field is the same as fighting tyranids in a city". What conclusion am I supposed to draw from that?
 
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First you said "Artillery isn't used in field battles" and then you said "Fighting tyranids in the field is the same as fighting tyranids in a city". What conclusion am I supposed to draw from that?
The idea that fighting in city >>> fighting in field.

Superior enemy mobility = X Hit and Run
::
Fight in field = Set piece battle, X Harassment
Fighting in city = Set Piece battle, Walls

Under conditions of superior enemy mobility, City = Fields + Walls
 
Whatever.


Our favoured terrain is the city walls, which won't last long. After that, while city benefits us more than field, it benefits the tyranids even more. And on the field, it'd be gunfire before melee, and when it's melee it'd be with a tarpiting layer of militia, with a tarpiting layer of militia beyond them, and another layer beyond them, etc. Tarpiting is a proven method of beating hara-


Ah, I see I am not fighting logic. I'll stop now.
So, what makes you think the walls won't survive long? Don't we have void shield generators that would protect the walls even from Tryanid psy stuff?
 
so...Imma try to summerize the argument here
(1): the city walls,buildings stuff, etc, would give the nid's room to pull harrasment...(side A)
(2): fields are good for harrasment (side B).

side B's premise however is only true sometimes, if you are trying to advance /attack them aggresively, then highly mobile harrassment benifits from barriers as they can use them to skirt the enemy and prevent solid sightlines. if you are defending however, (which we most certainly will be as nids invade, they don't defend), then obstacles only act as funneling for the enemy.... which makes harrassment near-impossable.

but thats assuming symmetric warfare(same types and similar numbers) which we know this won't be the case....but we can't easily make that determination of what type of battleground would benifit us most til we actually see it in action. (yes, we know they are using psykers, steath and mobility, but we need more details then that...IE, do they use biomancy backed by divination? or maybe they use pyromancy? (unlikely I imagine)....)

however, we can guess that IN GENERAL, the city walls will generally benefit us more then the nid's under most circumstances as we are defending, it has been a time-honered tradition and time-proven that walls almost ALWAYS benefit the defenders to some degree regardless of circumstances...because even if the enemy has some way around/threw them, the walls still force the enemy to USE said tools and waste time and energy.

.....so we would still want to force them to land outside the citys (if possable) and then travel to our citys and meanwhile be bombarded by artiliary then attempting to get past the walls while being engaged by our defenses and only THEN fighting us in melee.....
course the nid's might find a way to skip one of those steps via psykic powers (or just landing directly in the citys...can they do that?)...but why let them NOT skip a step and thus use up some of their resources?

honestly, we cant do a whole lot of pre-battle optimization till we know more details of how they will be fighting.
.....
SO, time for guess-work! cas we can't do anything else.......
I think its almost explictly given by rid's divination work that the nids will be using ultra fast and steathy melee-type and sniper-type units backed up by some equivalent of psykers which reinforce prior mentioned quality's with biomancy and other types of warp powers...this is less guess work and more of a certainty..

..however,...offensively speaking they might use:
(1): divination to gain info-advantage,
(2): metal-bending to increase chances that the cron's can't heal,(is that a thing? the nid's might make it a thing),
(3): time and/or space manipulation to control the battlefield in a attempt to ensure the enemy cant get good sight-lines on them while still retaining the ablity to strike themselves.
(4): I want to guess that warp-fire is as effective against the cron's as it is against anything else....so they might use suicide-bombers which just charge us so that the nid's can actively use their over-whielming psykic power to FORCE the resulting hole even larger.
(5): I don't know the kinds of confirmed types of pyskic powers in wh40k...some people should throw down a list so that we can guess which ones the nid's would try to use against the cron's in space. (although the nid's could very easily invent their own kinds....)
(6): some kind of warp-shinanagins to try to prevent cron solders warping out when defeated....the shadow in the warp might not be perfect afterall.

I suspect that some well-placed psykers that are powerful enough to resist the shadow-in-the-warp and still remain battle-effective and also experienced with anti-psyker fighting could easily change the tide of the battle....

*over hears whispers*...."what? oh, yeah I guess your right, they ALWAYS can change the tide......but even MORE so then usual I mean.

we might want to spend a THIRD div action to find details of how they fight...
 
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So, what makes you think the walls won't survive long? Don't we have void shield generators that would protect the walls even from Tryanid psy stuff?
We do have void shield generators, but they don't protect against psychic attack in Embers. For example, during the...Headcrusha war I think it was, the orks blew up our walls with psychic powers, completely bypassing the void shields. The tyranids would have similar levels of psychic power, so they can do the same pretty easily.
 
We do have void shield generators, but they don't protect against psychic attack in Embers. For example, during the...Headcrusha war I think it was, the orks blew up our walls with psychic powers, completely bypassing the void shields. The tyranids would have similar levels of psychic power, so they can do the same pretty easily.
That was Garkill.

It did not bypass the void shields.

It blasted through them.

At the cost of 50% of his weirdboyz. 500k ish.
 
That was Garkill.

It did not bypass the void shields.

It blasted through them.

At the cost of 50% of his weirdboyz. 500k ish.
I would also point out that all the additional warding we have done since then (and increased defenses) probably stack in a more exponential fashion then linear.... at least in terms of how much energy/force to blast through with shear-force of will.
 
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