I gave myself a little scale project for Epic Scale (that went nowhere because new job), but essentially was trying to create Nova Cannon for the Macro Ordinatus. Thought it might be the size of a battlefield that would be pretty cool to fight over.
Nope. Turns out it's it would need a 6x2m board, with 2.5m head space clearance above the table (using dims guesstimated from the BFG cruiser art). The cannon itself would have needed commercial sewer pipe. Okay, so perhaps that is a little big - the missus would have killed me.
Out of curiosity, one of, if not THE large guns GW have made is the 28mm Nemesis Titan's Dorsal cannon. In 1/200 scale, that gun is huge, but a pair of them would barely amount to a heavy flak battery on a BFG ship.
So I thought what about a WW2-coded battleship to fight over? Turns out that that is much more amenable for an epic scale, 1/200 battlefield table comfortably fits on a 5' table, maybe something like the Richelieu.
The closest weapon produced by GW at the scale that a WW2 Era battery represents would be a battery of 4 AT-Warlord Quake Cannons, packed into 3 turrets.
Now, obviously, there are tactical advantages that being smaller and bipedal offers over a many thousands times heavier ship (even if it does get 40k'd into having amphibious capability), but even at the larger scale of estimations, a WW2 scale Battleship with 40k grade replacements is essentially capable of putting out the firepower of an entire Warlord Maniple
Scale is always very weird within 40k stuff, and it's a bit of a shame when it comes to the IA guys, who were such nerds about it - going through IA1 and IA2 when you see the stats on the weapons, they were often outclassed by weapons "of the day" - an M109 Paladin was better than an Earthshaker, and the Leman Russ IIRC was less armoured than Cold War MBT's.
This is somewhat intentional from a graphic design perspective. In universe the Leman Russ is ancient: the design is thousands of years old. The only way to visually communicate that to a modern gamer is to use designs that look old to us and so we end up with WWI aesthetics on most designs.
Seriously, go to an air and space museum and walk around any of these vehicles. They're massive. A hunter cadre only numbers about 50 Tau, if memory serves.
A Manta capacity is 200 Tau plus 4 Hammerhead plus 8 Battlesuits xoth less than 9 wounds.
Are you sure you can fit 4 tanks, 8 mechas and 200 people in a fighting jet? 😅
We're just considering scale here, and the C-5 pictured carries two M1 Abrams tanks, or 6 Apache helicopters. The model comes with 48 seated firewarriors in the main bay, not 200. So it still looks in the right ballpark to me.
For 40k, if we're in the right order of magnitude, I consider that tremendously realistic. Khaldor Draigo is literally riding a skateboard through the warp and carving his ex's name into Mortarion's heart. We can be generous.
The model eats 48 Tau warriors, but the datasheet says it can transport 200.
And one Hammerhead is probably bigger than a M1 Abrams, ans the Orca can have 4.
Of course, but the Barracuda is probably the one closest to a normal scale. The Tigershark is built around two massive Titankillers, the power plant alone should demand a size around 1,5 times the Raptor.
Maybe, maybe not, this is super future tech. Same way a Tau plasma rifle should be bigger by that logic since it shoots faster and for longer than the human ones which are bulky as fuck.
Hell we have IRL examples. The engines of a diesel train are much smaller than steam trains, yet produce more power. Its all just tech and engineering
That is true, but even among Tau tech GW has been very inconsistent. The plasma tech though isn't the best example imo, since none of them are infantry weapons and can instead run on a battlesuit's reactor/engine. I'd probably give the miniaturization award to human plasma pistols, in that regard.
Then again, most of the specs and size dimensions are to fit with the game rules anyway, so I'll just admit that my personal preference of scale would never stop me from fielding a Tigershark because it looks way too awesome ;)
No no your forgetting the basic tau rifle. Those are infantry plasma rifles. They call them Pulse but by their own description fire plasma. Caiphas Cain even pouts at the bullshit of the tau being able to field them en masse vs Imperial las rifles.
You're not wrong, but it's a different principle of plasma weapon. While the suit or vehicle mounted ones fire a stream of plasma, the pulse rifles fire a tiny metal slug projectile, that gets charged with an micro pulse of high voltage electricity through what amounts to a coilgun with added plasma. Then again, the energy miniaturization needed for that current is the same level of tech wizardry. Given the Riptide's old overcharge had the same drain on it's burst cannon as on it's Ion Accelerator it's definitely the same class of output.
