The Culture v's 40kverse

[Misery Esquire]

I bring this up because when you start talking minutes and so forth, while arguably quite appropriate for the scale of things and all.... it means that for all their supposed power the Imperium will tend to loose against settings that run well... faster.

I mean people may snark at Star Trek's point blank range, but phasers can fire pretty fast and the ships themselves can... well the Picard maneuver is flash-stepping with a starship, not that that's normal procedure or anything but says a lot about their ability to maneuver along with plenty of shots from the franchise of ships banking and turning in real time.

Really really really really not trying to start a Trek vs 40k thing here just that for the times I'm hearing 40k can start to sound like a the hard-shelled part of a tortoise and hare situation... only without the hare being lazy.

The thing about Star Trek is thier abyssmal FleetCom, thier point blank poking range, and thier flimsy ships and ship design. (The Defiant is decent, but only in comparison to Spindly-Bits-Mc-Galaxy Class) While they will bounce around faster than even the Eldar, the Imperium just has to land a broadside on them to crumple the shields and hull.

...And Starfleet & Co.'s one time they could show fleet tactics (Dominion War), they lined up like British Redcoats to trade shots. The sum of thier fleet manuevering can be describe as "zerg rush", when loss of control and crashing into another ship equals instant death for both paticipants.

So, the Imperium sits there, in thier usual Napoleonic style barrage line, and 'Trek attempts to rush them. Sure, they can move into the blind spots for a single ship faster than that ship can adjust, but an Imperial Fleet is positioned to cover each other, when in formation. Which is all of the time that they're not trying to get through the tricky bit of a gravity well.

---
On psyker range detection ; They could just post them all over the solar system in space stations, thereby covering a much larger area, and infact, they probably do. There's at least one example of them being locked in space stations so that they're seperate from the population. (Arbitrator Trilogy)

[hamishspence]

Mostly it's because you don't need to do much "maneuvering" in space combat due to space being pretty... well, empty

Still helps if you can get out of the enemy's firing arcs quickly though.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Still helps if you can get out of the enemy's firing arcs quickly though.

If you can't rotate your ship on its axis faster than an enemy ship at range can move to get out of your firing arc, then you've got serious problems

[Water_Bear]

That may sound impressive, but it's just a maximum distance of not even twice the moon orbit. That's not nearly enough for any deep space detection. Either it's a scale failure or psykers do not play much of a role in deep space detection.

My guess is both.

Games Workshop has no idea of what scale means; see the 1 Space Marine and several thousand Imperial Guardsmen per Planet (avg pop 3 billion according to Dark Heresy), the fact that Tau are ever within a kilometer of their enemies, and the way Tyranid FTL worked the last time I checked.

At the same time, I have serious doubts that the Imperium could detect a Culture ship before it got to within ~1 AU of Holy Terra (Mars too depending on how much old tech is still working there.). They could probably do a decent job defending it, seeing as they have enough Psykers to rip open a new Eye of Terror even without the Emprah and have turned the moon into a massive Death Star-like fortress, but actual detection is unlikely at solar system ranges.

[Anima]

On psyker range detection ; They could just post them all over the solar system in space stations, thereby covering a much larger area, and infact, they probably do. There's at least one example of them being locked in space stations so that they're seperate from the population. (Arbitrator Trilogy)

To cover a sphere that includes the jupiter orbit you would need roughly 2,000,000,000 Psykers with the maximum detection range of 600,000 km. Of course you could reduce this number if you only try to cover the planets and the surface of this sphere. Still doesn't sound very practical.

[Selrahc]

Well, remember, all this talk of solar system ranges? The Culture really really doesn't need to be anywhere near Terra. In Player of Games, one of the Culture books towards the beginning of the timeframe, it's caually easy for a warship to passively and perfectly bug a starsystem from dozens of lightyears away. The Culture really doesn't need to get anywhere near the solar system at all if all they're doing is information gathering.

[Misery Esquire]

To cover a sphere that includes the jupiter orbit you would need roughly 2,000,000,000 Psykers with the maximum detection range of 600,000 km. Of course you could reduce this number if you only try to cover the planets and the surface of this sphere. Still doesn't sound very practical.

