Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-27642965-20160211003725/@comment-27890440-20160229133853

The problem here is always going to be comparing two universes onm a number of variables and making them match up between settings, bearing in mind completely incompatible fictional sciences. Also, what do we mean by universe? Would including star trek necessarily mean the federation or would species 8472 count? Would the Chaos Gods be participants?

It would make sense slightly more if we narrowed the discussion down to individual factions but even then its very difficult to establish how they would match up. In the above example the IoM easily overmatches the federation in scale, manpower and military resources. However, their FTL is horribly unreliable, making deployments chaotic and unpredictable, whereas the federation can put exactly the forces they want, where they want, when they want. The IoM builds much larger, more militarised ships, but their tech (and specifically ability to advance) is stagnant and pretty basic by scifi standards, whereas you can guarantee within a few days of encountering void shields the federation would be actively looking for ways to bypass them. Based on what we see in their canon, they'd likely succeed. The IoM would absolutely dominate in land engagements, whereas the federation would fight primarily in space, with (believe it or not) their own form of exterminatus available if need be (general order 24). In a war of attrition the IoM wins hands down, but purely because they are larger and frankly geared up for total war, not necessarily due to actual tactical or technical superiority. They would grind the federation down, but they would spend several years being danced around and taking horrendous losses doing so. Although yeah, Space Wolves v starfleet redshirts would be funny.

This of course assumes that you are simply lining them up to face each other in a vacuum. In setting the IoM is protrayed as being stretched pretty thin, constantly having to face multiple attacks from existing factions all of which are consistently hostile, whereas the federation has more diplomatic relations with their neighbours (who often even serve as allies) and would be in a more flexible position to deploy a large fraction of their forces, as during the dominion war when most estimates have them fielding 30,000 combat ships on a fairly narrow front.

In another scenario, on the other hand, we are literally teaming everything present in one universe up against everything from another, then you have to question exactly what in the 40k universe could feasibly threaten the borg, 8472, V'ger, the whale probe, the organians, the prophets and the biggest of them all, the Q. Even the Blackstone Fortresses are portrayed as being at least potentially vulnerable to sufficient firepower, whereas several of the above have at this time shown no vulnerabilities.

Even the Chaos Gods are not portrayed as omnipotent, far from it fact, nor is the Emp, both relying very heavily on mortal followers to increase their capabilities, whereas the Q are rarely if ever noted to have any limitations whatsoever. On screen they have claimed to have them, but only appear to visibly display them when taken totally by surprise (walking into an unexpected forcefield - which he then walked straight through, being punched in the face by Sisko, etc). When prepared they are seemingly capable of doing absolutely anything they want,literally to the point of using the galaxy as a plaything with no effort at all, and they number in the very least the hundreds. In other words trek has a whole race of beings who individually out match the Emperor by at least an order of magnitude.