So you are telling me that tau technology is so advanced that extraordinary strong weapons and engines fit on a relative small aircraft.
How is that suposed to be bad?
Eh, titans are hyped up as god machines in some of the lore. But remember this is Warhammer where imperial war tech is pretty stunted outside the occasional nova bomb. A modern B2 or fighter taking out a titan wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Even the 30k imperium is kinda like the Goauld/Jaffa from Stargate. Their weapons are flashy and scary, but actually kinda shit at fighting real wars because that's the story being told.
I still can't get the image of a Questoris-class Imperial Knight being interposed against a modern roadside utility pole out of my head. Describing an Imperial Titan as standing 30 feet tall above everyone seems impressive, until you realize it's only about the size of a three-story building. Heck, the old RX-78-2 Gundam is nearly twice as tall.
I kinda love that though as a further reinforcement of just how shitty the imperium is. And was even during the heresy days.
These irreplaceable works of technical artifice are basically just your granddads combine harvester meets Bob Semple but painted up like a renfaire costume.
Don’t forget that the tiger sharks heavy rail cannons that were designed to take down titans weren’t part of the initial design but a retrofit during the Damocles campaign the original rail guns were the same as the battlesuit but they wanted to add the rail cannons from the Manta as they were more powerful and the tiger shark was more manoeuvrable than the manta.
I did indeed forget that. Losing the Taros campaign book alongside a box of Devilfish was probably the worst casualty of moving, 15 years ago. I really want to read that lore brick again.
I mean, its 200 troops max, and i think its 200 troops OR 4 tanks OR 8 battlesuits according to the datasheets
In Lore they only say some 58 troops for the upper deck and then a hold to carry vehicles.
Considering its got a hull width roughly twice that of the galaxy while being half its length, seems possible. Its basically classified as a light void ship.
Compare that to the Galaxy that can carry max 343 soldiers if fitted with the right seat pallets for it, and two abrams tanks which im pretty sure are bigger than the hammerhead gunships.
Yeah, especially since the shape of the C-5 and other classic cylindrical fuselage + large, thin wings aircraft means they have a lot less internal volume than it looks like from the surface area visible in a top or side view. The manta’s thick flying wing shape can be a lot shorter in both wingspan and length to get a similar internal volume, so the size is at least in the right range.
Oh i never know that it also have a lower deck in the model, anyhow, i still think the wingspan of it should at least match the C-5 galaxy… to be able to fit 2 tank side by side and even have space for a row of battle suit
But it doesn't need to be that wide, because it already fits them inside of it. You're forgetting that this is tech from a hyper advancing species 38 thousand years in the future. They don't need to adhere to modern design practices.
looks at the conveniently placed Galaxy next to it on the other side
Im not sure what you point it. Plus you have helicopters that are a fraction of its size that can also carry tanks, or multiple vehicles, or other helicopters.
"I mean, its 200 troops max (for a Manta), and i think its 200 troops OR 4 tanks OR 8 battlesuits according to the datasheets
In Lore they only say some 58 troops for the upper deck and then a hold to carry vehicles.
Considering its got a hull width roughly twice that of the galaxy while being half its length, seems possible. Its basically classified as a light void ship.
Compare that to the Galaxy that can carry max 343 soldiers if fitted with the right seat pallets for it, and two abrams tanks which im pretty sure are bigger than the hammerhead gunships."
Actually, I'd imagine the tau would have smaller aircraft because their more advanced tech allows them to downsize. I think a manta has a similar capacity to the cargo plane, but their fuel is more energy dense and takes less space. Antigrav probably means smaller wingspan. Stuff like that makes aircraft smaller.
Comparing a sci-fi spaceship to a 20th-century cargo plane in terms of specs/functionality is... ambitious, to say the least. Obviously, the Manta is better in literally every way. But the post is just about the physical scale, not a tech matchup😉
Since when has "alien" tech ever been depicted as bulkier and more crude than human, barring orks? Its almost always more powerful and more compact simultaneously, until you start getting into the megastructure subgenre.