Fortunately, with a population of 10,000,000,000,000,000+ (And a rate of one psyker per 1000 citizens), and the fact that the entire sphere doesn't need to be filled in, it just needs to have an outer layer, plus an inner layer around Earth/Mars, they can probably manage it.

Practicality and the Imperium of Man?

[tyckspoon]

1. Machine wise there's a thing called a Discordant who can disable technology, from a few rounds or even permanently with a tough enough check. While they are not all THAT normal their existence should be brought up. Also the more complicated the technology it is the easier it is to disable (I.E. Baneblades are far easier to disable than, say, lasguns.)

2. On the detection front, normal psykers aside, there is also Navigators who can detect from anywhere between 5,000 km away all the way up to 600,000km away depending on their mastery, with the typical being around the middle. This also allows the Navigator to detect the makeup of the ship, asteroid, or crew coming in.

For 1, if they can't do it from at least inter-planetary ranges it won't matter at all (and they'd probably have to do it at inter-stellar range to be a significant factor.) 2. is nice, but I'm not sure it's still relevant at the speeds the Culture can attain and the distance they can act at- 600 thousand kilometers is somewhat more than ~4 Astronomical Units, which (starting from Earth) would be a detection range extending to the area of Jupiter. That's an area that can be covered in about 40 minutes at light speed, and is roughly nothing for tech that can do significant FTL... although it might be helpful if you can put one of those multi-AU-range sensors on a listening post out on Pluto or something. I suspect the Imperium has better things to be doing with a psyker that powerful, tho. Bad math, please ignore this.

Edit: Blah, got my conversion going the wrong way. 600k km is .004 AU. Yeah. That's utterly meaningless.

[Anima]

If you can't rotate your ship on its axis faster than an enemy ship at range can move to get out of your firing arc, then you've got serious problems

Actually that's not the problem. If a ship can change it's course fast enough you will not hit it completely independed of your turning speed. Simply due to the time anything takes to travel beetween the ships. Depending on the ships acceleration and distance even lightspeed weapons like lasers will miss. The only answers would be future prediction or saturation fire. Or FTL sensors and weapons.

[The Glyphstone]

Coincidentally, saturation fire is how the Imperium kills Eldar ships.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Coincidentally, saturation fire is how the Imperium kills Eldar ships anything.

Fixed that for you

[GloatingSwine]

The only answers would be future prediction or saturation fire. Or FTL sensors and weapons.

So, Effectors and Displacers then.

Culture ships fight at relative speeds far in excess of lightspeed.

In Excession the Killing Time engages a fleet of around 300 obsolete (from its perspective) Culture-Idiran war Culture ships, spread over a total volume of maybe 100 light years. It flies through the axis of the fleet wrecking a significant number of ships, including locating and destroying its main target (a ship of its own design), in eleven microseconds. It did damage its own engines achieving the speed required to do this (30 trillion times the speed of light, normal culture ships travel at a more stately 80,000-100,000c), however, it is sufficient to demonstrate that in a fight in space nothing in the 40k can touch the Culture, their weapon ranges are measured in light years, their combat speeds in multiples of the speed of light (whereas space combat in the 40k 'verse is strictly a sublight affair), and their reaction times are significantly below the planck second.

FTL sensors and weapons? Rather.

[Forum Explorer]

So, Effectors and Displacers then.

Culture ships fight at relative speeds far in excess of lightspeed.

In Excession the Killing Time engages a fleet of around 300 obsolete (from its perspective) Culture-Idiran war Culture ships, spread over a total volume of maybe 100 light years. It flies through the axis of the fleet wrecking a significant number of ships, including locating and destroying its main target (a ship of its own design), in eleven microseconds. It did damage its own engines achieving the speed required to do this (30 trillion times the speed of light, normal culture ships travel at a more stately 80,000-100,000c), however, it is sufficient to demonstrate that in a fight in space nothing in the 40k can touch the Culture, their weapon ranges are measured in light years, their combat speeds in multiples of the speed of light (whereas space combat in the 40k 'verse is strictly a sublight affair), and their reaction times are significantly below the planck second.

FTL sensors and weapons? Rather.

That's cool and all but I don't think anyone is seriously saying the Imperium could beat the Culture in any sort of fight.

[Oracle_Hunter]

That's cool and all but I don't think anyone is seriously saying the Imperium could beat the Culture in any sort of fight.

