Battle Among the Stars - Who wins when it comes to Naval Warfare

If anyone has read my previous articles that focussed on Darth Vader vs Tigurius and Master Chief vs Titus; you'll know I have a knack for not letting things go when it comes to "X for Fictional Universe Y" could easily beat "Z from Warhammer."

This would portray me as a toxic 40K Fanboy but beleive it or not I am not. In Darth Vader vs Tigurius I mentioned that I had been a fan of Star Wars longer than I had been a Warhammer fan. This article won't be any different as I put another beloved sci-fi franchise under the microscope to see how it shapes up against Warhammer. Today I intend to see if the USS Reliant from Star Trek can beat an Emperor Class battleship from Warhammer 40k.

This is another one of those articles where I have watched a Youtube video of someone who gave their opinion on how a ship like the Reliant is capable of snuffing out a warship of 40K calibre. To give the creator their dues, they do make a good case for the Reliant but the video seems a little one sided, and has a whiff of Trekker about it. I won't be looking at this from either point of view, I will take into consideration each vessel's technical information, performance data, and the effectiveness of the crew.

Why the Reliant?

In all honesty I have no idea why the video's creator chose the Reliant; personally I would've picked the Excelsior class at the very least. However, we are stuck with the Reliant.

The Reliant's Specs

Name: USS Reliant NCC-1864

Class: Miranda Class

Crew Compliment: 220 but can support 500 for emergency purposes

Length: 277.76 metres

Beam: 173.98 metres

Height: 65.23 metres

Powerplant: 1x 1500+ Cochrane warp core feeding two nacelles and 1x Impulse System

Max Speed: Warp 9.2 for 12 hours. Warp 9.2 is approximately 1643.66 times faster than the speed of light. The Reliant could cover a distance of just over 71000 Kilometres.

Construction: Tritanium Single Hull

Armament: 6x Type 7 Phaser Banks, 2x Pulse Phaser Cannons; 2x Photon Torpedo Launchers with approximately 80x Photon Torpedoes

Defence: Deflector Shields

What does this mean?

The Reliant is a hardy and versatile vessel. Whilst it lacks the firepower of it's bigger Constitution Class cousins, it is no slouch when in the arena of combat. Whilst under the command of Khan Noonien Singh, see Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, the Reliant was able to cripple the Enterprise. If not for the plot armour of James T. Kirk, the Reliant would've no doubt retired the Enterprise for good.

The Tritanium which makes up the hull is an incredibly tough substance to get around. It is stated to be 21.4 times harder than diamond which would give it a Mohs Hardness Absolute Hardness Limit of 32100; a number that means very little to most people, me included. This is only when Tritanium is in it's purest form, but it isn't as versatile as the federation would like. Whilst offering good protection, it must be partnered with a structural integrity field to prevent it from self-imploding due to it's brittle nature. Most Starfleet vessels will alloy the Tritanium with Duranium or another more versatile alloy to make the material less brittle at the cost of durability.

Star Trek is not known for it's crystal clear technical data; the power of the weapons and the strength of the hull often varies from episode to episode. The phasers might do massive damage to a target in one episode and completely ineffective in an another. Ship phasers can cut through the crust of a planet which puts the top end of their output at around 100 RonnaWatts or 10 to the power of 28 Watts.

The Photon Torpedoes are another weapon where the technical stats are deliberately obfuscated. In Voyager the Isoton Warheads on their torpedoes generate a yield of nearly 500 Megatons, but in The Next Generation technical manual it is stated that the 3Kg Matter/Anti-Matter warhead generates a yield of 64 Megatons. You can see how wishy washy Star Trek can be when it comes to performance and technical statistics. It is likely that the Reliant's Photon Torpedoes are of the TNG variety rather than VOY's. The Reliant's compliment of 80 Photon Torpedoes can deliver a combined 5120 Megatons of explosive ordinance. It's a shame they don't have a rapid fire mode.

