Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-27642965-20160211003725/@comment-27890440-20160308185803

To be honest I hadn't even considered the Culture who AFAIK represent the single most powerful protagonist faction in sci fi. They have individual ships that could take on the IoM (30 or 40k) with impunity, and those ships number in the thousands.

On another note, however, ive been giving this a little thought and realised that the IoM posess quite a few key weaknesses in space combat that would severely hinder them against many sci fi factions. Hinder to the point of cripple potentially.

Specifically they posess neither FTL weapons or combat capability, nor can they move safely in system at anything but a very low fraction of the speed of light. Their sensors appear limited and their FTL itself so cumbersome and unpredictable that they couldnt react to pinpoint strikes except to assess the damage after the fact (which we often see in the 40k fluff anyway)

Any FTL combatant could easily (as in very easily) outmaneouvre their ships and weapons (bearing in mind even lasers are light speed only), picking them off with FTL weapons. This would render even planetary assaults virtually impossible given the time frames between translating from the warp and moving into a planetary system (at the given max safe speed of 1%c this would take weeks and even that is generous given they would be decelerating steadily).

On that basis I'd go with the Culture winning hands down, the Federation on a war setting being able to hold out indefinitely but not having the resources to go on the offensive, Dune not really making a dent, SW going toe to toe in prolonged ship to ship battles with the outcome depending in part on which faction we see.