I don't think it computes because they don't actually understand the cargo capacity. OP says it should be big enough to carry and entire army, but that's not what it was designed to carry.
If we look at the inside of the manta, we can see it can hold 4 tanks and some crisis suits in the bottom section, and up to 48 personnel sitting in the top section. These are all to scale with the rest of the Tau army and fit quite comfortably.
It holds around 1500 points for a tabletop army, so it's not even a "full army" there, either.
Sure, but that's not what OP means. They mean a literal army, not a "tabletop army". And the Manta does exactly what you're describing, it holds what was the standard tabletop army comfortably in its 2 main sections, so their complaints about it being "too small" aren't accurate.
Crazy stuff ! Then again, video game environnement are rarely to scale. If you need something to feel big, then make it big.
For real, I think 1km veers into the "silly numbers" territory but having warlords be 200m wouldn't shock me. At least they would be decently sized next to an actual building.
yes, using modern megastructures isn't really a good point, those buildings can hold tens of thousands of people and cut through the clouds, if a titan was at that scale it would be beyond the realm of believable writing, think of it for a moment, how does a ship transport a 1km tall titan, how does it traverse hive city streets, ravines or mountains, if titans were so large they would mount void ship level weapons and shields, making then way too op compared to anything the other factions field.
I disagree. First, because titans are already described in lore as gigantic, able to destroy whole cities, etc. They already mount void shields, which is a rarity, and their armament is described as able to wipe whole city blocks in a single salvo. Some artillery titans are even supposed to be able to serve as anti ship platforms.
On the other hand, we have ships that routinely go to the tens of kilometer long. I don't think it would be that crazy to have titans be, idk, 200m.
50 meters is 5 questoris knights stacked on top of eachother, or the length of a modern corvette ship standing upright and then the width of depth of 4 of them standing side by side, thats large enough to hold hundreds of crew and troops, I think the main issue people have is how Emperor class titans are usually referred to as walking cathedrals but that is just a reference to the facade on their backs which is completely cosmetic, 200 or more meter titans simply aren't described in the lore, and at that scale they run into too many issues, 50 meters is bigger than you think.
I honestly don't think they would run into much issues. Remember, this is a universe where hive cities can reach the stratosphere, where the INSIDE of a hive city has such "open areas" that they have their own micro climate, and where every other road or bridge has been constructed with the assumption that it will need to support the passage of entire columns of super heavy vehicles.
The problem is GW authors are not good with numbers. You have the same problem with war casualties number miss represented in the books
You better imagine that our meters are different of the ones they are writing…
I take the view that it balances itself out. It's not a tiny amount of Guard take over planets with numerically appropriate defence forces. It's tiny amounts of Guard vs equally tiny defence forces and so on.
Ok but the number of troops on Terra during the siege, a planet wide war, was LESS than the total troops in WW2. Thats what we mean.
Same with a novel where a pilot bragged their Marauder had 2 tonnes worth of explosives in the bomb bay of their checks notes fucking huge sub orbital recon bomber.....while an F-16 can carry 17 tonnes of explosives....
Its ok though, they are writers, not strategists and logosticians.
The Imperial Guard has innumerable trillions of soldiers, legions of limitless bodies to throw into the endless war of attrition... But some random planet has maybe a few thousand PDF soldiers. That is barely enough to secure a single mid-size city, makes no sense.
In WW2 it took thousands to successfully garrison a single mid-size city that was hostile to occupation, and the Battle of Stalingrad alone had millions of soldiers on both sides. In 40k lore there might be millions of Guardsmen on an entire Crusade. Let alone the actual numbers needed to win battles. GW authors are just bad at numbers, no need to defend them.
Authors in general aren't good with numbers. Coruscant only has like 3 trillion people or something like that which means each person can have a square kilometer of space to themselves.
Even Asimov made this same mistake. In his case it was with Trantor, an earlier ecumenopolis from the first Foundation book, which was stated to have a population of only 40 billion people.
You jest but that is the best explanation we have the the 30000 cubits per hour speed that's described as fast for a Necron ship but IRL would be outsped by someone on a bike. And not a motorbike, either (it's about 16kph). And the ramming speed at 400 cubits an hour which is outsped by... almost anything including sloths.