The deflector shields are a sort of ambiguous entity across Star Trek. Typically they are multipe layers of energetic distorion and protect the ship with a field of Gravitons. Shields generate Gravitons, Phasers use Nadions. Star Trek writers love just throwing scientific words at the wall with random words thrown in to see what sticks. They operate at certain frequencies to protect the ship from energy attacks and matter collisions ranging from debris, asteroids or projectile weapons. Typically a ship's shield is split into six sections (Forward, Aft, Port, Starboard, Dorsal, Ventral) and can lose one of these sections without comprimising the entire shield. However, shield recovery time can range from the Nova Class' 45 seconds to over a minute. Some ships can reinforce the shield generator with power from the other services but once the shield in a particular section has been overloaded there is no backup shield to cover it until the generator recharges.

What is the Emperor Class ship like?

Warhammer 40K is even more wishy washy than Star Trek. Whereas Star Trek could (un)reliably give us weapons with an output of some form, 40K tends to say "here is a gun that can melt tank armour" which is unreliable as hell because 40K has a lot of tanks, the Land Raider, the Rhino, the Baneblade to name a few. Wouldn't really matter what kind of tank a guardsman and his lasgun could shoot through as the tank will probably just run him over as a result.

The Emperor Class technical information is as follows:-

Name: Divine Right (just picked the first one on the list)

Class: Emperor Class Multi-role Warship, it's designated as a battleship but functions more like a carrier and command centre for fleet engagements.

Crew Compliment: Anywhere between 10 thousand and 100 thousand personnel (see what I mean by wishy washy)

Length: Between 8 and 12 Kilometres, even the smallest Emperor class is over 28 times bigger than the Reliant which gives the

Beam: Unknown

Height: Who knows

Powerplant: Several Nuclear Fusion Plasma Reactors, 1x Warp Drive

Max Speed: Somewhere between 0 and 0.5 Lightspeed Void Travel, Emperor only knows during Warp Travel.

Construction: Ceramite, Plasteel, Ferrocrete, and Adamantium Armour

Armament: 8x Weapon Batteries, 4x Prow Lance Batteries, 5x Dorsal Defensive Weapon Batteries, 2x Ventral Lance Batteries, 2x Ventral Weapon Batteries, 8x Navis Imperialis Attack Squadrons - a mix of Fury Interceptors, Starhawk Bombers and Shark Assault Boats.

Fury Interceptor:-

Crew: 5, Length: 40-70 Metres

Armament: 2x Hull-mounted Lascannons

Wing-Mounted Anti-Starship Missiles and Multi-Lasers

Starhawk Bomber:-

Crew: 15

Speed: 1800 KPH or 1118.5 MPH, pretty fast for a bomber

Armament: 1x Twin-linked Lascannons, 2x Twin-linked Long-barrelled Multi-Laser turrets, 2x wing-mounted Twin-linked Heavy Bolter turrets, Anti-Ship Missiles, Plasma Bombs

Payload: 10x Anti-Voidship Missiles, 40x Plasma Bombs

Shark Assault Boat:-

Crew: 4

Length: 50-55 Metres

Armament: 1x Twin-Linked Las-Breacher, 1x Autocannon

Cargo: 50 Naval Armsmen in 5x Ten Man Squads. Each squad can be equipped with the following:-

Sergeant-at-Arms - Either Close-Combat Shotgun, or 1x Bolt Pistol & 1x Power Sword, or 1x Autopistol & 1x Chainsword

1x Voidsman - Either a Las-Volley, Plasmagun, or Meltagun

1x Voidsman - Either Shotgun or Autopistol & Power Weapon

1x Voidsman - Either Shotgun or Autopistol & Chainfist

1x Voidsman - Heavy Shotgun and Endurant Combat Shield

5x Voidsmen with Combat Shotguns, one can be equipped with a demolition charge.

What does this mean?

It is a lot to process; whilst the ship itself may not be as heavily armed as a battle barge or a Gloriana Class, it can still hold it's own. Given the design of Imperial ships, most combat is conducted like the sea battles of old with ships coming about to fire broadside volleys at one another. The ship does however, sport several powerful lance batteries and an armoured prow for ramming into the enemy.

