Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-4851119-20140323173912/@comment-2253300-20140414014840

Yes ,but at no point in the UNSC's history up to this point did they have the military power to beat the Imperium. The Imperium has bigger armies, more planets and infinitely more resources than the UNSC, pre or post HUman/Covenant war. The INfinity, the largest warship the UNSC has ever made by far, is just a little longer than a Lunar Class Cruiser, one of the most basic of Imperial Capital Ships. It's also the first UNSC warship to incorporate shielding technology. The rest of the UNSC fleet is made up of unshielded ships that at largest wouldn't be considered more than Escorts by Imperial Standards. Both in durability and firepower the UNSC fleet would be painfully outclassed at any point in their history/ Their navy does have an advantage in mobility at the interstellar and system levels, but at engagement range they don't.

For the sake of argument we'll say that the standard armor given to UNSC marines is comparable to Flak Armor. Even so Lasguns are superior to standard UNSC firearms in penetrative capability and accuracy, and the Imperial Guard has access to more power full weapons and warmachines than the UNSC does. THose tanks from Halo wars are not up to scratch, and if you are basing you analysis of Imperial Armor, or anything for that matter on Dawn of War then I should point out to you that it does not accurately represent the setting. It gets as close as an RTS game could, but it still isn't accurate. Furthermore the UNSC does not have an answer for Titan class warmachines. The Rail Gun on the Mammoth concievably has enough power to maybe drop a Titan's Void Shields, but I doubt that a Mammoth would be able to survive the return fire from a titan class weapon, and manage a second volley. even all of that not withstanding the Imperial Guard simply has more bodies to throw at any given engagement by a wide margin. I'll give you that the UNSC fights smarter than the Imperial Guard in general, but that wouldn't help them much against the sheer number of advantages that the Imperium has.

Regarding Spartans vs Astartes I should point out to you that there are only a handful of Spartan IIs left alive, and their level of augmentation is the only one of all the Spartan projects that could match Space Marine Augmentation. Both Spartan IIIs and Spartan IVs fall painfully short on this point, and they do in training as well. For that matter there are less than a hundred Spartan IIIs left, so the vast majority of the Spartan Branch are IVs which are a poor man's super-soldier. Add to this the fact that Marines on average have a century or so of combat experience whereas the oldest of Spartans only have a few decades. In addition while Mjolnir power armor has shileds, this is still ultimately inferior to Astartes Power Armor. With a few seconds of concentrated fire from a standard firearm like the UNSC assualt rifle one can drop the Mjolnir's shields and penetrate the armor to do lethal damage. Compare this to Space Marine Power Armor which is impervious to Lasfire, with the only example of a Lasgun that can effectively penetrate it being the Hot shot, which is a brand spanking new state of the art weapon. Essentially a Marine would be impervious to UNSC small arms fire, with the necessity for a Heavy Weapon, Rail Rifle, Rocket Luancher or Spratan Laser to simply do damage. Meanwhile a Standard Bolter fires heavy calibur micro-warheads at super-sonic speeds. It would shred through Mjolnir's shields and armor plating in no time. Finally you have the fact that Space Marines are far more numerous than Spartans. Now I'll give you one thing. Spartans fight smarter. Space Marines are usually deployed as Shock troops while Spartans usually do Spec Ops, and make use of small unit tactics. In addition Space Marines are known for being hidebound by their combat doctrines, while Spartans are extremely tactically adaptable, being willing to use the enemies own equipment against them. However in light of the overwhelming number of advantages that the Astartes already possess this give the Spartans only a slim advantage, and does not balance out the equation.