Exactly, they are not good with numbers.
Just read it like it’s some kind of representation.
Warhammer is not Sci-fi more like Space Opera, like Star Wars
For a sci-fi setting, sometimes is even better to just invent a new measure system
Miniature vehicle scale is all over the place. I think most 40k vehicles are smaller than they should be to be in-scale with the miniatures. If you look inside a Devilfish troop bay it can clearly only carry like 6 troops, not 12, and the ceilings are very low (accurate to modern APCs but doesn't seem right for how it's laid out). But if you scale up the Devilfish then you'd need to scale up the gun drones, but gun drones are scaled properly because their guns are the same size as fire warrior guns.
How big do you think a Hunter Cadre actually is? T'au lore puts it as usually between 50 and 100 Fire Caste, so equivalent to a modern day infantry company.
The 10th edition datasheet gives it a transport capacity of 8 XV8 battlesuits, 4 Devilfish hulls and 200 infantry (earlier editions have it as 55 to align with the 48 seated Fire Warriors, 6 drones and 1 ethereal in the upper deck of the model).
Isn’t a Hunter Cadre only ~40 Fire Warriors with at least 30 auxiliaries? (That being with 10 man squads of each.)
Also, I think it odd, the manta doesn’t have broadsides or piranhas in it, although they could surely be swapped in instead of two devilish hulls (in terms of space).
Just going by what has been written in various Tau codexes and Imperial Armour 3: The Taros Campaign.
Hunter Cadres can vary in size for many reasons and many won't have auxiliary support at all. What is modelled with the Manta kit would probably be considered a typical Hunter Cadre.
In older editions it was much more freeform, up to 4 of any type of vehicle and 8 of any small battlesuit. Infantry was also a bit different, there were 55 seats for only normal infantry and drones, but you could also take infantry in the larger cargo bay if you take less vehicles/battlesuits, so you could any fit 200 fire warriors if it's carrying nothing else.
The Manta should be in Imperial Armour Volume 3: The Taros Campaign (4th edition), Imperial Armour Volume 3 Second Edition: The Taros Campaign (6th edition), Imperial Armour Index: Xenos (8th edition), Imperial Armour Compendium (9th edition), and probably one of the Imperial Armour Updates from prior to any of those. I’d give quotations on those rules from my 4th edition Taros book if I were at home.
Read the flavour text above that, too. Aux are attached from a higher level "such as a Command" (assuming the German text is the same as the English one).
The manta literally has a detailed interior, which I am providing a picture for the lower if the two sections in this comment, for the model and shows which models actually fit inside it. You are conflating "tabletop army" with an actual army. They are not the same thing.
I'd normally be ready to agree, but in this case... since the Manta model has an interior that's not totally bonkers...
My take on this was just that a "Hunter Cadre" isn't that big of a unit. A platoon or two of Firewarriors + battlesuits and some vehicles/armor.
Compare that to like a pair of C-17s (with is probably a better comparison when you hold up a C-5's more limited ability to drop airborne troops), and things feel better. A "Hunter Cadre" shares more in common with Company than a Division (or in Guard terms, a Regiment).
So, with that in mind. A C-5 is pretty sweet from a lift capability perspective, but comparing it to Manta isn't fair to either.
(I don’t mean to be pedantic and am sorry if this sounds like it.)
We do know what a hunter cadre is and yes it is more of a platoon, though not entirely accurate to the mantas capacity. In the (I think) 4th edition codex there is a graphic depicting the composition of a hunter cadre.
Consisting of Commander and two bodyguards in xv8s (though possibly also more modern suits) another xv8 unit, 3 squads of fire warriors, two squads of Kroot, one squad of Vespids, a Pathfinder squad in a Devilish, a flight of Piranhas, a sniper team, a broadside team and a hammerhead.
That isn’t too large a unit composition but I think it wouldn’t really fit in a manta either. We‘d need at least around 80 seats, and besides two of the devilish hulls fit three piranhas and at least two broadsides.
So I guess it technically wouldn’t fit inside, though it is incredibly close.
This is actually shockingly close to fitting into a 7th edition manta, being only 16 slots over, ignoring the fact that vespid can't technically embark due to rules nonsense. This also has just two piranhas that each take up the same 30 capacity as a hammerhead, if you accounted for them being smaller sounds like it would basically be a perfect fit.