The vast majority of the Divine Right's offensive weaponry lies in it's squadrons of voidcraft. The nimble Fury will often acts as distractions whilst delivering shots to ebb away the enemy's defences allowing the Starhawks to clear a way for the Sharks to board the enemy vessel.

How do the two stack up against each other?

Each ship has it's own advantages and disadvantages. The Reliant has teleportation technology; and whilst the Imperium has teleporter technology, it isn't clear if the Divine Right makes use of it. In this case we operate under the assumption it doesn't have one. The biggest problem with teleportation is that the Reliant will have to drop it's shields in order to use it, making it a vulnerable target for the squadrons of voidcraft the Divine Right will employ. Even if the Reliant could beam a torpedo onto the Divine Right; the chances are they'd give a Shark Assault Boat the opportunity to board the ship, and no matter how well trained Starfleet personnel are, they'd be mincemeat at the hands of Imperial Navy Voidsmen.

But let's look at this objectively. We'll use the category system that has served us well in the past albeit slightly modified.

Offence: Divine Right. In all honesty it isn't even close. In terms of absolute offensive capability, the Divine Right outguns the Reliant in every way possible. Whilst the Phasers and Photon Torpedoes are powerful, the Divine Right has Macrocannon Batteries, Lance Batteries, and Squadrons of Attack Craft. If it were just ship-to-ship I would call it a draw but then the Divine Right would be fighting a battle whilst holding one hand tied behind it's back and hopping on one foot.

Defence: Draw. I was going to give this categopry to the Divine Right as it has multiple shield generators and when one shield fails another takes it's place. Voidshields work by channeling the power of the Immaterium and generating a field of Warpspace around the ship, Voidshields are only really useful against energy weapons, they can reduce the effects of kinetic projectiles but torpedoes and shells will still hit the ship. So whilst the Reliant's Phasers are useless against it, those Photon Torpedoes will always hit their target. The Reliant has a shield that blocks both ebergy and kinetic weaponry but it only has one. Yes it may be divided into six parts, should one of those parts fail then the ship has to perform defensive manoeuvres.

Manoeuvrability: Reliant. The Reliant can fly literal circles around the Divine Right. Even at half impulse power, the Reliant has the greater manoeuvrability. The Divine Right functions much the same way an eighteenth century warship does. It'll have a turning circle as wide as the moon, relying on it's powerful batteries to end the fight quickly.

Special Abilities: Divine Right. This comes down to what is better, a teleporter or 50 men with shotguns? Yes, the Reliant can transport an armed torpedo aboard the Divine Right but that comes at a cost. Firstly, the crew would have to identify a critical area of the Divine Right beforehand which isn't would be difficult when you are under attack from quadrons of attack craft. As I stated above, the three types of attack craft will work in unison to get the Shark Assault Boats into a position to deliver the Voidsmen safely aboard the Reliant.

So who wins?

The Divine Right. It isn't a completely one-sided fight. In ship-to-ship combat, the Reliant would be able to take advantage of it's better agility and speed. However, in ship-to-ship combat the Reliant's phasers would be useless against the Divine Right's voidshields. The Reliant would need to do as much damage as possible with it's limited supply of photon torpedoes. The armour of the Divine Right is strong but not invincible and if the Reliant can concentrate it's torpedo volleys in the same region they could do some serious damage, possibly even destroy the ship.

We do however have to take into consideration the following:-

1. The Divine Right has more weapons
2. The Divine Right has a greater supply of ammunition
3. The Divine Right has void attack craft

The Divine Right's primary offence comes from the void attack craft. The Starhawk and Shark sacrifice shields for better armour and manoeuvrabilty whereas the Fury can be fitted with shields to extend it's dogfighting capability or to act as an escort for the Shark. It wouldn't take long before the squadrons of attack craft strip the Reliant of it's shields and turn it into swiss cheese with the multitude of ordinance or by boarding it with heavily armed men.

The Winner: The Divine Right

For reference you can see the original video at the following link:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ChTId2Jm4

Please feel free to draw your own conclusions and comment whether or not you agree with me. 

Please use facts to back up any argument you have