Certainly not, unless (as was suggested in the last thread) The Culture might decide to mass-clone Emperors to kill Chaos. Personally, I don't think that will end well for The Culture

[Tyndmyr]

but c'mon, having low Alpha (or high Beta) Psykers launch an assault on a single Ship can cause portions of it to get sucked into a demon-filled Warp.

Strictly speaking, it is already canon that ships can exist transdimensionally(outside of the usual four). So, that's not actually that unusual of an event...a hostile one, to be sure, and one that would normally get a reaction from any warship, but not something that's extremely unusual.

The interview with Chaos angle, though...yeah. That's likely. They'd almost certainly want to talk first, and while chaos does look uncomfortably like a hegswarm, this might provide a vector.

As for souls/bodies...nah, demon princes, etc are the same soul in a body that gets reformed. The soul would appear to be something akin(but not quite equal to) the mind. This gives a couple of possibilities...are culture people nulls? If so, this has significant implications(and of course, these is purely an intersetting decision, so it could go either way). If not...then psyker abilities should manifest in at least a sprinkling of Culture folks. Interesting implications there, too.

Another thing to note is that the beacon is not just a much of psykers sitting around waiting to work. It's a bunch of psykers being fed to the emperor. There's no guarantee that it works as a weapon(hell, most people aren't sure just how the beacon DOES work). If the emperor were alive, it'd be a different story, but yeah...starship range stuff is usually avoided in 40k for the simple reason that it makes it hard to justify a game symbolized by a pistol and a chainsword. That's why you've got even the emperor being taken down at point blank range, not killing enemies from afar.

[GloatingSwine]

That's cool and all but I don't think anyone is seriously saying the Imperium could beat the Culture in any sort of fight.

No, but this thread apparently keeps going despite the fact that it's pretty well established that any reasonable Culture vessel could basically take on the entire 40k galaxy at once, likely including the Chaos Gods themselves, and have a reasonable chance of walking away unscathed.

Because strictly sublight combatants vs. a Culture vessel is basically "everything explodes and no-one can figure out why or what's happening, let alone do anything about it".

[Soras Teva Gee]

The thing about Star Trek is thier abyssmal FleetCom, thier point blank poking range, and thier flimsy ships and ship design. (The Defiant is decent, but only in comparison to Spindly-Bits-Mc-Galaxy Class) While they will bounce around faster than even the Eldar, the Imperium just has to land a broadside on them to crumple the shields and hull.

Like I said really don't want to get into it, so just say I don't feel Trek ships are all that weak. And the point blank is (or was) less common then jump cut trading of fire. However its probably all despite themselves as even during the Dominion War its still y'know Star Trek. Regularity, comes up again for the rational implications there of, what do you think this is... Honor Harrington?

Trek's second only to Doctor Who for plausiblity taking a back set to nonsense. And DW at least with NuWho its explicit Time Lords are just plain better, infinitely so. (One, badly outdated, Tardis can tow Earth across time/space... just go home challengers. No doesn't matter who you are.)

Well, remember, all this talk of solar system ranges? The Culture really really doesn't need to be anywhere near Terra. In Player of Games, one of the Culture books towards the beginning of the timeframe, it's caually easy for a warship to passively and perfectly bug a starsystem from dozens of lightyears away. The Culture really doesn't need to get anywhere near the solar system at all if all they're doing is information gathering.

Oh true but this is more about 40k and the sort of wild claims people like to cook up.

Fortunately, with a population of 10,000,000,000,000,000+ (And a rate of one psyker per 1000 citizens), and the fact that the entire sphere doesn't need to be filled in, it just needs to have an outer layer, plus an inner layer around Earth/Mars, they can probably manage it.

Practicality and the Imperium of Man?

Except that was a top range quoted not for Psykers but for Navigators. Who quite aside from the numbers issue as they don't occur but have to be born from other Nav's... can and would refuse anyone thinking up the notion.

Also its an RPG book source which probably means you start talking about "hero" level special characters not a manufacturable quantity. Unless the range can be achieved by starting stats with a minimum of cheese. Don't know just pointing this out. So even Terra would be more likely talking like single digits.

And Culture uses a hyperspace type FTL so you need a filled in sphere not a bubble.