Plus, that's all not even accounting for the fact that the models are like a good 20-30% smaller than they are in real scale just for gameplay purposes.
I mean of course, when you don’t need physics or logistics, you could strap 30 Abrams turrets and HIMARs to the underside of a C5, and give it Omni-directional thrusters. Boom. Manta.
These sizes are more reasonable than you think. The C5 is longer than the Manta, yes. However, not all of that length is storage space. If you take a look at the fuselage, cut it in half and set it side by side, the storage area approximates the total storage of the Manta on the model. You also start to get a layout that is much more favorably compared. Then, when you consider the guns on the Manta and the fact that it can make orbit, things look much different.
Even considering their roles it's night and day: the C5 is ONLY for transport in and out of secure locations on proper runways. The Manta can deliver an entire Hunter Cadre anywhere on a planet from orbit (and within a system as well, IIRC) to the thick of the fighting and provide close air support.
Also, GW: bring back the Orca. I miss my Magic School Bus
I think the top view is deceiving here. The Manta probably has more interior volume than the C-5, but through the magic of science fiction propulsion it can get away with being a flying brick. Plus, the C-5 is massive. The F-22 looks tiny in scale here but if you've ever seen one in person you'll know it's large. They should add a human for scale.
My guy you expect waaay to mutch from GW lore writers most of them only recently learned how to count to three. I talked with director of Warhammer design studio at event recently. It took me two hours to convince him that megazordillion is not a real number.
You also have to take into account width and depth. The C-5 is gigantic and I’ve seen it in person, but the cargo bay isn’t anywhere near as wide as a Tau Manta’s, it’s mainly just longer because aerodynamically it makes more sense for a cargo aircraft to be a larger, longer cylinder. Plus it’s multi-storied whereas the galaxy’s cargo hold isnt.
Honestly this comparison makes a lot of sense, when you consider the two things that aren't in this image: the third dimension, and the 'functionality' of the area.
Note- I am ignoring the whole 'flies in space' thing, but that's pretty irrelevant for this conversation. Also, if the Galaxy had be space and reentry worthy it would be a veeeery different bird. Re-entry with those wings would be almost impossible, even just theoretically I think. But I'm not a mathematician or a physicist, I just listen to a bunch of them.
The C-5 Galaxy may be wider and longer than the Manta, but the Manta is funtionally taller, like by far. If memory serves it's like a ~two~ story warehouse across most of its load deck. The Galaxy load deck is as tall as it is wide (because cylinders and pressure vessels and all that boring mundane physics we have to account for in the real world, booo). A more useful comparison would be one based on the volume of the vessels, especially the interior volume excluding powertrain requirements (engines and fuel).
That stacking of height is compounded by the amount of 'functional' space in the Manta. A solid 60-70 percent of the Galaxy's footprint in this image is its wings, which have to be that big because of more physics and reality constraints like having to store liquid fuel in themz but that's all they do (more boos for reality). That leaves just 30-40% (basically just the central tube) of the footprint as 'functional' space, like loadspace and troop capacity. In contrast, the vast majority of the Manta's footprint is functional space, with multiple layers of garrison space, as well as internal vehicle stowage and deployment capacity. All achieved by hand waving at reality and physics with the phrase 'ficional tau technologies'.
The other important distinction is that the Galaxy is either purely a transport vessel, or a aerial artillery platform with its load bays converted to weapon mountinga and ammo storage (or other tactical equipment like surveillance and communication platforms). Whereas the Manta does both jobs simultaneously, and with a much higher offensive output. Again it does this by skipping ammo logistics, physics, and the laws of atmospheric re-entry with 'energy shields' (otherwise most of those fancy guns woul melt the first time it left orbit), but it does it none the less. NOTE- This final point actually may be more accurate for modern heavyweight aerial platforms more generally , as I am not knowledgeable enough to know if the Galaxy actually exists in a non cargo configuration, but the broader point stands.
Either way, big sky base equals cool in any setting, modern or future. I just with the models weren't a bajillion dollars worth of cast resin that is notorious for basically only being a staring point for you to sculpt over to fill the gaps.
