1) The Hyperspace is not the warp, so no demonic problems.

2) The Astronomican has limited range. And it's already reached.

3) The Star Wars Ship explode often because in Star Wars the weapons are powerful.

4) The Star Wars blaster is more powerful than Imperium lasgun. Remember the sandcrawler.

5) Against the Titans, the Republic and Empire would use thermal missile: death for Imperium Titans.

To me, the technology of Empire is junk, they are only fortunate to fight against death races.

The only advantage of Imperium is Republic doesn't know the coordinates.

Can you reference nr 2? I'm trying to read up on the fluff (I play ork tabletop, they travel by...sheer stupidity)

4 says the blasters are accurate, but to do that kind of damage they'd have to have used some kind of heavy weapons platform or the blasters somehow manage to leave litt damage to the human body (exept killing it instanty) while exploding vehicles left and right. So that would have to be some kind of heavy blaster like the las cannon.

I recall no thermal missiles from the movies, OP said no extended universe but still, if we're drawing all the warhammer fluff we'll need to bring in some extended from star wars to even the scale. How does a thermal missile work and how do they compare to the various missiles used in orbital bombardments by imperial and astartes fleets? Oddly enough I don't recall any of the ships in the movies having anything but laser batteries.

I'd say the imperium has alot of advantages, but it also depends on which star wars enemy they have. Republic/early empire they have 1 planet producing troops, in half the time, so two planets "producing" soldiers will out number the clones on the battlefield. Not nearly on the same quality per man, but the imperium usually draws soldiers from several systems when preparing a crusade.

Melee will also be a big issue, every race in 40k has some proficiency in close combat. Clone troopers versus a squad of assault marines will be hard pressed to do much good, even guardsmen have bayonets or some other form of close combat blade.

I don't doubt that the republic will win 1 on 1 in most land or space battles, barring astartes which would be far superior to a clone commando in terms of training, experience and equipment. But the most likely it won't be 1 on 1, not even close.

Can you reference nr 2? I'm trying to read up on the fluff (I play ork tabletop, they travel by...sheer stupidity)

Interestingly, there are many sources (particularly around 3rd Ed.) that put the Astronomican's 'range' at about 50,000 light years or roughly half the Imperium. Most of the Ultima Segmentum is outside of the Astronomican. However, later editions including the current 5th Ed. make no reference to the range, simply saying how vital the psychic beacon is to holding the Imperium together. Maybe this is a quiet GW retcon?

4 says the blasters are accurate, but to do that kind of damage they'd have to have used some kind of heavy weapons platform or the blasters somehow manage to leave litt damage to the human body (exept killing it instanty) while exploding vehicles left and right. So that would have to be some kind of heavy blaster like the las cannon.

Star Wars 'blasters' were originally lasers. Older models developed into plasma-based firearms, and the newer blasters are particle beam weapons. They are incredibly destructive weapons, with even pistols being capable of killing with a single shot, or destroying light vehicles.

In 40k terms the average blaster pistol is a highly efficient plasma pistol.

I recall no thermal missiles from the movies,

True. Thermal detonators, and thermal demolition charges, thermal mines, but no missiles. They are actually nuclear fusion explosives and i guess the closest 40k analogy are melta bombs.

As to the OP, the Star Wars Empire is very likely to destroy the military forces of the Imperium due to their far greater technical advances. However, the fractious nature of the Star Wars Empire, with a strong democratic groundswell is going to seriously struggle to 'win the peace' in the Imperium where blind faith in the God Emperor will make 'winning hearts and minds' quite difficult. Pretty much everything about the Empire will be seen as inherently heretical by the peopl of the Imperium, and 10,000 years of cultural dogma is going to be a hard nut to crack!

Luddite said:

I'm far from being an expert in this matter yet I've found a similar piece of information on Lexicanum that states: "This psychic power is directed by the mind of the Emperor across about fifty thousand light years of the galaxy. Because Terra is situated in the galactic west, the Astronomican does not cover the extreme eastern part of the galaxy. Warp travel beyond the Astronomican's reach is severely limited - this creates the effective borders of the Imperium".

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astronomican

About the fight between the Imperium and Star Wars Empire or Republic: ain't the Force a manifestation of the Warp? And therefore arent' the jedis mutants, kind of unsanctioned psykers? So, should the Imperium's armoured fist fail in annihilating the Empire/Republic (which I sincerely doubt), I think that the invading (or invaded) Star Wars universe would be quickly possessed by demons and Chaos spawned by uncontrolled psychic powers. Odd it hasn't happened yet.

Luddite, it depends on which ground rules apply. If we take star wars into warhammer rules star wars gets screwed bad, warp speed would mean they travel via the warp in the same fashion tau does. Only allowing small jumps, or should they try to do a longer jump enter the warp fully and get slaughtered by demons as they have no gellar fields. Force users would be psychers and thus at risk of drawing on more power then they command and thus use sorcery with all the dangers involved.