Coincidentally, saturation fire is how the Imperium kills Eldar ships.

However if manual labor is considered useful in Imperial weapons that means even with saturation anyone with decent computing could quite literally fly through it like a mid-level Touhou player.

[Parra]

No, but this thread apparently keeps going despite the fact that it's pretty well established that any reasonable Culture vessel could basically take on the entire 40k galaxy at once, likely including the Chaos Gods themselves, and have a reasonable chance of walking away unscathed.

Because strictly sublight combatants vs. a Culture vessel is basically "everything explodes and no-one can figure out why or what's happening, let alone do anything about it".

Consider it less of a discussion on IF the Culture could do it and more of a HOW they would TRY to do it.

Obviously genociding the entire 40kverse would solve most issues and it would be well within the tech capabilities of the Culture to do so. It is not however something the Culture would ever even consider.

They assimilate not dominate. Kinda like Borg but nice.

[Forum Explorer]

No, but this thread apparently keeps going despite the fact that it's pretty well established that any reasonable Culture vessel could basically take on the entire 40k galaxy at once, likely including the Chaos Gods themselves, and have a reasonable chance of walking away unscathed.

Because strictly sublight combatants vs. a Culture vessel is basically "everything explodes and no-one can figure out why or what's happening, let alone do anything about it".

I figure this thread keeps going cause someone started writing a fanfic about what would happen if the Culture sent a scout to investigate the 40K verse.

And now we are giving information about things that scout might end up encountering and how they would react to it.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I figure this thread keeps going cause someone started writing a fanfic about what would happen if the Culture sent a scout to investigate the 40K verse.

And now we are giving information about things that scout might end up encountering and how they would react to it.

Hell, it's why I'm still here

[Kitten Champion]

I thought the question was whether the Culture could convert the 40K universe into it's mindset? Rather than whether or not they could just wipe the floor with everyone.

I don't think the Culture would even require their various weapons, given that -- to the best of my knowledge -- the 40Kverse is artificially balanced and only certain fortunate circumstances keep it from imploding dramatically. An intelligence with knowledge of the economics and politics of the Milky Way would just need to pull a few strings here and there to undo the great powers, perhaps without even revealing themselves.

For instance, capture an Ork, manipulate its genetics to increase its natural intelligence, reproductive speed, and willingness to cooperate with other Orks. Let it loose. Leave the Milky Way.

[Oracle_Hunter]

For instance, capture an Ork, manipulate its genetics to increase its natural intelligence, reproductive speed, and willingness to cooperate with other Orks. Let it loose. Leave the Milky Way.

I don't think even The Culture would be foolish enough to try and Uplift Orks

[Renegade Paladin]

Like I said really don't want to get into it, so just say I don't feel Trek ships are all that weak. And the point blank is (or was) less common then jump cut trading of fire. However its probably all despite themselves as even during the Dominion War its still y'know Star Trek. Regularity, comes up again for the rational implications there of, what do you think this is... Honor Harrington?

Federation starships are far from weak. What they are is not on the same scale as 40k, Star Wars, or anything competitive to or superior to them, which is not the same thing as weak in absolute terms.

However, for Star Trek fleet engagements, the only real extant example is DS9 Sacrifice of Angels, in which Sisko forgets that space is three dimensional and proceeds to plow through a Dominion blockade with a fleet rather than go over, under, or around it.

[Kitten Champion]

I don't think even The Culture would be foolish enough to try and Uplift Orks

If you've got genetic manipulation on the level of The Culture, what an Ork would be is something very different. It's better than eliminating them entirely, or risking a single Culture casualty to my mind.

They could do something similar to to the Tyranid Hive Mind if they wanted.

[Misery Esquire]

If you've got genetic manipulation on the level of The Culture, what an Ork would be is something very different. It's better than eliminating them entirely, or risking a single Culture casualty to my mind.

The Old Ones designed the (kr)Orks from scratch. I don't think I know any civilization that I would put on level for genetic enginnering with them.

They managed to design the orks, so that they would genetically have the knowledge on how to build tanks, helicopters, teleporters, and hundred-meter-tall ramshakle battlemechs. They designed, and gave, the ability for Clap-If-It's-True psychic fields Orks automatically have. Squig, gnots, and Orks are also all the same species, and all grow from Ork spores.