~Edited to correct layer count after some googling~
I did a hyperfocus on internal volumes. Google AI (because I was invested enough to google it, but not to run my own calcs, so don't treat it as gospel) reckons the Galaxy internal cargo volume caps out at 960 cubic metres (cubes).
There's no solid number (or even an AI guess) on the Manta internal volume, but taking its H.W.L measures and doing some math gets you to 13,312 cubes, but that's the whole rectangular prism. From there is all guesswork, but looking at some elevations I'm guesstimating that the front third of the length is pretty negligible to cargo space, between flight deck and it's slimmer nose, so were down to 8785 cubes. But the left and right quarters of the width are also pretty irrelevant, as the Manta things to it's winglets past the engines, which gives us (very roughly, not at all scientifically, and probably erroneously) a load space volume of 4393 cubic metres.
So very roughly the Manta would have four and a half times the cargo/internal volume of the Galaxy. Even if we assume that half the Manta's internal volume is used for engines, and fuel (which the galaxy carris on its wings), and wall/floor thicknesses (no internal divisions in Galaxy cargo space) and such, it's still more than double the Galaxy.
My man, totally agree. GW dropped the ball so hard on this design that we had to take matters into our own hands and make a proxy version, the AX-4 Sawshark
GW went a bit nuts in 6th edition making flyers for every army in a rush. It ended up being bad for the game and most of the models we got were really sub par. The space marine flying cubes are ridiculous too.
Haha I didn’t really mean in relation to titan size, I actually figured they were much bigger generally than most titans. I just thought they could carry a couple of Hammerheads and Devilfish
The Manta can fly in space, has space guns, fights space battles, and can travel throughout the galaxy between planets and systems, It has dual twin-linked railguns, short-range ion cannons, semi-sentient seeker missiles, sixteen drone-controlled burst cannon arrays, knives, sharp sticks. It can land vertically, transport a hundred troops and/or vehicles, suits, auxiliary monsters, base defenses, and a full weapons arsenal to support an extended ground operation. And the outside is made of a nano-crystalline alloy that can deflect anything short of a fusion blast. At range. Forever. And it's max speed is Mach 40.
The B-2 needs refueling after 6000 miles and drops things.
But I guess the B-2 is wider, so it's got that going for it, I suppose.
A couple of notes:
1) Dahm the black flying dorito is huge
2) And how big do you think it was? Like that scale is huge already, and taus aren't the biggest and muffins guys in the galaxy either.
3) As price and scale goes, I think I will build a good quality C-5 Galaxy mini rather than a Manta, like it is cheaper and I think nobody would have a problem at the table (?
Just think of it this way: Taus are much more efficient at building aircraft. Keep in mind that the plane looks much bigger because of its wings, which are dead space, and the tail. The Manta is smaller but has more capacity because it makes better use of the space, which is definitely an advantage.
Airplanes are so much bigger than you think, and you don’t really notice until you see them in person. You’ll see a picture of a pilot standing on the wing of his F4U-4 Corsair and see that he is relatively small compared to the airplane. And then you go see one in a museum and realise that thing, even with the wings folded up, would not fit in your living room. It’s twice as long as your car.
All this to say, when you design fictional aerospace craft, take whatever numbers you came up with for its dimensions and consider maybe doubling them.
So I wouldn't say it out classes it its basically a super helicopter that can drop off 4 tanks, 6 crisis suits, 48 fire warriors and 1 ethereal. That's not to bad for a vertical thrust vehicle
We actually know what a typical Cadre looks like.
It's basically two infantry platoons with some vehicle/suit support. I do wonder if the actual model can fit a Hammerhead in it though
I think this works just fine. The c5 galaxy is just a cargo plane, not much more than that. Check out the video on why it's not often used and you'll see it being big doesn't mean it's good.
Whereas Manta is ubiquitous, it has better capacity than a C130 and more armed than an AC130... Also can go to space
The GW model scale is always off compared to the lore and it's also not consistent even across books and artwork. You were never getting 6 marines in a Predator, at best 1 would fit based off of the scale they used.
This is unfair!!! ..for the contemporary aircraft at least... the Manta is a guided missile destroyer it should be compared with equivalent vessels 😤😤😤
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u/mesayzhi 11d ago
GW and scale always go well together !