Yep. Hypercomm transmissions can't go through shields, so in order for Vader to be talking with those ship captains, their shields had to be down. Needa also had to order shields raised after coming out of the asteroid field when the Falcon turned to ram them. Interestingly enough, in the novelization, several large asteroids impact Avenger's hull and do absolutely no damage. Do the Tyranid ships have to actually get up to ships to board, or do they launch boarding parties from a distance? Because the distances we see ships fighting at Coruscant and Endor is considered point-blank and, according to Ackbar in the ROTJ novelization, so close that the crew isn't even trained to perform under those circumstances.
Both. At range Mycetic Spores and their larger cousins are used. Each has a few dozen to hundred Tyranids. Up close they grapple and stuff you full of tentacles upon which they have literally every single tyranid upon the ship to call upon which can be from hundreds of thousands to billions. (I recall reading a piece of fluff where a Tyranid Razorfiend Cruiser FILLED a ships corridors with just Rippers.)
So SW ships can just sit back and relax while their computer assissting targeting turbolaser batteries keeps shooting at them light seconds away. Sounds good. That's why shielded and manouverble Baradium missiles which can crack open capital ships in half very effective in this case. And Baradium fission devices would be equal useful, since they can destroy entire planets. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Baradium Perhaps not but it will hurt them.
Dark Primus- The fundamental problem with your assertions is sublight speed. 40K ships are known to travel at relativistic velocities in combat, to the extent that the only way to go significantly faster is to cheat (actually use your FTL drive in combat like the Necrontyr do or something similar). The Imperial Navy will learn some very hard lessons on combat speed the first time they meet the Tyranids. If there's anyone genuinely intelligent in Imperial Command they will likely not make the same mistake twice- but it will slow the rate at which they are able to thin the swarm. Massed firepower from as many capships as you can muster will be the way to go. Fortunately for SW, they have the FTL speed to amass a very significant fleet at a single point very quickly. Otherwise they'd be fucked.
And not to mention three ISD's came out lightspeed hitting the Executor dead on destroying all three ships but the Executor itself suffered no damages, only it shields were damaged. I think they need to get close in huge numbers, since the longer they expose themselves to enemy fire the fewer nids would be able to board enemy craft. The Republic fleet came pretty much on top of the Confederation fleet and tried to box them in to prevent them from escaping. And the battle of Endor the Alliance fleet was pretty much boxed in between a rock and a hard place and had no choice but to go ship to ship with the Imperial fleet so that they would not be targeted by the super laser from the death star and be destroyed one by one. That's the impression I got.
Sure but I'm talking about general combat. The first scout forces encounters the nids will of course be for a big surprise, and probably a fight for their lives. The first smaller battles are always a test to see each others strength, skills and weaknesses and exploit them in the battles that comes afterwards. Imperial ships do have advantages to make hit and run attacks and able to react fast.
May I remind you that 2nd and 3rd edition codex all mentions that the Genestealer has been present in the Imperium for millenia? Given that the entire Imperium hasn't been overrun by stealers, the stealer cults simply aren't that aggressive in expansion. It would appear that a more realistic look at genestealer cults expansion is that after an initial stage of rapid recruits conversion, they become more selective and begins a slow, yet steady expansion of both the brood influence and numbers. The spinning away of daughter groups is either done while during the initial expansionary phase or in limited numbers after the brood has evolved a patriach. Said ISD was withstanding megaton level asteroid strikes, and the survival of Avenger shows that if anything, the strike was an outlier.
For god sake. That collision occurred during a freaking interstellar subspace run. May I remind you that Han made a non hyperspace interstellar journey at Hoth? Given the known examples of near light speeds made by starfighters in the NJO, that collision you harp so much about was taking place at probably relatavistic speeds. As it is, we KNOW the ISDs are extremely maneveurable, including the SSD from screen images of their rotation speeds. Maneveurability does not mean pilots do not screw up and collide with each other. The Royal Navy had 2 entire ship lines crash into each other once because the Admiral suffered from command paralysis during training maneveurs. The USN crashed the USS Constellation into a stationary obstacle at Changi because the captain screwed up the maneveur. Or rely on the ship armour, crew complement and automated defences and guns to continue firing even as its overwhelmed by boarders, while you know, the entire fleet supports the crippled ship by continually firing. Or use vast snubfighter assaults to engage the Tyranid ships during said boarding assaults and accomplish another mission kill as said ship defences are overun by numbers, as they rely on spore clouds, an active PD. I'm not an expert on the Tryannid spaceships, so i shut up further before I embarass myself but there is no reason why once again, the Imperial Navy CAN@T adopt the same tactics the Imperium navy uses to win a Nid engagement. This isn't the first fucking time you simply assume that Imperial forces can't adopt the same tactics the Imperium use.... Why the fuck is that?