Orks never learn anything except how to create a bigger bang by strapping something other than (quasi)conventional explosives together, when the Imperium introduces it to them.

And Orks were thier rush project. Eldar were thier (second) original product.

[GloatingSwine]

Federation starships are far from weak. What they are is not on the same scale as 40k, Star Wars, or anything competitive to or superior to them, which is not the same thing as weak in absolute terms.

However, for Star Trek fleet engagements, the only real extant example is DS9 Sacrifice of Angels, in which Sisko forgets that space is three dimensional and proceeds to plow through a Dominion blockade with a fleet rather than go over, under, or around it.

On the other hand, he was aboard the USS Ben Sisko's Mother****ing Pimp Hand at the time.

[Kitten Champion]

The Old Ones designed the (kr)Orks from scratch. I don't think I know any civilization that I would put on level for genetic enginnering with them.

They managed to design the orks, so that they would genetically have the knowledge on how to build tanks, helicopters, teleporters, and hundred-meter-tall ramshakle battlemechs. They designed, and gave, the ability for Clap-If-It's-True psychic fields Orks automatically have. Squig, gnots, and Orks are also all the same species, and all grow from Ork spores.

Orks never learn anything except how to create a bigger bang by strapping something other than (quasi)conventional explosives together, when the Imperium introduces it to them.

And Orks were thier rush project. Eldar were thier (second) original product.

Unless Ork's genetics are magical, they can be decoded and altered.

Given their capabilities, all the more reason for The Culture capture and analyze them.

[GloatingSwine]

If you've got genetic manipulation on the level of The Culture, what an Ork would be is something very different. It's better than eliminating them entirely, or risking a single Culture casualty to my mind.

They could do something similar to to the Tyranid Hive Mind if they wanted.

The Culture doesn't really go in for direct manipulation like that.

Their usual MO is more societal manipulation, y'know, SC agents in key places in the Ecclesiarchy, Adeptus Mechanicus, and Inquisition, gently redirecting the course of Imperial civilization.

But that doesn't mean they're not willing to slap things down if they can't be otherwise contained. Orks might suddenly find themselves completely unable to leave planets they're already established on, for instance. Sure, they'll fight each other forever more, but there'll be no more WAAAAAGHS! to threaten the rest of the galaxy.

Also, don't make the mistake that the Chelgrians and Idirans did, and think that the Culture is fluffy. They also came up with gems like the EDust assassin, a specifically designed partially sentient nanoswarm assassin intended to kill its targets in the most gruesome method possible, and the monofilament tattoo in Surface Detail (waited until it established skin contact with the target then immobilised and dissected him, somewhat slowly).

Compared to Special Circumstances, things like the Eversor can be regarded as not even trying.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Unless Ork's genetics are magical, they can be decoded and altered.

Ork Genetics may very well be magical, since they were made by the closest thing WH40K has to Actual Gods (and not just Physical or Chaos Gods).

Mostly, I'm thinking that Uplifted Orks would, nonetheless, have a snap-back in which they would resume their usual Orky behavior but retain the enhanced sophistication that The Culture gave them. Heck, if The Culture managed to get rid of their infighting then you have the chance for a WAAAAAAAAAGH that encompasses literally every Ork in existence.

Gork and Mork would immediately be incarnated and The Culture would be crushed under their big stompy feet. Or every Ship would be hit with a shot from an interstellar Shokk Attack Gun.

I'm not sure if The Culture's loss would be more total than if they tried to clone an army for Emperors but it would be vastly more amusing

[Soras Teva Gee]

Federation starships are far from weak. What they are is not on the same scale as 40k, Star Wars, or anything competitive to or superior to them, which is not the same thing as weak in absolute terms.

As a philosophy I personally don't find sheer scale the most compelling argument. A bit of quantity over quality is one thing, but if you can only win because you can afford truly terrible loss ratios or whatever isn't that meaningful in my book.

Ork Genetics may very well be magical, since they were made by the closest thing WH40K has to Actual Gods (and not just Physical or Chaos Gods).

Well its pretty consistent though that the Warp can be manipulated by scientific means though. Genes will be one of the crossover points where it may not be completely understandable, but would be replicable to some degree or another.