If it's the other way around the imperium of man is screwed as they would have no efficient means of invading without the astronomicon to guide their fleets. And yeah, if it's the republic they will suffer from their democratic process and systems with far too humane values and ideals to deal with the imperium of man.

They would try to liberate planets, the imperium is more likely to view the planet as iredeemably corrupt and force an exterminatus on the majority of the planets and simply colonize it themselves later.

So it's hard to tell, especially with the movies hampering the violence of their firearms, the blasters you mention seem far more powerful then those in the movies. But the empire was on the decline weren't they? So how capable would they be at fighting another large galatic empire? Not that the imperium isn't on the decline.

Berengario said:

For the Astronomican: Rugue Trader P. 184

And can someone explain me how the space travels worked when big E. wasn't on his throne?

The Force is not the Warp, read what Lucas says about it.

And Hyperspace is not Warp Space, but, meh, call Matt Ward and ask him to rewrite the Empire, so you will sure it will win.

The Galactic Empire wasn't in decline.

So how did their weapons become worse from episode 1-3 and over to 4-6? They seem to field alot more advanced weapons during the clone wars and clone troopers seem far superior to stormtroopers.

It didn't work, it had worked at some point in time when the universe was seeded with human life, but before then it was severely limited at best (judging by what little is known about that time).

What is hyperspace then? It we're going to put both universes together that would mean we're up to 3 dimensions with distinct differences.

I will win? Orks vs Star Wars, or hell, even the imperium of man will win. If they didn't bash the crap out of eachother all the time.

Always had the feeling the Galatic Empire was in economical recline, but as I'm not that familier with the EU I'm most likely mistaken on that one.

Luddite said:

LoL. Wasn't any idea that better technology was going to win battles for Empire left behind on Endor. Regardless though, there are the ruins of many of more advanced civilisations that the Imperium crushed by being more fanatical and more aggressive.

Also I scoff at you're lousy C-canon (and worse) material. I've watched all the G-canon (and T-canon) and none of it matches up with you description, blasters are at best similar to Pulse weapons but lack the punch, throughout all of the films droids are shot and fall over, scenery has scorch marks on it rather than deep craters and the one (off-screen) incidence of a them causing significant material damage could easily be attributed to something else, like that lazer firing MG-34 Storm troopers keep lugging around.

End of the day though, it depends heavily what side you are writing from. If the SW writers do it a lone kid is going to be turfing the Emperor out of the Golden thrown after being chased by hilariously incompetent Custodes. With a 40K writer old man Palantine will be murdered by an assassin as piles are smashed and burning bodies mount up.

The Hyperspace is a dimension without the limitations of our dimension, but is not the warp or the "immaterium", because in the hyperspace there aren't demons and you can't gain psychic powers from hyperspace, so is not the immaterium.

And of course, numbers and violence are enough to win battles, yes, why not.

No. It doesn't work. Ask it to celts.

But it's 40K, you have right, I always forget this, so for the E. you have win.

The celts ruled most of western europe as fractioned warbands, what's your point? That they lost against the romans? Every great empire in our entire history has lost/fallen at some point and the ones we have now will eventually as well. And romans were a brutal bunch who looked upon mercy with disapproval, cruicified dissenters and butchered rebellions that sprung up. How were romans not violent?

Warp space was calm in the early days of the universe when the Old Ones were alive, and star wars is long long ago so why wouldn't that be possible?

Numbers do matter in battles, of course weapons do as well, but both these sides are fairly even as far as I can see.

I don't care who wins but I'd at least like to hear some arguments. How many clones fought in the clone wars? What tonnage and armaments does an imperial cruiser have?

Ok, I have a small gripe with starship energy weapon ranges. This drove me nuts when i saw a friend playing STO, and I felt the need to throw my two cents in. As far as I know an energy weapon, with a few exceptions, fires it's beam at the speed of light correct? So why is the range on these weapons limited, in near vacuum mind you, to 10 km for SW/ST and 180 km for 40k? If the weapon in question discharges it's beam for 1 second, then the beam travels for 180 THOUSAND miles(don't remember the km #). Granted you would need some really good computers to make those shots, and it might be a little difficult for the imperium to pull off, but SW and ST? Might be possible.... hell it is probable.

The laser beam, neither side uses "real" lasers as you wouldn't see them, would loose energy the further it draws in cold empty space. Via light emission not directed at the source and via heat. You'd be better off using physical mass for further range but slower velocity (think Mass Effect, if you're read/listened to the information about the ships)

Wrayth said:

It's a bit strange yes. As Ghaungan says nether Star Wars, nor 40K (nor ST for that matter) uses normal lasers. But they do have massively long ranges anyway and near light, if not actual light speeds velocities.

