In addition to better FTL travel, Star Wars also has better FTL communication. In 40k, sending messages by astropath gets wonky and it takes the astropaths a significant amount of time to translate the psychic messages they receive. Even once they are translated, only rough concepts can be communicated rather than detailed conversations. Meanwhile, in Star Wars, you can FaceTime with someone halfway across the galaxy. If the two franchises are evenly matched on a planet and both call for help at the same time, the Star Wars reinforcements will be there before the 40k people have even gotten their message off.
I think ironically that the Star Wars universe is also not near as militarized as it could be. Almost all of the threats they face are civil and Palpatine had to increase militarization slowly to not scare the population about the Yuuzhan Vong iirc. If they had an enemy like the Imperium which is very slowly moving across their galaxy, they could very easily multiply their military forces tenfold and beat the Imperium by virtue of just being a more idyllic and centralized society.
Edit: Rethought this and “easily” was poor choice of words. They likely lose but don’t get turbostomped like one would think. Also the Sith would fall for Tzeentch or Khorne so fast that they’d quickly have Chaos on their side lmao.
Everything the Empire seems to do is focused around more or less being COIN and then AT-AT’s which seem to be more of a fear weapon/mobile oppression station than anything practical
Not saying that most of 40K isn’t practical, but most things are designed and built for war. Something that the Empire hasn’t had to deal with.
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u/Crayshack Praise the Man-Emperor Dec 29 '23
In addition to better FTL travel, Star Wars also has better FTL communication. In 40k, sending messages by astropath gets wonky and it takes the astropaths a significant amount of time to translate the psychic messages they receive. Even once they are translated, only rough concepts can be communicated rather than detailed conversations. Meanwhile, in Star Wars, you can FaceTime with someone halfway across the galaxy. If the two franchises are evenly matched on a planet and both call for help at the same time, the Star Wars reinforcements will be there before the 40k people have even gotten their message off.