Bullshit. There is NOTHING IN THE UNIVERSE that supports that piece of shit. Slowly moving rock suddenly equals relativistic firepower now? When they were traversing an asteroid field slowly so that they could target asteroids? That makes each Star Destroyer what? Several thousand kilometres long in order to support the visuals as relativistic speeds? Two ships colliding I can accept. THREE colliding I cannot. Either the Imperial Navy is so inept (a common theme considering their opposition in the movies.) that they can't have seen that coming a thousand kilometres away OR the ships are incapable of the maneuvering you speak of. Ship armour? Imperium Armour is a hundred times thicker and stronger and the Tyranid ships crush it like TINFOIL. As for automated defences whoop-dee-doo, they won't do shit considering most Tyranid organisms that conduct their boardings are either too numerous to care or too powerful to notice the shots. (It is known for Tyranids to use Carnifexes in Boarding actions.) Because A: It lacks "AoE" weapons that are so often used against Tyranids and B: Because the Empire has nothing in its arsenal capable of stopping a Tyranid Boarding action short of a self-destruct. Because the Empire doesn't have the equipment, experience, inclination, skills etc that the Imperium does.
Not their SOP. SOP is to get into spitting distance and broadside each other. I didn't think it was that easy to travel around the WH40k galaxy. I guess you learn something new every day.
Still it's VERY hard to do getting your own ship and all . And you have an EXTREMELY paranoid Organzation keeping track of such xenos activity. Plus there is evidence of widespread riots, civil wars and other such events occuring when Hive Fleets Leviathian made it's apperance.
Don't know if the details have been retconned since but the original idea was that Genestealers had spread from a moon called Ymarl where they were believed to be native life. It's possible that they have both been present for millennia as a minor threat and have experienced a vast increase in numbers due to Tyranid advance seeding in more recent times.
Ah yes, that one slipped my mind. That impression's just about right. No, it isn't. ROTJ considers those distances point-blank range, with the novelization going so far as to say those distances are almost never used, to the point that ship crews aren't even trained to fight at such proximity.
My 4th ed Tyranid Codex is in my car, but I remember that an advanced Hive Fleet called Tiamet is rumored to be the source of the Ygmarli Stealers. They somehow got onboard the Imperial ships sent to purge the system that the remnants of Tiamet were located at. I think the 'dex pegged it as sometime in M37, but don't quote me on the exact details. As I said, my Codex isn't handy.
Yeah its been retconned. (In fact one of the few ones you can sit back and go "yep, that was a retcon") Or more accurately "yep, the Imperium was wrong, who'd have thought it " (Not that it could have known better. As it is Catachan is thought to have undergone Tyranoforming from an early lost Hive Fleet)
I hear that # a lot but its funny how most fleet battles in SW are under about 40 ships often in the 10 or so ship range.
Truth be told, the SW galaxy is BIGGER than ours. Those 25K ships arent just sitting on their assess twidling their thumbs, there is an ass load of crime or what not that requires their attention.
??? You mean they continue to boost the numbers in canon, as far as i know the SW Galaxy is considerable smaller than our own, which by the way is a large Galaxy in our local group.
Apparently the Milky Way is 100k ly across with 100-400 billion stars, while the SW Galaxy is 120k ly across with ~400 billion stars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_galaxy
Really? When was the numbers boosted for the size because the only one I know is that SW galaxy is 120k ly across while our galaxy is 100k ly across.
Part of the confusion is GL said that the SW galaxy was (125% of the Milky Way galaxy) back in the ninties (iirc), but the Milky Way was upgraded back in 2007 iirc to 10% larger than previously thought.
It gets worse "However, in 2003 Leland Chee confirmed on the StarWars.com Message Boards that the object seen in Episode V is indeed the 'Star Wars' galaxy." http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_galaxy Wait. You mean...this object? Proof once again that SW makes no sense.