Strange then that despite the film battles in both ST/SW and 40k illustrations of space battles and Battle Fleet Gothic all seem to take place at very close ranges. Although I have to say that Battlefleet Gothic did admit that 40k were normally fought at massive ranges where enemies couldn't been seen with the naked eye but the had purposefully hugely reduced the range scale to fit better. That would mean that many illustrators had taken dramatic license which is not uncommon.

Pretty simple m8te, Looking at two tiny dots in a starfield is kinda boring... so they make the close together to make it interesting.

Space is way bigger thenyou mind can fathom it. It's a basic human thruth space is so big we (the norms) can't realie understand it let alone scope a ship battle in space where projectiles can go on for EONs at near similar speed. (if we decide to say solar and dark mather have enough mass over time to stop a shell cruising in intersideral space).

that is why most drawing of space ship you will see them both...

crisaron said:

I don't know, this is pretty gosh darn exiting to me:

I mean just look at that! How can anyone survive such a vicious attack? And will the Cobra Destroyer in the upper left fly apart from it or will it give one last heroic effort to get that torpedo out? And what about the pirate raider in the lower right? I mean, ****, that explosion and the way it just sails though it... one word and just one: AWESOME!

And no artistic license was needed in producing such an epic and gripping peace depicting the shear excitement of nearly an hour's worth of space fighting either!

EDIT: and, in fact, I would pay good 3d move money to see 45 minuets of this this on the big screen, IMAX style, in 3D!

I also like planetariums so....

Graver said:

Ha, certainly thrilling. Of course no one's suggesting that you don't have either ship in frame. But the wierd thing is that all the old war footage and war films of battleships fighting is already used to not being able to show both ships at once. Most of Star Wars is based fighter dogfights and the capital ships combat doesn't feature heavily but Star Trek just copied it despite how little sense it made.

Sebashaw said:

That argument works both ways though, if Hyperspace isn't the Immaterium and thus 40k forces can't travel faster than sublight in the Star Wars universe, then neither can Star Wars forces travel faster than sublight in the 40k universe. So unless you want to simply pick a side to win the only sensible thing to do is say that both work and each can use them in our hypothetical 'battle universe', otherwise whoever is unable to use their 'fast' travel is at a huge disadvantage.

You're quite right that numbers alone do not win battles, violence.... usually plays a pretty large part though. Probably the best example everyone knows is the Battle of Thermopylae, force multipliers can enable a smaller force to defeat one with vastly superior numbers. That said, I don't see that the smaller Star Wars fleet possesses such multipliers; Their weapons are on a similar enough level of fire power that neither side has a huge advantage (both sides are quoted in canon as requiring "entire fleets" of normal starship weaponry to destroy a planet for example), Star Wars vessels seem in general to be smaller and faster than Imperial Navy ships but fall behind in armour and weapon range (see my previous post for the actual numbers, too lazy to copy it! ), both sides have super 'planet killer' ships (Death Star/Blackstone Fortress) or weapons.

Take all that then consider the huge numerical advantage the Imperial Navy has and it's hard to see how the Galactic Republic could win, initial engagements, sure, their speed and agility will let them do well, but in a prolonged war the Imperial Navy is able to throw so many ships into a battle that numbers will tell.

If you feel there is some massive advantage(s) that the Star Wars fleets have please feel free to list them, i'm always interested in a good discussion about the power levels of various different world systems

For sake of the discussion i would suggest to see the Hyperspace and the Warp as two different Dimensions.

@Suthainn:

The Movies all played in the Outer Rim where the Ship Density is far lower then in the Core Systems. Also the Planets you see in the Outer Rim are more often Backwater Worlds. In the Cores there are whole Planetary Sytems dedicated to churning out Spaceships at a very fast rate (Sluis Van or Kuat, the last one actually is a planet with a whole Ringstation around it which existed and produced Ships for thousands of years, there are other such long living products) All in all the Galaxis where the Empire resides has roughly 12 million inhabited planets and in average these are of a much higher technological standard.

The empire is able to advance in a technological sense and is actually able to repdouce all its technology. the Empire of Man struggles there and shows very little ability to adapt to new situations. Its only answer is "ship more troops there".

All in all these two Empires are hard to compare since the settings are so different. Star Wars is all about flashy Space Combat while Warhammer 40k is all about Grimdarky bloody Groundbattles with Chainsword wielding Tank Commanders (Drive me closer...)

The Remark in the movies about the Firepower was a comparison between the Death Star with all its weapons vs the imperial Fleet. And the Firepower which was the topic of discussion was the firepower needed to actually destroy a planet, not just making it inhabitable. there are several magnitutes of firepower between those two goals. Actually Star Destroyers have enough Firepower to sterilize a planet all on their own with Orbital bombardement. The requirements of Firepower needed for this are in line with the Firepower the Star Destroyers showed in the movies (like shooting asteroids, some Geeks actually did some calculations with upper and lower margins of Firepower, just for a rough comparison)

This is a page with such calculations (there are actually more such pages) http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/

All things considered i would put the Star Wars empire with clear advantages in technological advancements, Firepower of ships, manuverability of ships, speed of ships, number os ships, while the empire of man has clear advantages in Ground combat (especially through Space Marines, i dont see anything in Star Wars which is able to Stop them, Jedis may be able to do this, but there arent near enough of them) and the will to fight. The Star Wars Universe might yield to extreme brutality (if youre willing to include the Expanded Universe the technolgical discrepancy will grow to extremes, but it also shows how the New Republic had severe Problems to deal with a unyielding, cruel and extreme violent enemy, the Yuzhan Vong)

All in all i would put my money on the Empire due to the Superior Ships. Alone of the Imperial Class Star Destroyer were 25000 build in the 20 year period the Empire ruled before it was defeated by a boy from a backwater planet and a overly arrogant and blind Emperor. The Empire of Man cant compare with such Industrial Power in any way.

How many ships does the Empire of man have btw? It cant be that many. The IoM has roughly one million planets? so far i couldnt find any satisfactory numbers.

For comparing ship sizes, this site is the best i could find so far: http://www.merzo.net/

The biggest ships in Star Wars are the Death Star II (160km) Death Star I (120km) and the Super Star Destroyer (17-19km dependng on official source )

If you count in the EU for the GE it will get really silly since the GE Universe makes tremendous technological improvements (like the Defender Star Destroyer, smaller then a Imperial Star Destroyer, but shields as strong as a Super Star Destroyer) and some very silly Superweapons. Like the Sun Crusher with its nigh indestructible armour which could even withstand a Glancing hit of a Death Star Energy Weapon or the Pressure and Heat inside a sun and Torpedoes which let suns go supernova. And all that cramped in a 50m ship...

EDIT: If the guy with the second post is right the IoM would have roughly one Million Warp Capable ships: http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=129121

Sorry for the off-topic, but what happens when Captain Picard, who by a mistake fell into a wormhole and entered 40k universe, plots a course to some nearest star and says: Warp 8, Engage!?

It will take him some time to reach that star, and if hes in bad luck that star has inhabited planets. Then he will be eaten alive by the first hostile he encounters. While he tries to talk t it. He maybe lives a little while longer if he lands in Tau space.

Schwarzie said:

As far as hyperspeed: Yes, ok, if the Empire does cover half the galaxy (it shouldn't, but it does) then it will have to be fast. However, if it can be crossed in a matter of hours (as many claim) again many things make no sense. Every Imperial Base would be within minutes, if not seconds, of massive reinforcement so Rebel hit and run attacks would not work.

Imperial Vessels can navigate without the Astronomicon: they just rely on it as it allows them to make much longer jumps and so travel much more quickly. Short range vessels don't even require a navigator, and just make small jumps and correct their course every time they pop back into the "real world". On a short range you can even have psykers produce a "mini-Astronomicon". It would be slower (and is already outspeeded by the Empire), but they could navjgate as long as the Warp actually exists in the Star Wars Universe . If not then... well they are dead in the water. The same applies to the Empire if "hyperspace" doesn't exist in the 40k universe.

I would rate a blaster as being more powerful than a lasgun.

Schwarzie said:

Picard could talk a Litchcor into being nice!

Togath said:

This is one of the two single greatest problems the Star Wars Empire would have invading the Imperium of Man ... once they started doing warp jumps through the demon infested regions of the Imperium's universe they would be suffer mostly horribly at the hands of slathering chaos beasts, suddenly finding a smorgisborg of unprotected craft entering their home dimension.

Second, as someone else mentioned, the only reason Warp travel is possible in SW is do to the mapped out hyperspace lanes. Without those you are left to making very short leaps, hoping not to bounce too close to a star or fly through an asteroid belt. Thus, their speed would be virtually useless as an advantage.

That said, without the Astronomicon to guide them, the Imperium would face the exact same problems in Star Wars space. The major, military difference here, though, is that with so many Xenos about, the Imperium could almost immediately go about performing Exterminatus upon entire systems ... which would serve in louring their enemy to them.

Unless the travel difficulties were overcome by one side or the other, however, such a war could simply never occur. Or, rather, it would be a very slow war as one or the other force slowly established beachheads in the enemy territory and attempted to learn enough about the region - while fighting off defenders - to gain gradual access into deeper territories.

Jack of Tears said: